[tmbchr]™

The Empire Never Ends



Still churning my way through Philip K. Dick’s In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis, and there are a number of quotes that I’d like to stitch together. Before we launch into them, it’s important to understand that Dick believed himself to have had direct experience of the illusory nature of time. One of the many theories he tried out philosophically was that we are or were actually living still in the days of the Roman Empire. Not just figuratively for the sake of fiction, but literally. He believed that “real time” ceased in the decades immediately following Christ’s death, and was kickstarted up again in 1945 by the discovery of the Gnostic codices at the Nag Hammadi library. For more information on these theories in a highly encapsulated form, refer to his short treatise, Tractates Cryptica Scriptura.

Now, on to the quotes that struck my fancy from this book. On page 10, he writes:

Within our spatiotemporal universe it is impossible that USA 1974 and Rome AD 45 could be one and the same… how could they be? They are at two times and two places. The only way they could be one and the same would be if time and space were somehow not real; or put another way, if something about the two continua themselves were not real. That is, if Rome was not Rome; USA was not USA; but both were a third thing, the same thing. […] USA 1974 and Rome AD 45 are two ways of looking at the same thing: two aspects of the same thing.

A few pages previous to that (but written earlier that year - 1980), Dick explores a similar idea. He also felt that his novel Flow My Tears The Policeman Said inadvertently (and unknown to him) retold the story of the Book of Acts in the New Testament. (Read more about his theories and connections between the two books here.) On page 102 he writes:

[The Book of] Acts isn’t any more real than USA 1974; both space-time continua are accidents of a common essence (universal). This universal is what I call the Black Iron Prison. It exists outside of time; it’s accidents sho up, e.g., during the Thirty Years War, in the future in [Flow My] Tears, in USA 1974. I am one of those who has fought it; fights it and in the future will fight it again; I am a universal, too, in terms of my immortal soul reborn again and again to resume its role.

As far as I understand it, when he says “accidents” above, he is inverting one of the trickier tenets of the Catholic Doctrine of the Transubstatiation (taken from Wikipedia):

This doctrine holds that the elements are not only spiritually transformed, but are actually (substantially) transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. The elements retain the appearance or “accidents” of bread and wine, but are indeed the actual Body and Blood of Christ, the actual, physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. […]

“Substance” as a philosophical term describes what a given object is, the properties of the object that are essential to “it” being “it.” Without its substance, an object ceases to be what it “is.” Accidents are non-essential properties; even without its accidents (such as color, taste, or shape), an object remains what it “is.” For example, hair is an accident of humans, while being a mammal is substantial. If a human loses its hair, it is still human. If a human stops being a mammal, it is no longer a human, because being a mammal is essential to being human. At Consecration, the substance of the Eucharistic elements change; while the non-essential properties (shape, taste, color) remain the same, the essence of what it “is” changes into Christ’s Body and Blood.

So he’s saying that the outward appearance, the insubstantial “accidents” of the Black Iron Prison modulate and change, but the essential underlying substance does not. It’s an intriguing idea on it’s own, that their is some kind of archetypal or Platonic “ideal” Empire which projects its form outward, continually reconstructing itself out of whatever detritus and human ambition and lust for power that it finds laying around. A darkness that lays waiting to be called forth from the mirror by anyone foolhardy enough to say “Bloody Mary” three times.

With near constant comparisons between Bush and Hitler, between the modern day United States and the growing Nazi war machine, you really do have to wonder if there hasn’t been just one Empire throughout all time, expanding and splintering again and again like the long-drawn breaths of some infernal machine. Growing in order to subsume new life and new energy into itself, breaking apart to unleash creatively warring dynamics (which are then subsumed back into the whole on a higher level), branded and re-branded throughout all of time to suit the mentality and the mythology of the time-space regions it overtakes. Maybe it is, as some believe, that same edritch force driving civilization itself, keeping us ensnared in the artificial clacking rhythm of linear time.

But if we are to take Philip K. Dick at his word, relief awaits us. The Paraclete, the Plasmate, the Gray-Robed Christians. “I am one of those who has fought it; fights it and in the future will fight it again; I am a universal, too, in terms of my immortal soul reborn again and again to resume its role.” Dick wrote (and in my mind continues to write today, tomorrow, endlessly) elsewhere in that book:

The Gospels, then, depict a sacred mythic rite outside of time, rather than a historical event.

Maybe then the reason why so few of us were taught much of anything about history is not due to low educational standards or over-arching conspiracies, but because we are entering an escape vector out of the “accidents” of time into the mythic structures which lay behind, beneath and above our world. The Empire never ended, but the Resistance never lost. Our struggle is not just another drama played upon the stage of Time; it is *the* drama. It is the dynamic by which mythic forms enter the world of living and dying, splintering into a thousand instances of the same thing.

, , , , , , , ,





15 Reader Responses

  1. Identity in Crisis Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 12:59 am

    “…you really do have to wonder if there hasn’t been just one Empire throughout all time, expanding and splintering again and again like the long-drawn breaths of some infernal machine.”

    I think this really has a lot of truth to it, particularly if you take into consideration the adage that “to secure peace is to prepare for war.” There’s a constant give and take, and though power shifts across space and time, there is ALWAYS an Empire (Roman, British, American, Chinese, Persian, whatever) somewhere seeking to exert its influence, and always a resistance against that. When the resistance wins… it’s very possible that it soon evolves into the Empire, seeking to protect itself against an Empire resurgent. It’s never realized, until it’s too late, that by destroying the Empire, you become it. It’s the Nature of the Beast to constantly change form to survive…

  2. Tim Boucher Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 1:15 am

    Well what I was thinking was more that having a Resistance is essential to the Empire. The Empire first of all needs an enemy. Initially its enemies are external, allowing it to grow. When there’s no more room to grow, it feeds on itself, finding its enemies within. This in turn breaks the Empire into pieces again, which enter into a state of flux with one another. The Empire again rises like a phoenix from the ash, and continues to grow and expand, until it reaches the borders and then must turn inward again.

  3. SubstanceM Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 10:15 am

    For sure you can look at it that way - there was Empire, there will be Empire. Check Star Wars into the future - the Empire. And the Resistance. But what I love about PKD is that he is talking about how it is literal, and time doesn’t exist, and the modern Empire is superimposed on the ancient “decadent” Empire. That is a way of looking at it that totally twists your mind, because HOW CAN IT BE? Time moves forward. But once you look at some of his other speculations - that time is like light and may be bent off into various rays of time from the one constant stream of time, or time may be moving backward but as in a mirror we see a reflection and it appears to move forward, and other equally thought provoking ways of viewing time, then it opens up a whole different can of worms. If there is really only ONE TIME, and it is now, then everything is held within that moment. Hence the Empire is the same as it ever was.
    I like how this way of viewing time opens up so many possibilities. I like to try to marry this concept with the concept of holographic universe, because in that scenario maybe it is possible to stop and start time…FYI I have no personal experience to back that shit up :)

  4. prnsqlr Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 11:16 am

    Probably my favorite post you’ve written!

    RE: Bloody Mary, there are is a whole mythic system involving her among homeless children in Miami. Only the “Bloody Mary” part reached me in the midwest as a child.

  5. jp Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 11:51 am

    there are is a whole mythic system involving her among homeless children in Miami.

    holy wow, that is one of the wildest articles i’ve ever read!

  6. Aditi Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 11:57 am

    That’s a wonderful book. I should pick it up again; I was able to skim through it briefly a few years ago.

    Have you read his essay on The Book of Changes? I believe it ties it nicely with a lot of the points brought up above.

    The last time I read your page you were discussing reading PKD on the bus and finding that old greeting used for Early Christians. I believe you just have to look into these parallels and find that they do in their own minute ways run parallel to what you’re trying to piece together with the bigger picture…

    Oh, I just moved to Seattle and stopped by the Theosophy Library and found they have many, many old books relating to Gnosticism. You might want to check that place out if you haven’t yet.

  7. Rev max Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 2:08 pm

    PKD’s insights corroborated by St. Burroughs

    In Burroughs’ mythology, the world is one of conflict between the Johnsons and the Shits. A Shit is one who is obsessively sure of his own position at the cost of all other vantages. Burroughs describes Shits as incapable of minding “their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a small pox virus has.”(4) This is more than a offhanded analogy. For Burroughs, Shits are, in actuality, virus occupied hosts—chronically infected by what he terms the Right virus. “The mark of a basic Shit,” Burroughs reminds us, “is that he has to be right.”(5)

    The war between the Johnsons and the Shits is an epic one that runs throughout Burroughs writing. Though of immense proportions, like the Gnostic battle between good and evil, the cosmic war is not figured across eternity. It has an end and, for Burroughs, that end is imaginable. It does not come without immense conflict, however. Burroughs tells his reader, “The people in power will not disappear voluntarily.”(6) There is no turning back, once the battle is met. “Once you take up arms against a bunch of shits there is no way back. Lay down your arms and they will kill you.”(7) “Hell hath no more vociferous fury than an endangered parasite.”(8) And remember: “The wild boys take no prisoners.”(9)

    In discussing his mythology, Burroughs describes a classic Catch-22: “He who opposes force with counterforce alone forms that which he opposes and is formed by it… On the other hand he who does not resist force that enslaves and exterminate will be enslaved and exterminated.”(10) Burroughs’ work begs the question, how does one resist the forces rallied against one without taking on the virally-tainted of the opposing force. To imagine a permanent solution proves an easy flirtation. In his essay “My Own Business,” Burroughs writes that “one is tempted to seek a total solution to the problem: Mass Assassination Day.”(11)

    In The Place of Dead Roads Burroughs imagines a scenario where the Johnson Family organizes into armed squads who fan out to hunt the virally infected. Some Johnsons are assigned as “Shit Spotters” whose task it is to move out into cities and small towns across the country recording those who exhibit virus occupied behaviors. Acting upon the intelligence thus gathered, sharp shooters follow-up eliminating the detected Shits.(12) Ultimately Burroughs tempers his fantasy. He observes, “Probably the most effective tactic is to alter the conditions on which the virus subsists.”(13)

    In truth, indifference will prove the end of the Shit problem. “Conditions change, and the virus guise is ignored and forgotten.”(14) Burroughs envisions the Shit position obsoleted by changes in normative culture:

    This trend toward sanity has brought the last-ditch dedicated shits out into the open, screaming with rage. Victimless crime, the assumption that what a citizen does in the privacy of his own dwelling is nonetheless someone else’s business and therefore subject to denunciation and punishment is the very lifeline of the right virus. Cutting off this air line would have the same action as interferon, which blocks the oxygen from certain virus strains.(15)

    And slowly the Shits are ignored into a dull celluloid sunset.

  8. Rev max Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

    On a more serious note, I’ve often thought the same thing - that myths describe real history, stripped of all the eccentric details - events that we all experience, because they exist outside of time and repeat eternally.

    We all came from Eden, we all visited Golgotha - in some plane of reality that is invisible to the 5 senses yet coterminous with this one.

  9. james Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 3:30 pm

    Ever heard of the 30 year theory, that zeitgeists repeat themselves every 30 years or so? That means right now we are smack dab in the middle of the ’70s (Watergate, Nixon) as well as the ’40s (WWII, American prosperity).

    I like to think that time is not only real, but that it is a circular spiral. Like a vinyl record spinning– if you were to put a scratch in the vinyl, you would revisit that scratch in the form of an audio “pop” every 4 seconds or so, even though the music/audio is seemingly “moving forward” in straight linear time.

    Occasionally, the scratch is so deep into the groove that the music/audio loops, repeating a section over and over. This is akin to a time warp.

  10. Kylark Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 4:46 pm

    Rev Max addresses a question I’ve held in mind for a long time and haven’t even begun to fully formulate, let alone answer: how do you kill without being a killer? PKD describes himself as eternally fighting the Black Iron Prison. Yet this is the man who said, “to fight the Empire is to become infected by its derangement.”

    And infected he was. The real-life PKD went so far as to denounce some critics and fellow writers to the FBI.

    Burroughs’ parable seems to delineate a way out. A quick, clean shot to the head to those who are fucking it up for the rest of us. But most of us feel an instinctive revulsion to this act, a revulsion which is well-founded.

    How do we resist those who wish to exercise power over us without becoming mired in eternal struggle, or worse yet, taking on the attributes of those whom we fight?

    And slowly the Shits are ignored into a dull celluloid sunset.

    I think I understand this… sort of. “Ignore the Empire and it will go away.” Stop feeding it with your attention. Work on yourself first. Like Gandhi said, “you must be the change you wish to see in others.” Is that really the solution?

  11. james Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 6:59 pm

    The PKD link is great, Kylark– incidentally it’s one of the reasons why I like his novels but distance myself from embracing them wholly. Like Timothy Leary, PKD rides the fence in political terms: was he a snitch, or just deluded? The LA Weekly did a great piece on PKD years ago, focusing more on his speed addiction (which causes paranoia and audible voices in the head, among other things) and the damage it did to his psyche .

    Also: the premise of PKD’s refusal to put coded messages into his fiction… isn’t that the same (or at least similar) premise as Vonnegut’s “Mother Night”? I’ve often wondered if Vonnegut just made up that story or if it was based loosely upon true events.

  12. Rev max Says:
    March 15th, 2006 at 3:06 pm

    And infected he was. The real-life PKD went so far as to denounce some critics and fellow writers to the FBI.

    Crystal methamphetamine abuse might have had something to do with this too.

  13. james Says:
    March 15th, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    Now that I think of it, Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout character could very well be based upon PKD… but it probably isn’t.

  14. Benway Says:
    March 15th, 2006 at 11:53 pm

    Burrough’s Cities of The Red Night is heartily recommended. One of his later novels, it tells of a struggle taking place in different times and places simultainiously. The boundries desolve until all are the same story. I’ll have to read it again, taking into account my thoughts since I last read it.

  15. I Am Erica - Pop Occulture Blog Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 2:58 pm

    […] So who, if anyone, is this mysterious “Erica” encoded into our nation’s very name? The name Erica is the feminine form of Eric, which comes from the Old Norse name “Eiríkr”. The component linguistic elements that make up this name are ei “ever” and ríkr “ruler”. So, in essence, the name of America means “I Am The Ever Ruler.” (see these two posts for more detailed explorations of that idea) […]



SURROUND YOURSELF WITH STRENGTH.