Dick- The Exegesis

the·oph·a·ny
/THēˈäfənē/Submit
noun : a visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god

explain the following passage from The Exegesis, connecting it to Dick’s broader theophany:
“The trouble is, sitting here, for instance, I do know what each object is. I know its name. I
know its purpose, what it does, etc. I can't unknow that this is a typewriter, this here my light,
this over here the air conditioner.”

The importance of this passage is trying to understand the unknown. Dick goes on to explain
that we as human beings like to be able to identify things, know things. He goes on to
explain that each of us builds our own “model of the universe” through weariness, despair,
and fear. The belief/perception trying to be conveyed in this passage is that we all have our
own different way of labeling things and understand different things, most of which these
pieces of information have been taught to us. Once we “know” we have been taken out of
this Magic Garden. And because of this, we are unable to go back to our “childlike” thinking
before. Dick refers to this process as Scientific Magic, it decreases the menacing and the
hostile by abolishing the unknown. People are afraid to not know where they are where they
are going etc.

We like to be able to identify things, know things.

Each of us builds our own “model of the universe” through weariness, despair or fear.

Dick refers to it as a Magic Garden

Once we have identified everything, reality has now passed away and now we are in a world
of familiarity

As dick was recovering from dental surgery in 1974, a woman delivered his drugs to his
door wearing a goldfish pendant that she said was a symbol of early Christianity.

Dick saw a flash of pink light and proceeded to collapse on his bed.

Dick thought this light was because of the pendant

Visions of abstract thoughts began appearing to dick

Followed by philosophical ideas and engineering blueprints

Dick began seeing a strange humanoid being that could blend in with his sourroundings
He proceeded to call this being zebra and declared it a benign diety that would enter
anything, mimic

Dick saw the pink portal again and out of it he saw extraterrestrials that warned him that
there is a cosmic conspiracy against JFK and MLK

Another hypothesis Dick considered was that it was all a product of mental illness. While
Dick was paranoid—likely because he used amphetamines to enhance his productivity—he
knew his divine madness had a lot in common with mystical experiences

define any two of the following three terms, relating them to each other and to Dick’s
revelatory experience:
[i] anamnesis;
[ii] Black Iron Prison;
[iii] balking

anamnesis is the recollection, abrogation of amnesia.

For Plato, anamnesis the recollection of the world of ideas in which the soul dwelled
before incarnating in human form - explains the human capacity for
understanding abstract, universal truths, such as the geometric theorems of Euclid.

In Dick's more Gnostic understanding, it also implies the recollection of the soul's origins
beyond the fallen or occluded world.

Black Iron Prison, also BIP: Dick's term for the prison world of political tyranny and
determinism he glimpsed beneath in March 1974. He later wrote that upon perceiving it, he
realized that he had been living in it and writing about it his whole life. In his dualistic
cosmologies, the BIP is opposed to the Palm Tree Garden
or PTG.

Palm Tree Garden: The spiritually redeemed and ontologically

genuine world, revealed to Dick in January-February 1975, when southern
California seemed to transform into the Levant.