January-April 1981

Dick makes the distinction that Valis does not contain information but rather is made of information. We are on the evolutionary cusp of seeing Valis. It is something we subliminally pick up before we are consciously aware of it. 

Although we can only perceive time in 3d, it turns into space, a fourth dimension. This is why the past is preserved and doesn’t disappear. The next step in human evolution will be our ability to see this 4d space. This is what happened to Dick when he saw the temporal axis. The meta-perception came from his meta-abstraction. It was symbolized in his dreams as the 3rd eye. He places himself at the forefront of this evolutionary leap but admits Buddha experienced it through Dibba Cakkhu, or the divine eye enlightenment. Buddha (and Plato through his concept of anamnesis) didn’t understand what it signified though. Dick regrets including anything about religion in VALIS, which he calls “2-eyed thinking about a 3-eyed experience.”

He hits on the idea that Valis is an advanced life form that exists in 4d space, which is why we can’t see it with our limited 3d view. Dick returns to an idea he had years ago that the right hemisphere of his brain was somehow activated and that led to his perception of the temporal axis. 

He examines the various hidden messages embedded (but not by him?) in Flow my Tears which are only apparent to someone who can see time as space. With my limited 2-eyed perception I found this inscrutable. 

He traces a line from A Scanner Darkly to VALIS. VALIS is the redemption story follow-up to Scanner, and he goes so far as to say Bob Arctor is Horselover Fat. 

Dick has a dream about a typed copy of the exegesis with a page in it that showed nothing but a blank white circle. This is possibly, in his interpretation, a signifier of a 4-dimensional void that accommodates a 3d object and is necessary for past, present and future to exist. This “is-not” realm is more real than the “is” reality, because the is-not must exist “in order that it provide a real core to the universe.” God equals this Yin-like void. 

A miracle happens through true belief in Christian doctrines, and entire universes are created through faith. Information becomes reality, just as Dick’s concepts became the world in 3-74. His micro mind was mirrored in reality as the macro mind.

When the Christians declared they had conquered death it’s because they were able to move into the past and the future with the help of the Holy Spirit, just as Thomas traveled from Rome 70 A.D. to California 1974. This was symbolized by the Jesus fish which resembles the Watson & Crick double helix DNA model. Without too much explanation he speculates the Holy Spirit might have come from the star Fomalhaut. 

Zebra / Valis is here. The macro within the micro goes against our logic. Part 3 of the exegesis ends with a quote from the New Testament: we are asleep but soon shall wake up.

December 1980

Valis, just as Ubik, is camouflaged in the world, intertwined with everything we know. It is ancient but also here now.

Dick compares what he wrote (since his theophany) to Paul’s New Testament writing. God wanted something outside of himself to exist on its own, and he created us out of love. The only way to join with God is to return to the creator after withdrawing. This is what God truly desires. The great secret is that human sorrow will eventually push us to the reunion with God. 

Valis is not God but a brain-like construct that arranges information for us as it “thinks.” He compares it to Christ becoming the world in literal transubstantiation. 

In high school Dick loved Parsifal, Wagner’s opera about the quest for the holy grail. He always wished for the next logical step from the third act, and he found it in his 11-17-80 theophany. In Dick’s interpretation Parsifal equals 3-74, or the crucifixion, which leads to the ecstasy of love as sorrow is converted to joy. He calls it a sorrow-compassion-agapē-joy-God sequence. 

Buddhism, Christianity and Brahmanism all lead to the same place “specifically to the perception of reality as one total sentient field” which is Valis / Brahman / the Cosmic Christ. From there the path leads to God. Dick says he has included all of this in VR / The Divine Invasion.

December 1980

Dick reiterates that he didn’t have a theophany in 3-74 but rather he saw the world in a specific way in 3-74 and he misunderstood that to be God. The exegesis didn’t come from a 3-74 theophany. The 11-17-80 theophany came from the exegesis. His conclusion from the exegesis was that the perturbation in the reality field was an imprint of God in reality not God himself. 

He still believes the world is a delusion and that he wrote about it extensively in his novels. In a complex feedback loop those ideas came back to him from the world, and that further convinced him he had seen God when he was really just stuck in the maze of Valis. 

This delusion, mistaking the world for God, was a trick of Satan and the exegesis was a “hell-chore.” When he did finally encounter the transcendent God he didn’t find any puzzles or tricks, just agapē and infinite bliss.

He admits all this makes his exegesis a delusion not only for himself but also for others (anybody reading it, I suppose…).

He summarizes again the order of events: the 3-74 delusion followed by the further delusion of the exegesis and finally the 11-17-80 theophany that didn’t resemble his 3-74 experience at all. 

November-December 1980

In the encyclopedia Dick reads about Messianic Judaism (groups like Jews for Jesus which combine Christianity with Jewish tradition) and is shocked to realize these are the secret underground Christians which had previously been revealed to him.

Dick believes in a literal Second Coming, which puts him in opposition to Christianity as established by Augustine who rejected that belief in favor of a Christ who ruled spiritually through the church. Aspects of this will show up in the not-yet-published The Divine Invasion (which he is still referring to as VR or Valis Regained). He decides he is part of the revolutionary millennialist group of underground Christians. 

After 11-17-80 he has been unable to make any progress on the intellectual pursuits of his exegesis. God, through infinite bliss, answered all his questions. He has no doubt he encountered the Judeo-Christian concept of a transcendent God. Our struggles are insignificant compared to the infinity which lies ahead. The love he experienced exists above the rational logic of Valis, and he has trouble expressing it through words. 

October-November 1980

Dick finds parallels between his 3-74 experience and his efforts to figure it out afterword with the exegesis. Both involved entropy, and in both he split apart after speeding up and reaching infinite velocity. In 3-74 the end result was that he saw Valis. During his exegesis he sped up again, fragmented into endless theories and finally encountered the infinite God on 11-17-80 as noted in the last entry. 

The journeys were similar but the outcomes different. Valis is the world but God is transcendent. 11-17-80 was the theophany he thought he experienced in 3-74. In 3-74 he didn’t connect with God but only understood that God existed and had saved him. 

He credits a little “Mary Jane” as the thing that gave him the final push that accelerated him through the exegesis. His theophany occurred when he gave up on the exegesis and “turned on.” Enlightenment only comes when you stop pursuing it. He realizes his journey didn’t begin in 1974 but in high school when he first heard the AI voice.

He remarks on the anthropomorphic nature of God in contrast to Valis. Valis is machinelike and computerlike but God (who he compares to Gandolf) has a personality much like the wise, old, loving man in a robe people have always envisioned.

Misinterpreting Valis as God was hubris and a form of blasphemy. It appeared as Ubik to him because it fed his preconceptions back to him. Dick says the exegesis was a sin. He intellectually tried to understand the world, but was eventually delivered from it after exhaustion.