LM VNDE�WOOD-MILLE� NOVATO, CALlFO�NIA In Pursuit of Valis: �elections from the Exegesis Clothbound: ISBN 0-88733-091-6 Softcover: ISBN 0-88733-093-2 Copyright © 1991 by The Estate of Philip K. Dick Cover art © 1991 by Ilene Meyer Preface copyright © 1991 by Lawrence Sutin. Afterword copyright © 1991 by Terence McKenna Introduction copyright © 1991 by Jay Kinney. "A PKD Chronology" is by Paul Williams A shorter version of the Introduction appeared as "The Mysterious Revelations of Philip K. Dick" in Gnosis Magazine, issue #1, Fall, 1985. (Gnosis Magazine, P.O. Box 14217, San Francisco, CA 94114.) An Underwood-Miller book by arrangement with the authors and The Estate of Philip K. Dick. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without explicit permission from the author or the author's agent, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages. For information address the publisher: Underwood-Miller, 708 Westover Drive, Lancaster, PA 1760 1. For information about the Philip K. Dick Society, write to: PKDS, Box 611, Glen Ellen, CA 95442. Book design by Underwood-Miller Softcover type designed by Daniel Will-Harris Printed in the United States of America All Rights Reserved FIRST EDITION Library of Congress Catalog Number 89-20532 CONTENTS Preface by Lawrence Sutin .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. vii Introduction by Jay Kinney .......................xvii A PKD Chronology ............................. xxxiii One: Direct Accounts oj Personal Experience . .. 1 Two: Theoretical Explanations ................. 63 Three: On His Writing Techniques and the Creative Quest jor Truth ......13 1 Four: Interpretations of His Own Works .........165 Five: Plot Outlines and Explorations jor Works-in-Progress ............... ..205 Six: Political and Ecological Concerns ..........233 Seven: Two Self-Examinations ...................24 1 Eight: Three Closing Parables ...................249 Afterword by Terence McKenna ...................253 Titles ........................................263 Glossary ........................................265 Index ............................ ............273 PREFACE ON TH E EXE�ESlS OF PHILIP K. DICK TheExegesis of Philip K. Dick has too long remained a terra incognita. As a practical matter, that is hardly surprising: Theunpub lished form of the Exegesis consists of over eight thousand pages without a unifying numbered sequence, most of which are handwritten in a scrawling script, and all of which were arbitrarily sorted into ninety-one manila folders following Dick's death in 1982. Thus, while the 1980s saw the posthumous first publication of numerous Dick mainstream novels of the 1950s, the Exegesis remained out of view as an archival nightmare. But one with a curiously legendary status. For readers of Dick's work had already encountered mention of an "exegesis" in VALIS (1981)-a brilliant novel on the impossible quest for mystical truth in the pop-trash wonderland of Inodern-day America. In VALIS, we are told of a journal kept by fictional character Horselover Fat, the alter ego of fictional character Phil Dick. Horselover Fat has gone through an intense mystical experience a/k/ a direct encounter with higher wisdom, one that has trans­ formed his life and caused many to question his sanity. VII VIII IN PURSUIT OF VALI S Horselover Fat can barely make sense of it himself, and at times he is tormented by the thought that it was a delu­ sion-or even an outright breakdown. Hence his pressing need to keep a journal, to make a record of his theories, his doubts, his joys, and his fears. As fictional character Phil Dick explains: Theterm "journal" is mine, not Fat's. His term was "exegesis," a theological term mean­ ing a piece of writing that explains or interprets a portion of scripture. Fat believed that the information fired at him and progressively crammed into his head in successive waves had a holy origin and hence should be regarded as a form of scripture [ ....] VALIS is an indispensable introduction to the world of the Exegesis; readers of the present volume would benefit greatly-and most likely derive considerable pleasure­ from a prior study of it. The first eight chapters of VALIS, which are largely autobiographical, portray the central events of February-March 1974- "2-3-74" in Dick's stan­ dard shorthand form-and the year that followed.These events cannot be easily summarized, consisting as they do of a tumultuous stream of visions, hypnagogic voices, dreams, and altered states of consciousness. Readers may consult chapter ten of my biography, DNINE INVASIONS: A LIFE OF PHILIP K. DICK (1989), in which these events are placed in an orderly chronological sequence by way of letters, interviews, and quotations from VALIS and from the Exegesis. On March 21, 1975, Dick wrote a vivid and concise account of the visions that had enthralled him one year earlier. Its fervent tone indicates just why Horselover Fat-and the real-life Philip K. Dick-felt that the term "exegesis" was justified as a title for his journal specu­ lations: PREFACE IX I speak of The Restorer of What Was Lost The Mender of What Was Broken March 16, 1974: It appeared-in vivid fire, with shining colors and balanced patterns­ and released me from every thrall, inner and outer. March 18, 1974: It, from inside me, looked out and saw the world did not cOInpute, that l­ and it-had been lied to. It denied the reality, and power, and authenticity of the world, say­ ing, "This cannot exist; it cannot exist." March 20, 1974: It seized me entirely, lift­ ing me from the liInitations of the space-time matrix; it mastered me as, at the same instant, I knew that the world around me was card­ board, a fake. Through its powerl saw sud­ denly the universe as it was; through its power of perception I saw what really existed, and through its power of no-thought decision, I acted to free myself. It took on in battle, as a champion of all human spirits in thrall, every evil, every Iron Imprisoning thing. March 20 until late July, 1974: It received signals and knew how to give ceaseless battle, to defeat the tyranny which had entered by slow degrees our free world, our pure world; it fought and destroyed tirelessly each and every one of them, and saw them all clearly, with dis­ like; its love was for justice and truth beyond everything else. August 1974 on: It waned, but only as the adversary in all its forms waned and perished. When it left me, it left me as a free person, a physically and mentally healed person who had seen reality suddenly, in a flash, at the moment of greatest peril and pain and despair; it had loaned me its power and it had set right what had by degrees become wrong over God knows how long. It came just prior to the ver­ nal equinox or at it. The Jews call it Elijah; the Christians call it the Holy Spirit. The Greeks x IN PURSUIT OF VALI S called it Dionysus-Zagreus. It thought, in my dreams, mostly in Greek, referring to Elijah in the Greek form: Elias. Gradually its fierceness turned to a gentle quality and it seemed like Jesus, but it was still Zagreus, still the god of springtime. Finally it became the god of mirth and joy and music, perhaps a mere man, Orpheus, and after that, a punning, funning mortal, Erasmus. But underneath, whenever it might be necessary again, Zeus himself, Ela or Eloim, the Creator and Advocate, is there; he never dies: he only slumbers and listens. The lamb of Jesus is also the tyger which Blake described; it, which came to me and to our republic, contains both, is both. It-he-has no name, neither god nor force, man nor entity; He is everywhere and everything; He is outside us and inside us. He is, above all, the friend of the weak and the foe of the Lie. He is the Aton, He is The Friend. -PKD March 21, 1975 As both VALIS and the Exegesis indicate, Dick was very much aware that these events would inspire skepticism, and even scorn, in many persons. Whether or not one is prepared to grant them the authentic status of a genuine mystical vision, or prefers instead to diagnose them as the byproducts of psychOSiS or other mental abnormality (Dick himself took both positions in the Exegesis, though the former view clearly predominated), this much is cer­ tain: they transformed Dick's life, spurred him to eight years of devoted labor on the Exegesis, and became the central subject matter of his final novels: VALIS (1981), THE DIVINE INVASION (1981), and THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER (1982), termed collectively by Dick as the "VALIS trilogy". Thevery nature of this subject matter-which probes so incessantly at the essence of reality and the prospects fot divine intervention in the world-is singularly offputt­ ing to a good number of modern day readers. After all, "metaphysical" has become, in common parlance, synon­ ymous with "futile" and "imponderable". For such read­ ers, who are likely to recoil instinctively from the more PREFACE XI abstract portions of the Exegesis, it lllay be salutary to recall that a skilled llletaphysician (which Dick certainly was) can provide quite exact and useful delineations of experience. As Ezra Pound observed of the scholastics of the llliddle ages: "a llledieval theologian took care not to define a dog in terlllS that would have applied just as well to a dog's tooth or its hide, or the noise it lllakes lapping water." Dick was passionately concerned with llletaphys­ ical issues; he handled the theories and terminologies of the great philosophical systems with the same loving care as a craftsman might give to his favorite tools.