In Pursuit of Valis Read online

  There is an idea that wants to be born, it has wanted to be born for a very long time.[237] And sometimes that longing to be born settles on a person. For no damn good reason. Then you’re “it,” you become the cheese, and the cheese stands alone. You are illuminated and maddened and lifted up by something great beyond all telling. It wants to be told. It’s just that this idea is so damn big that it can’t be told, or rather the whole of history is the telling of this idea, the stuttering rambling effort of the sons and daughters of poor old Noah to tell this blinding, reality-shattering, bowel-loosening truth. And Phil had a piece of the action, a major piece of the action.

  But I anticipate myself. Those who grasp a piece of the action end up with two things on their plate; the experience and their own idiosyncratic explanation of the experience based on what they have read, seen and been told. The experience is private, personal, the best part, and ultimately unspeakable. The more you know the quieter you get. The explanation is another matter and can be attempted. In fact it must be told, for the Logos speaks and we are its tools and its voice. Phil says a lot of things in the Exegesis, he is aware that he says too much, so he keeps trying to boil it down to ten points or twelve parts or whatever. I have my own experience, equally unspeakable, and my explanation, equally prolix. Phil (sometimes) thought he was Christ,[238] I (sometimes) thought I was an extraterrestrial invader disguised as a meadow mushroom. What matters is the system that eventually emerges, not the fantasies concerning the source of the system. When I compare Phil’s system to mine, my hair stands on end. We were both contacted by the same unspeakable something. Two madmen dancing, not together, but the same dance anyhow.

  Truth or madness, you be the judge. What is trying to be expressed is this: The world is not real. Reality is not stranger than you suppose, it is stranger than you can suppose. Time is not what you think it is.[239] Reality is a hologram.[240] Being is a solid state matrix and psychosis is the redemptive process ne plus ultra.[241] The real truth is splintered and spread throughout time. Appearances are a vast and interlocking lie.[242] To finally know the Logos truly, if that means anything, is to know it as for, as what Phil called a “unified abstract structure.” In a way this was where PKD went wrong. It wasn’t his fault. He saw that the world of 1975 was a fiction and behind that fiction was the world of AD 45. But he lacked an essential concept, lacked it because it really hadn’t been invented yet. Anyhow the man was a SF writer and a scholar of classical philosophy, he could not be expected to stay in touch with arcane discoveries beginning to take place on the frontiers of research mathematics. But he got very close, his intuition was red hot when he reached the conclusion that a unified abstract structure lay behind the shifting always tricky casuistry of appearances. The concept he needed was that of fractals and fractal mathematics. The infinite regress of form built out of forms of itself built out of forms of itself ... unto infinity. The principle of self similarity. Phil was right, time is not a linear river. He was right, the Empire never ended. Parallel universes is too simple a concept to encompass what is really going on. The megamacrocosmos is a system of resonances, of levels, of endlessly adumbrated fun-house reflections. PKD really was Thomas and Elijah and all the other precursive concrescences that came together to make the cat-loving fat man who compacted trash into gold. The logic of being that he sought. and largely found, was not an either−or logic but a both−and and and−and kind of logic.

  PKD was never more right than when he wrote:

  I actually had to develop a love of the disordered & puzzling, viewing reality as a vast riddle to be joyfully tackled, not in fear but with tireless fascination. “What has been most needed is reality testing, & a willingness to face the possibility of self-negating experiences: i.e., real contradictions, with something being both true & not true.

  The enigma is alive, aware of us, & changing. It is partly created by our own minds: we alter it by perceiving it, since we are not outside it. As our views shift, it shifts. In a sense it is not there at all (acosmism). In another sense it is a vast intelligence: in another sense it is total harmonia and structure (how logically can it be all three? Well, it is).[243]

  One cannot learn these things. One can only be told these things. And it is the Logos that does the telling. The key is in the I Ching, which Phil loved and used but which occupies a disappointingly small fraction of his ruminations in the Exegesis.[244] Almost as if the counter flow, the occluding intelligence, kept Phil’s eyes diverted from the key element necessary to the universal decipherment that he was attempting. Time is a fractal, or has a fractal structure. All times, moments, months and millennia, have a pattern; the same pattern. This pattern is the structure within which, upon which, events “undergo the formality of actually occurring,” as Whitehead used to say. The pattern recurs on every level. A love affair, the fall of an empire, the death agony of a protozoan, all occur within the context of this always the same but ever different pattern. All events are resonances of other events, in other parts of time, and at other scales of time.[245] The mathematical nature of this pattern can be known.[246] It can be written as an equation, just like the equations of Schrodinger or Einstein.

  The raw material, the Ur text, out of which this mathematical pattern can be drawn is the King Wen sequence of the I Ching. That is where the secret lies. In the world’s oldest book. Of course. Once possessed the pattern can then be discerned everywhere. Of course. It is ubiquitous. One of Phil’s favorite words. I know this because the Logos taught me the pattern and I escaped the black iron prison of the world to tell thee of it. I have published it, I have lectured it and have had it written into software. My books are on the way, some with Phil’s old publisher Bantam. I would bet dollars to donuts that if Phil had lived to see, to feel, and to understand what this PKD-inspired servant of the Logos has managed to drag home from the beach, he would embrace it. This cannot be said without sounding like a madman or a jackass. I am sorry about that. As Phil Dick said, “What’s got to be gotten over is the false idea that hallucination is a private matter.[247]

  What is important is that the birth of this idea is now very near, has in fact already happened, and PKD showed the way. The answer is found. And this incredible genius, this gentle, long-suffering, beauty-worshipping man showed the way. When it counted he was right. All hail Philip K. Dick.

  —Terence McKenna

  Occidental, California June 1991

  Terence McKenna, with his brother Dennis McKenna, wrote The Invisible Landscape, 1975, which is scheduled to be reprinted by Harper San Francisco in 1992. He is also the author of The Archaic Revival: Essays and Conversations by Terence McKenna, Harper San Francisco, 1991. His laboratory for exploring the unified abstract structure of time was written into MS-DOS software as Timewave Zero Version 4.0, from Dolphin Software, 48 Shattuck Sq. #147, Berkeley, CA 94704.

  List Of PKD Works Mentioned (With Dates Of First Publication)

  Novels

  SOLAR LOTTERY (1955)

  EYE IN THE SKY (1956)

  THE MAN WHO JAPED (1956)

  THE COSMIC PUPPETS (1957)

  TIME OUT OF JOINT (1959)

  THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (1962)

  THE GAME PLAYERS OF TITAN (1963)

  THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH (1964)

  MARTIAN TIME-SLIP (1964)

  CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON (1964)

  THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (1965)

  DR. BLOODMONEY (1965)

  THE UNTELEPORTED MAN (1966)

  NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR (1966)

  COUNTER-CLOCK WORLD (1967)

  DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (1968)

  GALACTIC POT-HEALER (1969)

  UBIK (1969)

  A MAZE OF DEATH (1970)

  OUR FRIENDS FROM FROLIX 8 (1970)

  WE CAN BUILD YOU (1972)

  FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID (1974)

  CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST (1975)

  DEUS IRAE (1976) (Collaboration with Roger Zelazny)
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  A SCANNER DARKLY (1977)

  VALIS (1981)

  THE DIVINE INVASION (1981)

  THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER (1982)

  RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH (1985)

  Stories

  “Impostor” (1962)

  “Second Variety” (1953)

  “Human Is” (1955)

  “Precious Artifact” (1964)

  “Retreat Syndrome” (1965)

  “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (1966)

  “Faith of Our Fathers” (1967)

  “The Electric Ant” (1969)

  THE PRESERVING MACHINE (story collection) (1969)

  THE BEST OF PHILIP K. DICK (story collection) (1977)

  “Frozen Journey” (1980) (later retitled “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”)

  Nonfiction

  THE DARK-HAIRED GIRL (1988) (letter and essay collec­tion with special focus on early 1970s)

  Glossary: Selected Significant terms

  The Exegesis roams through all of western and eastern philosophy and religion. To thoroughly elucidate all concepts discussed within it, a glossary would have to expand to the size of a separate volume. The present Glossary limits itself to the most vital terms utilized by PKD in the Exegesis excerpts presented in this volume. In addition, personal and otherwise inscrutable references by PKD are clarified. For general subjects, such as Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Judaism, Platonic and Neoplatonic thought, Sufism, Zoroastrianism and the like, the reader must turn to the numerous competent reference works that are already available.

  Those readers interested in studying reference works that were of particular value to PKD may wish to begin by perusing the philosophical and religious entries in the BRITANNICA 3, which was PKD’s most frequently utilized reference source. Another favored reference work was the four-volume ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY published by Prentice-Hall. They should also seek out the works referenced in the editorial footnotes that accompany the Exegesis selections in this volume.

  Acosmism: A belief which denies the genuine existence of a universe apart and distinct from God. PKD wrestled with this belief but seldom embraced it, often positing instead a complex separate universe in need of divine restoration. See Two-Source Cosmology.

  Acts: The Book of Acts in the New Testament. PKD often believed that there was a significant overlap of spiritual content between Acts and his own hovel, FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID (1974). According to PKD, this overlap was completely unconscious, as he had not read Acts at the time of writing TEARS (1970-73). Thus, PKD would often analyze TEARS in the Exegesis as a precursive confirmation of the spiritualvalidity of his 2-3-74 experiences.

  AI Voice: Artificial Intelligence Voice. Terms coined by PKD to name the hypnagogic voice that he heard often in 1974-75 and intermittently in the years thereafter until his death. It is a misleading term in that PKD did not consistently hold that the voice was AI in nature. Most often, he described it as “female,” and his theoretical attributions for it included the Gnostic goddess Sophia (see Sophia) and PKD’s own sister Jane.

  Anamnesis (Greek): Recollection; abrogation of amnesia. It is one of the key concepts of Platonic philosophy. For Plato, anamnesis—recollection of the ultimate World of Ideas in which the soul dwelled before incarnating in human form-explained the human capacity for understanding abstract, universal truths, such as the geometric theorems of Euclid. For PKD, anamnesis served as one termbywhich to describe his encounter, in 2-3-74, with what he regarded as a higher wisdom.

  Ananke (Greek): The blindness that follows hubris (overweening pride or self-absorption).

  Black Iron Prison (BIP): PKD’s term for the unredeemed (spiritually) and spurious (ontologically) world of everyday consciousness. The reality that enchains us. See Orthogonal Time.

  Crypte morphosis (Greek): Latent shape or form. In 1974, PKD found himself thinking in Greek phrases (including this one) during a hypnagogic state. He later related the concept of latent shape to Fragment 51 (the Bow and the Lyre) of Heraclitus.

  Dokos (Greek): Deception, lack of true perception. PKD employed this term as a Greek cognate for the Sanskrit maya.

  Eidos (Greek): Ultimate Form or Idea. A fundamental term in Platonic Philosophy, in which the Idea of the Good is the unifying principle of the World of Ideas, which in turn is the source of all being.

  Enantiodromia: Sudden transformation into an opposite form or tendency. The term was used by Heraclitus, but PKD first became familiar with it through his reading of C.G. Jung. Jung employs it to describe the tendency for the psyche to overcome deep-seated psychic resistance by shifting (seemingly suddenly) to the opposite pole of attitude, belief, and emotion. For PKD, enantiodromia was one term by which to describe the force and extent of his inner transformation in 2-3-74.

  Entelechy: Actualized being or process that has fully realized its potential.

  Firebright: Name coined by PKD for ultimate, living wisdom. See Plasmate.

  Golden Fish: On February 20, 1974, a young woman working for a local pharmacy delivered a bottle of prescription Darvon tablets to the Fullerton, California apartment of PKD. She was wearing a necklace with a golden fish emblem. According to PKD, the sight of that emblem triggered the events of 2-3-74. PKD regarded the golden fish as both a Christian symbol and as a spur to anamnesis of the eternal truths of all philosophies and religions.

  Heimarmene (Greek): The deluding, entrapping power of the spurious, unredeemed world of everyday reality.

  Homoplasmate: A human being who has been transformed through crossbonding with living knowledge bestowed or transmitted by a higher source of wisdom. See Plasmate.

  James-James: The name given by PKD to a mad god of whom he dreamed in 1974 or 1975. His nature was that ofan evil magician. He corresponds closely to the Gnostic demiurge Yaldabaoth.

  Macrometasomakosrrwis: PKD’s own term for ultimate, genuine reality; a cognate term to the Platonic World of Ideas. See Eidos. Literally, this term breaks down into Great-Ultimate-Body-of-the-Cosmos.

  MITHC: PKD novel THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (1962). Moira (Greek): Justice.

  Morphological Realm: As used by PKD, this phrase refers to the realm of ultimate, genuine reality. As such, it is analogous to the Realm of Ideas of Plato (see Eidos) and the Palm Tree Garden.

  Negentropic: A force or influence which counters or reverses the process of entropy.

  Noesis (Greek): The experience of direct perception of the Realm of Ideas posited by Plato. See Eidos.

  Noös (Greek); Nous (Latin): Ultimate Reason.

  Orthogonal Time: Time in its genuine mode, moving perpendicularly to spurious linear time. In a 1975 essay, “Man, Android and Machine,” PKD described orthogonal time as containing within “a simultaneous plane or extension everything which was, just as grooves on an LP contain that part of the music which has already been played; they don’t disappear after the stylus tracks them.” Orthogonal time was one theory by which PKD attempted to explain the sense bestowed upon him by the experiences of 2-3-74 that “The Empire Never Ended,” i.e. that Imperial Rome and modern day America were simultaneous or superimposed aspects of the enduring Black Iron Prison.

  Palm Tree Garden (PTG): The redeemed (spiritually) and genuine (ontologically) world, revealed to PKD in January-February 1975, when the southern California world around him seemed to transform into the Levant, and goodness seemed to pervade the whole. In chapter 18 of the PKD-Roger Zelazny collaborative novel DEUS IRAE (1976), the vision of Dr. Abernathy—which was written by PKD alone—is that of the Palm Tree Garden.

  Pigspurt: See Plasmate.

  Plasmate: Literally, living knowledge. PKD often felt that he had bonded with it in 2-3-74, and that, as a result, there dwelled within his psyche what seemed to be a second, entirely other self. See Horrwplasmate. At times, PKD believed that the identity of this second self was the late James A. Pike, with whom PKD had been friends in the mid-1960s. Atothertimes, he posited an early Christian named Thomas (who li
ved circa 45-70 A.D., in the time of the Book of Acts) as this second self. Yet another identity posed byPKDwas Pigspurt, a malevolent force that had filled him with fear and a craven attitude toward governmental authority; but it should be noted that Pigspurt was seldom mentioned—PKD rarely regarded this second self as malevolent. As for the plasmate itself, he most often regarded it as the living transmission of the Gnostic goddess Saint Sophia, Holy Wisdom. Another name coined by PKD for this Holy Wisdom was Firebright. With respect to PKD’s use of the term “plasmate” to describe living information that pervades the universe, it should be noted that a similar information metaphor is now being employed by certain quantum physics theorists.

  Ramparts Petition: PKD was a signatory to a “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” petition that appeared in the February 1968 issue of “Ramparts,” a new left magazine that opposed the Vietnam War. In subsequent years, PKD came to fear that he had thus earned the enduring wrath (and surveillance attention) of the U.S. government and its military intelligence branches.

  RET: Acronym for Real Elapsed Time.

  Rhipidos (Greek): Fan or fan-like shape. PKD associated rhipidos (one of the Greek words that came to him in his hypnogogic visions) with the fins of the fish, which is a symbol of Christ as well as of the benign deity of the Dogon people. The Rhipidon Society in VALIS takes as its motto: “fish cannot carry guns.”

  Set and Ground: Terms used by PKD (apparently borrowed from gestalt perception theory) to both distinguish between genuine reality (set) and spurious reality (ground), and to describe their seeming admixture in the everyday world. See Two-Source Cosmology.

  Sophia: Gnostic goddess of wisdom. See AI Voice and Plasmate.

  Spaciotemporal Realm: As used by PKD, this phrase refers to the spurious world of accepted, everyday reality, which is bounded by static, linear concepts of time and space. See Morphological Realm.

  Tagore: On the night of September 17, 1981, Phil was falling asleep and then was suddenly startled awake by a hypnagogic vision of Tagore, a world savior who was living in Ceylon. On September 23, PKD sent a letter to the science-fiction fanzine “Niekas” (and to some eighty-five other individuals, friends and distant contacts) describing Tagore as dark-skinned, Hindu or Buddhist, and working in the countryside with a veterinary group.