The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick Read online

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  Considering the distance over which these packets of information travel, and their velocity, much contamination, signal-loss and other fa miliar invasion of the material contained must take place—cross-talk from other fields, so that when the tachyons at last impinge on us even if our transduction is superb (as in the case of "mystics" and "saints") there would be something quite less than a perfect meaningful construct. I suppose that out of these etoin shrdlu type of ramblings (or whatever you get on a linotype when your fingers go from left to right) the various "Names of God" are constructed; they supply the spurious and dogmatic Holy Writ such as the Mormons treasure as their inspiration.

  If you recall the weird word found on deserted Roanoke Island in 1591, which was CTOSYOAN, carved on a tree and everyone mysteriously gone,—well, look I did it just then; I had my fingers one key to the right on my keyboard: the word is CROATOAN; I was copying it from my text book and had my eyes away from my hands. Thus marvelously proving my point. But for centuries scholars have been trying to figure out what "Croatoan" means. Probably it means nothing; the terrified colonists of the island, faced by one or more hostile forces (famine, Indians, plague, etc.), had an inspiration and left the island for some other sanctuary, believing that those letters spelled out something meaningful. Perhaps the Cosmic Teletype Operator turned his head for a moment, as I did, and erred.

  In my novel Galactic Pot-Healer there's a girl character named Mali Yojez. Not being able to think of another name, I hit keys at random, and used what I got. Years later a burned-out freak who had read the book looked at me with secret insinuating accusation and said, pointing to these letters-used-as-a-name, "That's me you're writing about there in your book." I pointed out that Mali Yojez was in no way his name. "It's a code you used," he explained, "to cover over my name so I wouldn't know. But I do know." I then pointed out that I had written and published the book years before I ever met him; at that his all-knowing paranoid glee increased. "That just proves how clever you are," he said. "You even knew about me in advance." You see what I mean, Peter.

  I've reinserted this into the typewriter because just as I was about to mail this, it occurred to me that according to my tachyon theory, I could well have anticipated meeting the above-mentioned burned-out freak. This brings to my mind my strange and eerie feeling that my novels are gradually coming true. At first I laughed about this, as if it was only a sort of small matter; but over the years—my God, I've been selling stories for 23 years—it seems to me that by subtle but real degrees the world has come to resemble a PKD novel; or, put another way, subjectively I sense my actual world as resembling the kind of typical universe which I used to merely create as fiction, and which I left, often happily, when I was done writing.

  Other people have mentioned this, too, the feeling that more and more they are living in a PKD novel. And several freaks have even accused me of bringing on the modern world by my novels.

  Well, a case could be made here for my above tachyon theory, I guess, although I hadn't thought of it until now. Let us say that I am inspired by a creative entity outside my conscious personality to write what I write. (I had imagined it to be my subconscious, but this only begs the question, What is the subconscious?) There is no doubt that quite frankly I do not in any real sense write my novels; they do come from some non-I part of me. Often they contain dreams I've had (this was true of Lovecraft, I've heard). If tachyon bombardment was inspiring my novels, then it would stand to reason that the world—it is really all the same world which my books depict, as has been pointed out in critical essays many times—it would stand to reason that, as the years pass, my books would, so to speak, come true. They are about the future in two ways: they describe it fictionally, like S-F tends to do, and, they being inspired by tachyon information about the actual future (or possible several alternate futures) depict on-coming reality. Isn't our world now somewhat like the world in Solar Lottery, my first novel? And other, later novels of mine even more so? I do not wish to be in one of my own novels, by the way. So this isn't wish-fulfillment. Anyhow, I'm not the only person who's noticed that the world seems to be getting like my novels; it was pointed out to me recently that if I had waited another year to bring out Flow My Tears it would have been out of date (actually it was by-and-large finished in 1970).

  Several times I've had the uncanny experience of meeting people who resemble persons, characters, I'd previously made up for my novels. In Flow My Tears there's a 19 year old girl named Kathy, as you recall, whom Jason meets; she is a girl of the gutter, so to speak, living a quasi-illegal existence. The next year, 1971, I in fact did meet a girl, the same age, living a life so similar to that of the girl in the novel as to frighten me—frighten me that if she reads the book ever she may sue. Her name—Kathy.

  I am not the true and actual source of my own fiction, and I've always wondered what the source was. John Denver, the current folk singer, says he doesn't compose his many songs; "They're out there in the air somewhere," he says, "and I just fish them in." Well, my novels aren't out there in the air; they're in my unconscious—or are they? Maybe Denver is right; it's coming at us from a standpoint physically outside our brains, not down deep below the surface. In point of fact, S-F is often thought of as "future history," and this notion is one I've combated, with great irritation, over the years. And yet I'm faced with the fact that time and history have caught up with me, which is perhaps one reason why you and others were disap pointed with Flow My Tears; I waited too long to bring it out. Put another way, the gap between my vision and the actual world has gotten smaller and smaller over the years; when I wrote Solar Lottery it was a vision that no one else had, but how can I claim my vision in Flow My Tears to be unique in the same way? I could do as well by getting my information from newspapers, perhaps. How strange. How frightening, to me, anyhow.

  And yet, as of this March, with the sudden bombardment of the nonobjective graphics, perhaps I have once again regained contact with the authentic future; for example, the work I'm engaged in now is a sequel to Man in the High Castle, at last—I've wanted to do that for 12 years, but never come up with an idea good enough. Based on my experiences from March of this year on, I believe I have indeed, finally, come up with an idea good enough, and am deep into it. I feel that the external creative force which I've discussed throughout this letter, whatever its source, whatever its nature, has inspired me as I have never been inspired before. More important to me than what it is, what it's called, is the quality of its inspiration to me and the effect on my writing. Well, from these experiences over the past three months I do have a terrific idea, I think the best of my life, and in no way will it be anything you can read about in the present day newspaper. Perhaps what has happened is nothing more or less than a sudden return of the old force of creativity which animated me in years past and novels past.... Whatever it is, God bless it, and I am grateful for it. Wish me luck—and also, let me know what you think of all this; I value your opinion uniquely.

  Letter to Claudia Bush, July 5, 1974

  [4:13]

  Dear Claudia,

  Since I last wrote you (sending on the 7 page letter to Peter Fitting plus the 2 page letter to you) I have continued to have the same dream again and again which I mentioned: a vast and important book held up before me which I should read. Yesterday, for example, since Tessa and Christopher had gone off on a picnic, I took several naps and had four dreams in which printed matter appeared, two of them involving books.

  For three months, virtually every night, I've had these dreams involving written material. And within the last few days it became obvious that a specific book was indicated. That the ultimate purpose of all these dreams was to call my atte
ntion to an actual book somewhere in the real world, which I was to find, then take down and read.

  The first dream on July 4 was much more explicit than any before; I took down my copy of Robert Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil, a large blue hardback U.K. edition, for two men to look at. Both men said this was not a book (or the book) they were interested in. However, it was clear that the book wanted was large and blue and hardback.

  In a dream a month ago I managed to see part of the title; it ended in the word "Grove." At the time I thought it might be Proust's Within a Budding Grove, but it was not; however, there was a long word similar to "Budding" before "Grove."

  So I knew by the first part of the day yesterday that I was looking for a large blue hardback book—very large and long, according to some dreams, endlessly long, in fact—with the final word of the title being "Grove" and a word before it like "Budding."

  In the last of the four dreams yesterday I caught sight of the copyright date on the book and another look at the typestyle. It was dated either 1966 or possibly 1968 (the latter proved to be the case). So I began studying all the books in my library which might fit these qualifications. I had the keen intuition that when I at last found it I would have in my hands a mystic or occult or religious book of wisdom which would be a doorway to the absolute reality behind the whole universe.

  Of course the possibility existed that I didn't have the book in my library, that I would have to go out and buy it. In several dreams I was in a bookstore doing just that. One time the book was held open before me with its pages singed by fire on all sides. By that I took it to be an extremely sacred book, perhaps the one seen in the Book of Daniel.5

  Anyhow today I looked all day around the house, since Tessa has been sick with a sunburn, and all at once I found the book. The three month search is at last over.

  As soon as I took down the volume I knew it to be the right one. I had seen it again and again, with ever increasing clarity, until it could not be mistaken.

  The book is called The Shadow of Blooming Grove, hardback and blue, running just under 700 huge long pages of tiny type. It was published in 1968.6 It is the dullest book in the world; I tried to read it when the Book Find Book Club sent it to me but couldn't.

  It is a biography of Warren G. Harding.

  Cordially,

  Phil Dick

  P.S. This is on the level, and it goes to show you that you should never take your dreams too seriously. Or else it shows that the unconscious or the universe or God or whatever can put you on. A three-month gag. (If you want to read the book I'll mail it to you. Postage should be enormous. You got three years ahead in which you have nothing planned?)

  Letter to Claudia Bush, July 13, 1974

  [4:16]

  Dear Claudia,

  [...] Inasmuch as I've delighted you so far with my unusual (to say the least) trip into Big Dreams of Big Books, then I might as well go all the way.

  Now, as I've mentioned, among other things I've dreamed about:

  A big blue book whose title ends in the word grove and before this is a word starting with a "B" which could be blooming or budding or something. A book in which everything there is is.

  The sibyl. Who knows and sees everything ... The deeds of men, especially.

  The cyclops (in same dream as above). Contributing the seeing Eye.

  A friend called "Paul" holding up galley proofs for me to read, which I am told consist of a "book of prophecies," and in which I find a passage about myself. Again, a huge MS of printed pages, but not quite a true bound book in our terms. Yet enormous.

  The word "sintonic," which I am told to be, and which when I wake up I believe to be a neologism, but when I finally look up and find to be a real word, Greek, meaning self-harmony, etc. In harmony with, etc. A key term in Pythagorean thought, also Roman.

  Well, Claudia, let's take the above five in terms of what I found in my funky reference books. Now, ESP has been described as "when you somehow acquire knowledge you shouldn't have," or "have no way of having," whether it's about the future, or what's in the next room, or in another person's mind, etc., or in the past. Since I wrote you earlier today I decided to look up Virgil's Aeneid, because in the short paragraph which I quoted to you about the Cumaean Sibyl, it's in that book where she is mentioned. Okay. Here is what I found:

  In Book III of The Aeneid there is a long description of the Cyclops.

  In a later book, Aeneas meets Queen Dido, "... Then the Sibyl takes him through mystic passages of the Blissful Groves where those who led good lives bask in green valleys and endless joys" (Will Durant's Caesar and Christ, [>]). Note: "Blissful Groves."

  So we have here (1) the Cyclops, (2) the sibyl, and (3) the "Blissful Groves" which is indubitably what I saw in my dream, and also the fact that the sibyl has a lot of books of prophecies which she burned one by one, as in my dream of the singed book held up to me to read, each page rimmed with singed black. As if the book had gone through a fire but had been rescued.

  Now, Claudia, I never knew any of these things. And it certainly is odd how much are from a single strand of myth from Roman and Greek times: right down to specific Greek words such as Syntonos, or however it's spelled in Greek. Also I dreamed the word "ulna" one time, as I mentioned in the form "Sadasa ulna." Well, I looked it up and it is Latin for "elbow," but also it can stand for a measure of length, and the citation in my complete Latin dictionary for that use is Virgil's The Aeneid, book III. The word "ulna" appears there as used by Virgil in that fashion, and although other citations follow, its appearance in that book would seem to be the initial use of it that has survived. And the best known, to scholars.

  So my dreams seem to refer again and again to a specific paradigm and that paradigm is being explicated with each dream until now I can't avoid seeing what the paradigm is.

  Or was 2,000 years ago.

  So this could be placed under the rubric "ESP" or more accurately ESP knowledge.

  What the dreams I've had from mid-March to now, which is to say scores and scores of them, mean is that: This is prophetic knowledge. Which is to say, I can take what comes and has already come as accurate prophecy. Once this is established, the so-to-speak credentials, then it can and has gone on to the knowledge itself. Such as last night, about the assassinations in this country, which the sibyl said included Jim Pike, Bishop Pike that is, who knew Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King, and who is my friend; I knew Jim very well.

  The sibyl said that the three burglaries of my house between November 1971 and March 1972 in which all my papers were taken finally, by the time it was over, had to do with the belief or fear that I had material Jim Pike had given me before his death. (I had said he had done so in the foreword of my 1969 novel A Maze of Death.) This was the purpose of the three burglaries of my files. They had reason to think so; I had said so in A Maze of Death.

  I always wondered why my papers were taken. I could never figure it out and the police said they were baffled, too.

  In April of this year when I was in the hospital for high blood pressure (caused really by these "dreams") I met a lawyer and told him at length about the hits on my house. His theory after careful thought was that it was most likely that they were after papers concerning Jim Pike, religious material Jim had given me or told me before his death. In at least one of my dreams, Claudia, I was Jim Pike; I know that because I saw "my mother" and it was Jim's, Mrs. Chambers, who I once met. Also, Jim was a Latin scholar. His specialty, in fact, his joy in life.

  I am freaked, when you consider his book The Other Side, about the dead coming through to the living. He gave credit to me in its foreword, for research work.

  Love,

  Phil

  Letter to Claudia Bush, July 16, 1974

  [4:34]

  Dear Claudia,

  Herewith you will find a copy I made for you—did the whole damn thing word by word on my own typewriter—of a short piece I wrote which I think a lot of.

  I'm sending it to you because f
irst I do think it has worth and it's a present to you from me, what I have best to give. (I was going to put it on the market, but never mind.) There is however a second reason. I wrote this short piece with no thought to any formal system of thought past or present. It is just what I experienced and believed. The next day when I read it I saw instantly that it was unquestionably Hindu doctrine. There is the path: dharma. There is the delusion that hangs over reality: maya. And there is the light of God shining below maya: Brahman. But later on I realized that even more was involved: the clear concept of the liar, when I looked through my reference books I came across it and recognized it at once when I turned to a passage about Zoroastrianism. The God of Light versus the Master of the Lie. There it was. I could not recall ever having known that before. Perhaps I did, but it was no longer a conscious part of me.

  Needless to say, honesty was valued by the Persians as the first virtue, after piety (which was needed to justify honesty, evidently, since in those days everything had to be assigned to a supernatural cause to make it stick). They believed other good things, as revealed to them by Zoroaster as revealed to him by Ahura-Mazda by way of the Avesta, such as it being a sin to feed unfit food to an animal such as a dog. The greatest thing in the Persian system of course was its affirmation of life, the value of life, the joy of life, the justice possible in this world and not the next, the value of trying. It put down passivity, resignation, despair, and I'm glad to say once released from the power of the Lie I saw passivity, resignation and despair as intended by-products of the Lie, and any system of thought or religion which taught those as virtues (Christianity included) as a manifestation of the Lie.