"Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood."
At this point in the novel, Arctor has had a complete mental breakdown and is now living at a New Path drug rehabilitation center in Santa Ana, California. While he sits there, cradling his cup of warm coffee, he hears the conversation of others, one of whom speaks this quote. This passage provides a negative picture of the detrimental effects of substance abuse; in some sense, it dulls one's senses to the point of severing the connection between existence and life, making a person a mere shell. This metaphor is powerful; it's clear PKD didn't look favorably upon his own decisions regarding drugs.
"Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then, briefly."
Paranoia is one of this novel's overarching themes, as most of its characters are thoroughly paranoid. While watching his housemate Barris through surveillance cameras, Arctor thinks that his own paranoia regarding Barris (who seems to be out to get him) has actually been justified, and that is precisely what Barris seems to be doing. Every once in a while, paranoid suspicions can be grounded, but Dick quickly qualifies this by adding "briefly;" paranoia is an unhealthy way to live, and he wants to make sure the reader knows that.
"What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too."
This quote is perhaps one of the novel's most important paragraphs. The book's title is based on 1 Corinthians 13:12, which says, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (KJV). It has to do with the obscure nature of truth in this life; our perception is clouded and muddled, and it's impossible to truly know ourselves. The Scriptural verse looks forward to a time when these limitations will be removed (heaven), but the novel's passage is a bit more fatalistic. If, as Arctor thinks, he cannot know himself through pure subjectivity, and a "scanner" cannot know him through pure objectivity, who is he? Technology is wonderful, but it isn't an end in itself, merely a temporal means of making life easier and more enjoyable. Taken as an all-encompassing worldview, however, it becomes extremely dangerous and reductionistic, removing value from life beyond the physical, an eventuality PKD warns against.
