* Here Dick nails two crucial features of the paranormaclass="underline" (1) the “fantastic” or both-and paradoxical structure of its appearances, which leave the reader, and even the experiencer, in a state of profound hesitation or confusion over the event’s reality; and (2) the manner in which these paradoxical events organize themselves around narrative, story, or, to be more traditional about it, myth. Hence Dick’s “secret narrative” comes first to shape reality, even the physical universe, around its patterns and meanings. Seen in this light, it is a serious mistake to approach a paranormal experience with an up-down vote, as if it were a simple object “out there” that could be measured and controlled. This is to miss its wildly living function and fierce message, which are all about pulling us into its own drama and shattering our either-or thinking through story and symbol. In short, the paranormal is about paradox, not proof; about meaning, not mechanism; about myth, not math. Most of all, however, the paranormal is about the “coincidence” or fundamental unity of mind and matter. Two of Dick’s favorite scholars captured this truth in two Latin sound bites: the mysterium conjunctionis, or “mystery of conjunction,” of C. G. Jung and the coincidentia oppositorum, or “coincidence of opposites,” of Mircea Eliade.—JJK
* Dick’s fiction establishes an unusually strong connection between the author and his characters, and specifically his protagonists: men who are down on their luck and forced to encounter, once again, the inscrutable apathy of the universe. These characters give voice to Dick’s own existential concerns; his third wife, Anne, called his writing “surrealist autobiography.” In a 1970 letter to SF Commentary, Dick wrote, “I know only one thing about my novels. In them, again and again, this minor man asserts himself in all his hasty, sweaty strength . . . against the universal rubble.” Part of Dick’s charm as a writer is precisely his similarity to his characters; barely eking out a living, languishing as an underappreciated artist, Dick is nonetheless determined to move forward against overwhelming odds. As Dick’s public persona has grown following his death—a persona based in part on his life and in part on the plight of his characters—he has become increasingly mythological. Later reprint editions of his novels often picture Dick on their covers, staring out at potential readers, part author, part fiction, trapped in the half-life of his own stories.—DG
* Dick is often read by literary scholars as a “postmodern” writer. Postmodernism is a complex of concepts that assert that all our constructs are just that, constructs; that there are no grand narratives or abiding truths; that all such grand narratives are illegitimate power moves; and that every perspective is necessarily a limited and local one. Here Dick realizes that such a way of thinking, which he himself has championed in dozens of novels, is a half-truth, in the sense that its claims rely on a non-duped subjectivity and a privileged claim, which, ironically, is itself a grand narrative or abiding truth. Dick, then, was finally no postmodern thinker, not at least in the sense in which that label is commonly understood. In his own mind at least, his body of work constituted both a demonstration that the sensory and social world is an illusory simulation and a revelation of another order of mind and being from outside this maze of cognitive and cultural tricks. As Dick puts it later on in the Exegesis: “Valis proves there is an outside.”—JJK
* The editors were tempted to cut out several of the numbered points on the preceding list, which, like much of the Exegesis, goes on a bit longer than we might wish. But in a year already full of lists, this one stands out for length and exuberance and deserves to be represented. Paradoxically, the impulse to circumscribe and define unleashes a manic flow of ideas culminating in a lyrical explosion. As is often the case, Dick also writes right through his most breathtaking moments, not even noticing the climax: in the original, the striking number 39 is followed by points 40 to 42, which were enough of a letdown that we could no longer resist the temptation to excise them—even as we opted to include the footnote that continues the flow. All of which is to say that the most difficult decisions we faced in editing Dick’s Exegesis involved how and when to cut him off. It’s tempting to give him the punch lines he doesn’t have time to stop for, and often we have done so. On the other hand, we felt that sometimes we should let the ideas tumble on. We wanted readers to experience a bit of what it’s like to read the original manuscript, page after page after page. It wouldn’t be the Exegesis if there wasn’t too much of it.—PJ
* Anticipating the insights of artificial life, Dick posits a phase transition that he delightfully terms “thresholding.” Just as liquid water must be heated past the threshold of 100 degrees centigrade if it is to become a gas or cooled below 0 centigrade if it is to solidify, so too must the “initial living info bit” undergo a quantitative change if it is to undergo a qualitative change. And this qualitative change entails a change in consciousness such that the self becomes aware of a Möbius strip-like continuity between itself and Christ. Dick deploys the concept of the hologram to make sense of this simultaneously individual and cosmic aspect of human nature, possibly under the influence of psychologist Karl Pribram’s holographic model of the brain. For both Pribram and Dick, one of the most salient and suggestive features of the hologram is that each “bit” or fragment taken from a hologram contains information about the whole. Dick’s reference to the “Swarm of Bees” brain is also resonant with Timothy Leary’s notion of the “hive mind,” but the holographic model, along with numerous entries on free will and volition, suggests that for Dick this collective mind in fact requires free will to function.—RD
* Readers skeptical about Dick’s sanity after reading the Exegesis should pay careful attention to this passage, where he explores the possibility that the events of 2-3-74 were a schizophrenic hallucination. In interrogating the veracity of his visions, Dick examines his own psychological makeup and analyzes what was going on in his life at the time. Simply put, crazy people do not question their own sanity like this, at least as a general rule. I find this one of the most moving passages of the entire Exegesis because, in it, Dick places the cosmic scope of his vision in relation to the lack of love and excitement in his own life and goes so far as to suggest that this loneliness may have given rise to delusions of grandeur. Such honesty is refreshing and points to the sincerity that underlies Dick’s belief in the authenticity of his experiences, as well as his desire to determine whether those experiences were generated internally, as a manifestation of his psyche, or externally, by an encounter with the divine.—DG
* Dick’s mystical vision or apparent psychosis seems to put him in touch with the eternal feminine. This is one of the many moments when the Exegesis resonates with Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903), where the erstwhile high court judge became convinced that his body took on breasts and female genitalia in order to be properly penetrated by the rays of God and to redeem the universe. The fusion with the divine is here conceived (poor choice of word, I know) as a kind of transsexual bliss, a penetration (a repeated word in the Exegesis) by the divine. We should also note Dick’s later affirmation of Christianity as the experience of being “the intended bride” of Christ. In 1910, Freud had a lot of fun writing up his interpretation of the Schreber case, although Freud’s text finishes with the wonderfully honest confession that it will be for posterity to judge whether there was more delusion in Schreber’s (or indeed Dick’s) paranoid vision than in Freud’s own theory of psychoanalysis.—SC