The plasmate is one of the strongest links between ancient Gnosticism and the modern Phildickian variety.

Phil believed that in December of 1945 something of world shaking occurred. It was in this year that a shepard, Mohammed Ali Samman, set out into the mountains near his village in search of fertilizer. Instead, he found a large red jar within one of the caves. He was scared, fearing it might contain a demonic spirit. Phil might not be so quick to say those fears were unjustified. In any case, the lid was lifted and a golden mist rose from it. The most logical explanation for this, of course, is that fine particles of the contents were simply wafted upwards by the air currents. Phil might say this was simply an outward sign of a more subtle and mysterious event which occurred as Mohammed Ali Samman lifted several somewhat decayed, and obviously ancient, books from their resting place. Though a long series of adventures some of these texts would first make their way to the world, passing through such notable hands as the psychologist Carl Jung. Phil believed something else escaped from the pot at the same time.

To understand exactly what this “something” is, we need to look back at some of Phil’s other beliefs. He saw the world as an irrational creation, a product of a deranged mind. However, a force of sanity and of goodness exists outside of it. This force can send part of itself outward into our universe, like an amoeba extending a pseudo pod. Much like the amoeba, it can also consume what it touches. Phil postulated that one such protrusion was extended into the world as Jesus. Christ was able to spread this healing as information, but not information in a normal sense. Dick says that it was “living information” that was sent out from Jesus. He called this living information the plasmate, and says this is the true meaning of the proverb of the mustard seed. Where the plasmate fell on good soil, a fertile mind suited to it, this living information was able to take root. In this state it would begin to bind itself into the human host, creating something anew that was a hybrid of the two forces. The plasmate could create a human possessing the Gnosis. A human whose nature was not that of its irrational creator, but of a higher nature. The human might still be clothed in corruption, but his essence would be converted, or partially so at any rate, to that of a higher realm.

Phil believed that these were the ancient Gnostic Christians. The proto-orthodox church and the roman empire arose as antibodies of the irrational system, excising and destroying anyone who had crossbonded with the plasmate, and any remaining source of the plasmate. It managed to secrete itself away, as the authentic teachings of Jesus, in the caves near Nag Hammadi. It was released, it was angered, and it set out to reestablish itself within the world and continue the healing process.

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The Plasmate and the Meme >>

Plasmate and the Meme

A particularly fascinating facit of the plasmate ideas is its similarity to the meme. The term “meme” was created by Richard Dawkins, an ethologist and popular science writer. In 1976 he wrote a book about genetics, aimed at a lay audience, titled The Selfish Gene. Dawkins noted that evolution wasn’t really tied into DNA as such. Evolution is a process by which self replicating units of information reproduce, mutate, and are selected for or against by environmental pressures. This would later become most observable within a branch of artificial intelligence development called genetic programming. There, evolution was perfectly observable and useful, without any ties to the chemical structure of DNA. In that context, it was just units of information contained within a silicon substrate which took up the role. Dawkins proposed something very similar within the context of human social interaction.

Richard observed that concepts or ideas would also behave in a similar manner to genes. They replicated themselves via human communication, they were subject to mutation via alternation or development of the ideas within an individual who might then spread the alternation, and they live or die by how well or often they are transmitted. While not a perfect one to one ratio when some specific details are examined, it’s still a metaphor which carries a large amount of validity.

Memes, like genes, are a subset of a larger whole. Genes, of course, are grouped into components of chromosomes. These chromosomes in turn are contained within the larger world of the cell. Collections of memes analogous to a chromosome are often called a memeplex, short for “coadapted meme complex.”

The plasmate is certainly much larger than a single meme. Within it lies the most significant aspects of an entire culture. Everything which was most important to three hundred years worth of philosophical striving is encoded within the plasmate. The Nag Hammadi Library is the initial vector (Phil’s “seed form”), like an engineered virus is to modern genetic engineering. The Nag Hammadi vector then inserts the plasmate into a human host. This initial implantation transmits the plasmate as it was when it went into hiding during the 3rd century. Later, the plasmate memeplex is given a chance to breed, mutate, and breed again. Its individual meme components spread, and the whole is made larger and stronger as the composite organism containing it begins to ingest the current culture, heal portions of it, and then expel the purified form back into the social environment.

Phildickian Gnosticism: The many religions of Philip K. Dick
John Emerson, November 14, 2005k