Best Review of the Exegesis So Far

"Dick’s choice of the name Eldritch to (anti)christen his villainous cyborg signals, I think, a purposeful wedding of the textures and tones of SF with those of Gothic horror. A term redolent of Lovecraftian slime, “eldritch” designates the uncanny quality of even the most advanced technologies, their apocalyptic infestation of the soul. Yet for Dick the decay of human identity under the lurid gaze of dark gods is not a primordial regression, as Lovecraft would have depicted it, but rather the outcome of technological progress itself; the notion of the perceptual world as a manipulable construct, amenable to technoscientific control, unites Gnostic theology with psychedelic experience in a particularly science-fictional way."
Rob Latham in the LA Review of Books

Boehme on Magic

"Magic is the mother of eternity, of the being of all beings; for it creates itself, and is understood in desire. It is in itself nothing but a will and this will is the great mystery of all wonders and secrets, but brings itself into imagination or figuration itself by the imagination of the desireful hunger into being. It is the original state of Nature. Its desire makes an imagination, and imagination or figuration is only the will of desire. But desire makes in the will such a being as the will in itself is."
-- Jacob Boehme (1575-1624)
(thanks to Phil Norfleet for the quote)

PKD Panel Needs Papers!

I'll be submitting a paper proposal on Philip K. Dick and Alchemy to
the Association for the Study of Esotericism conference this summer.
There is room on the panel (with me and Erik Davis) for more papers
about PKD. Any serious reader of the Exegesis who has an academic
lens to bring to the study would be perfect for this. Drop me a line
if you're interested and would like help workshopping a paper proposal.
Here is the link.

Philip K. Dick on the Religious Theme in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back

From "Universe Makers ... and Breakers" 1981: "I'm getting a little tired of people turning out to be robots, harmless-looking life forms evolving into stupendous but predictable space squids, and, most of all, World War Two's Battle of Midway refought in outer space. But I must admit that the eerie, mystical, almost religious subtheme in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back enchanted me."

thanks to Frank Hollander for posting this quote. Nice to know that the Joseph Campbell thing can make an exception for bad space opera.

and from Selected Letter vol 5 (p.120):

While I was there in Metz we saw the French premiere of STAR WARS and I was amazed at the theological implications of what, in the film, is called "the force". Have you seen the film? I then bought the novel. Beyond doubt there is a profound theological theme to it, and the audience is reacting to it. Also (and I tell you this witha certain hesitation) the description of "the force" in STAR WARS for unaccountable reasons resembles the entity or force which took me over during my religious experiences in March of 1974. That which I saw then, which I call VALIS or Zebra was a plasmatic energy

more from PKD on Star Wars in this post

Magic equals Science

“I was twelve [in 1940] when I read my first sf magazine…it was called Stirring Science Stories and ran, I think, four issues….I came across the magazine quite by accident; I was actually looking for Popular Science. I was most amazed. Stories about science? At once I recognized the magic which I had found, in earlier times, in the Oz books – this magic now coupled not with magic wands but with science…In any case my view became magic equals science… and science (of the future) equals magic.”
-Philip K. Dick, Self Portrait (1968)

Wired on the Problem with Causes

The problem with this assumption, however, is that causes are a strange kind of knowledge. This was first pointed out by David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher. Hume realized that, although people talk about causes as if they are real facts—tangible things that can be discovered—they’re actually not at all factual. Instead, Hume said, every cause is just a slippery story, a catchy conjecture, a “lively conception produced by habit.” When an apple falls from a tree, the cause is obvious: gravity. Hume’s skeptical insight was that we don’t see gravity—we see only an object tugged toward the earth. We look at X and then at Y, and invent a story about what happened in between. We can measure facts, but a cause is not a fact—it’s a fiction that helps us make sense of facts.

The truth is, our stories about causation are shadowed by all sorts of mental shortcuts. Most of the time, these shortcuts work well enough. They allow us to hit fastballs, discover the law of gravity, and design wondrous technologies. However, when it comes to reasoning about complex systems—say, the human body—these shortcuts go from being slickly efficient to outright misleading.
Trials and Errors: Why Science is Failing Us

Sanford L. Drob restates the Lurianic Kabbalah in abstract terms

(1) a primal nothing/being or “Absolute” (Ayin/Ein-sof) (2) initiates a contraction or self-negation (tzimtzum), which gives rise to (3) an imagined and alienated realm (ha-olamot) (4) within which a created, personal subject arises (Adam Kadmon). (5) This subject embodies the fundamental structures, ideas and values of both God and the human world (Sefirot), However, (6) these Sefirot are inherently unstable and deconstruct (shevirat ha-kelim), leading to (7) a further alienation of the primal energy from its source (kellipot, Sitra Achra) and (8) a rending apart of opposites, resulting in the intellectual, spiritual, and moral antinomies and perplexities of our world. As a result of (9) a spiritual, intellectual, and psychological process (birur), (10) the ideas and values of the world are restored in a manner that enables them to structure and contain the primal energy of the Absolute, and complete both God and the world (tikkun ha-Olam).
The Lurianic Metaphors, Creativity and the Structure of Language

This is interesting to compare with PKD's efforts in the Exegesis to restate his own mystical system in abstract principles. Also, Sanford L. Drob sounds like the name of a Character from a PKD novel.