Galactic Pot-Healer in Exegesis

GALACTIC POT-HEALER shows the very real possibility of encroaching madness. The archetypes are out of control. Water—the ocean itself—which is to say the unconscious, is hostile & rises to engulf. The book is desperate & frightened, & coming apart, dream-like, cut off more & more from reality. Flight, disorganization: the way has almost run out. Those elements dealt with in earlier novels—ominous elements—now escape my control & take over. What Brunner* said, "That one got out of control" is correct & has vast psychological significance. & yet I did not become psychotic. Why not? What happened?

Very simply the meta-abstraction was the birth of higher reason in me. Specifically & precisely Logos. It was noesis, but, more, it was Logos itself. & Logos—not just as reason, although it is that—but Christ: Christ is the power of the rational principle itself.

The Dialectic that I experienced in 3-74 was between the irrational & the rational, in me, in world, in God. The rational won.

The issue is properly stated in VALIS, which shows not only a return of control but is an account of victory—in the form of rationality, of Logos itself—over madness; I am not only rational, I also depict as open, autobiography, this battle in me & this victory. Ursula is both right & wrong. "Phil Dick is moving toward madness"* does not apply to VALIS but to GALACTIC POT-HEALER; already with TEARS & then more so in SCANNER reality has re-entered; I am again in touch with the real.

VALIS, is, then, the return from madness or near-madness, an account of a prior inner struggle & not a symptom of that struggle still going on.

Collected+Selected Tweets on Philip K. Dick -- seeds of sooncoming posts

PKD Tweets collection by Ted Hand aka @t3dy on Twitter, http://t3dy.livejournal.com

2011
Thinking of PKD interpretations of gnosticism/alchemy as similar to movie adaptations of PKD books; don't have to get it right to be fun/useful

interesting to compare masculine marxism of Philip K. Dick with feminine marxism of Anne R. Dick.

...but soon thanks to the mainstreaming of phildickian themes we can look forward to "reality breakdown TV"

I think PKD is worth studying as a Spinozist for the ways he fictionalizes philosophical problems he plays w/
@HBergson there's an anecdote somewhere about a guy PKD knew who was drugged out+couldn't think straight, but PKD read his copy of Spinoza--
He found in the book that the guy had underlined the exact same passages that were meaningful to PKD->Example of drugs rot brains.

These days I tend to read PKD on Gnosticism, Buddhism, Mystical Allegory as pure phenomenology, but used to see it as inescapable mystic key

@soundhunter one of my favorite parts about studying PKD is that he treated his weird gnostic experiences as allegorical keys to his novels.

@00Pelican00 I'm sure glad I found PKD in my teens, + was ready for all the heady philosophical and gnostic stuff by the time I hit college.

PKD+Alchemy-inspired artist http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/04/02/alchemy-the-art-of-david-mack-april-2nd-at-floating-world-comics/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bogen quoted by PKD in ASD

PKD on direct connection between Karma and Black Iron Prison http://www.philipkdick.com/new_ex-thereisadirect.html thanks @kimcascone for it

@00Pelican00 Wilson also wrote the introduction to a volume of Selected Letters of PKD, some of my favorite reads on his VALIS experiences.

@00Pelican00 RAW wrote about meeting PKD in Cosmic Trigger and a chapter "The Black Iron Prison" on PKD in Cosmic Trigger 3

@Xamyul What I like about PKD as a Ren.Magic guy is his original use of the material. Same thing I study in Pico della Mirandola's Kabbalah.

@Xamyul PKD was strongly influenced by the Rosicrucian Enlightenment theory I think, and an early proponent of reading Renaissance Gnostics.

@Xamyul I suspect from PKD's treatment of Bruno in VALIS that he's influenced by Yates, but he had German+read Eckhart+Boehme, knew his shit

@Xamyul PKD's reading of Bruno is SF but no less implausible than most Renaissance Historians who wildly misread figures to their own ends.

@Xamyul PKD says Bruno+Hermetic Alchemists knew of but could/t locate/replicate "entity made of information" dormant in buried gnostic texts

@Xamyul I took a whole class on Proclus in grad school and he plays a big role in my MA thesis. Haven't come across much on him in PKD's bio

@Xamyul what about Valis now? I posted PKD on Bruno+Alchemy in Valis yesterdayish http://pkdreligion.blogspot.com/ did he read much Proclus?

Searching for Philip K. Dick by Anne Dick is a damned harrowing read. Her prose is astonishingly strong + clear, literary yet personal. #PKD

Interesting difference between RAW+his major influences WSB,PKD,Leary+Crowley--they were neglectful fathers but RAW emphasized childrearing.

Samuel Umland http://bit.ly/9Xzfw0 and Gabriel McKee http://bit.ly/bL4sKK on PKD and Religion

2010

Josh Lind,“Vessels of Spiritual Transformation: C.G. Jung and Philip K. Dick.” reads Galactic Pot Healer http://bit.ly/asmIaa

@tedfriedman PKD is my absolute fav. Jungian. He gets into it in Letters+Exegesis. Jung+PKD was discussed recently here http://bit.ly/bzbD9I

@tedfriedman check out chapter 5 of Samuel Umland's book http://bit.ly/9Xzfw0 also Gabriel McKee http://bit.ly/bL4sKK + Sutin's PKD bio

Now Wait For Last Year is (like Scanner) an overlooked drama of Christian redemption. PKD uses far-out SF instead of deconstruction to probe

I love the way Game Players of Titan interrogates the games that are always already involved in making decisions about social arrangements.

Because Galactic Pot Healer is a deliberate effort at Jungian-style myth-craft I find it the best PKD novel for allegory of interior journey

PKD, RAW, WSB are great successes as American writers in part b/c they can pull of Lovecraft-style cosmic horror, research as crazy-driving.

@DavidRozansky SF was liberating to PKD b/c it gave him metaphors to explore his mystical+philosophical themes. redemption's a neglected key

PKD+RAW share interest in strategies folks use for dealing w/neuroses and psychopathology--also in each case tied up with philosophy/occult

Dick studies characters who lose reality in order to illuminate humanity which is based on kind response to vulnerability of loss

Terence McKenna took inspiration from PKD's fictional altered states: "we must imagine what we can imagine"

While I admit that A Scanner Darkly is most faithful adaptation of PKD to film so far, I think it misses theme of redemption, humor of book.

@rfamovie Kafka is good as PKD precursor but I would emphasize Lovecraft (American horror tradition)+Borges(reality permutation)

PKD's exploration of ASCs is not Faustian quest to gain gnosis/power but more xtian project to become compassionate:understand vulnerability

PKD inverts paranoia--outside world demonstrates crazy symptoms according to rational tests that prove character isn't hallucinating

PKD "didn't know" that he was writing mystical allegory to trigger deconditioning beam of pink light, illuminate paranoid cerebral heights

PKD stories use weird SF ideas to do mystical allegory in order to trigger Altered States of Consciousness. Like Crowley, he claims unconsc.

PKD+Religion themes are conspicuously missing from PKD-based movies (Exception--Waking Life!) instead he appears to be secular/cyberpunk-ist

PKD movies have been seen as cinematic style "failures" but this might cause us to miss items of phildickian interest that do make it thru.

Like PKD stories, we can appreciate dys[/u]topian ideas/worlds in the movies, although they may fail to fully capture or work as whole films

Like PKD's hastily-written and stylistically uneven writings, PKD movies are often "bad" but not in a way that interferes with appreciation.

PKD movies are not always as polished as critics would like due not to laziness but the difficulty in translating his ideas onto the screen.

PKD movies are generally narratively flawed but each successfully portrays at least some aspects of the dystopian world projected by PKD.

I suggest that camp value of macho performances in Screamers, Impostor, even Paycheck+Next has been underappreciated. Need to apply PKDirony

Unlike Blade Runner, other PKD movies unlikely to get cult following, will always lack same degree of cultural importance, but still worthy.

I agree w/ "Future Imperfect" author: PKD movies are under-rated + more effective/interesting than critics have allowed. Still much to study

Many of the insights of Plotinian psychology which were important to Dick are compatible with the esotericism of Jung which PKD also dug.

Looking at the influence of philosophy and theology on PKD's earlier work, we must take into account influence of Plotinus,Christian Mystics

"PKD and Platonism" is a vital topic but it has been overshadowed by "PKD and Gnosticism" -- his younger and deeper commitments are neoplat.

PKD flirted with heresy the way he flirted with dark-haired girls--clumsily. His gnostic interests don't override his Plotinian commitments.

Interesting to contrast PKD w/ Lovecraft--PKD's "agnostic" version of cosmic horror sometimes allows for possibilities of gnosis, redemption

Is PKD bringing Plotinian ideas into the thought-experiments of his novels? Seems to me he opts for down-to-earth love over mystical union.

Influence of Plotinus on PKD deserves study. Difficult to do because he never finished a formal ontology or systematic theology, but we can.

PKD's hermeneutic imports SF methods-- "what if," mindfuck, reality breakdown, narrative twists as dialectic, applies to mystical problems.

PKD as allegorist: Jung is a start, Christian neoplatonism, gnosticism, perhaps alchemy, but also SF allegory--application of what if to God

PKD+Religion:why PKD interests practicing occultists-gnosticism in action, mystical allegory, ASC jokes, imagination exalted,trip reports...

PKD applies a homebrew mystical hermeneutics to his own novels, giving us not only information about the content but a method of decoding.

PKD deserves study as a theologian, but his mystical project is of interest beyond theorizing God--also as process/methdology and practices.

PKD's Galactic Pot-Healer contains Jungian allegory but due to typical Dickian inversion/destabilization can't reduce it to that.

PKD: need to deal with reality of experiences as well as mystical studies of PKD and presence of religious/gnostic ideas in stories/novels.

Fallout3 Android Quest deserves serious study as literary allusion to PKD, probably first great success in adapting a PKD theme to hypertext
Fallout3 Quest succeeds as PKD allusion because it challenges player to think thru android/human problem in order to decide quest outcome
Fallout3 Quest works as an interesting detective story/bounty hunt like Blade Runner+PKD's Androids, forcing player to decide about finding.

2009
PKD did serious theology. Drugs and Mental Illness don't change that. Failing to build a system doesn't make his project less valuable.

What is jazz esotericism? David Gill suggested that PKD "jams" with theological ideas. This is a great tool for thinking about syncretisms.

PKD version of HGA would be "you can heal stuff you are a healing terminal" then proceed to grok and heal various programs in noetic space.

The time traveling hero in PKD's "Dr. Futurity" is an "anthropological" character who must reason about strange cultures and languages.

PKD's Bruno -- magical art of memory necessary to reflect universe in mind of "operator." This helps PKD explain the mega-memory visions.

PKD knew Giordano Bruno through an encyclopedia article that relied heavily on Frances Yates' version of the Art of Memory, which PKD used.

we should take PKD's paranoia into account but this should not cause us to overlook the seriousness of his philosophical-theological thought

I wonder if anyone has applied Girard's mimetic theory to the study of Religion in Philip K. Dick (both his beliefs and his writings) I will

PKD vs. C.S. Lewis could be treated as gnostic fictionalizer vs. orthodox fictionalizer of religious belief and experience. also (post)colon

enjoying Solar Lottery by PKD, dig the fealty oath and telepathy stuff, the game theory and the dialectic. Nice RST angle. Typical PKD forms

Solar Lottery shows PKD's early mastery of suspense progression and psychedelic skill with psionic scenes, sets up his key themes+objects

PKD's esoteric allegory employs metaphors of neurosis and entropy drawn from contemporary psychology and physics, framing divine invasion.

PKD's main influence as a "mystic" was Plotinus. Tho not a deep neoplatonist, he explored the metaphysics and ontology of unitive experience

Post-PKD occultism: hermeneutics of signals received from "trash stratum" of pop culture+decaying social forms synchronicity participation

PKD board game - teeps and precogs

PKD+Religion study-PKDRST-needs to look at Dick's influence on weird occultisms of dudes like brother blue Terence McKenna chaos/cyber jung-

PKD novels form a continuous series when decoded as esoteric allegory. incorrect to call it philosophical/metaphysical: this is hermeneutics

I sunk PKD-did-it-first, pomo PKD, mindfuck film, mystic as crazy, lazy gnostic Jungians, nonreaders who write PKD. "fuck yr short memories"

not many PKD readers want to follow him into radical pantheism. atheists have no metaphysic. Christians don't like tampering. but esoterics!

kinds of esoteric PKD fan--occultists decode his novel mysteries, scholars dig wordplay, gnostic epistemologists, visionary fellow travelers

PKD novels can be studied not just for allegory of PKD myst.exp. but also in terms of ASC tweaking fx on the reader. cult author 4 acidheads

PKD schizognostic hermeneutic: religious ASC as visionary pathology vs RAW paranoid metaprogram hermeneutic: religious ASC as useful idiot

PKD did the formal ontology as he felt necessary (which seems like too much even to his average fan) but then proceeded to new theism quests

PKD's theology has been exagerrated as too heady. It's not excessively metaphysical. Shares the hastily summarized character of enc.articles

PKD theologized on a heavy metaphysical level but also on a very human level, in terms of the me-other relation between man and strange God.

PKD+LSD has not gotten a fair shake as a topic. Few readers want to learn about the dark places of the mind thus explored. Many voyeurs tho'

PKD compared religious states of altered consciousness to phenomenology of drug, stress, and mental-illness induced ASC. Got sense of humor.

PKD exegesis-lots of great stuff, esp. one-liners+gnostic novel
decode. dialog w/ God about infinity is so important and such classic Dick.

PKD on the future: much weirder than Heraclitus Eastern myth
Schopenhauer, even post-Bergson. He's para-Plotinian, freed from syntax of
time

McKenna's metaphysics and theology are strongly influenced by RAW and
PKD and must be understood in the literary universe of those types

Philip K. Dick and the Alchemy of Information

Excerpts from VALIS

It all had to do with time. "Time can be overcome," Micrea Eliade wrote. That's what it's all about. The great ystery of Eleusis, of the Orphics, of the early christians, of Sarapis, of the Greco-Roman mystery religions, of Hermes Trismegistos, of the Renaissance Hermetic alchemists, of the Rose Cross Brotherhood, of Apollonius of Tyana, of Simon Magus, of Asklepios, of Paracelsus, of Bruno, consists of the abolition of time. The techniques are there. Dante discusses them in the Comedy. It has to do with the loss of amnesia; when forgetfulness is lost, true memory spreads out backward and forward, into the past and into the future, and also, oddly, into alternate universes; it is orthogonal as well as linear.

Tractates Cryptica Scriptura

20. The Hermetic alchemists knew of the secret race of three-eyed invaders but despite their efforts could not contact them. Therefore their efforts to support Frederick V, Elector Palatine, King of Bohemia, failed. 'The Empire never ended.'

21. The Rose Cross Brotherhood write, 'Ex Deo nascimur, in Jesu mortimur, per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus,' which is to say, 'From God we are born, in Jesus we die, by the Holy Spirit we live again.' This signifies that they had rediscovered the lost formula for immortality which the Empire had destroyed. 'The Empire never ended.'

22. I term the Immortal One a plasmate, because it is a form of energy; it is living information. It replicates itself -- not through information or in information -- but as information.

23. The plasmate can crossbond with a human, creating what I call a homoplasmate. This annexes the mortal human permanently to the plasmate. We know this as the 'birth from above' or 'birth from the Spirit.' It was initiated by Christ, but the Empire destroyed all the homoplasmates before they could replicate.

25. As living information, the plasmate travels up the optic nerve of a human to the pineal body. It uses the human brain as a female host in which to replicate itself into its active form. This is an interspecies symbiosis. The Hermetic alchemists knew of it in theory from ancient texts, but could not duplicate it, since they could not locate the dormant, buried plasmate. Bruno suspected that the plasmate had been destroyed by the Empire; for hinting at this he was burned. 'The Empire never ended.'

26. It must be realized that when all the homoplasmates were killed in 70 C.E. real time ceased; more important, it must be realized that the plasmate has now returned and is creating new homoplasmates, by which it has destroyed the Empire and started up real time. We call the plasmate 'the Holy Spirit,' which is why the R. C. Brotherhood wrote, 'Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.'

31. We hypostatize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of the information; the message has changed. This is a internal linklanguage which we have lost the ability to read. We ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes in the content of the information. We ourselves are information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then projected outward once more, now in an altered form. We are not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are doing.

36. In summary; thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements - change - in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it - i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself).

37. We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the world "idiot" is the word "private." Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness.

letter to Claudia Bush (Exegesis p. 176)

what happened to me in March is exactly that "in the twinkling of an eye"23 rebirth or transformation, much like an abrupt chemical process ... as the alchemists so realized. But it must as I say be touched of adventitiously—which is the role Christ plays or did play, his work being already done. He set it in motion. It can't be turned back. He died, but he died knowing he did it. And of course he shared—he was the first to share—in the fruits of his own secret. He did add, though, that most of us would laugh at all this, finding it incredible and impossible and senseless, not to mention stupid. It never meant anything to me until March, and in March when it happened to me I couldn't relate what had happened to anything I'd ever been taught about God or religion. I thought god was up there in the sky. However, he is not; he is a spark which can fuse the total mind in each of us into something entirely new which was not there before (a description of irreversible chemical processes), burning off the dross and making stable (or as the Bible says, uncorruptible) the valuable contents. You can readily see the analogy between this and a chemical reaction in which the results are spectacular, as with ignited gunpowder. There is no way to anticipate the results based on a study of the three prior constituents, and if I told you what would happen unless you had seen it you probably wouldn't believe me. Fire is the adventitious element added; in the case of the transformation I went through, it is also a kind of fire: seen as chromatic phosphene activity. Probably this is radiation phosphene stimulation; the Soviets say that such radiation stimulating phosphene activity can come here—and does—from sidereal space. I believe it. This is the catalyst. The valuable aspect of the external catalyst is that it keeps the process within the control of who it is who controls these things; it isn't going to simply occur at a random time for no reason at all. The universal mind dispatches a Mediator—which is what Christ is called, correctly—to trigger it off; or anyhow the fish sign or any Logos triggering agent.