Inverted Mirror Worlds

Fragmented Landscapes & High Weirdness

Unless you know what the reality is, you will always tend to pursue the appearance.

Idries Shah

Reality as we perceive it is within an inverted state – or at least, this is the point I am making. Because of this condition, humanity views life as if through a mirror that projects back an upside-down reflection. Further, what we know to be our reality construct is splintering, since a purely material construct cannot maintain its existence indefinitely without connection and communion within a greater psychic unification. And from this, a gnostic-like awareness of being embedded in a ‘reality construct’ will increase as our technologies progressively intermediate the physical life experience. The gnostic vision shows that we occupy a counterfeit reality that veils our perception of the Greater Reality. A counterfeit reality exists because there is another Reality on the flipside. One way to say this is that there is a ‘false solidification’ of the world based on counterfeit materiality – welcome to the Inversion. One person who understood this and spent his whole creative life trying to decipher it was the writer Philip K. Dick. In one of his later essays, written near the end of his life – ‘Cosmogony and Cosmology’ (1978) – Dick attempted to put his gnostic understanding into a personal cosmology. His essay opens with the words:

As to our reality being a projected framework -- it appears to be a projection by an artifact, a computerlike teaching machine that guides, programs, and generally controls us as we act without awareness of it within our projected world. The artifact, which I call Zebra, has “created” (actually only projected) our reality as a sort of mirror or image of its maker, so that the maker can obtain thereby an objective standpoint to comprehend its own self.¹

Dick viewed life as an evolving projected reality that is defective and ‘malshaped.’ And yet this very defectiveness was what compelled the human being to seek a merger, or assimilation, with the Source (or what Dick referred to as the ‘Urgrund’ after Jakob Böhme coined it as the Absolute). In our current state, Dick considered that the individual already possessed fragments – or ‘fractions’ – of the Urgrund/Absolute/Source within them, and that the ultimate goal of a human life was to accomplish this human-Source merger: ‘Already humans so closely approximate isomorphism with the Urgrund that the Urgrund can be born within a human being.’² In Dick’s perspective, this Urgrund (Absolute – Source of All) was all the time penetrating into this false reality construct, and attempting either to trigger/activate people, or wait for them to awaken themselves, towards the time when a merger could be accomplished. After this merger (or ‘Blitz’ as Dick said, again using a term from the German mystic Jakob Böhme), the human being would have a perceptual comprehension of Reality that transcended all current temporal and spatial limits of the Inversion. If enough people were to assimilate with Source (the merger) then the artificial reality construct (the Inversion) would be annihilated. In its place would be a sentient reality-awareness that was simultaneously all within the Urgrund/Source.

            Similar to the grander gnostic vision, Dick believed that the false god/Demiurge (or ‘artifact’) is not evil, and neither is the false projected world of the Demiurge. Rather, the Demiurge is ‘ruthlessly deterministic and mechanical.’ And in this, it cannot be appealed to. The Demiurge is itself an artifact that cannot fathom any greater truth beyond itself or purpose for being. It merely performs a function and is callously indifferent in this – this is the force that I refer to as the machinic impulse. This attitude is almost identical to those expressed by some contemporary tech-scientists who are working towards the actualization of artificial intelligence (A.I.). They also believe that the coming A.I. is likely to be indifferent to human intelligence because it will be operating within a different reality construct. For Dick, reality must be regarded as a process that is moving towards the birth, or merger, of the Source within the human being. In the meantime, humans are compelled to suffer the pangs of pain that come with living within a seemingly indifferent cosmos. Dick’s cosmology is a model that, as he says, suggests that our world is the attempt by a limited entity to create a copy – a mimicry. This would then account for the imperfections and the ‘evil’ elements contained within this reality construct. This model explains, according to Dick, the following facts:

1. the empirical world is not quite real, but only seemingly real;

2. its creator cannot be appealed to for a rectification or redress of these evils and imperfections;

3. the world is moving toward some kind of end state or goal, the nature of which is obscure, but the evolutionary aspect of the change states suggests a good and purposeful end state that has been designed by a sentient and benign proto-entity.³

In this schema, the Urgrund/Source-of-All and humanity is moving toward fusion whereby the intermediary entity (artifact-Demiurge) is moving toward final elimination.

            Of course, this also begs the question that if the Demiurge gained a realization of its own eventual demise, would it not seek cunning ways to avoid this? Perhaps the acceleration towards A.I. and a world techno-infrastructure is a means to sabotage this human-Source merger by further encapsulating the human being in an artificial, deceptive construct? What Dick’s cosmology does show is a form of evolutionary struggle, or contestation, between a natural evolutionary trajectory and an artificial devolutionary path. And within the reality construct, it is likely to be difficult to discern which pressures arise from the Demiurge – the artifact of error and falsity – and which from the Greater Reality of Source. This, it may be surmised, represents our ongoing human struggle in the polarity between ‘good and evil,’ as it has been commonly depicted throughout millennia. Dick’s cosmology also recognizes this polarity struggle by saying that there is evidence that the Urgrund/Source does, from time to time, make a revelation to human beings in order to further the positive evolutionary process towards enlightened or perceptual knowing. And to counteract this impulse, the Demiurgic ‘false god’ entity would induce ‘blindness or occlusion’ to further the unknowing and perceptual darkness. This, argues Dick, is the perpetual struggle between ‘knowing versus nonknowing.’

            Regardless of all this, Dick confesses that he is pessimistic over the human future as the established artificial construct is just too good at doing what it does – it functions too well. Humans can therefore not rely solely on intervention to help them escape this false prison. They must also seek to activate the sacred spark within them. The rising must first come from within the individual if there is hope of meeting half-way the intervention of the Source from beyond the construct:

Intervention in our world qua world will come only at the end times when the artifact and its tyrannical rule of us, its iron enslavement of us, is abolished. The Urgrund is real but far away. The artifact is real and very close, but has no ears to hear, no eyes to see, no soul to listen.⁴

The important aspect here is the recognition that within the current reality construct, the Inversion, there is an alternative nonvisible realm of authentic reality. That such a truth exists, concealed by the projected reality or mirror world, would constitute, says Dick, the ‘greatest esoteric knowledge that could be imagined.’ Further, there is most likely to be unknown groups/organizations that guard the knowledge of such techniques that can trigger the perceptive awareness of this authentic reality.

            Another significant point here, in this inverted mirror world – the reality of Dick’s high weirdness – is the polarized struggle between liberation and enslavement: ‘Inasmuch as the artifact enslaves men, without their even suspecting it, the artifact and its projected world can be said to be “hostile,” which means devoted to enslavement, deception, and spiritual death.’ Within the dreaming mind, life is artificially hostile to awakening and individualized liberation. And yet this state of affairs has become normalized within the dominant reality construct. For this reason, we can say that reality is inverted as people are conditioned to accept their ‘enslavement, deception, and spiritual death’ as part of the regular way of life – and to not know it. The reality that is presented to us is a counterfeit one, and it is mightily effective. It is so effective, and efficient, that most people are not tempted to seek for any alternative. The coercive power of the Demiurgic dreaming mind is as penetrating as it is subtle. To affirm the existence of the Greater Reality, the person will have to deny the dominance of the consensus one. In the past, this has caused the ‘denier’ much harassment, persecution, and even death. The dreaming construct does not gladly tolerate dissenters. Unless a person can reach a point where they can deny the reality construct through a form of initiation – ‘to die before you die’ – then they remain entrapped within it for their whole life experience. Liberation thus requires a specific form of abandonment – a giving up of one’s persona and the dominance of the egoic self. This has been considered part of the ‘learning process’ as a way to defeat the enslavement of the dream programming. Dick outlines several aspects necessary within this learning process:

1. We must recognize the existence of the artifact.

2. We must recognize the spuriousness of the empirical world, generated by the artifact.

3. We must grasp the fact that the artifact has by its world-projecting power enslaved us.

4. We must recognize the fact that the artifact, although enslaving us in a counterfeit world, is teaching us.

5. We must finally come to the point where we disobey our teacher -- perhaps the most difficult moment in life, inasmuch as that teacher says, “I will destroy you if you disobey me, and I would be morally right to do so, since I am your Creator.”⁵

By disobeying the ‘teacher’ (the false-god), a person is denying the reality construct – and this is the whole point. Yet this is not an easy stage to arrive at, especially within a reality construct that throws so many distractions at the dreamer. Those people who benefit most from the artificial construct – through fame, wealth, pleasure, etc., – are the ones least likely to turn against it, and even less likely to deny it. What happens is that such dreamers make sustained efforts to maintain the reality construct, as to secure their benefits. The Inversion is thus maintained from within by willing interests. The dreamers self-perpetuate the inverted dream for they are having pleasure, or take benefit, from its very existence.

            Those persons less likely to benefit from the reality construct would be considered those most likely to question it. And yet this is not always the case. Such disgruntled people may question the unfairness of reality and its inequality, but on the whole this resistance takes place within the accepted reality paradigm. Something ‘extra’ is required for a person to consider seeking a vision, or transcendent view, beyond the dominant construct. Triggers from beyond the reality program are necessary. What we ‘see’ and experience in this reality acts like a mirror. And a mirror can both reflect and deflect. It can reflect aspects that make us question what we see; it may give us a better angle to notice what is missing, or what may perhaps be the original source of the reflections. At the same time, the mirror deflects us from the origin, the original image, and bedazzles us with sparkling counterfeit images and distractions. This mirror world is the dreamer’s world, and it is full of fragmented landscapes, high weirdness, and distorted perceptions.

The Dreamer’s Dilemma

As Above, So Below. The dreamer is also a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic Source. Within the dreamer’s inner being exists a reflection of the Greater Reality. The dreamer is also a shard, a fragment, of the True Reality – this also comprises part of the mirroring. Dick refers to this micro-macrocosm relationship as the following:

1. On the surface, the universe consists of a spurious projected reality, under which lies an authentic substratum of the divine. It is difficult to penetrate to this substratum.

2. On the surface, the human mind consists of a short-term limited ego that is born and dies and comprehends very little, but behind this human ego lies the divine infinitude of absolute mind. It is difficult to penetrate to this substratum.⁶

To penetrate into the realm of Source, it is the individual who must make the first active step. That is, the individual must make the initial effort to ‘open themselves’ to the influence of the Greater Reality. If not, any interventions from beyond the construct will only fall onto ‘deaf ears,’ or unfertile soil. The Inversion is a dream of separation and alienation; of having no direct contact with the Source of our being – with Origin. And this is the nature of the counterfeit mirror world. It is similar to light plunging into the darker density of water; it is refracted upon entry and the light ray appears twisted at an angle. We perceive this dislocation, this fracturing of light, without realizing that it is a direct reflection from the origin (the Sun). In a similar way, we are not responding to the rays of light entering the dark density of our realm: the Origin is receiving no reply. The dreamer is asleep to the Call that has gone out.

            The responsibility for the transmutation is upon each person. This is the difficulty, and the lesson, of being within the reality construct we call life. It represents both a separation – a splintering – as well as a longing. Within the present moment we are also longing to return. The division is real and yet it is not. It can be said to be a real illusion. This is the dreamer’s dilemma – the paradox within the program. Dick speculated as part of his gnostic cosmology that the Urgrund (Source) was attempting to reach its objective by reflecting itself back to itself, using the individual (in this case, Dick himself) as a point of reflection. We may consider ourselves as localized pinpoints of being that reflect the Source back to Source, and through developing this mutual communication a merger is achieved. Humanity can become a faithful and authentic reflection of Source, rather than the counterfeit dreamer’s distorted reflection.

            It is because of the innate reflective characteristics of the reality construct that we have in our realm the notion of polarity and polarization. Since this counterfeit reality is but a reflection/projection, it is not whole or complete in itself. This split from Origin is the very reason why this realm is defined and/or experienced through polarity – it is not unified. And since it is fractured off from the original Source, then by its very nature it is fractured within. These splinters are recognized through polarity relationships, which are themselves reflections of division and fragments of the whole. The Inversion is animated through the dynamism of opposing aspects or seeming opposites. These ‘opposites’ are themselves reflections of one another, just as the dreamer’s existence is a reflection of Source. Within this realm of polarity, we sense intuitively that we are strangers, that we do not belong – we are as strangers within a strange land. Yet if we confront the world directly, we become antagonistic to it. As an analogy, it is like we are wandering around as foreign entities within a host’s body. Once we are awake and aware to this fact then we must continue to move around within the host in disguise, for were we to reveal our true origin then the host’s antibodies would immediately view us as a danger and come to attack us. In this way, the artificial construct protects itself. And for now, we must do the same. If the dreamer awakens, they would do well to step lightly and carefully: to be ‘in the world yet not of the world.’

            Entanglement and attachment to the dreaming realm is only going to get deeper and more entrenched. The dense fog is becoming denser, aided by the acceleration of technological means to increase the hold, and control, of the artificial. The artificial is the antithesis of the Real. It is the jewel in the crown of the Inversion. The normalization of this estrangement, which is the cause of much suffering, is the Demiurge’s ultimate victory, says Dick: ‘The victim colludes in his own suffering, and is willing to collude in a willingness to agree to the naturalness of suffering in general. Seeking to find a purpose in suffering is like seeking to find a purpose in a counterfeit coin.’⁷ If we seek too long amidst the things of the unreal, we will eventually come to accept the counterfeit things as the end of our seeking. This is similar to the well-known joke of the drunk searching under the streetlight for his keys. A passer-by joins in the search and after a time of finding nothing, the passer-by asks if the drunk was sure he had dropped his keys here. ‘Oh, no,’ replies the drunk. ‘I dropped them over there in the park.’ When the passer-by asks why the drunk is searching here, the drunk replies that there is more light here to see with. This once ancient tale has now become known in modern times as the ‘streetlight effect’ that signifies a type of observational bias that occurs when people are only willing to search for something where it is easiest to look. However, within the dreaming mind the easiest place to look is amongst the artifices of mimicry and within the counterfeit deceptions. This is the beguilement that sustains the trance of the Inversion. This is the marketplace that for too long has been selling our parts back to ourselves. I shall leave the final words here to the late Philip K. Dick, gnostic unraveller and reveller: ‘We got entangled in enchantment, a gingerbread cottage that beguiled us into enslavement and ruin.’⁸

[The above essay was taken from Kingsley Dennis’ forthcoming book The Inversion: How We Have Been Tricked into Perceiving a False Reality (Aeon Books, September 2023)]

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References

¹ Dick, P.K. ‘Cosmogeny and Cosmology’ (1978), p281, The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (ed. Lawrence Sutin). 1995. New York: Vintage Books.

² ibid, p282

³ ibid, p284

⁴ ibid, p286

⁵ ibid, p291

⁶ ibid, p293

⁷ ibid, p307

⁸ ibid, p310