Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick

by Lawrence Sutin

  Phil was vouchsafed, in this annus mirabilis, one last key vision, of a Palm Tree Garden, in January and February 1975. In a 1981 Exegesis entry he wrote of "that other way of being-in-world that I associate with 2-74 to 2-75, what I call the Palm Tree Garden, or as I now term it, the Spacial Realm [. . .]" In the Exegesis, the Palm Tree Garden (PTG) is contrasted with the Black Iron Prison (BIP) of the Empire (reigning Authority) that never ended. Phil included his PTG vision in Deus Irae, his collaboration with Roger Zelazny. To Dorothy he wrote: "I walked about in it [the PTGJ for several hours, enjoying it exactly as Dr. Abernathy does [... J" The passage was written solely by Phil:

  Dr. Abernathy felt the world's oppression lift but he did not have any insight as to why it had lifted. At the moment it began he had taken a walk to the market for the purchase of vegetables. [... ]

  Somewhere, he thought, a good event has happened, and it spreads out. He saw to his amazement palm trees. I...J And dry dusty land, as if I'm in the Middle East. Another world; touchE,, of another continuum. I don't understand, he thought. What is breaking through? As if my eyes are now opened, in a special way. [. . I

  Somehow goodness has arrived, he decided. As Milton wrote, "Out of evil comes good." [...]

  Then, he thought, possibly the world has been cleared of its oppressive film by an evil act ... or am I getting into subtleties? In any case, he sensed the difference; it was real.

  I swear to God I'm somewhere in Syria, he thought. In the Levant. [...] To his right, the ruins of a prewar [the novel is set in SF future time] U.S. Post Office substation.

  Tessa recalls that spring day: "We were walking to the post office-a regular habit, with us. [... ] The post office [... ] was a Byzantine-looking brick building with archways and a false front that made it appear to be domed. During the day, the city around us took on more and more of the appearance of a first-century Roman colony. Phil kept seeing stone walls and iron bars where more modern structures and barriers actually stood."

  In an undated typed page found among Phil's 1975 correspondence, there is a fitting overview to the year of visions and voices, wisdom and perplexity:

  This is not an evil world, as Mani [founder of Manichaeanism, which equates earthly matter with evil] supposed. There is a good world under the evil. The evil is somehow superimposed over it (Maya), and when stripped away, pristine glowing creation is visible.

  One day the contents of my mind moved faster and faster until they ceased being concepts and became percepts. I did not have concepts about the world but perceived it without preconception or even intellectual comprehension. It then resembled the world of UBIK. As if all the contents of one[']s mind, if fused, became suddenly alive, a living entity, which took off within one's head, on its own, saw in its own superior way, without regard to what you had ever learned or seen or known. The principle of emergence, as when nonliving matter becomes living. As if information (thought concepts) when pushed to their limit become metamorphosed into something alive. Perhaps then in the outer world all the energy or information when pushed far enough will do the same. Fuse into something everywhere (the force Ubik) that is sentient and alive. Then inner-outer, then-now, cause-effect, all the antimonies will fade out. We will see only a living entity at its ceaseless building: at work. Creating. (Has continual creation almost reached completion?) (Such dichotomies as big-small, me-notme will be transcended.)

  The universe as unified information is, of course, a favorite metaphor of quantum physics theorists.

  Those skeptics who would dismiss 2-3-74 as the symptomology of a stroke or the delusions of a psychotic should bear in mind (among other limitations of reductive explanations) that Phil could be as skeptical as themselves.

  Consider this Exegesis self-interview by Phil, just after having been interviewed by Charles Platt in May 1979 for Platt's book Dream Makers. Phil made his own tape of the Platt interview; upon reviewing it, he was provoked into high courtroom drama, a cross-examination designed to impeach Phil's own integrity:

  Listening to the Platt tape I construe by the logic presented [by himself] that Valis (the other mind) which came at me from outside & which overpowered me from inside was indeed the contents of my collective unconscious, & so technically a psychosis (it certainly would explain the animism outside, & the interior dissociated activity). But-well, okay; it would account for the Al voice, the 3 eyed sibyl, & the extreme archaism of the contents, & seeing Rome c. AD 45 would simply be psychotic delusion-I did not know where or when I really was.

  Q: What about the resemblance to my writing?

  A: The content was originally in my unconscious, e.g. "Tears" & "Ubik."

  Q: What about external events? The girl? The letters?

  A: Coincidence.

  Q: & the written material? Huge books held open?

  A: Verbal memory.

  Q: Why would I believe that my senses were enhanced i.e. I could see for the first time?

  A: Psychotomimetic drugs indicate this happens in psychosis.

  Q: & kosmos? Everything fitting together?

  A: "Spread of meanings" typical of psychosis.

  Q: Foreign words I don't know?

  A: Long term memory banks open. Disgorging their contents into consciousness.

  Q: Problem solving-i.e. the Xerox missive?

  A: There was no problem; it was harmless.

  Q: Why the sense of time dysfunction?

  A: Disorientation.

  Q: Why the sense that the mind which had taken me over was wiser than me & more capable?

  A: Release of psychic energy. [. . .]

  Q: If 2-3-74 was psychosis, then what was the ego state which it obliterated.

  A: Neurotic. Or mildly schizophrenia [sic]. Under stress the weak ego disintegrated.

  Q: Then how could the phobias associated with my anxiety neurosis remain? e.g. agoraphobia?

  A: It does not compute. Something is wrong. They should have gone away or become totally overwhelming. The impaired ego must have still been intact.

  Q: Was my "dissociated" behavior [e.g., the Xerox missive, diagnosis of Christopher's hernia] bizarre?

  A: No, they were problem-solving. It does not compute.

  Q: Perhaps there were no real problems.

  A: Not so. It was tax time.

  From this point on, Phil, having considered the worst, rallied to his own defense. It cannot be said that he is convincing either in condemning his sanity or in exalting 2-3-74. Finally, the answer seems to lie in Phil's first and lasting loss:

  A: Then the enigma remains.

  Q: We have learned nothing.

  A: Nothing.

  Q: After finishing listening to the tape do you have any intuition or guess as to who & what the Valis mind is? (Later.)

  A: Yes. It is female. It is on the other side-the post mortem world. It has been with me all my life. It is my twin sister Jane. [...] The other psyche I carry inside me is that of my dead sister.

  For those yearning for a diagnosis to slap onto 2-3-74, good news: Temporal lobe epilepsy can induce seizures that are neither disabling nor obvious for purposes of medical diagnosis or the individual's own sense of something amiss. It can't be disproven that Phil may have had such seizures during 2-3-74-or other times throughout his life. And if he did, everything is explained-from the Al Voice to the endless Exegesis. Consider this eerily on-the-money description from a medical study:

  Such "psychic" or "experiential" phenomena activated by epileptic discharge arising in the temporal lobe may occur as complex visual or auditory or combined auditory-visual hallucinations or illusions, memory "flashbacks," erroneous interpretations of the present in terms of the past (e.g. as an inappropriate feeling of familiarity or strangeness, the "deja vu" and "jamais vu" phenomena), or as emotions, most commonly fear. Penfield [...] called these phenomena "experiential," an appropriate term considering the fact that to the affected patients they often assume an astonishingly vivid immediacy, which they liken to that of actual events. Never
theless, the patients are never in doubt that these phenomena occur incongruously, that is, out of context, as if they were superimposed upon the ongoing stream of consciousness, with the exception of fear, which is sometimes interpreted as fear of an impending attack. This insight clearly distinguishes these phenomena from psychotic hallucinations and illusions.

  Not bad as a skeptic's schematic of 2-3-74. A standard psychiatric textbook includes the following as behavioral traits of patients suffering from temporal lobe seizures:

  Hypergraphia is an obsessional phenomenon manifested by writing extensive notes and diaries. [...] The intense emotions are often labile, so that the patient may exhibit great warmth at one time, whereas, at another time, anger and irritability may evolve to rage and aggressive behavior. [.] Suspiciousness may extend to paranoia, and a sense of helplessness may lead to passive dependency. ~. . .] Religious beliefs not only are intense, but may also be associated with elaborate theological or cosmological theories. Patients may believe that they have special divine guidance. [. ]

  There are, of course, also listed traits that miss Phil by a mile, such as "stern moralism" and "humorless sobriety."

  For those seeking a reasonable diagnosis, temporal lobe epilepsy does the trick. One can even go so far as to group writers who may have been influenced-in their spiritual concerns-by the possible presence of temporal lobe epilepsy. Dostoevsky, who suffered from epileptic seizures, is one prominent example. But how far do such speculative diagnostics and groupings take us? William James draws the line this way: "To pass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but inquire into their fruits for life."

  What "fruits" were there for Phil's personal life? Phil seldom doubted that 2-3-74 was a blessing. But he never claimed to have become a saint. A 1975 Exegesis entry makes this plain:

  I. .] I am in no customary sense-maybe in no sense whatsoeverspiritualized or exalted. In fact I seem even more mean and irascible than before. True, I do not hit anybody, but my language remains gunjy and I am crabby and domineering; my personal defects are unaltered. In the accepted sense I am not a better person. I. ..]

  But as to the lack of proper spiritual refurbishing in me ... perhaps we have too clear an attitude toward pious transformations as being the ones He wishes in us. Perhaps these are our standards for the very pure; after all, He would retain the individual, I think, and not force us all into one proper mold. I have been changed, but not in all ways; I have been improved, but not according to human standards. I can only hope I am obeying His will and not my own.

  I do not conform to my own views of goodness, but maybe I do to His.

  Tessa's perspective is similar:

  I saw no personality change in Phil. If anything, he was more of what he had been before the experience. It did hold our relationship together, but it also tore us apart, in the end ]the marriage ended in 1976]. Just as Phil believed that someone was out to get him, to kill him, he came to believe that someone was out to kill his wife and child. Phil was so intense, immediately following a vision, that his presence in the room became a tangible thing, a thickness of the atmosphere. But he was only quantitatively different, not qualitatively different. There were brief periods, however, when Phil was not himself the way an apple is not a rectangle.

  The events of 2-3-74 and after are unusual, even bizarre. There are scenes of tender beauty, as when Phil administered the eucharist to Christopher. There are instances of inexplicable foresight, as when he diagnosed his son's hernia. And there are episodes, like the Xerox missive, that foster skepticism. For some, the visions and voices will constitute evidence of grace. Others, both atheists and religionists, will doubt 2-3-74 for those very reasons. Saint John of the Cross warned:

  It often happens that spiritual men are affected supernaturally by sensible representations and objects. They sometimes see the forms and figures of those of another life, saints or angels, good and evil, or certain extraordinary lights and brightness. They hear strange words, sometimes seeing those who utter them and sometimes not. [... ] we must never delight in them nor encourage them; yea, rather we must fly from them, without seeking to know whether their origin be good or evil. For, inasmuch as they are exterior and physical, the less is the likelihood of their being from God.

  There are, of course, eminent examples through the ages of persons who did not fly from such signs. One such is Blaise Pascal. On the night of November 23, 1654, Pascal experienced a vision that he transcribed, sewing the account into the lining of his coat so as to keep it by him constantly:

  From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve

  FIRE

  God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.

  Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

  And here we come to the heart of Phil's 2-3-74 experiences. Certitude had he none. Oh yes, one can find numerous passages-in interviews, the novels, and the Exegesis-in which Phil advances a theory with the sound of certitude. But always (and usually quite soon thereafter) he reconsidered and recanted.

  Indeterminacy is the central characteristic of 2-3-74.

  And how fitting that is. Mystical experiences are almost always in keeping with the tradition of the mystic. Julian of Norwich, a Catholic, perceived "great drops of blood" running down from a crown of thorns. Milarepa, a Tibetan Buddhist, visualized his guru surrounded by multifold Buddhas on lotus seats of wisdom.

  Phil adhered to no single faith. The one tradition indubitably his was SF-which exalts "What IF?" above all.

  In 2-3-74, all the "What IFs?" were rolled up into one.

  As Valis proved, it was, say whatever else you will, a great idea for a novel.

  11

  As 2-3-74 Ripens Into Valis, Phil Fashions New Theories Nightly Yet

  Wonders-Meta-abstractions Be Damned-If Ever He'll Find The True Love

  He Deserves (Who Doesn't?), While Slowly He Discovers (Sometimes)

  Something Like Happiness Anyway (1975-1978)

  Year after year, book after book & story, I shed illusion after illusion: self, time, space, causality, world-& finally sought (in 1970) to know what was real. Four years later, at my darkest moment of dread & trembling, my ego crumbling away, I was granted dibba cakkhu [enlightenment]-& although I didn't realize it at the time, I became a Buddha. ("The Buddha is in the park") [Al voice message]. All illusion dissolved away like a soap bubble & I saw reality at last-&, in the 4 1/2 years since, have at last comprehended it intellectually-i.e. what I saw & knew & experienced (my exegesis). We are talking here about a lifetime of work & insights: from my initial satori when, as a child, I was tormenting the beetle. It began in that moment, forty years ago.

  PHIL, September 1978 Exegesis entry, just before writing Valis

  My God, my life-which is to say my 2-74/3-74 experience-is exactly like the plot of any one of ten of my novels or stories. Even down to the fake memories & identity. I'm a protagonist from one of PKD's books, USA 1974 fades out, ancient Rome fades in & with it the Thomas personality & true memories. Jeez! Mixture of "Impostor," "Joint" & "Maze"-if not "Ubik" as well.

  PHIL, earlier 1978 Exegesis entry

  (It is also obvious that I have let the world know [in Valis] that I went through some bad years, during the last decade. Future biographers will find their job done for them before they start. My life's an open book and I myself wrote the book.)

  PHIL, February 1981 letter to agent Russell Galen

  YOU'D suppose that, with 2-3-74 to ponder, life would be anything but dull.

  But dull was precisely Phil's complaint as New Year's Eve 1975 rolled around. Next door in their Fullerton apartment building, a neighbor was throwing a big loud bash. Meanwhile, Tessa used the night to catch up on laundry, while Phil was left to pop Christopher's balloon with a cigarette as midnight arrived. In a letter two days later he railed: " I hadn't realized before how fucking dumb and dull and futile and empty middl
e class life is. I have gone from the gutter (circa 1971) to the plastic container. As always, I got it wrong once again."

  It wasn't that their life was all that secure Phil would take in roughly $19,000 in 1974 and $35,000 in 1975, but a good chunk of that income was advances on royalties made by the Meredith Agency to keep Phil afloat between irregular royalty checks. Foreign sales were his mainstay: British, French, Italian, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Japanese rights accounted for the bulk of Phil's real earnings in 1975. Tentatively, Phil and Tessa were beginning to nibble at the bottom end of the good life. Phil treated himself to the new Encyclopaedia Britannica 3, in which he read voraciously; citations to it in the Exegesis are legion. For Tessa, there was a new guitar and a fee-stabled horse. In March they moved from Cameo Lane to a rented house-Phil's credit rating didn't allow for a purchase-at 2461 Santa Ysabel in Fullerton. In April 1975, Phil popped for a red Fiat Spyder-his first sports car since Anne.

  It felt good. And it gnawed at him. There was more. Phil wrestled with it in the Exegesis-handwritten as if to emphasize its provisional nature. In his fiction, Phil balanced his themes of "What is Human?" and "What is Real?" As to the former, Phil felt he knew the answer: kindness. But as to the latter, he never made up his mind. On this question, the Exegesis gave him room to fly-creating and banishing worlds at will.

  From the nightly sessions certain key ideas began to emerge. One of these is "orthogonal time," which Phil discusses in a 1975 essay, "Man, Android and Machine." Orthogonal time is "rotary," moving perpendicularly to "linear" time. It contains "as a simultaneous plane or extension everything which was, just as the grooves on an LP contain that part of the music which has already been played; they don't disappear after the stylus tracks them." In a March letter to Ursula Le Guin Phil honed the concept: Orthogonal time was "Real Time"-"without it, there would be nothing but illusion, nothing but Maya, so to speak."