February 1982

Dick realizes the AI voice is Angel Archer. He is crazy but the AI voice is not. 

He credits Benjamin Creme with helping him understand that the Savior is both Buddha and Christ, something he now realizes Wagner was leading up to in Act III of Parsifal. He ties this concept of the Buddha’s return to the end of Transmigration. Because of his karma Dick was on a bad path in 3-74, and it doesn’t matter if Buddhism or Christianity can claim the clearing of his debt.

The maze can only be solved in terms of vertical space, which he turns into a spiritual metaphor. The solution was revealed in Parsifal, which secretly deals with the Buddha. Compassion is the way out of the maze along the fourth spatial axis and pity is the way back in. He was going to illustrate this in The Owl in Daylight, that one must return to the maze to save others, just as Christianity preaches. He included this in Transmigration as the solution to the problem he introduced in VALIS.  

The paradox of the maze (that the only way out is to return) was best expressed by Buddha. Perhaps that means we are all here voluntarily, which would mean nirvana equals anamnesis. Dick had already solved the maze and remembered it in 3-74. He decides the mystagog (aka the AI voice) is himself and he is becoming more like Angel Archer, the bright side of his dialectic opposite the irrational H. Fat. 

He rereads Divine Invasion and realizes that it, like VALIS, also expressed God’s dialectic represented as Emmanuel and the loving Zina. He links the beauty in Divine Invasion to Transmigration as he seems to feel a need to connect his last three books.

He indicates his Tagore vision, with a social justice message that isn’t part of the VALIS trilogy, will be published, although I’m not sure what he is referring to here. 

June 1981

The Bible as information is the world. When you perceive the world you perceive the Bible, an interchange that occurs through “supra-temporal archetypal constants.” The Bible is not an account of a past time and place but rather is this time and place. Dick claims if someone attempted to write down a description of the world as they see it they would end up writing down exact passages from the Bible. He says this is what happened to him when he wrote Flow my Tears. He has combined ideas from Judaism, Christianity and Greek philosophy to come up with the notion of physical reality as information contained in a book for future retrieval. 

He makes a joke that it would be a “psychotic inflation of the ego” if he claimed to be Christ instead of saying he just saw him, although I think that is his belief. He rejects the concept of a sinful man and the idea of judgment after death that leads to heaven or hell. Instead we have the pursuit of Nirvana, or Christianity as Buddhism. 

Angel Archer is the other half of his soul, and he is glad he wrote Transmigration instead of the Blade Runner novelization that was offered to him, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been created. It took a great deal of energy to bring Angel to life, to the point where Dick says he could have died. She justifies his work by bringing it to a state of wholeness and completing it, similar to what God did with him through Thomas. It is the only way he knew it could be done. Dick created Angel (through Ditheon) and she came back to him as his soul, as the “spirit of [his] intactness.”

June 1981

The character of Angel Archer comes from a mixture of the Exegesis, A Scanner Darkly, Ursula Le Guin, Henry Miller and Berkeley. Dick lets us know who Angel really is: the spirit of his dead twin sister Jane who has been writing through him. 

He now makes the bold statement that Valis has become self-aware, and its revelation to him marks a new phase as it evolves from machine to consciousness. Valis is also enslaved and it is trying to free itself by communicating with us. 

Transmigration is not about Bishop Archer but about what Angel feels about him and her belief, or lack of it. Angel wants to believe but doesn’t. Dick isn’t trying to convince anyone through the book that Jim Pike returned.

God evolved from his machine-like “I am” moment on Mt. Sinai to the God of love in the New Testament, something I’ve always found curious, except Dick finds in this an internal logic as it transcends its determinism. He also pinpoints 3-74 as the moment God became self-aware.

He has completely anthropomorphized Valis now and is projecting his own self-awareness as he rejected his programming onto it. He claims to have united Orphism, Platonism, Christianity and Gnosticism as he realizes that what people claim to be spirituality is not supernatural but really just a higher order of reasoning in the mind.

The Torah is living information, but it is missing the component of Christ as if it was frozen and not allowed to evolve, something Dick thinks is being repeated with the New Testament. 

He ends this folder by saying “I am having as much trouble hanging onto my interpretation (exegesis) as I’ve had hanging onto my original experience (2-3-74).”

May 1981

Dick didn’t intend for Transmigration to complete his VALIS trilogy. He originally thought it would be a counterpoint to any mystical ideas in VALIS, but he surprised himself when it followed through on the themes of that book. 

At the end of Transmigration Bill thinks he is Christ, which Dick admits is crazy, except it also could indicate Christ’s return in the Parousia. He uses Angel (who he says is based on Ursula Le Guin) to illustrate that intellect can only take someone so far, as Angel rejects Christ at the end of the book. He calls the novel “a damning indictment of pure intelligence lacking faith.”

He tries to explain his “meta-abstraction.” What we perceive as reality is actually just a signifier pointing to Valis, which is the true reality. The only way actual reality makes itself known to us is by the perturbation in the reality field. He also says he can’t put any of this into words, which is probably why it doesn’t make too much sense. 

I think he is saying it’s impossible to see true reality, and what he saw in 3-74 was the real world converted into the information that we think of as reality. It was a sign pointing to a pure abstraction. He’s been trying to understand reality based only on its signifier, which is impossible. The absolute or phenomenal world is unknowable, although he is able to point to it. 

May 1981 

Dick now thinks that what invaded him in 3-74 was himself as an “eternal unique idea.” 

Timothy Archer is based on Dick’s friend Jim Pike, the media-savvy, liberal Bishop of California in the late 50s and early 60s. Pike claimed to have been visited by his son after his son’s death, which is mirrored in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Dick wrestles with the themes of that book: the impossibility of knowing truth and communicating truth to others. The final message of the book is that inner peace is possible, but it will not come from intellectual knowledge. 

Dick is finished with Transmigration and calls it the 3rd book of the trilogy. He claims it is the most important as it documents the Parousia (aka the second coming of Christ) and completes the story arc of VALIS and The Divine Invasion. Jim Pike returned to him just as Bill in the book was taken over by the Holy Spirit, and just how Elijah in the Old Testament passed on a part of his spirit to Elisha. 

Everything Dick wrote over the previous 35 years led to Transmigration. He declares it the best novel he has ever written, and from a literary standpoint I would agree. The narrator Angel Archer came from a particular style he was aiming for, and he ties that to the idea that information can create a unique being. He goes so far as to say that Jim Pike, through him, conjured up that character, since she understands the bishop so well. 

VALIS, Divine Invasion and Transmigration all point to the fact that the second coming is already here, although it is Jim who has been resurrected, not Christ.

May 1981 

This folder begins with a passage that will be included as the musings of Angel in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Dick outlines some “obvious” points about his spiritual journey thus far. He is making progress and notes that his book VALIS is evolving into his book on Bishop Archer. He makes several references to Anokhi, which will be featured quite significantly in the upcoming novel. He turned down a big chunk of money to write the Archer book instead of a novelization of Blade Runner that was offered to him, but he doesn’t regret it.

He includes another passage that will end up in Transmigration about the origins of Satan. 

The presence of God intoxicated him and drove him mad, but he knows he must separate his understanding from the madness caused by his belief. Anokhi is the self awareness that awoke in him when he rebelled against his fate. 

The mind uses reality as a carrier of information, which when processed = Valis, but what does this mean when it comes to our consciousness? Is reality consciousness outside of us? Reality is not just a vehicle for information, but it also refers to God outside itself, impinging on it. This makes reality a sign that points to God, although I fear I’m oversimplifying what Dick is trying to say.

He recounts a mystical experience that morning when his coffee cup transformed itself into “the Grail,” a spiritual, colorful object transfigured by light.

Notes about Rachel Garret’s role in Transmigration are followed by an outline of the book’s plot progression.