Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Philip K. Dick on Paracelsus (from The Exegesis)

Okay. I have no doubt that the sort of space I experienced in the "Alto Carmel"
dream and the Voice dreams is Paracelsus' inner firmament. Thomas brought it with him,
along with the huge open books. That was the mind of Paracelsus, and it was infinitely
older and wiser than mine—and it embraced vast vistas, in terms of its "philosopher's
stone" comprehension of the mysteries of the universe. It acted as a micro-mirror of the
macrocosm. This is what generates the vast inner space: one man's little mind becomes this
magic mirror of the macrocosm. According to my push-pull psyche-world model, this is
readily susceptible to explanation: world is locked into the given psyche anyhow. They
aren't:

So psyche and world are 2 mirrors facing each other:
enriching capacity at both ends. This is the 3rd secret, this binary, mutual synchronized
enriching capacity. Could this be what Paracelsus meant by inner vast reaches of space,
mirror and imagination? A (the) world-generating power? That's

Inner space (of Paracelsus) is perhaps the key as to how the immortal man can be
transtemporal and transpersonal. This places world inside us—did I not, in 3-74, when I
regained my true vision, say I'd been seeing the universe backward? Perhaps I meant inside
out—yes, I felt we were on the outside, like the skin or surface of the balloon, and the
actual world was inside, with us outside. We are not at the center of the world looking up
and around, but outside looking in.

This kind of experience and wisdom goes back all the way to Pythagoras, to the
Orphics, and to Dionysus himself. It is the great core wisdom of all mankind, including the
Dibba Cakkhu enlightenment of Siddhartha the Buddha. I can say I am a Buddhist or even the
Buddha, that in Brahmanist terms I have an avatar in me; I am an Orphic, a Neoplatonist, a
Christian, a hermetic—all these statements are true; and also I have to some extent
formulated my own system (as Bruno did). I have seen God but it was not
God; it was more (and I have a cybernetics-biological model). I am with Boehme perhaps most
of all—and with his teacher, Paracelsus, most of all. And even with Heraclitus in his maxim
that "latent form is the master of obvious form"85 in my inner-outer, upper-lower Christ
versus Caesar system, and with Empedocles in his dialectic, and with Xenophanes in his
concept of God, or noös, and especially with Parmenides in his Forms I and II, of which
Form II (lower, outer, obvious) is not really real. Thus, as with the Gnostics, I am
acosmic, but with Spinoza in his monism—and a little Taoistic, too.   [3:74] Man as magic
micro mirror of the macrocosm, reflects (and hence contains) the map (or logos) of the
macrocosm replicated in miniature (cf. Bruno and Hussey on Heraclitus). He contains the
cosmos by containing this map or plan or logos of it; that's how it works! And since the
cosmos is alive and thinks the map is alive and thinks.

This transcends any given religion—transcends any partial, culturally-determined view, or
way of knowing. The hermetic cosmology serves best inner space, mirror, memory—Bruno and
Paracelsus. This was absolute knowledge and absolute wisdom. And, like an alchemical
transmutation, Zebra turning the irreal into the real. The totality of reality, micro- and
macrocosms seen in alchemical terms, in alchemical process from lower (base) to higher
(noble). Hence the info about mercury. If a human mind was involved it was/is one of the
greatest minds in human history. Were I to pick one I'd pick Paracelsus, but this is only a
guess.

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