The writing of the first entry of folder 85 (667) was triggered by a dream PKD had. He dreamt about The Exegesis itself: He saw a white circle in the middle of a page of the manuscript, covering what was written beneath. The question he immediately asks is: “What does that signify?” followed by an attempt to understand “the message” of this dream. He ponders the existence of a non-existent reality, wich he calls “non-is.” A surprising statement at first sight. His attempt to find the properties of this “non-is” is based on his remarks about the difference between 2D and 3D—the latter necessitates a void. He even adds a fourth dimension to it—namely, time. Is “non-is” a fifth dimension? First, he focuses on what is (or, rather, what is not) “is” using reality as a point of reference. The goold ol’ shakspearean “to be or not to be?” Not quite. The resulting paradox is striking: “the authentic reality is the world of what is not.” What does PKD actually mean? He does not seem to know the answer himself since he is unsure about the properties of “is-not.” Therefore, he puts forward three hypothetical hypotheses in the form of three questions: 1) “Non-is” is part of the domain of the Yin; 2) “Non-is” is the matter partially filling space; and 3) “Is” is at the periphery of “non-is.”
His remarks about the relationship between reality and being provide a framework that is fruitful in order to investigate the workings of Ubik (published in 1969). The idea that “existence is a decayed state of reality” is hard to interpret but it also confirms a posteriori (it is mentioned in endnote #85 that this folder was probably written between 1975 and 1980) the intention of PKD in this novel—id est to work on a narrative that challenges the reader’s understanding of reality. His experiment is a literal translation of his initial idea: The objects surrounding Joe Chip and his crew are literally decaying as the characters ‘travel’—so to say—through time.
Furthermore, PKD’s understanding of reality in this fragment of The Exegesis is combined with a religious dimension—a sixth dimension? The end of the third paragraph—“As soon as something is created it has fallen (away from the actuality state of nonbeing)”—echoes with Christian references: The fallen angel, Lucifer. However, it seems wrong to impose a good-evil duality on being and non-being. Similarly, the syllogism at the end of the third paragraph goes beyond the traditional understanding of the Christian God: “God = void. God = absolute being. Void = absolute being.” Once again, what does PKD mean here? The void, which is necessary to the third dimension, is at once ubiquitous and sacred. It is also at the core of being (l’être). As a consequence, PKD’s theory on reality leads to this unsolvable equation: ‘non-being=being.’ Therefore, his final assertion—”To understand this we must elucidate and define the properties of that which is not”—leads to a dead end.
However, adopting a monostic point of view here might be helpful. What if the duality that separates non-being and being was actually the bridge that unites the two notions in a single entity? Thus, the modern-then-primitive elevator that traumatizes Joe Chip in Ubik would ‘be’ and ‘not be’ at once. The primitive elevator is just another instance of its “being.” Similarly, the modern elevator is also another instance of its “being.” Two different realities for the (supposedly) same object. Two “decayed” instances—or I would rather use the term ‘incomplete’ instead. And there even exists in the novel an intermediate version of the elevator—older, but not as old as the ‘primitive’ one. What is the elevator, then? Well, the elevator ‘is not.’ In order to grasp the “authentic reality beneath or behind it,” one has to think of the elevator as a non-being. In that same fashion, the reader of Ubik is confronted to multiple manifestations of the same objects which ‘are not’ in any given reality.
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