For example, one of the elements of his 2-3-74 experience was a series of "phosphene graphics" visions, which included, in one instance, a sighting of the Golden Rectangle of Greek aesthetics, which represented, in that culture, perfect architectural proportion as reflected in structures such as the Parthenon. Dick also became fascinated, during this period, with the Fibonacci logarithmic series, named after the thirteenth-century mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, who utilized it to demonstrate a frequent structural analogy among spiral forms in nature, as in certain seashells, leaves, and rock formations. Subsequent research has extended the analogy to the spin of hurricane winds and the DNA double helix, as well as to the underlying theorems of fractal mathematics and computer imaging. Dick believed that the Golden Triangle and the Fibonacci series were keys to interpreting the archetypal truths being revealed in the "phosphene graphics"; these speculations appear frequently in the Exegesis and are featured in Dick's novel Valis and in the speech "If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others," included in this volume. Nonetheless, the skeptical reader is likely to give them short shrift, consigning them as mere gibberish.
But now consider the pervasive influence of phosphene graphics in shamanic visions and world religions, as summarized by anthropologist Michael Ripinsky-Naxon:
Somewhere in the neural network of the brain and the retina is spurred a phenomenon [phosphenes] that actuates inner sight, or luminous visions, and which may constitute the basis for an objective, physical framework for the visions encountered among religious adepts such as shamans and mystics... . Carl G. Jung, observing the transcultural character of the neurally stimulated phosphene shapes, pioneered the idea that certain archetypal symbols might originate in the personal experience of such luminous designs... . The almost visionary, later paintings, executed in an asylum, by Vincent van Gogh, exhibit phosphene patterns, as do many unskilled crayon drawings of youngsters between the ages of two and four years. As can be also expected, a large number of designs encountered in ancient and aboriginal cultures display phosphene-like characters.*
* Michael Ripinsky-Naxon, The Nature of Shamanism (Albany State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 148-50.
Ripinsky-Naxon goes on to consider the archetypal symbol of the spiral specifically:
If we... recognize the spiral to be an archetypal pattern and its schematic representations as the labyrinth, then this conception may help elucidate our understanding of why this motif has been used to symbolize the unknown origin-point leading to the Hereafter, the cave, the tomb, and the womb of the Great Mother. The tomb, as has been noted, was constructed in resemblance of the body of the Great Mother, whose energy and procreative sexuality are conveyed through the element of the spiral.*
* Ibid., p. 150.
In this regard, note that Dick believed (see "If You Find This World Bad ...") that he sighted, through the vision of the Golden Rectangle, the goddess Aphrodite, or the sexual aspect of the Great Mother. As for the Importance of the Great Mother to Dick both philosophically and psychologically, the reader may consult his speech "The Android and the Human" in the present volume.
Again, the point here is not to seek to argue on behalf of Dick as an inspired seer, or even -- necessarily -- as a "sane" human being. (There is no proof possible as to the sanity or insanity of Philip K. Dick.)* Rather, it is to challenge the reader to resist labels and to plunge into the ideas expressed in the texts themselves, and to wrest from them what seems useful and vital without regard to predisposing diagnostic labels. One might further urge that readers suspend their tendency to read Dick's metaphysical writings with belief or disbelief foremost in mind. For Dick, as the writings themselves reveal, had no pointedly persuasive intentions with respect to the reader. In turn, those readers who refuse to worry over whether Dick persuades them on any particular points may find that he illumines any number of prospective paths for further exploration. There is a beauty and a visionary intensity to the possibilities Dick offers, as in "Cosmogony and Cosmology," a 1978 essay in which Dick sought to distill key concepts of the Exegesis. The divine form discussed is that of a righteous Godhead (akin to the redeeming Logos of the Gnostics) who has lost the memory of himself as the true creator and has ceded control of the earthly realm to a blind and ignorant demiurge or "artifact." This "artifact" (akin to the Gnostic Archon) holds all humans in its delusional thrall, and even the Godhead must struggle against it.**
* There is a considerable range of quality in the attempts to apply diagnostic measures to Dick's life and writings. Jay Kinney, for example, offers a thoughtful and subtle comparison between schizophrenic and shamanic states in his "Wrestling with Angels: The Mystical Dilemma of Philip K. Dick" (published in In Pursuit of Valis). In the writings of Gregg Rickman, however, diagnoses of Dick abound and are relentlessly flogged despite the highly inconclusive evidence. Paul Williams, the onetime literary executor of the Dick estate, provides a sound assessment of Rickman's egregious mode of analysis in his To The High Castle, Philip K. Dick: A Life (1928-1962) (Long Beach, Calif.: Fragments West/The Valentine Press, 1989), of Dick as a potential victim of child abuse. See "The Rickmanization of PKD" in the "Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter," No. 24 (May 1990).
** For those readers who would insist upon viewing Dick as a "mad" charlatan tossing about ideas he could not comprehend as truly as might a "sane" and reasonable scholar, the following case study -- in miniature -- may prove illuminating.
The late Ioan P. Couliano, an acclaimed historian of religious thought who taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School and worked as a scholarly collaborator with the eminent Mircea Eliade, had occasion to examine one novel of the "Valis Trilogy" -- The Divine Invasion -- in his landmark survey of Gnostic thought The Tree of Gnosis (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). Couliano's judgment of the thematic influences in that novel was intended to rebut those who, in Couliano's view, too carelessly cited Dick as an example of a "Gnostic" science fiction writer:
"A closer look at the novel shows that, indeed, Dick took inspiration from Jewish and Jewish-Christian apocalyptic literature (especially The Vision of Isaiah), yet his novel, which describes the descent of God to the earth through the first heaven controlled by the troops of Belial the Opponent, and God's encounter with his wisdom in a kindergarten, makes no use of gnostic material."
Now compare this with an analysis by Dick himself, written in 1979, in the concluding pages of an unpublished outline of the novel in progress (then titled Valis Regained) that would become The Divine Invasion. Note that Dick himself recognizes the absence of a fundamental Gnostic good-evil dualism in this novel. He also makes reference to Isaiah (though his source is the Bible, not the apocalyptic text cited by Couliano):