Ant :
The movie is my all time favorite sci fi flick.
Its one of mine as well, interestingly in PKD's Exegesis, he describes Androids as his Christ and Blade Runner as a Satan.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is one of the most complicated books I have ever read. For me it will require research in philosophy, religion, science, all subjects I'm familiar with but not adept at, then a reread of his exegesis to pick up what has gone over my head.
Anyway here's a bit from the exegesis regarding Androids and Blade Runner.
This is from folder #64
[56:19A] The intellect-as opposed to the senses-can know the true nature of the world-not because of some occult power in the intellect- but because the true nature of the world is intelligible
in itself (as the Pythagoreans taught: ratio and mathematical truth, not a substance but structure). There is, then, a one-to-one correspondence between the human intellect and the true nature of the world, and this explains the meta-abstraction: why it revealed the true nature of the world to me (and my own nature to myself). The true structure of the universe is cognate to human reasoning, and this is the paradigm of Pythagoras and his insight upon hearing the anvil struck. Thus my exegesis with its emphasis on the reasoning faculty, the meta-abstraction, the overcoming of "cognitive estrangement" is by no means a waste of time or a blind alley but is pure Platonism, the meta-abstraction being noesis acquired through anamnesis. One might even say that the meta-abstraction is not only a revelation of
how the universe is construted but
that it is an intelligible structure and
that the human reason is able to comprehend it- and it is precisely this that over comes "cognitive estrangement" by yielding up cognitive comprehension as the final yield pertaining both to self and world: the part-whole relationship. Thus it is taught by Plato that there is a spark of the divine in the human soul.
[56:1B] December 12, 1981
Though he seeks to sell his (Satan's) power fantasies (Blade Runner) he unknowingly promulgates the third Kerygma: the ecosphere (animals) is now ensouled: holy. [...]
My god, this movie is the greatest defeat (what was done to the book) and victory (the Tagore kerygma promulgated); the first is ostensible, the latter cryptic. Oddly, the first appears ostensibly to be a victory but is really a defeat; nonetheless a real victory lurks secretly under it, but it is not the victory that people will think the making of a movie from my book is. They will say, "it is a great victory to have your book made into one of the biggest movies of all time" but they will not know why; it doesn't have to do with what is in the movie, etc.; it has to do with what is in the novel. [...]
The beetle I was tormenting back when I was in the third grade- I saw it as holy, as Christ. Later the turtle was Christ. The rat who screamed was Christ, and appears as such in
Tears; this is the revelation in
Tears by means of the dream: the rat ensouled and now King Felix: Christ. The crippled lamb who lagged behind. Pinky as pink sheep humiliated and killed. Its all in
Androids, and finally the Tagore vision explicates what was already in
Androids as doctrine, and in
Tears as revelatory cypher. The movie is defeat; the novel victory, ostensible vast loss, secret good shinning almost invisibly from beneath this defeat, these fascist power fantasies they've made it into. Evil has served good; evil appears to win but it is good that actually does.[...]
The Tagore vision is a summation of all that has gone before. Looking at Pinky there toward the end and seeing the passion, seeing Christ humiliated and dying- that was not one vision among many; that was not an aspect of a vision: that was the core of it, the beating heart of it all; when that is coupled with the revelation of the Logos in camouflaged form invading reality (the ecosphere) and transubstantiating it- add these two together, and there it all is. This not quite the same as Jesus Patibilis; it is a new revelation of something dynamic: a process of conquest. Ah; last night I saw in my mind the Godhead moving into the animal kingdom, and I saw the vast joy that the Godhead experienced in receiving that fallen, lower kingdom (domain) back; not the joy of and by that kingdom, but the joy of and by the Godhead; the Godhead moved into that lower kingdom and inhaled it, drew it back in by it- the Godhead-advancing into the lower, fallen kingdom long separated from the Godhead; and what beauty! The colors, the love, bliss by itself, by the Godhead, to receive back that domain with all the life in it. This was a vision of what I had seen in 3-74 of Valis (the Logos) invading reality; there I saw it with my outer eye's, externally, but last night it was an inner vision, and I had forgotten it until this moment; I experienced the jopy and love on the part of the Godhead to do this thing, not what was done for the animal kingdom but what the Godhead felt. Colors, as Dante describes the Trinity in Paradiso: the varicolored rings of light; I saw that like rings of Saturn advancing into the animal domain. "The love that moves the Sun and other stars" -it had regained the lost animal kingdom; and this is my vision going back to the beetle I was tormenting in the third grade; it is one vision extended over all my life. And I found it in Act III of
Parsifal the good Friday spell.[...] As the EB says, To see in the old dilapidated bum the Christ; that is the Christian Dispensation. But I see in the sick, humiliated, dying animal the Christ, literally saw; and this is the Third Dispensation, the cat crapping and wild, and then all of a sudden tamed and wise, like a saint; It was the Christ and this is a new dispensation, Tagore's. Before it was, Where the man is, there is Christ. Now it is, Where the animal is, there is Christ. To see this and understand this: for this I was fashioned from the beginning; for this I was made. My original satori regarding the beetle was the true one; everything else only amplifies.[...]
A strange an mysterious strategy; to put the new kerygma in a novel published in the late sixties but then disclosed to me only now, toward the end of 1981, but just at the time we get the signed contract with the
Blade Runner people to rerelease the novel in conjunction with the film- as if the
VALIS trilogy has diverted everyone's attention, my own included, like when the thought came to me that true message was in "Frozen Journey" and not in
VALIS! The true message is not in
VALIS, but it is, I now think, in
Androids and it will have the greatest circulation- probably- of all. Viewed in terms of Gods strategy,
Blade Runner has been used as a means to an end, the end being the kerygma in
Androids. Thus to have suppressed
Androids and either written authorized the novelization based on the screenplay would have been to hand over victory to evil, but this did not happen. The fully executed contract between
Blade Runner and me regarding the rerelease of
Androids was waiting for me in the post office box on Friday, the day I was up in Venice and learned the truth.
To share-experience-the joy by the Godhead as it invades-expands into-the animal kingdom, lost to it all these many millennia! The repair to the damaged Godhead! Yes it is a self-repair, a re-inhaling, a recovery of part of its lost self. Christ reknitting the decomposing cosmos and restoring it to God. Christ moves lower and lower, deeper and deeper into the decomposing cosmos, down layer by layer, starting with man. Thus the vision of Christ at and in the trash layer(stratum) is a vision of ultimate and final repair.
Why am I so joyful? I am celebrating a victory and can now stop work- finally-and relax. Why? Because I did my job and I know it. What was the job? To get the third Dispensation in print, and I did so in
Androids-I need to nothing else in my life. The Tagore vision: the Godhead expanding into the ecosphere (animal kingdom)
Okay: there are other aspects. I didn't sell out to Hollywood: (1) do the novelization or (2) permit the novelization; (3) suppress the original book. And in view of what the film is about it would have destroyed me for two reasons, not one: (A) the Tagore vision in
Androids; (B) the Heinlein power fantasies in
Blade Runner. These are antithetical and they express the opposing kingdom's Christ (
Androids) and Satan (
Blade Runner). Look what it would have done to me spiritually and psychologically and politically. My soul is safe, and it was in jeopardy. This is why I see victory despite the vast defeat.