The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick. Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings by Philip K. Dick

This would be why I felt I was receiving from a hidden (occult) brotherhood, represented by armed knights. . . the knights of the grail, so to speak. And the content of my experience: I was shown specifically the Christian brotherhood toppling Rome, now. The siege of us prisoners being lifted by the body of armored knights on horseback at the outer walls. The “mystical body of Christ” of which we are parts and he is the head — this would be a sort of midway concept of the source, standing between pure mystical perception of immanent God (a la Spinoza) and a strictly human wisdom (gnostic, AMORC, Roman Catholic, etc.) brotherhood. The head is divine (theos), the members are of the human congregation. Its presence is actually here (now), in and on our world, in our society, making changes (the rock torn not by human hands and hurled at the statue, as in Daniel). (And I did hear, hypnogogically, “I am part of the King.”)

Palmer — crossed palm trees. Palm trees are a Christian symbol of the Holy Land; what I saw in 2-75, then, is a vision of the Holy Land. I did not go (journey) to it; it came to me. I was already seeing a palm tree (like the Afrika Korps palm tree emblem) in the FISH sign, months before. The palmer sign, perhaps. In hoc signo, etc. [In hoc signo vinces: In this sign we conquer.] Again, we have here symbols specifically of Christianity, rather than of God per se (as distinguished from). Also, a building in the Holy Land, with Romanesque arches. Memory of the Sacred Other, from its “former life”? A building where the White Brotherhood (etc.) met? The significance of my seeing this might be: My search is over. I had reached my destination, the end of my journey. (And, very soon after, the voice of St. Sophia dimmed away entirely from my mind. The one full year, from vernal equinox to vernal equinox, had evidently ended.) It all must be regarded as a searching for and a finding of (vide the quest represented in my various novels).

c. 1976

I Am a Living Animal, Tied to a Dying Soul.

— PKD

1. The Greeks considered reality veiled (by dokos [Greek: deception], e.g. Parmenides).

2. The Hindus consider reality veiled (by Maya, which we generate ourselves, but which also Kali spins) (cf. Heinrich Zimmer [noted Indologist]).

3. Calvin considered us blinded, that once we could see what is really there, but were punished (this dovetails a little with Empedocles and with Castaneda, with shamanism in general, and hence with the mystery religions, e.g., Dionysos).

4. Augustine considered the City of God mingled with the City of Earth so as to make them indistinguishable to us now; but at the Parousia, they will be separated (to our senses).

5. Zoroaster believed as 4. Good (Ahriman and Ahura-Mazda, the light and dark blended; but at the Final Day, the two portions would be visibly separate).

All are dealing with the problem of phenomenology of accident versus essence: Kant’s Ding-an-sich [thing in itself]. “This crumbling pageant.”

6. I once saw appearance, then briefly (five days) assimilated the objects of perception (noetically) and then returned to ordinary perception of appearance, the “reflection” of reality (Plato, Paul, etc.). My experience proves that all views that we see only “a reflection from the bottom of a polished metal pan” are correct, FOR WHATEVER REASON, the latter being in doubt only. I did not see; then I saw; then I did not see again (exactly as Paul says). Why the first? Why the second? Why the return of the first? Teilhard’s view of an evolutionary step forward? Or anamnesis, restoration of lost faculties (Calvin)? Or coiled, cyclic time? Moebius strip time?

Is change (Dionysos, metamorphosis) real? Heraclitus/Christ Teilhard

Or: Is unchange (Apollo, the healers) real? Parmenides, Jahweh

Is the search itself the goal (as is said)?

My Gollancz speech [“Man, Android, and Machine” (1976), included in this volume] is insane but true. And I knew more then, noetically; what I’ve read since bears it out. The madman speaks the moral of the piece.

If we deceive ourselves, why? If someone/something else deceives us, then why and also who? Wacht auf! [Wake up!] Brahmin (it, not he). It dreams, and now wakes, or it was awake, and now falls asleep; I think it is waking. The universe-organism of the Greek philosophers: It wakes and sees. Cells, forming a Great Brain. Bees in a hive. Rising now to consciousness. Of what? Itself? There are no answers, only mysteries (not questions but mysteries: secrets. Sacred secrets, not disclosed to us. But not by whom? Well, when I woke, those five days, change was real: a process. Cosmogenesis (Teilhard). Toward. Omega.

Outline in Abstract Form of a New Model

of Reality Updating Historic Models,

in Particular Those of Gnosticism and

Christianity (1977)

It is proper to say: We appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computerlike thinking system that, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential information (knowledge, gnosis), and each of us possesses a somewhat different deposit from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction — a failure — of memory retrieval. There lies the trouble in our particular subcircuit. “Salvation” through gnosis — more properly anamnesis (the loss of amnesia) — although it has individual significance for each of us — a quantum leap in perception, identity, cognition, understanding, world- and self-experience, including immortality — it has further and more truly ultimate importance for the system (structure) as a whole, inasmuch as these memories (data) are needed or valuable to it, and to its overall functioning.

Therefore it is in the process of self-repair, which includes: rebuilding our subcircuit (world) via linear and orthogonal time changes (sequences of events), as well as continual signaling to us both en masse and individually (to us received subliminally by the right brain hemisphere, which gestalts the constituents of the messages into meaningful entities), to stimulate blocked neural (memory) banks within us to fire and hence retrieve what is there.

The adventitious information of gnosis, then, consists of disinhibiting messages (instructions), with the core (main) content actually intrinsic to us — that is, already there (first observed by Plato, that learning is a form of remembering).

The ancients possessed techniques (sacraments and rituals) used largely in the Greco-Roman mystery religions, including early Christianity, to induce firing and retrieval, mainly with a sense of its restorative (repairing) value to the individuals; the Gnostics, however, and Mani correctly saw the ontological value to what they called the Godhead Itself (i.e. the total entity).

PHILIP K. DICK

K. W. JETER

12/7/77

SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA

(Note: While such “Enlightened” spiritual leaders as Zoroaster, Mani, Buddha, and Elijah can be regarded as receptors of the entity’s total wisdom, Christ seems to have been an actual terminal of this computerlike entity, in which case he did not speak for it but was it. “Was,” in this case, standing for “consisted of a microform of it.”)

Late 1972 letter found amongst c. 1977 Exegesis papers

I almost became a sincere tool of a conspiracy consisting of myself.

There goes the John Birch Society sincerely trying to save this country from the John Birch Society — from itself.

Prototype: Pooh and Piglet following the woozle footprints around and around the tree. There are more all the time.

I blew up my own house and forgot I did it. [The reference here is to an episode in November 1971 when Dick’s house and files were broken into, possibly with the use of explosives; his list of suspects for this unsolved crime included himself.] But why did I forget I did it? So I’d think I had an actual enemy so I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I’m paranoid, i.e. crazy. I blew up my house to convince myself I was sane. Anyone who would go to that much trouble must really be nuts. So as soon as those who thought I was imagining that people were after me saw that my house had been blown up, they realized that I was far more paranoid than they had suspected. Their paranoid suspicions about me are now much greater. Sensing their paranoid suspicions about me, I realize etc.

Why is everything is short supply? Because everyone is hoarding. Why are they hoarding? Because everything is in short supply.

We all wind up isolated, suspicious of each other, each of us trying to figure out what is going on, which means, who is doing it? Who is our enemy? The fact that we can’t figure out what’s going on overloads our brains, overworks our minds; we wear out fast, get exhausted and confused. And still we can’t locate the enemy. Because we are confused we begin to act in an ineffectual way, so our behavior becomes erratic. Others who notice our erratic behavior wonder what we are up to. Actually we are up to nothing, are merely in the process of burning out over the problem of trying to figure out what other people are up to, inasmuch as their various behaviors are becoming more and more perplexing. Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don’t. They ask us, What are you doing? We can’t give a coherent account because we don’t know, but our failure to give a coherent account convinces them that we are lying, and the only reason we would lie is because what we are really (doing) ought to be concealed. This confirms their fears and mistrust, and they intensify the interrogation. The false premise is, You must know what you’re doing and if you won’t tell me, then you must be lying in order to conceal something I wouldn’t approve of, which is probably directed at me to hurt me. Each person winds up more and more confused, having wasted his time and exhausted himself interrogating other persons as confused as himself on the false assumption that they know what’s going on. Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home.

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