The Exegesis is a journal

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

 kept by science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 writer Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...

, documenting and exploring his religious and visionary experiences. Dick's wealth of knowledge on the subjects of philosophy, religion, and science inform the work throughout.

Dick started the journal after his visionary experiences in February and March 1974, which he called "2-3-74." These visions began shortly after Dick had impacted wisdom teeth removed. When a delivery person from the pharmacy brought his pain medication, he noticed the ichthys

Ichthys

Ichthys, from Koine Greek: , is the Greek word for "fish"....

 necklace she wore and asked her what it meant. She responded that it was a symbol used by the early Christians, and in that moment Dick's religious experiences began:

In that instant, as I stared at the gleaming fish sign and heard her words, I suddenly experienced what I later learned is called anamnesis

Anamnesis (philosophy)

In philosophy, anamnesis is a concept in Plato's epistemological and psychological theory that he develops in his dialogues Meno and Phaedo, and alludes to it in his Phaedrus.-Meno:...

—a Greek word meaning, literally, "loss of forgetfulness." I remembered who I was and where I was. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, it all came back to me. And not only could I remember it but I could see it. The girl was a secret Christian and so was I. We lived in fear of detection by the Romans. We had to communicate with cryptic signs. She had just told me all this, and it was true.

For a short time, as hard as this is to believe or explain, I saw fading into view the black, prisonlike contours of hateful Rome. But, of much more importance, I remembered Jesus, who had just recently been with us, and had gone temporarily away, and would very soon return. My emotion was one of joy. We were secretly preparing to welcome Him back. It would not be long. And the Romans did not know. They thought He was dead, forever dead. That was our great secret, our joyous knowledge. Despite all appearances, Christ was going to return, and our delight and anticipation were boundless.

In the following weeks, Dick experienced further visions, including a hallucinatory slideshow of abstract patterns and an information-rich beam of pink light. In the Exegesis, he theorized as to the origins and meaning of these experiences, frequently concluding that they were religious in nature. The being that originated the experiences is referred to by several names, including Zebra, God, and the Vast Active Living Intelligence System. From 1974 until his death in 1982, Dick wrote the Exegesis by hand in late-night writing sessions, sometimes composing as many as 150 pages in a sitting. In total, it consists of approximately 8,000 pages of notes, only a small portion of which have been published.

Besides the Exegesis, Dick described his visions and faith in numerous other works, including VALIS

VALIS

VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God....

, Radio Free Albemuth

Radio Free Albemuth

Radio Free Albemuth is a novel by Philip K. Dick, written in 1976 and published posthumously in 1985. Originally titled VALISystem A, it was his first attempt to deal in fiction with his experiences of early 1974. When his publishers at Bantam requested extensive rewrites he canned the project and...

, The Divine Invasion

The Divine Invasion

The Divine Invasion is a BSFA Award nominated 1981 science fiction book by Philip K. Dick. It is the second book in the gnostic VALIS trilogy, and takes place in the indeterminate future, perhaps a century or more after VALIS...

, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is a 1982 novel by Philip K. Dick. As his final work, the book was published shortly after his death in March 1982 following a series of strokes, although it was written the previous year...

, one brief passage in A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly is a BSFA Award winning 1977 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The semi-autobiographical story is set in a dystopian Orange County, California, in the then-future of June 1994...

, and the uncompleted The Owl in Daylight

The Owl in Daylight

The Owl in Daylight is a novel that Philip K. Dick was working on at the time of his death in 1982. He had already been paid and was working against a deadline. After his death the Philip K. Dick estate approached other writers to see about the possibility of someone writing the novel based on his...

, as well as many essays and personal letters.

In Pursuit of Valis: Selections From the Exegesis was published in 1991. In April 2010, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced plans to publish further excerpts from the Exegesis in two volumes. The first, 1056 pages long, would be released in 2011, and the second (a volume of the same length) in 2012. Editor Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...

 described the upcoming publications as "absolutely stultifying, brilliant, repetitive, and contradictory. It just might contain the secret of the universe."

External links

• Exegesis Previously unpublished pages from the Exegisis, posted online by the Philip K. Dick Trust.
• Religious Experience of Dick Cartoonist R. Crumb's depiction of events, using Dick's words as script.