The VALIS Trilogy

by Philip K. Dick

  "All these hosts must die; strike, stay

  your hand—no matter.

  Seem to slay. By me these men are slain already."

  It is an awful sight. Arjuna has seen what he cannot believe exists.

  "Licking with your burning tongues,

  Devouring all the worlds,

  You probe the heights of heaven

  With intolerable beams, O Vishnu."

  What Arjuna sees was once his friend and charioteer. A man like himself. That was only an aspect, a kindly disguise. Sri Krishna wished to spare him, to hide the truth. Arjuna asked to see Sri Krishna's true form and he got to see it. He will not now be as he was. The spectacle has changed him, changed him forever. This is the true forbidden fruit, this kind of knowledge. Sri Krishna waited a long time before he showed Arjuna his actual shape. He wanted to spare him. The true shape, that of the universal destroyer, emerged at last.

  I would not want to make you unhappy by detailing pain, but there is a crucial sort of difference between pain and the narration of pain. I am telling you what happened. If there is vicarious pain in knowing, there is actual peril in not knowing. In aversion lies a colossal risk.

  When Kirsten and the bishop had returned to the Bay Area—not permanently but, rather, to deal with Jeff's death and the problems raised by it—I could upon seeing them again notice a change in both of them. Kirsten looked worn and wretched, and this did not seem to me to emanate from the shock of Jeff's death alone. Obviously she was in ill health in purely physical terms. On the other hand, Bishop Archer seemed even more animated than when I had last seen him. He took complete charge of the situation regarding Jeff; he selected the burial spot, the kind of gravestone; he delivered the eulogy and all other rites, wearing full robes, and he paid for everything. The inscription on the gravestone came as a result of his inspiration. He chose a phrase which I found quite acceptable; it is the motto or basic statement of the school of Heraclitus: NO SINGLE THING ABIDES; BUT ALL THINGS FLOW. I had been taught in philosophy class that Heraclitus himself invented that, but Tim explained that this summation came after Heraclitus, by those of his school who followed him. They believed that only flux, which is to say change, is real. They may have been right.

  The three of us joined together after the graveside service; we returned to the Tenderloin apartment and tried to make ourselves comfortable. It took a while for any of us to say anything.

  Tim talked about Satan, for some reason. Tim had a new theory about Satan's rise and fall that he apparently wanted to try out on us, since we—Kirsten and I—were the closest people at hand. I presumed at the time that Tim intended to include his theory in the book he had begun working on.

  "I see the legend of Satan in a new way. Satan desired to know God as fully as possible. The fullest knowledge would come if he became God, was himself God. He strove for this and achieved it, knowing that the punishment would be permanent exile from God. But he did it anyhow, because the memory of knowing God, really knowing him as no one else ever had or would, justified to him his eternal punishment. Now, who would you say truly loved God out of everyone who ever existed? Satan willingly accepted eternal punishment and exile just to know God—by becoming God—for an instant. Further, it occurs to me, Satan truly knew God, but perhaps God did not know or understand Satan; had He understood him, He would not have punished him. That is why it is said that Satan rebelled—which means Satan was outside of God's control, outside God's domain, as if in another universe. But Satan did I think welcome his punishment, for it was his proof to himself that he knew and loved God. Otherwise he might have done what he did for the reward ... had there been a reward. 'Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven' is an issue, here, but not the true one: which is the ultimate goal and search to know and be: fully and really to know God, in comparison to which all else is really very little."

  "Prometheus," Kirsten said absently. She sat smoking and gazing.

  Tim said, "Prometheus means 'Forethinker.' He was involved in the creating of man. He was also the supreme trickster among the gods. Pandora was sent down to Earth by Zeus as a punishment to Prometheus for stealing fire and bringing it to man. In addition, Pandora punished the whole human race. Epimetheus married her, he was Hindsight. Prometheus warned him not to marry Pandora, since Prometheus could foresee the consequences. This same kind of absolute foreknowledge is or was considered by the Zoroastrians to be an attribute of God, the Wise Mind."

  "An eagle ate his liver," Kirsten said remotely.

  Nodding, Tim said, "Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him and sending an eagle to eat his liver, which regenerated itself endlessly. However, Hercules released him. Prometheus was a friend to mankind beyond any doubt. He was a master craftsman. There is an affinity to the legend of Satan, certainly. As I see it, Satan could be said to have stolen—not fire—but true knowledge of God. However, he did not bring it to man, as Prometheus did with fire. Perhaps Satan's real sin was that upon acquiring that knowledge he kept it to himself; he did not share it with mankind. That's interesting ... by that line of reasoning, one could argue that we could acquire a knowledge of God by way of Satan. I've never heard that theory put forth before." He became silent, apparently pondering. "Would you write this down?" he said to Kirsten.

  "I'll remember." Her tone was listless and drab.

  "Man must assault Satan and seize this knowledge," Tim said, "and take it from him. Satan does not want to yield it up. For concealing it—not for taking it in the first place—he was punished. Then, in a sense, human beings can redeem Satan by wresting this knowledge from him."

  I said, "And then go off and study astrology."

  Glancing at me, Tim said, "Pardon?"

  "Wallenstein," I said. "Off casting horoscopes."

  "The Greek words which our word 'horoscope' is based on," Tim said, "are hora, which means 'hour,' and scopos, which means 'one who watches.' So 'horoscope' literally means 'one who watches the hours.'" He lit a cigarette; both he and Kirsten, since their return from England, seemed to smoke constantly. "Wallenstein was a fascinating person."

  "So Jeff says," I said. "Said, I mean."

  Cocking his head alertly, Tim said, "Was Jeff interested in Wallenstein? Because I have—"

  "You didn't know?" I said.

  Looking puzzled, Tim said, "I don't think so."

  Kirsten regarded him steadily, with an inscrutable expression.

  "I have a number of very good books on Wallenstein," Tim said. "You know, in many ways Wallenstein resembled Hitler."

  Both Kirsten and I remained silent.

  "Wallenstein contributed to the ruin of Germany," Tim said. "He was a great general. Friedrich von Schiller, as you may know, wrote three plays about Wallenstein, whose titles are: Wallenstein's Camp, The Piccolominis and The Death of Wallenstein. They are profoundly moving plays. This brings up, of course, the role of Schiller himself in the development of Western thought. Let me read you something." Setting his cigarette down, Tim went over to the bookcase for a book; he found it after a few minutes of hunting. "This may shed some light on the subject. In writing to his friend—let me see; I have the name here—in writing to Wilhelm von Humboldt, this was toward the very end of Schiller's life, Schiller said, 'After all, we are both idealists, and should be ashamed to have it said that the material world formed us, instead of being formed by us.' The essence of Schiller's vision was, of course, freedom. He was naturally absorbed in the great drama of the revolt of the Lowlands—by that I mean Holland—and—" Tim paused, thinking, his lips moving; he gazed absently off into space. On the couch, Kirsten sat in silence, smoking and staring. "Well," Tim said finally, leafing through the book he held, "let me read you this. Schiller wrote this when he was thirty-four years old. Perhaps it sums up much of our aspirations, our most noble ones." Peering at the book, Tim read aloud. "'Now that I have begun to know and to employ my spiritual powers properly, an illness unfortunately threatens to undermine my physical ones. However, I shall d
o what I can, and when in the end the edifice comes crashing down, I shall have salvaged what was worth preserving.'" Tim shut the book and returned it to the shelf.

  We said nothing. I did not even think; I merely sat.

  "Schiller is very important to the twentieth century," Tim said; he returned to his cigarette, stubbed it out. For a long time, he stared down at the ashtray.

  "I'm going to send out for a pizza," Kirsten said. "I'm not up to fixing dinner."

  "That's fine," Tim said. "Ask them to put Canadian bacon on it. And if they have soft drinks—"

  "I can fix dinner," I said.

  Kirsten rose, made her way to the phone, leaving Tim and me alone together.

  Earnestly, Tim said to me, "It is really a matter of great importance to know God, to discern the Absolute Essence, which is the way Heidegger puts it. Sein is his term: Being. What we have uncovered at the Zadokite Wadi simply beggars description."

  I nodded.

  "How are you fixed for money?" Tim said, reaching into his coat pocket.

  "I'm fine," I said.

  "You're working, still? At the real estate—" He corrected himself. "You're a legal secretary; you're still with them, then?"

  "Yes," I said. "But I'm just a clerk-typist."

  "I found my career as a lawyer taxing," Tim said, "but rewarding. I'd advise you to become a legal secretary and then perhaps you can use that as a jumping-off platform and go into law, become an attorney. It might even be possible for you to be a judge, someday."

  "I guess so," I said.

  Tim said, "Did Jeff discuss the anokhi with you?"

  "Well, you wrote to us. And we saw newspaper and magazine articles."

  "They used the term in a special sense, a technical sense—the Zadokites. It could not have meant the Divine Intelligence because they speak of having it, literally. There is one line from Document Six: 'Anokhi dies and is reborn each year, and upon each following year anokhi is more.' Or greater; more or greater, it could be either, perhaps lofty. It's extremely puzzling but the translators are working on it and we hope to have it during the next six months ... and, of course, they're still piecing together the fragments, the scrolls that became mutilated. I have no knowledge of Aramaic, as you probably realize. I studied both Greek and Latin—you know, 'God is the final bulwark against non-Being.'"

  "Tillich," I said.

  "Beg pardon?" Tim said.

  "Paul Tillich said that," I said.

  "I'm not sure about that," Tim said. "It was certainly one of the Protestant existential theologians; it may have been Reinhold Niebuhr. You know, Niebuhr is an American, or rather was; he died quite recently. One thing that interests me about Niebuhr—" Tim paused a moment. "Niemöller served in the German navy in World War One. He worked actively against the Nazis and continued to preach until 1938. The Gestapo arrested him and he was sent to Dachau. Niebuhr had been a pacifist originally, but urged Christians to support the war against Hitler. I feel that one of the significant differences between Wallenstein and Hitler—actually it is a very great similarity—lies in the loyalty oaths that Wallenstein—"

  "Excuse me," I said. I went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet to see if the bottle of Dexamyls was still there. It was not; all the medicine bottles were gone. Taken to England, I realized. Now in Kirsten's and Tim's luggage. Fuck.

  When I came out, I found Kirsten standing alone in the living room. "I'm terribly, terribly tired," she said in a faint voice.

  "I can see that," I said.

  "There is no way I am going to be able to keep down pizza. Could you go to the store for me? I made a list. I want boned chicken, the kind that comes in a jar, and rice or noodles. Here; this is the list." She handed it to me. "Tim'll give you the money."

  "I have money." I returned to the bedroom, where I had put my coat and purse. As I was putting on my coat, Tim appeared from behind me, anxious to say something more.

  "What Schiller saw in Wallenstein was a man who colluded with fate to bring on his own demise. This would be for the German Romantics the greatest sin of all, to collude with fate, fate regarded as doom." He followed me from the bedroom, down the hall. "The whole spirit of Goethe and Schiller and—the others, their whole orientation was that the human will could overcome fate. Fate would not be regarded as inevitable but as something a person allowed. Do you see my point? To the Greeks, fate was ananke, a force absolutely predetermined and impersonal; they equated it with Nemesis, which is retributive, punishing fate."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I have to go to the store."

  "Aren't they bringing the pizza?"

  "Kirsten's not feeling well."

  Standing close to me and speaking in a low voice, Tim said, "Angel, I'm very concerned about her. I can't get her to go to a doctor. Her stomach—either that or her gall bladder. Maybe you can convince her to undergo a multiphasic. She's afraid of what they'll find. You know, don't you, that she had cervical cancer a number of years ago."

  "Yes," I said.

  "And a hysterocleisis."

  "What is that?"

  "A surgical procedure; the mouth of the uterus is closed. She has so many anxieties in this area, that is, pertaining to this topic; it's impossible for me to discuss it with her."

  "I'll talk to her," I said.

  "Kirsten blames herself for Jeff's death."

  "Shit," I said. "I was afraid of that."

  Coming from the living room, Kirsten said to me, "Add ginger ale to the list I gave you. Please."

  "Okay," I said. "Is the store—"

  "Turn right," Kirsten said. "It's four blocks straight and then one block left. It's a Chinese-run little grocery store but they have what I want."

  "Do you need any more cigarettes?" Tim said.

  "Yes, you might pick up a carton," Kirsten said. "Any of the low-tar brands; they all taste the same."

  "Okay," I said.

  Opening the door for me, Tim said, "I'll drive you." The two of us made our way down the sidewalk to his rented car, but, as we stood, he discovered that he did not have the keys. "We'll have to walk," he said. So we walked together, saying nothing for a time.

  "It's a nice night," I said finally.

  "There's something I've been meaning to discuss with you," Tim said. "Although technically it's not within your province."

  "I didn't know I had a province," I said.

  "It's not an area of expertise for you. I'm not sure who I should talk to about it. These Zadokite Documents are in some respects—" He hesitated. "I would have to say distressing. To me personally, is what I mean. What the translators have come across is many of the Logia—the sayings—of Jesus predating Jesus by almost two hundred years."

  "I realize that," I said.

  "But that means," Tim said, "that he was not the Son of God. Was not, in fact, God, as the Trinitarian doctrine requires us to believe. That may pose no problem for you, Angel."

  "No, not really," I agreed.

  "The Logia are essential to our understanding and apperception of Jesus as the Christ; that is, the Messiah or Anointed One. If, as would now seem to be the case, the Logia can be severed from the person Jesus, then we must reevaluate the four Gospels—not just the Synoptics but all four ... we must ask ourselves what, then, we indeed do know about Jesus, if indeed we know anything at all."

  "Can't you just assume Jesus was a Zadokite?" I said. That was the impression I had gotten from the newspaper and magazine articles. Upon the discovery of the Qumran Scrolls, the Dead Sea Scrolls, there had been an enormous flurry of speculation that Jesus came from or was in some way connected with the Essenes. I saw no problem. I could not see what Tim was concerned about, as the two of us walked slowly along the sidewalk.

  "There is a mysterious figure," Tim said, "mentioned in a number of the Zadokite Documents. He's referred to by a Hebrew word best translated as 'Expositor.' It is this shadowy personage to whom many of the Logia are attributed."

  "Well, then Jesus learned from him, or any
how they were derived from him," I said.

  "But then Jesus is not the Son of God. He is not God Incarnate, God as a human being."

  I said, "Maybe God revealed the Logia to the Expositor."

  "But then the Expositor is the Son of God."

  "Okay," I said.

  "These are problems over which I've agonized—although that is rather a strong term. But it bothers me. And it should bother me. Here we have many of the parables related in the Gospels now extant in scrolls predating Jesus by two hundred years. Not all the Logia are represented, admittedly, but many are, many crucial ones. Certain cardinal doctrines of resurrection are also present, those being expressed in the well-known 'I am' utterances by Jesus. 'I am the bread of life.' 'I am the Way.' 'I am the narrow gate.' These simply cannot be separated from Jesus Christ. Just take that first one: 'I am the bread of life. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.' Do you see my point?"

  "Sure," I said. "The Zadokite Expositor said it first."

  "Then the Zadokite Expositor conferred eternal life, and specifically through the Eucharist."

  "I think that's wonderful," I said.

  Tim said, "It was always the hope, but never the expectation, that we would someday unearth Q, or unearth something that would permit us to reconstruct Q, or parts of Q; but no one ever dreamed that an Ur-Quelle would manifest itself predating Jesus, and by two centuries. Also, there are peculiar other—" He paused. "I want to obtain your promise not to discuss what I'm going to say; not to talk about it with anyone. This part hasn't been released to the media."