The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick Read online

  I don't know why I'm speculating along like this, though, because in point of fact I've decided, by a process of deduction, who my tutor is. Asklepios, or one of his sons. A Greek physician, whose step-mother was the Cumaean sibyl, his father Apollo, at whose shrines "... the sick were given wholesome advice in their dreams," this cult yielding only reluctantly to Christianity. Also Asklepios was according to legend, slain by the Kyklopes, a cyclops. Which would explain my extraordinary dream: I saw a fusion of his step-mother and him who Asklepios feared most in all the world.*

  This also explains why the highest wisdom shown me is that associated with Apollo. His—my tutor's—father.

  Interestingly, although Apollo is considered to have been a myth, the Cumaean sibyl is thought to have really existed, and Asklepios likewise. The sibyl lived at least a thousand years, migrating to Rome and writing her Sibylline Books. Asklepios, as I say, was slain by a Kyklopes, by order of Zeus. There wasn't anything Apollo could do about it; Asklepios was bringing a dead person back to life with his healing powers, which Zeus couldn't tolerate because it interrupted the natural order. Which I guess is ananke again ... which would explain why in his instructing and shaping me Asklepios would emphasize that element in life. He learned all about it. I'm getting the benefit of his unfortunate experience.

  I can see me telling my therapist this. "What's on your mind, Phil?" she'll say when I go in, and I'll say, "Asklepios is my tutor, from out of Periclean Athens. I'm learning to talk in Attic Greek." She'll say, "Oh really?" and I'll be on my way to the Blissful Groves, but that won't be after death; that'll be in the country where it's quiet and costs $100 a day. And you get all the apple juice you want to drink, along with Thorazine.

  Apollo's motto at Delphi was "Know thyself," which forms the basis for all modern psychotherapy and mental health and certainly underlies my getting in touch with myself, as depicted here. The other night when I found myself thinking, during the hypnogogic state, in Greek, I managed to snatch a couple of words out of what I believe to be a syntactic sentence. (At the time I wasn't positive it was Greek; it remained a problem to check on, today. It was.) I snatched out:

  crypte (-) morphosis

  These mean something like:

  latent shape (or hidden or concealed shape)

  Although I don't have anything more to go on; it would seem to me that I—or my tutor—was musing on this whole situation, and in pithy Greek formalizing it. A latent form is emerging in me, buried perhaps by Apollo himself, when his son Asklepios was killed by the Kyklopes, so that his son's wisdom and skills, derived from Apollo, would continue on despite Asklepios' sudden death—remaining latent within the morphology of the Indo-European descendents of Asklepios, perhaps genetically handed down through his sons. (He had two.) Now, when needed, this crypte morphosis is emerging, again active; its external stimulating-triggering source being some aspect of the dreadful civic decline of our society, its falling into ruins. "Within the degenerate molecules, the trash of today, he (PKD) resurrects a power buried for eons." (S. Lem, about Ubik.) Other gods of the past have at other times returned to life: Wotan in Germany, during the Nazis. Surely Apollo with his balanced wisdom, his clear healing harmony of opposites, his clear-headed self-knowledge and integrity—what better archetype or god, long slumbering, should be roused at this sad time? Of all the ancient buried deities Apollo is needed by us the most; we have seen enough of the politics of unreason, "Thinking with the Blood," etc.

  In further research I discover that Apollo was the god of the sun, the builder of cities, of music and art, and healing through his son Asklepios, who is the patron god/saint of health, and to whom the Hippocratic Oath is taken. Also, I learn that the strong Pythagorean medical views entering the Greek healing schools after Asklepios held that harmony within and among all parts of the body constituted health. I learn, too, that the Greek Orthodox Priests in Asklepios' hometown still maintain sanitaria and heal as the patients' forerunners were healed 2,600 years ago. This is no quaint, obscure person, Asklepios; only unknown to me. I can think of no more valuable intrusion into my psyche than that of the father and founder of western healing. It is just what I need. And, behind him, the civic strength of Apollo, the brother of Athene.

  This would explain the "photo" I saw briefly: the ancient seated goddess with arms out that were coiled around with snakes; those are associated with all these healing deities. From Egypt, probably by way of Mycenae.

  Footnote: The original display of dazzling graphics which I saw, which inaugurated all of this, were characterized by their balance, not what shapes they contained. They were, like much of Kandinsky's abstract art, modern esthetic elaborations, in color, of the ancient a priori geometric forms conceived by the Greeks, which even in their time passed over into esthetics by way of Pythagoria, e.g., the Golden Section becoming the Golden Rectangle.* Certainly this would indicate that even the start of this contained the hallmark of Apollo: the balance, the harmony—I remember noting that in all the tens of thousands of pictures what was continuous in them was this perfect balance, illustrating a fundamental principle of art. It was that aspect which caught my attention and eye and told me they had great worth. In a sense, since all were rectangles, they were permutations of the Golden Rectangle, which I saw today in its original abstracted, empty form, so calm, so enduring, so restful, reminding me of Apollo's basic virtue: syntonos. I didn't even know the word then; it came to me in sleep. Healing me, as was done 2,600 years ago and never quite ceasing.

  By the way, the town where Asklepios' sanitarium existed, I read now, is up in the mountains. Probably the climate was and is cool and moist; I read it's heavily wooded. I bet the stars are quite visible there. It's the place I yearn for. Out of memory.

  [4:58]10

  Letter to Claudia Bush, July 22, 1974

  [4:68]

  Dear Claudia,

  I think I've solved what's been in my head at night.

  I'm seeing all the books and writing tablets, all the written material night after night: the Qumran Scrolls.

  Gee. It finally fits together, all this stuff.

  They're what people call the "Dead Sea Scrolls." I've been doing more research. I'm positive. Hundreds have been unjarred and opened and translated recently. In England and Israel. The Qumran community were Essenes. Here, before the scrolls were found, is Will Durant's description of the Essenes:

  ... possibly they were influenced by Brahamic, Buddhist, Parsee [which is Zoroastrianism, PKD], Pythagorean and Cynic [search for the honest man, PKD] ideas that came to the crossroad of trade at Jerusalem.... They dwelt in homes owned by their community ... [i.e., communistic ideas of property: "A rich man is a thief," PKD] ... they hoped that by piety, abstinence and contemplation they might acquire magic powers and foresee the future. Like most people of their time they believed in angels and demons, thought of diseases as possession by evil spirits, and tried to exorcise these by magical formulas; from their "secret doctrine" came some parts of the Cabala. They looked for the coming of a Messiah who would establish a communistic egalitarian Kingdom of Heaven on earth;... they were ardent pacifists and refused to make implements of war.11

  The Romans wiped them out.

  Well, so the contents of the Qumran Scrolls would contain all the elements I've been entertaining in my mind, and scrolls equal books, and the Essenes were into prophecy, or anyhow wanted to be. It's all there: the numbers (Pythagoreanism), the weird semi-words (Cabala). This is exactly what Jim Pike was into, therefore. All of the above. See, Claudia?

  The Essenes sent teachers to the various cities; these teachers concealed their Essene background and training. Jesus Christ is the best known example. (The Qumran Scrolls indicate he was indeed a "secret Essene.") Another example would be Appolonius of Tyana (died 98 A.D.).12 Look him up, Claudia; you'll see what I mean. These Essene secret teachers fanned out into the Roman Empire and so-to-speak subverted it with their doctrines. After the Essene Community was wiped out around 70 A.D.
such secret teachers as Appolonius of Tyana continued to spread their doctrines. These underlie—covertly—our world.

  Nobody knew the source of these teachings until the Qumran Scrolls were recently found; no wonder Jim Pike and other theologians went crazy with excitement—saw Christianity in an entirely new light. It isn't a Jewish heresy but based on the sources I quote from Will Durant above. And they were into cypher (Cabala) and prophecy—and lots and lots of what probably are prophetic books (the scrolls).

  And since Jim's death many more've been dug up and translated (which also means deciphered). Query: If the Essenes were successful prophets, not just trying and failing, did they anticipate their being wiped out, and anticipate leaving their entire doctrines and views and information as sort of time-bombs which would remain hidden until today? Is it possible? Very possible, I think. They hid all their stuff to be found later—much later. Once more to be reintroduced into the world, as it was—their original effect on our world—fading out, finally. To revive it.

  Jesus Christ, Claudia. Doesn't this fit together? I know it's true; I mean, I know now that what I've been seeing which I assumed was many sources, many doctrines, was and is the worldview and knowledge, the gnosis and secret wisdom, of the Essenes who favorably informed and educated and directed and influenced society from 2 A.D. on, and even before. A synthesis of all the really useful stuff from the Antique Classical Past—now alive again, e.g., in my head at night; it's in my head because I was Jim's friend and so forth, as I've said. From the Qumran Scrolls he got all this synthesis of the wisdom of Antiquity and then he died and then he "came across" to me and so now I've got it.

  I think I'm putting the pieces together, the final ones. For God's sake, Claudia, be cautious with who you discuss this, if you do at all with anyone. I'm being super careful as to whom I'm telling this to—in all candor, just you and my wife; other people like Jamis even, and Peter Fitting and so forth—just fragments. I'm not kidding, be careful.

  It's adding up and it spooks me, for obvious reasons. As I nail it down I get more and more frightened, but then I calm down and feel very relaxed because it's such wise stuff, such good stuff that's coming to me at night. Last night, for example, I heard her (you know, my anima, the sibyl), singing along with a choir:

  You must put your slippers on

  To walk toward the dawn

  With advice like that, how can I lose? (Seriously, she did sing that, but what it means I have no idea. I don't even own any slippers. Two nights ago I dreamed about the Goddess Aurora, who is the Greek Goddess of the Dawn. I sure have odd nights.*)

  Love,

  Phil

  Letter to Claudia Bush, July 24, 1974

  [4:73]

  Dear Claudia,

  I will Xerox the Philip Purser in-depth interview with me that just appeared in the London Daily Telegraph magazine.13 Then you can see what a nitwit I appear to be to foreigners. Mr. Purser in his interview notes that when Tessa brings me some eggs to eat I offer him some (not out of the same dish, just, "Would you like some?"). I guess that's odd behavior. Eggs, too, are funny, evidently, since he comments on that. "He is seen to be eating eggs," or words to that effect. You'll see, once we get it to you. [...]

  Anyhow, back to my obsession (you know which one; are there more than one?). Last night I woke up with an acute feeling of resentment and the scales falling from my eyes and my illusions shot to hell. I had been talked to four times already that night by Asklepios and several people with him, and all at once I discovered he was telling me the usual amount of half-truths and lies and opinions like anyone else. He was just a human being; the bunch of them standing there—I had seen them off to the right, in sort of a phalanx, with Asklepios in front doing most or all of the talking—and I had been listening to them and I now knew they weren't gods and what they said, especially him, wasn't holy writ.

  Lying there in bed fully awake I thought, Well that is the end of all of this. I've seen them and they're just people. Same as us.

  I was very disappointed, and today when I was having my eggs in the living room and waiting to see what our nanny brought in—and who—I decided not to tell Tessa what happened in the night because it was such a bummer. Just people. Burn!

  And then it came to me that I had actually seen them in the night, they were there, they did talk to me on and on, in particular Asklepios, and I was right: there were a bunch of them. They were not very formidable, and I felt like a kid who discovers to his shocked dismay that his parents are no different from anyone else: with, so to speak, feet of clay. Also, I now knew who it was who was addressing me on and on; it is Asklepios, the founder of Western medicine back in 600 B.C. He lacks modern medical techniques, medicine, equipment and knowledge; his practice hasn't evolved one bit. To make up for his lacks, I guess, he has to fake it a lot.

  Love, and write if you get worry I mean work. Freudian slip; sorry. Write any time.

  Phil

  Letter to Claudia Bush, July 24, 1974

  [4:74]

  Dear Claudia,

  Claudia! Another letter! Guess what about!

  I forgot— how could I?—to relate to you a dream I had the other night; see, the purpose of relating it is to show how many myth elements from Antiquity can, with a little effort, be disclosed.

  I'm with a bunch of people in an elevator. There is, oddly, an elevator operator (we don't have those in real life ever anymore, at least where I've been living the last 20 years); he's a small man, with olive skin and black curly short hair and large eyes, the way people are depicted in the Roman mosaics. He's wearing a brown cop uniform and is in complete charge. To his right, by the modern extremely heavy doors of the elevator is what looks like a pile of spaghetti with tomato sauce; sticking down into it is a fork. The elevator stops and I step forward to leave, but before you leave, what you have to do is extricate the fork from the pile of spaghetti, which I begin to do. But I discover it's a three pronged trident, not a fork, and it isn't spaghetti it is a pile of reddish yarn. As I pull, threads come with the trident.

  The cop at once begins in the most commanding and frightening authority-type voice to explain that the prongs of the trident must be brought free without breaking a strand of the thread; he speaks to all in the elevator. He shows me how to extricate the trident without breaking the strands, and then he begins in his firm commanding voice to recite rhymed verse. At this I know him to be that cop, the only one; he is the most awesome of them all, and we all fall totally silent and listen with humble, almost religious, respect to his verse. Then he touches the button which opens the door. As I step through the now open portal I see the man behind me stoop down and start attempting to extricate the trident without breaking the strands twined around its prongs.

  Then the next night I heard the woman singing the rhymed couplet about "You must put your slippers on/To walk toward the dawn," with the full choir behind her, again and again and again. I said to Tessa after the elevator dream, "I guess I'm going to have to listen to some of her prophetic couplets." And so I did.

  In the elevator dream I see these Classical Myth elements:

  The authority figure in charge of the "vessel" is the psychopomp, the guide of the souls who leads them across (the Styx, etc.) to the Other Side. Charon is very strict. The thread, which may be Arachne's or Ariadne's, must not be broken. If it is Ariadne's, then the trident is the sword she gave to Theseus along with the thread to guide him out of the Labyrinth; if he broke it, his life was over. (If the trident is that of Poseidon then it is evident where we are in the dream: I quote from Gods and Heroes of the Greeks, p. 12: "... they cast lots and Zeus got heaven, Poseidon the sea and Hades the underworld.") Both Poseidon and Hades appear then in the dream of the elevator, which is far down in the "lower floors, with darkness outside, as with the basement level," and the trident. I see three myths right there, with the trident sticking into the "strands which must not be broken," and then the guide who recites verse indicates that we are in the prese
nce of prophecy, of an oracle. Also, the spaghetti tells us we're in that part of the world. Plus the olive-colored skin and eyes of the "cop."

  I looked the citations up just now; and there is another thing which is startling, I mean beyond how many myth-sources unknown to me seem involved.

  The morning after I had this dream I received a letter from my friend Philip Jose Farmer, in which he wrote:

  ... You're among the most imaginative of men, Phil. Have you tried to use that imagination to figure a way out of the situation? ... Think in other categories, as Ouspensky14 said; use your unconventional mind as if it were the powerful tool which it indeed is. You're in the labyrinth, but your Ariadne's thread is your imagination.

  I think I mentioned a more recent dream about double domed men with rather golden skin—huge egg-shaped craniums, very fierce and formidable and decisive, with an enormous yearbook type book "which you can't get right now because it's not available." Last night, with sudden fear, I broke through the memory block about that dream; in it one of those double domed golden skinned men opened a huge cyclops eye which at once, as with the cyclops sibyl, shoved his regular two eyes aside. He wasn't looking at me, thank god, but it so scared me that when I woke up I couldn't remember that. Last night when I did remember, the image from the dream was so vivid that I thought, I actually thought, that maybe I hadn't dreamed it, I had actually seen a cyclops such as this during the day, in reality. Only by a priori reasoning, that this was not possible, did I deduce it therefore had to have been in the dream.