by Paul Levy
November 21,
2016
from
AwakenInTheDream Website
A pioneer in the
field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a wounded
healer in private practice, assisting others who are
also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality.
He is the author of
Awakened by Darkness: When Evil Becomes Your Father
(Awaken in the Dream Publishing, 2015), Dispelling
Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil (North Atlantic
Books, 2013) and The Madness of George W. Bush: A
Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis (Authorhouse,
2006). He is the founder of the "Awakening in the Dream
Community" in Portland, Oregon.
An artist, he is
deeply steeped in the work of C. G. Jung, and has been a
Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over thirty years. He
is the coordinator for the Portland PadmaSambhava
Buddhist Center. |
There is something terribly wrong in our world.
The Native American
people have a term -
wetiko - that can really help us to
contextualize and get more of a handle on the ever-unfolding
catastrophe playing out all over our planet.
As my research deepens, I
am continually amazed that so many different spiritual wisdom
traditions, as well as creative artists, are each in their own
unique ways, pointing out wetiko.
Wetiko - which can be likened to
a
virus of the mind - works through our unconscious blind spots, which
is to say that it depends upon our unawareness of its covert
operations within our own minds to keep itself in business.
There is no one
definitive model that fully delineates the elusive workings of
wetiko disease, but when all of these unique articulations are seen
together, a deeper picture begins to get in focus that can help us
to see it.
Seeing how wetiko works -
both out in the world and within our own minds - is its worst
nightmare, for once we see how it is playing us, its gig is up.
Recently, I have been delighted to learn that the science fiction
author
Philip K. Dick (henceforth PKD) was, in his own completely
unique and "Philip K. Dickian" way describing wetiko - the
psycho-spiritual disease that afflicts our species - to a T.
Considered to be one of
the pre-eminent sci-fi writers of his - or any - time, PKD had one
of the most unique, creative, unusual and original minds I have ever
come across.
Way ahead of his time, he
was a true visionary and seer, possibly even a prophet. To say that
PKD had an unfettered imagination is an understatement of epic
proportions - it is hard to imagine an imagination more
unrestrained.
Continually questioning
everything, he was actually a very subtle thinker whose prime
concern was the question "What is reality?"
Though mainly a writer of fiction, PKD didn't consider himself a
novelist, but rather, a "fictionalizing philosopher," by which he
meant that his stories - what have been called "his wacky cauldron
of science fiction and metaphysics" (1) - were employed
as the medium for him to formulate his perceptions.
In other words, his
fiction was the way he was trying to figure out what was going on in
this crazy world of ours, as well as within his own mind.
As the boundary dissolved
between what was real and what wasn't, he even wondered whether he
had become a character in one of his own novels (in his own words,
"I'm a protagonist from one of PKD's books").
Through his writing, PKD
tapped into the shamanic powers of language to shape, bend and alter
consciousness, thereby changing our view and experience of reality
itself.
From all accounts, it is clear that PKD's life involved deep
suffering.
His process included bungled suicide attempts,
self-described psychotic episodes, psychiatric hospitalizations and
abuse of drugs (he was a "speed writer," in that most of his writing
was fueled by speed - amphetamines).
We shouldn't throw the
baby out with the bathwater, however, and use these facts to
invalidate his insights or dismiss the profundity of his work.
Though much of what he
wrote came out of whatever extreme state he was in at the moment, he
was definitely (in my opinion) plugged into something profound.
PKD was a true creative
artist who, in wrestling with his demons, left us a testament that
can help us illumine our own struggles.
In 1974 Dick had - at least from his point of view - an overwhelming
mystical experience, which he spent the rest of his life trying to
understand and integrate. He was thrown into a "crisis of
revelation," feeling an inner demand to understand what had been
revealed to him.
I love that he didn't
have a fixed point of view in his inquiry, but, depending on the
day, wondered whether he had become, in his words, a saint or
schizophrenic.
He continually came up
with new theories and viewpoints, depending upon who knows what.
There is no psychiatric category yet devised that could do justice
to the combination of genius and high weirdness that characterized
PKD's process.
It is clear from his
philosophical writings, letters and personal journal (his
"Exegesis") that whatever it was he experienced in 1974 radically
changed his whole perception of the universe and his - and our -
place in it.
PKD confesses in his letters that the world has always seemed
"dreamlike" to him.
To quote PKD,
"The universe could
turn into a dream because in point of fact our universe is a
dream." (2)
We are asleep - in a
dream state - and mistakenly think we are awake.
PKD writes in his
journal,
"We are forgetful
cosmocrators (i.e., rulers), trapped in a universe of our own
making without our knowing it." (3)
It is as if we are living
inside of a dreamlike universe, but in our state of amnesia we have
forgotten that we are the dream's creators - the dreamers of the
dream - and hence, have become trapped inside of a world that is our
own creation.
As PKD points out,
"one of the
fundamental aspects of the ontological category of ignorance is
ignorance of this very ignorance; he not only does not know, he
does not know that he does not know." (4)
We ignore - and remain
ignorant of - what PKD is pointing at to our own peril.
I imagine that if PKD were here today he would be most pleased to
learn that his mind-blowing revelations were helping us to wrap our
minds around the over-the-top craziness that is getting acted out in
every corner of our world.
Not only precisely
mapping the covert operations of the destructive aspects of wetiko,
PKD offers psycho-activating insights into how to deal with its
insidious workings that are novel beyond belief, insights that can
therefore add to the ever-growing corpus of studies on wetiko.
Like a modern-day shaman,
PKD descended into the darkness of the underworld of the unconscious
and took on - and into himself - the existential madness that
afflicts humanity, and in his creative articulations of his
experience, is offering gifts for all the rest of us.
For this we
should be most grateful.
THE BLACK IRON
PRISON
We are trapped in a dream of our own making.
PKD writes,
"We are in a kind of
prison but do not know it." (5)
Becoming aware of our
imprisonment, however, is the first, crucial step in becoming free
of it. One of the main terms PKD coined to describe wetiko is the
"Black Iron Prison" (henceforth BIP).
PKD writes,
"The BIP is a vast
complex life form (organism) which protects itself by inducing a
negative hallucination of it." (6)
By negative
hallucination, PKD means that instead of seeing what is not there,
we cannot see what is there.
In PKD's words,
"The criminal virus
controls by occluding (putting us in a sort of half sleep)… The
occlusion is self-perpetuating; it makes us unaware of it."
(7)
Being self-perpetuating,
this occlusion in our consciousness will not go away of its own
accord; it acts as a feedback loop (in PKD's words, "a positive
feedback on itself") that perpetually self-generates until we manage
to break its spell.
PKD writes,
"the very occlusion
itself prevents us from assessing, overcoming or ever being
aware of the occlusion." (8)
An intrinsic challenge to
our investigation of wetiko/BIP is that it is incarnating in and
through the very psyche which itself is the means of our inquiry.
Speaking about the
difficulty of seeing wetiko/BIP, PKD writes,
"we alter it by
perceiving it, since we are not outside it. As our views shift,
it shifts. In a sense it is not there at all." (9)
Similar to how an image
in a dream doesn't exist separate from the mind of the dreamer,
wetiko/BIP does not objectively exist, independent from the mind
that is perceiving it.
In our encounter with
wetiko, we find ourselves in a situation where we are confronted -
practically face-to-face - with the unconscious, both its light and
darker halves.
There is another problem with seeing wetiko/BIP. Because it is
invisible to most people, seeing it can be an isolating experience.
When we see wetiko/BIP, we are, in PKD's words,
"seeing what is there
- but no one else does, hence no semantic sign exists to depict
the entity and therefore the organism cannot continue an
empathic relationship with the members of his society.
And this breakdown of
empathy is double; they can't empathize his 'world,' and he
can't theirs." (10)
This points to the
important role language plays in human life - it is the cardinal
instrument through which individual worldviews are linked so that a
shared, agreed-upon, and for all intents and purposes common reality
is constructed.
Hence, creating language
and finding the name - be it wetiko, the Black Iron Prison or
whatever we call it - is crucial for getting a handle on this
elusive mind-virus.
It is as if our species is suffering from a thought-disorder.
PKD
writes,
"There is some kind
of ubiquitous thinking dysfunction which goes unnoticed
especially by the persons themselves, and this is the horrifying
part of it: somehow the self-monitoring circuit in the person is
fooled by the very dysfunction it is supposed to monitor."
(11)
When we have fallen under
the spell of the wetiko virus, we aren't aware of our affliction;
from our point of view we are normal, oftentimes never feeling more
ourselves (while the exact opposite is actually true; i.e., we have
been taken over by something alien to ourselves).
Working through the
projective tendencies of the mind, wetiko distracts us by exploiting
our unconscious habitual tendency to see the source of our problems
outside of ourselves.
Speaking of the BIP, PKD writes,
"We are supposed to
combat it phagocyte-wise, but the very valence of the (BIP)
stasis warps us into micro-extensions of itself; this is
precisely why it is so dangerous.
This is the dread thing it
does: extending its android thinking (uniformity) more and more
extensively. It exerts a dreadful and subtle power, and more and
more people fall into its field (power), by means of which it
grows." (12)
"Android thinking," i.e.,
robotic, machine-like group-thinking (with no creativity programmed
in), is one of the qualities of a mind taken over by wetiko/BIP.
Just as someone bit by a
vampire becomes a vampire themselves, if we don't see how wetiko/BIP
works through our unconscious blind spots, it "warps us into
micro-extensions of itself" such that we unwittingly become its
purveyors, which is how it propagates itself in the field.
Masses are breeding grounds for this nefarious mind virus to
flourish.
Wetiko/BIP is not just something that afflicts individuals
- it is a collective psychosis that can only work the full power of
its black magic through groups of people.
In his book
The Divine Invasion, PKD has one of his characters say,
"Sometimes I think
this planet is under a spell…. We are asleep or in a trance."
Along similar lines, in
his Exegesis, PKD writes,
"We got entangled in
enchantment, a gingerbread cottage that beguiled us into
enslavement and ruin…we are not merely enslaved, we are
trapped." (13)
As if living within a
mythic or fairy tale-like reality, our species is under a
bewitchment - a seeming curse - of massive proportions.
Contemplating "the basic
condition of life," PKD writes that each one of us will,
"be required to
violate your own identity…this is the curse at work, the curse
that feeds on all life." (14)
This curse that feeds on
life is another name for wetiko/BIP. Thankfully, in his writings PKD
gives us clues regarding how to break out of this curse.
We can't break out of the curse, however, without first shedding
light on the nature of the darkness we have fallen into that is
informing the curse.
Giving a precise
description of how wetiko/BIP works, PKD writes,
"This is a sinister
life form indeed.
First it takes power
over us, reducing us to slaves, and then it causes us to forget
our former state, and be unable to see or to think straight, and
not to know we can't see or think straight, and finally it
becomes invisible to us by reason of what it has done to us.
We cannot even
monitor our own deformity, our own impairment." (15)
A complex and seemingly
malevolent life form, wetiko/BIP works through the cover of the
unconscious, rendering itself invisible to our conscious awareness.
It feeds off of and into our unawareness of it.
Further elaborating the BIP, PKD writes,
"It can not only
affect our percept systems directly but can alter our memories."
(16)
We become convinced that
our - i.e., "its" - memories are objectively real, therefore feeding
into the self-limiting and self-defeating narrative the virus wants
us to believe about ourselves.
We then tell stories -
both to others as well as ourselves - about who we are and what
happened to us in the past to make us this way in a manner that
reifies us into a solidified identity.
In The Divine
Invasion, PKD has a character say,
"something causes us
to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it
wants us to remember and think."
Are these the ravings of
a paranoid madman, or insights of someone who is seeing through the
illusion, snapping out of the spell and waking up?
PKD writes,
"It is as if the
immune system has failed to detect an invader, a pathogen
(shades of William Burroughs: a criminal virus!).
Yes, the human brain
has been invaded, and once invaded, is occluded to the invasion
and the damage resulting from the invasion.
It has now become an
instrument for the pathogen: it winds up serving as its slave,
and thus the 'heavy metal speck' (i.e., the BIP) is replicated
(spread through linear and lateral time, and through space)."
(17)
The mind invaded becomes
an unwitting channel for the pathogen to further propagate and
spread itself in and through the field.
To quote PKD,
"We may not be what
we seem even to ourselves." (18)
Wetiko/BIP is a
shape-shifting bug; it cloaks itself in and assumes our form,
impersonating us such that we then identify with its limited and
impoverished version of who we are while we simultaneously
dissociate from - and forget - who we actually are.
Wetiko/BIP is in
competition with us for a share of our own mind; it literally does
everything it can to think in our place, sit in our seat and occupy
- and possess - our very selves.
Speaking of this very
situation, PKD writes,
"A usurper is on the
throne." (19)
Having no creativity on
its own, once wetiko "puts us on," i.e., fools us into buying into
its version of who we are, it can then piggyback onto and plug into
our intrinsic creativity, co-opting our creative imagination to
serve its malevolent agenda.
PKD writes,
"Being without psyche
of its own it slays the authentic psyches of those creatures
locked into it, and replaces them with a spurious microform of
its own dead psyche." (20)
Sometimes using the
phrase the "Black Iron Prison Police State" (which is mirrored
externally in
the ever-increasing "police state" of the world), PKD
also describes this state as one where the person so afflicted
becomes "frozen" (as in trauma), in a "corpse-state" (i.e.,
spiritually dead).
Wetiko/BIP can be conceived of as a cancer of the psyche that slowly
metastasizes, gradually subsuming all of the healthy parts of the
psyche into itself to serve its sinister agenda.
Speaking of the part of
the psyche that has been captured by the BIP, PKD comments,
"This section died.
It became fossilized, and merely repeats itself. This is scary;
it is like mental illness:
'one day nothing
new ever entered his mind - and the last thought just
recirculated endlessly.'
Thus death rules
here…
The BIP is the form
of this death, its embodiment - of what is wrong, here."
(21)
Like a vampire, wetiko/BIP
is - and turns us into - one of the undead; it is death taking on
living human form so as to take life.
Wetiko/BIP, like a virus,
is "dead" matter, it is only in a living creature that viruses
acquire a "quasi-life." When we fall under wetiko's spell, our
life-force and God-given creativity become vampirically drained, as
we are bled dry of what really counts.
Commenting on the BIP, PKD continues,
"To see it is to see
the ailment, the complex which warps all other thoughts to it."
(22)
To see the BIP is to
begin to heal it; there is no healing it without first seeing it.
Once wetiko/BIP
entrenches itself within a psyche, however, the personality then
becomes one-sided, self-organizing an outer display of coherence
around this pathogenic core, which masks the inner dysfunction,
making it hard to recognize.
In a psychic coup d'état,
the wetiko bug can usurp and displace a person - or a group of
people - who become its puppet and marionette.
To quote PKD,
"We're a fucking
goddam 'Biosphere' ruled by an entity who - like a hypnotist -
can make us not only quack like a duck on cue, but imagine, to
boot, that we wanted (decided) to quack." (23)
PKD comments that when,
"we begin to see what
formerly was concealed to us, or from us, and the shock is
great, since we have, all our lives, been trading (doing
business) with evil." (24)
This is one of the
reasons it is so hard to see wetiko/BIP - there is a
counterincentive built into seeing it, as we have to be strong
enough to bear the trauma of seeing our own collusion with darkness.
If we choose to look away
from how the BIP occludes us and become resistant to bringing
awareness to the nature of our situation, we are then being
unconsciously complicit in our own imprisonment.
To quote PKD,
"So there was a base
collusion between us and the BIP: it was a kind of pact!"
(25)
He conjectures,
"we're sources of
psychic/psychological energy to it: we help power it." (26)
As if we are in a
double-bind with no exit, PKD points out that,
"the enslaved people
cannot be rescued by departing the Empire (the BIP) because the
Empire is worldwide." (27)
Existing within the
collective unconscious itself, wetiko/BIP/Empire is ubiquitous;
being nonlocal it can't be located within the third-dimensional
space-time matrix, and yet, there is no place where it is not.
Its very root - as well
as the medium through which it operates - is the psyche, which is
somehow able to inform, extend itself and give shape to events in
our world.
To think that the ultimate source of the horrors that are
playing out in our world is to be found somewhere other than within
the human psyche is to be truly dis-oriented, i.e., looking in the
wrong direction.
PKD writes,
"The very doctrine of
combating the 'hostile world and its power' has to a large
extent been ossified by and put at the service of the Empire."
(28)
In fighting the seeming
demonic power of wetiko/BIP/Empire, we are playing its game and have
already lost, as it feeds off of polarization.
PKD warns that,
"the BIP warps every
new effort at freedom into the mold of further tyranny."
(29)
Even our thoughts
regarding how to solve the BIP only "fuel" the seeming reality of
the BIP.
The Empire/BIP/wetiko
will subvert every attempt at shedding light on its darkness in such
a way as to feed the very darkness we are trying to illumine. And
yet, if we don't fight it, then we have no chance.
What are we to do?
PKD opines,
"The idea is to break
the BIP's power by revealing more and more about it." (30)
Just as a vampire loses
its power in the light of day, wetiko/BIP has no power in the light
of conscious awareness.
To quote PKD,
"The Empire is only a
phantasm, lingering because we have gone to sleep." (31)
It is as if the Empire/BIP/wetiko
is an after-image that we have mistaken for being real; PKD refers
to it as a "deceitful corpse" that apes life.
The idea is to shed light
on darkness - what good is seeing the light if our vision doesn't
illumine the darkness?
The Gnostic text
The
Gospel of Philip says,
"So long as the root
of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is
recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes…
It is powerful because we have not recognized it."
(II,
3, 83.5-30.)
FAKE FAKES
Wetiko/BIP can be likened to an "anti-information" virus - not only
does it block the reception of information, but it substitutes false
information for the real thing.
PKD writes,
"the bombardment of
pseudo-realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very
quickly (in his words 'spurious humans')." (32)
PKD writes of the BIP,
"it has grown
vine-like into our information media; it is an information life
form." (33)
It is an info life form
(composed of and creating living dis-information) that lies to us -
PKD compares this to the figure of Satan, who is "the liar."
Wetiko/BIP has co-opted
the mainstream, corporatized media to be its propaganda organ, which
becomes its instrument for creating - and delivering into our minds
- fictitious realities.
These institutions have,
to quote PKD,
"an astonishing
power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind.
I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create
universes." (34)
PKD was intensely
interested in what makes an authentic human being.
He continues,
"Fake realities will
produce fake humans. Or, fake humans will produce fake realities
and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually,
into forgeries of themselves." (35)
An authentic human being,
on the other hand, to quote PKD,
"cannot be compelled
to be what they are not." (36)
He elaborates,
"The power of
spurious realities battering at us today - these deliberately
manufactured fakes never penetrate to the heart of true human
beings." (37)
Wetiko/BIP has no
creativity on its own, but is a master of imitation - it apes, mimes
and impersonates both our world and ourselves, such that, if we
identify with its version of the way things are, we have then given
ourselves away.
Succinctly stating the
problem, PKD writes,
"The problem is that
a mock creation has filtered in, which must be transubstantiated
into the real." (38)
Our universe is a
collectively shared dream or hallucination that appears real.
In PKD's words,
"our reality is a
cunning counterfeit, mutually shared." (39)
To imbue our world with
an intrinsic, objective reality that exists separate from the mind
that is observing it would be, in PKD's words,
"a dreadful
intellectual error."
Pointing directly at wetiko/BIP, PKD writes that,
"there is a vast life
form here, that has invaded this world and is camouflaged."
(40)
He marvels at how it
camouflages itself; in PKD's words, it,
"simulated normal
objects and their processes so as to copy them and in such an
artful way as to make himself (the BIP) invisible within them."
(41)
Through its mimicry of
real phenomenal objects, the BIP, in PKD's words,
"steadily, stealthily
replaces them and mimics - assumes their form." (42)
Though PKD's writings
appear "out there," and can easily sound crazy, paranoid and
conspiratorial, it should be pointed out that what he is pointing at
is exactly what an apocryphal text of the Bible is referring to when
it speaks of a "counterfeiting spirit." (43)
PKD has articulated wetiko's/BIP's counterfeiting ability - and how
the universe responds - in a way that only he can.
He has realized that the
very ground of being itself - PKD refers to it by various names -
Christ, God, the Savior, the Urgrund (a German term used by both
Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme to describe ultimate reality) - is
responding to wetiko/BIP in a very unique and revelatory way.
As the BIP mimes reality
so as to create a counterfeit of the real thing, the ground of
reality, in PKD's words, "counterfeits the counterfeit."
In PKD's words,
"So originally the
bogus info mimicked the actual successfully enough to fool us,
and now we have a situation in which the actual has returned in
a form mimicking the bogus." (44)
Wetiko/BIP has created an
illusory, fake world, and the ground of being itself, in a radically
new ontological category that PKD calls a "fake fake," has imitated
the imitation.
Delighted by this new
idea, PKD asks the question,
"Is a fake fake more
fake than just a fake, or null-fake?" (45)
In other words, if a fake
fake is not more fake than a fake, is it the real thing?
PDK's idea of a fake fake
is cognate to the indeterminacy between originals and simulacra that
is the hallmark of the world of virtual reality.
To quote PKD,
"A fake fake =
something real.
The demiurge (the false God in Gnosticism)
unsuccessfully counterfeited the pleroma, and now God/the
Savior
is mimicking this counterfeit cosmos with a stealthily growing
real one." (46)
In other words, God/the
ground of being is assimilating our seemingly counterfeit universe
into and as itself.
Writing about the Savior, PKD writes that,
"it doesn't want its
adversary to know it's here, so it must disguise (randomize) its
presence, including by giving out self discrediting information;
as if mimicking a hoax." (47)
Just like the BIP tricks
us into identifying with its world, the true ground of being tricks
the BIP by surreptitiously imitating and becoming it; i.e., taking
it on (and into itself).
It doesn't want to let
the BIP know it is doing this, which would defeat the purpose of its
counter-ploy; the Savior does its mimicry on the sly. PKD comments,
"The Urgrund does not
advertise to the artifact (i.e., wetiko/BIP) that it is here."
(48)
Just as the BIP works
through our blind spots, the ground of being works through the BIP's
blind spots. PKD comments,
"the artifact is as
occluded as to the nature and existence of the Urgrund as we are
to the artifact." (49)
Like an underground
resistance movement, the Urgrund's activities, in PKD's words,
"resemble the covert
advance of a secret, determined revolution against a powerful
tyranny." (50)
Speaking of Christ as
another reference for the ground of being, Dick writes,
"Through him the
properly functioning (living and growing) total brain replicated
itself here in microform (seed-like) thereafter branching out
farther and farther like a vine, a viable life form taking up
residence within a dead, deranged and rigid one (BIP).
It is the
nature of the rigid region to seek to detect and ensnare him,
but his discorporate plasmatic nature ensures his escape from
the intended imprisonment." (51)
In other words, the
spirit can't be pinned down.
In PKD's words,
"He is everywhere and
nowhere." (52)
Describing this deeper
process of how the ground of being potentially saves us - and itself
- from wetiko/BIP, PKD comments,
"a criminal entity (BIP)
has been invaded by life giving cells (Christ, God, the
Urgrund)
which it can't detect, and so it accepts them into itself,
replacing the 'iron' ones." (53)
PKD is describing
transubstantiation in the flesh. Speaking of the savior, PKD writes,
"like a gas (plasma)
he begins invisibly to expand and fill up the whole of BIP."
(54)
What I so appreciate
about PKD's vision is that he's not just describing the
life-destroying workings of wetiko/BIP, but he's also articulating
the other half of this process, which is the response from the
living intelligence of the universe as a whole.
To quote PKD,
"The key to
everything lies in understanding this mimicking living stuff."
(55)
PKD equates this
"form-mimicker" with the Deus Absconditus, the dark and hidden God.
The idea is that God
reveals Itself through its darker half.
This makes me think how the unconscious responds to a one-sided
situation in our psychic lives by sending compensatory forms - like
symbols in a dream - so as to bring us back into balance.
To quote PKD,
"If the universe is a
brain the BIP is a rigid ossified complex, and Zebra (another of
PKD's names for the savior) is metabolic toxin (living info)
designed to melt it out of existence by restoring elasticity to
it, which means to cause it to cease recirculating the same
thought over and over again." (56)
Seen psychologically, the
BIP is a rigidified complex which has developed an autonomy and has
gone rogue, seemingly having an independent life and a will of its
own that is antithetical to and at odds with our own.
In psychological-speak,
until this "autonomous complex" (what indigenous people refer to as
a "demon") is dissolved and rejoins the wholeness of the psyche,
"the organism," to quote PKD,
"is stuck in its
cycle, in cybernetic terms; it won't kick over - which fits with
my idea that we are memory coils which won't kick over and
discharge their contents." (57)
We are like
malfunctioning memory coils in a quasi-dream state.
In PKD's words,
"we are an impaired
section of the megamind." (58)
These contemplations
helped PKD to contextualize, and hopefully integrate his
overwhelming spiritual experience of 1974.
He writes that his
experience is,
"an achievement by
the Urgrund in reaching its objective of reflecting itself back
to itself, using me as a point of reflection." (59)
In other words, PKD
realized that we are all potentially reflecting mirrors for the
divine ground of being to wake up to itself.
This is to say that we
play a crucial role in the deeper archetypal process of the
Incarnation of the deity.
PKD writes in his journal,
"Perhaps the
transformation of and in me in 3-74 (i.e., March, 1974) was when
this mimicking 'plasma' reached me and replaced me - although I
appeared outwardly the same (i.e., my essence changed - a new
self replaced the old)… my 'me' was covertly replaced by a
greater other 'me' I'd never seen or known before." (60)
This greater self that
replaced PKD's ego goes by many names: the greater personality, the
Self, our true nature, Buddha nature and Christ, to name but a few.
PKD writes,
"A human can evolve
into Christ if Christ ignites his own self in the human and
takes the human over (61)… it is at the moment of when
the ultimate blow (of pain, murderous injury, humiliation and
death) is struck, it is Christ who is there, replacing the
victim and taking the blow himself.
This is what happened
to me in 3-74." (62)
He continues,
"So flight from
suffering inexorably involves a flight from life (reality)…
But
the secret, mysterious opposite from this is a full facing of
suffering - a non-flinching - that can lead to a magic alchemy:
suddenly it is you/suddenly it is Christ/so you must equal (be)
Christ." (63)
In psychological speak,
the "genuine suffering" (to use Jung's words) that PKD went through
enabled him to withdraw his unconscious projections from an outward
historical or metaphysical figure and wake up the Christ within
himself.
In other words, he was able to introject this sacred
figure, i.e., realize that Christ (i.e., the Self) lived in him and
was not an external figure separate and different from himself.
(64)
DREAMLIKE COSMOLOGY
According to PKD's cosmology, it is as if God the creator has
allowed himself to become captured, enslaved by and hostage to his
own creation.
PKD writes,
"He, the living, is
at the mercy of the mechanical. The servant has become the
master, and the master the servant." (65)
PKD's words have a
particular ring of truth in this technological age of ours, where
many people think that one of the greatest dangers that faces
humanity is that AI (artificial intelligence) can potentially
enslave its human creators.
PKD continues,
"But the artifact is
teaching him, painfully, by degrees, over thousands of years, to
remember - who he is and what he is. The servant-become-master
is attempting to restore the master's lost memories and hence
his true identity." (66)
PKD's contemplations shed
light on what might be the hidden purpose of the emergence of wetiko/BIP
in our world. PKD comments,
"The artifact
enslaves us, but on the other hand it is attempting to teach us
to throw off its enslavement." (67)
Wetiko/BIP tests us so as
to make sure that we will make optimal use of our divine endowment.
As PKD points out, the fundamental dialectic at work is liberation
vs. enslavement.
Here's what I wrote in
Dispelling Wetiko,
"Wetiko literally
demands that we step into our power and become resistant to its
oppression such that we discover how to step out of bondage and
become free, or else!" (68)
In a sense wetiko/BIP is
the guardian of the threshold of our evolution...
PKD has created a parable in which a fallen and amnesiac God has
fallen prey to Its own creation and is in need of redemption. Lest
we think that PKD's cosmological imaginings are the ravings of a
madman, it should be pointed out that his theories are fully
resonant with those found in the profound wisdom traditions of,
-
Alchemy
-
Gnosticism
-
Kabbalah
-
Christianity
Evoking "Christ as the
salvator salvandus," PKD writes of,
"the savior who must
be saved and who is in a certain real sense identical with those
he saves." (69)
In PKD's words,
"The creator can
afford to descend into his own creation. He can afford to shed
his memories (of his identity) and his supernatural powers…
The creator
deliberately plants clues in his irreal creation - clues which
he cunningly knows in time (eventually) will restore his memory
(anamnesis) of who he is…
So he has a fail-safe system built in.
No chance he won't eventually remember.
Makes himself subject
to spurious space, time and world (and death, pain, loss, decay,
etc.), but has these disinhibiting clues or stimuli distributed
deliberately strategically in time and space.
So it is he
himself who sends himself the letter which restores his memory
(Legend of the Pearl).
No fool he!"
(70)
It is as if we, or more
accurately, our true identity as the Self (which is whole and
connected with the whole) plants alarm clocks in the waking dream -
what PKD calls "a perturbation in the reality field" - that are set
to go off at just the right time, acting as a catalyst to wake us
up.
In PKD's words,
"The megamind is
attempting to stimulate us back to being in touch with itself."
(71)
Once these clues - which
can be conceived of as a higher dimension of our being signaling to
us - are deciphered, we can discover, as PKD suggests, that we've
composed them ourselves.
What PKD calls "disinhibiting
clues" (what he also calls "Logos triggering agents," and what I
call "lucidity stimulators") are like keys that open up the lock
encasing our minds so that we can remember who we are and our life's
mission, i.e., what we are here to do.
PKD writes,
"Zebra is trying to
find - reach - us and make us aware of it - more primarily, it
seeks to free us from the BIP, to break the BIP's power over
us." (72)
Our classical,
materialist mechanistic worldview is, as PKD rightfully points out,
"shabby and cracking
apart and fading away." (73)
PKD writes that there is
a,
"universe lying
behind ours, concealed within - yes, actually concealed within
ours!" (74)
The universe we see
simultaneously conceals and reveals the universe lying behind ours.
It is PKD's opinion that
in order to construct a new worldview to replace the one that is
cracking apart, we need to see - to re-cognize - the universe
concealed within ours.
"The world is not
merely counterfeit," PKD writes, "there is more: it is
counterfeit, but under it lies another world, and it is this
other world, this Logos world, which filters or breaks through."
(75)
He continues,
"But in truth, in
very truth, this is a shadow universe we see, a reflection in
the mirror of another universe behind it, and that other
universe can be reached by an individual directly, without the
help of any priest." (76)
This other universe - a
universe that we are not separate from and is not separate from our
consciousness - doesn't need an external mediator to be accessed,
but can be reached through direct experience.
I call this other, higher-dimensional world that underlies and is
concealed within ours (borrowing a term from physics) the "nonlocal
field," which is a field that contains, pervades and expresses
itself through our third-dimensional world (while at the same time
not being constrained by the third-dimensional laws of space and
time).
The nonlocal field
connects us with everything.
When the nonlocal field,
or in PKD's words, the "Logos world" breaks through consensus
reality and reveals itself are when we experience synchronicities -
what physicist F. David Peat calls "'flaws' in the fabric of
reality."
Synchronistic phenomena
are, in Peat's words,
"momentary fissures
that allow us a brief glimpse of the immense and unitary order
underlying all of nature."
Just like the BIP/artifact/Empire/wetiko
will co-opt and subvert any of our attempts at illumining it to feed
into and serve its nefarious agenda, God/Christ/Zebra/Urgrund/Savior
will use the BIP/artifact/Empire/wetiko's attempts at imprisonment
to ultimately serve our freedom.
Speaking of the
artifact's agenda of,
"enslavement,
deception and spiritual death" PKD writes, "even this is
utilized by the Urgrund, which utilizes everything, (this) is a
sacred secret." (77)
PKD points out that one
way of expressing the fundamental dialectic is information vs.
anti-information (remember: wetiko is an anti-information virus).
To quote PKD,
"The Empire, which by
suppressing information is therefore in a sense the anti-Christ,
is put to work as half of the dialectic; Christ uses everything
(as was revealed to me): in its very act of suppressing
information, the Empire aids in the building of the soma of the
Cosmic Christ (which the Empire does not realize)." (78)
This is to say that the
Cosmic Christ is, in essence, generated by its antithesis (the
anti-Christ).
This brings to mind Goethe's masterpiece Faust, in which Faust asks
Mephistopheles (who represents the devil) who he is, and
Mephistopheles replies that he is the,
"part of that force
which would do evil, yet forever works the good."
It is a Kabbalistic idea
that, though at cross purposes to the good at its core, evil is the
very condition and foundation of the highest good's very
realization.
BODHISATTVIC
MADNESS
A collective psychosis, wetiko is a psycho-spiritual disease of the
soul that pervades the collective unconscious of humanity.
To quote PKD,
"The only question
is, which kind of madness will we choose?… We are, then, all
mad, but I, uniquely, choose to go mad while facing pain, not
mad while denying pain." (79)
PKD is delineating two
different ways of facing the pain of reality; in his writings he
makes it clear that his ("non-flinching") way of facing pain isn't
necessarily better, it just "hurts more."
PKD writes,
"In a very real sense
the pain we feel as living creatures is the pain of waking up…
the pressure of this pain motivates us to seek an answer; which
is to say, motivates us toward greater and greater
consciousness." (80)
PKD is professing a point
of view that can help us to recontextualize what seems to be
meaningless suffering; one of the things that's hardest for human
beings to bear are experiences bereft of meaning.
"The artifact," PKD
explains, speaking of and from his own experience, "by
inflicting too much pain on me it had, in a certain real sense,
awakened me." (81)
In his novel
VALIS, PKD
writes,
"It is sometimes an
appropriate response to reality to go insane."
PKD writes,
"My insanity, facing
an insane world, is, paradoxically, a facing of reality, and
this is sane; I refuse to close my eyes and ears." (82)
Paradoxically, PKD's form
of insanity is the most sane response of all.
PKD wonders,
"Perhaps if you know
you are insane you are not insane." (83)
He elaborates,
"The distinction
between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor's edge,
sharper than a hound's tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is
more elusive than the merest phantom.
Perhaps it does not even
exist; perhaps it is a phantom." (84)
Never one to shy away
from the tough questions, PKD asks,
"So, then, in what
sense am I insane? I am insane in that I continue to face the
truth without the ability to come up with a workable answer…
I really do not know
anything in terms of the solution; I can only state the problem.
No other thinker has ever stated a problem and so miserably
failed to solve it in human histories; human thought is,
basically, problem-solving, not problem stating." (85)
I personally don't think
PKD is giving himself enough credit.
For in fact, it is clear
in his writings that he did come up with a "workable answer," one
that is universal and is common to all wisdom traditions.
PKD
likened our existential situation to being in a maze, what he refers
to as,
"one colossal and
absolute Chinese finger trap."
The harder we try to get
out, the more trapped we become; this is to say that we are not able
to find our way out through ordinary means.
Seemingly alive and
sentient, the maze has a peculiar nature of shifting as we become
aware of it. It is as if it is aware of - and responds to - our
awareness of it.
One only escapes from the maze, to quote PKD,
"when he decides
voluntarily to return (to resubject himself to the power of the
maze) for the sake of these others, still in it.
That is, you
can never leave alone, to leave you must elect to take the
others out… the ultimate paradox of the maze, its quintessential
ingenuity of construction, is that the only real way out is a
voluntary way back in (into it and its power), which is the path
of the bodhisattva." (86)
We would only voluntarily
return to help others if we recognized that they are not separate
from ourselves, which is to realize that we are all interdependent
and interconnected - which is the very realization that
simultaneously enlivens compassion and dissolves
wetiko.
PKD writes,
"when you think you
are out of the maze - i.e., saved - you are in fact still in
it." (87)
This brings to mind the
insight that if we think we are free of wetiko and it is only
"others" that are afflicted with it, this very perspective is,
paradoxically, a symptom of having fallen under the spell of wetiko...
To quote PKD,
"If there is to be
happiness it must come in a voluntary relinquishing of self in
exchange for aware participation in the destiny of the total
one." (88)
In a very real sense, PKD
did find the solution to humanity's existential dilemma.
He writes,
"compassion's highest
power is the only power capable of solving the maze." (89)
As PKD points out,
"The true measure of
a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak
establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how
quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of
himself he can give." (90)
In other words, the true
measure of who we are is how much we are able to love.
PKD concludes,
"If the final paradox
of the maze is that the only way you can escape it is
voluntarily to go back in (into it), then maybe we are here
voluntarily; we came back in." (91)
In other words, perhaps
we have chosen to incarnate at this very moment in time, i.e., our
voluntary return to the maze has already happened (evidenced by the
simple fact of our incarnation), which is to say that we have
already solved the maze and simply have to recognize this fact.
This is true
anamnesis -
a loss of forgetfulness - which is a remembering, a recollection of
our dissociated members, as we re-member our rightful place as part
of a greater whole, connected with all that is.
"Anamnesis," to quote
PKD from a 1976 interview, "was the loss of amnesia. You
remembered your origins, and they were from beyond the stars."
(92)
References
(1) A phrase used by
Richard Doyle to describe PKD's writings, from the Afterword to
PKD's Exegesis, p. 899.
(2) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
553.
(3) Ibid., 778.
(4) Herron, Don, The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick:
1980-1982 (Nevada City, California: Underwood Books, 2009), p.
267.
(5) Ibid., 96.
(6) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds.,
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
404.
(7) Ibid., 294.
(8) Ibid., 403.
(9) Ibid., 517.
(10) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 173.
(11) Herron, Don, The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick:
1980-1982 (Nevada City, California: Underwood Books, 2009), p.
146.
(12) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
473.
(13) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 310.
(14) From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
(15) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
405.
(16) Ibid., 357.
(17) Ibid., 405.
(18) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 310.
(19) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
828.
(20) Ibid., 319.
(21) Ibid., 391.
(22) Ibid.
(23) Ibid., 291.
(24) Ibid., 178.
(25) Ibid., 402.
(26) Ibid., 328.
(27) Ibid., 608.
(28) Ibid., 473.
(29) Ibid., 346.
(30) Ibid., 323.
(31) Ibid., 414.
(32) Ibid., 263.
(33) Ibid., 596.
(34) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 262.
(35) Ibid., 263-4.
(36) Ibid., 279.
(37) Ibid.
(38) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
554.
(39) Ibid., 289.
(40) Ibid., 596.
(41) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 251.
(42) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
222.
(43) Referred to as the antimimon pneuma in the Apocryphon of
John (Apoc. John III, 36:17),
(44) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
327.
(45) Ibid., 419.
(46) Ibid., 277.
(47) Ibid., 316.
(48) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 308.
(49) Ibid., 285.
(50) Ibid., 309.
(51) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
391.
(52) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 295.
(53) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
332.
(54) Ibid., 315.
(55) Ibid., 222.
(56) Ibid., 332.
(57) Ibid., 414.
(58) Ibid., 278.
(59) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 296.
(60) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
222.
(61) Ibid., 290.
(62) Ibid., 294.
(63) Ibid., 317.
(64) This brings to mind the quote from the Bible, "It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Galatians:
2:20).
(65) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. xxiii.
(66) Ibid., 294.
(67) Ibid., 291.
(68) Levy, Paul, Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil
(Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2013), pp. 261-2.
(69) Herron, Don, The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick:
1980-1982 (Nevada City, California: Underwood Books, 2009), p.
79.
(70) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
413.
(71) Ibid., 278.
(72) Ibid., 404.
(73) Ibid., 75.
(74) Ibid.
(75) Ibid., 272.
(76) Ibid., 76.
(77) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 289.
(78) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
612.
(79) Ibid., 692.
(80) Sutin, Lawrence, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K.
Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995), pp. 309-310.
(81) Ibid., 296.
(82) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p.
692.
(83) From The Man in the High Castle,
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4764.Philip_K_Dick?page=4
(84) From Valis,
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4764.Philip_K_Dick?page=2
(85) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), pp.
692-3.
(86) Ibid., 877-878.
(87) Ibid., 878.
(88) Ibid., 296.
(89) Ibid., 877.
(90)
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4764.Philip_K_Dick?page=1
(91) Jackson, Pamela and Lethem, Jonathan, eds., The Exegesis of
Philip K. Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), pp.
878.
(92) DePrez, Daniel -
An Interview with Philip K. Dick
- Science
Fiction Review, No. 19, Vol. 5, no. 3, August (1976).
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