Palmer Eldritch: “God promises Eternal life. I can do better; I can deliver it”

Supposedly, I told SK that I would summarize my thoughts on the Philip K. Dick book: Three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. So here it is.

The word stigmata means mark associated with a particular incident generally disgraceful. In this book, I thought the old definition would fit well. Stigmata are the marks on Christ’s body after the Crucifixion. For people more familiar with Hindi movies – the tattoo that Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) has on his left forearm in the movie Deewar would be considered a stigmata. Though in his case, it was the disgraceful incident of his father that he had to bear.

The book deals with what we call as reality and also God. Now now … lets not get carried away with the usual organized religion definitions of God. Think of the definitions from the Gita, Upanishads, Buddhism, Taoism. Very nicely summarized as: The Tao that can be thought of or spoken about is not the real Tao.

Palmer Eldritch is a guy who travels to Pluto and comes back with a new drug called Chew-Z. This drug is meant to replace the existing drug called Can-D. The latter is mainly used by the people who are sent to Mars and they use this drug to temporarily escape from dull life. Competition. The person who runs Can-D wants to have Chew-Z banned. While Can-D is a temporary ‘fix’, Chew-Z is better in that, it lets people live a life that they would like to have in their dream world. The details in the book – pre-cogs and such – are classic PKD, so won’t bore anyone with those.

Now, here’s where the story gets beautiful. Palmer Eldritch inserts himself into these dreams. He is characterized by the so-called three stigmata: a robotic right hand, artificial eyes and steel teeth. Eldritch is now capable of living in other people. It seems that once people come out of their drug-induced dreams a part of Eldritch is now in them. No escape.

The reason why Eldrich would be God or obtained some kind of God-like properties from Pluto is hinted in a few sentences. I have listed a couple:

1. “He had great power. He could overcome death”.

2. (Spoken about Eldritch) “He really exists, really is there. Although not like we’ve thought and not like we’ve experienced him up to now.

He can’t help us very much. Some maybe. But he stands with empty, open hands; he understands, he wants to help. He tries, but …. it’s just not that simple. Don’t ask me why. Maybe even he doesn’t know. Maybe it puzzles him too. Even after all the time he’s had to mull over it”.

Clearly, PKD is thinking/questioning two things: reality and god.

Here’s what I think. I like the definition of reality as described in the Upanishads or the Matrix. Maya – the source of all illusion. Yawn.  God is an abstract idea that humans have created. Now here’s a strange conundrum I just realized. In the Gita, Mr. Krishna Yadav tells Mr. Arjun Pandu says that we should treat and think about everything the same. The stone and the block of gold. Wouldn’t that mean that the word God and the corresponding concept is just another step in attaining Moksha? Therefore should be rejected at the appropriate time in the appropriate life?

Okay, I just stepped into something that I haven’t really thought about. Better to stay away. Thats the thing about PKD books. Makes you think about reality and all that.

Mind wandering into thinking about these things. Will stop writing about PKD now. Not much of a summary but it is what it is.

Before I sign off, I am currently reading the short stories of Saadat Hassan Manto. Urdu writer from Independence/Partition days. Recommended by my sister. Loving what I have read so far.