In Pursuit of Valis

by Philip K. Dick

  [ . . . . ]

  The true name of the game is power (to define & hence control (people’s perceptions of) reality), not consumer commodities like big house, Porsche & clothes[ . . . . ] Those are sops-bread & circuses, mere toys marked “success” but still toys. Which is why I can spartanly disdain them in my pursuit to control the definition of reality through my writing, etc., & I say that reality is irrational & irreal & subject to manipulation by mind—which is a sort of handbook of ideology of control, to view it thus, & provides the disenfranchised with techniques (inner secrets) of power: almost shamanesque in nature. esp: Jason Taverner, even when totally stripped of power & identity, destroyed his police (i.e., authority) foe (pursuer).

  Lem & the party experts[126] saw correctly that in my writing I was handing over weapons (secrets) of power to the disenfranchised of the capitalist west; their appraisal of me is correct. Over & over in my books 1) power is studied; 2) who has it; & 3) how those denied it manage to get it.

  Although appearing left wing my training is really Fascistic—not “Fascistic” as Marxist rhetoric defines it but as Mussolini defined it: in terms of the deed & the will, with reality de-ontologized, reduced to mere stuff on which the will acts in terms of deed. Since few living people correctly understand (genuine) Fascism, my ideology has never been pejoratively stigmatized by the left, but those to whom I appeal are in essence the core-bulk of latent masses, the fascist mob. I speak of & for the irrational & the anti-rational, a kind of dynamic nihilism in which values are generated as mere tactics. Thus my real idol is Hitler, who starting out totally disenfranchised rose to total power while scorning wealth (aristocracy) plutocracy to the end. My real enemy is plutocracy; I’ve done my (Fascistic) homework.[ ... ] My fascistic premise is: “There is no truth. We make truth; what we (first) believe becomes objectively true. Objective truth depends on what we believe, not the other way around.” This is the essence of the Fascist epistemology, the perception of truth as ideology imposed on reality—mind over matter.

  (c. 1978)

  Valis is the real & rational world breaking into (invading, as in e.g. UBIK) our simulated & irrational world. I’m saying, Valis is a world, a (the) real world. Ubik is to the cold-pac world as Valis is to our world. If Ubik & Valis are one in the same, our world is both irreal (UBIK) & irrational (VALIS).

  We’re missing half our stereo signal—what I call the upper realm (one).

  This notion that in 2-3-74 the real broke into the irreal (as in UBIK) is acosmic & Gnostic—& it agrees with another Gnostic idea (put forth in VALIS) that the creator of this world is irrational. A superior position cf. UBIK & VALIS is a superimposition of two basic Gnostic ideas, one cosmological, the other cosmogonical. It’s very interesting, what you get if you superimposed VALIS over UBIK—& I had previously seen that VALIS is an electronic circuit-like feedback of UBIK & mixing, enriching, etc.[ ... ] The rational is real; the irrational is not real. Our ordinary world is the latter into which the former has broken, invading it (as UBIK, but now Ubik is seen not just as real but as rational & as world, an information world; put another way, information experienced as world). Different space-time worlds are different coherencies—systems— of information, the info content of each arranged within a 4 dimensional system. I believe that my 2-374 experience with Valis confirms the acosmism of UBIK and consisted of the breaking into this irreal world of the real, of whose nature I now have some idea. It is my belief that 2-3-74 verifies the acosmism of my 27 years of writing.

  Tis invasion by the real/rational into the irreal/irrational is a third Gnostic ur-concept. (The Salvator Salvandus [The Redeemed Redeemer.][127]So in what way—if in any way—is my view & experience not Gnostic? In no way that I know of. We have the counterfeit creation of the blind demiurge, & the true God taking pity on us & invading this domain by outwitting the[128]

  Oh yes. 4th idea: that this world is a prison with prison wardens (the archons). i.e., those who impose “astral determinism,” which the Savior breaks (5th Gnostic idea!)

  I seem to have—

  Oh. 6th Gnostic idea. Anamnesis restores memory of our divine spark nature & celestial origin. Our real nature.

  7th Gnostic idea; the saving Gnosis itself, which recalls to us our real nature.

  Then the 1974 overthrowing of the tyranny by Valis is the Savior freeing us from our Prison. This is his prime role; he frees us, restores our memory & true nature, & gets us out of here. Meanwhile the true God transmutes this irrational irreal world into the real & rational. These are Gnostic ideas #8 & #9.

  I now have assembled the complete Gnostic system with its two realms only one of which—the upper-is real (Form I of Parmenides). (As stated in VALIS) it all stems from the insight that our world is not real. Then we ask, not real in relation to what? (Something must be real, or else the concept “irreal” means nothing.) Then we ask, “What is the real like? And how do we find it?” & we ask, “How did this irreal world come into being? & how did we get imprisoned here?” & then we ask, “What is our real nature?”

  If reality, rationality & goodness are not here, when are they? & how do we get from here to there? If this is a prison, how do we escape?

  We learn of a mysterious savior who camouflages himself to outwit our jailer, & make himself & his saving Gnosis known to us. He is our friend & he opposes this world & its powers in our behalf as our champion. & “one by one he takes us out of this world.” The Valentinean[129] ontological assessment of knowledge is not that it (the Gnosis) leads to salvation oris knowledge about salvation. But that in the act (event, revelation, experience) of knowing in itself lies salvation. Because in knowing, there is a restoration of man’s lost state, & a reversal of his present state of ignorance. Upon knowing, man is again what he originally was.

  This view accords with 2-3-74. Upon knowing I became again what I originally was. & this involved me as a now-restored piece of the ground of being itself, from which I, as a piece of it, had fallen & forgotten & lost my nature.

  My 10th Gnostic belief (v. supra) is that time is .a mere counterfeit, of eternity.

  When hyperuniverses I & II interact (to form our reality) three realms are created:

  1 — Eigenwelt — totally I (free)

  2 — Mitwelt — mixture I & II (partially free)

  3 — Umwelt — totaly II (enslaving)[130]

  or 1 heaven, the world of the Gods. 2 the world of men. 3 the subhuman world of blind deterministic nature. We can rise to 1 or sink to 3, but normally are in 2, the mixture. The purpose of art is to free us; i.e., lift us to world 1, the Eigenwelt by sharing it via the art with others.

  (c. 1978)

  So the BIP is an ossified complex in the macromind (brain) which must be dissolved. The Holy Spirit is like (sic-like) a metabolic toxin, i.e., a medication (measured amount of poison); this explains the “bichlorides” dream & the “aspirin of Mercury” dream.[131] &, like any mental complex, it warps other thoughts to itself—acts as a magnet, & creates uniformity (which is a term of entropy). There is—& has been—no progress or change in the complex for 2000 years.

  If the complex (the BIP) isn’t dissolved, it will eventually shut down the macromind (brain). It imposes its form progressively unless attacked (as if by a—or several—phagocytes). It is dead; the dialectic in it has ceased. Either it can get larger & impose its will on more & more contents of the mind, or it can be successfully attached & dissolved. Thus Zebra invades the macromind to do battle against the stagnant complex, which (the latter) isn’t rational (vide Jung’s statement about “nothing new coming into the psychotic mind”; then, I deduce, the macromind, due to the BIP complex, is psychotic, as put forth in VALIS). Zebra seems to be winning (v. 1974 & later). So this is what Zebra/Valis was doing in ‘74. & this is why I correctly perceive the BIP as lying unchanged in the past, present, & alternate worlds (& possibly future—& absolutely unchanging).

  The whole thrust of my published corpus of writing is thematically a Dissolving agent—d
issolving reality— i.e., the complex (BIP)!!!!

  (c. 1978)

  All my writing, in which irreal, forgery universes are presented, are expressions of Parmenides’ insight about the nonreality of Form II. This sets me & Parmenides apart from Taoism. It prepares the way for Gnosticism & the concept of a botched, bungled world. Form II can be regarded as “False work,” necessary but temporary. Yin was given the first try at copying the androgynous Godhead, & failed. The BIP resulted. So Yang penetrated to add what is missing, which is nothing less than reality itself.

  It is not just the BIP which is not real; it is the Yin’s world, no less. Of course, we do not inhabit a purely Yin world (Ground). Set (Yang) is here, too, to a very large degree.

  [ . . . . ]

  Witness my writing. If there is nothing spurious about Form II (Yin) & the phenomenal world I have said nothing in my years of probing the “What is real & what is merely seeming?” This is no small matter—for me as an artist & for all life, which is enslaved into illness, age, injury & death & loss by the Yin world. The Yin world cannot sustain its own creatures.

  How can something that doesn’t exist exert coercive power over us? For one thing, we obey it by giving it our assent (i.e., we agree that it is real), & having done so we then obey its orders. We hold a self-defeating & improper relation to it; we allow it to be the Master. Primarily, we can’t sort out the Yang (Set) part. We are blinded. Yang allows this, since it wishes us to discern the puzzle & make a choice—without clear guidelines. Yang is making use of Yin for his purposes. A puzzle is presented to us. We know that absolute good (deity) exists, and yet we see a world of undeserved suffering. How can these two coexist? I say, there are two worlds & each has its own laws: one blind & rigid; the other loving & sentient. Since we cannot perceptually unscramble them we see both coexistent, but in fact it is 2 pictures superimposed (laminated). Also it (they) is (are) in dialectic strife: “Blow & counter blow, faster & faster as time runs out.”

  [ . . . . ]

  In reading Sladek’s parody of me,[132] I get the impression that to me the universe is not to be taken seriously, probably because I am afraid of it, but nevertheless curious about it—fascinated by it, dangerous as I see it to be. But that somehow a handle exists by which to unravel it & make it yield up what it really is—if anything. It may not be anything at all, but I’m trying for handle after handle, poking around trying everything reversed & backward, like it’s a toy. Layer after layer reveals paradox after paradox, which in themselves I find fascinating. Also, I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue—the clue-lies there. I’m always ferreting out elliptical points, odd angles. What I write doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There is fun & religion & psychotic horror strewn about like a bunch of hats. Also, there is a social or sociological drift-rather than towards the hard sciences. The overall impression is childish but interesting. This is not a sophisticated person writing. Everything is equally real, like junk jewels in the alley. A fertile, creative mind seeing constantly shifting sets, the serious made funny, the funny sad, the horrific exactly that: utterly horrific as if it is the touchstone of what is real: horror is real because it can injure. It all is a brave whistling in the dark tunnel—like Stephanie:[133] funny when frightened, scare her & she will tell you a joke—the situation oddly viewed. No wonder I loved her so & she experienced the affinity between—not sorrow & horror—but fear & horror.

  I certainly see the randomness in my work, & I also see how this fast shuffle of possibility after possibility might eventually, given enough time, juxtapose & disclose something important, automatically overlooked in more orderly thinking. Pataphysique.[134] No wonder my stuff is popular in France—the surreal, the absurd. Also, it is palpably autobiographical—the little business firm, & the fatherly owner or world leader.[135]

  Since nothing, absolutely nothing, is excluded (as not worth being included) I proffer a vast mixed bag—out of it I shake coin-operated doors & God. It’s a fucking circus. I’m like a sharp eyed crow, spying anything that twinkles & grabbing it up to add to my heap.

  Anyone with my attitude might just stumble onto by sheer chance & luck-in his actual life, which is to say, the life of his mind—the authentic camouflaged God, the deus absconditus; by trying odd combinations of things & places, like a high speed (sic) computer processing everything, he might outdazzle even a wary God, might catch him by surprise by poking somewhere unexpectedly. If it is true that the real answers (& authentic absolute vs. the merely seeming) are where we would least expect them, this “try it all” technique might-might one day succeed by believing what it would never occur to anyone else to believe, really believe—might take at face value as true the most worn out, most worked over & long ago discarded obvious “staring us in the face all the time” as the crux of the mystery. To be able to see mystery in the obvious—the best-camouflaged ultra-terrestrial life form might one day guess wrong & be flushed briefly out of its concealment (which had always worked before). For one thing, a totally naive person like this who would believe anything might believe in what is really there but conceptually automatically rejected by more experienced people. The child has faith in what the adult knows can’t be & so could never see, obvious thought it be; i.e., before everyone’s eyes: hidden in plain sight.

  This kind of fascinated, credulous, inventive person might be granted the greatest gift of all, to see the toymaker who has generated—& is with or within-all his toys. That the Godhead is a toymaker at all—who could seriously (sic) believe this?

  (1978)

  The mad god James-James began generating world upon world, worlds unrelated, worlds within worlds. Fake worlds, Fake Fake worlds, cunning simulations of worlds, mirror opposites of worlds.

  Like I do in my stories & novels (eg STIGMATA & “Precious Artifact”). I am James-James.

  I created one world among many & entered it & hid myself in it. But the police detected me—the non-terran police & tried to fake me out with the xerox missive. But I knew it was coming—as soon as TEARS appeared they would be sure about me & I recovered my memory & identity & power & dealt with it properly, & paid them back. My organization helped me—it set off my memories, a month in advance. I saw my creator—my creator, protecting me. I am hiding here, under his protection. The network voice—she talks to me. I am patched in to the network, so I am not alone. Meanwhile, my creator (“Zebra”) patiently repairs the damage I’ve done, by rebuilding the worlds. He harbors no resentment. All I am allowed to do now is write about what I used to do. In a sense I am a prisoner, but it’s for the best.

  I learned this from “Precious Artifact.” I am a mad ex world-generator, now confined. But still periodically mad. I can’t die. I am countless[ly] reborn—metamorphosed. I know the truth about the worlds I have made, that they’re not real—I know about dokos, simulations which will pass any test. They are not fantasy, & they are only illusion to those who take them as real. They are skilful forgeries which will pass inspection. They are indeed like metastasizing cancers. “A world capable of splitting its perceived reality into countless counterfeits of itself” however Lem put it. (Does Lem know? He has guessed.[)]

  Burroughs is right about the nova police[136] & them tracking down their quarry. But in my case, Zeus protects me. Dythrambus.[137]

  There is a war. The police are moralistic, brittle.[ ... ] But what can they do about me? [ ... ] & anyhow my writing is all over the world. I’ve done my job. Undermined the Brittle Moralistic Police.

  Given a new life with no memories I was still able to underInine. The worlds are cunning forgeries & the police are after me. But Zeus will always protect me, despite what I’ve done. Misused my ability. Lem may be on our side (my organization). In any case he knows—he knew before I did—i.e., before on 2-74 I remembered. The nova police fell here; I assisted in that, but only to a very tiny degree. TEARS contained the message: the quarry is innocent & the police will suffer, reprisal—what they love most will be taken away if they threaten
with arrest. Leave me alone! I can destroy you. But in challenging them I gave myself away, lost my anonymity. They pressed me & I betrayed them to each other.[138] I can destroy you with what I know. You rule illegally; your mandate ended when the woman—called Isis here—died. Horus, you are my enemy. Shiva/Dionysos/Seth. Horus, I am not afraid of you—Isis is dead so you no longer rule. I am with her, bonded to her, I carry her inside me. You are Osirus. I am the legitimate new king in hiding. Search, find me—& you, this time, are destroyed; you don’t want to find me this time as you did in 33 AD, because I am—I have my father’s power this time, not just his knowledge.

  We spring up everywhere: proliferated.

  The time has come to render this world void, to abolish it, & judge. Shiva. The police search frantically.

  The innocent (the wild little ones of the forest) have nothing to fear. My extended hand tells them that.

  Solemn-Pentheus-die. Felix happy Dionysos live. Pentheus Police General of TEARS-the de facto monarch.

  In TEARS it is King Pentheus vs. Dionysos (Christ, Hamlet)—he is insane—intoxicated, a Generator of Worlds. Rome, Pentheus, against a Quicksilver Spirit he can’t catch. Brain damage: SCANNER: an ad, for Mercury. I, the mad one, live on. Sanity at the center burned children, not pot. The mad one does not hurt the little innocents & so obtained Zeus’ patronage over the serious ones, the old ones, who burned children in the name of brittle morality. The sane ones, the sober, somber ones (the police) are evil. We have a difficult situation here, Abba [Father]; the sane ones are murderers, & the insane ones gather flowers. You, Abba, know which of the two is to be protected—not the sane ones.