17 - P. K. Dick and Gnosticism

 This is the paper I presented at the Philip K Dick Convention at San Francisco State University two years ago.

1957 edition. I have it.

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick was an ardent believer in Gnosticism, and he incorporated it in writings. Dick was so dedicated to popularizing the Gnostic philosophy that during his last years he wrote an 8000-page tome on the subject.

He was the author of many popular short novels, including the 1957 novel “Eye in the Sky”. Although Dick never mentioned in interviews that “Eye in the Sky” was a Gnostic novel, the story is permeated with Gnostic ideas.

The Gnostics were a sect active in the second century CE. They combined the Christian religion with the Platonic principle that ideas are perfect and the physical world is an illusion. They believed that the world was created by the Demiurge, an inferior God who thought of himself as the supreme deity. This Demiurge created an imperfect world because he was imperfect himself: he was deluded and self serving, and he meddled in human affairs. The Gnostics identified the Demiurge with the Biblical God, and they asserted that the only means of salvation for humans was to seek not an imperfect God, but Gnosis (knowledge), and Sophia - goddess of Wisdom.

This Christian sect also rewrote the story of Adam and Eve, and the beginning of PK Dick's novel has several analogies to it. The novel opens with scientist Jack Hamilton being dismissed from the nuclear missile plant where he works, by the powerful Col. Edwards. Edwards suspects Hamilton's wife, Marsha, of being a communist: “[She] protest[ed] the barring of Charlie Chaplin from the United States...[she] is mixed up in too many pro-left movements” (Dick 6). In reality Marsha just goes to different groups because she wants to be informed: “She is curious; she is interested. Does her being there prove she agrees with what they're saying?” explains Jack (Dick 8); but this is the McCarthy era, so Jack and his wife are banned from the plant's grounds.

Jack and Marsha resemble the Gnostic Adam and Eve. In the Gnostic Gospels, Eve, following the advice of Sophia, eats from the Tree of Knowledge. Then the Demiurge, feeling threatened, expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (Scott and McClure 180). In Dick's story, Marsha seeks knowledge, like Eve. Edwards, here acting like the power-hungry Demiurge, perceives Jack and Marsha as a threat and bans them.

Col. Edwards is just the first instance of a character in the story impersonating the Demiurge. In “Eye in the Sky” most characters take a turn at being the Demiurge and at forcing people to live in their fantasy world. PKD sends the rest of the characters, and us readers, into a quest for Sophia – wisdom – and the authentic reality.

In the novel, a group of visitors, together with Jack and Marsha, take a tour of a mysterious machine, the 'Bevatron.' A sudden explosion causes the participants to fall into the Bevatron's chamber, where they lie in a coma, but moments later they get up and believe the incident is over.

However, the next day a giant 'Eye' appears in the sky, like an all-seeing Biblical God. This god, like the unjust Demiurge, rains locusts on people who lie, but does not touch real sinners because, “You think virtue can exist without sin? ” (Dick 65). Hamilton realizes that this god is the product of the mind of one of the tour participants: Arthur Sylvester, a religious fanatic. Jack and the rest of the group decide to neutralize Sylvester in the hope to come back to every day reality. Instead, they find themselves in the mind-world of Mrs. Pritchett, a wealthy middle-aged mother, who understands she is the owner of this world.

From this moment on, the world of each 'Demiurge' is no longer what they think it is, but what they will it to be, and the consequences of their unchecked power are always disastrous. Pritchett, in order to shape her dream world, starts with eliminating some troublesome categories, and soon she destroys the entire fabric of existence, including herself. Joan Weiss, the bookstore owner who comes after her, turns out to be a dangerous sadist: “I want to see everything you do...I want to make you do things...” (Dick 173) are her first ominous words as her reality emerges. She too will be made powerless by the rest of the group.

Besides the ongoing theme of an out of control creator, “Eye in the Sky” presents other parallels with Gnostic concepts: for example, in the Gnostic Gospels Sophia prophetizes that the Demiurge will be defeated by an 'enlightened one' (Scott and McClure 174), and in Dick's story each 'world creator' is finally made harmless by the rest of the exasperated group.

A second example is the theme that the world we live in is an illusion: the Bevatron visitors often have flash-backs of their bodies still unconscious in the Bevatron chamber, so we never know if the events of the story are real or if they are just the electrical activity of dying brains. We as readers have to decide what reality is, and what we would like it to be; like the Gnostics, we search for knowledge and wisdom.

Another Gnostic concern is self determination: the next world that the group experiences belongs to McFeyffe, the company spy who had 'outed' the innocent Marsha. He is the real Communist; he confesses that Communists and Capitalists cannot tolerate people, like Marsha, who think on their own: “People like your wife ... just won't obey orders” (Dick 231). This echoes the sentiment of the Gnostics, persecuted by the early Christians and by the Roman Empire for their views (Scott and McClure 170).

In the end, the survivors awake to the real world - at least Hamilton says it is - and we take a breath of relief. Here, Hamilton will produce a new Hi-Fi music system together with Bill Laws, a black graduate in physics who guided the tour of the Bevatron. The project will be financed by Mrs. Pritchett. “Let's get to work!” they exclaim (Dick 243).

The novel ends on that upbeat note but, as he typically does, PK Dick leaves us with a cliff-hanger: are the protagonists back to reality, or are they in Hamilton's mind? Several clues show that the latter is true. According to the logic explained in the story, each person's turn as a 'creator' is dictated by the order in which they fell into the Bevatron chamber. The last person to fall, after McFeyffe, was Hamilton, so it is his turn. Another indication that we are in Hamilton's mind is his assurance that the group is back in the normal world. In the story, every person whose reality was being played out declares they are in the normal world. It is normal to them!

New edition of the book

Is this still a happy ending? Hamilton is the most level-headed person in the group, so we can speculate that his companions will like living in his reality. But we can't be sure that his world will be better than the others. When we analyze Hamilton's character, we realize that he has serious flaws, so his world will be flawed to0.

Hamilton, for example, disrespects his wife: when in Pritchett's world, he tries to have an affair with a prostitute in his own house to provoke Marsha, because she had agreed with Mrs. Pritchett's straight-laced views. His behavior toward Bill Laws, his black scientist friend, is no better. Hamilton declares several times that the group was better off in the world of the racist Sylvester than in the saccharine world of Mrs. Pritchett. However, in Sylvester's world Bill Laws was a shuffling illiterate, while in Pritchett's world he had a director's job (albeit in a factory of perfumed soaps).
Hamilton dislikes Pritchett so much that he even connives with the sadistic Joan Weiss to end Pritchett's reality, thus plunging the group into their worst nightmare, Joan Weiss' world.

The ending is in part positive because people learn to cooperate instead of imposing their views, so they achieve a sort of Gnostic wisdom. However, the characters are not living in the true reality, but in Hamilton's mind, and Dick does not consider this situation to be ideal: he showed us many instances of Hamilton being insensitive to others.

In conclusion, throughout his novel PK Dick is faithful to Gnostic ideas: that people have to learn and seek wisdom; that beings are inherently flawed and cannot create a flawless world; and that when people play God they end up behaving like monsters, or, as the Gnostics would have said, as Demiurges.

Works Cited:
Dick, Philip K. Eye in the Sky. New York: Collier Books, 1993, c1957. Print.
Leonard, Scott, and Michael McClure. Myth and Knowing. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.