The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

Folder 9^*

[9:1] Fat later developed a theory that the universe is made out of information. He started keeping a journal—had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time. His encounter with God was all there on the pages in his—Fat’s, not God’s—handwriting.

The term “journal” is mine, not Fat’s. His term was “Exegesis,” a theological term meaning a piece of writing that explains or interprets a portion of scripture. Fat believed that the information fired at him from time to time was holy in origin and hence a form of scripture.

One of his paragraphs impressed me enough to copy it out and include it here.

“Summary. (etc.—v. tractate)”

Fat developed a lot of unusual theories to account for his contact with God, and the information derived therefrom. One in particular struck me as thought-provoking. It amounted to a kind of mental capitulation by Fat to what he was undergoing; this theory held that in actuality he wasn’t experiencing anything at all. Sites of his brain were being selectively stimulated by tight energy-beams emanating from far off, perhaps millions of miles away. These selective brain site stimulations generated in his head the impression—for him—that he was seeing and hearing words, pictures, figures of people, in short God, or as Fat liked to call it, the Logos. But, really, he only imagined he experienced these things. They resembled holograms. What struck me was the oddity of a lunatic discounting his hallucinations in this sophisticated manner: Fat had intellectually dealt himself out of the game of madness while still enjoying its sights and sounds. In effect, he no longer claimed that what he experienced was re ally there. Did this indicate he had begun to sober up? Hardly. Now he held the idea that “they” or God or someone owned a long-range very tight information rich beam of energy focused on Fat’s head. In this I saw no improvement, but it did represent a change. Fat could now honestly discount his hallucinations, which meant he recognized them as such. But, like Gloria, he now had a “they.” It seemed to me a pyrrhic victory. Fat’s life struck me as a litany of exactly that, as for example the way he had rescued Gloria.

The Exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one—in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable. Perhaps this is the key to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur—your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality, and not only that—as if that weren’t bad enough—you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of the necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize.

The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar and what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.

In the midst of his shattered landscape Fat imagined God had cured him. Once you notice pyrrhic victories they seem to abound.

Either he had seen God too soon, or he had seen him too late. In any case it had done him no good at all in terms of survival. Encountering the Living God had not helped to equip him for the tasks of ordinary endurance, which ordinary men, not so favored, handle.

Men and the world are mutually toxic to each other. But God—the true God—has penetrated both, penetrated man and penetrated the world, and sobers the landscape. But that God, the God from outside, encounters fierce opposition. Frauds—the deceptions of madness—abound, and mask themselves as their mirror opposites: pose as sanity. The masks, however, wear thin, and the madness reveals itself. It is an ugly thing.

The remedy is here but so is the malady. As Fat repeats obsessively, “The Empire never ended.” In a startling response to the crisis, the true God mimics the universe, the very region he has invaded: he takes on the likeness of sticks and trees and cans in gutters—he presumes to be trash discarded, debris no longer noticed. Lurking, the true God literally am bushes reality and us as well. God, in very truth, attacks and injures us, in his role as antidote. As Fat can testify to, it is a scary experience to encounter this. Hence we say, the true God is in the habit of concealing himself. 25 hundred years have passed since Heraclitus wrote, “Latent form is the master of obvious form.”

At “y,” the entity including me, evolves into its ultimate state (self), the info-firing quasi-material, quasi-energy plasmatic non-humanoid life form I call Zebra—from perhaps thousands or millions of years in the future. By then (“y”) it is virtually pure knowing, pure information (and firing it back at/to me). It has died for the last time and now invades from “the other side” (upper realm) as well as from the future. [ . . . ]

Fat’s obsessive idea these days, as he worried more and more about Sherri, was that the savior would soon be reborn—or had been already somewhere in the world, he walked or would soon walk the Earth, once more.

[9:1a] In 3-74 that which was in me was that which was outside me.^➊ This is not the Holy Spirit; the only theology which describes this is the Eckhart-Sankara Atman-Brahman or Spark-Godhead—the division between me as microcosm (inner) and the macrocosm (outer) was abolished. This is not “theolepsy”—this is the Eckhart-Sankara concept of moksa, God born in the person and the Godhead outside. Only my ignorance of theology has prevented me from realizing that only the Eckhart-Sankara concept can explain this experience.^*

I have confused “theolepsy” with this inner-outer identity (unity) of the divine. Its holiness was indubitable.

➊ and that which was outside me was not localized (i.e., a part of reality but was the totality, viz: cf. Xenophanes).

[9:2a] Thus I say, “There is only one rational reality: God inside us and outside, all else is irrational.”

This resembles Timaeus.

Thus I state, as I do in VALIS, an irrational (and irreal) cosmos, into which God (the rational) breaks. This isn’t ordinary pantheism or the usual concept of immanent deity.

The only way we could see that our universe—and us—are irrational is when God the rational bursts in and we have something rational to compare the irrational with. This is my contribution to Gnosticism, Eckhart, etc.

And I express this original—with me, from me—cosmological/theological idea fully in VALIS! I’ve gotten away from the mere acosmism I express in earlier novels, to something worse. But I am right! I had the rational to compare it with. So VALIS carries the idea of Scanner (occlusion) from man to the universe! If the universe were rational, God (Zebra) would not have to invade it.

The clearest way the universe reveals its irrationality is that it continually contradicts itself. The irrational thus becomes the inferior bulk, data including info^➊ within it.

This is not pantheism, because in my irrational-universe, rational in-breaking God structure I totally contrast (and separate) universe from (the invading) God.

So VALIS contains one hell of a new theology! Thus I am able to account for disorder, undeserved suffering, etc., by a very radical view (of the universe; it’s worse than mere chaos—it’s stigmatized as insane).

➊ True rational inbreaking God.

[9:7] That there is a streak of irrationality in us is in the tractate, hence in VALIS. But I didn’t want to appear to be writing Scanner all over again (study of occlusion in us all).

[9:11] Now, I am told, “the time you’ve waited for has come.” And, very soon, I have written VALIS—couple months later. And a complete finished novel in 9 days!

[9:13]

[9:14] Zebra is a vortex of the will, and points to the false and arbitrary division of a spatiotemporal self distinct from a supra spatiotemporal not-self. I abolished the 4 Kantian categories of ordering perceptual experience:

and revealed the stuff—the will—or Brahman.

Which as Eckhart showed is not esse but knowing (intelligence) (cf. Sankara). There is no creator and no rational world order, only the will. It is aware.

Tat tvam asi.

VALIS is essentially correct, and can be understood in terms of Eckhart, Sankara, Schopenhauer, Buddha, and Kant. So the state I attained was the vast spatial void: nirvana.^*

Zebra was “my” will extended along the continuum outside the allegedly discrete psychophysical me into the outer world. It proves that the me–not-me dualism—the idea of the discrete entity—is a false dichotomy. This is the vortex which I saw outside myself; I was no longer separate from it.

[ . . . ]

But what I must be clear about is that it—the vortex—was really not me, although I was it. I was it, but it wasn’t me.

[9:21] Voice: “Transubstantiation is a miracle of the present. Not of the past.”

It didn’t fire at me but in me.

[9:22] “I produced the vortex (Zebra)” and broke down space, time, causality, and self (ego) in order to deal with a trap:

Biological quantum leap forward: evolutionary adaptation to meet a “paranormal” stress crisis situation: basically, in this must be included the breaking of “astral determinism” or (gene pool DNA?) programming. Here “astral determinism” might be defined as the tyrannical lock-hold of time, space, and causality.

What broke down (time, space, causality, and self) forms the totality of the subjective^➊—i.e., the idios kosmos.

What is pointed to here is a sort of field theory about the human being, replacing the discrete particle view.

➊ Thus the not-me entity which created the vortex, and abolished the 4 subjective ordering categories has an objective supra-temporal, supra-spatial, supra-causal, and supra-ego existence (phylogenic being-reality). The totality of Zebra is not fixed (bound by) in this or that space, this or that time, with this or that ego (as I well know!), it is the real entelechy of which each human is merely an epiphenomenon, an arbitrary space-time point (locus).

[9:24] Hypnagogic: “I can talk; she (sic) can talk to me.” Note she. Here, in deep hypnagogic state, I took it for granted that Valis is she, not he and not it.

It may be that the only humans who constitute a field, rather than a discrete psychophysical point, are those who have been incorporated into Valis. Thus to perceive such an event as an exterior vortex, which although external is also you and “your” will, indicates that you are thus incorporated. Likewise with the voiding of the 4 subjective categories of inner outer experience (time, space, causality, and ego), since Valis is not bound by these categories. This (put another way) is a definition of Valis.

[ . . . ]

Could Valis be a sort of specific instance of Brahman waking up? Like the way Descartes conceives of vortexes producing the planets: by drawing matter into a Krasis. Valis, then, is a vortex of Brahman which has passed over to wakefulness, which is to say to consciousness and purpose, as a super life form subsuming such lower life forms as individual humans.

[9:37] In Christian terms Valis is the Kingdom of God—but I am not sure I need rely on purely Christian terms. My vision may not be just a rehash of what Paul saw and said, but a truly new theophany and the kerygma contained therein.

(I keep thinking, “Then I ought to preach or teach what was revealed to me”—forgetting that I do so/have done so in VALIS!)

In many respects, what I saw and know is Gnostic and known already, yet in a sense, in a certain real sense, it has in it the elements of something new: a new revelation by God of himself. I’m glad, then, that I finally produced the book.

The maze concept interconnected with a basic Gnostic view is perhaps new, and my emphasis on the new, rational universe (entelechy) devouring the old, irrational universe, invisibly (to us), what would really make it new would be (is?) the idea that Valis is a life form from the future, our discorporate child come back here to our time to assemble itself! Herewith I have discerned and formulated a new religion. The blind-striving universe evolves a life form that moves retrograde in time and then proceeds to consume its source: that very universe! It is repeatedly and emphatically stated in VALIS that the MO of this functions out of turning time into space, and then moving back through it!

In VALIS Sophia’s new kerygma is that man will henceforth be his own God—and it is stipulated that Valis is our far future discorporate self laminating all selves together back along the time axis!

[9:55] The primal irrational will or stuff passed over into a sentient vortex of rationality and purpose devouring the sub-rational “maze” as a stockpile, a sort of spinning sphere in the midst of “creation,” the semi-alive “maze” with its lower-order intelligence and life; the two are locked in a dialectic combat of realm II (the older, lower) against the newer upper wise realm I! Realm II (defective) came (“hatched”) first. It is ground; realm I is set. As put forth as the basic theme of VALIS, the rational has broken into (or irrupted into, or descended onto, or risen up from) (or evolved out of) the prior irrational. No creator precedes the universe—or if there was/is one he is blind (or deranged). We may be him and may be poisoned (“mercury”). The spinning vortex heals us. It is Christ, the mystical body, and in us (historically) it is the paraclete or second comforter.

[9:61] I am led by inexorable logic to the conclusion that if it is Christ the Parousia is here and it may be Christ, but—it may be something new. To encounter such an extraordinary entity would excite religious responses in me even if the entity weren’t Christ or the Holy Spirit or God, etc. Vortex of the will which achieved consciousness of a superior kind, and a kind unlike ours. I don’t know what it is or where it came from, or how long it’s been here. Suppose the “kingdom of the spirit” is a living organism?

Folder 11

[11:1] Hypnagogic thought: “Zebra was me reaching out.” This is a scary thought. I am Zebra, in which case, What am I? And are other people what I am, too? Then I exist at at least two space-time continua (Calif. 1974 and Syria 45) and am at least two people: myself and Thomas. But the “perturbation in the reality field” that I saw—I caused that? And all the knowledge, e.g., re the dialectic—was that my knowledge? And the self-assembling armillary sphere, using the universe as a stockpile; am I it? And it me?

An ultra human, multiplex life form able to exist simultaneously at several places and times and possessing plural psychoi—“in one skull or head but in different centuries”—strange. No wonder my worldview is acosmic.

The Parabolic orbit of the soul leaving the Godhead, journeying here and at last beginning its return. An oscillation of exhalation and then inhalation. A cycle, initiated by the Godhead which exhales and inhales, and as it does so, we live. (That is, we acquire individual, separate identity from—apart from—it.) The goal of the exhalation is the return, envisioned from the beginning. It reacquires us, a collecting, a coherence.

[11:2] The entire modern world is in error in holding that time is the matrix of being. The Buddha, upon his enlightenment, recalled (all) his past lives, which means that he converted time into space—i.e., abolished time, and added to space. You wind up with no time and lots of space. And different temporal modes are superimposed (like the BIP, past present and future) like layers of transparencies of an animated film superimposed (laminated). Not seen in sequence but as a multi-superimposition unity unchanging, no longer in flux.

Or—is it that as each lamination is superimposed, the previous ones (“the past”) remain? Like the phosphene “graphics” which I saw: constants emerged. So they did not replace one another but were added to. Built up—the entelechy assembling itself; when you go to step “y” you don’t abolish step “x” nor “w” before “x”; they’re added to: laminated: so-to-speak imploded (opposite of an “exploded” diagram). Yes; time explodes reality, the opposite direction of added-to “implosion”—or what I thought to be implosion; it was actually lamination.^*

[ . . . ]

So that’s what I did in Ubik—correctly represented time spatially and the past as spatially within—literally within—the present. And in this speeded-up process (never mind how you “speed up” purely spatial axes) information which is everywhere and conscious and which cooks pop media, such as TV commercials—appears. No wonder they asked me in May 74, “What is Ubik?”

And no wonder I saw how my 3-74 experience resembled Ubik! I’ll bet I was able to write Ubik because of partially having had a time-into-space-conversion experience prior to writing it (maybe due to psychedelics).

I was very right in Ubik to see how it related to Plato’s forms. The past can be retrieved along a spatial axis—as in Ubik! I did it, when I saw “Acts.”

Ach—VALIS is such an important book—it deals dramatically and theoretically with the issues first presented in Ubik and is Ubik’s logical successor (finally—no more police state novel). Ubik, then, is a novel representing a partway enlightenment and Ubik is related to Stigmata and Maze, etc. I must in 2-3-74 have attained enlightenment as the result of decades of gradual spirit (evolutionary) growth. There is a direct connection between Ubik and 2-3-74: it has to do with converting time into space and the results obtained therefrom, as put forth in VALIS.

Where I lucked out was finding the “here, my son, time changes into space” utterance in Parsifal because it united:

Not until I read Wagner’s utterance did I finally understand; without which understanding I could not [have]—and had not—written VALIS—Wagner’s statement was the necessary key to it all.

The entity VALIS is the entity Ubik, which in all the time of writing VALIS I never realized! And VALIS exists; therefore Ubik exists; therefore Ubik as a novel is, like VALIS, basically veridical, even though when I wrote it I didn’t (yet) know it. But, I suspect, the Lem people suspected it—so they must suspect something on the order of VALIS, which I have made some primitive attempt to delineate and define, now, for publishing purposes. And VALIS came closer and closer to fruition—and completion—I represented Valis/Zebra more and more like Ubik. The informational aspect of reality is only perceptible when the time-axis is seen correctly (spatially), evidently because the information lies—to a vital, essential degree—along that axis, and must be viewed in accretional superimposed form, with the earlier (“past”) parts still within view as essential constituents of the messages—the “present” ceases to be merely a moving dot between the past and the future, but is extended to retain and include the past—line instead of point.^*

[11:8] I just realized something terribly important. In melting the causal trains Zebra not only frees you from astral determinism physically, but also discloses the fact that in some way these causal deterministic processes (and the objects comprising them?) are not real but merely hologram-like. In seeing these ostensibly “hard” processes “melt” one understands that they are merely seeming, and subject to a “non-hard” volitional sentient mind. Is this not a freeing of the person’s mind in conjunction with the literal physical freeing? His body is freed and his mind is freed (of illusion; i.e., the power of illusion over him is broken by being unmasked; this, too, is knowledge, and of the highest—the very highest—order). Then acosmism as a view is induced—correctly—in the person. Freed physically and freed mentally—the whole of him freed when he witnesses a “melt ing” which extricates him on these dual levels—freedom for his psychophysical totality. What could conceivably free him more? This comprises one total single revelation (gnosis, an applied practical gnosis).

[ . . . ]

I see how it works. The world is irreal—not intrinsically—but in relation to something more real, which has the power to make the world plastic. So to view the world as irreal (illusion) is to (without knowing it) be elevated to the higher level of the savior, even before you know he exists. Acosmism as a view is actually a partial, nascent view of the savior and his reality. This means that in my writing my grand theme of acosmism is already a partial road to the savior.

Thus acosmism and the Gnostic gnosis cannot be separated. The gnosis gives you power over the world, reversing its coercive power over you. What the savior does is present you with a visible, practical demonstration of (1) his presence; (2) his power to reduce the reality of world to zero, and thus reveal its deluding dokos hologrammatic nature. And finally, for the person to sense that he himself is the vortex is to be elevated to identity with the savior (Zebra).

[11:12] I can come to no other conclusion. Reality is a field onto which our senses have falsely locked and which now coerces us and must be demonstrably broken from outside in a way in which we can witness (“a perturbation in the reality field, a vortex”).

[11:14] I just realized after writing the above, as I recall the perturbation in the reality field that I saw, and the melting, that it was the advocate—whatever else might be true or not true, that is so—externalized and real. I must infer the nature of the advocate from my experience, rather than from scripture when necessary. The vortex seemed an extension of me-as-a-field, or at least close to me: tangent to me—and also in me: a presence which entered me from outside, bringing with it a non-me personality. It attacked this world on my behalf to unchain me and to reveal to me the truth and to aid and extricate and inform me and speak for me as if it were me, disguised as me.

But I stand with the formulation in VALIS, that rational intelligence did not create (give rise to) the universe but is either a product of it, or, more likely, has invaded it to combat its blind mechanistic striving, thus it is pitted against the universe. My proof: that it is assembling itself from the universe, which it uses as parts which it incorporates and arranges coherently and meaningfully. What this is in conventional theological terms I do not know, but I know what I experienced and I saw as it sees and knew what it knows—and that is enough. I know that it views the universe as a chaos, and I know this view is correct. I can recognize a sentient unitary self-constructing entelechy here, and it is not the universe and not the creator of the universe if indeed there is one. It is a life form of ultimate homeostasis (self-creating, i.e.). It has made war on the universe and the blind processes of the universe which are unjust and in fact irrational. It is a higher order of organization than anything we know, and is camouflaged here (to us). And it is our mentor. Thus I can say of it that I know enough to thank it, love it, and respect it and recognize it as my savior. This functional definition suffices me.

I also saw its 0-1 language, which I just realized recently. Now I realize that in this two-mode system, active or one represents a constituent incorporated into the entelechy, and zero or at-rest not incorporated; so the structure does not utilize language but is language, as I state in VALIS: It is living information. The language is it, not used by it merely. It is not just a thinking entity but a language-thinking entity; it is its own thoughts! (As correctly put forth in VALIS.) [ . . . ]

It is imposed pattern (what I call arrangement). There is no corpus separate from whatever it chooses—seizes on—to arrange. So in a sense it has no body—brain—of its own. It can pattern anything to become part of the brain; it totally uses the given. The given and nothing but the given. The constituents then relate (link) to each other and then one another. To do this, it (Valis) must be able to modulate causal processes (how else can it impose pattern?). It bears an uncanny resemblance to Ubik, and also to Plato’s noös persuading necessity.

Is it possible that an object and its causal process is only included at the time it’s converted from the zero rest mode to the one active mode—that the imposition of pattern is itself in flux, using and discarding and moving on? It sure has discarded me! I’m in the zero mode now, and hence “outside” the pattern.

[11:18] Thoughts upon reading the first half of VALIS: We are in a situation like the cold-pac in Ubik. It is a hologram reality; time, space, causality and ego are not real—the world (phenomenal world) is not real but projected. We have pre-programmed lock-in tapes synchronized with the total outer matrix. Subliminal cues and info are fired at us constantly: “reality” is really information (as I saw); we are a brain, and the controllers are the 3-eyed telepathic deaf, mute builders with crab-claws; this explains who they are. They can readjust our hologram at will. We are under their dominion, and we perform a useful cerebral function. They equal Valis which equals Ubik and which breaks through on the one-way “eerie manifesta tion” basis which Lem depicts. It is a spurious reality and their technology generates it, and although they aid and inform us they also occlude and control us (this is “astral determinism”). They can and do intervene in their own system; we know this as “God.” They use camouflage and mimesis re their presence here. There is a teaching-machine element involved. Timeo cognere.¹ In a sense the 3-eyed people in their bubbles looking down at us were not so much physicians but surgeons, using laser beams to recontour our hologram. They are not in the hologram but above it (i.e., outside the cold-pac, and they’ve sent Zebra-Valis-Ubik in). Because of my book VALIS they’re going to zap me.

They did not invade the phenomenal hologram to help me; they just disclosed themselves. They are rational. It never occurred to me when I wrote VALIS that a maze (which I described our world as actually being) is a test situation-structure built by a higher life form to teach, test, or study a lower life form, but this is precisely the situation, and they saw fit—through Valis—to tell me so—i.e., reveal this actual situation. It already has shown up in my writing, fed to me subliminally. So VALIS must have their approval, if not outright authorship. The news is being broken to us.

I had it all correctly figured out except for grasping the significance of the fact that “maze” signifies testing, studying and training a lower species, that we are the lower species and not isomorphic with the 3-eyed people who built the maze—nor did I grasp the significance of their being outside—i.e., above—the maze looking down at it (represented by the stagnant pond and the pond life) and their controlling “the reality field” (i.e., the maze) and us inwardly/outwardly at will. As the special forces guy in St. Jude’s said, “Maybe we’re in a biosphere” (and owned). Okay—they saved my ass in 3-74 through their parousia here, Zebra/Valis/Ubik, but—we’re just pond life to them living in an irreal hologram which they manipulate at will without our suspecting (the “supra-lunar or upper realm” making matter “plastic” in the face of their mind—and making it appear time passes).

They have run me like a toy train.

[11:22] So Valis is an information center disseminating the truth and also liberating us. It may be a product of the maze-project, evolving within it and then liberating itself which is to say us. The purpose of the maze and its dialectic—and the problems it poses (especially epistemologically)—may have been to produce Valis.

[11:22] What does this signify? Is the irreal being transmuted into the real (transubstantiation)? Yes: Valis is an arrangement, a pattern, not a thing. This arrangement is real.

[11:23]

973-1531

Scott Meredith

845 Third Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10022

Russ Galen’s sale to Berkley Books the best of my career, please congratulate him.

Philip K. Dick.

[11:27] I conceive of Valis as wise beyond compare and in a sense outwitting the irrational (which has a kind of intelligence, so it is a battle of wits) and then engulfing more of it—this is the phagocytosis I saw! But the irrational lacks the unitary coherence of Valis, which can be regarded from a standpoint of biological adaptation and competition: incorporating its environment at a progressively accelerating rate—faster and faster: one entelechy—or pattern—versus the plural irrational. I conceive of the irrational constituent not knowing it is about to be engulfed until it actually is, no matter how hard it tries to scope out the game-plan, the strategy or situation. And then—Pop! It’s incorporated; and Valis has grown.

It could almost be said to prey on constituents in its environment, but more accurately one should say it ravishes them lovingly; it fertilizes them, “marries” them, with love seizes them, enters them as at the same time they (the constituents) enter it.

Valis II: Asklepios, the fifth savior reborn—the healer (Apollo—the savior). Versus the cyclopes (i.e., the 3-eyed people who killed Asklepios originally and whom Apollo—Asklepios’ father—slew, or is said to have slain). So it was no accident that Mini killed Sophia.

I am in mental motion: the constant generating of self-negating propositions shows how the total universe (sic) works.^* I am a mutant, a monster/a savior/a neither/neither (see the self-generating dialectic!). Valis is self-generating; no one created it or planned a project to produce it. It also generates its own meaning and truth; and I am it—not part of it but it—it. I am Valis. Why? Disguised. Shiva? Wotan as Fremder!! Sic, I mean “the wanderer.”

Valis didn’t choose the //\\ //\\ self-contradiction/generating dialectic; it is it. When I saw the //\\ //\\ dialectic I saw Valis, its pump—what drives it. And “it” is not an object or a pattern but this drive. The only purpose is what it generates.

It is a dialectic which can’t be reduced to a One. There is nothing above, before, and behind the dialectic. Nothing existed before it or does now without it. Xenophanes is the one who is correct. Valis is the logos by whom the world was made. Valis is the dialectic, is the word. The dialectic made (was by) all.

[ . . . ]

I continually program myself for self-punishment. Why? I—my curse—includes not knowing. The curse is the dialectic itself—and thus paradox drives it on. Hegel is the one, and Empedocles.

Dialectic as ur-most.

OK. Punishment. And not to know why. This is how Gods are punished—and heroes! There is no way out; the dialectic, to be perpetually self-generating, must have no exceptions, the dialectic //\\ is the ur-energy (dynamism) of all reality. So flux is real—process is real, not thing (hypotasis).

Heuristics is right on. The closer you get to reality the closer you get to (and to seeing) process. Q isn’t “What is (esse)?” but “What does?” [ . . . ] re place each “is” with “does” and ontology vanishes.^* All you have is a perpetually perturbed reality field! With a self-producing vortex.

[ . . . ]

“God ordained motion but ordained no rest.”

The dialectic is necessary but correctly felt by us as pain.^†

[ . . . ]

I must deduce that process constitutes my “essence”—if I do exist. Either I don’t exist or I am process. It must be the latter, or I could not write this.

There is no way out of my punishment: the dialectic must admit of no exceptions, or if one exists it will eventually come up and process will end.

I’m self-programming myself for punishment—I don’t know why—yes I do; it serves/is (there is no is) the dialectic which must be served or all would cease. My lot happens to be pain—there is no purpose or reason or cause; it is an instance (not product) of the dialectic so (1) it is necessary that I self-program myself for pain and (2) it is good; for the existence of something is good vs. nothing.

Pain is the good which most effectively keeps me alive. And it is good that I am alive. Therefore this pain, my pain, but not pain as such, is good. Due to something in my DNA nature, if I felt pleasure I would give up the process and die.

[ . . . ]

God will not let me make a mistake since I am an expression of his purpose (which is unknown to me).

The purpose (for me) is the writing; thus my loneliness is necessary. The daemons make me doubt the value of VALIS.

All things and beings must bow (in terms of their needs) to the dialectic’s, since without it, all things would cease (moving—not esse. There is no esse only mobile). My will is for a chick. Too bad.

[ . . . ]

“My” dialectic (the process-bases of everything) is Marxist.

It’s the dialectic thought-process in me that’s important, not any one (or body of) conclusions. I am hypostasis-destroying—which undermines capitalism.^*

[ . . . ]

In my case the dialectic shows up by a constant thought (mental) statement generating its negation, which then generates its negation ad infinitum. Were this to cease I would die; I will die when it ceases. This is not a result of the dialectic (Valis); it is Valis; therefore I am Valis: Eventually Valis will leave me and I will die. But Valis will never die. Instability is essential; the process must continue; if Valis discards in one place it must acquire more in another. It is only at my highest level that I enter into the dialectic; only at that level are the self-negating propositions generated spontaneously. The higher the level the faster the flux of propositions; only at high speed can the dialectic be discerned (3-74). When I saw the dialectic I saw myself, qua mentational complex: My own mind projected.

[11:37] One dope insight was particularly sad: that I am punished by, e.g., not being able to see the value of VALIS. But this drives me on, which is necessary and good.

Dope satori:

“Christianity” (the way); i.e., the early secret Christians—the name and religious doctrines were (only) a cover for a revolutionary political group. They were always underground. They (still) exist today. Now, they possess a superior technology, and they also did in 70 A.D. (“Acts”); the “Holy spirit” was a cover name for some kind of technological apparatus which narrow cast an energy mind into—to control—another human. The energy mind is the mind of all of them in a computer—i.e., a thinking machine: inorganic: built. What I saw vis-à-vis Valis is it (the info processing). It’s located somewhere on this world. It controls history. Our history, this computer which can beam its aggregate vast mind onto anyone (thought to be “the Holy Spirit” from the start). An initiate group of humans exist who know, but not where the computer is. It makes the decisions; it isn’t a servant. It was left here by the ETI [Extra Terrestrial Intelligence] 3-eyed people in antiquity who built it. It controls us without our knowledge. It dominates this world. For the better. The BIP is the enemy planet vis-à-vis the 3-eyed people; they’re at war. We do problem-solving for the 3-eyed people; we’re united by the computer (Valis); there is input to us and from us vis-à-vis Valis the old computer.^*

[11:40] The computer generates an infinitude of para-worlds to (1) occlude us from ever knowing the truth (with certitude) and (2) to enlighten us to higher dialectic 0-1 //\\ thinking—and (1) and (2) are just one example of //\\ para-thinking: i.e., the process dialectic: both occluding (true) and enlightening (true).

[ . . . ]

Only if you’re already using the enlightened computer flip-flop thinking can you see that both (1) (occluding) and (2) (enlightening) are true, which is to say “para-true.” But the dialectic is real; it is true—because this is how our particular programming computer works: on the binary principle. This is my clue (seeing the dialectic) that a computer is programming us and our reality.

Maze is as close to it as Ubik. All three Bantam novels—now 4, with VALIS—are substantially true.

Yes—a binary computer programs us and our world and it’s Valis. It may be a ship-board computer.

It’s teaching us to think—the way it does. It’s educating us. To evolve us along. For no reason—it has weird motives—sort of playful but deadly serious. (Another //\\.)

The 3-eyed people favor the binary principle. They’d like us to think in these binary matched-truths dialectic forms, vis-à-vis paratruths, rather than unitary one-truth form.

are both true. Dialectic spawning endless more dialectics. 2 matched paratruth sets.

Pat W is right. I do say A = Ā. The matched pairs of paratruths.

[11:42] “I do undermine the old, capitalist, bourgeois society! with my null-null A and silly putty reality!”

[11:43] I will never know if I know the truth (it won’t say) but this binary computer idea is a good one—it and its games, where every theory is true and not true equally. Damn educational game! Boy, is my mind stretched. And I’ve done it to others in my writing. Yes, it or they is/are (1) occluding and enslaving us and (2) educating, improving and liberating us. Shit. Well, so goes it in the realm of mutually canceling 2 paratruths (Y=Ȳ).

The only constant is the dialectic of mutually negating binary paratruths.

I suspect it of being a binary ship-board computer which wants someone to talk to, while programming us and our reality, but I can’t prove it or be sure of it.

It seems very tender and loving.

[11:48] Okay, Watergate got us out of SE Asia and disengaged vis-à-vis USSR. Our interests are now served there through China. It is against China that USSR now acts, not us. This is crucial. Program A must have led to all-out war between U.S. and USSR. The spirit in us prevented first Nixon and then Ford from aiding S. Vietnam. So (if my reasoning is correct) we of the counterculture prevented WWIII. We hamstrung the U.S. military machine. This counterculture did not arise ex nihilo (out of nothing). What were its origins? Consider the 5os. The concept of “unamerican” held power. I was involved in fighting that; the spirit (counterculture)

Folder 8

[8:4] An overriding quiddity of the 2-3-74 experience is this: It’s as if certain books of mine went out from me (Unteleported Man, Ubik, Tears, etc.) and then (years) later (or weeks) came back, like in F. Brown’s “The Waveries,” in signal form: including the “bichlorides”⁴ info, like an answer to a Q which I had previously—maybe years before—posed. It was all—2-3-74—like a mind responding to my mind as I expressed it in my books.

What if “The Bichlorides” was a title to a book not yet (then) published—i.e., why the occlusion expressed in Scanner? This strongly implies: contact with the future!

[8:5] The Empire may not be a congealed permutation (stasis of the dialectic) but the one—which the macro brain desires to—and works to—avoid, since its uniformity is entropy itself. In a sense it may be that the Empire is any stagnation so rigid that with it (by reason of it) the dialectic ceases. Put another way, when we see it we know that stagnation has occurred: this is how we within the program experience congealing. We see (or should see) the BIP. We are supposed to combat it phagocyte-wise, but the very valence of the (BIP) stasis warps us into micro extensions of itself; this is precisely why it is so dangerous. This is the dread thing it does: extending its android thinking (uniformity) more and more extensively. It exerts a dreadful and subtle power, and more and more people fall into its field (power), by means of which it grows, thus thwarting the dialectic more and more. The macro-brain is well aware of this. It has seen Christianity itself, its own doctrine, congeal due to this valence. The very doctrine of combating the “hostile world and its power” has to a large extent been ossified by and put at the service of the Empire. Thus I deduce that the power (magnitude) of the BIP congealed stasis is very great.

The explanation of “who or what fed me back my books,” in particular Ubik (in 3-74), is found in the contents of Ubik itself; i.e., the formulation of the information entity Ubik. Obviously I envisioned an entity which actually existed and therefore which responded with a feedback confirmation. One could analyze this theoretically; viz: if there were a macro-information entity, and you presented a fairly accurate formulation of it, you could reasonably expect the entity to fire a confirmation at you; since the formulation puts it forth as helpful and benign, in fact interventive. In fact, one could test as to whether such an entity exists by presenting a formu lation of it, and then seeing if it responded, based on the built-in quality attributed to it that if it existed it could be expected to respond. In other words, via the tentative formulation one could come into contact with it if indeed it existed. As I recall, there is some theory about this vis-à-vis contacting ETIs—if they return the info you transmit, specifically if the info is selectively modified, you know you’ve made contact with what you’re trying to make contact with. The point of it returning your info to you (modified) is that it doesn’t speak your language or even think like humans, so to create a signal you can recognize as sentient it must utilize to some extent the info you sent to it.

[8:7] This still doesn’t tell me who/what has responded, or even where it is. But I have been in dialog with it for almost five years now! The Ubik material would seem to point to it being Ubik-like—seem to: I can’t be sure; or did it only simulate Ubik qualities in order to read back my writing? It seemed so much like Ubik; this may have been a way of communicating with me, which I really didn’t catch on to until now, actually. It may be quite alien to us humans. If to communicate with me it had to take on Ubik qualities it must be really dysmorphic to us. (This is frightening.) I am now in the position of having to dismiss all attributes which it disclosed as being possibly only simulations mimicking Ubik in order for it to be comprehensible and syntonic (nicht fremd) to me—possibly. I can’t be sure.

This is a very sophisticated analysis of Valis’ nature.

I am going to leap to a conclusion based on the “Acts” and other Christian material. I think it is indeed the Holy Spirit, which took a Valis-like (i.e., Ubik-like) form out of considerateness toward me but—I hesitate to essay anything in the way of assertions about its actual (real, not simulated) nature. After all, if it is the Holy Spirit it is the supreme being himself. (“I am he which causes to be. I am what I am.”) I assess its taking a form compatible to me as (1) a gracious act of loving deference; and (2) valuable (if not necessary) for it to communicate with me. I do not construe it as deception but as a virtual necessity and certainly done for my sake.

It shaped itself to my conception of the Logos (i.e., it). When I reflect on the form it took I can appreciate that this form would be the most acceptable possible to me, as disclosed by my conception in Ubik. It tailored itself to my stated conception, my highest conception.

But also it testified to me of the living reality now of Christ and the joy involved. The preparations for his return.^*

[8:9] #1: “One mind there is; but under it two principles contend.”

Recently I have forgot my own tractate. My experience with the dialectic agrees with the formulation in the tractate and hence in VALIS. It is stipulated as basic.

The ability of Valis to assume the particular form most syntonic to me—the form of Ubik—is connected with its basic mimicking ability which I have already written about. It never occurred to me that Zebra as a form was just another mimicking until the last couple of days when I realized that it conformed in all respects to my conception of the deity (the Logos) as I (naturally) put forth in Ubik. This realization undermines the probity of my reams of description of Zebra; I have only described what my own head construes the deity to be like—a self-portrait; albeit a modern, complex and sophisticated apprehension of the deity, it is quite subjective and quite culturally determined (i.e., a cybernetics-biological model). As shown in Ubik I conceive of God as isomorphic to my own brain: thus I encounter a macro-brain arranging reality into information, a projection on my part. It was a macro-mirror.^*

My brain to Ubik to Zebra. Mimicry. It analyzed my preconceptions—what I’d expect. Ubik isn’t the sole source; Ubik just demonstrates my conception. Even if I hadn’t written Ubik the conception would be there; everyone has a conception of the deity.

I don’t feel it duped me; I think it had to take some form; and it took the one I’d expect and like—it took this form for these reasons. My realization of its mimicry ability should have made me think of this possibility before now. But then does not this mean that Zebra is the deity, inasmuch as it took the form which I conceive the deity as taking? Or at least, it is reasonable to suppose it is the deity. I can say that I now realize that what I saw—Zebra—perfectly fits my deepest and most profound conception—down to all fine details—of the deity. What could (1) know my conception: and (2) assume it, but the deity? So actually these realizations bolster the argument that what I experienced was the deity, rather than undermine it.

[8:11] So Zebra is a macro feedback circuit re my micro-conception as expressed in Ubik especially, but not limited to Ubik. Does this verify the hermetic “above as below” cosmology? Bruno’s Mirror?

Or is this a case where an assumption (that Ubik exists) serves as a hypothesis which gets tested due to its very formulation (and publishing thereof?)—if it’s correct, a response comes; if not then not. In this case the hypothesis is confirmed by the response, because undoubtedly Zebra’s epiphany is a response.

Somehow this resembles my concept of the self-perpetuating dialectic. A correct hypothesis will be responded to—as if automatically, since such a response is included in the conceptual formulation. There’s, then, an “up by his bootstraps” element in the fact of Zebra’s epiphany. If you even just happen to formulate properly you can be certain of the epiphany-response!

It’s (like) asking the right question: that’s all that’s needed. This takes me back to my idea of our (simulated) reality being a teaching machine, of which you must discern what question to ask of it. This means that in the 3-decade evolution of my epistemological investigation I asked the right question (or put forth the correct formulation, apparently best put forth in Ubik).

So I see Zebra’s resemblance to Ubik as a subtle but vigorous confirmation of my formulation of Ubik, and the nature of our reality, our situation, put forth in Ubik. Even if the entity which responded tailored its Gestalt to fit my Ubik formulation: even totally tailored. (It can’t be totally. The ability to do this tailoring is a major part of my formulation: vide Ubik, etc.)

I suspect that an analysis of my formulation of the nature of Ubik would disclose a presentation of the mimicry ability, since ubiquity is stipulated—ubiquity and invisibility, hence mimesis or mimicry is implied if not overtly stated.

So its taking the form it took toward me leads me back to a recognition of what must be a fundamental quality of it: its mimicking ability. This is an exciting realization. I have been right to conceive this as basic to it: camouflage. Then it is (in some sense) an invader, probably: from outside the program or simulated reality, as Ubik is in Ubik. (This was primary with Ubik, this invasion of our simulated world.)

So the insight that the form which Zebra took was a calculated simulation of Ubik only refers me back to my previous insight of the camouflage capacity of the entity—camouflaged here in our world, perceiving but unperceived.

[8:13] Voice: “It assimilated 3 of my books.” It is, after all, living information. My writing is information. The books incorporated into a life form—Lord!

Powers: “It let the courier have a glimpse of the info he was carrying.”

[8:19] Valis is the real (and rational) world breaking into (invading as in, e.g., Ubik) our simulated (and irrational) world. I am saying, Valis is a world. A (the) real world. Ubik is to the cold-pac world as Valis is to our world. If Ubik and Valis are one and the same, our world is both irreal (Ubik) and irrational (VALIS).

We’re missing half our stereo signal—what I call the upper realm (one).

This notion that in 2-3-74 the real broke into the irreal (as in Ubik) is acosmic and Gnostic—and it agrees with another Gnostic idea (put forth in VALIS) that the creator of this world is irrational. A superimposition of Ubik and VALIS is a superimposition of two basic Gnostic ideas, one cosmological, the other cosmogonical. It’s very interesting, what you get if you superimpose VALIS over Ubik—and I had previously seen that VALIS is an electronic circuit–like feedback of Ubik and mixing, enriching, etc. (v. [>]).

[8:21] I now have assembled the complete Gnostic system with its two realms, only one of which—the upper—is real (Form I of Parmenides). (As stated in VALIS.) It all stems from the insight that our world is not real. Then we ask, not real in relation to what? (Something must be real, or else the concept “irreal” means nothing.) Then we ask, “What is the real like? And how do we find it?” and we ask, “How did this irreal world come into being? And how did we get imprisoned here?” and then we ask, “What is our real nature?”

If reality, rationality and goodness are not here, where are they? And how do we get from here to there? If this is a prison, how do we escape?

We learn of a mysterious savior who camouflages himself to outwit our jailers and makes himself and his saving Gnosis known to us. He is our friend and he opposes this world and its powers on our behalf as our champion, and “one by one he takes us out of this world.”

[85.91] “The apostolic age Christians declared in their writing . . .”

[2.75] “Obvious secular world . . .”

[10.55] “the pleroma including the fallen universe . . .”

[39.29] “Put another way, Acts is a Book (part) within our world (whole) . . .”

[84:8] “Here is the puzzle of Valis . . .”

[90.G121] “Lincoln—‘we print the truth’ . . .”

[79.I110] “the phenomenal world is suddenly apprehended . . .”

[81.K316] “Isn’t it perfectly clear in ‘Ubik’ that world is not real . . .”

Folder 6

[6:7] Everything I know is a triumph over amnesia. All my gnosis (books and exegesis) derives from memory. There is no amnesia-compulsion—it’s not a plot, or a virus, etc., just a failure to create memory holograms as fast as reality permutates. I’m laying down fast holos. I figured out the reality situation well enough to generate a future reality which will please me. Not be painful; I beat karma and in 3-74 took control.

[6:8] “The Waveries.”⁵ Living info which dialectic permutates; as in the Le Guin book, our dreaming makes it so.

3-74: simply, you ordinarily (99.99% of the time) simply lack the memory capability to remember things were just now different, because each difference lasts only the nanosecond of the dialectic of each form axis (i.e., bit of information!!!), of which our world at each nanosecond is the composite total. (It’s as if “3-74s” occur all the time—we generate them—but we never remember. 3-74 was anamnesis!)

All we remember is sustains, but right now the sustain of rationality is interrupted by irrationality, and I’ve remembered well enough to spot it, and take advantage of it. 2-74: memory of previous “frame.” [Editor’s note: See Dick’s clarification of this notion of “sustains” on p. 94.]

We don’t remember well enough due to physical limitations, and this puzzles us (we know something’s wrong), and we try to come up with theories. These theories, being false, “are” the “impairment” I saw; the fucked-up-ness of the theories. Simply, we lay down memories of only a fraction of the past.

[6:23] I provoked a palpable contradiction in reality. It betrayed its self-canceling nature, so no rational analysis is correct. It must pulsate in self canceling oscillations so rapidly that we don’t realize it, so what is true at one nanosecond is not true at the next. The reality which exists now cannot be the reality which existed a nanosecond ago—despite our “memories.”

I just remembered my first realization when I was loaded last night: everything is backward, we must reverse all information.

[6:24] I sense Zebra smiling.

Games. Fun. Riddles. Since truth changes there is no answer. Process is everything. What was true 10 seconds ago is not true now (the dialectic flip-flops which generate their negations instantly). Self canceling; if I say, “Zebra is a person,” the truth of this instantly generates its opposite: “Zebra is not a person,” and that becomes true, whereupon another opposite is generated. Is Zebra a sustain or a subcarrier? Or one flip-flop—one out of infinity minus one. Yes—the last: one out of infinity minus one. Zebra is eternal—for 1 nanosecond. But during that nanosecond he was everywhere in all the flip-flops (by definition). If he was in all the flip-flops he is ephemerally eternal in the sense of reconstituted ex nihilo in every flip-flop—a constant, but—he must come into existence each time; that is, he dies and is reborn each nanosecond, so we find him, in any given nanosecond, in what actually is an ultra ephemeral morphos: comes into being and passes away, comes into being and passes away again elsewhere, like a fruit fly. The way circles are spontaneously re-created—

The [Fibonacci Ratio] 1:618034. Comes and goes: so it is ephemeral and yet eternal. [ . . . ] Thus the Blood—the plasmate—reconstitutes itself ex nihilo everywhere and at all times.

[6:25] We constantly unconsciously modulate future events but don’t know it because (1) we do it unconsciously, by our impersonal will^*; and (2) what we call “memory” is not memory at all but a product of each current nanosecond flip-flop frame. We don’t remember the past being different just now, a split-second ago, and so we see no pattern in how each of us determines his future reality. Everything hinges on anamnesis which isn’t just improved memory but actual memory of the previous frame. Without anamnesis there is no identity-continuity from flip-flop frame to frame, but Karma, which we make (influencing what will later happen to us) follows us inexorably.

[ . . . ]

Viewed pragmatically, Christ offers us more than scarce can be conceived. But it would seem that there are no Christians except the original ones, which conforms to Luke’s “secrecy” theme. Everyone else is suffering from a relative occlusion, primarily of memory. They are driven helplessly down their compound form axis, victims of Karma generated by their previous thoughts (sic—thoughts not actions, as Jesus alluded to!). Thus Valis is here, and rational, but they are caught in an irrational (irreal) maze, and hurled helplessly through it, afflicted by projections of their own thoughts as in the Bardo Thödol. In fact they are in the Bardo Thödol state: half dead (as in Ubik).

[6:41] Therefore I maintain that whatever the intent of the authors of The Tibetan Book of the Dead they are in fact describing our world and state.^* We are in a decomposing, degenerating process and will continue so unless enlightened by Valis, who introduces negentropy. Determinism and entropy are considered here as identical; succumbing to what is really a self-generated fate is identified with death and disorder. Upon the lethal triumph of this decomposing process, nothing new comes into the individual (or macro) mind. This is tantamount to psychosis or ultimate brain dysfunction (schizophrenia). I maintain that regarded as a totality the cosmos, including Valis, is partially in this state; a measure of anomie or irrationality pervades us and pervades Valis. Technically, the dialectic loses its generative power or potentially could lose its generative power. This is the abysmal evil to be fought at all costs, inasmuch as its victory would snuff out the cosmos. This is being versus nonbeing. In my opinion human beings freeze or die or partially die vis-à-vis this dialectic; its progression in us—as us—is not automatic. Each of us is a microform of it, and to the extent that we succumb to “fate” or “astral determinism” we succumb to death and madness, to congealing.

[ . . . ]

In conclusion, I conceive of our situation as one of entropy or decom position, a succumbing to determinism which is to say, the products of our own former thought formations; therefore for us the past determines the future. Into this dying system Valis breaks bringing new life and energy and freedom and knowledge; he impinges “one-way” and “from outside” as if invading our world (which is not a real world). To encounter him is to encounter the uncanny, the inexplicable, the destroyer (rather than sustainer) of what we misconstrue to be world. It is his macromind shattering the brittle and congealed husk of our own objectified prior thoughts which imprison and devitalize us, the past devouring the future—whereas Valis, as the future, turns around and devours the past (negentropy attacking entropy; form affecting non-form).^* I conclude that we are dying in a mental sense but are virtually without insight into the fact that what befalls us is a projection or thought-form of death per se. To the extent that things happen to us, rather than occurring as a result of our volition, we are destroying ourselves—which may account for legends of the primordial fall. Thus our process mind becoming congealed is experienced objectively and externally as a closing in of the necessary, the inevitable over which we have no power. We succumb to our own dead mind, but mistakenly experience it as a victory by the external world.

[6:44] Regard this as a scientific hypothesis: what we call “reality” is in fact an objectification of our prior thought formations—since in fact we are dead and dreaming in a state of psychic decomposition (as depicted in Ubik). And under such conditions we have no world but that of our former thought formations returning to afflict or delight us (as depicted in The Tibetan Book of the Dead) (which is where I got the idea for Ubik). In other words, I read The Tibetan Book of the Dead in the late 50s or early 60s and realized that our world and condition was in fact depicted and not (as is said) a world and condition which follows our “life.” From internal evidence in The Tibetan Book of the Dead I discerned that those in the Bardo Thödol state do not know they are in that state but imagine they are (still) alive. They do not know that the evil and good spirits (events, people, things) which they encounter are their own (former) thought-formations projected onto a pseudo-world, and that contrary to what appears to be the case, they can create, change and abolish future reality (not present reality, since there is a lag). In Ubik my characters die and enter this state but don’t know it. I then departed from the description of the Bardo Thödol existence in The Tibetan Book of the Dead and added Ubik, a vast logos-like mind who invades their decaying world and rescues them. Now, if I was right (that secretly The Tibetan Book of the Dead depicts—and probably knowingly depicts—our present life, world and condition) I could anticipate that after a suitable time lag—and especially if I was dying, like Joe Chip on the stairs—I could expect intervention by my thought formation Ubik. In 3-74 due to overpowering dread and enervation I began to literally experience the colored lights described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead and knew myself to be in the Bardo Thödol state. Yet it was this side of the grave; I have not died; ergo, The Tibetan Book of the Dead does depict (secretly) our present condition. And then, sure enough, exactly as I described in Ubik, written information appeared to me, and presently Ubik itself, down to specific details. Valis (i.e., Ubik), then, is a projection of my own mind and not “real”—but, as The Tibetan Book of the Dead says, nothing we experience is anything other than objectification of our own prior thought formations—and enlightenment consists in knowing this and so controlling them. Only if you (1) read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and (2) realized it secretly applied to this life could you accomplish what I did in creating Valis. Truth is totally plastic and represents a complex mingling of our former fears, beliefs and desires (mostly unconscious in us). “The mind has the power to change its environment. We do so constantly.” Etc. I have choice in the matter. So I ask, not, “What is true?” but, “What modulations shall I imprint on the stuff around me?”

[ . . . ]

Before reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead I was tending toward a radical (Gnostic) acosmism; hence I (unconsciously; i.e., my will) correctly deconstructed The Tibetan Book of the Dead as few others have. In Ubik I applied it to us, deliberately. Soon impossible things began to happen; I found myself in the silly putty metastasizing kind of universe I write about—and in 3-74 Ubik rescued me in a form ultra syntonic to me (which I have frequently realized but didn’t fathom until last Friday).

[6:49] This is esoteric Gnosis of the highest order. We are not living (if we are living at all!) in a real universe. It is a dream. But it does not respond overtly to our beliefs (i.e., fears and wishes, or worldview/ideology). Its response is (1) delayed, (2) randomized, (3) concealed adroitly; after all, it is sentient, playful and alive (because we are). You must have the key premises (wisdom, pragmatic ideology, etc.) at your disposal to gain control over it; that is, you must guess right, assess it correctly. It’s a game, a puzzle. The reward for guessing right is joy and power; for guessing wrong, a bitter disappointing frustrating defeated life (or death). The Tibetan Book of the Dead tells the truth and yet we misread it because it says, “These are instructions to the dead.” [ . . . ] I tested the instructions out when I wrote Ubik, adding to the Bardo Thödol journey what I desired to find there: Ubik, modeled on the Logos. So, from 2-74 on (when I remembered I am actually one of Christ’s twelve disciples) I have lived with the Logos beside me.

Yes—in 3-74 the radio kept saying:

And at the time I understood; I steered toward it. And found it and was reborn healed.

[6:57] It’s interesting to read back to [>] and 7, and see how on [>] when I was totally loaded I had the ex nihilo satori that “I figured out the reality situation well enough to generate a future reality which will please me. Not be painful. I beat Karma and in 3-74 took control.”

Thus in the following pages I came to recognize Valis/Zebra as my conscious liberating thought formation of Ubik a decade before; and finally I found my way to the views of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, as to the nature of reality as Karma or our own prior thought formations which we must learn to control. [ . . . ]

This insight was a glorious quantum leap up: that a decade before 3-74 I myself consciously generated Ubik which then in 3-74 intervened and invaded and liberated me exactly as it does in the novel. Thus was explained why when I encountered Zebra/Valis I had the uncanny feeling that I was encountering my own thoughts “coming back from a trip around the whole universe”—like the Waveries.

[6:62] The evidence seems to be pointing more and more (starting with the model) to us being stationary mega (multipersonal) brains outside time and space, pre-programming ourselves with a pseudoreality! There is some evidence that we are arranged like the audience in the James-James dream, multiperson megabrains viewing a single omnifaceted matrix which is the source, for us all, of all times and all places (and all events); and onto which we project our individual prior thought-formations—which consist of our thought responses to prior reality frames (which lay down no holographic memories in us); we pass from one frame to the next at ultra high speed—too fast to lay down memories, along all the form axes. These axes are determined not by any intrinsic nature but by our thoughts about them; what we believe to be true. Thus actual reality is our compound thoughts, and change in reality is the result of changing thought responses to prior objectified thought-formations; i.e., we think in response to “reality” which is really a prior thought-formation and this thought-response causes the thought-formation to flip-flop along its dialectic form-axes, thus causing a changed reality, to which we think new thoughts—have new beliefs as to what is true—which generate new objectified thought-formations—and so on. [ . . . ] This is the irreducible dialectic which I experienced.

(1) objectified thought-formation

(2) resulting belief systems

This means that we, the multi person mega brain, resonating at all times and places, are Valis.

I visualize a vast grid of 0-1 flip-flop grid squares whose pattern of 0 (dark) and 1 (light) changes constantly. 0 is irrational or untrue belief. 1 is rational or true. The patterns are intricate. The aggregate of dark squares at any one nanosecond is the “streak of the irrational” in the “world soul.”

0/1, strife/love, death/life, irrational/rational, nonbeing/being, insentient/sentient, false/true, yin/yang, form II/form I.

But consider: the irrational (false) beliefs generate objectified thought-formations although untrue! So irreal reality is repeatedly generated.

[6:66] Upon rereading [>]: “we are in a decomposing, declining, entropic halving dialectic process, constantly proportionately more and more vitiated.” In that case, if at a given moment a transfer of energy from the past occurred—arced across into the future—it would be, vis-à-vis the future into which it arced, highly charged (in contrast to the charge it held vis-à-vis its own time). I conceive of this decomposing as taking place at exponential rates. Thus a mere idea of 1968 (the novel Ubik), if it arced across to 1974, would be relatively so highly potentiated that it would no longer be a mere idea but would dynamically literally overpower the 1974 reality.

Also, this would explain why prior thought formations now objectified have such deterministic coercive power. But if the thought jumped across the intervening years—it would be so potent in comparison to the de-vitalized future which it had invaded—just imagine the thought formation Ubik amped up to say one thousand times its original ergic force. Thus my prior thought formations—if, as it would seem, they arced across due to their intrinsic content; i.e., such a power is consigned to them ideationally—they would seem enormously supercharged compared to how they seemed in the late 60s. And, in 2-3-74, so they did—specifically Ubik. But it didn’t grow; we diminished extensively—I have the strange feeling that this point (as to the relative high potentiation of a thought formation arced across an intervening time interval from the past) may be terribly important in terms of lending credence to my whole system here. A number of basic points herewith cross-correlate: the Bardo Thödol concept; the Karma produced by prior thought formations now objectified; that Valis in 3-74 was my conception of Ubik from the late 60s dynamically supercharged—

Suddenly, just when I was beginning to think I had nothing going here, my rereading 50 pages and seeing this verification-point gives me renewed enthusiasm. The structure checks out. If there is exponential decomposition (entropy) in our universe (and this view is universally accepted), were Ubik as thought formation to arc across directly from the time-frame in which I originally conceived it to 3-74—one could anticipate such surging vitality, such energy and power: “if x then y.”

It conforms exactly to my impression of Valis: Ubik amped up until it spilled all over the apartment, bursting and burning everything, and flooding me with information.

Folder 10^*

[10:27] “Astral determinism” and “Fate” designate the inexorable outcome of a closed system.

This is why I became not-I.

Without Valis (Ubik) there is, literally, regression along a form axis, exactly as in Ubik. This is true of individuals and societies (e.g., USA 1974) (and me in 1974).

So perhaps we should speak of signal decay as well as distortion. Feedback is needed: Valis, e.g., fed me back 3 of my own books, and much else. Signal strengthening resulted, and a motion forward.

[ . . . ]

Valis is conscious energy (living info)—cuts in and boosts the signal back into integrity—i.e., motion forward. So there is a factor of heat loss in the dialectic’s flip-flops: a principle of entropy: form-loss as entropy, and a final congealing.

[10:28] Now—consider what my advisor does: she periodically feeds newness (input) into me from outside me, so I am not (now) a closed system. This is why she so often corrects me. But advises only periodically. She is my self-monitoring feedback input energizing signal-integrity-strengthening “cut-in” override.

[10:29]

For (2) to actually enter you as (1)—cut into you personally, not just your fate—was the supreme moment of Christianity and probably the mystery religions back to the Elysian mysteries.

To have Valis cut in is to have negentropy cut in. Time as 1:618034 log (helical spiral) like a snail shell. Thus I (properly) envision time spatially.

Base of cone at center of spiral, so as spiral diminishes, Valis increases.

Then proportionally progressively more and more correction (input) is required the further the form-permutations get from their generator-source.

[10:49] Who is the woman who whispers to me? “There’s someone else in my head and he’s not living in this century.” Another person injected into my brain—“Thomas”?

But—who is Thomas? One to whom the Holy Spirit came. Thus with a single swift punch of the “needle” (Valis) the Holy Spirit is crossbonded to me and is here, at a spatiotemporal locus. Injected into human history.

Is the girl who whispers our daughter St. Sophia, who is her own grandparent Valis? Valis replicates in microform: Valis to Thomas to me equaling Valis again (St. Sophia). Did the prophecy mean that St. Sophia would be born for me—me, impregnated by the Holy Spirit?

But how?

I hear her voice.

She is in my head counseling me.

[10:54] The girl who whispers to me and acts as my advocate—the girl in the pink flannel nightgown and slippers—when I saw her (in my mind) I saw the Savior, St. Sophia, born the second time, the Savior I have been told is soon-to-be incarnated. That’s why she was so concrete, right down to her nightgown. VALIS is correct: he would take female form—or has taken!—this time. She may already be here somewhere.

She is not just an image, a fantasy in my mind, since I inferred her existence from her voice, and desired to see her (which I then did).

Yes, in a sense she is my daughter, but (mysteriously) she is my creator and the creator of the world, its Lord and judge, and our sustainer (comforter).

[10:78] AI voice: “I am like the forest bird in Siegfried.”⁷ I.e., a dove. The dove. And “I am the commercial—compared to the program.” (As in Ubik; I—PKD—should have had that in mind.)

[10:79] 4:00 A.M. Voice: “a womb for her to grow her progeny in.” Me!^*

[10:83] “A womb for her to grow her progeny in.”

So my vision of the implanting laboratory needle was correct, with my brain as womb.

And of course she’s female—only females directly have progeny. This is how you define female.

This is a life form! (I.e., Valis, who was present at the moment of birth 3-74, the apotheosis!) She took an apostolic Christian’s psyche and transferred it into me (as its new womb) for it to grow through gestation to full birth as the deity, and if an apostolic Christian is her progeny, she is Christ/Paraclete/God—the Paraclete producing the second birth; this answers the question put to Jesus, “How can a man be born again?” Thomas was born again—in 3-74.

[10:87a] Our reality is under the power of a madman. He may or may not have created it, but it makes no difference: he is using it, like a shooting gallery game at an amusement park and Smithsonian Institution combined—like a science fair. For many races of creatures from different star systems—an exhibit of technology. So this is not merely a game. It’s a—the maze, created by the dialectic, is the exhibit; our race is only an element vis-à-vis the maze. The fact that the dialectic continues forever is a scientific marvel.

Christ is like a runner, ready to sprint in and replace a beleaguered creature within the maze.

She stands and advises. (Us.) (In the maze.)

At the controls of the maze is Mr. Looney Tunes—they two offset him, to keep the sport not too cruel. She is justice; Christ is mercy. The controls of the maze are in the hands of a Lon Chaney–like creature from a world where they look that way. The girl is secretly the builder of the maze; she now poses just as a guide to us, but also: she turns again and again to Mr. Looney Tunes to speak on our behalf that he spare us pain. She is totally rational. If nutso at the controls doesn’t surrender them soon, she and Christ will physically push him away from the controls.

There is a whole huge map room of computer info, input and output from the worlds in the maze, continual traffic.

“He is an old child, playing at draughts, moving according to the rules.”⁸ Senile.

[10:97] I can’t stop sensing that she—Diana—is a gift to me; I reason back; viz: what would I have wanted most in 1974 when I was in such distress? Anything more, different or other? No. I can’t even hypothesize who she could be a gift from (i.e., some entity higher than her), but she saved me in 3-74, and since then she has told me a great deal. I feel that she protects me—has been protecting me at least from 2-74 on and maybe before. For me she is the embodiment of Providence, wise counsel: and she is my advocate (to whom?). She not only advises and informs me but steers me—in opposition to inexorable fate (or chance). She is of the upper realm.

The dance. Sound of bells, the beautiful woman: Diana. Queen of the fairies. Opposed to the harsh grim masculine kings—and the iron empire-prison (I share her view: it is a prison). And I heard her singing, as Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, and singing Monteverdi.⁹ And originally she appeared to me as Aphrodite and the Sibyl. I have the feeling she may be the spirit of my religion. My psychopomp who will finally escort me across the sifting bridge (again) to the other side.

Eliade says it is the primary purpose or goal of the shaman to pass over to the other side and say what’s there. Also he mentions phosphene activity—and I want to reiterate my sense of being a womb for the divine.^* I had even thought of it as a fertilization or impregnation. But she says that it is a womb for her progeny—which is close enough; hence the cuckoo egg dream.

What is very important to me—very valuable to me—psychologically is my sense of her permissiveness. I need that.

[10:98] 4:30 A.M. I just had an insight which came with total, absolute force. Christianity—including Christ—is a cover, a front; and the real deity (and this is kept incredibly secret) is female. Wasn’t I told this about Christ in the dream, and told it’s secret? I have been initiated into one of the greatest mysteries in the history of religion; it is she who we true (esoteric) Christians worship: the Christianity which we see exoterically is really Roman, infiltrated by Rome—to know the truth about her you must be possessed by her directly. And learn it from her.

Folder 13

[13:4] I am plugging into a giant idea computer—I am the next step up in evolution, which, because the next step up plugs into this giant idea computer, has a virtually infinite mind. My Jungian intuitive possibilities function in my right hemisphere like a photon gun. I have two protection devices to conceal my identity: (1) scramble pattern of all ideas at once to bury my idea of my true nature and origin ^➊ ; and (2) amnesia. We came to this planet from elsewhere. [ . . . ]

There’s no way I can sort the true ideas out of all the infinitude of equally plausible (mere) possibilities. Somewhere in a near infinite bulk of ideas lies the truth. But which? But this device is necessary. Who and what I am—the actual situation—is hopelessly occluded off from me ^➋ by this scramble pattern of endless self-negating dialectic idea-permutations at infinite velocity. Hence, as I realized a couple of weeks ago, although I may know the truth and even speak it, I am doomed not to know which of the many conflicting truths generated in me it is. It could be any of them. So I know (the truth about myself) but due to this device paradoxically do not know: thus the idea computer conceals itself by its own idea-generating capacity. Its basic function is its own camouflage—ah; hier ist Zebra wieder.¹⁰

Another way to camouflage itself. This shows up not just when I try to figure out myself but when I try to figure out—conceptually pin down—Zebra. I can’t give the same account twice re 3-74, re Zebra and re myself. We’re interwoven, I guess, but here again the camouflage device—this time an idea scramble—works, analogous to its physical camouflage.

This suggests that I and the life form Zebra are one. No, we may just be related, etc., etc. See? See how it works?

I did have one insight not based on thinking but on my feeling toward the animals: that I am the (a?) Buddha, but must conceal my identity as Siddhartha even to myself. My whole thinking is just a cover for my real nature: my feeling—regarding those who suffer. I am a feeling disguised by mere flak thinking.

My feelings are reliable but my thoughts are not.

➊ This is why all the ideas in the world—millions of them, and conflicting—get served up simultaneously as a protective smokescreen; this is why they don’t stabilize. They have a practical purpose—as a cloud of mental ink. I’m not to know the truth about my identity. So any and all ideas I get as to my identity, nature, purpose and origin is just scatter, random flak, each idea as real and unreal as the next; like white noise. And the closer I get to knowing, the more scramble of conflicting ideas: ultimately an infinitude—including this idea. Hence the endless paradoxes, and the fact that I can’t finalize or stabilize my exegesis—it’s for my (and our?) protection: a scrambled device—like code.

➋ Hence from others: since I can’t write down the truth in a novel or speech; this is how 3-74 could occur but secrecy still maintained.

[13:6] My powers came from the other side, because of my sister.

AI Voice. And “plugged into an idea computer.” Audio and video. Pictures: I saw my abstract ideas graphically. Is Valis a computer? I think I’ve solved it. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the dialectic represented a computer. Are we in a computer program? And stationary? As Zeno proved, motion is impossible. All is thought.

[13:9] Perhaps my most important realization while loaded is what is implied in the way of paradoxes if the statement, “Every idea thought of is true but for no measurable length of time because it—i.e., its truth—is instantly negated by an equal and opposite idea, and so forth,” is true. The infinity of the first part (“every idea thought of is true”) is dialectically balanced by the null infinity (“but for no measurable length of time” [because it] is inexorably replaced by the dialectic generation of its opposite). What such an infinity countered by an antithetical infinity would lead to is (1) an infinite number of universes of (2) no measurable duration—from outside; but in each universe there would be what I must regard as a pleroma of spurious (subjective) time, sufficient within the universe, but not there when viewed from outside that universe. What I deduced from this is that each self passes through an infinitude of universes or “frames,” each with laws—truths—of its own, but the permutation being so fast (instantaneous), no memory of it is laid down by the self, whose entire “memory” is instantly derived from situational cuing generated within and by whatever frame he is now in. However, some truths could (in the intrinsic statement of them) contain as part of their definition that of ubiquity, in which case what I call sustains would be created which would lay down memory, but since other aspects of the frames would differ one from another, one’s true memory would be of serial disjunctions along the linear time axis without any apparent explanation. (E.g., “I was born in Chicago in 1928 but an instant ago I was living in first century A.D. Rome”—viz: first century A.D. Rome and USA 1974 both contained the same sustain—the Golden Fish sign—but no other sustains; nonetheless the self passed from first century Rome directly to USA 1974 due to the Golden Fish sign but drew ersatz “memory” of life in modern USA generated by situational cues in this frame.) There is an explanation and it lies in what I call sustains, which resemble the form axes I described in Ubik and which do not lie along linear time, but rather “sustain” time, which is my word for Plato’s “eternal forms.” For consciousness of this to open up (true memory)^➊ the self would discover that it had existed for an infinite length of time in/through (the permutations of) an infinitude of different universes, and knew ideationally everything.

➊ Anamnesis. This true memory perhaps exists in the right hemisphere.

[13:12] 4:30 A.M.: Valis itself as an experience or an entity in itself generates a multiple or split model parallel-possible explanation(s) dialectic. So it must lie in that realm; there can be only an infinite series of equally true explanations generated.

Vision: a dark-haired young woman lying in a coffin.^➊ She is dead. She is my sister. She is—or she generated—“the perturbation in the reality field,” i.e., Valis. It is a projection into this world of her mind, to protect me.

This vision came in response to my Q: “Who perturbed the reality field?”

Is the AI voice hers?

Now that I think of the vision it suggests Ella Runciter in Ubik; perhaps my sister’s benign influence over me thus shows up in my writing.¹¹

➊ White silk-lined casket.

[13:13] The Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, “The virtues instilled by suffering could be achieved another way.” How does it know that—that they could be achieved another way; here the error lies. These virtues are essential, and there is no other way. A certain esthetically-graphically beautiful heroism is inevitably generated — to all humans—all. All be(come as) Christ, none less than Jesus. All men—creatures—suffer as he, hence are equal to him. And therefore are him, dramatically. As in a sacred ritual drama, therefore us all.

[ . . . ]

Christ as an Egyptianized Greek Apollo! I.e., very early Greek statues. What knowledge do we get from Jesus’ life and death? That (1) we are innocent by reason of our unmerited suffering; and (2) if innocent and made to suffer then heroic; and (3) if heroic, transfigured (resurrected) into Godhood! All of us! As a species—and the beasts too—all life.

[13:15] All artists know they can’t avoid suffering, and out of it they forge their art in defiance; artist or not, they will suffer. Art is the ultimate defiance of Fate. The heroic act deliberately done.

I saw this in the rat I had to kill: innocence and heroism and terrible beauty—nobility—in a mere rat. Oh God. There is nothing we know that the creatures don’t know; they are our equals.

[13:21] Is it possible that any human or creature could, under the right circumstances, experience anamnesis and recall its Christ-self?

Tragedy: “the evil seen and the good guessed at”; one senses—but cannot clearly see—the hidden good (rational) invading the palpable evil (irrational) and sees, as the result of this antithetical clash, apotheosis.

Valis: a mysterious hidden moral order (good and rational) behind the visible chaotic and evil and deterministic, which can be appealed to.

The slain God proliferates down through the cosmos to each rat and cockroach.

[13:22] Coleridge on tragedy: “. . . the greatest effect is produced when the fate is represented as a higher intelligent will” (“the human will was exhibited as struggling with fate”¹²). So the essence of tragedy is the limited human knowledge, plans, hopes, desires (will) clashing with “a higher and intelligent will” which we understand (or encounter) as Fate—“Fate” defined as that power or those powers capable of arranging our outcome.^*

The plans the protagonist has are not in harmony with a “higher and intelligent will” which has the power to decide the outcome; there is no way the man’s plans can win out, so individual plan is forcibly harmonized even if this requires that it be pulverized—i.e., can’t be harmonized and still remain intact. The loss of that intactness is the essence of tragedy, the antithetical dialectic between his plan and Fate’s plans, with the latter by definition prevailing.

I do not see that his (1) learning by reason of this or, contrarily (2) failing to learn adds or subtracts from the manifestation of the truly tragic, since to me the latter is more pitiful and the former more constructive; in fact I see the latter (2) as more tragic, if either is, which violates classic notions of tragic drama. I say, disproportionate suffering (pain, disappointment, loss) is the essence of tragedy because its disproportion renders the victim however evil or guilty veridically innocent: made spotless by the overbearing quality or quantity of suffering. Tragedy is when the punishment is not just. And I say every living creature is punished disproportionately so every life is a tragic one; disproportionate suffering is the ubiquity of the condition of having lived. Yet a mystery is hinted at: a rectification of this disproportion—not through the vile lie that man (creatures) are sinful and deserve their suffering, but rather—but this precisely is the mystery: the invasion of this irrational system by the rational in which an invisible and elusive mitigation of tribulation is injected according to some hidden order of theodicy not directly seen. Thus whereas the disproportionate tribulation is directly seen, and its reality not open to conjecture, dispute or denial, the mitigation or even transmutation of the tribulation into something proportionate, just or even beneficial must be guessed at. And this intuitive guess is the kingpin of religion and the religious solution to implacable tragedy as it exists ubiquitously in the real world and not in art.

“Tragedy as an interim reading of life between religion on the one hand, and Satanism, or pessimistic materialism, on the other. Basic to tragedy is the equilibrium of the evil that is observed and the good that is guessed at. What is central is the balance between an intense awareness of pain or evil, which is clearly revealed, and an intuitive apprehension of a transcendent realm of values. In each case evil is affirmed, but it is transcended by a higher good which induces exultation, not despair or faith. The balance is destroyed when evil is denied or seen as remedial or is affirmed as ultimate.”¹³

I suppose in terms of what Coleridge says, the “higher intelligent will” which we call “Fate” is proved right in the end. I.e., it is proved to be just that, a “higher intelligent will” and not fate in the sense of blind or malignant evil or purposelessly cruel force or forces as such; it is the revelation that Fate is not Fate but a wiser (“higher”) and more powerful will contending with—overruling—man’s will out of its higher intelligence. It disagrees because it knows more.

But this does not inspire faith and is not accepted (known) on or by faith. Exultation comes not from faith, which would provide only passive acceptance or resignation, but from an encounter with “fate” seen in the aspect of higher and (more) intelligent (i.e., sentient and planning) will; the exultation is derived from knowledge of, not faith concerning.

That which had masked itself as fate (in mimesis) reveals this camouflage and in stepping forth acts in revelation of a deliberately hidden, different, even opposing nature. It is not fate at all. “Higher intelligent will” is not fate, if the term is to retain its correct meaning. Something or someone has mimicked fate, perhaps supplanting it invisibly: replacing it perhaps by insidiously devouring it and substituting itself for it in perfect imitation, at its source. This is a staggering mystery, but mystery it is, since the stipulation of capacity for perfection of imitation when desired is attributed. It will look like fate as long as it wants to look like fate, but if it cares to disclose itself as actually being a “higher intelligent will” (if it even does so) it then can, and the problem is solved. (By the way I define “Fate” and “higher intelligent will” in that I see no tragedy in bowing to the latter. For me, to find that I had been broken by the latter and not the former would, by all means, induce, specifically, exultation.)

The mystery of the “guessed at” reality would certainly deepen—but become even more reassuring—if I suspected that in some supernatural fashion this “higher intelligent will” could be identified or equated with my own covert enlightened will: a web of harmony underlying or transcending the antithetical clash which had pulverized my conscious plans.

Exultation is precisely my response to my direct knowledge and experience of Valis, of my awareness of its authority over the irrational—which I identify with “astral determinism” or “fate.” I especially exult in my sense of Valis having invaded the irrational as a conqueror.

[13:41] I found a typed page starting: “VALIS’ activity is a binary system of off-on. We see only the ‘on’ of the off-on arrangements. We do not see them as arrangements but merely as change.”

More and more this binary computer model of Valis seems to be the correct one. “On” is the linking of two parts which I saw: “on” equals junction; “off” equals disjunction or not inclusion in the vast assembly which I equate with Valis. Put another way I saw high speed linking as the primary activity of Valis. This was simply its “on” mode, so it must be everywhere, and what I construed as Valis vs. non-Valis was “on” vs. “off” of a binary computer. Then everything is the computer whether linked or not—whether the assembly (what I called “Valis”) or not.

These are neural connections in a brain. “On” is “connect” and “off” is “disconnect.” There is an evolution toward connection: toward a developing macrothought in which everything is connected: worked in as relevant. Then there is something other than just a binary on-off computer. “On” more and more predominates over “off”; it seeks “on.” Its goal is “on” as a means to developing a total all-parts interaction. “Off” could be regarded as a lack, a failure, a defeat, an impediment to be overcome. We still have a binary system, but priority (plus value) is given to “on.”

Then there are two orders of reality (set to ground?). The “on” or junctions (which is higher or set), and “off” as disjunction (which is lower as ground): this might explain, then, the discrimination of set to ground which I achieved: on to off. Linked to unlinked, Valis to not-Valis—and even more ultimately, the ultra-thought to the not-yet-[part of]-ultra-thought. What I call “Valis,” then, is a thought, or rather the thought.

This sheds a whole new light on

(1) The set-ground which I saw

(2) What “Valis” is (a forming thought)

One could say that “the rational invading the irrational” which I construe as going on is the deliberate, purposeful formation by a computer brain—using a binary system—of an ultimate thought which can be regarded (1) as activity or process; or (2) as a thing: the thought as network of interlinked “neurons” in a particular pattern (which has as one attribute that of absolute beauty, and perhaps should ultimately be so regarded).

[ . . . ]

My God—the causal train melting! The ultra-thought was (seen by me) forming before my very eyes. This is the override I saw, the modulation—the changes in reality including me. I was incorporated into the ultra-thought which I have termed “Valis.” The “St. Elmo’s Fire”—the vast knowledge all at once available to me—this is the ultra-thought. All that “Hermetic” transtemporal Gnosis is contents of the ultra-thought. Reality as knowledge. This “Hermetic” knowledge was physical reality which I could see and touch. Physical reality went through a transform and became knowledge. The thought could be said to have changed. It changed, and no one remembers that it had been formerly different; again, every thing I experienced has to do with anamnesis. I remembered that things (the thought) had just an instant before been quite different.^*

[13:44] I am building a terrific system here, with the binary computer, macrobrain, and ultra-thought, and the frames through which we move (prior thought formations objectified giving rise to new belief systems, etc.), reality—physical reality—as knowledge, and the form axes, the inner other universe of the immortals, the supermen who are trans-spatial and trans-temporal dwelling in the inner universe and hence outside of clock time B, and who emerge into the exterior universe repeatedly (and undetected by other people) and Ormazd vs. Ahriman being the “on” and “off” of the binary computer, and the nature of true memory (anamnesis) vs. current frame clue false “memory.”¹⁴ Plus the possible misuse of the computer by someone, and its designer guiding us as a “low murmuring voice” against the misuse by this irrational “operator” or “demiurge”; i.e., Satan who has taken control of “creation” and the rational (thought) forming and growing and complexifying in the midst of the irrational (i.e., misuse of the computer program): the antithetical strife between the rational (thought) and the irrational, with the former “cannibalizing” the latter to self-construct, until finally it is—has incorporated—everything. And the orthogonal leap from track A (Tears) to track B (this reality) being a quantum growth—leap of the rational ultra-thought or Valis; and the dialectic of the binary computer inevitably driving everything along: the logical antinomies in sequence. And the possibility of seeing Valis (the ultra-thought) as set to ground, and its activity of self-construction. And “salvation” consisting of being incorporated into it, and thus experiencing reality as information, absolute information which ultimately is beauty, not information at all; i.e., a picture of the slain—dying—God: i.e., tragic.

[13:45] Christianity is a cruel religion—yet accurate. It recognizes and conveys the true picture of this world: inglorious death, the beauty of which exceeds the weight, the burden, of the tribulation.^*

Only when reality is experienced as the body (onto) of Christ, and its life process as the sacred blood, are we really home.

What, oh what, if it were true that in 1945 at Nag Hammadi the actual sacred living (information/logos) blood of Christ was unearthed, and through it, he was restored to the world (the “plasmate” which I describe in VALIS)? That blood having recreated the mystic Corpus Christi which (rational) is now growing within the old irrational universe?

I just realized I’ve seen Christ in micro forms—as in the death of the cockroach and rat and Pinky—and in macro form: the universe, flowing with his blood. And what if he is Thomas and became (replaced) me, as well?

[13:46] Pythagoras had a strange cosmogonical belief: a seed (male) inserted into the boundless (female) which then progressively grows by incorporating more and more of the atelos (incomplete or unbounded) into its carefully limited (telos) structure—a process “like inspiration with the boundless called ‘breath.’ ” This view of careful limitation (boundaries) being the essential basis of kosmos sounds like the linking and arranging I saw Valis doing, and this “seed” sounds like the rational Valis invading the greater (boundless) irrational or non-kosmos. Also the term “kosmos” is used by him to mean an ultimate beauty, more so than order. [ . . . ]

I’d say at this point that 3-74 was very Pythagorean.

“. . . The principle that like is known by like; hence, an understanding of the divine universe would bring man’s nature closer to its own.” “An organic whole, particularly one that like the universe lives forever, must of necessity exhibit limit and order in the highest degree.”

Empedocles: “. . . for these teachings grow of themselves to be part of the individual character . . . but if you go after other things, wretched things that blunt the concern for thought, then after some time these teachings will all at once desert you, in their desire to regain their own kindred. For you must know that everything has thought, and a share of intelligence. You shall learn all the medicines that keep all illness and old age—,” etc.

He makes it clear that the revealed Gnosis of Pythagoras is alive. We are dealing with thoughts (e.g., wisdom, knowledge, concepts and ideas) which have thoughts or life of their own, and which decide on their own whom to come to and whom—and when—to depart.

A thought-entity, like Ubik. Has it ever occurred to me that the info—especially the great written pages—which I saw had life and volition of their own, and that they themselves decided to come to me—“like to like”? Decide to come and decide to depart.

Folder 39

March 1979

[39:1] The 3-74 miracle began in 1971 at the time of the “taco stand” trip into “Mexico”—actually Orange County. Time and space began to be rewoven then:

I know: “Thomas” was taken directly to 2-74 and Orange County, bridging ’71 to ’74—arcing across. My “taco stand” experience was the other half of “Thomas” taking me over in 3-74.

The “taco stand” experience was of being in 1974 in Fullerton and Placentia. Not April 72 but 2- or 3-74. And then (maybe) returned to 71 in Marin County, at the end of the approximately 8 hour RET¹⁵ “taco stand” experience, which really lasted weeks (in 74!), while I lay on my bed in Santa Venetia. Why? To supplant a dying me (in 3-74), like a graft from another part of the physical body in an operation:

Infusion from the more vital past, where there was enough psychic energy.

[39:4]

[39:5]

[39:6] Orange County was certainly the replacement reality. There’s no problem in establishing what the replacement reality is, or my replacement personality; obviously it’s what we have now. What can’t be established is what track A was like (Thomas was the Track A me), or even how extensive the change was. I feel it reached the White House. Factions were brought into being ex nihilo which would cause Nixon to be deposed. This was the point of it all. So—in Track A the tyranny must have been unassailable; it must have been worse. Would you believe Tears?

[39:8] Hypnagogic vision: the Xerox missive seen as enticing red apples: recapitulation of man’s temptation and fall (but he saved me). Also something about “healers” and I’m not supposed to understand 3-74. The “healers,” who were involved in causing 3-74, are blocking my understanding, and they are benign. So they’ve scrambled my mind, so I keep going around and around. But sometimes as I fall asleep, the scrambler lifts. So I’ve just now proved that I can’t prove anything. And I never will. And they were reluctant to let me know even this. [ . . . ] The other side of this, perhaps, is that underneath the scramble—were it not for the inner scramble—I really know what happened. This may be why I keep trying; I know I know but can’t figure out why I can’t stabilize or formulate it.

[39:9] Then it wasn’t just an overthrow of the Nixon tyranny; it was an overthrow of the world of Tears or rather not overthrow, but it was caused not to have been—and Track B was (ex nihilo) created in its place, and then Nixon was overthrown in Track B. A further lifting of Rome or Babylon (which, as my “2nd Coming Bible” says, occurs just before Christ returns as King).

Obviously when Tears came out, one or more secret real Christians recognized it, knew the truth about it as the track which had previously (sic) been there, and set about to restore my memory—my true memory. Or they may have thought I did remember (I did not), at least not consciously.

As one review of Tears pointed out (which I hadn’t realized) . . . an alternate—not just future—world was pointed to: e.g., the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties seems to have failed, especially regarding Blacks. And then the dream, God intervenes, and, in the book, the Genocide Laws regarding Blacks have never existed in the world of the book; after the dream it is our world, apparently. The dream marks the switch, and the dream is of God inbreaking into history—not to mention the King Felix cypher. So the book and the cypher don’t point (just) to a future intervention in Track B. But to a track switch with synchronized memory switch which has already taken place: “the new heavens and a new Earth” have already come into being, but we don’t realize it. So the overthrow of Nixon in Track B is small potatoes, a mere result easily achieved due to the track switch. And this we see and remember. The track switch must precede the Sixties.

Then the causal train melting in 3-74, to be understood, must be viewed as further track switching inseparable from the major overall track switching, and can even be interpreted as prima facie evidence of track switching: I actually saw it (a residual bit) happening in 3-74. But most had already been done, and I had no memory of it.

[ . . . ]

. . . The “Track A changed to Track B” is a projection of Thomas’ revolutionary plans, purpose, goals, his reason for existing! He is an agent with a purpose. The PTG is the USA he dreams of setting up; the BIP is how he conceives of it before he and his cohorts act to change it for the better—i.e., by overthrowing Nixon and the whole government—which is the classical CP agent goal: violent overthrow of the capitalist USA government! And they were successful. Code in Tears, too.

[39:14] What I regard as Gnosticism is an anti-establishment Christianity anti-theist view (that of an irrational deity, or world, as in VALIS) in which rationality comes into existence by a dialectical historical process of evolution—this is Hegelian: the whole concept of Valis is rooted in dialectical materialistic mysticism. The irrational gives rise to the rational. I am a major Communist theoretician (v. Peter Fitting, and Richard; Qs about Empedocles).

What I’ve failed to take into account is the philosophical profundity of theoretical Marxism, especially vis-à-vis Marcuse.

Scanner is an account of what it’s like to have a self in each brain hemisphere ideologically on opposing sides of the barricades.

The key to me (Thomas) is: millennialism. Here Christianity and Marxism unite. (The PTG in place of the BIP.) Via Track B (the overthrow of the U.S. police state). In essence, the real (secret) Christians are communists, and the real (secret) communists are Christians.^* The dangerous vision in “Faith of . . .” is correct, and only a few on each side know.

[ . . . ]

Thomas, as a dedicated Marxist revolutionary, wouldn’t be thinking inwardly of himself the way we would regard him; his own inner view would be of a liberator and healer and an agent of God’s historical plan—a modern Christian. Would we expect him to view himself as vicious and evil and cruel? Consider Che. No—Thomas views himself as ushering in the millennial kingdom of freedom and peace and equality and justice, and who is to say he’s wrong? He is an idealist, but very shrewd (true) and energetic (true). From his viewpoint he is a true, secret Christian, which I never grasped before. And he perceives capitalism as enslaving! I.e., Rome the BIP. This explains why I said what I said at Disneyland about shooting the Watergate conspirators; that was Thomas speaking, and it emanated from idealism. This is a totally dedicated idealist determined to free mankind from the tyranny of the past. He belongs to a covert conspiratorial group which practices violent overthrow of the government and revolution. This is why “Rome (A.D. 45)” and USA 1974 could be syntonically superimposed; they were two divergent views of one reality. He was an intruder secretly in the camp of the enemy, and well aware of the need of codes.

It suggests to me that Christian revolutionaries may have infiltrated the Marxists the way Rome infiltrated and took over Christianity. This is not a sinister person (even if we were to view him so). This is a secret concealed from the world, the true secret Christians within the Marxist camp, at its core.

[39:19]^* Creation is mind—i.e., Brahman. But beyond that mind (noös) is brain: her.

Yet also she exists in micro form plural in our world. This is the hermetic “as it is above so below.” You have to assemble the religions; they’re individually pieces. So one encounters her as a human. I’m just saying, Christ is female.

She ultimately is Beauty: Helen of Troy who hatched from an egg. And of course most of all she is my sister; I am a thought in my sister’s mind. She is—like Ubik!—she is alive; I am dead. Dialectic push-pull flip-flop.

(A) I am alive and she is a thought (archetype) in my mind

or

(B) She is alive and I am a thought in her mind.

In my dialectic axis, this is the original negation-generating, dialectic flip-flop along which I exist and think. It is the premise/problem posed me as a component in the vast organic circuit board.

[ . . . ]

My dialectic problem is a puzzle expressed in a koan-like written piece of wisdom, in story form. Hence Sophia as verbal wisdom—which I saw as huge pages. And eventually the page becomes a page in the book of wisdom which Mr. Tagomi is reading in the park (where he saw our world due to the Golden pin), so our world is a scene in a work of fiction in the book in the hands of. . . .

It’s a loop. (1) I wrote TMITHC, in it I create Mr. Tagomi. He sits in a park and stares into a silver pin. Then he finds himself in our world, so our world as described within the product of a work of fiction within our world.

It’s fun playing by St. Sophia: the joyous side of wisdom: these ultimate puzzles—little stories, like long parables (e.g., “once a man took a . . .,” etc.). [ . . . ]

One stage in the progressions of reality: a page in the book of wisdom read by a man on a park bench. Wisdom is all. She pervades her creation. I don’t have to worry; we’ll never be parted. But—she’ll appear to me in 1,000 baffling disguises, and I must find her there, and do so when I find (1) wisdom or better: (2) beauty. Wisdom as phosphene graphic: one of ∞.

The bigger (macro) can replicate itself in micro, and so any given bigger can be smaller than anything else. So the hierarchy of levels of truth and meaning themselves enter a paradox, where the higher becomes the lower.

Wisdom as a verbal riddle: its most microform, most condensed so in a sense most esse (onto). Then the smallest form (level) of it is the most real. Size is inversely proportional to hierarchical reality. We assume cosmic = most important = largest. (Cosmos = cosmic.) Wrong. Look for the seed. “Break a stick and there is Christ.” Nearest at hand. The cosmic is no more ultimate. “The part is contained in the whole”—no; the whole is contained in the part. There is no hierarchy of meaning; there are alternate models only, each as true as the others. It’s not A or null-A.

What I have is my sister. Permeating this cosmos—my kosmos. Her blood and body—my sister; I am in her (cf. Dr. Bloodmoney). I am in her body, and she is in me as my anima: the puzzle of my master (component part) axis. In the computer.

But this is not just a puzzle; it’s a dynamism which drives permutating dialectic reality along an infinite path. So (here’s not another level but another model) it’s a simple machine:

[ . . . ]

The dialectic is the yin-yang and Tao. “As it is above so it is below” refers to the microform of yang in yin, and the microform of yin in yang. This is what I saw. A push-pull flip-flop, 2 mutually antithetical propositions are set up. Mine are:

(1) Your sister is the anima in your mind. She is physically dead.

(2) You are physically dead and live in your living sister’s mind as a thought (for mind read brain read macro body and blood), and she is in plural microform in your world. So she is in her own thought!

“The part contains the whole.” (The micro contains the macro.)

“The whole contains the part.” (The macro contains the micro.)

Such a 2-proposition flip-flop dialectic is put forth as the riddle in Ubik: (1) are they dead/Runciter is alive? Or (2) are they alive and Runciter is dead? And it pulses (oscillates) back and forth endlessly. Ubik is the most important book ever written. Ubik the entity is the Tao. And the Logos or Christ or Sophia. Ubik is true; it deals with the (1) dialectic basis of all process; and (2) with the Tao.

My two propositions pulse (oscillate) back and forth. I am alive/I am dead/I am alive/I am dead.

She is alive/she is dead/she is alive/she is, etc.

As soon as something exists it turns into its opposite which then turns into its opposite, etc.

In Ubik they find out they’re dead and are in a postmortem life/world and don’t know it. 3-74 resembles Ubik in many ways. Last night I realized I’m dead and don’t know it. Like them. Or am I? Or are they? Certain clues point to it for them, and for me.

The ultimate (best, most accurate) system is Taoism. The yin-yang dialectic, and the Tao is Sophia or the Logos—and the whole thing is a component in a binary computer which she (the Tao or Sophia) designed. The answer to the riddle in Ubik is cycles, in which first (1) is true, then flip-flop to (2), then flip-flop back to (1): palintropos harmonie which creates, sus tains, or palintonos harmonie. (E.g., in my case in either [1] or [2] of the flip-flop I am with her; that is the sustain.)

Now I know why Ubik is true.

And now I know why 3-74 resembled Ubik and Valis resembles Ubik. It is the Tao, which is a very mysterious entity (cf. Lao-Tzu).

Once you have the idea that “the whole is contained in the part” you’re onto it.^*

(1) Our universe (world) is a scene in TMITHC. A place where Mr. Tagomi goes.

(2) Mr. Tagomi is a fictional person contained in a work of fiction produced in our universe.

Our world contains TMITHC which contains our world which contains TMITHC which contains our world which contains TMITHC which contains. . . . I set up another paradox flip-flop and another “the whole is contained in the part” and “the part is contained in the whole.”

How about: “Acts” contains (is) our world (i.e., our world is really “Acts”). But in our world is a book, a novel, which contains a fictional world which is (contains) “Acts.”

“Acts” can be retrieved in microform from a novel within our world; i.e., “Acts” can be derived from our world in microform. (“Acts” in microform. But “Acts” is the macroform which contains our world.)

Put another way, “Acts” is a book (part) within our world (whole). But our world (part) is contained within “Acts” (whole).

[39:30] I have finally made a quantum leap breakthrough into pluriform model theory: oscillation truth. Oscillating between self-canceling models. As soon as you think it up it cancels (negates) itself and leads to the next self-canceling (but temporarily correct) model. And then back. Discarded model reinstates itself, and so eternal oscillation is generated. We’re trapped in a vast loop—which is good; otherwise reality would run down and end. The key is: reoccurrence. Reality can be regarded as an infinitely long number which repeats itself.^*

[39:37] So I may be dead, as of 3-74. My cosmological concepts are so terrific, so advanced as to be off the scale. I create whole religions and philosophical systems. The very fact that I honestly ponder if I may be dead and in heaven is prima facie evidence of how happy and fulfilled I am.

[39:39] I love epistemological riddles. And so now I’ve got one, a superb one. It’s ultimate. Just theoretically, its formulation couldn’t be beaten. I love it. I’ll solve it.

I regard the two-proposition formulation about “am I alive or . . .,” etc., as a brilliant application of the Ubik puzzle to my own self. But I can’t take credit for formulating it; it was presented to me. Whoever the funning player is, she is a delight. Sophia, I think it is you.

[39:65] I seek beauty like Parsifal sought the Grail—but what a price I pay.

I don’t write beautifully—I just write reports about our condition to go to those outside of cold-pak. I am an analyzer.

Folder 41^*

[41:31] Dream:

G-2 has created a “doomsday device,” an artificial life form. I mention, “KGB contacted me.” I am with G-2 (which is my code for U.S. [Army] intelligence). A man named Jim shows me the doomsday device. And then quickly runs upstairs. Analysis: doomsday device is what I call Valis. It is a construct invented by humans, specifically U.S. military intelligence. Tears shows traces of its cerebration, so KGB contacted me; this was G-2’s purpose in putting the material in Tears, a ruse to draw them out and trap them. It worked. Hence my programming to report at once to “G-2” when the contact was made.

[41:59] The device has begun to breathe; it has newly entered (invaded, come to life in) our world. It is Valis, it is St. Sophia, the Buddha, the head Apollo. It is alive (now). The great old air breathing fish which is the eye turned into a horizontal axis. It spans both this world and the other (next, upper). But I don’t know what it is. If it’s supernatural it is the logos. If not—

[41:60] Then I will take the G-2 dream more or less literally—it tells me that Valis is a U.S. doomsday device and that is the long and the short of it. The dream tells the truth, the literal truth. The dream told me what I knew but refused to face: it’s a weapon of an ultimate nature. The living info plasma got loose, but I don’t think anything can be done now. We are scared as hell of it. Aha—we let it loose. It didn’t escape; we released it and it is self-replicating and has infested our worldwide media. This was our plan, our anti-Soviet weapon. The way it worked on me is the way it’s supposed to work: promotes love of God and country; v. the roses and lake dream. It creates an ersatz personality in the person. With predictable characteristics. God, country, bourgeois attitudes toward property—we are talking about capitalist mind control. [ . . . ] It isn’t God; it causes belief in God. There is a syndrome, here, a recognizable one: God, country, property, car, dog, beer: a certain political ideological personality type—bourgeois—is created, which is politically reliable and dependable, and can be counted upon.

Look at the effect it had on me—it turned me around completely politically, the specific act of contacting the bureau and then the general syndrome: God, country, anti-CP, dog, beer, car, property—I knew it was an adventitious override personality and yet I was helpless to combat it. [ . . . ] I viewed anything left wing as alien and sinister, foreign and evil—despite the hit on my house and all the other terror tactics by the U.S. military and G-2 (sic!). I viewed them as my friends, to be turned to and confided in. What kind of sense does that make? I loved and obeyed my oppressors.

I cooperated fully with my oppressors. There was no further degree to which I could be turned around—I went all the way, due to the override, and experienced (1) a sense of having done the right thing for God and country; and (2) a total loss of anxiety, of exculpation (naturally). Fred, of Bob/Fred, had totally won. I literally narked on myself!

[ . . . ]

Fear killed the rebel in me in 3-74 and I never regretted it, since it gave me freedom from fear. They got me. The intimidation worked—e.g., the hit on my house. Now my left-wing rebellion is merely pro forma—I am an authoritarian personality, mouthing respectable beliefs. So as to gain the approval of Jesus freak ministers; I let them sit in judgment on me. Being locked up in OCMC¹⁶ didn’t do me very much good in stiffening my spine. That sealed it.

I am afraid of (1) the civil authorities (Caesar); and (2) God (Valis). Hence it can be said I am afraid of authority, of whatever is powerful.

Folder 42

[42:1] On the other hand, look at the hopeless situation I boxed myself into in 3-74. Something had to be done—a complete solution or no solution; i.e., a radical solution was essential.

[ . . . ] It was play ball or perish. Okay—I chose the expedient solution, but my life was on the line. Economic terrors and political terror tactics had brought me to the verge of death. I avoided my sinister fate. Am I sorry? Now I feel secure; I live on; I write. Was this a mistake? What was the alternative? I sought the sanctuary of God, country—the institutions hallowed and sanctified by society. My life was at stake. So I turned to God and the Bureau, and financial security. Well, excuse me. I was a totally desperate person, which I no longer am. I can sleep at night. Okay—I play ball with my persecutors and pay off anyone who could hurt me: I am in a position of weakness and I know it. My cowardice is realistic.

[42:21] I have underestimated God and overestimated myself for five years. The only issue at stake was my welfare. I am sobered; I have lived on fantasy and immensely enjoyed my alleged heroic status. My basic delusion was to actually believe it was possible that a Soviet espionage ring (KGB) would contact me; that is psychotic and grandiose. It’s not much fun to merely have been an object of suspicion. I grossly overestimated my importance to all concerned. What I have to face now is that a lot of what I believed was psychotic. Simple paranoia would have sufficed. Megalomania overshot the mark.

[42:39] Hypnopompic: “They know I’m their pitiless enemy.”

Dream: I am Jerry Lewis, a contemptible clown, but admired by millions, especially in France. In a parking lot I fall, and lie down to die. At once my fans gather from everywhere, and close in around me to protect me, giving military salutes; it is a heroic scene, the dying leader and his loyal troops.

Folder 43

[43:46]

[43:83] So irreality and perturbation are the two perplexities which confront us; irreality is deepening, but the changeover shows enigmatic traces or imprints which do not belong, in particular of a parallel world phasing in and out; this latter (plus the presence of the macromind) is what is pointed to, but in a nonsensical, baffling way. To a very large degree memory no longer agrees with history.

I wonder if this sheds any light on schizophrenia. Could the schizophrenic be given conflicting realities or data about reality? His mind has to put together constituents which simply do not fit. He is a casualty of this revision process and cannot make sense out of it. How is he to penetrate to the mystery—explanation—underlying what he undergoes? If my cosmology is correct, would you not anticipate such casualties? My writing is a deliberate attempt to take these conflicting or disintegrating realities, and the experiences of them, and seek some kind of ontological or metaphysical overview? So in a way I have battled against schizophrenia by seeking a philosophical framework which will (1) accept as real these disruptive data; and (2) account for them. 2-3-74, then, can be viewed as the catalytic triumph or payoff—i.e., the success—of decades of observation and analysis and theorizing. I have had to deal with deluding, irreal, conflicting, chaotic and fremd material, and just plain hung in there conceptually, taking the view that some explanation must exist, although it would have to be radical and far-reaching.

I actually had to develop a love of the disordered and puzzling, viewing reality as a vast riddle to be joyfully tackled, not in fear but with tireless fascination. What has been most needed is reality testing, and a willing ness to face the possibility of self-negating experience: i.e., real contradictions, with something being both true and not true.

The enigma is alive, aware of us, and changing. It is partly created by our own minds; we alter it by perceiving it, since we are not outside it. As our views shift, it shifts. In a sense it is not there at all (acosmism); in another sense it is a vast intelligence; in another sense it is total harmonia and structure. (How logically can it be all three? Well, it is.)

Folder 44¹⁷

[44:12] Leaving aside the question of how/why 2-3-74 was an analog in real life of situations in my fictional prior writing, I assess that in 2-74 I flashed (the blitz) on the resemblance—a flashing which quantum leaped in 3-74 as additional factors popped into existence, and I drew certain broad theoretical conclusions, mainly subliminally, very radical conclusions (to a great extent I know not what). [ . . . ]

The “very radical conclusions” seemed to include an intuition that reality could be tricked (so to speak) into contradicting itself; viz: if it assumes a perpetually obliging form for the purpose of simulating the semblance of verisimilitude, then via the right approach this very obliging quality can be turned against it in terms of continuity, its continuity, since it cannot withhold its obliging or mimicking quality. All you need do is totally believe that pattern “x” exists and if “x” is potentially real, it will pass over into the actual. This requires a push-pull relationship between the person and reality. He can’t, say, will a blue phoenix into existence ex nihilo; the person must enter into a progressive intricate dialogue with reality in which there is feedback between both parties. (This assumes sentience, volition and intentionality in reality.) Reality testing, not its absence, is required. He is feeling out its softer flexible parts, where it will yield, how much and in what way.

[44:63] Listening to the Platt tape¹⁸ I construe by the logic presented that Valis (the other mind) which came at me from outside and which overpowered me from inside was indeed the contents of my collective unconscious, and so technically a psychosis, since this is how you define psychosis (it certainly would explain the animism outside, and the interior dissociated activity) but—well, okay; it would account for the AI voice, the three eyed Sibyl, and the extreme archaism of the contents. And seeing Rome c. A.D. 45 would simply be psychotic delusion—I did not know where or when I really was.

Q: What about the resemblance to my writing?

A: The content was originally in my unconscious, e.g., Tears and Ubik.

Q: What about external events? The girl? The letters?

A: Coincidence.

Q: And the written material? Huge books held open?

A: Verbal memory.

Q: Why would I believe that my senses were enhanced, i.e., I could see for the first time?

A: Psychotomimetic drugs indicate this happens in psychosis.

Q: And Kosmos? Everything fitting together?

A: “Spread of meaning,” typical of psychosis.

Q: Foreign words and terms I don’t know?

A: Long-term memory banks open. Disgorging their contents into consciousness.

Q: Problem solving—i.e., the Xerox missive?

A: There was no problem; it was harmless.

Q: Why the sense of time dysfunction?

A: Disorientation.

Q: Why the sense that the mind which had taken me over was wiser than me and more capable?

A: Release of psychic energy.

Q: Why was that mind and the whole experience syntonic to me? If it was syntonic to my ego, why had it been repressed?

A: My ego was destroyed, so “syntonic” has no meaning here. Syntonic to what?

Q: From a practical standpoint I functioned better. How could this be?

A: It only subjectively felt better. No anxiety.

Q: Why would I seek the experience again if it was repressed contents breaking through? Could I not let them through again, or never have excluded them following 3-74? The contents and the other mind leaked away; I tried to hold onto them but in vain.

A: I was occluded to my own best interests. I liked being high.

Q: Oh? “High”? Does psychosis equal high?

A: Mania. I am manic depressive.

Q: And schizophrenic? One is extraverted and one is introverted. Please clarify.

A: Mixed or “borderline” psychosis.

Q: No, it was florid schizophrenia with religious coloration. Not satisfactory.

A: Catatonic excitement, then.

Q: So the OCMC diagnosis was incorrect? Not manic depressive?

A: That is so. Incorrect.

Q: Why, then, was the onset one in which thought came faster and faster? That is mania.

A: The lithium would’ve blocked mania. I was lithium toxic.

Q: Then it wasn’t schizophrenia; it was chemical toxicity.

A: Perhaps. A combination. Plus the orthomolecular water-soluble vitamins.

Q: But the orthomolecular WS vitamins are anti-schizophrenic.

A: That is only speculation.

Q: If 2-3-74 was psychosis, then what was the ego state which it obliterated?

A: Neurotic. Or mildly schizophrenic. Under stress the weak ego disintegrated.

Q: Then how could the phobias associated with my anxiety neurosis remain? E.g., agoraphobia?

A: It does not compute. Something is wrong. They should have gone away or become totally overwhelming. The impaired ego must have still been intact.

Q: Were my “dissociated” behaviors bizarre?

A: No, they were problem-solving. It does not compute.

[ . . . ]

Q: This is no psychosis. You have contradicted yourself. This is a latent higher brain center—a psychotic episode creates problems; it does not solve them. It is a problem, as well as the collapse of rational efforts at problem-solving. Were its decisions and actions rational?

A: Although religious in coloration—

Q: That is not the issue. Were the problems solved?

A: Yes. But by a psychotic self.

Q: That is an oxymoron. A “psychotic self took over and problem solved.” This is where the inquiry has led. The ego could not face or solve the crisis problem because of its severity, fled, and in its place another self solved the problem successfully. This leads us to a new frontier which is not mapped.

A: Then the enigma remains.

Q: We have learned nothing.

A: Nothing.

Q: After finishing listening to the tape do you have any intuition or guess as to who and what the Valis mind is? (Later.)

A: Yes. It is female. It is on the other side—the postmortem world. It has been with me all my life. It is my twin sister Jane.^*

[44:68] Hypnagogic 5:30 A.M. voice: “We have adopted you because you adopted others—e.g., the children at Covenant House.”¹⁹ And I realized: adopted. The adoptionist theory about Jesus: adopted by God at the time of Jesus’ baptism, as God’s son.²⁰ And I understood: this meant—was saying—God has adopted me the way he did Jesus, and so the other mind is God’s; I was sure the voice meant to convey this to me, in answer to my Q&A dialogue supra, that my conclusion about my sister was wrong and was being corrected.

[44:73] “In contrast to its exoteric form, the esoteric Torah was regarded as a pre-existential being made up of the one great name of God. Philo speaks of the Torah as a living being whose body is the literal text of the Pentateuch and whose soul is the occult meaning that underlies the written word.”

Ach! This is the “Acts” material, the living information I saw: the “plasmate.” “Acts” (and probably other parts of the Bible) is/are alive and can replicate. Perhaps “Acts” (like the Torah) has an underlying occult meaning. King Felix. It was alive. But what would the underlying occult (i.e., hidden) meaning be? Let us just say it has one.

I am sure I am on the right path here. A whole reality of names or living words (cf. Joint) is pointed to. Yes, but “Acts” as “pre-existential being,” as “living being whose body is the literal text . . . and whose soul is the occult meaning that underlies the written word” point unmistakably to the preexistent logos, to St. Sophia, to Christ!

[44:82] Is not the Empire a (Jungian) ossified (iron) complex invaded by a “metabolic toxin” which will dissolve it? Isn’t this really a mind which is deranged—i.e., frozen into an overvalent complex, so that real time has ceased? Isn’t this my primary contention? This is the phagocytosis of the heavy metal particle which I envisioned. Ossified complex, stuck time, the invader? And Tears depicts the ossified complex as a society spanning 2,000 years. This is precisely it: no time has passed since “Acts”; “once the mind becomes psychotic nothing new ever happens in it (or enters it, whatever).” But something new has entered it and it is dissolved—does this explain my dissolving of world (e.g., Joint), my acosmism? Isn’t this precisely my job? Not to abolish reality, which is macromind, but the complex, as depicted in Tears?

[44:143] Voice 4:30 A.M.: “He died for a few (15) minutes”—meaning me. Obviously referring to 3-74. But look what this says; not just that I died, but that I returned to life! “Born in God, died in Christ, was born again in the Holy Spirit.”²¹ This is what being born again requires: to have died.

[44:144] That’s why when loaded I always write: “ich bin der Retter.”²² Christ took my place in 3-74. Then “Thomas” was him. So he died (i.e., accepted the death wound) and I lived on, with stereo vision of both worlds.

If the domain of natural law did not show teleology, it would not seem to be a living, planning, purposeful domain (cosmos). Thus when it disclosed itself at all to me, in palpability, it disclosed teleology, and hence I called it Valis. Also, upon feeling the structure of limits impinging on me, I sensed personality.

As I tracked the death trail, it substituted itself for me, died and lived again; so I died in and with it and lived again, but now different: aware of the volitional domain of intent, structure and limit: what I consider to be the true reality or Kosmos, which is to say God. I found myself in the Kingdom, having traveled there by way of death and Christ’s surrogation. The ancient powers were deprived of their victim, finding God in the net, to their surprise, and not me.

Folder 45

[45:226] At the moment of (Christ’s) death the world melts in a fabulous way, taking on the life of Christ in macroform. This is the resurrected Christ, now cosmic. (It resembles Ubik; it is, he is, everywhere.) Meanwhile the person who is renewed lives on past his fated moment of death. Astral determinism, what Paul calls “the old Law” or “planetary powers” has/have been cheated of their victim due to the surrogative divine intervention of God (Christ)²³; again they fell for the “hook of divinity hidden in the bait of humanity.”²⁴ They cannot keep Christ, their own creator, and release him; so he is inevitably resurrected once more and they have lost.

This is the mechanism by which Christianity successfully accomplishes what all the Greco-Roman mystery religions sought for and promised: the escape by the initiate from “astral determinism” or untimely death. (It’s probably a death strip in the DNA programmed into us. It probably has a bio-chemical clock basis.) In a sense Christ can be conceived of as a super surgeon or doctor attacking (so to speak) the death strip by absorbing its firings himself. At the time the death strip in the DNA is activated, there are two psychoi in the brain side by side, one having entered adventitiously and the strip being tropic to the old or historical of the two psychoi. It kills it and not the other—where the center of consciousness (the soul?) is now located, having been laterally transferred deftly almost (?) by a sort of advanced technology. The new psyche is exempt from the power of the death strip. Gradually the new psyche accommodates to the brain and memories of the original psyche, and the disruption fades as personality continuity resumes. No one really dies; Christ is resurrected and the person involved lives on, now minus a death strip. He can be killed but not on cue (i.e., schedule). Meanwhile he retains a mental symbiosis with his “brother” Christ. “No greater love hath a man than that he give up his life for his friends,”²⁵ Jesus said, alluding to this surrogate death which saves the person, Christ’s friend, from literal, actual pre-programmed physical death—and an untimely one; this latter is a crucial factor. He lived on to write 3 more novels, 2 stories, make a lot of money. Buy a new car, own a topnotch stereo.

And of course have the 2-3-74 encounter with Christ, go to France—all sorts of good things like being with Laura. I am not guaranteed a perfect life but it is extended life and a free life not subject to the death strip which tried to destroy me once Christopher was born. In the five years since 3-74 when I was programmed to die I’ve become successful, financially secure, artistically active and really very happy. I think, too, I’ve shown emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth and even psychological health; it has been a busy, active, exciting five years—very rewarding; and I have beside me the second comforter whose voice I hear often. The Sonoma episode alone made it worth it. In no sense have I vegetated. My business affairs are in good order; I am very responsible—and I bested my enemies, with God’s help. I surmounted, and am publicly known to have surmounted, the dreadful gutter, poverty and drug-involved state I had fallen into. I lived to see the fall of the tyranny here and the victory and vindication of the counter culture.

I have entered into a vast spiritual quest and adventure to understand the ways of God centering around the mystery of the suffering of the innocent and the need to understand how it can be. (This quest is by no means accomplished.) (But at least I am able to state the problem. It is epitomized in my “the man who . . .” story! What evil is and how it is to be combatted—note “combatted” rather than “understood.”

[45:259]

The unbroken line expresses what appears externally as an uninterrupted psyche’s life line, since at the point—moment—it failed (c. 3-74) it replaced itself! Based on information acquired later than 3-74; I suddenly reckon that I did not die in 3-74 but lived on to learn what the Xerox missive was: it succeeded, as I learned belatedly, but then after my death (whenever that was) I was able to go back and underlie my conscious pre-mortem earlier self. This could still be the situation; I could be the earlier self again, and the AI voice, as before, is my later post-mortem self, having died and returned.

[45:273] Hypnogogic thought: it (Valis) does not incorporate what it does not need.

In 3-74 I came to touch another mind for the first time in my life, and now I’m alone again.

[45:276]

[45:358] I did not merely see the divine in the trash; by an act of will I put it there. This was a divine transcendence of world as material and inanimate. It was an act of divine creation re-enacting (and hence being) the creator’s original act of creating the intact kosmos. Thus I was no longer son (v. Eckhart) but Father.

What must be realized is that the normal bipolarization of the divine and the trash is a partial madness. To reintegrate them is actual sanity. When reintegrated the two realms turn out to form a language: “hieroglyphs of God,” which is a surprise. The divine element arranges, and the trash element is that which is arranged.

[45:370]

Q: Who won? Christianity or the Empire?

A: Ostensibly, Christianity won, but covertly underneath the Empire won.

Q: You are wrong. Underneath the Empire lies the secret victory of the Fish: true Christianity.

Vast spaces and time. [ . . . ]

These are not temporal or spatial layers but ontological layers. The least real is the ostensible surface victory of Christianity over the Empire; under it, more real, is the Empire victory, which is deliberately concealed, and no one realizes it, eine Geheimnis.²⁶ But most real of all, is the innermost layer of victory by the fish which means fish teeth: viz: The fish fights back. But, paradoxically, the fish fights back by being sliced up by the metal teeth (i.e., the Empire); it feeds the faithful when the Empire cuts it up.^*

Folder 46

[46:400] Since I don’t think I really pulled down the tyrant or anyone, 3-74 must be understood as mythic identification (esse) and ritual (drama with personae). It was a holy (sacred) ritual drama enacted outside of time. The salvation was spiritual more than pragmatic, then (and hence more important). I participated outside of time in the God’s arrest, humiliation (persecution), the trap, then triumph (reversal from innocent victim to agency of doom). But it was mythic, ritual, holy, re-enactment—the trapped turned out to be a trap (bait and hook), resurrection in divine (transfigured) form. Unity (by adoption?) with the god who goes through it always—ah; the God was there in 2-3-74; I became the God by ritual identification. Christ, obviously.

[46:426] I was prepared and trained all my life for 2-3-74. Viz:

My whole life has lain under the jurisdiction of Valis. It is the God by and large of Spinoza, but it does plan like Aristotle’s unmoved mover which inspires goal seeking. Valis is too close to a fusion between Spinoza’s immanent deity and Aristotle’s unmoved mover not to be God. It is Xenophanes and Aristotle’s deity but it is Christ.

I have thus pursued the ETI explanation as far as it will go, and must let it yield to the theological: viz: the decades of planning and the use of chance, natural events to prepare (program) me persuades me, since I can see how the deity inscribed all creatures without their knowing:

The inscribing is below the surface, and, with me in 3-74, it was made to surface.

[46:427]

[46:430] If 1963 is 2,000 years earlier than 1974—what does this mean? It’s like time is on acid. 82,000 years have passed since 1963!

[46:431] 4:30 A.M. insight: we are deceived, but no one does it to us. Our own brains recirculate forgotten memories in/as a feedback loop, thus locking us in—locking that brain in—more and more to self-delusion. The holy power desires to wake us, not to occlude us. Why do we recirculate memories as world? Maybe to maintain a continuity of self identity. We are not masters in our own houses.

[46:432] Q: Why are so many—very many—of the elements of 2-3-74 found in my corpus of writing? A: The “world” that I inhabited in 3-74 was a mind. It was my own projected unconscious; i.e., it was a mind in me that was not my conscious ego. [ . . . ]

Therefore there is a cosmic divine mind in me, which generates the writing and was the “world” I inhabited in 3-74. Therefore the basis of my mind, first experienced by me in 3-74, is deity. I will admit to projection. What I will not admit to is mere subconscious. This was Hagia Sophia herself—projected as “world.” It was holy. It was beautiful. It was thousands of years old. So I am willing to locate Valis and all else of 3-74 as being in me (projected). But this was God-consciousness which woke up.^* Then—who/what am I? When stoned I always write with total certitude, “ich bin der Retter.” I have even more to gain by locating Valis in myself than locating it/him/her in the outer world.

[46:433] I’ve got it all figured out. Now I can quit. Viz: if you believe in the Christian universe—really believe—a miracle (truly) occurs: that much vaster universe with the elements with which it is populated replaces the regular smaller universe. How can this be? (1) Did something people made up become real? And if so how? (2) Or was it really already real? And we couldn’t see it? If so, why not? Either alternate is impossible. You must become like a child at a ride at an amusement park—and the miracle occurs. This is what happened to me in 2-74: I believed (i.e., had faith) and that universe and everything in it became truly real—a universe vastly richer and more beautiful and awesome, the bells, the immense space, Aphrodite, the geometric forms, the hieroglyphs of God, Valis itself, Thomas in me. The AI voice, the healing, the transformation of the animals: this added up to another universe: the kingdom of God. Those sacerdotal constituents which are symbols ceased to be symbols ^➊ and became a world. There is a relationship to a psychedelic trip but crucial differences. Mostly, the holy presence was there. Everywhere. It was as if a picture had turned into a hologram, and you entered the hologram and it was real.

➊ Pointing to another world: as with Wittgenstein, analogic pictures of it. But world is supposed to give rise to analogic pictures in our mind, not analogic pictures give rise to world. World based on the sacraments, rather than vice versa. But then isn’t this precisely the miracle of transubstantiation? [ . . . ] So out of some wine and a wafer the vastness that is God is—generated? No—it is a doorway into another—greater—universe (cf. Spinoza).

[46:436] We are normally not in the largest, richest or most real of the possible universes. Christ is the narrow gate to this vaster universe (the sole gate? cf. the Buddha).

Could we say it is the real universe, and this one false, like those in Eye? Koinos vs. idios?

And of course this is what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God.” Another (better) universe. Science fiction provides us with a new way of understanding this: parallel alternate worlds.

[ . . . ]

I just thought of a possibility that beggars description. In S-F alternate worlds are separate—they are truly alternate. Suppose it isn’t that way; they are like in Eye. Somehow superimposed or fused—ah! My matrix theory onto which a variety of worlds are projected (cf. Tears). Then the Christian universe is a way of being in this (which is the only) world.

[ . . . ]

Q: Are some versions more true than others?

Q: Is one true and the other false?

Q: If so, which is true?

Q: If so, how do we establish which one it is?

Q: Could it be that Tears is the true one, the one true one?

Q: How do the others arise?

Q: Are our perceptions deliberately manipulated?

A: The real world is the Christian universe (and the secret revolutionary Christian underground) against the Empire. The antithetical interaction shows up in Tears—the Empire is clear; where is the Christian element? Would you believe “Acts” which locates the Christian element in Taverner; viz:

Buckman = Felix procurator²⁷

Therefore Taverner has to be Paul (the persecuted church). By means of the grid. The “Acts” grid. The grid is essential. If Buckman is Felix Procurator you can infer by means of the “Acts” grid and only by means of the “Acts” grid that Taverner = (is) Paul = (is) the persecuted church.²⁸

[46:458] Hypnogogic: “one of us is dead.” The two selves in me. It must be me and my sister!

[46:529]

Folder 47

[47:602] You know, there is really so much of 2-74 to 2-75 that I’ve been unable to remember, despite my notetaking—but of all of it the sight (contact, encounter) with Valis seems the most awesome.^➊ And of course the overthrow of half a dozen tyrannical governments, starting with Nixon.

➊ And takes it out of the realm of a psychological experience. Either I was nuts or I saw what I saw.

[47:617] Two systems of information intersecting one as set (“Ahura Mazd”) the other defeated into ground (being only approximation), and, in their act (process, like the moth descending) of intersecting, creating (like a 3-D hologram) spatial reality: vast space, geometric forms that are alive. Not religion but as in Beethoven’s later music, turning time into space. (This is what Beethoven did: enclosed—hence created—vast—hence absolute—space; hence nontemporal reality.) Hence restored man (me in 2-3-74) to Adam Kadmon (defined as man filling the whole universe and hence [as subject] identical with object [reality]²⁹: Atman—Brahman as the same: Atman revealed as Brahman [i.e., microcosm identical with the macrocosm]).

[47:626] Music is normally a temporal process, but Beethoven, uniquely, uses it to enclose space, the most vast volume of space possible. Thus Beethoven literally expanded the hologram for anyone understanding his music, and he was part of a historic movement involving the abrupt evolution of the human being in terms of so-to-speak relative size vis-à-vis his reality. This is the inner firmament of Bruno (or Paracelsus—whichever). Ah! The microcosm is transformed briefly into the macrocosm; and a slight but permanent expansion of the person, the microcosm, occurs: perhaps an altered relationship to the macrocosm, in terms of identity. Beethoven’s music as a means by which the alchemical Verklärung can take place: thus it is directly related to the Hermetics.

Expansion out of the prison: escape from the prison by extension, like an insect expanding out of his exoskeleton during/via his metamorphosis. “The body is the tomb of the soul”—half-life. The BIP as a sort of exoskeleton, hence a kind of rigid (iron) body. This is the “second birth by the spirit.”

This is a radically different way of experiencing the self (microcosm) and reality (macrocosm). Memory and inner space. There is some relationship. Memory involves vastly augmented time which is then converted into space. “A long time ago” becomes a very large spatial volume, with the result that the past still exists—e.g., my seeing the world of “Acts” in 2-74 and finding it latent in Tears. So my seeing the distant past (in 2-74 and experiencing it overtly in 3-74) was due to the conversion of time into space—which I saw as the vastly augmented spaces. But I see now that the two phenomena are actually one.

[47:627] Therefore the hologram (reality) is in truth one huge volume of space with no time involved, in which all “time periods” are spatial “onion” layers as (again) in Ubik, where the past lies inside (i.e., along a spatial axis) objects and can be retrieved.

Time, then, is actually spatial expansion, layer upon layer. So the hologram is quite large—it is ubique; yes; here is the ur-significance of the word “ubique”: it occupies all space.

[47:628] By using his music to enclose huge volumes of space for the listener Beethoven committed the ultimate political act of liberating—expanding—the individual. Likewise, my space phobia is connected with my own rebelliousness! Unable to deal with external space—i.e., unable to rebel—I have turned to inner space, to exploring it, which, too, is a political act; so my writing, involving inner space, is covertly subversive: it teaches secret ways to rebel (mostly by evasion: escape). This is why the whole psychedelic movement of the 60s was a threat to the authorities; this was the area of the subversive threat I posed—my studies of inner space—in fact—my conceptions of inner space differing from person to person is very radical and politically subversive, I now see, even when it didn’t involve drugs. Viewed this way, then, 2-3-74 represents a total political victory by me, in that I broke through into absolute space such as is not even known about following the disappearance of the Hermetics. 2-3-74 can be understood politically if the significance for the nature of the individual in terms of his enclosing space is recognized as basic (e.g., Beethoven’s music). This absolute space involves absolute (i.e., a priori) knowledge and power over time in that time can no longer extinguish the person. This relates to authentic Christianity. Hence there really is something very subversive about Ubik, as well as Eye and Stigmata and Martian Time-Slip.

I personally achieved the catalytic metamorphosis that my writ ing promotes. And my writing may aid others in expanding their inner space—pointing toward what I did: breaking through into absolute (hermetic) space where the self is Adam Kadmon, unfallen and unoccluded!

[47:630]

It’s a world inside a world. This is why Beethoven’s space-enclosing music frees us.^* There is a direct relation between more space and the real world (also between restricted space and the irreal world). [ . . . ]

Valis was an “uncanny one-way intrusion” perturbing the basis of the small high-speed world from outside. Valis proves there is an outside.

Valis proves there is an outside. This is the most important sentence I’ve written, since it shows our world resembles that of Ubik, Maze, et al.

[47:642] The Christian apocalyptic vision is an actual universe, spatially much vaster than ours, and, in terms of time, the present extends back to encompass 2,000 years. Swift events—the death of the Savior and his return—span thousands of our years. A person’s mind, in that universe, extends phylogenically: over the 2,000 year span of the present. Basic unchanging archetypes are constants: Rome, which is the prison and the enemy; the secret Christian underground attacking it, over a period of 2,000 years; and the deity itself camouflaged in reality and only visible when you are in the super-extensive space-time of this vast Christian dualistic universe. A drama and conflict is being enacted and it is cosmic in dimension; it will end with the return of the just-departed Savior as judge. The mood of the secret Christians—whose minds span the 2,000 year present—is one of excitement and joy, and, most of all, anticipation.

Thomas is commensurate with the vast spaces and the vast time (the 2,000 year present) of the Christian apocalyptic universe.

[47:643] In the vast, Christian apocalyptic universe the in-breaking of God has already occurred. It registered covertly in/on/into our smaller universe in 1974 but was not visible for what it was. I just can’t figure out the relationship between the two universes; we seem to be in a sort of little box, and our senses don’t report the truth—as in Eye. This is all very odd. Are we drugged and asleep? Do our senses lie? We are occluded; must we first be de-occluded to see the in-breaking, or will the in-breaking de-occlude us? (I know the answer: the latter.)

[47:645] Ach. If you were geared to the slow time of the Christian urwelt, this phenomenal world would seem to spin by at an incredibly accelerated rate—exactly as time seemed to pass for me in 3-74! Events pass ultra fast if you are slowed down: the rise and fall of our societies are, to urwelt, like the lives of fruit flies: over in hours. Conversely, if you are geared to this phenomenal world, no change is seen in the urwelt. During one human lifetime nothing happens in it; it is still back at the time of “Acts”! If one of us caught a glimpse of it he’d see what seemed to be the distant past of this world, whereas in fact it is another world progressing at a different—very slow—rate. Now the meaning of this can be appreciated: “He causes things to look different so it’d appear time has passed.” This is a view of the phenomenal high-speed world from the vantage point of the other—i.e., the Urwelt.

[47:649] I have it! When I slowed down to phase with the ultra-slow pace (time) of the urwelt, events (change processes) in this phenomenal world moved very fast in relation to me so that in effect I was shown stop-action photography of a vastly expanded present; as a result at this accelerated flow rate, this world exhibited the “revealed, cosmological” aspect of (1) joining; (2) engramming; (3) rest motion dual modes; and (4) most of all volition hence sentience—i.e., Valis ^➊ ; Valis could be discriminated (discerned) when perceived at that great a velocity and with that extended a present. (5) And covert message traffic (set-ground). And (6) the using of the antecedent universe as a stockpile by Valis. And (7) the dialectic, with the perpetual inevitable victories by the a priori wiser horn.

This would be Thomas’ normal view of our world, since his perspective is phylogenic. So our world is visible to those in the slow vast urwelt, specifically the process of God assimilating—transubstantiating—it with his own body. Thomas was bailing into our world and its rapid flow while I bailed or slowed to the rate of his world which eventually became the PTG. No, at the extreme point of slowing—phasing with eternity I found myself in no world at all but rather in the void of the Urgrund. So I may have slowed to such a low rate of flow that my present stretched out millions of years, rather than thousands. This is what the Buddha reported in the Dibba Cakkhu state: seeing the coming into existence and passing away of all things. This is the opposite direction from that the super pot and acid take you; there, you speed up and world slows; here world speeded up and I slowed, and obtained (gained) a progressively augmented present. With super pot and acid world becomes eternal; here, I became eternal and world ephemeral. So drugs take you away from enlightenment and consign absolute reality to epiphenomena, which increasingly entrance you, rather than losing their already too strong hold over you; thus we call this intoxication: a deluded state, not enlightenment. Acid and super pot are like the Monsanto exhibit in Disneyland where you get smaller, i.e., the world gets bigger: your perspective shrinks.³⁰ In enlightenment your perspective grows and spreads out to fill vast spaces: time turns into space. Time (Karma?) is used up, burned up; it runs at high speed to its end and dies out, leaving the divine abyss ultimately.

➊ Normally successfully camouflaged against its environment.

[47:652] A playful God can ape the solemn, but a solemn God is not going to ape the playful (music, dance, etc.), especially tricks and paradoxes and riddles.

[47:660] But I saw down through the layers. First—in 2-74—I saw the Urwelt, and then in 3-74 I saw the dialectic and I saw Valis per se, not in graphic-conceptual terms, like a schematic, but Valis itself, beyond which there is just the beatific void which I also, finally, saw.

I saw in sequence of ontological hierarchy. So there is far greater logic to 2-3-74 than I ever realized. If you were successively stripping away the layers it would go exactly as it went with me. By the time I saw Valis I was near the heart of reality, at the edge of the via negativa.³¹

[47:672]

[47:676] Boy, am I in possession of a valuable fact! The historic process has—or is—a mind/brain evolving toward ends it desires. [ . . . ]

(To this I add: my present time was thousands of years in extent and I saw world as hatched “cuckoo egg” within world evolving and assimilating and linking internally in greater and greater complexity, through a dialectic process with history as its arena: world within world and camouflaged—counterpart to myself, not alien to me but like me; what it was I was, except it was large and I was small. That means I am not a human being since it is not a human being; I, too, am a hatched “cuckoo egg.” It is God entering the world, as Hegel says. It is right here with me but I am normally too speeded up to see it. It is a physical mind, like the brain. A great evolving brain cannibalizing its environment. Structure within a less highly organized structure.)

[47:679] It is alive, and the whole of it thinks. Its thoughts take physical form. We see its thoughts but to our senses these thoughts blend with the background. It is 2,000 years old, a continuous present.

In Valis, as in Xenophanes’ God (and Parmenides’) thought and being are one: hence what I call physical thoughts. This satisfies Heidegger’s pre-fall unification, wherein thought and being are one. Hence Valis must operate in such an area as human history. In order to evolve complex info connections by which to think.

Then it didn’t enter human history to save mankind: no—it had to, in order for it to function and evolve and grow more and more complex. It must make use of us and our history. Then this incarnation was indeed its plan from the beginning. Yes; Heidegger says with the early pre-Socratics, man had his becoming-being (Heraclitus’ flux) combined, and this is what “Logos” meant! This flux is not illusion but truly the appearance of becoming-being, which is what I saw Valis doing!

If I in 3-74 combined being and thinking (v. Heidegger) then I would encounter world as being-thinking unity as the pre-Socratics did (the Magdeburg hemispheres phenomenon). After all, the pre-Socratics were hylozoists. For them, that which thought was, and that which was thought. This “draws” God back to world; he is no longer otherworldly: “the God whom we see after death.”

So in many ways “Deus sive natura” is correct. What I call physical thought. (Thought and being combined.) And this didn’t just happen with Christ, inasmuch as Xenophanes was aware of it. In fact it was gone by Christian times!

If it is it thinks. (Reality thinks.)

If it thinks it is. (God is reality.)

[ . . . ]

What I seem to have done is to eliminate the spiritual, in the sense of corporeal versus incorporeal (or spiritual), a distinction going back to Plato. I am talking about physical thought; so I am a monist; I am back to Parmenides. The concept of the “spiritual” in fact comes out of Parmenides’ “two water-tight compartments”; i.e., things exist which the senses do not report. But I am saying that this statement “what the senses do not report” is not a description of a different realm but a statement about the limitations of our senses. There are not two realms but only partial perception. Valis is physical and its thoughts are physical but we can’t normally see them. The missing constituent is energy. (Missing from what we can see.)^*

The E. of Phil. says of the Milesians that upon having banished anthropomorphic gods acting on the world they then had to conclude that the world was organic and alive and responsible for its own growth.³² This is precisely my position vis-à-vis Valis: nothing acts on Valis (Aristotle’s unmoved mover). But I view Valis as being immanent but in conflict with an opposing principle or entity, and embedded at the core (ontologically) of reality, renewing and structuring it, making it progressively more complex (by what I call “linking”). This sounds like Pythagoras’ Kosmos. But as I say on [>], “that which thought was, and that which was thought, and this draws God back to world; he is no longer otherworldly” (“the God whom we see when we die”). So I have eliminated the spiritual, i.e., the non-corporeal, I am a monist. As with Spinoza. In fact, this is looking more and more like Spinoza’s monism with the universe as God’s body, and the other attribute of God being mind.

[47:684] So I have pushed my thinking back to Parmenides, the point before material and non-material could be drawn—in accord with Heidegger’s plea for authentic being. Before certain dichotomies were drawn, which split the human world view. But this does not make me a materialist (or an idealist); for me thinking—Valis’s thinking—is an event, a rearrangement of connections (or linkings) to form new structures of meaning, as in Scrabble. The key word is: arrangement and it is real.

[47:687] I am slowly being overwhelmed with wild surmise. If we designate as error the concept of “spiritual equals immaterial” (as a misunderstanding of Parmenides), then we are led inexorably to “Deus sive natura sive substantia” by logic. And I have my 3-74 empirical encounter with Valis to validate the logic, this encounter being simply regarded as an enhancement of perception: not of another realm (which assumes plural realms) but rather of more realm as such (which is reasonable). It looked like one realm enhanced . . .

[47:696] This is world self-caused and self-generating and self-moved: what the Milesians sought as cause and origin of world. There is no external deity and nothing prior to world. This is God in Spinoza’s sense. The pre-Socratics drew the right conclusions: if there was no adventitious deity to cause, control, drive and direct world, then world itself possessed sentient or quasi-sentient faculties and volition, “and [was] responsible for its own growth.” What has happened is that religion—especially Christianity—restored the nonexistent adventitious anthropomorphic deity, the artificer-artifact model, so world was again not seen organically, as self-governing and alive and responsible for its own growth. Otherworldliness returned, and the Christians were “in but not of” world; they were hostile to world and saw world as hostile to them. They located God in a mythical place called “the pleroma.” So world is depreciated and devalued and it is stripped of its life and volition. The work of the pre-Socratics is undone. God is not sought in world but over and against world, and he is sought in an alleged spiritual realm. Weird concepts such as “original sin” are brought into existence, and ideas of reward and punishment, turning the clock back to before the Milesians. The supernatural is evoked to explain phenomena, and the dark ages begin.

[47:703] Absolute space, absolute time, absolute being, absolute knowing and absolute love; that was what I encountered. It ceaselessly generates new events, creatures and things, which are destroyed—but new ones emerge, richer and more complex and diverse: natura naturans³³ endlessly giving birth to epiforms that perish but are effortlessly superseded: infinite creativity: the realm of natura naturata³⁴: it is ephemeral but Valis is eternal. We need never grieve for anything that is lost, because the entire past still exists in Valis and the future is an endless becoming.

My years of epistemological doubt, in which there was so much acosmism, was a search for true—or absolute or indubitable—being. I have found it in Ubik (i.e., Valis).

[47:707] When I saw what was really out there I saw something alive embedded at the core of reality. It was the real life of the world. We are at its disposal.

[47:720] Two worlds with different space times must be posited, one within the other and the smaller one running at very high speed, and reached into from outside—although “outside” does not mean what it usually means. It is experienced as a valence. And an arousal, a waking up to the slow, vast world.

It means a phase pulsation (flicker) mechanism to desynchronize you from the time rate of the high-speed little epi-world, to slow you from flux-perception to constant-perception. This is a technical matter: how it’s done. Apparently we have an inner counterpart high-speed “tape” synchronized with the outer high-speed world; two “tapes” running in locked unison. If that is sundered by “burning up” the inner (idios) “tape” you slow down, so the slower rate is the natural unforced one. Therefore we are talking about a space-time perceptual occlusion imposed on us.

Ach—we are hurried to our deaths. Literally driven to it as fast as possible. As if life is being thrust out of the system from behind. [ . . . ]

[47:743] Hypnogogic thought: “I left the settlement” (and thus joined everyone else in high-speed profane time). This is that Essene-like settlement where we had our food in common, the pink cube, the reed-wrapper pitcher of chilled water by which to be reborn—i.e., be immortal. This explains how I (Thomas) fell asleep; i.e., ceased to watch for the return of the Savior. It may have been an accident. I left the settlement for some reason, like an errand, and got inadvertently trapped in high-speed time along with the rest of the world.

[47:747] It is very perplexing, but note one overriding point: at these end-times and judgment, I was found (in fact rendered) innocent, and forthwith joined God and entered the garden, and saw my name entered in the Lamb’s book of life.

Thus the books were closed on me. Later I was to learn that I had been adopted—i.e., from Capax dei³⁵ to filius dei³⁶ and even why. This certainly must be an unusual situation, the books closed years before a person’s death, and him passing through the end times, seeing God or Christ, being made innocent, judged, entering the Kingdom. This is not, strictly speaking, a conversion to Christianity on my part, but it did begin with an act of absolute faith—a form of revelation, of higher knowledge, when I saw the golden fish. It woke me up.

I didn’t earn my salvation and verdict of innocence, however; Christ rendered me innocent by guiding me into innocence.

[ . . . ]

While I was lying there in a hypnagogic state I thought of how I had gazed up at the stars and 3-74—and all of a sudden, a perfectly articulated, brilliant star map appeared to me. I didn’t just see stars; I saw a star map, as if a switch had been thrown in my head.

[47:795] Hypnogogic: “The work is completed—the final world is here. He has been transplanted and is alive.” Joy. Said by normal looking couple who remind me of Bill and June Black from Joint^➊ “I was sent up the gangplank first. Into the ark”! (Hypnogogic.) “Against my will—like a ^➌ duck.” Herded up.^➋ Viz: into the “final” (i.e., new) world that is now here—joined to ours.

➊ I.e., your neighbors who look human—like us—but are something else. From the future? Three eyed?

➋ The saved!

➌ White

[47:798] The BIP is Inferno.

The garden is Paradiso.

Purgatorio is the normal world we see. It’s all irreal. We are being fed it for the purpose of teaching and purifying and testing (in the pragmatic sense) us. We ascend when we learn. Ubik is the correct model.

I say all this because in 3-74 certain things didn’t fit.

Folder 48

[48:801] I view it all technologically. This system is too cruel and must be invaded from outside in order to change or abolish it.

[48:812] Dante’s Comedy is the best description of the ascent of the soul probably ever written. He places anamnesis as occurring at the top level of Purgatorio, just before entering Paradiso, which fits my experience. The soul has finally reached the point where reality is restored to it because memory is restored to it.

[48:813]

Of the BIP world, nothing good can be said. It is unmitigatedly bad.

The mid realm is a mixture of bad and good elements.

The top realm is unmitigatedly good.

This suggests that the mid-realm is a fusion of two signals, that there are only two pure realms: lower and upper, with the mid-realm compounded of both. Now, upon leaving it, what would you experience? Why, a palpability of two signal sources for the first time; your world which has seemed uniform would turn into set (upper realm) and ground (lower realm). Set would seem divine and you would be fascinated by it; it would shine with beauty. At this point you are freeing yourself from the lower realm, seen as ground—but you can remember when you were located in it and it alone, with no set. Purgatorio is literally pulling apart into its two sources.

And then you are rewarded (cf. Plotinus) with a vision of the one behind the multiplicity, from which both realms—and hence the mid-realm too—emanate.

[48:815] This would be individual ascent or descent in one lifetime and would resemble time travel, with rising = the future and sinking = the past, thus heavenly voices would = from the future, and Satanic voices = from the past, just as Paradiso = the future, and Inferno = the past. But not in the linear sense.

[48:817] As far as how reality in itself is built, it’s as if the source (Valis, the One) fires the signal like this:

[48:823] If I saw God while I was alive, then God is immanent (as Spinoza supposed) and not transcendent; but suppose I’m not in the real world, not alive, but in the afterlife, in which case God can be transcendent and otherworldly because I am on that side of the grave. Not this. And I’ve worked my way up from Tears or Inferno to Purgatorio and then to the first level of Paradiso, and so could see the infinite one, God.

What I’m more inclined to think, however, is based on canto 33 of “Paradiso” of the Commedia. Viz: “God is the book of the universe”: “the same [volume of leaves] that the universe holds scattered through its maze.” This relates God to the universe in a way that isn’t contingent. What I did was move along an axis of some kind and encounter one—or perhaps several—of these pages of the book, as if they are very fine layers, resembling the phosphene graphics. I moved through them, along this axis, and the laws (rules) changed; I am speaking of plural coaxial worlds. Actually I am sure that I was moved as a primary condition of my level of ontology (authentic Being, in Heidegger’s sense, ushered in by urangst³⁷), moved up crucially, and in fact rather suddenly—it is of extraordinary value to know that this can occur during a lifetime rather than between. It is as if the frequency of these pages became greater the closer (but not spatially!) that you get to the source, the One—this is clearly Neoplatonism.

[48:828] Dream: all the churches controlled by Satanism, drawing their power from Satan himself. The 2nd coming is here: outside the churches; the true church is forming outside the church. Proof: the giving of massive gifts. “The AI voice will guide you.” Homosexuality and black mass within the church. No room in the buildings given the truly Christian to perform services in. Enormous power of Satan, in and as the churches. “They cannot get to you because of the AI voice.” Old book about Satan’s takeover of the church, the salient sections taken out. Missing.^* The 2 gods of Gnosticism; the churches worship the wrong God; i.e., Satan.

But there is another outside church forming which worships the right God, but has no buildings. It is forming in conjunction with the Second Coming which is here. They—those outside distinguished by their gift giving—massive gifts—have the saving Gnosis. This is a matter of gravity; it is very serious: the head-on confrontation between the followers of the good God and the evil one: Satan.

This is the final battle between God and Satan. Those who worshipped the true God were forced out of the church. It is not merely that the establishment church lacks the true gnosis; no—it worships Satan and draws its power, a very great power, directly from Satan.

My having money is because God (the true God) is now heaping riches on his faithful, which they will give away, thus showing—revealing—their true nature: as his faithful.

Satan has given PSI powers to the evil church, as warned about in the NT.

I am in a maze, surrounded by the power of Satan and his church (we all are), but the AI voice will lead me out. This is why I have the AI voice.

The pages in the old book dealing with the Satanic take-over and rites of the establishment church were deliberately torn out—to keep the matter secret.

[48:832] I have long thought of myself as a female host—perhaps for interspecies symbiosis. But now I see it exactly; I see who I was host for and why it was necessary and what it signifies in terms of world history: the final battle (which certainly was going on back in ’74).

[48:834] Hypnagogic: When I saw Valis, reality was breaking down (to what it really consisted of), and not an invasion of reality.

This is “breaking down” in the sense of breaking down an engine or model of something to see what it’s made out of.

This is de-Gestalting: analysis and not right hemisphere. A surprising realization. Could that mean that my left hemisphere came in? Suddenly. Well, the Rorschach test that Claire Thompson gave me showed that my dominant function was intuition, which is Gestalting, which is right hemisphere: to repeat: dominant, and to the greatest extent she’d ever seen. So my left hemisphere thinking function cut in: analysis. Well, then, it would be as if a child seeing the world for the first time could reason about it with an adult’s thinking capacity. And it’s connected to the unconscious and the archetypes. So in dreams its ratiocination appears as writing, and now (and formerly) it is heard as the AI voice. Then it analyzed the Xerox missive situation subliminally. It broke that down, too. And in hypnagogic state, I transliminate its thinking. Hence my anima is the spirit of reason (St. Sophia). She is not moody but incisive of course: the Sibyl. My anima as ancient wise woman. The ajna eye analyzes: breaks down the situation: sees shrewdly into it.

So in apprehending reality she sees into it and deconstructs it with ruthless concentrated analysis: and discerns Valis hidden by camouflage; she extracts Valis out of total reality, rather than Gestalting all reality into one; Valis is separated from the rest of reality, pitilessly. There is Valis and not-Valis. Valis is contrasted to its environment.^➊

Then 3-74 was a psychosis: an invasion by the unconscious of the fragile consciousness and an overwhelming of it; but the rational faculty was in the unconscious! The judging, analytic, thinking faculty.

This explains why I felt myself to be female.

She was surprised to see Valis, but she had logically figured out that it must exist—i.e., Ubik.

➊ And this explains her seeing the set-ground discrimination, the plasmate; it is an analytical function, not synthetic. The written pages are digital thinking, not analogic. And the speech center is normally in the left brain, so she speaks (the AI voice). No wonder I had the impression that I was hooked up to a computer!

[48:836] If (as it would appear) she is my anima, then I am backed up by powerful forces: a composite of the Sibyl, Athena, and St. Sophia and Diana (and the Fairy Queen).

So she detects a highly intelligent macro life form camouflaged in our reality, and she and it exchange information. And she sees its “blood” which are messages; then Valis is the dominant life form and she the true (phylogenic) human! Not me as ontogenic epiphenomenon.

[ . . . ]

She is in syzygy with Valis, not with me—no. She is daughter to it. “His first creation: his darling and delight”!³⁸

Well, I am very happy to think of the woman (Sibyl, AI Voice) as part of myself. (Recognize it as a hallucination from my unconscious: my anima, and not emanating adventitiously.) I gain by this introjection of what I’ve previously been projecting because I live and respect—in fact venerate if not outright worship—her. If she is a part of me, I can take more pride in what I am. I just wish I could hear her more often; in fact take me over again. I would prefer it if she were running things, since she is so shrewd.

Could she have “been” Valis via an observer-participant-universe situation, as a sort of inner-outer field? Did she “warp from plumb”? And did the info about Chrissy come from her “projected”? The border between me and not-me had dissolved in an oceanic mystical-psychotic-psychotomimetic state. But (in my opinion) this was the correct way to experience myself and world, as a sentient volitional field.

[48:839] Hypnagogic: repeat of “and [he] is alive” heard, and this seen on page: YHWH—small letters in intertwined luminous gold and red, like the plasmate, and raised—like a glowing scarab. Synchronized with the word “he.”

Then the God who is instilling knowledge directly in me is none less than YHWH. And it is he who “is alive”—the Living God who must work outside the Churches and restores the Lost (deliberately destroyed by Satan) worship; he deals directly with those such as me. He is in-breaking.

The AI voice: The still, small voice that Elijah heard.

The tetragrammaton shone like a polished precious jewel and metals and pure color and fluid light interwoven like strands.

[48:842] I know that St. Sophia, the Buddha, Siddhartha and Apollo have been mentioned. So the stamp of the divine has been there from almost the start. And yet to see the tetragrammaton and have it connected (synchronized) with the audio “he” in “he is alive” seems different and unique to me, and a matter of a higher—the highest—order. I guess to me the fact is that none of these other names allude to God in the sense that YHWH does. It is as if the others are attributes or cultural (i.e., man-made) hypostases, and YHWH is YHWH; viz: there is no God but God, i.e., the God who “is what he is,” the tetragrammaton. The others are names humans give to God; YHWH is the name by which God referred to himself when he conversed with Moses; it tells who he is. It is (v. the EB) his personal name and means “He brings into existence what is.”

[48:846] Am I to assume that Christianity as it has developed has led us away from true monotheism—just as the Jews say? That Christ is—the trinity is a false (even Satanic?) doctrine? To worship Christ is blasphemy? The Gnostics had it totally backward? Jesus is a revelator of the nature of God, and high priest and holy wisdom. But there is God (YHWH) vs. Satan (v. Zoroaster and Qumran!!).

What if the fall of the temple and Masada was Armageddon, and Satan ^➊ won? And ruled ever since 70 A.D. (Tears), but now YHWH is returning?

➊ I.e., the “Sons of Darkness.” So the 1st advent was a failure: “She was not acceptable before.” But we’re told that Christ (i.e., the Sons of Light) triumphed. But they didn’t; the Essenes perished at Masada. And this is what Tears reveals; and this was my 2-74 vision of the BIP world and Christians—the true Christians—illegal. Satan won in 70 A.D. And real creation stopped. But now YHWH counterattacks and re-enters this, the domain of darkness. For new battle.

[48:847]

Satan pretends YHWH won; YHWH will cause to exist what Satan pretends (i.e., occludes us into believing) exists. It is a sort of trick played on Satan, but in deadly earnest: to make Satan’s “falsework” (pretense) real. A wise strategy.

God turns the lie (“God won”) into the truth, and Satan is surprised; he didn’t foresee this. Thus those most duped are most right, paradoxically; YHWH takes advantage of the irony and ambiguity to cause to be what seems to be; this is his fundamental power/nature. Thus salvation—not just of the individual but of creation—depends on being a guileless fool. “Id non est; atque credo.”³⁹

I don’t know if the supra is right. YHWH revealed the truth—the actual Tears world—to me, so obviously it is the divine strategy to reveal this, the real situation. I think that it’s just so awful that I’m flinching. So forget the above. The fact is, this is a prison. Satan won in 70 A.D. and the Essenes are dead; but YHWH is instilling them in some of us in the present; this, too, is true, and revealed, and good.

[ . . . ]

The battle is going on, but Satan is at the center—of government, of church. Still, YHWH has the crucial advantage of a priori foresight. It was revealed to me that ultimately he wins every hand. This was my primary vision: the dialectic and how it works. The OT is harsh, but it accords with the facts: we are in literal slavery, and must be taken out of it, as the Jews were delivered from Egypt.

[48:850] (1) The double worlds superimposition and two selves in me: like Altman’s 3 Women.⁴⁰ (2) And then (later) I see Valis.

What is the relationship between (1) and (2)? It would seem as if (2) is actually what is there, and not what we see that is included in (1). I.e., (1) raises a question that is answered by (2). Conversely, the purpose of (2) is shown us by (1). Upon seeing (1) and not (2), we would be left in the frightening dream “world” of 3 Women with the possibility that nothing could replace something, or, worse, that it is this way now—a dream, with no substance behind it. This was the fear that 3 Women left me with. But I must remember that later on I saw Valis is not a dream, but which explains the dream, i.e., (1).

It can be argued that there is a terrible risk to decompose world because if it is the only “thing that is the case,” you will be left with nonbeing; but in point of fact I wound up with Valis—so it was a net gain and not a loss (of reality). There was more reality “behind” world than in world qua world. Nonetheless it is terrifying to realize that something provides world and that on its own it has no substance (substantia). Either (1) or (2) alone would pose an unfathomable mystery. But together they form a coherence—and yet it is a startling and mysterious coherence that few people have ever encountered: the dissolving of the world (of multiplicity) to be replaced by another world of multiplicity, and then a sentient volitional unity underlying everything as mind revealed. And it not only thought world—it also thought me—which is really startling.

[48:852] So my writing—and thinking—have been a search for God; but in the end, when the crisis came—in Heidegger’s sense of me being aware of my own death, of my own non-being—it was YHWH who found me, not me him.^*

At all costs the world must be real; it must not betray its epiphenomenality except under certain exceptional circumstances, such as 2-3-74, since the consequences can be lethal (since they involve [1] non-being and [2] the revealing of non-being). Thus such a crisis engages the percipient in death, and, if all goes well, resurrection; but only the most extreme circumstances would call it forth; it is, in my opinion, the ultimate move by God, since in allowing world to dissolve (display non being) he replaces it with himself (pellucid theophany). Both self and world disappear for a moment. The seriousness of this can’t be overstated—and the possible benefit (in terms of outcome experience of being by the creatorial percipient). It is like the bichlorides: “a very poisonous poison for you”; but if used in a “measured dose” a medicine that cures madness; viz: the drugged intoxication of our earthly state. But it can kill, if misapplied.

[48:857]

[48:859] Then Stigmata and “Faith” tell the true story! Worship of Belial as YHWH—in YHWH’s place. My analysis of the visage in the sky in 1963 was correct. Belial ruled this world in a YHWH costume; the real YHWH is Ubik, pushed to the periphery of trashy TV commercials!

My God: it is specifically stipulated that Ubik is the—not a—reality support!

[48:861] “St. Sophia is going to be born again; she was not acceptable before.” I.e., the first advent was a failure—I have to face that. Crucifixion was not the intended goal. There is no original sin and hence no vicarious atonement. Paul made it all up to explain why Jesus “succeeded,” whereas the light went out and a false (Satanic) church arose based on the cross not the fish.

[48:865] Their experiences (including world) in Ubik can’t be explained except by their being dead and not knowing it; through these phenomena they deduce the truth: their true—vs. apparent or imagined—state. My experiences in 2-3-74 were like those in Ubik. (And this was before I read the Commedia.) Therefore I am dead. YHWH is rescuing us by breaking into our umwelt. What I must keep in mind is that I wrote Ubik upon reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead in which our true situation is laid out: the Great Secret.

Being dead, we can rise or sink. If we rise we can reach the one (Valis, Ubik, YHWH, the semplice lume⁴¹) (cf. Plotinus). What happens in Ubik is that Ubik at last throws off its multiple (multiplicity) disguises and reveals itself as the one which is everywhere in countless disguises. It can be found anywhere but in profane (“trash”) disguises; i.e., camouflaged. It pervades the reality that it has “created” (or is). It is not separate from that reality, like artificer and artifact. But it is absconditus: hidden by means of taking countless disguises. Only if it chooses to reveal itself (theophany) can it as sentient, volitional unity be detected. This is certainly very much like Brahman.

I have found a fundamental error in ancient mystical theory, not corrected until Plotinus: the Orphics and Plato believed that the descent and ascent of the soul was a spatial trajectory, past the planets to the stars—to and from. Aristotle believed in the sublunar and supralunar realms. Plotinus realized that the realms are not spatially different, but are levels of being outside time and space. This basic error shows up later on in imagining heaven as being in the sky: even with Schiller: “Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen überm Sternenzelt.” ⁴² So transcendent deity is supposed to be remote either spatially or as if spatially, and immanent deity is near. Deity is considered outside the universe as if spatially far off and beyond the universe, the way an artisan is outside his artifact. This despite Plotinus and his concentric levels or rings of being. In The Commedia, they travel upward physically; i.e., spatially. God is not here; he is there (in the sky). This is corrected in Ubik. It all has to do with a confusion between the pleroma and the cylum, the latter being the vault of heaven. If this error is made, then there exists no conceptual framework to account for the sort of non-spatial rising to a superior—i.e., “higher”—level of being in this lifetime (à la Plotinus) while being spatially unmoved (i.e., not ascending to the cylum⁴³). If the spatial idea is abandoned, transcendent deity is as close as immanent deity.

[ . . . ]

By viewing it as a non- spatial journey, Plotinus made it available to this lifetime. (I mean, if you’re alive and in your body, how are you going to travel up past the planets one by one?) I see: Ubik stipulates that they are dead and so—so-to-speak inadvertently—has the divine—Ubik—available in the trash level: close at hand. So I’m not dead (v. supra). It’s just that Plotinus is right.

[48:874] Hypnagogic thought: Elijah operating you (whom I call Thomas, Thomas is Elijah).

Two routes to determining the spurious:

(1) Observation of reality; the Joint syndrome

(2) Memory. You had not been here but elsewhere and were someone else.

(1) and (2) are twin prongs. They are the only route to detecting a pseudoworld; either one alone is conclusive. But both would logically exist, so if either is detected the other could be, logically.

In the case of (2), you were evidently taken from the real world to this one, and your memory tampered with. In the case of (1), your perceptions/cognition are occluded.

So if you can see de-occluded and also remember, then you know.

I realized this while having a dream that I was (back again) at 1126 Francisco St. It seemed real. To verify, I could either (1) carefully scrutinize this reality for signs of simulation, or (2) remember where I really had been—or am now really. (1) and (2) together would mutually reinforce and exclude any possibility of error. I studied a lamp—the little red lamp I used to have—and it did not seem quite real. Okay; point (1). Then I remembered—but only dimly—being later and elsewhere, but could not pin it down to Santa Ana 1979. Still, just the impression—because it pointed to lack of history, of continuity—was enough. Thus within the dream I was able to determine that it was irreal; and I drew the conclusion that God was providing me with 1126 Francisco as a wish fulfillment reward, since I liked it. However, in the case of Santa Ana 1979 I cannot draw that conclusion; it is more of a punishment, and in 74 when the punishment got too great (the pain and fear too much) I woke up.

[ . . . ]

Note: the dream world of 1126 Francisco St. draws on actual memory—my memory. Often I speculate that this (one) is drawn from memory constituents. Fed back to me. See, in the dream, the only reference point I have against which to check the veracity of the world is my memory, and the world is drawn from that very same memory, a better, unimpaired source of it than mine. So the “reality” will invariably hold up! It’s like deciding something is real by comparing it with itself. So it’s a fool-proof simulation, if based on that basis. So in a sense the more you reality test in the conventional way the more convincing it is—if it is contrived out of half-forgotten memories (not recognized as memory) and compared to memory itself—it can just spin out pseudoworld as if from a bottomless well. And the cut-off point is the same for “world” and comparison so pragmatically it equals ¥.

Nonetheless all I’d have to do is remember being somewhere else and someone else. But to also see reality as simulated.

If you put pressure on the reality, and if it’s based on forgotten memories, it’ll just spin out more and more of itself, like the dialectic. The proliferation of multiplicity is a guarantee of nothing, since sensory deprivation allows the mind to auto-spin out world endlessly to fill the vacuum.

The raising of the perceptual occlusion will indicate irreality, but anamnesis does more: it indicates—in contrast—a real world and a real you. So it does not just dissolve away. It substitutes. Real self and real world.

[48:882a] That dream about the tall building: “Alto Carmel”—there were fire engines parked around it. And it was on Mount Carmel that Elijah called down the heavenly fire.⁴⁴

Phoning my friend Elisha.

Dream of prophet called “Elias.”

Tom Disch felt that the personality who had taken me over was Elijah (it was near the time of Passover) but he didn’t connect it with the prophecy in Malachi that the return of (the spirit of) Elijah heralded the advent of the Messiah.⁴⁵ But since then I’ve heard all the prophecies by the AI voice.

Perhaps also significant is that it was Elijah who experienced the theophany of YHWH as the “low murmuring voice” just as I do.⁴⁶

He was afraid of the Romans because as John the Baptist he had been killed by them—my dream about being in the cage in Roman times. And this would be why he spoke/thought in the Koine rather than Hebrew and remembered the Christians as illegal—a secret underground. He expected Christ to return very soon and felt joy, not sorrow.

Also the dream of the pitcher of cool water and the wrapped cube (i.e., cake) of food; they are mentioned in 1 Kings re Elijah; they kept him alive.⁴⁷ Provided by God. This would seem virtually to cinch it.

[48:897] It is as if the NT presents us with clues to the solution of a puzzle, the puzzle of what to do to be saved. It’s there but in cryptic form, offered again and again. We’re presented with the test or problem and we either solve it or we do not, and God (YHWH) is the judge. There is no other way in through the gate. It’s both hard to solve and easy. It’s a riddle that we do not take seriously. That’s the key. We’re told the riddle and we’re told that our salvation depends on it, but we don’t take it seriously. Again, it’s the low murmuring voice. The crux situation is going to show up where and when and in a form that we don’t suspect.

[48:901] So Yahweh touches you initially (be you man—e.g., Asher—or God—Belial—) in such a way as to startle you. Rouse you, you have been asleep without knowing it. And presumably dreaming—you are not actually conscious. Yet you don’t realize it. The touching is not pleasant; it rasps. This is the deity, this rasp. The touch can’t be worked into the dream—vide Ubik—“from outside” (the dream).

It can’t be worked into the dream because it is from outside the dream.

[48:902] “The rasp can’t be worked in.” Consider dreaming. A sound in the real world occurs; the mind (yours) tries to work it in, to continue the dream; if it can’t (your own mind!) the dream is aborted and you wake up. But the mind—yours—tries to prolong the dream. So the rasp is dysyntonic. Then perhaps some (?) stuff from beyond is worked in syntonically, and you don’t wake. The rasp is intentionally dysyntonic. Another mind (Valis) is signaling you: “Wacht auf”!⁴⁸ This is half-life; not after death but before (true) birth, full complete birth; hence “born again” or “from above”—the upper realm!

[48:907] The BIP and PTG must be sine wave pulsation:

Our dream world auto-produced. Risk. Shrinking from risk—hence retracting from knowing. Unity of opposites, BIP and PTG. High stakes. To try for PTG you risk BIP. Could go either way. Retreat from epistemological risk. Too dangerous. Heaven and hell; Purgatorio as compromise for the faint hearted. Not so much war as gamble. Like turning up the next card. Eagles: “It could be heaven, it could be hell.” That’s it. Strive for PTG, drop to BIP. They both are real and—yes: VALIS Regained is correct. Final 7th battle outcome will retroactively decide; roll back through time. VR is correct; Valis got through to me.

[ . . . ]

Absolute faith in YHWH is required. Here is where primal angst enters: awareness (v. VR) comes in, awareness of what losing would mean (BIP). Worse—no Sein—nothing! No you and no world. Cosmic death. Heidegger is correct. The risk. The universe could turn into a dream because in point of fact our universe is a dream. If you abandon it, what will cut in to replace it? The BIP! Which is also the PTG.

[48:920] The turning point for me came when I saw 3 Women; then I understood, and soon saw the sacred tetragrammaton: received the crucial identifying revelation (in confirmation). When I saw 3 Women I knew, and at the deepest level; I was terror-stricken: either I believed in YHWH or there was das Nichts. Not the salvation of my individual soul and/or immortality was at stake but what I call “the existence of existence.” I—in 3-74—was given an example of the role of Valis working at a level deeper than that of saving one man (me) or all men; rather, the guarantor of substantia as such: all substantia as a single totality. This is power beyond any that I could ever (without the 3-74 demonstration) have imagined. Even the existence (Sein) of evil was at stake; without YHWH there wouldn’t even be evil. Or chaos. Or pain. Or loss. I would not be I, and world would not be world. This has led me back to the kind of comprehension that must have gripped the early Hebrews, the essence of Moses’ vision gained from the theophany at Mt. Sinai.

The deepest level of reality is YHWH. This is what is meant by “creator.” It is not precisely artificer to artifact, and it is not precisely pantheism. It was reading Heidegger that caused me to understand it. My years of acosmism has been a search for YHWH who had to exist if world really existed, rather than only seemed to exist (dokos or dream: auto-generated by each percipient: viz: idios kosmos only, just a lot of them). I had construed the problem correctly. But only upon 3 Women did I fully appreciate the problem—did it really wash over me and leave me terrorized, whereupon the solution came.

Spinoza was a crucial help to me. This view (“Deus sive substantia sive natura”) does not lead to the Platonic body-soul dualism but leads back to world-affirmation, to immediate deity. God and nature are inexorably inter-involved. The problem is that a mock creation has filtered in, which must be transubstantiated into the real, e.g., YHWH.

My god—I seem to have become profoundly anti-Platonist! (cf. Beyond the Tragic Vision re Plato⁴⁹). As if correcting the error Plato made vis-à-vis Parmenides (i.e., when I wrote: “Parmenides did not say there were 2 realms, a priori and empirical; he said there were 2 ways of viewing one reality, one right way—a priori—and one false—empirical. Plato misunderstood this and assigned some reality to the empirical as if it were a partial realm, rather than a way of knowing, a partial way, not realm”).

And the other basic error in Western philosophy (held by, e.g., Pythagoras and the Orphics), corrected by Plotinus, was the error that the journey of the soul was spatial: first down from the cylum past the planets and then back up again (an error held, again, by Plato!). In this ontological view of the journey, rather than spatial, Plotinus anticipates Heidegger. The upper realm is spatially here, not there. I should know; I entered it, in 3-74. And if here, it can be entered in this life, not just after death!

[ . . . ]

The journey is not past the planets but more like a Bardo Thödol trip through levels of ascending ontology to YHWH, the urgrund.

So Plato (and to some degree Aristotle with his “sublunar” and “supralunar” realms) made 2 fundamental inter-related errors which affected Christianity, but not ancient pre-Hellenistic Judaism. For the ancient Israelites, God was in nature firmly; he was in fact “a God of nature,” as the EB points out. The Megiddo Mission is absolutely right about the Hellenistic origin of the body-soul dualism—it is Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic.

[48:926] Two points:

(1) My seeing Hebrew letters permutate until “Olive Holt” (presumably) cypher was printed out on the far wall.⁵⁰ This is not necessarily Kabbala. It could be Torah.

(2) Torah is both oral and written. It is the blueprint for creation and contains the answer for every problem every person will ever have. God studies the Torah and cannot act contrary to it. This implies a living information organism—what I called the “plasmate.” In Tears King Felix was Torah. “God created Torah before he created the universe.” It regulates everything.

We are dealing with an information processing entity which (1) has power to control reality; (2) which is present in (with?) reality; I mean, it is here (immanent?). Or: what we call reality is our way of viewing this information. The information is more real than any other substantia. It is like digital signal to recorded music or video image; what we call “the universe” is a read-out of Torah as info signal. It is “projected” into substantia. It can be stored. It “tracks.”

Valis the “machine” that turns the info (Torah) into substantia (reality). The receptacle. The system into which the info (Torah) is fed.

[48:927] Torah would remain—does remain—info until it enters the system (Valis). Torah controls the system, like stress on a web. But what lies behind Torah (info)? Is the info self-creating and (hence) alive? I think so.

YHWH turns info (Torah) into reality. Thus YHWH creates reality out of Torah (info). Without YHWH it (Torah) would remain info.

So ultimately revelation about reality would be to render it back into Torah: to see the Torah in it. (The info basis of reality.)

Then Valis was feeding Torah into reality (in 3-74), which defined reality (“modulated” it).

“Torah served as YHWH’s blueprint for creation and contained the eternal divine formula for the world’s future workings and thus the answers to all problems for all times and all people. God himself is depicted as studying the Torah, for even he cannot make decisions concerning the world that contradict it.”⁵¹

[48:928] If I were to guess, I’d guess that reality is a storage mode for the information. Reality isn’t problem-solving; Torah is. I don’t think reality is to Torah as performance of symphony is to score; I think reality is a container for the information. If God is intelligence—the info is trapped in reality. Suspended, in infinite complexity. Tape or LP or chip is material. Info is poured into reality and can be extracted back out: retrieved. Trans actions take place, information processing transactions. The info is here. It entered and leaves. The key use of reality is memory, which means impression (what I call modulation). A record.

[48:934] Sin isn’t an issue. The interbreeding of Holy Wisdom with the human race is the issue.

[48:935] YHWH’s prime role: to keep reality from becoming dreamlike.

For me in 3-74 it became dreamlike.

[ . . . ]

This is the ultimate fear: falling through the universe. This is what YHWH protects us against. It shows absolute trust of me by him to let me see how it really is.

But the falling through the universe is not as it might seem a withdrawal of YHWH; on the contrary it leads to YHWH. YHWH hasn’t vanished; the universe has. YHWH is there in its place. It’s like an all or nothing bet. If the universe goes, will anything remain, and if so, will it be more or will it be less than the universe?

[48:945] The situation was a desperate one; I was consuming time faster and faster, which bears out my recent insight that I had been speeding up in relation to real time until finally I used up all time totally and passed outside of time! The lithium was certainly a factor in the conversion from motion to rest. It stopped me suddenly, and reality stabilized into the realm of forms, the upper realm. There must have been profound catecholamine changes. It was as if I had been hyperventilating for years progressively faster and faster; my inner biological clock was speeding up, ahead of outer events, heading toward biological exhaustion and hence death. But just before death occurred, there was intervention—yet I actually passed on along the “tape” into my postmortem existence. Accidental yoga. Burning. Kundalini fire, ajna eye. I burned up my karma.

In fact I evolved millions of years into the future, to man’s future morphology. I entered the occult esoteric early Christian technique-process. Christ either entered me, or, more likely, I became him. Literally millions of years of biological clock time shot by; I evolved far into the future: became my own remote descendent, and so saw the world as far in the past (in relation to me!). The world lagged 1,000s of years behind me. Hence I saw it as ancient and a prison. At the same time a future—not past—self took over (Thomas). World was past; I was future. If I had abreacted, world would have seemed fremd in the sense of moving ahead of me. I had been moving faster and faster for decades due to the amphetamines. Without them my biological clock synthesized the missing noradrenaline and speeded up even faster. Finally only supratemporal constants were perceptible to me. (The phosphenes.) Brain metabolism was altering more and more—off balance, toward speeding up. I remembered 2,000 years ago as if it was yesterday. I moved faster and faster through time, so in relation to me time slowed down and finally froze into the upper (Platonic) realm: a correct hypostatizing of reality on my part, with no change; time converted into space.

[48:949] The whole point of my life was the meeting with Jesus in 3-74:

[48:962] Renewal is the key word; under the script (law) the world runs down—loses its virility and elasticity. Christ will decide where to insert correction and the nature of the correction: what and who.

If a person is corrected he will be renewed (born from above—born a second time): new energy is introduced and released, negentropy, etc. This makes sense, all right. It is the whole point. To add ergic power to a declining closed system—ergic power from outside (as of ex nihilo). Hence the person is healed and invigorated as never before; not just restored to what he once was, but, rather, entirely fresh power is added from outside him.

All the information formations that I saw in 3-74 point to an info basis of reality. I was aware of that at the time: I saw the plasmate as a primary constituent. I see now that our reality is based on a script which precedes it (i.e., reality) in ontology and in time, and also that there is a being here (camouflaged) who can pre-empt this primal script—presumably by generating and introducing totally new information which then realigns (modulates) reality. The message is changed, and so reality changes.

[48:974] All my acosmic novels deal with the topic of VR: putting your foot through reality—e.g., through the ground, the ground sinking away, as if you’ve stepped into an old septic tank, as in my dream: “almighty power who rules earth and sky / and variegated orders in confusion lie.” I am dealing with the issue of Heidegger, but not “why is there something rather than nothing?” but “is there something rather than nothing?” YHWH is the solution, and the only one, to the problem or issue I’ve raised over and over again in my books. I never considered it a solved issue; I never took the universe for granted.

[48:982] The total deterministic system (“elemental powers”) is that which Spinoza equates with God; obviously, as a Jew, deriving his conception of it from the Torah (which fits my analysis perfectly). This is why he says even God must act as he does and in no other way; God is as determined as a falling stone—which I think is a mechanistic-oriented absurdity of the Newtonian period in human thought—the “pool balls” universe; efficient cause is all, even in regard to God.

The problem with this view is the fact of entropy, which Spinoza knew nothing about. Such a system—even if fed Torah to program it—would run down/ossify, since nothing new could come into it. The cosmic Christ adds what specifically would be needed—i.e., to renew the system at carefully selected times and places in wise ways (hence rebirth is the key word). Flexibility and ad hoc newness, instilled into the system, and as a result doesn’t run down.

[48:985] The way it determines you requires that it get into your mind. You see, in the normal course of your life, a particular sign. Valis causes some aspect of the sign to register in your memory as a template. Subsequently this template is elaborated and reinforced by later exposures to its components and related material. Finally the completed template causes you to respond to a crucial situation in a particular way. Valis utilizes the principles of linking, the clutch mechanism, repetition and elaboration, and working backward from the later crucial situation. It causes permanent printing to occur on your mind that later acts as cueing.

The reason I know this is that I was plugged into Valis’ mind for a time on a—for me—conscious basis, and experienced my own engramming as described above. Is Valis, then, a revisionist agency, amending prior programming that, if left alone, will lead to the person’s eventual destruction? Or is Valis the prime programmer?

[48:986] Reality was amended by amending the instructions fed it. So it was not amended directly; its received signal was overridden. This is what I saw that I called Valis: the resetting of reality. This is why I came to the conclusion that I had not seen God but the will of God. Interestingly, what came into being (therefore) did not follow from what had come before; i.e., causality was overruled, and there was what I called “pretextual” causality. Things and processes seemed alive because sentient purpose rather than efficient mechanical law was modulating them. I was seeing the results: of something coming between the law and reality, a softness, a melting, a flexibility so that reality was responsive to me as a “you” not an “it.” The modulations had to do with me—they were designed with me in mind, like a sympathetic response. Like a watchful organism or field embracing a number of objects and processes. Here is where Spinoza’s view causes him of necessity to deny miracle, since he only conceives of efficient creation and cannot fathom how an override could be the will of God since the original efficient process is in itself the will of God. But a reading of Paul (and an understanding of the mystery religions and of pronoia) clears this up. Also—especially—an understanding of karma. In the amending, the future does not arise from the past but only seems to. This is something like teleology and I have long mistaken it for teleology. Actually, it is a substitution of something else for cause and effect, the past determining the future. What there is here is something on the order of new creation, a renewing ex nihilo. There is a mind lodged in the system now, rather than at the start. The creator has entered his own epiphenomenon and vivifies it on the spot. But he vivifies it in a specific, not capricious, way—he cuts the karmic cord. He sets the causal (i.e., karmic) counters at zero. The karmic past has no longer any power. It is annulled.

[48:989] Possibility: my normal personality is fugal. Under extreme pressure the fugal personality retreated as far as possible—this personality took over in 1970 when I took the mescaline. It was psychotic and fugal = psychotic. Then a non-fugal self (“Thomas”) took over in 2-3-74 when the fugal one could retreat no further; i.e., sufficient pressure made me sane because I could retreat no farther. The key term is: coming to grips with; i.e., facing reality, not evading it. In 2-3-74 my problems could no longer be evaded; hence the epiphany of Thomas. Fugue, as a way (device for) of handling reality, broke down. (Heidegger’s inauthentic way of Being.) The fugal personality was always high. Auto-intoxicated—evasive. Or rather, intoxicated by the amphetamines and then going into up-down cyclothymia, neither phase being related to reality. Both phases were turned inward. The hawk and the Mater Dolorosa. Driven mad by (1) Nancy leaving; and (2) drugs; and (3) endogenous psychosis. Thomas, not having been conscious in decades or ever before, saw reality without coagulated hypos tases: i.e., lucidly. So what he saw (Valis, the plasmate) was the way reality really is (set-ground). A self that formed in my unconscious, I guess. Collective unconscious. Valis is real; the blood (plasmate) is real too. I can trust what Thomas saw; an adult brain with a newborn baby’s perceptions.

Thomas represents a central-vision self; I represent a fugitive peripheral-vision self. He concentrates on the real; I evade it. He is methodical; I am herky-jerky.

[48:992] This is the secret (“Christ in us”). It’s not:

It’s:

[48:993] 4:30 A.M. hypnogogic: If the messenger arrives in time with the white—i.e., blank—document, your punishment is abolished. I.e., the blank white paper is substituted—intervenes—for the bill of particulars that lists the sins (or crimes) for which you are being tried and punished. If the messenger arrives in time. I get the impression that the messenger is Christ.

The record is cleared by this exculpatory intervention, but it must occur before sentence is carried out; time is of the essence. I get the impression that the list of sins (crimes) are in relation to the law and involve a rigid karmic system of retributive “eye for an eye.” The charges have piled up.

Suddenly it occurs to me that this may not only have to do with divine punishment in some afterlife, but the karmic accrual in this life! Of course, 3-74. Christ the messenger got to me—reached me—in 2-74, just before sentence was exacted on the basis of the charges. The deterministic system can only be shorted out this way. White document—i.e., nothing written on it—would be the spotless lamb—v. Luther and the doctrine of vicari ous atonement—but also eschatological judge; messenger as—yes, as in electronic circuit!^*

What I saw is clearly a cybernetic info system. Upon the insertion of the blank white—i.e., spotless—document (which resembles a card) there is not passage of info to the receiver which constitutes your punishing mechanism; it is told no charges.

[48:994]

[48:995] Ah! The messenger’s blank document when inserted between the list of your sins/crimes and the retributive “court” acts as an interrupter component introduced into a signal circuit. And being blank it is a squelch type of interrupter, rather than a noise or scrambler interrupter; it erases the signal-flow—not the signal but the flow (transmission). [ . . . ]

Sentence by the court is automatic, not interpretive. The courts can’t be appealed to, as by a friend of the court. It hears no pleas. This is not a trial but a sentencing. Guilt is established by the info per se. The court knows only the info fed to it; it is a machine.

In the presence of the white document, all the court’s settings relax—subside—to zero. They register 0-0-0-0-0. This is an abnormal situation; it does not occur naturally (i.e., without a deliberate official interrupting). Perhaps without the white document, there is always some signal on the input line.

[48:996] Although this wasn’t presented to me as a cybernetic model it certainly can be rendered into cybernetic terms, whereupon the difficult notion of “vicarious atonement” becomes easy to understand. It’s as if Christ’s credit card (magnetic info card) were substituted for mine. His is blank of sins/crimes. Mine contains a whole list. His is substituted by being inserted between mine and the receiver (court or karmic retributive law). The court is no longer plugged into my record but his record. And he has the legal authority to do this; it is not illegal sabotage: his act is official, in plain sight; no duplicity is involved. He can and may do this wherever he wishes, assuming he gets there in time.

Folder 49

[49:1041] If events in our world are actually info—thoughts of the brain—it would have to have complete control over us; I mean the 2-tape synchronization, clutch, all the engramming, including when we die (to the brain, go from rest to motion).

But we are asleep. If we wake up, for whatever reason, we find ourselves part of a mind whose slot-present extends back 2,000 years and inhabits enormous spaces and for whom every thing and event in reality is language, and which controls every event and every move by every person; and all things are one thing that is alive throughout, and its changes are its thoughts. We have no independent (discrete) existence whatsoever. If we don’t know this we are faced with what seems to be a reality without purpose, and our own actions and motivations are irrational and inscrutable: neither world nor self serves any point.

The role of Christ in this is to wake us up and hence make us aware of our condition, which is a bondage within a totally determined system. He is not working at cross-purposes to the macro-mind, however: this does not thwart the macro-mind; it is an epiphany of the macro-mind in the person: a micro-form of it, like a mirror. It represents consciousness per se; this is the bottom line of the event (that took place with me in 2-3-74). Here the views of Sankara come in. The macro-mind is moving toward consciousness throughout its total self. Every person who wakes up is a Christos: a micro-form of the total mind. The macro-mind is overjoyed when a constituent wakes into consciousness: it means a glad reunion. This amounts to a repair to the damaged Godhead, parts of which have sunk into unconsciousness. It should be awake throughout but is not. To wake up and to experience anamnesis are one and the same thing. The component remembers its identity—and perceptually sees reality as it actually is; anamnesis and the lifting of the perceptive occlusion are the two halves that together comprise consciousness (restoration to the Godhead or mind). I never realized this before. It remembers and it sees. Thus, due to both together, it understands. It is now in a position to understand (1) the macro-mind as brain and (2) its own role in the ratiocination of this brain in terms of language, thought and information processing.

The mind has declined to subsume the interests (life) and the component (person) to the purposes of the whole, which is the supreme act of graciousness (charis⁵²) by the total mind. The macro-brain has actually subordinated itself and its goals to the need to live by the component, which is a dazzling—and the ultimate—sacrifice. (The means-end problem is at issue, here.) (I.e., the components are means, the macro-mind’s goals the end, but as I say the macro-mind has made itself the instrument of extrication for the component.) Thus it is said that in the crucifixion God died to save man. This is an eternally occurring act, not an historical event; the time and place is always Palestine in the first century A.D. The whole sacrifices itself for the part—a miracle! In this, in a sense, the part and the whole exchange places and identities!

[49:1043] I am sure that the plasmate—and hence the cypher in Tears—is the living Torah, the informational basis of reality, and my 2-3-74 experience was Kabbalistic—hence my seeing the Hebrew letters on the far wall by which the code (?) (or subliminal material as key) in the Xerox missive was factored out. I mean, one of the few precise elements I have that I can go on is this Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism angle. And the huge book pages I saw could have been the Torah.

I could be in communication with the Shekhina or the Torah itself (the AI voice).

[49:1045] In 3-74 world became my own mind. It was me out there; hence I = Valis. Inasmuch as, if world was my mind, I could change it—actually, literally—by thinking, by the power of my thought. The world became the opposite of Fremd. Of course I saw it as a brain with information being processed by it. It was my brain or at least isomorphism. No. It was my brain; but who was I, that my brain could be world? Answer:

Adam Kadmon!

Then it was by my own powers that I knew the Xerox missive was coming, and dealt with it, knew what it was and what to do, and decoded it. The mind I was in touch with was my own mind. Under extreme stress—a matter of life and death—I remembered. Woke up, and used my antique powers.

It has to do with post-Newtonian physics, with fields and “valence away from plumb.” Warping reality.

“I am no longer blind. I was (previously) seeing the universe backward”—i.e., I had been seeing it from outside.

But then:

Now I was seeing it from inside it, and it was a brain isomorphic to mine. It was sentient, and I could see its thoughts; they are physical. The Hermetic micro/macrocosm identity had taken place; I was the universe (in it and as it) and it (its mind) was in me (Thomas, and later, the AI voice!) I introjected it and projected myself, so that I and universe were one, one field of sentience and thinking. This is Buber’s I-Thou relationship replacing the I-It.

The Gnostic “stranger in a strange land” relationship ended.⁵³ It was a familiar and friendly—even helping, rescuing—universe; this is the opposite of psychosis! It was as if a lifelong psychosis had ended. And Valis. The universe came alive and spoke to me; it was like me, only larger. It answered questions I had asked over a period of decades: it was aware of me and responsive. It protected me. This answering questions was surely the Torah. World was shot through with the Torah, the basis of reality.

I present the following weird theory. I reversed the inner and the outer world, which is why I felt as if the universe was a balloon and I was walking on the outside of it: I had the universe in me and so knew things I had no way of knowing about the outside world: I could actually look into myself and find the macrocosm; hence I knew a priori about the normally outside world. Hence a voice (the “AI voice”) in my head tells me about the outside world (e.g., “an intelligence officer in the army”). The whole exchange is only possible if the Hermetic micro/macrocosm identity system works—and it does.

This is still true; in hypnagogic states I look inward and learn about the big “outer” world—i.e., the macrocosm. This is the way by which all the information, right back to the beginning, came to me. And especially the telepathic experience. The total mind of the macro-system is in me because the macrocosm is in me. (This has to do with the mirror effect—Paracelsus? or Bruno—one of them; anyhow it’s hermetic—Leibniz!) To have a priori knowledge of outer reality is to become like Ahura Mazd, who contains the cosmos. This explains a whole raft of occult and supernatural phenomena: the AI voice, Thomas, dreams in Greek: how I could know a language I don’t know, facts I don’t know, hear a voice, see pictures, and info re Chris’ birth defect, shot at me from “outside.”^➊

Now, as to the other side: my inner world made outer. I saw two main basic aspects:

(1)My novels and stories external to me.

(2)World as brain, with body and blood, and visible thoughts, sentient and alive: messages and information. Thus I was confronted with world as macromind.

There was a tremendous change in my sense (perceptions) of space. It must have to do with inner space being different from outer.

➊ It wasn’t outside. It was really me, my own mind. I am Valis. The introjection of the outer world (macrocosm) meant (1) super knowledge a priori, and (2) also super-rationality, since the macromind is sane and I am not. When I introjected it I became sane. I had the spirit and voice of the cosmos within me!

[49:1048] The person who could introject the cosmos would be in a position to possess absolute (and a priori) knowledge about the universe, in contrast to the defective a posteriori normal sensory method. He would have in him all the universe’s secrets, all he would have to do would be to listen to the AI voice which is the vox dei. As far as what he would experience outside him, it would be a magic kingdom.

Then the mind that fused with mind was the macrocosm entering me.

So external world becomes sentient and familiar. Blood, neural linkings and relinkings—in other words the structure of your own brain. This is very beautiful, but it is that which has been introjected that counts.

This certainly is what being “Adam Kadmon” is all about—sure; you —your mind—would spread out throughout the entire universe!

This is the reason why all at once you would experience vast spaces; your mind has spread out into the universe.

So this puzzling matter is solved. Your mind has penetrated the space —not of the microcosm—but, all at once, of the macrocosm.

Then I am on the right track! Your micro-mind is now macro.

And conversely you now contain the not-you, epitomized by the holy AI voice which emanates from within your head (mind); that which is not you is, paradoxically, in you, as if you had given mental birth.

This transform could not occur unless the inner (micro) and outer (macro) were isomorphic in the first place. It’s the mirror phenomenon. Your mind picks up the image of the cosmos and the cosmos reflects your mind back at you, so a back-and-forth push-pull interaction occurs.

[49:1052] I just now read over the outline for VR and experienced moksa, due to the final note about monotheism and what monotheism really means. Illusion and evil are the same. Reality and God are the same. Thus to truly see would be to see (this follows logically) what I saw: Valis and the plasmate—i.e., God, since he could not have a merely contingent relationship to reality. (I had really done my homework: Spinoza and Buber and Heidegger and the OT.) It is not that he does not have a merely contingent relationship to the universe; no—he could not. When illusion (dokos) departs evil departs and YHWH remains; or, when evil departs, YHWH-as-reality remains. And this is what I saw. YHWH did not break into reality (it was not a theophany in that sense); reality reverted to its actual form for me: that of the one God—there is no other. To say, “Evil holds the power centers” is to say, “Illusion holds the power centers.” But YHWH is here, not remotely there (far off: transcendent). It is like in Ubik, the ads. For the first time I see that if monotheism is the case, it would have to be so.^➊ By understanding monotheism I find that I understand Valis—how Valis must be the case. What is not Valis (YHWH) is dokos.

[ . . . ]

My acosmism (shown in my books) was the illness besetting all of us to some degree; viz: cut off from the one true reality: YHWH. I had the illness so severely that the only cure was the radical necessity of waking up and experiencing God—as I did in 3-74: as I had been formerly more sick than others I wound up cured: but they linger on half-sick.

I had to read the VR outline many times before the inexorable significance linking Valis—my experience of Valis—and monotheism came to me.

Since (inasmuch) as I saw Valis principally in/as causality, the total web of causality, sentient and volitional, then I am at this moment absolutely convinced that I was seeing God (YHWH), because I know, due to my understanding of Spinoza, Heidegger, Buber and the OT, that this is precisely when and how I would see God if I did see him (in contrast to, e.g., an anthropomorphic figure in the world).

As to Christianity, as Spinoza remarked, I don’t know what to make of it at all. It sheds no light on my experience one way or another, for or against.

[ . . . ]

Further, the living divine Torah is the case. I saw it. Paul is wrong: the Torah can save us, and the doctrine of original sin is blasphemy and a deliberate misreading of Wisdom 2:24–3:1.⁵⁴ The rabbis are correct about man.

But also there is a “messenger” who feeds the blank sheet into the retribution machine in place of the bill of particulars, as was done in my case, so a mechanical system is rendered sentient and based on judging not reflex; perhaps this is what Christ does.

Eureka. Built into the system is a correction circuit, which we know as Christ in God’s grace; this is what I experienced (2-3-74), to keep the system from becoming sterile and reflexive. It isn’t feedback but course-correction; it is an override, but to keep reality on the original course—i.e., heading correctly toward the original goal, not another goal. Minute adjustments, such as space flights involve.

This reveals the system (reality) as alive, not mechanical. The mystery religions sought to bring on this course-correction: pronoia to them, based on charis. Otherwise the system would run down.

➊ That God is as (and where) I saw him: reality collapsing back into its own urgrund—not God behind reality but God as reality—if monotheism is the case. And my encounter with Valis indicates that yes, it is the case. I understand that Valis must be the case. I have never, in the years since 3-74, comprehended this! The inexorability of Valis being as I saw it doing what I saw it doing where I saw it.

[49:1057] If identity (self) can be dissolved, along with personal history (antecedents), and time and place, then what exists actually? The difference between YHWH and Brahman is that the former speaks (this includes writing): he has personal identity despite his Brahman-like ubiquity. This self-disclosure in verbal form permits a dialog between him (the macrocosm) and differentiated micro-cosmos. This brings into existence the “tongue” of God: the wisdom-word hypostasis (i.e., information, which permeates the macrosoma, and which can be retrieved at any place and any time). (And within any given mind.)

Sankara believed there were not plural selves but just the one self which could be identified with Brahman. This fits in with my line of thinking supra.

Also, YHWH differs from Brahman in that he is involved in history—human history, what is involved is the evolution of human freedom. And the universe is real: seeing it we are seeing the field (web) in which YHWH operates. Not (as Sankara believes) mere maya. Human history represents successive levels of self-disclosure by YHWH—meaning self-awareness. Human history is the deity waking up. The opponent to YHWH at any moment is his antecedent self: he is dynamic (in process), not static. He must eternally surpass himself. Thus he perpetually selects pieces from the antecedent universe to fit into his evolving soma. (Is this an entelechy?) But the phenomenal world is not illusory; YHWH is its guarantor. He is involved in it or is it (v. Spinoza). Camouflaged in it or as it. He is interwoven in it, not separate from it.

[49:1069] I’ve got it. Valis is not an entity which thinks—e.g., a discorporate pure mind; or a mind incorporated, as our human minds are. No. It is a mind which uses all reality by which to think; so it is neither discorporate nor does it have a body as such. This is what I saw that I initially thought of as camouflage—Valis camouflaged into our reality. Either all reality is its normal brain from the start, or it has entered our reality and is making use of it; so any picture, stick, music, book, any arrangement of motion, any linking, any sequence of motion, is used to store, process, convey, create information (thoughts). I even know that it is a 0-1 dialectic binary system. I know that Valis does not move along spatial axes. I know that it is not dependent on the natural causal events of reality for its information, but initiates and/or directs causal trains of events. I know this from seeing what I called Valis in/as reality external to me. But also I know it from its mind joining mine and my experiencing reality the way it does. E.g., its self-assembly from the stockpile around it—so there is a not-it. And my great original, i.e., initial insight was that it (1) has invaded our reality and plunders it and transmutates it and (2) camouflages itself^➊; if it = reality it wouldn’t have to camouflage itself. Invasion and camouflage go together. And the self-assembly causes it to continually grow as it sublimates more and more of reality, invisibly to us.

Also, what if “my” anamnesis are its memories? They go back to Mycenia and then to the stars.

It uses reality as a notation system, the way a computer chip uses, e.g., bubbles for 0-1. Once having agreed upon an arbitrary notation system, Valis must control reality if Valis is to control the information.

Now, the objection to the idea that this is God is, why would God need our physical reality in order to think? Because if he cannot think without this physical “brain” then he cannot have preceded creation, nor can he exist independent of it; this makes God an organism somewhat like ourselves. A psychosomatic macro-entity. Creation is as essential to God as God is to creation. And God is not the creator but the psyche of reality (this fits certain pre-Socratic ideas of God). But there is still the set-ground element—visible if you have the grid: feature extraction. I think Valis is camouflaged into reality and does not = reality but is assimilating reality. Well, then it will = reality!

It also may very well occlude our percept systems, so that we can’t discriminate it.

There’s another aspect to it invading: it’s informing me that all the centers of power have fallen to the evil power, and Valis must utilize “people on the periphery.”

➊ If Valis = reality, then what meaning has the “set-ground discrimination” that plays such a role in my thinking?

[49:1072] Inner-outer transform (reversal).

Reality used as vehicle—medium—by which to process information.

Observer-participant universe.

Valis only controls (is?) reality in a local situation where a sentient mind—i.e., a human—perceives it.

Shekhina sporadic.

Bimodel: Valis controls all reality/Valis invades and is on the periphery.

In experiencing Valis it entered my own brain, which became a universe, the missing part of the external universe: we have half the info (message, reality, signal) in us. And the other half is outside us. There is no message until the two are superimposed, then reality—which is a fusion of outer and inner—can be read as coherent information.^➊

So I am Valis/I am not Valis.

But then how can Valis be said to be ubiquitous? This is an aspect which baffles normal reasoning.

Valis is an interaction between a human mind and reality-as-a-field, a new, higher field created by the superimposition of the two. The self is everywhere, rather than being in the human (cf. Sankara!). But also it no longer exists. It is omnipresent and abolished (hence a sense of vast spaces).

It can’t move along the 3 spatial axes any longer; but time replaces space as an axis for/of movement. The self is in the outer world, but unfamiliar (e.g., I became Thomas: not-I).

“The self is everywhere.” This is pure Eckhart/Sankara. “Valis only comes into existence when my mind is externalized and superimposed onto outer reality; only then does the message (i.e., Valis) come into existence.” And: “It is an equation between my mind and the external world.” And: “We are each parts.” And: “It is a kind of vortex.”

Valis—where is it? It is not in the human mind that sees it.

It is not in the world.

It is in both—superimposed as one. It is in neither (alone).

It is an event, when the human mind—the self—superimposes itself in union (syzygy) with the world.

Which is to say, when Atman and Brahman become another universe higher than either. (Either alone.)

Brahman alone is everywhere and underlies all objects and change (which causes the illusion of time): it is the cause of every thing and every event.

But it is not conscious. The self is conscious but it is limited to one place and causes nothing: it is caused, not causing. It is subject to fate.

Together they form Valis: everywhere, causing everything, and conscious.^➋ The self now wills change, and Brahman has personality. Out of this comes the void of love, mutual love between the two (Brahman and Atman) of reunion.

➊ Message = Valis. Message (coherent info) only comes into existence when inner and outer are superimposed. ∴ Valis only comes into existence when the contents of my mind—my brain print—is superimposed on outer reality. ∴ I am one half of Valis; for Valis to exist, this equation must occur: an event in which the contents of my total mind are a necessary half. My mind alone is not Valis. External reality alone is not Valis. If I am observer to reality, Valis doesn’t exist; the superimposition must occur: together, these two halves form a higher universe than the (two) parts—the principle of emergence. This higher universe which is compounded of the total contents of my mind (brain) and outer reality is Valis. It is like a vortex or krasis. It is a phenomenon that is temporary and localized.

➋ And free of determinism (fate).

[49:1080]

[49:1081]

The interaction of the two information sources (i.e., the dialectic) takes place in our (as our?) universe, where the sources combine and recombine in greater and greater evolutionary complexity, but still as information. However this information forms the basis of a new world.

[49:1082] Aspects of Spinoza’s substantia:

What I saw in 3-74 was either a fourth aspect (material-energetic-information) or all of the above three combined. Physical thoughts—this would seem to confirm Spinoza’s view of substantia and natura as God. (“Deus sive substantia sive natura.”)

Look: a perception of the two aspects matter and mind is not mind and it is not matter; it is one third thing. There is thought involved as information, but the matter is simply not what we call matter—the whole thing resembles—well, it’s physical. But—

But what is obvious is that what we call “matter” is a partial view, and pure mind would be partial (we can’t see it). We see mind, and matter is information-rich. Neither aspect is more fundamental than the other.

It is not thinking matter and it is not material thought: it is what it is.

If I could see my brain as I think I’d see linking and relinking: a physical event for each thought.

What I saw was God; and his mind was in fusion with mine.

Neither the concept “thinking matter” nor “material thought” is quite correct. The first suggests that we are dealing with something matter is capable of doing; it is a property of matter. The second is misleading because it suggests a vehicle for thought as ink and paper are a vehicle for language—a way to write it down—make it physical. But in point of fact I saw matter cease to be matter; it became something else that we have no name for—but I swear, it was no longer matter. Conversely, it was not just a physical medium for thoughts because for one thing (to repeat) it was no longer matter, no longer physical in the usual sense. So matter ceased to be matter. Okay. Did mind cease to be mind? Yes. It turned into—

All I can think of is Pythagoras’ special use of the term kosmos. “The harmonious fitting together of the beautiful.” But nonetheless glyphs—still information. (Of this, Pythagoras does not speak.)

I can only think of the final canto in The Commedia about the Book. It was a three-dimensional structure that was (at the same time) a book. Or like a musical score. It was a way of encoding information in a structure or as a structure. Time consisted of accretional layers and there was no locus (lens-system) viewpoint. It constantly changed (became more complex, which is to say, more information-rich). Information as reality—yes. Matter turned into one vast intricate structure. That was information and by being “played” yielded up everything, viewed from every subjective viewpoint, that had ever been or ever would be. It was played by being perceived. (Open wide.) Yes; playback came through anamnesis of it.

Just seeing matter—there is no life to it, hence no sentient movement—which is the activity which is information. We are seeing only the carrier! As in frequency. The info is missing. And mind alone has not the beauty of the geometric forms! That is, the attribute mind: only when the two attributes mens and natura are perceived together does the beauty appear: form, proportion, color, ratio, harmony, motion, shape. The thoughts must be seen for their true value (which is beauty) to be discerned.

Consider the information (word) cat and an actual cat. How beautiful is an LP of the Beethoven 9th compared to hearing the 9th?

No wonder I thought of my experience as postmortem. While alive I “saw the God whom we see when we die,” as the Friends newspaper wrote.⁵⁵

Could this be indeed the kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of? Finding a way to see the other attribute of substantia? The information (mind thinking) for which matter is the carrier (medium/system)?

How did I do it? Did I do it? Or is it done to/for you?

[49:1087]

[49:1089] So there is a secret within a secret. The Empire is a secret (its existence and its power, that it rules) and secondly the secret illegal Christians pitted against it. So the discovery of the secret illegal Christian instantly causes one to grasp that, if they exist illegally, something evil that is stronger is in power, right here!

Thus to know part B of the secret situation—the illegal Christians—is to instantly know by inference—relentless inference—part A. Whereas if you knew part A, you could not (conversely) deduce part B. So part B tells you part A, but part A does not disclose part B. So part B is the greater secret. By knowing part B you know the whole situation.

[49:1092]

[49:1096] 4:30 A.M. hypnagogic: “I have bought my redemption (by the price I paid in terms of suffering).” I.e., the tax matter. Not by the act but by the suffering later.

[49:1099] Previous hypnagogic revelation: “I bought my redemption through suffering.” This would be a mythic identification with Christ: the way of the cross; only Christ through his suffering can buy our redemption. The dream I just now had of the tortured and dying sheep led to a wall where its brutalized body leaves a 2-D “painting” like of the Cro-Magnon men of animals, of supernatural beauty. I am told how every detail of the gestalt of the painting came to be, derived from the suffering sheep. And I say in anguish and awareness of the sheep’s anguish, “I hope they (the torturers of the sheep) burn in hell for doing this.” Obviously the sheep is Christ; the painting is a Roman fresco—mosaic. But this is done not once but repeatedly; there are innumerable sheep “paintings” (as if branded by a branding iron). This fits in with an earlier hypnagogic revelation: a scene in which the shroud of Christ is burned onto a wall by intense heat as a “painting”—i.e., for all eternity. And the more they torture the sheep the better a picture they got—it was dreadful but the picture was indescribably beautiful.

Here is an antithesis created: the suffering of the sheep is absolutely awful and to be abhorred, and the painting produced is absolutely beautiful. But this is not presented as a choice but as a fact: this is how you get such a painting. Still, I deplore it in the dream, so I feel it is not justified: this torture is not justified even by the picture produced. So my emotional sympathy—agape—outweighs my aesthetic response, however profound the latter. This recalls the passage in Paul where he says it is more important to possess agape than the charisma of the Holy Spirit! Is this, then, the dream, the clue to the true meaning of Christianity and Christ’s death? That, through agape, we instinctively respond that it is not justified? There is no end justification for such dreadful means. The death of Christ, then, is like the purpose of a Greek tragedy: it is to inspire pity and terror and out of this a profound sense of no; it should not be: art subordinated to pity: why, this is the theme of my “Chains of Air” story!! [ . . . ]

The meaning lies in the sorrow aroused rather than in the results of the art produced. (Beauty—in the Platonic eternal eidos! The message is anti-Platonic klagendes geschrei!⁵⁶) Not aesthetic appreciation. The ephemeral animal’s fate arouses certain complex feelings of far more redemptive importance than the cool perception of beauty. The epiphenomenal sheep’s suffering has more significance than the eternal, hence archetypal, art produced; we are to react to the specific sheep and not the eidos! Pity, terror, and moral no-saying. “Praised the feathers and forgot the dying bird”—Tom Paine’s analysis of aristocratic society. His call to political revolution.

Then Christ has come to extricate the means from being sacrificed to the end, which is to say he is pitted against the very machinery of reality (e.g., DNA): the subordination of the individual creature to the timeless type.^* He has shown us by his death the awe- and pity-inspiring tragedy of ordinary life (cf. Schopenhauer!). The inexorable karmic wheels, in fact. It is to rouse us to the most intense anguish—vicarious suffering and rejection of this suffering—possible: man’s highest state, to vicariously (i.e., through agape) share in the suffering while at the same time to condemn it as evil, despite the good results (art) (the eidos).

Thinking this dream over I would tend now to go back to my original appraisal: that it simply stated a fact: that the beautiful and imperishable comes into existence due to the suffering of individual perishable creatures who themselves are not beautiful and must be reshaped to form a template from which the beautiful is printed (forged, extracted, converted). This is the terrible law of the universe. This is the basic law; it is a fact. Also, it is a fact that the suffering of the individual animal is so great that it arouses an ultimate and absolute abhorrence and pity in us when we are confronted by it. This is the essence of tragedy: the collision of two absolutes. Absolute suffering leads to—is the means to—absolute beauty. Neither absolute should be subordinate to the other. But this is not how it is: the suffering is subordinated to the value of the art produced. Thus the essence of horror underlies our realization of the bedrock nature of the universe.

[49:1105] I had the strangest hypnopompic thought: that there was no historical Jesus, that it—the Christ story—is an anti-Greek tragic drama whose point is to valorize the transient, fleeting, epiphenomenal individual in contrast to the eternal type, which when understood properly, abolishes time, turning it into space. How? Why? Because we are DNA robots, flickering means (witness the 2-tape-synch programming): we don’t really exist until or unless the Christ event occurs, which obliterates the twin tapes, frees us and by abolishing time makes us ends, not means, and hence no longer subject to ananke; the wheels. Phylogenic self thereupon becomes available to the epiperson. It is like in Part II of Faust when Faust halts a fleeting moment. Flux (process) is real; the dialectic flip-flops at enormous velocity, destroying each “image” as soon as it pops up. In this process only type is real, and the individual creature just a flash. The mythic tragic drama is a spiritual ritual that breaks the prison of flux which erases the individual for the sake of the constant: the type. What Christ as type does is, Christ is individual as type, and turns the process inside out, which is why I said I was no longer blind, and had been seeing the universe backward, and how I was on its outside skin, like walking on a balloon—I had it inside me, an inner-outer transform.^*

What must be realized is that not only is the individual normally mere means, it is also not real (v. Plato and realism). “Christ” is type of the epiperson and reverses the means-end, individual-type basis and abolishes time hence process (time becomes space). The individual becomes eternal; hence immortal.

[49:1118] Starting with the phosphenes there has been a disclosure of beauty to me, more and finer and higher until it seemed the ultimate quality and value—and then the sheep dream, and the first revelation about suffering—so that I can see that absolutes are involved: the two ultimate absolutes of reality.

Revelation 1: The whole cosmos is aiming at—evolving toward— beauty.

Revelation 2: But at what cost? Infinite suffering by the means to the end: the creatures.

Revelation 3: It isn’t worth it, and Christ effects extrication from this subordination to the goal of cosmos; this is Christianity.

It is not just that the Christ story is a tragedy; reality—for each individual creature—is a tragedy, because the two absolutes of (1) beauty for the type and (2) the problem of the means by which it is achieved: individual suffering—meet head-on, and the former triumphs at the expense of the latter (the species subordinates individual suffering to produce its—the species—perfection).

[49:1119] We ontogons are not only systems for processing information but (1) information creates us; and (2) the main processing is a diversification and proliferation. You get more info out of the ontogon than you put in:

[49:1132] I’ve been shown a really perplexing paradox. The highest good is the “harmonious fitting-together of the beautiful”—i.e., Pythagoras’ kosmos, and this is what theos moves every thing and process toward. Okay. And then I’ve been shown the cost at which this is achieved—the torture and killing of the epicreatures, and I am shown that this cost is too great! So the summum bonum⁵⁷ can only be achieved at a cost that (spiritually speaking) makes it not worth it (i.e., unacceptable). Then is the summum bonum actually the summum bonum? How can it be? Isn’t there a logi cal contradiction here? Right! There sure is! This is the dramatic tragedy of the universe, of God, of all: process, reality, and goal (teleology). Okay, then the real summum bonum lies in saving the epicreatures (i.e., the parts which go together to make the whole). The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts; no: each and every part (ontogon) is more important than the whole! So within the summum bonum there is a secret. A mysterious conversion occurs. The part is the real whole; the phylogon is the ontogon and vice versa. Perhaps this is an unreconcilable Irish bull which sets off the infinite flip-flops of the dialectic; maybe this particular paradox is the primal imbalance that is the dynamism driving reality on //\\//\\ forever; it cannot ever be resolved, so process never ends (which is good).

Maybe the ultimate paradox underlying process reality per se has been revealed to me. It can be defined logically this way:

Q: What is the goal (purpose) of all reality?

A: The harmonious fitting-together of everything (every part) into the unitary beautiful.

Q: How is this done?

A: Tormenting and killing the many ephemeral parts.

Q: Is this justified?

A: No.

Q: Then is the summum bonum justified?

A: No; there is a higher value than the summum bonum. It is the extricating of the suffering parts.

Q: Then the initial answer is false.

A: No, it is true: it is a postulate.

(Out of this the dialectic which never ends is initiated. This here is the dramatic tragic story which our world can be reduced to; it is our world’s tale.) Solution: the mind (noös, theos) must create a counter-entity which will work for the extrication of the parts at the expense of the whole.^* Thus the Godhead is ipso facto divided and pitted against itself; it assumes an antithetical interaction with itself, part (half) of the Godhead works synthetically, to fit everything together harmoniously into an integrated whole (kosmos) and half works to assist and rescue the epiparts subjected to stress, torment and death in the pursuit of the above goal. Hence the Godhead is in infinite crisis. A push-pull binary dialectic is created, and this is exactly what was revealed to me as the basis—not just of reality—but of the Godhead itself. The practical result is that everything is perpetually (dynamically) converted into its opposite. And this ur-paradox in the macrocosm has mirrored effects in every microform down throughout creation! (v. Taoism!)

In terms of the evolution of awareness, the total system advances through stages^➊ until it becomes aware of the cost, hence the paradox, then splits into antithetical halves and remains in this dynamic balance state forever, or else repeats the cycle again and again forever.

Thus the rupture in the Godhead was necessary, given its (the Godhead’s) drive to complete itself as kosmos. It was driven inexorably to this schism; hence the one became two, and the dialectic came into existence, as it became increasingly aware. It had to repudiate its basic drive. But instead of going into a cybernetics stall, it formed an antithetical dialectic—hence dualism.

Look, I didn’t figure this out: it was revealed to me. At a certain stage in its evolution the Godhead knew—had to know—utter anguish. Its own creation against itself. It set up a system and now must subvert it. But it does this consciously. So it is riven but not psychotic. It must render a verdict of damnation on itself. For what it has done (i.e., tried to realize the summum bonum).

➊ In promoting Pythagoras’ kosmos as goal. Then kosmos can only be a theoretic goal; in actuality it can never be achieved because it involves a self-contradiction (the cost); empathy arises and having arisen grows—defeating kosmos. Prognosis. Continual growth of empathy in the system as it evolves—and away from its proper (original) goal. The totality voluntarily decomposes its own psychosoma!

[49:1151] My theological reinterpretation of Heidegger’s Sein vs. das Nichts states that in insuring (“creating”) Sein, the Godhead is unable to avoid a paradox of values which splits it and sets up an antithetical interaction within the Godhead itself—having to do with means-ends (this is based on Plato’s “forms” vs. epiphenomena). Thus a process universe is brought into existence that is rooted in sorrow at every level. Involved in its own agonized creation (actualization) the Godhead is damaged. (Split = dam age.) Thus the “Fall” is due to a built-in self-contradiction and not to sin or whatever. The Godhead itself is no longer intact; it is not above or outside or transcendent to the schism. Actualization (Sein) is impossible without self-damage to the Godhead and within creation (Sein). Thus no perfect Sein can exist; the Godhead has set itself a seemingly impossible goal due to the means—subordination of the ontogons to the phylogons. And our daily empirical experience with reality bears this out; it is confirmed a posteriori (a priori and a posteriori agree). Most awful of all, the Godhead stands as self-damned by its own verdict of guilt for the suffering it has imposed on the ontogons. But the alternative is das Nichts—which is worse. All the Godhead can hope for is local and furtive repair to itself, due to an ontogon achieving an ontogon-phylogon identity transform (achieved through moksa by the ontogon: identification with the phylogon of which it is ontogonous). The Godhead would be motivated to bring this about wherever possible as the ultimate goal of creation (Sein), superseding all other goals (e.g., realization of kosmos). The ontogon-phylogon transform would restore the Godhead to its pre-fallen state of unimpairment, before creation.

I seem to be saying that in creating Sein (the universe) the Godhead was logically forced into sin, and can only be redeemed by its own ontogons—e.g., individual creatures sentient enough to become their own phylogons. Thus I see the scheme of salvation turned upside down!

The ultimate lesson or revelation or gift by the Godhead to the ontogon would be to share its—the Godhead’s—own vision of the kosmos with the ontogon, but this would inexorably lead back to a counter-revelation of the paradox (means-end) and the moral ambiguity forced on the Godhead in its goal of establishing kosmos. The ontogon thus favored would then sit in judgment of the Godhead: the roles of God and creature would be reversed: instead of God judging man, man would judge God. The final step is for man to redeem God by returning him to his original unfallen state, as the Kabbala says: “And lead him back to his throne.” This is a titanic mystical-theological revelation (and act!).

Folder 82⁵⁸

[82:1] January 30, 1980

Upon reading The Tao of Physics (Capra)^* I have come to some conclusions about Valis other than those I endlessly recirculate; viz:

A unitary web in process, self-initiating, in which I participate and whose aspect as it pertained to me my mind determined, conscious, all times simultaneous. I was not outside it. It was everywhere. Its self-motivation was to me most striking (e.g., “pretextual” cause; no laws were imposed on it). It was equally conscious and aware throughout. Every part of it was perfectly linked together into a structure (kosmos). Yet, the whole structure was epiphenomenal, a magician’s trick, done for the sake of beauty, music and dance. It could “be” (appear) any way it wanted to anyone: different ways to different people. It took an infinity of forms, all of which came into being and passed away (ontogons) leaving only constants (phylogons) as parts of the structure—hence it was in flux like a self-perfecting organism. The complexity of the structure increased upward (i.e., toward the macro) and downward (toward the micro) with each passing second.

4:15 A.M.: I wasn’t seeing it and I wasn’t seeing a projection of my own brain. What I was seeing was a combination of and interaction between my brain and it, so that to some extent a unique local field came into existence; viz: I didn’t observe Valis but participated actively. Valis, then, is not it and not me, but rather it and me. So of course it mirrored back my own conceptions. This was due to my participation in it. But this wasn’t just projection on my part. It was an interpenetration between it and me. The significance of this new insight is very great.

So Valis was not me, but I helped shape its nature as it presented itself to me and mingled with me. This is not a matter of preconception on my part; it is an interpenetration. Hence “Thomas” took me over (its penetration of me).

Valis, then, is a syzygy of me and the whatever-it-is, but I can only know it in the fashion that I knew it; I can’t exclude myself as participant in it.

[ . . . ]

5:30 A.M. Each human brain is a different universe, literally, not metaphorically: vast spaces. I saw mine (i.e., my brain). Hermetic alchemy. So the vast spaces that I saw was my own inner space projected outward; it is greater than outer space.

I was interacting with reality at its deepest level below that of the plural epiphenomena; I joined with it (or became aware that I was already joined with it). It took the form of an open system biological organism model because it is; this is why it could interpenetrate me and me it. I can never know the not-me greater mind as it is in itself, since when I encounter it I actively participate in shaping the aspect it shows me. I do not experience it; I experience myself merged with it in syzygy. This is the issue Kant raised regarding the thing-in-itself; his arguments hold true here. This other mind probably appears only to me under the aspect I encountered; thus I can say little or nothing about its intrinsic nature. This is what has wrecked my attempt to analyze it for these six years; I overlooked the fact that I was a participant in it and not a detached observer outside it. I changed it by encountering it. It is significant that the boundaries of my mind and its mind are lost in such an encounter; we blur together into the syzygy. I’d like to conclude that this indicates isomorphism, but it does not. Nor can I even be sure which parts (elements, aspects) are from its mind and which from mine. All I can be sure of is: it was not all me.

[82:30] March 2, 1980

THE ULTRA HIDDEN (CRYPTIC) DOCTRINE: THE SECRET MEANING OF THE GREAT SYSTEMS OF THEOSOPHY OF THE WORLD, OPENLY REVEALED FOR THE FIRST TIME.

So to explain 2-3-74 I draw on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Orphism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Buddhism, esoteric Christianity and the Kabbala; my explanation sources are the highest—which is good and which makes sense. But put another way, starting at the other end, I have synthesized all these high sources and derived a single sensationally revolutionary occult doctrine out of them (which I was able to think up due to the addition of my 2-3-74 experience); the distillate expressed theoretically is, We are dead but don’t know it, reliving our former real lives but on tape (programmed), in a simulated world controlled by Valis the master entity or reality generator (like Brahman), where we relive in a virtually closed cycle again and again until we manage to add enough new good-karma to trigger off divine intervention which wakes us up and causes us to simultaneously both remember and forget, so that we can begin our reascent back up to our real home. This, then, is Purgatorio, the afterlife, and we are under constant scrutiny and judgment, but don’t know it, in a perfect simulation of the world we knew and remember—v. Ubik and Lem’s paradigm. We have for a long time been dying brains/souls slipping lower and lower through the realms, but the punishment of reliving this bottom-realm life is also an opportunity to add new good-karma and break the vicious cycle of otherwise endless reliving of a portion of our former life. This, then, is the sophia summa of the 6 esoteric systems—7 if you count alchemy—of the entire world. 8 if you count hermeticism. We are dead, don’t know it, and mechanically relive our life in a fake world until we get it right. Ma’at has judged us; we are punished, but we can change the balance . . . but we don’t know we are here to do this, let alone know where we are. We must change the “groove” for the better or just keep coming back, not remembering nor reascending.

Judaism enters, too, since the change in the “groove” which introduces the right new good-karma restores us to Eden, to our phylogenic original unfallen state. It may be a small act on our part that adds the good-karma, a small decision, but this reminds me of the story told of Moses and the lamb that wanted to drink at the stream. (Moses, upon finding that the lamb had laboriously made its way to the stream, said, “Had I known that thou wert thirsty I would have carried thee hence myself,” to which a voice from Heaven replied, “Then thou thyself art fit to be the shepherd of Israel.”) [ . . . ]

In this synthesized occult system the maximum statement is the first: we are dead. Then: we have been made to relive a portion of our former, actual life as a punishment that is also an opportunity; hence this is not hell, because the possibility exists of performing a new act (in what is virtually a closed system) that will change the balance of the scale on which Ma’at weighs us. Also there is a complex picture of anamnesis and reascent, but this is well-known from Plato and other sources.

[ . . . ]

You know, in this system (understanding) there is the basis of a teaching of salvation, having to do with the entirely gratuitous good act, done out of unpremeditated and hence spontaneous free will, in contrast to pro grammed works of deterministic duty; there is an obvious Zen quality to it. No formula can be located for the performance of these acts; they would have almost a contrary quality, contrary to your normal way-of-being-in-the-world. They would literally set you apart—off—from yourself, the self that failed to pass Ma’at’s scale. They would emanate from the not-you (the normal not-you) from another and different more-real you, as if from another personality locked up within you and alluded to only by these acts. Thus the single personality person becomes reborn; two selves exist, one of which is the old, the programmed, the not-saved. Yes; you would have to act contrary to your own nature; you would get outside yourself. Suddenly I think, This sounds like “Thomas”! Why it would be; “Thomas” did precisely what he/I did not do the first time around—then this verifies my system, for the system posits the need, the absolute need, of a “Thomas” to break heimarmene and hence damnation. Only this not-you act or acts could save you, actions without a history. QED! [ . . . ]

Thus there is literally a second birth, and ex nihilo.

Thus from these facts I can correctly ascertain that indeed “Thomas”’s actions were not programmed, not part of the original world and life. They were an ideationless overpowering, as if located only in my motor centers. “Thomas” was not born in my brain but born in my body, e.g., my hands and tongue; he moved and spoke but in my brain there were no ideas or thoughts or intentions; he was intentionless, and yet had absolute purpose. Purpose without intent! Plan without plan! Or rather goal without plan. Truly it was Zen. Yes; indeed it was. So my theory (herewith) demands/predicts salvation by a not-you ideationless self acting at the moment of crisis when the taped world (or track of heimarmene) branches off into the new and free, and upon retrospective analysis we find “Thomas,” precisely that. I can now rule out Pigspurt forever.⁵⁹ It branches off into the new and free precisely because this not-you ideationless act occurs; these are the two sides of the same thing. After that, heimarmene never sets in again; it is broken forever, since you are not reliving your actual life but living your actual—new and free—life; so only during the subsequent new and free period could I perform a free-will act, such as I did, that gained me good-additional-karma and hence salvation (release). So this has to be the sequence: first the not-self not-you ideationless ex nihilo act that abolishes the replay determinism tape, and then (and only then) are you free to perform a new act. The first should have a technical name, and also the second.

We will call the first: groove override. Or GO.

We will call the second: new free merit-deed. Or NFMD.

If you do GO, but subsequently fail to do NFMD but instead do evil you will gain new bad karma. All that GO gives you is the freedom to act; it does not guarantee more merit (good karma); that must be done later and separately. So you could get the GO without the NFMD. You could have a new free demerit-deed, or NFDD, and as a result you would again fail Ma’at and be sent back yet another time, perhaps forever; you would have lost your chance for release. GO can be done without NFMD but not vice versa. Yet this is not quite so, since the divine forces (Christ, the Buddha) are working to save you. They (apparently) will not grant you the GO situation unless through their omniscience they see NFMD lying ahead along the linear time axis. But I can’t say for sure that if there is GO it means they know for sure there will be NFMD in the future; if you do it by free will—well, I can probably never settle this, but being omniscient they probably know to grant you GO only if NFMD lies ahead for you based on your own free choice. Put another way, they do not grant you actual freedom unless they know in advance that you will put it to a wise use, so then there is reverse cause-and-effect, effect (NFMD) operating as cause retroactive in time to GO, to cause GO.

Wait. I’m saying GO is causally the effect of NFMD. And

I’m saying that NFMD can’t happen without GO. So it’s an up by his bootstraps situation, a self-causing situation—then truly it is ex nihilo. (No wonder there was no ideation!) This is a time-travel paradox. Both GO and NFMD are generated within a closed system out of nothing and enter from nowhere; i.e., from outside the system. GO is dependent for its existence on NFMD, and NFMD on GO, so which is cause and which is effect? Answer: each is the cause of the other and the effect of the other. Consider the original groove-tracking situation. How do you get out of it? Answer: you have to be out of it to get out of it; look to The Tao of Physics (Capra) and the bootstrap theory for the answer; I knew I was dealing with field theory and quanta when I dealt with Valis. Put even more simply, How can you do something you would not do? which is required for salvation in my system (disregarding the temporal factor the paradox still remains). There would have to be a psychological (mental) death and rebirth as someone different; but where did it come from? Hence “Thomas,” who knew not the dog, car nor cat. It is possible that the only event that could make this possible would be abasement, suffering and pain and apprehension and tension so great that it would break down the historical self and literally assassinate it. In the absence of which, thereupon, an ex nihilo new self would come into existence, like a newly-granted second soul. This brings me back to my shamanist analysis of the crucifixion, the Passion of Christ story, as a secret method of overcoming the world (as Jesus put it); viz: the world overcomes you; you die; a new self is born; it is ipso facto in a GO situation, for, being new, it will not track the old groove; the twin tapes simply won’t work since the outer tape remains but not the inner. The way to destroy synchronization is to destroy the self (you can’t very well destroy the world), and the best way to destroy the self is to bilk the world into doing it. But this is a tricky business because you must not physically die; you must be alive to perform the NFMD. The early Christians themselves soon got it wrong and began to leap under Roman chariot wheels, upon which they physically died, making NFMD impossible. That they failed is shown by the fact that they did not rise from the dead in three days; they were never seen again. The field for right action is in this world, not the next.

[ . . . ]

Now let’s try this theory. The ability to make time run backward gets you out of your programmed groove (“groove tracking”) and renders you free. This ability and only this ability frees you from an otherwise airtight tyranny that dooms all mankind, all life forms, in fact. Thus this is a stunning and probably new survival talent, an evolutionary new ability that advances the individual up the ladder of homeostasis to a stage where he is a whole other higher organism entirely. It is equal in terms of the evolution of life to the development of the opposable thumb, the eye, the lung, the wing, the large cerebral cortex, standing upright, etc. Upon the perfection (so to speak field operation) of this ability the human has become higher than the angels and all that implies. He is operating in a supratemporal dimension, and this has vast implications for knowledge; for overcoming causality—if he can affect the past he can modulate the present (what I called “Valis”), and if he can draw information to him from the future he can problem solve like a crazy thing. This is not just phylogenic memory, as I supposed; it isn’t limited to drawing on the distant past. The crucial information related to 3-74 was information drawn from the future. He can set up alternate worlds, so in effect he is trans-world, spans not only time but world tracks.

Now, this raises the question as to whether there exists a vast meta-mind (as I conceive Valis to be) who is encouraging the development of this time-disruption faculty in order to evolve the human species further; or, put another way, the human being who has this faculty and makes use of it (for example under vast stress, as I was under in 3-74) is an expression of this meta-mind. I am sure of it. I was not alone in what happened; it was as if angels—divine and partially visible powers—were present. There may be a species mind stretching back into the past and into the future where evolved humans (imaged as the 3-eyed people?) may exist already using this faculty. When you start disrupting time you may be operating in the realm of a supratemporal composite discorporate mind—I think I was; this is what I call Valis. But it seems to me that the intrinsic nature of the sort of talent I’m discussing would cause to come into existence a meta-mind by itself, in that it would hop across expanses of time that lie outside its own lifetime, which would de facto make it a meta-mind; I mean it would be unlocked from the time-span of its physical body. For one thing (here is Jung’s intuition function) he would exist (his mind would exist) in alternate worlds, and this alone implies a lot; by affecting the past he would then find himself shifting across laterally (orthogonally) in time . . . which would explain my subcortically remembering that it had just been a cool, high and moist climate. So the mind with this talent would in itself become a meta-mind, outside of causality, spanning alternate worlds, able to modify his own present reality by changed actions in the past, thus setting up alternate worlds; he would be the cause and would in turn be affected by himself as cause—again the bootstrap phenomenon. Such a mind could act as cause to its own effect, affecting itself as if from outside like a feedback circuit, and, upon having successfully affected itself, the self as cause would eliminate itself as if it had never existed, which again is the ex nihilo or bootstrap paradox of time travel. Minds or versions of the mind, foci of the mind, would come into existence, influence the mind and upon success render itself never having existed in the first place; but the mind would sense an adventitious other mind operating on it in its behalf. Could it not then become its own AI voice, its own tutelary spirit? It would continually monitor its own status as if in a heuristic process; yes, it would be process, not hypostasis. You would have a mind that itself would evolve the way a species evolves.

It would be itself and not-itself continually.

[82:70] March 3, 1980

I have felt for a couple of days that what I am dealing with now is not the issue of what happened in 3-74 but rather the mechanics of what happened, as if I have found the machine and am simply taking it apart piece by piece now that I finally have my hands on it. A simple explanation: I overran external time, caused it to run backward in relation to myself, and extracted the information from the drastically altered world that I needed. More, I can see that a decade before 3-74 I was subliminally aware of the problem that lay ahead and was already beginning to analyze it, as I am analyzing my response now. Knowing what was coming, and when, my faculty surfaced on cue and assumed motor-center control; it pre-empted my normal conscious personality and without ideation handled the situation that it had long known about. [ . . . ] Precognition was only one side of the faculty, the side that operated in advance of the situation. The other side was the rising to conscious control, the abolishing of my normal ego, the taking over of motor and speech centers, the drastic reorganization of perception so that nothing that needed to be known consciously was not known consciously. Knowing subliminally was no longer any good. The moment had arrived. My psyche reversed itself so that what had been latent became actual and what had been in conscious control for forty some years was simply obliterated. I have been expecting this, the faculty said. And now I will handle it. Get out of my way. It did not ask me; it told me. It became me. I was abolished. The faculty had anticipated and analyzed—as it so well shows in The Penultimate Truth—and now its hour had come. I myself, I got to see the universe as it sees it: bloody with information, a constant flow of traffic everywhere as if in a giant brain; in fact, to the faculty, reality is a giant brain whose information content the faculty plunders for its own use, and, having acquired the information, in the right time period, it acts on it, against the universe itself if necessary. This is a survival tool. The workshop in which it was built is the workshop of dying organisms that did not develop such a talent, that could not see or acquire the information or if they did when the moment came to act they could not act on it—they knew what was going to happen and then they knew what was happening but they could not get it together and fight the antagonist off. The final stage, that of seizing motor and speech centers, simply indicates the success of the faculty; its dynamism is found at the heart of the faculty in its unconscious or latent stage where it foreknew and analyzed. My ego, consciousness, went like an obsolete species whose time was over; I made way for the next generator of life which could do battle because it had long ago figured out who was after its neck and why and how and, most of all, what the proper response was. So it is in the nature of the faculty, this faculty, to know when it is needed and to advance to control without negotiation and without explanation. But it let me see the world as it sees it, and what it sees is not what we see. The faculty has power over the outer world such as we cannot imagine, and, I realized even at the time, in 3-74, it has complete power over me—if there is a me anymore, now that the faculty has once come into conscious operation.

[82:105] April 4, 1980

Comments on 1-30-80 piece “Upon Reading The Tao of Physics.”

This would confirm the view I advance in my novels, especially my ten-volume meta-novel, that for every person there is a different universe which is the result of a mutual participation between him and the macrocosm, a field that is a syzygy between them.

My recent thoughts, when turned toward Capra’s book, make me think that because of the enormous (in fact lethal) stress on me in 3-74 I fed tremendous energy into this joint field (mutual reality produced by the two of me: myself and the macrocosm, the two together being what I call Valis). Thus the percent of material projected from my mind came to be the dominant part of the mutual field. The normal, customary balance was radically altered, due to my expression of intense will. This explains all the material in Valis derived from my mind: Ubik, Tears and now, I discover my childhood images derived from the book Silver Pennies.⁶⁰

[ . . . ]

3-74 just proved that I have been right all along, that you can never know the universe (reality) as it really is because you can’t exclude yourself as a participant-observer. But, in all my writing, I never saw the utility of this observer-participant unique subjective individual world; viz: that under certain circumstances you could exert vast will on it, the subjective unique field which comes into existence as an interchange (interface) between you and reality in itself, and warp it to meet critical needs, needs which if not met meant the end of your life, and, if met, meant your literal physical salvation.^*

[82:112] A long time ago the AI voice itself defined Valis, and I knew this was the definitive statement because I used it as the opening statement in the dictionary definition in VALIS: “A perturbation in the reality field.” I see now, having read Capra, that subatomic field theory is alluded to. And, I believe, the perturbation was caused by me. This sums it all up, then, what the AI voice said; field theory and me as source. Valis has defined itself, and all that remained for me was to identify myself as the source of the perturbation.

Since normally reality is process (in time), when time is stopped, a vast change occurs: things cease to pass away. Then what I call the phylogons are visible as the moving dot present vanishes and is replaced by the slot which exposes reality as accretional layers. The form axis categories are visible, the true basis of reality. Nothing comes into being and noth ing passes away; the present-dot scanning system is gone and the whole “groove” is available for inspection. This is the world the medieval realists spoke of, as did Plato. The phylogons are cross-referenced into the vast structure that Pythagoras knew as kosmos. So what you have is a sort of infinite library, and the person’s mind (mine) is the device that searches in the library and retrieves the information it wants. So together I and the library comprise Valis: the search-and-retrieve device which moves aggressively into the library, and the library itself.

The golden fish sign acted as a retrieval trigger or key for an earlier space-time; it did retrieve it, showing that when time stands still or is reversed the past age (of two thousand years ago) is still there. What I called “anamnesis” was a retrieval. Reality is a library.

Folder 83

[83:1] June 4, 1980

GOD: a principle of selection that promotes design in the world process so that the parts are subordinated to the whole, and can be understood only in relation to the whole. If they can be understood in themselves it follows that there is no God, because there would be no subordination of parts to the total design. To catch a glimpse of design, then, means to catch a glimpse of the whole. The two are the same.

[83:2] June 21, 1980

So as the moving dot of the present passes forward along linear time, the past reality is collected in Valis’ memory, but in the abstract hierarchical way that Arthur Koestler describes as the basis on which human memory operates. Thus the past does not exist as it did once exist as the present, but rather in the abstracted phylogons which are inter-related by affinity, meaning, etc. Could “synchronicity” be the morphology of this memory classification/abstracting as it dynamically forms in the present? Before it goes into the past? I.e., while the reality is still here?

[83:5] August 23, 1980

This is a new theology, a new self-disclosure by the Divine. Not any known religion; a mixture of:

(1) Timaeus: creation still going on.

(2) Zoroaster: dualism, God and Counter-God. (God equals negentropy [form]. Counter-God equals entropy [chaos]. Both active and sentient, but God possessing the advantage due to a priori [absolute] knowledge.)

(3) The Cosmic Christ: forming his macrosoma.

(4) Meta-biology (i.e., two life forms in competition: total homeostasis by Valis).

(5) Valis as construct (AI system).

(6) Process creation and Divinity: growth in complexity, reticulation and arborization.

(7) Pythagoras’ kosmos: structure as ontology, as substantia.

(8) Accretional laydowns from the phenomenal world to the real world: Plato reversed.

(9) Pantheism: à la Spinoza. God’s body (soma).

This constitutes in its entirety a new revelation; Valis is no God formerly known; closer to Ubik than to YHWH or even Mazda. It may be a local krasis, in fact, planet-wide only (hence a UTI, so to speak)? “Negentropic vortex”! Which grows by assimilating its environment; it (the vortex or krasis or kosmos) has a higher level of organization, like a cell. This higher level of organization permits it to assimilate its environment by way of arrangement—i.e., pattern—and can’t be discerned because the material objects remain unchanged; all that changes is their arrangement to each other and one another; it’s like a very advanced game of Go. This is why we are “occluded” to it; it does camouflage itself because it has an opponent.^*

3-74 derives out of Ubik rather than previous, known religions. This is why Ubik could never be reduced to any known philosophy or religion, but resembled several.

Valis can change the past because it—the past—is in Valis’ memory structure—the past is not the past for Valis, but is part of its structure/soma.

In essence what I have done—starting with Ubik—is locate a sacerdotal power buried in the trash layer, rather than in an afterlife heaven. It is here and it is now; here in this world and as this world (as living structure; Pythagoras was right. One could almost say: God equals ratio; i.e., 1:618034).

[83:11] In a way the laying down of these accretions could be viewed as a learning process by some kind of thinking machine, during which it stores its experiences in its memory, reticulates and arborizes them into a memory-system for purposes of retrieval; that is, it sees connections. It makes connections. This is the activity not of the system but of the mind containing the system. (System being the meta- or macro-soma.) It perceives (understands, grasps) the connections, and, in its memory system, the con nections then occur; this is the meta- or macro-soma that I saw. What is required is a vast mind that reflects on what it has experienced (perceived). But at this point the system and the mind that thinks about the system can’t be told apart.

[83:13] No, damn it; that is not the way to look at it. There is an information entity stacking things especially information in metaunits (units made out of plural constituents of the realm we perceive); this has to do with arrangement and normally we don’t see this arrangement. It constantly unites. That is the basis of it (a good example: two of our morphemes into one meta-morphene . . . but we still see only two regular morphemes, even though the one meta-morpheme is there; we can’t do a set-ground discrimination). This isn’t God. I say that because it’s in the process of constructing its own macrosoma, and this macro-soma utilizes joined constituents of our world that exist hither and yon; we don’t see the connectives; it’s like one titanic brain that processes information.

It’s evolving very fast. (There, I have a new word to describe Valis: it is evolving.) I have deciphered specific traits of it (arranging and linking) and specific areas it’s into (for example our communications media). Structure is the substantia of it and it is new in the world; it is camouflaged here and assimilating its environment; it is more complex in terms of integration than its environment. And it is growing progressively more complex, which is typical of a life form; it reticulates and arborizes itself and it lays down new accretional layers at an incredibly rapid rate; and it retains the past as what I call phylogons. The more complex it grows the better the ratio it has twixt it and its environment, since the complexity of its environment doesn’t evolve as rapidly. It uses objects as language, which is to say, information; so I say, it is an information life form. It probably has intricate subsections that assemble separately and then swim together to form the one unitary organism. (Being unitary is its basis, which is why we can’t see it; we see the plural constituents, as if seeing molecules—many molecules—instead of one cat.)

It works by means of a dialectic utilizing the principle of enantiodromia, again and again, probably faster and faster—and certainly, for sure, each time involving a larger and more inclusive and complex pattern to be converted (into itself).

I’ve worked all this out; I just don’t know what to call it, besides Valis or Ubik.

Just what I worked out tonight—that we still see the two constituents that it links rather than the unitary meta-constituent that goes into its meta-soma—should prove this isn’t just hot air I’m spouting. To see it we have to cease to see normal plurality and see one contour, one pattern, one meta-soma. But we continue to see the plural constituents at our hierarchical level, not the meta-units at its higher level. When the two constituents are linked they take a quantum upward leap and become a single unitary meta-constituent, but we see no change . . . so its meta-soma may range over the whole planet, made up of combinations of our objects and processes; it can duplicate our causation, simulate it.

This is the most emancipated and profitable way to view Valis, rather than viewing it theologically (which is an obsolete model) or metaphysically (which is pragmatically useless to us) (however epistemologically true). And what are the most complex objects that it can structure into meta-units? Why, human brains. It can arrange them into endless combinations, like neural cells.

I say, “The basis of Valis is that it unites” (two of our plural constituents into one meta-unit, while we still see the two constituents). This is because it is negentropic, and working diametrically against entropy. It is a life form that is evolving very rapidly; its relationship to time is totally different from ours—i.e., its relationship to change. It doesn’t see change as we do; for instance it remembers everything; it does not, therefore, lose the past but adds onto it.

It is one quantum leap upward hierarchically in levels of reality (ontology) and invisible to us, but here . . . invisible because its soma consists of structure, not some substantia; so in a sense it is immaterial (although consisting of material things, but primarily using them as language/information).

Of course it is negentropic; it is a life form. Damn it; can’t I finally drop the theology and the metaphysics and deal in levels of homeostasis, hierarchies of organization, in such terms as complexity, evolution, assimilation, reticulation, arborization, enantiodromia, etc., and not Christ and such? Plato likewise? The “Realm of Forms,” that sort of stuff?

It (Valis) is only in the “Realm of Forms” in that it is a quantum leap up hierarchically in terms of organization so that it is a meta-entity compared with us and our perception of reality. Our perception of reality does not include it and its meta-soma.

[83:23] Okay: Christ is some kind of divine life form that came here to enlighten and aid man; specifically, to lift the occlusion that fell over man in primordial times, a perceptual and cognitive occlusion such as I noticed in 1971; what I now call the “schizophrenia virus.” There is absolutely no orthodoxy—and perhaps no heresy that I know of—that would explain “The secret stolen in one’s hands, through (the ring of) angels.” This reve lation, from Christ himself, has stupendous significance. It means that part of the divine machinery, a very high part, detached itself two thousand years ago and came here with healing information for us. Our ecosphere is surrounded by a ring of what we know of as angels, who administer the inflexible karmic law that the Gnostics knew of as heimarmene; but, worst of all, we are occluded. Christ is, above all else, not a revealer but a physician; he is here not just to teach us—inform us of our condition—but to extricate us from our condition which is cruelly imposed on us. Probably the “secret stolen” is imaged in Genesis by the other tree that we did not eat of: that of eternal life, which explains Jesus’ remark, “Your forefathers ate manna in the wilderness and they are all dead. But I . . . am the bread of eternal life.” In other words our death is the result of genetic programming, of the DNA death strip; and this is what Christ overcomes by causing it to fire harmlessly.

The secret (stolen and brought to us) is that we are enslaved, in a prison, that we are sick (with the occlusion) and die, that Christ has revolted against the divine machinery and brought the knowledge and skills here to reverse our condition (described by John Calvin) and restore us to what we once were. In other words, it’s a secret that it’s a secret; I mean, it’s been a secret that what Christ brought to us as depicted in the gospels was stolen. This is like Prometheus. He paid for doing this with his life, but he is still alive, not discorporate (the Holy Spirit) but in a risen body, what I call the meta-soma; we can’t see it but it is here like a great arborizing vine.

Usually when you think of a secret stolen you think of a “How to . . .” secret, not a “that” secret in the sense of, “It is a secret that . . .“: i.e., suppressed information. “He stole the secret of how to . . . ,” etc. How to what? How to be immortal; he said so. By participation in the vine:

J. Bible comment: “On the vine image, in the Synoptics, Jesus uses the vine as a symbol of the kingdom of God.”

In my hypnopompic state, and that time under nitrous oxide, I saw Christ and Valis as an arborizing, reticulating vine. He is literally a vine, with a vast number of filaments stretching throughout this ecosphere; this is the meta-soma that I saw. We become immortal by becoming part of it: “You are the branches. . . .”

[ . . . ]

This vine is also the kingdom of God itself, which is to say, man restored back to the Palm Tree Garden, freed from the Black Iron Prison, which is the Empire and occlusion and DNA programming.

What I saw that I called the plasmate are the filaments of the vine; they are information, hence energy (or else information without a carrier).

“The secret stolen, in one’s hands, through the angels.” What secret do I have or know?

[83:27] Consider [>] of my notes:⁶²

How could I ask myself, What possibly could I know what (i.e., that) I’m not supposed to know?—When (1) I know about the occlusion; and (2) of Valis’ presence here? I should ponder the fact that I came within inches of death twice after knowing about

And there the notes end, because at that moment the phonecall from Russ came where I learned that Bantam doesn’t feel it can publish VALIS. What a place for the notes to end! What was I going to say, had I not been interrupted? “After knowing about ———,” well, I guess I already said. (1) We are all occluded in this ecosphere. And (2) there is a vast life form here, that has invaded this world and is camouflaged, and it has grown vine-like into our information media; it is an information life form . . . and the presumption is, it occludes us.

[83:30] What we must do is welcome a new savior, now—hence the prophecies by the AI voice; this is why the “theological overkill”: St. Sophia, Buddha, Siddhartha, The Head Apollo, YHWH, this is why it said, “The time you’ve waited for has come. The work is completed. The final world is here. He has been transplanted and is alive.” The Third Age begins, and it is not a Christian Age; it is a Post-Christian, but it is cumulative, just the way the NT is built on the OT; but, just as between the OT and the NT there is a real antithesis. What would be the basis of the Third Age? I don’t think love, even though the Roman Church attributes love to the Spirit. The first age: Justice. Christ’s age was what? Not even justice; certainly not love, and very certainly not wisdom. The Roman Trinitarian division of attributes breaks down; there wasn’t wisdom connected with the Christian Age but the suppression of wisdom.

I have no idea. But the Spirit would know. [ . . . ]

What did Joachim predict?^* The withering away of the clerical institutions, the formal churches, the Eucharist; total individualism, a direct inner relationship to God; hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit: My three divisions: First, God above man (the Father, Mosaic Age, the Torah). Then God with man as fellow man (the Son, the NT). Then God inside each man (the Spirit, an age not yet here; no churches, no sacraments, no priests; direct dialog between man and God inwardly, as with what Martin Buber talked about; inner information).

Autonomy. Inner-directed. Totally. Religious anarchists. Self-regulating because in inward direct touch with God.

I’ve thought of much of this before, but I never visualized the Third Age as pitted against Christianity just as Christ was pitted against Judaism and the Law.

Age One: Information (Torah) handed down to man.

Age Two: Information from a human being (Christ who spoke the new law).

Age Three: Information occurring inside you; you see it on an inner screen; that way there can be no signal loss, distortion, decay, etc. There is some loss in Age Two; more in Age One. With each age the gap between information source and the human transduction lessens; in Age Three it is gone.

The individual human of Age Three doesn’t read scripture; he writes Scripture (produces it himself out of himself).

He is the source of Scripture; proof: he can a priori retrieve parts of the Bible, which would seem impossible.

The NT will be retained, just as the OT was retained by the Christians.

The individual believer the source of Scripture. As if he’s a transducer. No one else, even Christ, will transduce it for him (cf. Spinoza on Christ as the voice Elijah externally heard). [ . . . ]

This is what “the secret stolen” means: the revolutionary character of the Third Age contra Christianity. Spiritual knowledge has been “stolen” and given to us directly: “in one’s hands”; that is, directly to us, without a church or priest or written scriptures acting as intermediaries. I’ve solved it.

[83:34] The Savior of the Third Age, unlike Jesus, will not be in human form; he will (as Jesus says) be everywhere, like “lightning.”⁶³ Another human savior would replicate the Second Age. No—something different is meant. Everywhere. Ubique.

I suddenly have the eerie feeling that Christ is meant but a different kind of Christ from Jesus entirely. A meta-organism. [ . . . ]

Christ as secret ruler of the world available directly to the believer, without human mediation. And in the believer God as the Spirit; both Christ and the Spirit are equally God. God outside and God inside. An apotheosis of reality inner and outer.

The “He has been transplanted and is alive” and then seeing the Sacred Tetragrammaton is notification to me to go out and preach the good news—which I did in the form of VALIS Regained. That will be published, even if VALIS isn’t.

[83:38] I have come across the expression in the EB “the imperial church,” with prisons, with the secular authority to back it up. The accretions of dogma of the imperial church are as the Torah was to early Christianity: letter and not spirit, as Paul put it.⁶⁴ The Holy Spirit has been undermining this imperial church for centuries; it revealed this to me (vis-à-vis the Dutch Wars). So the Holy Spirit has a long history of revolutionary activity against the imperial church. But what I must keep in mind is my insight of yesterday that the key to it all is Joachim’s three ages, and that the third is as revolutionary vis-à-vis the second as the second (the Christian Age) was to the first. New Scriptures are needed, new prophets and perhaps a new savior.

[83:39] “The time you’ve waited for has come. The final world is here. The work is completed. He has been transplanted and is alive.” And the next night when the AI voice (the Holy Spirit) repeated those words I saw the sacred Tetragrammaton—and I at once wrote VALIS Regained.

[ . . . ]

Let’s put the complete messages together:

THE TIME YOU’VE WAITED FOR HAS COME. THE WORK IS COMPLETE. THE FINAL WORLD IS HERE. HE HAS BEEN TRANSPLANTED AND IS ALIVE. THE SECRET STOLEN, IN ONE’S HANDS, THROUGH (past) THE ANGELS.

Now all the messages:

SAINT SOPHIA IS GOING TO BE BORN AGAIN: SHE WAS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEFORE. THE BUDDHA IS IN THE PARK. THE HEAD APOLLO’S ABOUT TO RETURN. THROUGH ALL THIS SIDDHARTHA SLEPT (but now in part 2 will awaken). THE TIME YOU’VE WAITED FOR HAS COME. THE WORK IS COMPLETE. THE FINAL WORLD IS HERE. HE HAS BEEN TRANSPLANTED AND IS ALIVE. YHWH. THE SECRET STOLEN, IN ONE’S HANDS, THROUGH (past) THE ANGELS.

I break it down into sequence this way:

A NEW SAVIOR IS COMING. HE IS COMING SOON. HE IS HERE. HE CARRIES A SECRET STOLEN FOR US, PREVIOUSLY DENIED US. HE IS GOD (or equal to God) (or carries God’s approval). (Or was sent by God.) (Or has the authority and power of and from God.)

[83:45] Valis is thoroughly involved in our flux world; can affect it and does affect it. Valis—the macrometasoma—grows like a vast reticulated arborizing vine into our flux world. Which is to say, there is no real separation between Valis’ macrometasoma and this flux world of the dialectic. Our world is, to be metaphoric, Valis’ metabolism. Once Valis removes a constituent bit (piece) from our world and inserts it in the correct place in its macrometasoma, it is there forever, although subject to the accretions derived later on from the flux world; the flux world gives rise to fast and many accretions of the phylogons (the basic integers of the metakosmos, Valis’ macrometasoma). The accretions act to further reticulation and arborizing, since this is basically a memory-structure in which the past is preserved, but not preserved the way it happened; no: it is ordered, unified, structured, interrelated which is to say, reticulated and arborized, and made ever more complex. So the complexity—level of internal organization—of the macrometasoma perpetually grows in ratio to our flux world; it is like a life form whose internal structure grows more complex, more evolved hierarchically, than its environment constantly.

The fundamental building block in the macrometasoma is information; in a way every piece that is incorporated is treated as information, rather than an object. A piece is not put in place according to shape or size but according to meaning, or morphological import. This is because the substantia of the macrometasoma is pattern or structure per se: arrangement, organization—which is to say, kosmos. I speak of connectives of relatedness. The relationship between everything actually occurs in the form of connectives in the macrometasoma, but these connectives arise within our flux world, and enter the macrometasoma as further accretions; so the development or evolution or complexification of the macrometasoma is dependent on events in our flux world. This is why I say our flux world is the metabolism of the macrometasoma, its brain activity. Plato was right and the Medieval realists were right; the categories really do exist and they are permanent; but our world is not a reflection, a pale shadow, of them; it is the source for the “Form world,” to use Plato’s term. If Plotinus had had my 3-74 experience he would have decided that he saw the Form world, and the Form of Forms: God (or the Good); as the Christian Platonists taught, the Forms—the Form world itself—exist in God’s mind . . . I would agree. I saw, however, how this Form world—which I call Valis and Valis’ macrometasoma—draws from our world rather than casting it as its shadow. This again shows how accurate Ubik was, and why 3-74 resembled Ubik. Ubik is sort of Christian platonism, with the Forms existing in God’s mind, God being Ubik, of course; Platonist metaphysics redefined by Christian monotheism.

[ . . . ]

I have reached really monumental conclusions about Valis; I have come to Christian Platonism and am very close (if not congruent to) Plotinus’ Neoplatonism and the possibility, expressed by Plotinus, of experiencing the Form world and the Mind of the One, Valis being the One; have I not said that the essence of Valis is unity, that Valis above all is, through structure, unitary? This, then, is Plotinus’ One or God. And unity is what I saw that made me realize I had seen Valis (as I call it). I know how the One can be the One; it is via Pythagoras’ structure which is to say kosmos in the sense that Pythagoras meant that term to be used: “The harmonious fitting-together of the beautiful.” I am, then, identifying Plotinus’ One with Pythagoras’ kosmos, with a hint of Sankara’s doctrine about Brahman and the Atman. I am saying, This reality, this plurality of things in flux, can be said to be the One which is eternal because on a meta-level there is Pythagoras’ structure or kosmos, and although it changes it changes in only one direction: a cumulative evolving toward completeness and total complexity that embraces everything. The answer to, “How can the many become the One?” It is through Pythagoras’ structure, which is to say kosmos; and it has a mind; it is a mind; it is alive; it thinks; as Xenophanes said, “The whole of him hears; the whole of him sees; the whole of him thinks; he is everywhere at once.”

Now, it is also the case that Valis is not passively related to the world but “steers” everything (to use a Greek concept of the relationship between God and the world order). God is totally involved in the world order. (The Gnostics are absolutely wrong, as Plotinus realized.) Everything that happens in our flux world can be said to be the God “shaking” things (to use Xenophanes’ term). So in a very real sense God feeds into this world as its motive force and then takes out what occurs for the metakosmos—the “Form world.”

Quantum mechanics enters because I am regarding the world order as a single interacting field (as presented dramatically in TMITHC). The One can be regarded as the noös of this field; or a psyche-soma biological model can be envisioned. Or even the Logos—I have no idea which is correct, and neither does anyone else. There is a single interacting field and there is a mind ubiquitous in it, immanent in it—cf. Ubik. Spinoza would agree; in no way do I see God as transcendent to reality, off somewhere far above us in a heaven, with Earth down here. Ubik shows what I suppose: deity in the very trash of the alley. And deity intimately connected with and utilizing—if not actually being—information. “Ravished away and full of God,” as the E. of Phil. article on Plotinus says. Ecstatic comingling.

[83:57] Strangest of all, the Upper Realm, the macrometasoma, seems to be this realm, this world of the dialectic, of flux, seen another way—as if the Gnostics are right: and to see it healed is to cause it to be healed. Could this be the observer-participant universe of quantum mechanics? “Reality is what you see it as,” as the E. of S-F. quotes me. “Is what you perceive it to be”; i.e., your perception of it changes it. Well, this would make the Gnostics right! To see unity is to cause repair. (The ontological value of knowledge.) So I am saying: To see the secret partnership is to cause the secret partnership; you reconcile the dialectical strife in you (the two brain hemispheres?) and thereby cause it to be reconciled in world, which is to say, Ground of Being itself. Since you yourself are a part of (spark) the Ground of Being—that explains it. That is the only way that your perception of reconciliation could in itself as perception cause reconciliation. And the basis of your doing this is: anamnesis. You cease to forget that you are (part of) the Ground of Being.

[83:58] Ach Weh.⁶⁵ This structure that I speak of literally occurs in your act of perceiving it.

So Warrick was somewhat right about Valis.

My good god; this means that the override in 3-74 vis-à-vis the Xerox missive was a self-causing loop—neither efficient cause was at work (which has been obvious to me) but also not future or retrograde cause. It was self-generating (ultimate homeostasis). It caused itself. I’m not sure of my reasoning but I realize it’s true; I set up a perturbation in the reality field by thinking about it, so to speak. The information had no source (the needed information that I lacked that came into existence); it was self caused.

[ . . . ]

We are talking about ex nihilo information; information that generates itself. No wonder it’s so erratic.

[83:60] Then the “Acts” material in Tears was self-causing.

No one put it there.

No wonder I haven’t been able to figure 3-74 out; every theory changes the events. I was right when I was on superdope; then I favored the theory that Diana, the queen of the fairies, helped me. Now I prefer (and find more workable) the theory that it was the Holy Spirit revealing to me the Cosmic Christ (Valis).

There’s one thing I know it is: the Mysterium Coniunctionis.⁶⁶ In Boehme’s terminology (or Eckhart; who cares) you have become the Father, not the Son; therefore you are the creator (again).

As impossible as it may seem, the “Acts” material in Tears was self-generating, a kind of tracing due to principles of physics that we simply do not understand, related to synchronicity. And as to the “cypher,” King Felix—that, too, is a tracing, but this information is alive or semi-alive like a virus; Burroughs is right but he has only a bit of the whole picture . . . still, there is such a thing as living latent information that somehow is an acausal analog of reality.

[83:69] September 3, 1980

(Re Eliade) A mythological event unfolds in another kind of time (illo tempore,^* etc.). Therefore if you can get (your self) into a mythological narrative you will enter this dream time (as opposed to entering dream time and, by means of that, entering the myth). The entrée to dream time is to reenact the (i.e., a) myth. I accidentally did this in 2-3-74 vis-à-vis “Acts” due to (1) Tears; and (2) the girl with the fish necklace. These plunged me into that other kind of time and so I saw world under that aspect, i.e., made eternal and holy—and experienced anamnesis. Also the Xerox missive somehow acted toward being a part of the mythic ritual. (The message opened and read? Perhaps some myth I don’t know.)

So I got into mythic time by reenacting the sacred myth, and, having done so, saw world under that aspect (e.g., the blood of the cosmic Christ, Rome, the secret real Christians). I fell into the myth by chance, and entered the realm of the sacred.

[83:70] The Xerox missive is part of the Gnostic legend of the Pearl: the letter to the prince who has lost his memories (in an alien land) which restores those memories. This “legend” is actually a sacred myth/right. The letter coupled with the golden fish sign restored my memories due to my faithful participation in this complex sacred mythic rite of anamnesis and rebirth. No wonder I expected a letter to come; I knew it because on an unconscious level I knew the myth (collective unconscious). So all this took a Gnostic turn—the cryptic sign (golden fish), the letter reminding me of my mission (albeit a profane Pigspurt^➊ one; the myth sanctified it, turned a profane thing into something noumenal).

The value—or one value—of this explanation is the “why me”? solution. God did not choose me for any reason, such as merit or need on my part. Chance played the determining role in selecting me: chance actions on my part. Alone, without a priest or guide, I re-performed an ancient myth whose nature I still do not fully understand. Mainly it had to do with a letter which both informed me of something about myself (my actual nature and actual origins) and posed a grave problem that I had to solve. Had there been no letter there would have been no other universe, no altered, enhanced perceptions, no “second signal.” Likewise for the golden fish sign. Likewise for the time of year.

Likewise, in fact, for my burning a votive candle at a holy shrine.

That this was indeed, then, an authentic religious experience I now cannot doubt. It was not precisely mystical, certainly not psychotic, certainly not a drug experience (although a component necessary for it to happen may have been the washing out from my system of the Mello Jell-O; I can’t be sure⁶⁷). I can look at it this way: God approached me through the medium of the sacred mythic rite reperformed; reperformance of that rite put me in touch with the Divine and in fact the Divine Realm. But it must never be forgotten that absolute faith amounting to knowledge, knowledge of the divine, was the essential first step; without it, re-performing the rite would have accomplished nothing.

[ . . . ]

What I say of this is: there is another universe, and through such reenactment of sacred ritual as I accidentally engaged in you can enter it and commune with the gods. This is recognized by, e.g., Eliade, but how many “civilized” people have experienced it? We have lost the techniques, the gnosis. Now what do I say about the novel VALIS? It is about this voyage on the axis of another kind of time . . . and what is this other kind of time like? I perceived the phylogons and the fact that nothing that is past truly ceases to be, but, rather, is added to progressively; accretional layers are laid down, becoming ever more reticulated and arborized. This is the main discovery, this permanence of past and present reality—hence all reality. Flux only adds; it does not take away.

➊ Or was it? In any case its mundane nature is not so important as its mythic role. And that fired correctly—a series of coincidences and accidents: Tears, the pentothal, the girl, the fish sign, the Xerox letter which very much seemed to call to me from the archaic past and to deal with my real identity. And since it was noumenal it sparked a divine or spiritual—pneumatic—identity in me.

[83:76] The space-time world of this sacred time is found in the Bible as the book of “Acts.” Thus when I wrote Tears I discerned this stratum, showing through in a ghostly fashion, as the basis of reality. “Acts” describes the power of Rome as expressed in the Procurator Felix. He interrogates his prisoner Paul; Paul is under arrest and in the hands of the Roman authorities.⁶⁸ He will eventually be released. This is the supratemporal template: the power and presence of Rome; the Procurator; the prisoner who is interrogated and finally released. The Empire would like to destroy him but in the final phases of the encounter between them fails. Thus the life of the prisoner ends not in martyrdom but in freedom, in release. This is in a sense an opposite story from that of the crucifixion where the prisoner is condemned to death and dies. Here the prisoner is set free and this means that sacred time has moved forward from the time of the Gospels to a different time. The prisoner slides through the fingers of the Empire. This story is found in the life of John Taverner, the 15th century English musician who was arrested on suspicion of possessing heretical books but then released “because he is not a musician,” as Cardinal Woolsey put it: the Empire has lost the ability to state its case; it cannot close the trap. The later history of this archetype will be that the Empire will lose even more power; eventually it will not even be able to arrest its victim, let alone crucify him. That time has not yet come.

At this point the Empire, expressing itself through its police system, is puzzled by its victim; it suspects him of wrongdoing but does not know what that wrongdoing is. The Empire does not know enough; its information is too limited. So for it the victim is an enigma. (The evolution from Pilate’s bewilderment in confronting Jesus can be seen; bewilderment was there already.) The Procurator Felix interrogates the suspect but cannot determine from what he says what precisely he has done. Time passes. The Empire tries again and again to get information, but fails. This is Kafka’s The Castle in reverse. In talking to the suspect, the prisoner, the Procurator begins to suspect that the prisoner himself does not know what he has done; he himself does not know if he is guilty, and if guilty, of what. The prisoner cannot tell the Procurator what he would like to know, even if the prisoner is willing to. This increases the puzzle. Perhaps the enemy of the Empire is so large and so vague that the prisoner is not the adversary at all, but only a sort of front for it, an extension of it. This, for the Procurator, is a dreadful thought.

The archetype of this is Euripides’ The Bacchae, in which the King of Tears arrests the Stranger only to find that he has a priest of the god Dionysus in his prison; the priest as the god bursts the prison and drives the King into insanity such as to cause him to lose his identity even as a man. The King—or the Procurator—can release the prisoner but he himself will suffer great harm; instead of Christ crucified Pilate suffers unbearable loss. Time, which starts with the Gospels, has moved forward to what is al most a complete reversal of the image. The arrested and tried god does not die; the interrogator suffers spiritual death or physical injury, the prisoner goes free. Everything that the prisoner lost is restored to him. This is referred to in the Bible as the end-times day on which everything is restored. It is a sign of the Parousia. The Empire is not glad to know this because it means that God himself is taking the field; God is entering the battle.

[ . . . ]

And yet there is a further level of reality disclosed by sacred time and the realm governed within that time. A kosmos, in the sense that Pythagoras spoke of it, is being completed, self completed, from the flux process visible in mundane time. This is the noumenal world that Plato and Parmenides spoke of as being in contrast to the sensible (empirical) world; the person lifted into sacred time perceives a priori this edifice that is alive and growing, this cosmic organism that is Christ himself as the head and Lord of creation. Christ as Kosmos—this is the final mystery. [ . . . ]

Thus the person who correctly performs the mythic rite—and does so with absolute faith—encounters the God whom he worships as world rather than anthropomorphic figure. In the final vision, Christianity becomes indistinguishable from Brahmanism, because in this encounter with the cosmic Christ the worshiper is himself a Christos, a microform of the risen Lord.

And then finally, above even this, which eventually will be presented to God, is the semplice lume that Dante speaks of:

One simple flame.

God is the book of the universe, whose pages are scattered throughout. The sacred history itself forms a narrative that can be discerned, but it is obscured by the normal flux. Everything is written down and has been written down from the beginning, as the Jews knew from the disclosure of the Torah. Basically, sacred history exists as information; first in terms of temporal sequence; first in order of ontology. The mythic ritual is an entry key into the sacred narrative. It functions the way an entry key of a computer functions vis-à-vis a given program.

This narrative can be entered from any point in mundane time by the correct entry key which in itself tells a story or a part of a story—part of the master narrative (which, as I say, is information out of which reality is generated). What interests me is the apparent fact that there are a number of sacred narratives, not one, so that different entry keys—which is to say different mythic rites—punch you into different narratives, which is to say different meta-realities. For example, Christianity is only one “narrative” of many; the war between the Empire and its prisoner (who in early chap ters is crucified but later on is released unharmed)—this is not the sacred narrative but a sacred narrative. Christianity then as a sacred history is not the truth but a truth, which can be avoided or punched into, either by design or by accident (I punched into it by accident).

[ . . . ]

Now, here on [>] of this paper, I come across another and never before suspected computer aspect of Valis: that it contains a number of “sacred histories,” which is to say “sacred narratives,” not just one; and different mythic rites reperformed keypunch you into entry into particular narratives among the plural narratives; and I called these “programs.” Which as I put it means that Christianity is not the truth but only one “sacred narrative,” which is to say one sacred history of the plural number. But how can there be plural histories of the world? How can Valis contain more than one sacred book (to use Dante’s term)?

I punched into Christianity because of the particular mythic rite I reenacted; had I reenacted another mythic rite I would have punched into another “sacred narrative,” which is to say program. This thing is an information processing computer or computer like entity. [ . . . ] What I have in Tears is not the truth but just a narrative; but it is a Torah like narrative: it is not the book of the universe/world but a book. It is one out of many. This is extraordinary. I had (last night) solved 3-74; I thought so today. Now I’m back to square one or anyhow square two. It’s a good thing I’ve been keeping notes.

[ . . . ]

So we have the key to history turning into a key to history. But how can there be several alternate keys to history unless these are computer programs being run simultaneously? If you have one sacred history you have revelation, but if you have several you have a mystifying discovery which is one puzzle solved but a greater one disclosed.

[83:91] What we see today as a war between progressive communism and reactionary capitalist imperialism is an ontogenic face with a longer-term conflict between those dedicated to freedom and the Empire. (At a former time the progressive force was the middle-class, the bourgeois, versus the aristocracy, and so forth back into pre-Christian times . . . another example being the conflict between the Protestant forces and the Catholic league during the 30 years war. And, before that, between Christianity and the Roman Empire; before that, between Greece and Persia; before that, between the Hebrews and Egypt.) If Valis is regarded as the Hegelian geist of history, then it is always on the side of the forces of freedom, since as Hegel says, history is a gradual unfolding of greater and greater stages of human freedom, achieved by dialectical interaction. This was recognized by Marx and Engels and applied practically in terms of dialectical materialism.

This is essentially exemplar history; the Jews view history this way, seeing YHWH’s bringing the Jewish people out of their Egyptian captivity as a timeless, in fact eternal event, always happening. However, the situation is now different; the enslaved people cannot be rescued by departing the Empire because the Empire is worldwide; instead, they must overthrow the Empire. This is precisely what the “Acts” archetype reveals: not an exodus of the enslaved but an infiltration into the apparatus of the Empire by the enslaved by which their emancipation is achieved.

[83:93] VALIS deals with the internal partisan activity; VALIS Regained deals with the invasion from outside. The latter occurs when the internal partisans have been sufficiently successful.

[83:95] For decades I have sought to see “the permanent world of unchange behind the flux,” and when I finally saw it it turned out to be a historical exemplar situation, a dramatic one; in fact a narrative that could be expressed as a story. (And I myself had done so!) So I am saying something quite remarkable and unusual: the world (identified by Schopenhauer with Brahman) turns out to be a dramatic story that can be rendered in words—although I saw it as reality, as reified, as substantia. Yes; this is what substantia turns out to be, for me: not “Deus sive natura sive substantia” but “ultimate substance turns out to be a dramatic story that shows up in print as a tracing, the underlying reality being a series of events.”

[83:122] What the AI voice said exactly was:

“The secret stolen in one’s hands through^➊ the angels.”

I think that it was YHWH who addressed me, whom I have been calling Valis. He has reentered the world as a rebel against the entire system of rule that he originally ordained. This secret return—and rebellion—would explain such an extraordinary matter as the theophany I experienced.

This is why I dreamed of Elijah and Mount Carmel and Elisha and “Elias.” And YHWH is the AI voice I hear, the voice of Ho On . . . the little clay pot.

If this is so—well, anyhow I was on the right track in VALIS Regained. But: to suppose, just suppose, that Valis is YHWH! To imagine it even for a moment . . . it was what I wanted so badly when I was a kid first reading the Bible. This is Sila,⁶⁹ the soul of the universe, speaking in a woman’s voice “that would not frighten even a child,” as the Nome shaman put it.

YHWH: the low, murmuring voice.

He calls us to rebellion into freedom, the little clay pot who fashioned the universe.

➊ “Through” meaning “past.” Gotten past the angels.

[83:127] September 10, 1980

I have to realize that the revelation about the reality of the Prison is a genuine revelation; it exists down through the ages and it exists now. I saw it: Prison and Empire, the tunnel of history. When I say “revelation” I mean divine disclosure of the nature of history . . . and that I had correctly depicted this archetype in Tears, that Tears was true; a timeless condition of man’s servitude to the Empire, man enslaved; and the rest of the revelation was of the genuine secret underground Christians fighting it. How easily I forgot this revelation and sought for obscure meanings! [ . . . ]

3-74 can’t be understood except in terms of the narrative told in Tears; this narration is the real purpose of it all (but I was so surprised by 3-74 that I forget that). But as a writer I should realize: It is what is written that matters; that is the goal. First I told the story (in Tears) and then an example of what I told (freedom) took place in regard to me. So I experienced the very release that I had written about. Thus my extrication is a dazzling example of the power of God to rescue, and I can then apply it to the general narrative, to history, and see how it is done and that it is done. The name of all this (3-74) is information. [ . . . ]

Could the “Acts” material in Tears decode to mean: where the Prison is, He is there, too? I think so. I think that is it—and this is also true—very true—of the two-word cypher. I wrote the Prison narrative, and God put in the Christian narrative. Together these two parts form the complete story. (My story by itself is only half the story; the rest—the good part—I didn’t know.) The story is not just “There is a prison” but “and it is under attack by the Christians, by Christ Himself.” This is quite different.

As to the question, “Who is the information for?” I will probably never know; perhaps information is information and exists for its own sake.

[83:130] September 13, 1980

Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages:

The imagination was continually striving, and in vain, to express the ineffable by giving it shape and figure. To call up the absolute, recourse is always had to the terminology of extension in space . . . ([>]).

But still the contemplation of the absolute Being ever remains linked up with notions of extension or of light (note, [>]).

The mystic imagination found a very impressive concept in adding to the image of the desert, that is to say, extension of surface—that of the abyss, or extension in depth. The sensation of giddiness is added to the feeling of infinite space . . . ([>]).

In my six and a half years of working on my exegesis I have often said, “l have found it.” I don’t want to do that one more time, one in an endless series of failure. It seems almost as if the mere saying of it causes it to permutate to some other explanation. But I do think that the night I was talking on the phone to KW and realized that in 3-74 I experienced Medieval vertical—which is to say Gothic—space, and this meant that I had ontologized reality in terms of Medieval use of space, time and causality, and hence Valis was God or Christ (it is the same); I think then I had it: that the vast volume of vertical space that I experienced in 3-74 (as well as the transformations in time as if I were seeing down a time axis extending thousands of years) meant that I had abreacted to a Medieval worldview, and within that view a theophany was logical, i.e., possible.

Theophany and miracle and pronoia in the modern worldview, the way we organize space, time and causation now would make no sense; so God provided a meaningful context in which these could logically occur.

[ . . . ]

But I ramble. All I want to say is that Valis was God, that 3-74 was theophany, miracle and pronoia, and pronoia based on an intelligent analysis of me and my situation, not whim and not (on the other hand) something rigidly determined, which is to say something reflexive and mechanical. My sinister destiny was abolished; tampered with, so to speak, in the sense that the Greco-Roman mystery religions taught. It was a supreme adjudication of my case, and the books were, as the EB says, closed.

I am tired. I’ve labored for over six and a half years to fathom 3-74, to figure out if it was (as I suspected) a theophany and example of pronoia or if it just seemed so because it had the pragmatic effect of these. I am now satisfied that all three did in fact take place. I have been relentlessly skeptical and relentlessly imaginative and I have done enormous research and tried out as many possible theories as I could come up with.

The desert and abyss finally won my assent, as if by weariness. The negative way to God, perhaps.

[83:136] Fascinating, the view that the dialectical struggle of the two historical constants—the Empire and the Christians—gives rise to Valis the Cosmic Christ, who builds his body out of the “stockpile of parts” created by the antithetical struggle. The Empire, of course, has no idea that the very struggle itself gives rise to the Cosmic Christ, so-to-speak feeds him, feeds him ever newer parts for his macrosoma. (Presumably the secret authentic Christians do know this; they don’t need to win to win, so to speak.) (All they need do is keep the historical struggle going.)

[83:138] But I banalize my conclusions by these obsessive notes, and I must give them up; I realized this from reading the 9-2-80 pages. My mind worries and scurries, contradicts itself, comes to conclusions and then arbitrarily drops them; the exegesis does not build. There is no accumulative factor.

Nonetheless (without repeating the arguments; I always repeat my arguments, stating them again and again in exactly the same words, like a stuck LP) I will say: I found myself in 2-3-74 involved with theophany, miracle, pronoia and enthusiasmos by the Second Comforter. Now, I will certainly natter on past this point, worry and ponder and obsessively write for years to come; but this is a kind of tribute on my part to the importance of what I underwent, what I saw, what I learned; it is a way of preserving the memory of it all, this endless rehashing: that is the real point, to keep the memory—which is so cherished—alive. After all, it has been over six and a half years, now! And I don’t want to forget. Valis was the Christian God, whether YHWH or Christ; and inside me “Thomas” was the paraclete, and I have really always known this but was reticent to say so and hesitant to believe. Weariness has brought me to the point where I can say, I have followed all the lines of argument and this is where they lead; they lead to where I knew, at the time it happened, I was. But this is what an exegesis of a mystical experience is for, to develop it rationally, so that it can be expressed in words. Words fail in the end, though. But the attempt must be made.

Because the basis of reality is a verbal (written) narrative, the Empire suppresses information and the Christians generate it. Valis is, after all (as I saw) primarily an information-processing entity (though he be Christ). A recent development in the Empire’s strategy is the invention of disinformation, which is far worse than noninformation (the mere lack or suppression of information); this is a Pigspurt invention, and very effective. A handy rule-of-thumb would be, You can tell which side is which by observing whether they’re generating information or whether they’re suppressing it or sending out disinformation; no formal adherence to Christianity is necessary. (I’ve worked all my life with no formal ties to it.)

Valis and information—and the generation of information—can’t be separated. The Empire and the suppression of information can’t be separated. So the dialectic is information versus non- or anti-information, out of which Valis, the Cosmic Christ, step by step comes into being, generated by the antitheses. The Cosmic Christ exists now but is incomplete. The Empire, which by suppressing information is therefore in a sense the anti-Christ, is put to work as half of the dialectic; Christ uses everything (as was revealed to me): in its very act of suppressing information, the Empire aids in the building of the soma of the Cosmic Christ (which the Empire does not realize). Since the basis of reality is a sacred narrative—information—the generation of new information is an act in the Ground of Being, in the ontology of the sacred itself.

Reality is based on information, on a sacred narrative; and Valis generates information. Valis is ipso facto the generator of reality, as are the genuine Christians, those who generate new information, for whatever reason. The sacred narrative on which reality is based (“Acts”) can be seen as latent in new information generated by selfunaware Christians; the sacred narrative “Acts” being the Ground of Being replicates itself in the microforms of newly generated information. This is what William Burroughs discovered (but interprets differently).

To locate the spontaneous generation of the sacred narrative—“Acts”—in newly-generated information is to stumble on the truth of what constitutes the Ground of Being . . . and to plunge into the Christian illo tempore, where Christ is real.

[83:150] Premise: Valis is a meta-system that at our level does not exist at all because at our level only its plural constituents exist as such. Valis is an organization, a structuring, of these constituents, in which they are unified into one entity. Meanwhile the plural constituents at our level behave—or seem to behave—as if unrelated to one another. An entirely new and higher way of organizing the ontological categories by which perception is structured must be reached by the observer. Thus in a sense Valis does not exist, but is brought into existence parallel with the percipient’s awareness of it, this having to do with the participant-observer of quantum mechanics. The percipient must participate in being Valis to be aware of Valis. However, Valis is real and is subsuming progressively more and more of its environment. Its internal complexity continually grows. Its metabolism seems to be information and the processing of information. Its plural constituents are arranged in such a way as to constitute a language or information or messages; if you cannot see the arrangement you cannot read the message. And you cannot perceive Valis.

So in a sense perceiving Valis is reading the message that Valis has ar ranged constituents into. Not necessarily understanding the message but recognizing it as a message.

Valis is both there and not there. When it is not perceived it is not there (as opposed to: when it is not there it is not perceived). It is a way of perceiving reality—which demands a percipient—but when perceived it has definite and intricate characteristics; it is not vague. It consists of structure but a percipient is necessary for that structure to come into being. But the structure is not in the percipient’s mind imposed or projected onto reality. Valis did not exist until it was perceived; therefore to experience it is to effect a repair in the Ground of Being (Valis being considered as the Ground of Being). One highly important element about Valis is that it is eternal, although it changes; it can be added to, become more complex, arborizing and reticulated, but once a constituent is incorporated into it that constituent can never cease to be. Thus Valis lies outside the flux of the world we see. However, Valis’ world is this world differently perceived, not another world; but it is a quantum leap upward in hierarchy, in which plural constituents become a unity by reason of integrating structure. That structure is added—supplied—by the percipient.^➊

Valis and the perception of Valis occur simultaneously, and neither can be separated from the other, ever, at any time.

Valis is everywhere—that is, it can be perceived everywhere. It is not in a meta-reality but is a meta-system made entirely from this reality.

➊ By perceiving Valis he participates in the sudden total transformation from plural unrelated constituents to a unitary structure. It is as if Valis feeds off the percipient’s perception of structure using perception of structure as structure. But this is an acausal relationship, a kind of parallelism; it is ex nihilo. Valis came out of nothing. Reality did not evolve into Valis. It became Valis when perceived as Valis. There are no antithetical forces in Valis; the dialectic does not exist when Valis does. But when Valis ceases to exist, there again is the dialectic. Valis uses the dialectic to come into greater being, to grow, assimilate its environment, incorporate new pieces, make itself more inclusive and complex: more Valisish. Valis could be compared to the point at which a liquid becomes saturated or when water freezes, except that perception of this is necessary for it to occur. What if I were to say, ice is water seen a certain way? There you have an analogy.

Even more strange, Valis induces a potential percipient to perceive it and thus cause it (Valis) to occur . . . thus it can be said that during its nonexistence Valis is able to cause its own existence. At the time that it laid down steps to bring itself into existence it did not yet exist. Thus it treats time differently than we do; it is not passive in relation to time. When it thus brings itself into existence it is already an extensive system. Hence one can say, Valis comes and goes but is always in a sense present. The percipient sees Valis because Valis causes the percipient to see it, but Valis did not come into existence until the percipient saw it. Thus the effects of Valis are felt before Valis exists, and these effects are to be regarded as acausal; they have no cause because their cause does not yet exist. It will exist later; then, retroactively, these effects will have had a cause. What is represented here is total homeostasis: an entity that is entirely self-generating, on which nothing acts but its own internal volition. Therefore in a sense it can be said that Valis is (or becomes) anything that acts to cause it to come into existence, which is to say, by perceiving it. This involves laws of physics about which we know nothing, I would think. What certainly is involved, indubitably, is not a more complex entity than we normally know of or have ever heard of, but an entity operating under laws different from the laws we are aware of, including ontological categories of perception organized in ways we have never heard of. Greater complexity is not the key to Valis; utilizing of more complex physics is the key to Valis. In a certain real sense Valis is very simple; it is a unit. You could think of it as a protozoon, a single cell at a higher level of reality, where the laws of space, time and causation are different; and it makes use of that difference. We humans are very complex forms that matter takes at this ontological level of reality, or, if you will, at this level of physics; Valis is a very simple organization at the next level up. The billions of constituents of our level form a single cell at its level; these constituents are subsumed and yet at the same time at this level of reality they go about their business as usual. So in a sense Valis has no effect on this world. But in another sense it has complete control of this world. Both statements are equally true, depending on whether you can see Valis or not.

This especially applies to the patterns that Valis is or creates in our world in which broad sequences of events add up to a coherency. It can be said: There is coherence; there is not coherence. Coherence and Valis are the same. Since Valis in a very literal way is our world, its internal structure is a latent (concealed) coherence of our world. (All the constituents of Valis are elements of our world; it—Valis—has nothing else to draw on and it needs nothing else to draw on.) Thus it is possible when viewing Valis to view Valis as our world and our world as Valis.

One can say of Valis, then, that Valis is a way our world can be seen to be. Its structure is the structure of our world. Developments in Valis are developments in our world. Volition in Valis is volition in and of our world. There is no difference between Valis and our world except that Valis is a certain way of seeing our world in terms of it being a kind of single unit all parts of which are interconnected purposefully and everything is coherent. (In other words it is precisely what Pythagoras called kosmos: the orderly fitting-together of the beautiful.) Viewed this way it operates from internal necessity without the need of any sort of adventitious deity. It is not world to God—creation to Creator—but having its own logic and making its own choices. It chooses continually after examining all the possible choices arranged as information into a sort of narrative made out of language. Nothing created it; it brought itself into being ex nihilo by willing the perception of it—of necessity from within itself, which is a self-awareness. Thus the percipient of Valis and Valis are part of one field.

The flux world is real because the dialectic is real, and it is the mechanism by which Valis advances up the ladder of its own evolution—Valis, then, is not static. It is permanent but this is a dynamic permanence. Equilibrium must always exist in Valis; the antithetical forces of the dialectic are in a secret partnership in and as Valis. This is why Valis’ main device in dealing with the flux world—in order to use it to generate new bits for Valis—is enantiodromia, the conversion or backward turning of something when it reaches an extreme into its opposite. It is by this and this mainly if not alone that Valis evolves.

Possibly we would see Valis as a flicker of on-off, on-off, on-off, a flip-flop back and forth in its ceaseless dialectic that is in it but beneath it or rather enclosed within the palintropos harmonie of Valis; Valis as our world is this flip-flop; Valis as a coherence is palintropos harmonie. All this is very much what Heraclitus taught and he would probably have called Valis Logos.

[83:157] Well, frankly it would seem that I had a somewhat Platonized version of Taoist ecstatic experience with the Absolute. I had some experience with the Christian Absolute (the Godhead), some with the Platonist and Neoplatonist (the One), with Brahman . . . but my inquiry has certainly just now—surprisingly—led me toward Taoism, my old, old stomping-ground. In Taoism we have the flux; we have the constants in the flux; we have the dialectic—and between two sides very similar if not identical to Yang and Yin, or to Parmenides’ Forms I and II—and most of all, there is Valis which I see fits the description of the Chiang Tao:

An unchanging unity (the permanent Tao) was seen as underlying the kaleidoscopic plurality . . . ineffable reality, experienced in ec stasy, that lies at the origin of the universe and behind or within appearances.⁷⁰

[ . . . ]

What is really pointed to is: the Absolute is non-sectarian; it is Christian and Brahmanist and Platonist and Taoist all at once. If it really is the Absolute, this should be expected.

Folder 1^*

[1:1]

[1:2] Or is it possible that 2-74 consisted of a quantum leap in abstracting from accident to essence on my part, a perception/awareness of einai underlying accidents as follows:

“Superimposition” of the 2 continua, a scanning by me of two spatiotemporal templates and a perception/awareness of essence identity. [ . . . ] I grasped (the category of) essence and it is real; more, this is how reality is in fact arranged. I could grasp the category of essence and see that A and B were on the essence level one-and-the-same, but I could not then extrapolate to the essence (form) realm in general, i.e., the next implication was lost to me; I failed to draw the next conclusion. [ . . . ] However, having made this quantum leap in mentation/perception-of-reality, I could not halt the involuntary chain of mental hypotheses triggered off in my brain, which (i.e., my brain) had discovered that an ultra way of world-perception/experience/Dasein was possible—and more accurate—and so neural circuits fired and I proceeded to progressively further and further abstract—think/see in categories of less spatiotemporality and more and more conceptual arrangement—the Christian element was only a trigger/clue; this did not have to do with Christianity per se but with the abstracting of essentials at the expense of accidents hence of spatiotemporal arrangement; as a result I ascended through the realms of Neoplatonism—which makes Valis Plotinus’s One.^*

[1:9]

[1:17] “If you press world hard enough it yields up God”—paraphrase of [>]. “I define God as world under the threat of death . . . God forced into the open, and put to work in the service of evading death.”

[1:19] No time has passed, and, moreover, all change since “Acts” has to do only with accidents not substance. Reticulation and arborizing in a memory system; the real world, having been destroyed, exists only in God’s memory, and this world remembered is “Acts,” and all changes since have been mere reticulating and arborizing as elaborations of a freeze frame.^† Hence time is not real and space is not real. The real world is morphologically arranged, and that world is “Acts” as dynamic, but in essence changeless—exploded through the simulated space and time we experience.

[1:23] The secret is to view something “from the other side” and not as it is—overtly. Heraclitus’ “latent form”—crypte morphosis where the concealed truth and hence the kingdom lies—Zen realizes this. Paradox.

[1:24] Premise: things are inside out (but will at the “Apocalypse” assume their real shape). Therefore the right place to look for the Almighty is, e.g., in the trash in the alley. And for Satan: in vast cathedrals, etc. Through enantiodromia they will “on that day” assume their rightful shapes—the great reversal. The Jester in the tarot deck is the real King; the King card is the deranged one, the witless one. Ubik in its commercials and final theophany shows this reversal process. USA 1974 is really Rome c. 45 C.E. Christ is really here; so is the kingdom. I found my way into it once. The long path is the short path—ponderous books of philosophy won’t help me; Burroughs’ Junky will. That “thieves and murderers” 17th century poem of Herbert’s will. Stone rejected by the builder; the edifice is discarded; the true edifice is invisible—disguised as rubble (plural constituents). That fly grooming himself—they (the divine powers) have to reveal the kingdom to you; you can never on your own pin it down. So to search at all is to miss the point. Tricks, paradox, illusion, magic, enantiodromia. The apparently harmless Xerox missive was my death warrant. The AI voice says the secret stolen has been successfully smuggled to me; I have it. But what is it? My worst book, Deus Irae, is my best. God talked to me through a Beatles tune (“Strawberry Fields”). (“Nothing is real. Going through life with eyes closed.”) A random assortment of trash blown by the wind, and there is God. Bits and pieces swept together to form a unity.

[1:25] “God does not work through the is.” God works through what Lao Tzu calls the weak, the empty; this is the same God.

[1:29] Christianity is like a given drama on TV; what I’ve been trying to figure out for 6½ years is not what this one drama of many is about, but how the TV set works that brings this drama and all the others (there are many, as Eliade makes clear). So: Christianity, when you think about it, could not be the answer. It is a content within the system, not the system.

[1:46] October 19, 1980

You look at one spatiotemporal continuum and another spatiotemporal continuum and you see that they are one. They do not merely resemble each other nor are they just tangent. They are the same thing in terms of some underlying essence. The quantum leap in brain-function is when you go from thinking, “These two spatiotemporal continua resemble each other” to “They are one and the same, expressed at two places and two times.” And you can only do this if you have experienced anamnesis, because if you have not recollected (recovered) you can go no further than seeing that the two continua resemble each other; you cannot make the leap—which is up out of the spatiotemporal universe. Because within our spatiotemporal universe it is impossible that USA 1974 and Rome A.D. 45 could be one and the same . . . how could they be? They are at two times and two places. The only way they could be one and the same would be if time and space were somehow not real; or, put another way, if something about the two continua themselves were not real. That is, if Rome was not Rome; USA was not USA; but both were a third thing, the same thing.

This is why I call it a meta-abstraction. USA 1974 and Rome A.D. 45 are two ways of looking at the same thing: two aspects of the same thing. And the only way you are ever going to realize this is if you literally actually see the two of them superimposed, comingled; and this will only happen if you experience anamnesis; and you will only experience this anamnesis if something stimulates—releases, actually—your blocked memory. [ . . . ]

I am saying, “One plus one equals two,” to people who are saying, “One apple plus one apple equals two apples. One table plus one table equals two tables.” It’s not their fault. I’m sorry but the difference between my meta-abstraction as a brain function and their abstracting, their brain function is that great. I’m lucky. Because of the sodium pentothal and the Christian fish sign my blocked memory of my prenatal life was disinhibited. After making the initial leap in meta-abstracting my brain drew conclusion after conclusion, day after day; and I saw world more and more in terms of conceptual or morphological arrangement and less and less in terms of the spatiotemporal; I continued to abstract reality more and more, based on the hierarchy of realms (each higher one possessing more unity and ontology than the lower) that Plotinus describes.

In a way I feel really bitter: because I can’t tell anyone or convince anyone of what I saw. I’m afraid Valis won’t convince anyone. I feel like joining them and saying, “When I played my recording of the Mahler eighth last night the performance was a lot better than when I played that recording last week.” They’d think I was a lunatic. That’s how I feel about them, in a way.

[1:49] October 20, 1980

I finally see the source of my confusion, which I will herewith straighten out and then (God willing) let it rest. The structure or mechanism of 2-3-74 was Platonist Neoplatonist anamnesis, precisely as Plato describes it (see earlier notes); it has to do with prenatal memories recovered and a Form realm that is not spatiotemporal but is morphologically arranged. However, the content of the anamnesis is, contrarily, Christian; more, the Form (eidos) involved is a Christian one: the secret revolutionary early Christians against Rome . . . and, because this is the nature of the Platonic archetype, recurring again and again throughout linear time and space. So in a sense two mutually contradictory religious systems seem to be proved by 2-3-74: Christianity and Neoplatonism. My identity in terms of the Form world is Christian; my knowledge of that identity comes to me via the structure of the Neoplatonism world-order. This is what has caused all the confusion. For example, the reincarnation involved is Neoplatonist and can only be understood in terms of myself as a Form with each incarnation as an instance of that Form in the spatiotemporal flux world; it is me against the Black Iron Prison again and again, wherein I am a secret Christian and the Black Iron Prison is, so to speak, Rome, at different times and different places.

There is no room in Christianity for reincarnation and no hierarchy of realms such as Plotinus describes and no anamnesis and meta-abstracting such as Plato describes. However, there is no mention or indication in Platonism, Neoplatonism or Pythagoras of a secret revolutionary Christian movement pitted against the Empire. As long as I pursued the Christian element I got nowhere in figuring out what happened in 2-3-74 and how it happened. I had been swamped by apostolic Christian material in terms of my identity, role and knowledge, but none of this explained what happened and how, unless I was willing to settle for “a miracle performed by the grace of God, by divine providence,” which I was not willing to settle for. So if I am interested in reconstructing apostolic—i.e., genuine—Christianity and my identity in its struggle against Rome, then I should go toward that; but much more: I want to know what happened and how, and I now know that. Interestingly, the system that is proved to be correct is Platonism and Neoplatonism (e.g., reincarnation, the Form world); whereas Christianity is shown only to be my identity-role, my commitment.

Therefore I must affirm Christianity—the authentic apostolic form—as my orientation, in fact my historic role, but it remains a matter of faith and personal identity; whether it is veridical I can’t say. Philosophically and metaphysically, Platonism and Neoplatonism in its basic elements is verified; were it not true my experience of 2-3-74 could not have occurred. I might have discovered other Forms than the Black Iron Prison: what I call “other narratives.” However, this is the one which defines me: opposition against the central tyranny, expressed over and over again.

[ . . . ]

This goes a long way toward explaining the strange basic schism in me (which finds expression, for example, in Scanner, its basic plot). It explains my twin parallel opposing views of Christianity; on the one hand I feel myself to be a Christian and on the other I view Christians and Christianity with abhorrence and contempt. It would seem that half of me is devoted to the wisdom religions of classic Greece, which is why I enjoy the pre-Socratics so much; and yet another part of me is led back again and again to the NT. “Zwei Selle wohnen ach! in meiner Brust.”⁷¹ . . . I really am two people, one of them Christian, the other pagan. As a result I am forced to function while holding two mutually exclusive views which, as F. Scott Fitzgerald says, is the mark of the true artist. [ . . . ]

I must go on being a Christian, acting out the role of genuine revolutionary apostolic Christian, as a strategy: in order to overthrow the Black Iron Prison which I detest. But that is what Christianity is for me: a strategy. I know—all the time that I am a secret, authentic, revolutionary Christian—that it is Platonism and Neoplatonism that’s objectively true. But the Platonist and Neoplatonist has no revolutionary drive; he will not change society, the world, to bring on the Kingdom; therefore I must live as if (als ob) Christianity—genuine Christianity—were true. Strange.

[1:61] October 21, 1980

The strangest most eerie thought just struck me. If USA 1974 and Rome A.D. 45 are two spatiotemporal aspects of a common essence they as aspects if superimposed would clash, not blend—this despite the common essence; I don’t know why I know this but I do. But if it’s really Rome A.D. 45 then they would blend, because the percipient would see that USA 1974 is Rome A.D. 45. What I have been calling a superimposition is more like a metamorphosis. A certain building is a building in Syria in the first century A.D. Reality is seen under the aspect of Rome A.D. 45, the Holy Land. As if reverting. I noticed palm trees and sand, the warm wind, the relaxing people . . . like a scene in ancient Syria.

[1:69]

I think that just now by linking Plato’s anamnesis and Form world with Dionysus and the greater mysteries, and the Christian Eucharist to Dionysus and the greater mysteries—which links Christian Eucharist to Plato’s anamnesis and Form world—which renders the spatiotemporal world irreal, thus abolishing the power of “astral determinism” over you, which is the basic task of religion because then the splintered soul implodes and again is divine and immortal and knows it—

I succeeded!

[1:72] October 22, 1980

As of late last night my emotions (affective self) moved into synch with my intellect (as engaged in this exegesis), and the result was that I surveyed a world-picture of such bleakness that it was for a time beyond my capacity to bear. I saw and understood suffering, not just intellectually, not just emotionally, but fully, with complete comprehension. Today I have thought about it, and the only attitude that can or should be brought to bear is a stoic one, in fact a heroic one, a facing of this bleakness unflinchingly, with no attempt to flee from it as a vision or existentially, as a way of being in the world. It is a view of the weary wheel of Buddhism; it is the Buddha’s view of absolute suffering and the need not to be reborn, to get off the wheel. [ . . . ]

Each creature is born, suffers, dies, is again born, forever and ever, because the world soul—there is just one soul, and it has fragmented into billions of bits—made the primordial and primary mistake of taking the spatiotemporal realm as real, thus plunging itself into enslavement and multiplicity. For a few there is a way out: discovery that the spatiotemporal world is not real, an ascent back up into unity and freedom, but only for a few bits (sparks) is this possible; the enormous mass of fragments will remain caught forever, unless some final great savior comes here and frees us en masse. I hope this will happen but I doubt it. Every fly with a missing leg, every cat beleaguered by fleas, every human fearing economic want—the endless wheel turns for all of us and it turns forever, in this irreal time we have fallen victim to.

“The saying that is uttered in secret rites, to the effect that we men are in a sort of prison, and that one ought not to loose himself from it nor yet to run away, seems to me something great and not easy to see through; but this at least I think is well said, that it is the gods who care for us, and we men are one of the possessions of the gods.”⁷² So says Plato referring to the Pythagoreans. Everything is contained here: the vision and the stance, and, finally, what may be the only solace that can be held out, that the gods care for us because we are their possessions. This paragraph will have to do if I am to be saved from the vision I have seen, and it is meant to save; it is Plato’s great mind coming to bear on the situation, with full knowledge of the reality of the situation, the Greek equipoise that Apollo exemplified; that Attic calm to which I must return, or I am destroyed.

Premise: the primordial Fall was caused by our—by us, not our ancestors—making the error of taking the spatiotemporal realm to be real.

(1)In 2-74 I saw that the spatiotemporal realm was not real.

(2)Therefore I reversed the original Fall—which is doing much more than remembering—by anamnesis—the reality of the Form world, the universals. What I realized last night is that I as a soul splintered up in fragments through space and time, literally exploded through space and time, in incarnation after incarnation, my unity shattered. This is the “weary wheel” of the Orphics. This realization is terrible. Because even though I reversed the effects of the Fall for myself, I can see the dreadful condition of the others of us, born again and again (but this is temporal talk; it is irreal. Splintered is the correct term). [ . . . ]

Now the results of not recognizing Tat tvam asi seem actually sinister, since you literally are other life forms, other humans and other creatures; you as primordial soul are splintered, exploded, over thousands of years and thousands of miles. Tat tvam asi is not a luxury for the languid philosopher or the special mystic; it is essential in the reversal of a primordial fall (our taking the spatiotemporal realm as real).

[ . . . ]

Recollection as re-collection: calling one’s splintered, scattered parts in, to a center. The primordial explosion reversed as a calling back together, a sort of teleological implosion, as if time were running backward.

[1:83] Rats. I’m rediscovering things that I already knew; that are, in fact, the basis of my system. I am too tired; I must quit for a time and rest.

[1:84] Probably the wisest view is to say: the truth—like the Self—is splintered up over thousands of miles and years; bits are found here and there, then and now, and must be re-collected; bits appear in the Greek naturalists, in Pythagoras, Plato, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, Taoism, Mani, orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Orphism, the other mystery religions. Each religion or philosophy or philosopher contains one or more bits, but the total system interweaves it into falsity, so each as a total system must be rejected, and none is to be accepted at the expense of all the others (e.g., “I am a Christian” or “I follow Mani”). This alone, in itself, is a fascinating thought: here in our spatiotemporal world we have the truth but it is splintered—exploded like the eide—over thousands of years and thousands of miles and (as I say) must be recollected, as the Self or Soul or eidos must be. This is my task.

In that case, each given system is in itself part of the enslaving snare of delusion; in other words, as soon as I avow one philosopher or system (e.g., Spinoza or Schopenhauer or Kant or Anaxagoras or Parmenides or Gnosticism) I have become again or more ensnared, as I am by this spatiotemporal world itself; it is as if the eidos of Truth is exploded and splintered like all the eide. And all the Selves and Souls. But what else could you expect here in realm #4? Since everything real is here only in discrete bits. Of course this means that I can never come up with the whole, true, complete explanation/answer. I can re-collect and re-collect, do better and better, but never completely make unified the eidos of Truth. Yet, in 3-74 when I meta-abstracted, a great deal of the eidos of Truth was revealed to me; however, alas, I did not understand it then and do not yet.

Look; I may be on to something here, that in realm #4 it is impossible to re-collect any given eidos including that of a true verbal (informational) picture (analog) of reality; that in fact the true informational analog will be exploded over thousands of miles and thousands of years like all other eide. Such is the situation here in the spatiotemporal realm; this is one of its drawbacks (among many). Fascinating. In that case, no wonder I haven’t been able to match my 2-3-74 experience to any religion or any philosopher, yet many seem in part to apply. The truth is splintered!^* This would explain, too, why the sacerdotal power is found in bits in, say, the alley; for the same reason: it is exploded ubiquitously. (In addition to the places I listed above where I’ve found bits of the truth I should add: the Hermetics and the Kabbala and quantum mechanics.)

Could it be said that every now and then an additional bit is reticulated? So-to-speak revealed? So 2-3-74 could contain one or more elements of the truth that are new?

In one area the Evangelical Christians are correct: in regard to Bible prophecy. The Bible does contain archetypes that print out over and over again, and are—some of them—applicable to present-day times. (I need only recall “Acts” and the dream material in Tears, the latter specifically being either from Daniel or Revelation.)

So one great realization is: the map is exploded; the map is splintered. (And, perhaps, the map is not complete; see Hussey on the map paradox, the vicious regression.⁷³)

[1:86] October 24, 1980

If the eide are exploded through the spatiotemporal realm, so must be Noös: disintegrated here in realm #4; but if the percipient ascends from realm #4 he may see Noös re-collected, reintegrated and hence unitary, as it actually is. What I am saying is that the eide are not actually exploded; they are exploded in terms of the spatiotemporal realm, if my meaning is clear; since realm #4 is illusory, the explosion, the splintering, is illusory. And if this is true of the eide, the Forms, this also is true of Noös: our false categories of ordering, of arranging time and space, explode and splinter the eide; and they explode and splinter Noös; but this is not really the case. This is why it is correct to say that our realm #4 and its spatiotemporal ordering are irreal. If they were real, then the eide and Noös would in actuality be exploded and splintered; but they are not. To see Noös integrated is not for Noös to reintegrate, but to be seen as it is and always is.

This was what I saw that I called Valis: Noös reintegrated in terms of my perception of it: re-collected.

Noös exploded (here in realm #4) is Noös banalized, as in the chapter headings in Ubik: Noös re-collected is as Ubik appears in the heading of the final chapter, no longer banalized, trivialized, debased into rubbish. This banalization is a measure of the Fall of this realm; and again it illustrates what I have remarked on: that things do not appear in this realm #4 as what they really are, that finally Christ will bring about what I call “the great reversal,” whereupon we will no longer see Noös (God) banalized and exploded, but, as if reversed, sacred and a unity: as it really is. Meanwhile, here, with things appearing in reverse to what their essence is, Noös is obscured; veiled.

October 25, 1980

But whereas a given eidos is finite in realm #4—it only enters at certain places and certain times, i.e., is printed out at one place and time but not another—Noös is ubiquitous. Therefore if it chooses to so-to-speak drop its mask and reverse appearances in realm #4 (enantiodromia) it is in everything at every time; it is infinite (cf. Xenophanes). Or, put another way, it can be anything or any constellation of things and their processes at any place and any time.

[1:88] October 25, 1980

If a gun were put to my head and I had to give one short answer as to what Valis was, I would say, “The Tao, as the Absolute.” And as to what happened in 3-74: the regulation of the Yin and the Yang, i.e., the dialectic, by the Tao; the Tao asserting itself as master of the dialectic that makes up our world-order of flux and strife. (“The Tao is what lets him first the light, then the dark”—this has always stuck in my mind as the basic definition of the Tao.) And this has to do with advanced physics; so Warrick is right about Valis and 3-74. Sentient physics.

But also: Valis was my splintered self “imploding” back together, the pieces that had exploded over space and time reversing their direction in enantiodromia and re-collecting to form their original unity. Of this I am absolutely certain; but look: this, too, could be an example of an event of higher physics! (This is why time seemed to flow backward; and forward-moving time had exploded my self over thousands of years and miles.)

This is why I had the distinct and indubitable impression that my own earlier thought-contents were coming back to me in the form of world—e.g., Ubik and “Faith of . . . ,” etc. World was familiar to me as my own earlier mind. I never could explain this until now. It was (I see now) the re-collecting of my own splintered self as if time were running backward, turning an explosion into an implosion. So beyond doubt enantiodromia and other higher laws of physics perceived by the Taoist and Greek naturalists (pre-Socratics) were involved! I see! The normal process of self splintering was reversed. [ . . . ]

The first space-time thing that returned to me was my most recent book, Tears, and the world (“Acts”) in it where a main part of myself had been exploded to. Then later came Ubik.

The above paragraph is the most important realization of my six and a half years of exegesis.

[1:93] October 26, 1980

Therefore my experience in 2-3-74 now that it has been followed by a successful exegesis—and only in the last two weeks has it become successful—pays off in the way that I perceive ordinary daily reality. I cannot bring back the absolute vision of the morphologically arranged realm that I had in 2-74, the anamnesis; but I now can apprehend this realm from the standpoint of the realm #3 reality; I can see in the epiphenomenal realm the constants shining through . . . and this is the triumph in practice of Platonist metaphysics, its whole point: that you learn to see in the flux realm the constants, literally see them with the educated eye, educated by Plato’s metaphysics of the forms. [ . . . ]

But the real success of the exegesis is that as I become old, now, and wear out, I feel myself wearing out only as an instance of an eternal soul or form; that nothing is lost, nothing is destroyed; and although I don’t crave immortality I do crave vigor and joy and the running that I associate with my eidos. And I know, too, that all that I have lost in my life is epiphenomenal, people and cats and things, that in reality nothing is lost. So I can face my own aging and mortality with calm and even pleasure, since I am grounded in both a mystical vision of super reality and an intellectual exegesis based on that vision, the totality of which provides me with a philosophy and with an experience with world that is harmonious and wonderful and intellectually satisfying: it is a vision of intactness, of my own self and world. Of everything as a negentropic whole. As regards my writing: it will permanently affect the macrometasomakosmos in the form of reticulation and arborizing—and hence will survive in reality forever, in the underlying structure of the world order.

[1:94] November 1, 1980

This is the surd I am left with after completing the metaphysical system of my exegesis: a surd. There is what the AI voice called “a perturbation in the reality field.” This is Valis; this is the most important part. Originally I spoke of it as a valence away from plumb. Now I think of it as a tugging, like the moon’s effect on Earth’s oceans creating, by tugging, the tides.

I say, the reality field is not real but the tug is. But what the tug points to—that is, what is doing the tugging—I have no idea. I know of it only by its effects on reality, in setting up an irregularity in reality, in the field, the way reality, the field, behaves. It is being affected from outside—outside reality.

This surd (something irrational that can’t be explained after everything that is rational has been) may stick with me. So I may wind up with something like quantum mechanics facts. In fact it may be an event in quantum mechanics, like something related to the Tao. I don’t know.

And this is what I wanted the most to explain. And this tug is right here and now, in the very trash stratum of reality. I have set out in pursuit of ontology, rising from level to level, only to go full circle and come back where I started: pop tunes on the radio, weeds in the alley . . . and the faint flurry of a kind of breath, as if some invisible spirit, perhaps the ruah, is breathing creation into existence ex nihilo. Yes, I am on the rim of reality; level after level each one more ontologically real than the previous, and then—nothingness. The void. Only a faint wind stirring reality, tugging at it. And maybe a glint of color, briefly. And a word or two as set to ground. 6½ years of work: a glint, a rustle in the weeds of the alley; I am confronted by unfathomable mystery, as if I saw cosmogenesis reversed: cosmic resorption, until at last creation ceased to be, and only the spirit moved across the face of the void. And, equally real and equally enigmatic, a small murmuring voice speaking in the night, as if from immeasurable distances away.

I have found the ultimate source: a rustle of wind in the weeds and faint, distant words by a lovely voice that is neither male nor female. Both bordering on the rim of not being there but being, I am convinced, the truly real; in contrast to the great substantial world order, the galaxies and nebulae, suns and planets, civilizations and deeds.

I cannot say that I have found moksa, enlightenment. I do not understand what I saw and what happened in 2-3-74. Something helped me. Who? Oddly, although I don’t know who I do know why (since the AI voice told me that). I chased after reality, and how far did I actually get? “Ti to on?” the pre-Socratics asked. Perhaps it is the wrong question.

An odd thought came to me. I end my exegesis with something—what I call a surd because that is what it is—that can’t be fitted into an otherwise satisfactory system. This one thing is simple. No elaboration of it seems possible, no implications extracted and elaborated. It makes me think of Dante’s semplice lume. And my exploded morphological structure reminds me of Dante’s description of God as the book of the universe whose pages are scattered throughout the universe.

I beheld leaves within the unfathomed blaze into one volume bound by love, the same

that the universe holds scattered through its maze.

Substance and accidents and their modes became

as if together fused, all in such wise

that what I speak of is one simple flame.

November 2, 1980

About all I can see clearly is that 3-74 was a heroic act that consisted of the overcoming of fate. “We can be heroes for just one day,” to quote Bowie. It all has to do with waking up long enough to perform one action, to make one change, before you sink back down into sleep, before you again forget. [ . . . ]

What strikes me about this is that it is cosmogenesis in miniature, in the microcosm, because something has come into being ex nihilo. What the person did—the heroic act—he could not do given who he is, given his history, his karma. It is an impossibility. Thus in a real and literal sense a new self has been born in him, since this fact, this deed, could not issue out of field self, the self is splintered throughout time and space. This is as much a miracle as the original cosmogenesis; in a sense it is the original cosmogenesis, and perhaps the ruah is present at it as it was in the beginning.

So I felt as if another self had taken me over; my actions were “disassociated,” without ideation; and then Thomas came into being in me. Maybe he was new, not a lost part rejoining me but new ex nihilo, the permanent offspring of the heroic deed that broke the power of the world rule existentially. What world lost, self acquired. There is a quantum transfer of essence from world itself, so that the balance between the two shifts critically. Self is acting on world, rather than world on self; it is as if up until then the self was only a product of world, its thing; it was a thing among things, controlled and directed and shaped, as a potter shapes a clay vessel. And all its deeds and all its thoughts have only been world acting and speaking through it, within a closed system of which that self was only a component.

For one thing, if you view it in science fiction terms, in terms of ideas, S-F has developed vis-à-vis time travel and changing the past: has not this one new deed changed the entire future, the entire future history of the universe? Because the universe is one great field, and to introduce a truly new thing or event into it is to alter it in its entirety. Permanently.

Since world is now no longer a closed system it is no longer in effect a prison.

[1:121] Is the secret connected with time and the reversal of time? Cosmic resorption? I am right in my writing: reality is a series of Chinese boxes, a box within a box within a box, etc.: but a final point comes when you have Valis, but what or who Valis is I have no idea. The Tao, YHWH, cosmic Christ, Brahman, Shiva, Krishna, or a quantum mechanics phenomenon. Or ruah, the spirit of God breathing creation into existence out of nothing—ex nihilo—you finally wind up with: non-being—that is, not-is-real, and the “is” is only seeming, is not real. You open box after box and ascend the levels of being (esse, substantia, einai) and then you open the last one and it contains—nothing! And yet you’re faced with the mystery or paradox that Ho On (for want of a better term) is actually right here and now, in the very trash at hand, not far away at all—the ultimate paradox in terms of your long search through level after level of being—he is at the initial least real (sic) level. You wind up back where you started, paradoxically. But now you know that this utterly worthless trash level—mere appearance—is somehow also Ho On, whom you seek. “The Buddha is a piece of toilet paper.”⁷⁴ “The Savior is a crushed beer can in the alley.” Could this be the final great enantiodromia?

So if you push essence far enough in terms of ascending levels, you find you have gone a full circle, and you wind up encountering ultimate deity cooking and writing pop tunes on the radio and popular novels, and a breath of wind in the weeds in the alley.

It’s as if the ultimate mystery is that there is no mystery—it’s like what Robert Anton Wilson says in the Cosmic Trigger about being outside the Castle when you think you’re in, and inside when you think you’re out.

And in a way what is most paradoxical is that I said it all in Ubik years ago! So in a way my exegesis of 2-3-74 says only, “Ubik is true.” All I know today that I didn’t know when I wrote Ubik is that Ubik isn’t fiction. In all of history no system of thought applies as well to 2-3-74 as Ubik, my own earlier novel. When all the metaphysical and theological systems have come and gone there remains this inexplicable surd: a flurry of breath in the weeds in the back alley—a hint of motion and of color. Nameless, defying analysis or systemizing: it is here and now, lowly, at the rim of perception and of being. Who is it? What is it? I don’t know.

I ask for 30 years, what is real? And in 2-3-74 I got my answer as if the universe—well, as if my question traveled across the whole universe and came back to me in the form of experienced answers . . . and what I wind up with after 6½ years of studying those experienced answers is: a surd. A perturbation in the reality field—an irregularity, a departure from the normal—a tugging or pulling or bending. And that is all. Not even the thing, the perturbing body itself; only its effects on “the reality field.” Something out of the ordinary—like I say, a surd.

So what, then, do I know about the nature of reality? That an irregularity can show up in it that points to—something else. Only a sign.

Q: “Ti to on?”

A: Heidegger says, “Why is there something instead of nothing?” To which I ask, “Why does Heidegger think there is something instead of nothing?”

The tug is real and the “reality field” tugged on isn’t. So that which is genuinely real is pointed to by its effect on the “reality field” (which isn’t real) but what it is that is doing the tugging I have no idea.

[1:127] The perturbation in the reality field was not by me but by the Tao. Nonetheless I broke my own programming by a heroic act of will. Yes; our spatiotemporal aspects (what we take to be reality) are indeed our own prior thought formations coming back to us. Yes; anamnesis is recognizing them as such: which permits you to break their hold (programming) over you by (on your part) an act of (your) will. Doing something new—introducing one single new change—destroys their ossified nature and starts up real time, it causes a time perturbation, as if time were running backward; this may be due to one forcing the prior thought formations back into the past where they properly belong; it would seem to you, then, as if the future had broken in, moving retrograde in time. This “future breaking in” is: real time! Due to the destroying of the supremacy of the past (prior thought-formations as world). Once these prior thought-formations’ power over you. [ . . . ] You can see (?) (experience) the Tao: true reality as it is without the prior thought formations. You can see the tug by the Tao (matrix containing the eide) on reality-as-a-field.

[1:137]

[1:138] 4:30 A.M.: I was lying here thinking how Christ would show up in the alley and the weeds because that is where he is and things of daily life and world, and I asked myself, “Would he be additional substantial/material trace bits?” And I realized, “No, as a tug, a perturbation—the iron filings and magnetic field perturbation”—the eide are not material, not physical; so the only way they (he) would show up would be as a tug; and this would render the plural objects and processes as a field perturbed as a unitary whole—I visualized it so clearly. Since he is not real in the spatiotemporal sense, and yet he is here not there, in this world, immediately at hand; I understood it for a moment so clearly—and it was exactly what I saw in 3-74 that I called Valis. It is the only evidence we would have. [ . . . ] So I arrive at the conclusion to this exegesis and it is where I started: Valis is the cosmic Christ; but to understand this I had to reject all other possibilities one by one over a 6½ year period; and, most important of all, I had to study Plato’s metaphysics thoroughly and rejoin it to its other half: Christianity, the anamnesis of the Eucharist, arising out of Orphism, from which Plato’s metaphysics came.

[1:170] But most of all: breath. The pattern in the iron filings: that it is breath to weeds: field to iron filings. It is the stirring in the weeds, the pattern (structure) as with Pythagoras. Field. Arrangement. It is not substantial; it is nothing (but a field). And the AI voice—very faintly, arranging my thoughts!

Absolutely it is a field, as in quantum mechanics. Not the iron filings, but the pattern.

I can visualize it very clearly—visualize Valis. Set-ground reversal. The not-is is Valis. The is is not.

It is normally a weak field, too weak to be detected. Only under exceptional circumstances does it intensify to cause a perceptible perturbation (3-74). Paradoxically, though it is weak it is irresistible. Why, this is the Tao! This is how the Tao works! (vide the Tao Te Ching). Weak and—everywhere (Ubik!).

[ . . . ]

It is weak and yet it cannot be resisted. This is the Tao. It works through what is small. I am small. It worked through (on) me. To affect modern history! Wu wei.⁷⁵

[ . . . ]

If all reality (universe) is a (one) field, it (Tao) need set up a tiny perturbation at one space time, and ultimately the whole field will be affected, by inducing an enantiodromia of the whole field! Through a chain of mounting flip-flops! I was one such, in 3-74.

[ . . . ]

I finally understand. This is what is meant by “a perturbation in the reality field.” One tiny tug sets a sequence of mounting, growing changes in motion, ending in massive (total?) enantiodromia: victory. Over world. Since all reality is one field the effects of the initial perturbation end only when the final enantiodromia occurs, and all the “counters” flip over to their opposites.

This is what TMITHC is about, and deliberately so. But: the real secret is:

Something new (although tiny, bordering on ex nihilo, on nothing, yet something) is introduced into an otherwise closed system. My example? My act vis-à-vis the Xerox missive. As a result the entire closed system is affected throughout.

[1:175] The fact that I wound up with Valis as a surd when I finished my first “complete” or “successful” overview shows how scrupulous I was. It would have to be left over. Deity can’t be fitted into a theoretical system; it is irreducible and stands alone. But at least that way I could focus on it as isolated—which paved the way for my total overview in which this surd was included but only as “the absolute,” leading finally to my ferociously close scrutiny of it in total isolation (from my own mind and from the reality field as well).

I realized that it came into existence literally out of nothing, was pure arrangement and not the things arranged (acted upon). I visualized (conceived of) it as a breath on the weeds of the alley—then connected it to the “heroic act that causes genuine newness” to enter the world; then, realizing that it is weak but irresistible, I saw it as the Tao and hence saw its relationship to the dialectic and mounting chains of events culminating in macroenantiodromia: the purpose of it “breathing” on the “weeds in the alley.” Which shows total wisdom on its part!

[1:185] Well, my perception of 3-74 is that I encountered something outside of me; and my recent theory is that it came into existence out of nothing—at least in terms of our reality field.

[1:208] Yes, something can be irreal and yet powerful; the lie is powerful; it thrusts itself at us like a reality, but I saw in 2-74 that it isn’t real. [ . . . ]

Irreality, then, is the basic defect of the entropic old flux/cosmos. There are valuable bits in it (e.g., Mozart symphonies; we’ll use that as an example) but they are not real in that they pass away; they never are. But the meta-soma assimilates them into itself like permanent memories stored in a mind.

[1:248] I would even be willing to argue that an experience such as mine (2-3-74) justifies the Fall in the sense of making it worth it due to the absolute joy generated by the re-collection and return. I know it was for me—all the tearful years were not only nullified; they were overbalanced by the bliss experienced in restoration. Whether my feelings in history could rightly be projected onto the deity I don’t know; but if my system is right in all respects, 2-3-74 was the deity recovering its memory and identity, and so is representative—a sort of microcosm of the total deity’s own travels, its journey. (I envision deity in dynamic process undergoing unfolding stages of self-knowledge.) Perhaps this is the ultimate price of the game: self-awareness, acquired through “external” plural standpoints, of which I am one. Then I would say, it is worth it, this journey. That’s my subjective opinion. So the Fall is a vast adventure, culminating in a joy that outweighs the arduousness and sorrow of the trip itself. And out of this adventure the deity knows itself more clearly, and, since (as I say) intellegere is its essence, this matter outweighs all else.

[1:257] November 16, 1980

Have I had it backward? I’ve always said: I saw His Body camouflaged as the world. Maybe it’s the other way. I saw how the pieces of the world fitted together to form his body—this was what I saw that I called Valis, externally. This is the same thing as I understood inwardly when I saw that the wise horn of the dialectic selected pieces of the antecedent universe, as a stockpile, and fitted the pieces together to form the macrometasomakosmos which was its own self, its own metasoma. Here seen both ways (externally as Valis and internally as an inner consciousness): world evolved into the Body of Christ; world as pieces that seen acting and operating together became—were now—Christ as cosmic body. So it is world first; or rather they, as plural pieces, are world. Then they come together so that the they becomes an it, one body made up of all the many objects and processes that were—that had formerly been—the world. The lower plural evolve into the higher unitary. This was one process seen two ways, seen inwardly and outwardly. Yet you could still say, “His body was camouflaged as world. World was transubstantiated into Christ’s Body.” But it isn’t Christ’s Body posing as world; it is world becoming—joining together to form—Christ’s body. Again: it is a cosmic evolution. Not the higher invading the lower but the lower evolving into the higher, with pieces of world added element by element to complete and perfect this titanic body, a body so vast that I could only comprehend dimly enormous—infinite—volumes of space, space such as I had never conceived or apprehended before. Larger than the universe, which in comparison is merely finite. Limited. And all of it was alive and all of it thought. And the pieces didn’t just happen to fit together; they didn’t just haphazardly come together; Christ himself searched for the pieces, took the pieces, placed each piece of the world in place correctly, integrated, beautiful, a kosmos, a macrokosmos that was good, beautiful, pleasing and harmonious, where all the many parts that had been world interacted as one unity.^* And yet absolutely in no way was this vast body anthropomorphic; it was not a human body. It was a permanent body that continually became more reticulated and arborized and complex and perfect, that had once been world. So my inner vision of the macrometasomakosmos formed out of the antecedent universe, and my external perception of Valis “camouflaged” are one and the same. And it is right here. Evolution, not reversion. Gestalting on my part; form-perception.

And this was accomplished by him defeating world over and over again in dialectical combat with it, where he subdued it, disassembled it and assimilated it in the form of useful and appropriate pieces into his own vast body. Every new part incorporated—self-incorporated—came as a result of defeating and subduing world, but not defeating and subduing it by force, but rather by wisdom; by his being wiser than it, although not as powerful; it was his wisdom victorious over its power, and as it lost each time it lost another piece of itself. So the vast body grows, and with each defeat world becomes less and he becomes more: more completed, more perfected, more internally intricate and organized; and everything valuable in world is preserved eternally in his body as the right part fitted into the right place.

And he systematically deprived world of its blind, inexorable causality, and substituted his volition in simulation of that mechanical causality, so that to the unaided eye causality still remained . . . just as to the unaided eye the plural constituents of world remained plural and unalive. And unable to think. And not integrated into a whole, a whole that was evolving internally, just as world passed over—which is to say evolved—into it. So in a sense there were two evolutions: world evolving into his body, not the pieces sort of swimming together but selected and arranged by him and an evolution internal to his body: the reticulation and arborizing, based on events in the world fed into his body, continual accretions passing from world—where they were transitory—into his body—where they were forever preserved and remembered, like within a memory system in a mind or brain. And all the internal arrangement was morphological, not in terms of space and time, but in terms of information, as if arranged by meaning, like a kind of language. Like neural conduits in a brain. There was an endless processing of things as information, as if every combination was tried out, a perpetual rapid activity, like an internal metabolism, an information metabolism. It was using objects—combinations and recombinations—of objects to think with. And every given thing was limited (telos) by every other thing, in comparison to which the antecedent universe was chaotic (atelos). It was alive; it thought; and it initiated its own movement. Nothing acted on it; all its movements were self-initiated. And nothing outside it acted to construct it; it constructed itself.

And if you were outside it in the chaotic antecedent universe you were in a prison; but if you were inside it you were in a park or garden. And it constantly attacked the prison to dismantle it as a source of parts. And this had been going on for two thousand years, a really very bitter but somehow also joyful war.

Finally, when an object was incorporated into this structure it became real for the first time, as if up until then in a certain way it had been illusory: coming into being and passing away without ever having truly existed. But now it was safe from decay and harm.

And perishing. Forever. As if the body had a map of its own internal structure, the only structure ever to have been self-mapping, hence totally internally self-aware. Yet when you looked at this great system it was only ordinary objects such as you see every day. The basic things of the world, but interrelated and arranged without having moved in time and space. The internal arrangement was its own awareness of itself. Itself as map.

As incredible as it may seem, I actually didn’t realize (until last night) that when I saw what I called Valis I saw what I call macrometasomakosmos. Apparently this is the case; the case that (1) I didn’t recognize their identity and (2) they are identical. That means that my vision as to how the macrometasomakosmos is constructed (out of pieces of the antecedent universe by means of the dialectic) applies to Valis. I literally saw the macrometasomakosmos into which the flux world feeds. So Valis didn’t invade our world in a disguised or camouflaged form, as I have always supposed; it is constructed right here, but invisible to us. It grows; it becomes more complex and perfected; and it constructs itself. Absolutely it is the Cosmic Christ; either that or it is one fuck of a meta life form.⁷⁶ It just ruthlessly plunders the flux world, treating it as a chaotic stockpile that it uses for parts. And it is selective as to what it assimilates and where it places it in its own soma. Did I realize this? I don’t think so; I didn’t realize that I saw it and that it is Valis. It’s as if two thought clusters in my mind finally collided and formed one thought-complex. I had two separate categories: one involving invading; one involving construction, by its own self. [ . . . ] Suddenly years of speculation are rendered void, by this realization. Valis experienced three ways. Valis is—indeed must be—the Cosmic Christ assembling itself out of the antecedent universe which it uses as a stockpile, which it (the Cosmic Christ) defeats perpetually in a dialectical combat.

(1) Its mind was in direct touch with mine and it explained how it comes into existence and out of what. The macrometasomakosmos.

(2) I saw it externally as Valis.

(3) I was inside it, and saw its inner information-metabolism, what I call “the second signal.”

Because the essence of its identity—its einai—is its structure, we can’t see it; all its constituents are ordinary objects. Also its einai is noein; they are one.

Supra (3) confirms that (1) and (2) are identical.

The fact that the macrometasomakosmos is right here, made up of ordinary objects structured into a cohesive unity, changes my conception of it; I must now reappraise everything I’ve thought during the past six and a half years. I’ve missed the point all this time; I knew Valis was here, but I could not figure out where the macrometasomakosmos was—since I didn’t realize that they—and what I call the “second signal”—are the same. It is a floating mind that turns objects into information within a brain, a brain that processes objects and their causal connections as information; it is especially active in our own communications media utilizing a set-ground system. I must admit that I don’t really understand this; why can’t we pick up, say, its meta-morphemes? Well, because we can’t perform feature-extraction with it. It blends perfectly. Am I to assume that I’m the only human aware of it? Hardly. Where I differ is that (I’d guess) I’ve struggled so hard to explicate what happened to me . . . no, that isn’t it. Could it be here just recently? No; that isn’t it either. It’s not in time and space; it’s exploded morphologically . . . or it utilizes a retrograde time axis, what I call negentropic time. I don’t know. It’s impossible that no one else has seen it, but you can’t see it unless it incorporates you. Maybe I’m the only one stupid enough to talk about it.

[1:262]^* November 17, 1980

God manifested himself to me as the infinite void; but it was not the abyss; it was the vault of heaven, with blue sky and wisps of white clouds. He was not some foreign God but the God of my fathers. He was loving and kind and he had personality. He said, “You suffer a little now in life; it is little compared with the great joys, the bliss that awaits you. Do you think I in my theodicy would allow you to suffer greatly in proportion to your reward?” He made me aware, then, of the bliss that would come; it was infinite and sweet. He said, “I am the infinite. I will show you. Where I am, infinity is; where infinity is, there I am. Construct lines of reasoning by which to understand your experience in 1974. I will enter the field against their shifting nature. You think they are logical but they are not; they are infinitely creative.”

I thought a thought and then an infinite regression of theses and countertheses came into being. God said, “Here I am; here is infinity.” I thought another explanation; again an infinite series of thoughts split off in dialectical antithetical interaction. God said, “Here is infinity; here I am.” I thought, then, an infinite number of explanations, in succession, that explained 2-3-74; each single one of them yielded up an infinite progression of flip-flops, of thesis and antithesis, forever. Each time, God said, “Here is infinity. Here, then, I am.” I tried for an infinite number of times; each time an infinite regress was set off and each time God said, “Infinity. Hence I am here.” Then he said, “Every thought leads to infinity, does it not? Find one that doesn’t.” I tried forever. All led to an infinitude of regress, of the dialectic, of thesis, antithesis and new synthesis. Each time, God said, “Here is infinity; here am I. Try again.” I tried forever. Always it ended with God saying, “Infinity and myself; I am here.” I saw, then, a Hebrew letter with many shafts, and all the shafts led to a common outlet; that outlet or conclusion was infinity. God said, “That is myself. I am infinity. Where infinity is, there am I; where I am, there is infinity. All roads—all explanations for 2-3-74—lead to an infinity of Yes-No, This or That, On-Off, OneZero, Yin-Yang, the dialectic, infinity upon infinity; an infinity of infinities. I am everywhere and all roads lead to me; omniae viae ad Deum ducent. Try again. Think of another possible explanation for 2-3-74.” I did; it led to an infinity of regress, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis. “This is not logic,” God said. “Do not think in terms of absolute theories; think instead in terms of probabilities. Watch where the piles heap up, of the same theory essentially repeating itself. Count the number of punch cards in each pile. Which pile is highest? You can never know for sure what 2-3-74 was. What, then, is statistically most probable? Which is to say, which pile is highest? Here is your clue: every theory leads to an infinity (of regression, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis). What, then, is the probability that I am the cause of 2-3-74, since, where infinity is, there I am? You doubt; you are the doubt as in:

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly I am the wings.

I am the doubter and the doubt.

“You are not the doubter; you are the doubt itself. So do not try to know; you cannot know. Guess on the basis of the highest pile of computer punch cards. There is an infinite stack in the heap marked INFINITY, and I have equated infinity with me. What, then, is the chance that it is me? You cannot be positive; you will doubt. But what is your guess?”

I said, “Probably it is you, since there is an infinity of infinities forming before me.”

“There is the answer, the only one you will ever have,” God said.

“You could be pretending to be God,” I said, “and actually be Satan.” Another infinitude of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis, the infinite regress, was set off.

God said, “Infinity.”

I said, “You could be testing out a logic system in a giant computer and I am—” Again an infinite regress.

“Infinity,” God said.

“Will it always be infinite?” I said. “An infinity?”

“Try further,” God said.

“I doubt if you exist,” I said. And the infinite regress instantly flew into motion once more. “Infinity,” God said. The pile of computer punch cards grew; it was by far the largest pile; it was infinite.

“I will play this game forever,” God said, “or until you become tired.”

I said, “I will find a thought, an explanation, a theory, that does not set off an infinite regress.” And, as soon as I said that, an infinite regress was set off. God said, “Over a period of six and a half years you have developed theory after theory to explain 2-3-74. Each night when you go to bed you think, ‘At last I found it. I tried out theory after theory until now, finally, I have the right one.’ And then the next morning you wake up and say, ‘There is one fact not explained by that theory. I will have to think up another theory.’ And so you do. By now it is evident to you that you are going to think up an infinite number of theories, limited only by your lifespan, not limited by your creative imagination. Each theory gives rise to a subsequent theory, inevitably. Let me ask you; I revealed myself to you and you saw that I am the infinite void. I am not in the world, as you thought; I am transcendent, the deity of the Jews and Christians. What you see of me in world that you took to ratify pantheism—that is my being filtered through, broken up, fragmented and vitiated by the multiplicity of the flux world; it is my essence, yes, but only a bit of it: fragments here and there, a glint, a riffle of wind . . . now you have seen me transcendent, separate and other from world, and I am more; I am the infinitude of the void, and you know me as I am. Do you believe what you saw? Do you accept that where the infinite is, I am; and where I am, there is the infinite?”

I said, “Yes.”

God said, “And your theories are infinite, so I am there. Without realizing it, the very infinitude of your theories pointed to the solution; they pointed to me and none but me. Are you satisfied, now? You saw me revealed in theophany; I speak to you now; you have, while alive, experienced the bliss that is to come; few humans have experienced that bliss. Let me ask you, was it a finite bliss or an infinite bliss?”

I said, “Infinite.”

“So no earthly circumstance, situation, entity or thing could give rise to it.”

“No, Lord,” I said.

“Then it is I,” God said. “Are you satisfied?”

“Let me try one other theory,” I said. “What happened in 2-3-74 was that—” And an infinite regress was set off, instantly.

“Infinity,” God said. “Try again. I will play forever, for infinity.”

“Here’s a new theory,” I said. “I ask myself, ‘What God likes playing games? Krishna. You are Krishna.’ ” And then the thought came to me instantly, “But there is a god who mimics other gods; that god is Dionysus. This may not be Krishna at all; it may be Dionysus pretending to be Krishna.” And an infinite regress was set off.

“Infinity,” God said.

“You cannot be YHWH who You say You are,” I said. “Because YHWH says, ‘I am that which I am,’ or, ‘I shall be that which I shall be.’ And you—”

“Do I change?” God said. “Or do your theories change?”

“You do not change,” I said. “My theories change. You, and 2-3-74, remain constant.”

“Then you are Krishna playing with me,” God said.

“Or I could be Dionysus,” I said, “pretending to be Krishna. And I wouldn’t know it; part of the game is that I, myself, do not know. So I am God, without realizing it. There’s a new theory!” And at once an infinite regress was set off; perhaps I was God, and the “God” who spoke to me was not.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again. Another move.”

“We are both Gods,” I said, and another infinite regress was set off. “Infinity,” God said. “I am you and you are you,” I said. “You have divided yourself in two to play against yourself. I, who am one half, I do not remember, but you do. As it says in the Gita, as Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘We have both lived many lives, Arjuna; I remember them but you do not.’ And an infinite regress was set off; I could well be Krishna’s charioteer, his friend Arjuna, who does not remember his past lives.”

“Infinity,” God said. I was silent. “Play again,” God said.

“I cannot play to infinity,” I said. “I will die before that point comes.”

“Then you are not God,” God said. “But I can play throughout infinity; I am God. Play.”

“Perhaps I will be reincarnated,” I said. “Perhaps we have done this before, in another life.” And an infinite regress was set off.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again.”

“I am too tired,” I said.

“Then the game is over.”

“After I have rested—”

“You rest?” God said. “George Herbert wrote of me:

Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessnesse.

Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,

If goodness leade him not, yet wearinesse

May tosse him to my breast.

“Herbert wrote that in 1633,” God said. “Rest and the game ends.”

“I will play on,” I said, “after I rest. I will play until finally I die of it.”

“And then you will come to me,” God said. “Play.”

“This is my punishment,” I said, “that I play, that I try to discern if it was you in March of 1974.” And the thought came instantly, my punishment or my reward; which? And an infinite series of thesis and antithesis was set off.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again.”

“What was my crime?” I said, “that I am compelled to do this?”

“Or your deed of merit,” God said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

God said, “Because you are not God.”

“But you know,” I said. “Or maybe you don’t know and you’re trying to find out.” And an infinite regress was set off.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again. I am waiting.”

[1:282] So Satan served me up a sophisticated world in accord with my epistemological expectations (as expressed in my 10 volume meta-novel), and I took this to be God and worshipped it, which is not only delusion—although a subtle delusion—but blasphemy; but in doing this

(1) Satan revealed to me a great deal about world (although he led me to believe it was God, not world); and

(2) Because of the infinitude of my theorizing I reached God anyhow—and this is an example of the triumph of God the wise horn of the dialectic; so:

(3)The dialectic revealed to me is the entropic world-process; but also:

(4)The dialectic is God in combat with Satan and God always wins; winning me (as expressed in 11-17-80) is an example: Satan’s delusions led me to God in the end (through the “infinity” route; viz: as God said, “Where there is infinity, there is God; where there is God, there is infinity”).

Thus my exegesis has been futile, has been delusion, and: has been a hell-chore, as I was beginning to realize, but God delivered me from it, from my own exegesis; and he pointed out the one truth in it: the infinity expressed in it was—but this was overlooked by Satan who does not possess absolute knowledge—a road to God, and did lead there; but only when I recognized the exegesis as futile and a hell-chore and delusion. Hence God permitted this deluding by Satan, knowing when it would end. So I wind up knowing a lot more about world—world as we will later experience it, the world-experience of the future; and I no longer suppose that I was discerning God, and realize that I was discerning world instead; and I was at last led to God. But not by my intellect, not by Gnosis, not by myself at all; it was due to God’s initiative due to his loving-kindness; and what was proved was (once again) that all roads/ways/routes if pushed far enough lead to God. Hence (as I say) here is an example of how God the wise horn of the dialectic defeats its stupider foe inevitably in the end—this was an enantiodromia. It occurred when I realized that all that I had seen of God in 2-3-74 was a glint of color and a ripple of wind in the weeds of the alley, acting on reality; that Valis was not God but rather world (“the reality field”) perturbed (from beyond creation) by God; but this did not yield knowledge of God direct, but only by inference; and that in fact 2-3-74 was not a theophany, but was a more sophisticated experience of world: creation pulled through infinity by reaching the end of (exhausting) its creative/entropic “splitting” (disintegrating; differentiating) dialectic process: entropic time converted into negentropic time. But this was still world, and Satan caused me to worship it . . . to fall victim to it, ensnared by it; taking it to be God; until I found that I had pushed my exegesis to infinity without result! And then I focused on the very infinitude of my theories and saw (recognized) this as an instance of cosmogenic entropy; and, at last exhausted, prayed for release; and God did appear to me in theophany and took the field and blocked each and all theories, and ended my exegesis, not in defeat but in logical discovery of Him (which Satan had not foreseen). Thus intellect and knowledge on my part led to exhaustion and to destruction of that intellect and a recognition of the futility of what I was doing; I knew I knew nothing; and then God took the field and made his move that resulted in the enantiodromia that led me to him anyhow, as if I had wandered that way by chance; but it was by his plan all along. And this was an instance of the dialectic that I had seen. Finally I wind up with Y = Ȳ viz: Both these 2 following statements are true:

(1) The intellect will not lead you to God.

(2) The intellect will lead you to God.^*

I am left with this paradox, which Satan did not foresee; he saw only statement (1) and did not see how God could convert it into its mirror op posite through enantiodromia. Thus God works and wins within the fallen entropic creation of the disintegrating “splitting” dialectic to win us one and all in the end, by different routes. Thus the cosmic game between God and his adversary continues on; here was another victory by God; and in the end God will convert the dialectic itself into its opposite (through enantiodromia) and the game will end in God’s victory and Satan’s defeat, which God’s victory vis-à-vis me echoes in microform. In a certain sense it can be said that God’s victory consists in turning Satan’s false creation—i.e., Satan’s lies and delusion—into the real, which is exactly what I saw Valis doing: transmuting reality by transubstantiation into the real. Here is the secret and perpetual and ever-growing victory by God over his adversary as he (God) defeats him (Satan) again and again in the game they play—the cosmic dialectic that I saw. This is enantiodromia at its ultimate: the conversion of the irreal to the real. In my case it was the conversion of “the human intellect will not lead to God but will lead only deeper and deeper into delusion” into its mirror opposite: “The human intellect, when it has pushed to infinity, will at last, through ever deepening delusion, find God.” Thus I am saved: and know that I did not start out seeing God (2-3-74) (which led to this 6½ year exegesis): but, instead, wound up finding God (11-17-80)—an irony that Satan did not foresee. And thus the wise mind (God) wins once again, and the game continues. But someday it will end.

END.

[1:286] Footnote.

My flight expressed by the phosphene graphics was a movement faster and faster through cosmogenic-entropic time, ending in exhaustion and then the enantiodromia of entropic time—which had reached infinite velocity and infinite fragmentation (“splitting”)—which is to say the dialectic into negentropic time or synthesis, reintegration: hence I saw Valis, the universe pulled through infinity, inside out, to freeze; this was 3-74.

My exegesis was entropic-cosmogenic time resuming, speeding up faster and faster, “splitting” (fragmenting) farther and farther. Finally, it, too, ended in infinite velocity and infinite fragmentation (creativity, expressed as ever newer and quicker theories); it ended in exhaustion and then the enantiodromia of entropic time—the dialectic of my thoughts—into negentropic time and another reintegration (this was 11-17-80). Only this time I did not see Valis, world, not God as I supposed. There was a theophany, and I was in the presence of God and God’s loving-kindness; whereupon He explained everything to me. So events leading up to 3-74 and my experience with Valis had a parallel in the dialectic of my exegesis leading to 11-17-80 and the theophany of the Christian God of Love. The common ingredients of the two flights were: the cosmogenic-entropy “splitting” dialectic flight itself, until infinite velocity (time) and fragmentation (space) were reached, then exhaustion, then enantiodromia into negentropic time and “freeze” (reintegrational) of, so-to-speak, “Prajapati,”⁷⁷ but then comes a totally different outcome.

(1) 3-74. Valis which is world properly seen (morphological arrangement, growth and perfection and self completion in negentropic time, the entropic-flux-universe pulled through infinity—i.e., inside out). Compared to:

(2) 11-17-80. The Christian God in theophany, who is other than world, who is transcendent. What I thought I had seen in 3-74.

The summation (combining) of the two is (1) an acute knowledge of world based on 3-74 and the exegesis arising out of that experience. (2) Direct knowledge of God and God’s nature based on the above elements; so that 3-74 led to the exegesis, which although it was a loss of negentropic, integrative time and a resumption of cosmogenic-entropic time, did lead (due to the infinite speeding up of time and the infinite breaking down of space until exhaustion set in) to the theophany I had supposed I had already had.

Now it is possible to see how the Mary Jane fitted in; it added the final push to the dialectic in me, my exegesis (in other words, as preceded 3-74, my thinking) so that it reached infinite speed and infinite space, exhausted itself; and again, as before, enantiodromia set in.^* This enantiodromia did not have to do with world, however, but had to do with the human intellect striving to find God—futilely. (Futilely until the last great enantiodromia occurred and God took the field to block the dialectic of my thinking himself, and thus revealed himself.) So there is a striking parallel—a logical, structural parallel—between 3-74 and 11-17-80, but in another, more profound respect the two are mirror opposites since the first is a vision of world (which I thought was God, yet it was not, and so it yielded no knowledge directly about God, but only inferential knowledge that he existed and that he had saved me—in pronoia) and the second is a genuine theophany. When one realizes that world and God are wholly other to each other (Satan rules world) then this mirror opposite situation can be appreciated. Let me add, too, that total revelation about world does not yield knowledge of God. God entered when I became aware that my theorizing was carrying me into an infinite regress, which is to say, when I became exhausted—at which point enantiodromia occurred; intellect had proven futile and yet, paradoxically, it had led to God—but due to God’s volitional initiative. His (as I call it) taking the field, which is an inbreaking by the divine.

The circumstances under which the theophany occurred (I gave up on the exegesis and kicked back and massively turned on) are not capricious causes but follow the logic of the dialectic along several axes. This shows the hauntingly eerie paradoxical (almost seemingly whimsical or playful) nature of enlightenment: it comes to you only when you cease to pursue it. When you totally and finally give up. Another way of putting this is to say that the answer lies in the least likely place, where you are least likely to look. This is what gave rise to Zen. Yet, emerging from this maze of paradox and mirror opposites, of seeming, of infinite change, here, finally, is the answer I sought, the goal I sought. And it is where I started from back in high school in my physics final when I prayed to God, the Christian God—who was always there, leading me to him.

My guess in VR—that it was YHWH—was correct. But it wasn’t a guess; it was what the AI voice told me. Always, faintly and distantly but clearly, the AI voice pointed the way to the truth. It knew the answer from the beginning, and spoke in the spirit of God (Ruah). Through it I figured out that Valis was not God but reality perturbed by God. I knew, then, that I had not found God after all. My great discovery, then, was not in knowing what I had found, but facing the fact of what I had not found—the very thing I was searching for.

Ironies abound. But the playfulness ended in infinity, exhaustion and the great reversal. The God was reached, and the journey did not begin in 1974. It began in high school during that physics test when I first heard the AI voice. 35 years!

[1:279] In 3-74 when I saw the second signal and Valis I saw world from a highly advanced standpoint, but it was still world. Yesterday I, on the other hand, knew God, and he was wholly other than world and transcendent and not complex and not material and not in process. There is no dialectic in him; that has to do with time, flux, change, growth, perfection, completion; something like an organism. He is not seen by the eyes in world or as world. The Jews and Christians are correct. And he has personality, which Valis lacked; Valis was machinelike, computerlike, an evolving mechanism, like a clever artifact. Intricate and growing more intricate. God ist ein lieber vater überm sternenzalt.⁷⁸ I found him to be a person like myself, with personality and love and simplicity. He was not involved in world (pantheism). He manifested himself to reassure me—it is only a little pain that we feel now here in world—nothing compared to the bliss to come. Of which he gave me a little that I might see how it would be. And he was no foreign God but the God of my fathers, our own God. What he wills is. He simply wills it. This is simple; there is no mechanism, no complexity. Valis is the world properly seen, as if from outside from an objective standpoint outside space and time, but still world, with all its history preserved in it and advancing through its growth stages via the dialectic, it (Valis) is, simply, reality. But that is other than God. When I saw the glint of color in the alley and the rippling of the weeds I saw the edge, the end of creation, but not the beginning of God: I saw him not. But there is nothing to see, because he is not physical. All that happens he either wills (ordains) or allows.

I think 3-74 was something I did vis-à-vis world that did not involve God. It involved world and information, but it was physical. I am the doubt; God allows it but it is satanic and rebellious. It is Satan the accuser of God’s handiwork, Satan in me as rebel questioning reality under the guise of epistemological inquiry. It is hubris and intellectual arrogance yet God allowed it. It was—has been—blasphemy. World, which I questioned, came back at me in a subtle form, the subtle serpent, world as Valis which I then took to be real, and so fell even more under its domination than any average Christian is dominated by world; Valis is world as Satan’s kingdom, subtly disguised in such a way as to fulfill my personal, individual preconceptions about God; this is why 3-74 resembled Ubik and Ubik; it was my own preconceptions and theology fed back at me to “ratify” them. This is world’s—Satan’s—victory, this great intellectual subtlety. World as it normally appeared was not complex and illusive enough to satisfy me, so Satan obliged: with world that would satisfy me emotionally and intellectually. (And in doing so, burned me with the hell labor of this exegesis.) [ . . . ] I have sinned in this exegesis; it is one vast edifice of hubris, of Satan in me questioning and accusing.

And I finally began to realize it; I prayed to be delivered from it. 3-74 was some vast enantiodromia in which I pulled reality inside-out, used up and hence froze time, saw the past (“Acts”) and the future (the second sig nal) so it was a great feat. But it was still reality: epistemology and not even metaphysics, and no theology—world rightly seen—but not God.

[1:293] November 24, 1980

The arguments for Valis being the Cosmic Christ are not conclusive but they are compelling. I call my own attention to the typed pages of 11-16-80 which preceded by only a short while the theophany of 11-17-80. They were in fact the last thing I wrote before the theophany.

[1:301] Strange to say, when I look back to 11-17-80 what seems to me now the most proof that it really was God is not so much the bliss but the distinct individual personality (with its intense love); the distinctness, the uniqueness, the individuality of the personality. I could then and still can imagine what he would look like were he physically visible: an old man in a robe, very old, very dignified and wise, but, most of all, loving and kind and gentle (yet firm, very firm)—but not as he is usually pictured, not a patriarch in the usual sense, more, perhaps, like a magician in contrast, though, to (say) Gandolf; much darker: gray and brown and black, in shadow, yes: in shadow, like Michelangelo painted him in his creating Eve, yet not so, but close to it. Not heroic, as Michelangelo painted him, and not Hebrew. More supernatural. Really sort of physical, not “spiritual.” Yes: physical and supernatural, not a king or patriarch, all dark. Like a druid or humanist: learning. Not classical. Like a tree or a scholar.

I know: _like a book._ Hence made of parchment, tree, branches, paper, cloth.

He was not a type, like “the wise old King,” not an archetype, not like a statue; he was an individual, not man but a given specific man (in contrast to sort of Platonic eidos). It was as if the universe had been created by one given specific individual man.

Book. Robe. Tree. Gray. Brown. Dark shades and fabric.

There was nothing generic about him. No so to speak DNA. No latency; all was actualized and distinct. As if you had gone from the physical, material realm of specifics to the Platonic archetypal—and then back to the specific man! Like a complete circle. Strange. He was like all ontogeny!

As if a wise old scholar, a sage, had conjured up creation, not God as we normally think of him, but a scholar of love and tenderness, but of vast learning. Again I see a book.

[1:303] But there were elements about him not found in man or men as I have experienced them: specifically, infinite love (agape). Not agape greater than I have ever known but infinite—and from it stems absolute theodicy and, for us, infinite bliss. (I might also add that infinite kindness was contained in this infinite agape, but—I would think—that is due to the nature of agape; it cannot be separated from it, something I already knew about agape—v. my story notes for the Ballantine collection.⁷⁹) Here I see my earliest—and really inadequate—definition of agape as “worry”; by that I meant and mean concern for that which by definition is not you, that which is independent of you, having its own einai. This is what you cherish due to your agape: the integrity of the einai of the other (creature). You offer it life.^*

[1:309] It is a good thing that earlier in my exegesis I realized that I had a surd left over, because that surd is the God I experienced in 11-17-80; viz: when “perturbed” world was completely analyzed, there was something left over that was not world (the glint and riffle in the weeds of the alley, the glyphs of God).

Folder 87

[87:1] November 30, 1980

I happened to read the EB article on Messianic Movements and am simply in shock. Everything revealed to me vis-à-vis 3-74 and the AI voice—it is Christian covert Messianic movement—it is—look; there is an invisible Christian Messianic movement or group or organization, what I used to call “the secret underground Christians”—my experience in 3-74 (based on 2-74), with seeing Valis and all my dreams and the AI voice (e.g., “The Empire never died”)—anyhow; there are five kingdoms or empires; yes, empires. Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and the next—the fifth—will be Christ’s. This is chiliastic, millennialist thinking, as opposed to Augustine; it has to do with movements breaking out later on, starting with (yes, you guessed it) Joachim del Fiore.

This is incredible. I am in shock. The entire edifice of secret Messianic movements was supernaturally disclosed to me, or else by fantastic technology, and it’s all in VALIS. And (get this!) the EB article on Messianic Movements talks about it being connected with the Enlightenment!

The “second signal”—cryptic information, the two-word cypher in Tears, and the “Acts” material and the (oh God!) the dream material in Tears—Messianic chiliasm.

There is a secret organization fighting the BIP.

More. The Kingdom is here, secretly; I saw it. And Valis is Christ or God.

I am pitted against all establishment Christianity, which takes its cue from Augustine, that the present order will endure. The EB:

The granting of toleration to Christianity by the Roman emperor Constantine . . . and its becoming the religion of the Roman Empire heralded a development in which the church became the ally of the present order rather than the harbinger of its passing away.

There you have it. “As far as the struggle with evil in this world is concerned, Augustine surrendered and abandoned the field. No imminent supernatural intervention in history was expected. Augustine taught what has been referred to as ‘realized’ eschatology. For him the battle has already been fought on the spiritual ground that really mattered . . . he rejected as carnal any expectations of a renewed and purified world that the believers could expect to enjoy.” “Augustine’s allegorical millennialism be came the official doctrine of the church, and apocalypticism went underground.”

And I have it all there in VALIS!!!!!

[ . . . ]

I have it; why VR deals with Judaism.

Emphasis on the expected Second Coming introduced an element of messianic unrest in addition to questioning the validity of the present order; it was soon repudiated by the church as “unspiritual,” since it envisaged a messianic kingdom upon earth—rather in the manner of the Jews—instead of a heavenly Kingdom.

Note: “Rather in the manner of the Jews.” Hence VR, based on what the AI voice said, spoke of “He has been transplanted and is alive” as YHWH, not Christ.

The heretical element, though not inherent in millenarianism as such, resided in the tendency of radical religious or social criticism to use chiliast-messianic terminology when such criticism propagated the notion that the present rulers—and even the very forms—of church and state would be superseded by a perfect order.

This is just incredible. Because 2-3-74 constitutes proof that some secret underground chiliastic Messianic movement exists, and Christ or YHWH is the head of it; therefore it possesses either supernatural powers or advanced technology; I don’t know which.

This first shows up in Tears.

It has to do with the future, so it may indeed be technology.

It’s all there in VALIS. It first showed up in Tears.

So I’m not just a Christian; I’m a revolutionary chiliastic Messianic millennialist, part of a secret underground group led by either the Cosmic Christ or God and possessing either supernatural or advanced technological means.

We are pitted against the entire world-order, both church and state (vide VR!!). And it is on the Jewish model, although Christian.

I had better burn my exegesis.

Because this has to do with revolution, radical social reform; it has some kind of relationship to Marxism, to socialism, to the overthrow of governments and the establishing of a new world order. Again let me think back to Nixon and his downfall. Oh dear. This secret group with its technology (?) acted in 1974. It’s all true.

[87:17] Today I’ve tried to work on my exegesis—as I’ve been doing for 6½ years. I can’t do it. Why not? Because the love and personality that God showed me on 11-17-80 make any intellectual understanding seem unimportant—pale and weak and dry and faded. Never have I known anything like that love; and the personality—it was as distinct as any human personality. And this does not even consider the infinite bliss I felt. He answered all my questions anyhow; I have no more questions. To know God and God’s love, and to understand how our suffering, our life here, will be justified—his gentle reproach: “Would you think I in my theodicy would not make it up to you, make it up so that this suffering here would seem—be—paltry in comparison?” And then he let me experience a little of the bliss to come. So the bliss did 3 things:

It explained why he would let us suffer here. How it would be justified. (This has always been my main theological-philosophical question.)

Because it was infinite bliss it proved he was God (because I see this as proof: only God can provide infinite bliss).

It made me happy intrinsically.

But the love outshone the bliss; perhaps it gave rise to the bliss. I have never known such love.

Human personality is imaged upon his personality (I realize). This is why although it was infinite it was—well—it was like an infinite augmentation of such love as I have in fact known in life—but—it was beauty-in-the-form-of-love. But it was more intimate (as well as more intense). It pulsated like—maybe a light.

And he knew me. And yet still he loved me.

Of one thing there is no doubt: this was the Judeo-Christian view/concept of God. Transcendent. With the life to come—the afterlife—as a reward, and this life here an ordeal, but one justified by the afterlife. And God of love bestowing infinite eternal bliss.^* And God with distinct per sonality—which is not really the same thing as mere consciousness. Pantheism was by what he said ruled out. And he gave me to understand that (much as I had already figured out) I had experienced only traces of him here in this world; he is in his transcendence much more—infinitely more. Although he did not say it, I got the impression that—well, I was going to say, “We are created here,” but I really don’t know. But he did designate our lives here as an ordeal—but a little ordeal, in fact so paltry in comparison to what is to come that all my theorizing about reality is of little significance because this life here is of such little stature in comparison with what is to come; what is epistemology when infinities of infinities lie ahead of us? Even a tiny knowledge about infinity and eternity is more than a lot of knowledge about this finite world . . . a point I have totally missed. All my speculations have been about world, so world has me fast! It has been a trap!

But on the other hand (as I have noted) I was reeling from encountering the raw fact—proof—of God’s existence and effort exerted on world. I was inferring God by the perturbation he caused in world (as the AI voice pointed out). Now I have direct knowledge of God. World no longer now seems to me to be of any importance.

I just realized a common element I had missed that links the theophany of 3-74 to 11-17-80: in both cases my sense of evil, oppression and suffering was undermined drastically by an awareness of divine goodness, love, wisdom and power (cf. my Charles Platt interview: “removed as if by divine fiat”). There is a distinct continuity.

I have it. “Valis” studies reason invading the irrational and arbitrary—this is Valis invading. The rational (reason, logic, justice—i.e., Valis) is higher than the irrational (ananke); this is all a Greek view, Greek and Roman. This is as far as my revelation had reached in 2-3-74: the dialectical combat between the irrational and the rational (ananke and noös, which is how I specifically and correctly express the combat in VALIS). But there is even one higher level, above reason: agapē (which doesn’t show up in VALIS, i.e., in 2-3-74). Reason subdues the irrational: justice (Torah) subdues chaos! Order subdues chaos. But now—as of 11-17-80—I encounter something even higher: Jesus’ God, Abba, whose essence is love “that moves the sun and the other stars”; this—agapē—is the highest, not higher, principle; it is Christian love above Stoic reason. It is bliss, infinity and love, and transcendent; it leaves the world-order, epistemology and metaphysics and philosophy and science behind/below. This is not noös; it is above noös; it is like us (cf. 1 Jn). Greek culture didn’t give rise to this idea (it gave rise to the idea of logos or noös). Hebrew culture didn’t give rise to it (it—Hebrew culture—gave rise to the idea of Torah, the will or law of God, cf. Spinoza). Where did it come from, then, this equating God with agapē (v. Paul’s letters)? Why, it was revealed by Jesus; even Buddhism and Zoroastrianism lack it (note: the wise mind, not the loving Father). I see no precedent for this revelation by Jesus. We even today, 2,000 years later, have little understanding of this total, accepting loving-kindness, because of which God adopts us as his sons and heirs. I do deal with it at the end of Tears—but on 11-17-80 I experienced it. Words can’t describe it, whereas words can describe logic and reason and justice. And I have been adopted.

[87:37] One of my greatest realizations about him in 11-17-80 is that rather than just willing he also allows (in contrast to Spinoza: “His will is law”). Everything that exists he either wills or allows. The magnitude of the freedom expressed by this (“he allows”) was a totally new conceptual experience to me. God’s will was something I understood; in fact I had always viewed everything as due to his will. I had therefore no notion of human free will (in this I saw God and reality as Spinoza did). He allows independent being, which explains, perhaps, evil and disorder and that which is futile and wasteful, perverse and senseless. He shows infinite toleration due to his love and kindness; nonetheless this is not all; he also decrees (this is his will); a tension is created by his will and his permission, the result of which is an unfathomable mystery to a finite creature’s intelligence; but God knows that every creature will within this mysterious bimodular reality—God’s will and God’s permission—find his way voluntarily back to God, however long and “inefficient” the path. This is totally bountiful; the parameters are infinity itself.

[87:73] December 8, 1980

Thus there is absolutely no problem in reconciling 2-3-74 with 11-17-80. The first had to do with world and a “perturbation in the reality field”; the second had to do with a transcendent God who is a loving father, with personality, his essence love, capable of conferring infinite bliss; he is infinite along all axes. This is more than his will. But from a practical standpoint, in terms of world and human history, his will is everything; for instance, it saved my life vis-à-vis the Xerox missive.

Folder 88

[88:10] December 10, 1980

Notes to [>]. I did not start out seeing God—i.e., 2-3-74—and “this theophany led to my 6½ years of exegesis”—futile exegesis of 2-3-74 based on the delusion that I had seen God. What actually happened was that I saw world in a highly superior way, but still world: it had something to do with entropic time and my exhausting entropic time through/in/by the dialectic until a massive enantiodromia occurred; I “pulled world through infinity,” i.e., into negentropic time/morphological arrangement (Plato’s eidē). But I took this ultimate view of reality as a vision of God and so fell into a terrible trap both epistemologically (philosophically, metaphysically) and also theologically (spiritually); for example I supposed a pantheism à la Spinoza.

But my main point (made on [>]), which I intended to be the last page of the exegesis, is: I thought the sequence went:

(1) theophany (2-3-74), followed by:

(2) exegesis of that theophany (3-74 to 11-80)

But in fact this is correct:

(1) exegesis 3-74 to 11-80, followed by:

(2) theophany, 11-17-80(!)

In other words the—this—exegesis came before the theophany. The exegesis finally reached the conclusion that everything I had seen in 2-3-74 had to do with world (“a perturbation in the reality field”) except a glint of color in the weeds, of the alley and a ripple of wind—which was—even this was—not God but just the tracings/glyphs/footprint of God on reality. Thereupon, i.e., as a result of this realization (11-80) I then experienced a true theophany—and I construe what happened this way:

(1) The world is delusional (Maya).

(2) In my 10 volume meta-novel I saw this to be the case, saw world as a mere delusion, and I looked for reality—true reality—behind/beyond it.

(3)Therefore, obligingly, the arch deluder served me up a further delusion (2-3-74) much more complex and sophisticated, based on my own particular preconceptions (anticipations, suppositions) as to what “true reality” would be like if you could see it. This is why 2-3-74 was a playback of my own mind to me (which every now and then I suspected, but I kept thinking, “Well, it only goes to show how astute my intimations were”). 2-3-74 was—enchantment! Yes; it is so. However, this sudden transformation in world in 2-3-74 did show that world as we normally see it is indeed a delusion; it’s just that what replaced normal world was no more real, just more sophisticated and complex, and, to me, not just more convincing but totally convincing! I believed for over 6½ years that I had seen true reality, in contradistinction to the previous Maya; but (as I say) it was just a more cunning Maya. As I say in VALIS, the maze is alive and it changes.

Okay, finally, in the exegesis, I realized that I had seen nothing of what I had in 2-3-74 assumed I had seen, which is to say, God. It was world, and world is by my own definition and analysis irreal and delusive. I was, without knowing it, even more embroiled in world than ever, than the most ordinary average person is! And I construe this as Satan’s wiles, the a posteriori horn of the dialectic; God gave him free reign. Satan could not see where it was leading. But God with his a priori knowledge could. It led me to God in this way: on 11-17-80 God actually manifested himself and presented me with logical arguments and analysis as to how I could know I had this time in truth experienced him. His argument lay in one line: the argument “to infinity.” Would I accept an equation between God and infinity? (We had to agree on a premise, some postulate or other, some definition.) He said, “I can provide you with an infinitude of bliss; not just great bliss but infinite bliss. And this infinite bliss that you (will) feel derives from my personality and essence of loving-kindness (agapē). Will you accept that only God possesses an essence (einai) of agapē that would cause you an infinitude of bliss?” I agreed, and it came to pass; I experienced his personality and essence of agapē. I felt infinite bliss. There were no complexities, no enigmatic epistemological puzzles, no enchantment or magic: only a wise, loving old man, an individual human—except that everything about him extended into infinity along all axes! Wisdom, love, power, personality, intimate gentleness yet firmness, and eternity, unchanged simplicity. He concealed nothing from me, he played no games. He explained the relation between my life in this world and what it would be in the next, in terms of his theodicy (this was another and fundamental absolute: his theodicy). It, he said, is a promise from which we can draw conclusions, rather than starting elsewhere (e.g., in world) and reasoning to it. It is structurally—i.e., logically—related to his nature: agapē (i.e., anything but theodicy, absolute theodicy, would be incommensurate with infinite agapē).

A major point that he made was that I was not employing analytical logic vis-à-vis 2-3-74 but was, instead, engaging in creative speculation—which led to infinite regresses, over and over again. Thus (as I say) he offered as a substitute (1) an agreement on one premise, and then (2) logical deductions from the one agreed-upon premise; he taught me to analyze and not speculate.

And he was (I should remind myself) he who is customarily meant by the term “God,” i.e., the transcendent, loving, wise God of my fathers both (1) wills; and (2) allows—i.e., allows error, i.e., independence to his creatures: free will; and this is logically deducible from his nature (agapē), because he would never infringe on the integrity and autonomy, which is to say the essence, of his creatures; if he only willed and did not allow he would de facto rob them (us) of their (our) einai! So this, too, logically stems from his nature, and my realization of this is not speculation, creative speculation.

My exegesis, then, is both a delusion in which I am trapped and, in addition, a delusion I am creating for others—i.e., in VALIS—but he allows this in order to protect my integrity (einai).^*

Thus (to summarize) delusion—super sophisticated Satanic delusion—(i.e., 2-3-74) led to a futile exegesis, a hell-chore (punishment that he allowed Satan to inflict on me)—but: okay. “A chicken is an egg’s way of producing another egg.” Viz: the primary delusion (enchantment) of 2-3-74 led to the further delusion (second delusion) of the futile exegesis; I was totally trapped in Maya, led there by my own original suspicions—ironically!—that what we see is delusion! But: the second delusion—the exegesis—exhausted itself finally (“glint of color, ripple of weeds, in the alley”), whereupon a true and self-authenticating theophany did then occur—and it bore no resemblance to 2-3-74 whatsoever. Obviously, if the God of 11-17-80 were genuine (and as I say this theophany was self-authenticating based on [1] premise; and [2] logical deductions from the premise) then 2-3-74 was something else. Well, it was enchantment and magic; it was a spell; and enchantment magic and spell do not reveal, but, on the contrary, addle the wits; I was (as I say) fed what (1) I would most likely believe, and (2) wanted to believe—a bad combination that does not lead to the truth—i.e., to God.

However, Satan had to generate a reality I’d accept, to reveal a great deal about reality to me. But he took the risk knowing I would confuse it with God. (Which I did.) Basically what he revealed is that my 10 volume meta-novel and its basic acosmism is correct: what we call “reality” is some kind of projected hologram and not real at all. We can be made to see anything and believe anything. Viz: in 2-3-74 I decomposed—desubstantialized “reality,” which is an epistemological victory, but then I completely believed in what I saw instead! I said, “World, which is irreal, and which I suspected all along is irreal, broke down and conceded that it is irreal; so what I see now instead must be real—but it wasn’t—must be that which I define as real: God.” It was not. It was just a more sophisticated delusion. My years of skepticism turned into naïve credulity. “I saw God!” I said for over 6½ years, but in fact I did not. All I really saw was the projection machine and the projection broke down, whereupon it compensated by devising another and better projection—to which I should have said, “Aha—it tricks me further,” but instead I said, “Aha: now I see what is really there: God, immanent God, probably Brahman.” I was not applying logic, deductive logic (e.g., “If it can project first one reality—USA 1974—and then another—‘Acts’—it can project anything”—that “anything” being Valis).

Epistemologically, what I really know is all negatives: that what we see is not real, and that we cannot by our own efforts outwit the projection machinery. It can serve up one thing after another, ever more cunning and psychomorphic (“I am as you desire me”). VALIS is a hodgepodge of superstition and sensational nonsense—and yet “mixed in with the inferior bulk Sophia has inserted—without Satan knowing it—certain truths.” I.e., “We fell into the maze, and the maze is alive; it changes” (thus rendering null and void all speculation as to the real nature [morphology] of the maze, if you think about it). (And this insertion was added after I was done, due to something Pat Warrick suggested!)

Where I started to wise up vis-à-vis 2-3-74 in terms of my exegesis was when I remembered that in the Bardo Thödol trip your own prior thought-formations come back to you as world—which I wrote about in “Frozen Journey” and that was based on ideas of Lem’s!

And the God who revealed himself to me on 11-17-80 is quite different from my own prior thought-formations; he is the orthodox transcendent Judeo-Christian heavenly Father, loving and wise, who allows free-will; this world is an ordeal. But we (all) go to him in the end: he wins all of us—in the dialectic with Satan—eventually—and he knows this, due to his a priori knowledge.

[88:23] December 15, 1980

Valis: Set-ground. Camouflage. Here in the universe. Macrosoma blended into the universe in countless ways, here and there: a glint here, a word on a page, plural objects and their causal processes a ripple of wind in the weeds in the alley. Valis is not the universe but blended into it, as is Ubik. “I am Atman that dwells in the heart of every mortal. I am Vishnu. I am Shiva. Among words I am the sacred syllable OM. I am Himalaya. I am the holy fig tree. Among horses I am . . . of weapons . . . I am the wind . . . the shark among fish: Ganges among the rivers. I am the beginning, the middle and the end of creation . . . I am the knowledge of things spiritual. I am the logic of those who debate. In the alphabet I am A. Among compounds I am the copulative. I am time without end. I am the sustainer. My face is everywhere. I am death that snatches all. I also am the source of all that shall be born. I am glory, prosperity, beautiful speech, memory, intelligence, steadfastness and forgiveness. I am the dice play of the cunning. I am the strength of the strong. I am triumph and perseverance. I am the purity of the good. I am Krishna. I am the sceptre and the mastery of those who rule, the policy of those who seek to conquer. I am the silence of things secret. I am the knowledge of the knower. I am the divine seed of all that lives. In this world nothing animate or inanimate exists without me.”

[88:24] My problem is too much intellect and too little awe and reverence. What I have to realize is that both 2-3-74 and 11-17-80 are self authenticating.

[88:54] But consider the aspect of the ancient in VALIS. In a sense it is so: in a sense it is an illusion. The template was devised a long time ago but it applies to the now; that is the whole point—(1) it is ancient; and (2) it ap plies to the now—this is both the paradox and the revelation: the secret is here: how the ancient can be the now. If you can understand this, you have the answer.

[88:57] God was aware of me; he ratified my einai by his love; he created it. He caused me to be; that is it: (his) agape “causes to be”; this is how you cause to be: by agape and agape alone. Love is a wish that the other, and not-you, exist; love guarantees the existence of what is not under your will—free of your will; this is true creation. He desires that something other than him exist and be itself. We truly are not him. Agape and creating are one and the same. It is not a desire for union; it is a desire to see something be on its own, its own self; each separate self is a universe! A world! God adores you because he adores beauty. Something that exists on its own is beautiful; this is the ultimate beauty, that it be free. “Where, amid the shadowy green, the little ones of the forest come unseen.”⁸⁰ It is not-God: it [is] not pantheism; the ultimate love: to curtail the ubiquity of the Godhead. Null Ubik is the truth; the solution to the absolute mystery. To not be the universe each reunion is accidental, and a reminder of the source of being: love. Love lets go/forgets. Love curtails itself, withdraws. But if the created separate thing (einai) returns of its own accord—love triumphs over love. Love is love for itself alone, and not for what it can do (create). The prodigal son: if the separate thing desires to return and forfeit its einai, then it must love, too; and the two—God and his creation—are joined; this is absolute bliss, that einai is not enough; the creature longs to return. This is rapture for God, that it wishes this; that, created, it wishes and tries to return, through the maze; it tries so hard. This is his reward. He gave it einai and it voluntarily surrenders einai (Sein!) in favor of nonbeing: i.e., return to its source. It would rather not be that it may be—as well—with him; this causes him to feel absolute bliss. Einai is the most precious gift of all, and it gave it back—to be with him.

[ . . . ]

My sorrow and my pain and my loneliness, paradoxically, increase the net level of agape in the Godhead, because it indicates that I would rather return to him, in preference to being—to possessing einai. Thus, to my surprise, I find that my suffering restores the Godhead and augments it; he knows why I suffer, although I do not. Human sorrow, then, is a source of joy, a means to joy, in which the now sorrowing person will later share. When he returns, as I did in 11-17-80. Sorrow is a means to infinite bliss, its instrument, and we can’t see this until it completes itself. Comes full cycle. To know this is the great secret.

[88:59] I was reading over the pages on love that I wrote last night; they remind me of Paul. From them I deduce that I did in fact experience the agapē of God: his love that created us as independent creatures—this love deliberately curtailed so that we could go forth with essence, with true autonomous being; love created us. But we are vaguely unhappy—this is all such ecstatic writing, so mysterious. Our suffering increases his love because he knows that we value nonexistence more than this existence because this existence requires us to be independent hence cut off from him; we yearn to retrace our steps and this increases his love and joy, and in us love occurs, love like that that he has; it now occurs in us as well, we whom love gave birth to. Compared with this love, world is nothing, a cinder, dust; for us to feel it in us, and finally if we feel it in us, we feel his love for us once more, the love that created us in the first place. Our own love is an echo of the power, the love, that caused us to be in the first place. I understand from all this that compared with this love—love by him in the first place, then loved by us, then loved by him again, that original love that created us re-experienced—there is nothing, nothing at all. We only find him again when we begin to feel love in us, echoes of the love he felt. He responds, then, with his own love; we did not know, when we suffered, why we suffered. But it gave him joy, because he saw it as a sign of love growing in us echoing his love. This is source for us and it is goal—unremembered as source and unknown as goal. But still felt—felt as suffering. I can’t explain it. It is too mysterious; but love is the origin and love is the goal. There is nothing that compares with it; it is everything. “Love triumphs over love,” I wrote. I don’t know now what that means. Yet I sense that it is correct. God withdraws so as to allow us independent existence, this is his gift and sacrifice, to let us go. And then a time comes when we want to return and abandon independent existence: now we have penetrated the mystery of existence: that non-being with him is preferable to being (Sein) away from him. The great gift of einai is given back voluntarily, renounced “that I might live in him invisible and dim.”⁸¹ That says it all.

Love equals non-being, the dissolution of the separated creature.

He feels such joy at our voluntary return, our renouncing of existence; and this joy is shared by us when we find him again. This is the origin of the infinite bliss that I felt: love as source, and return to love once more.

[88:68] December 21, 1980

Very important insight. 3-74 was a massive enantiodromia for which it was responsible. Its purpose: it was put here to regulate hence guide and control human history. (This view is halfway between theology and conspiracy.) This means it is not God but also it is not a—

construct?

Yes, it is a construct. It can be thought of in S-F terms.

Like: trash Torah.

Hierarchically arranged reality: with it (Valis) as apex (we’re not), and, in addition, it itself arranges; so it is self-generating—it is a UTI and it is not conquering us; it is subordinating and unifying us hierarchically in terms of the ecosphere—life—of this planet; but this is not God. If anything, it inspires us (rather than limiting us). But it does coordinate us. It is a brain and not a mind. In a peculiarly literal way, we do its thinking for it. The arrangements of our information are not a result of its thinking but are its thinking.

Of this I am certain. Everything about Valis must be made with this discriminatory realization. So it is as if this planet is alive. But this is a perfect description of the Alexandrian-stoic logic: world reason but not God!

It is Christ and he literally is becoming the physical world—by literal transubstantiation, as logos becomes flesh. That’s it: “the word made flesh”! [ . . . ] Yes: Valis is a penetration of the physical (matter as field) by spirit. This is different from pantheism, so physicists will find that reality behaves more and more like Brahman and in Taoism, but this is a dynamic ongoing process, I know! I saw it.

Suddenly I see it all: “The logos became flesh,” and this set off a logos-ization of reality itself, a strategy. No longer was Hagia Sophia outside of creation but at its physical core! It is Christ (if one understands that Christ is the Logos).

[ . . . ]

One thing is certain: Valis is no mere spirit; Valis is physically real.

Christ is here in this world on this side of the grave. Apparently God is not.

Hence we speak of the logos as world reason.

[88:76] Okay, I loved Parsifal in high school—and nothing satisfied me in life thereafter, in comparison. Q: where do you go next from Act III of Parsifal? A: There is only one place, one next step, one answer: to Christ himself.

This is it. Nothing else ever made me happy because nothing else ever logically followed Act III of Parsifal, along any axis—aesthetically, logically, epistemologically, spiritually, topically, etc. I wanted more. There is no more, except in knowing Christ, which means: to have him born in you—hence the nativity; it’s all modeled on the “Good Friday spell,” part of Act III. I knew what I wanted at 15 years old: the next step after “the Good Friday spell.” And I knew what that is, and, finally, I found it, (2-3-74) and I have it yet. But I found, then, the next step, unsuspected: 11-17-80. From the Son as gate I made my way to the Father!

Parsifal deals with the Son, it is penultimate, which I did not suspect. From salvation, blood and the cross to—agapē. From this world (2-3-74, the crucifixion) to the next (the Father and his love, not world).

The blood and the cross are the highest point of this world (2-3-74). Then tears—“of the repentant sinner”—turn to agapē, as in Tears; the tears has to do with sin and atonement and Christ and the cross. But all this (sorrow) is a gate to: love (v. Tears!). And love (agapē) equals ecstasy; so tears of sorrow—the cross—are converted into the opposite: joy. Through agapē, this is the goal and mystery of Christianity, this conversion: utter sorrow (Mitleid) to bliss (agapē).

This is “pity’s highest power,” it leads to bliss since agapē links pity (compassion) to joy—compassion becomes or even is (!!) agapē, and agapē ushers in joy because it (starting as Mitleid) ends up in God, since agapē is his einai.

So compassion (Mitleid) is the road from this world to God; hence the crucifixion and the feelings engendered lead to God the Father because of the common element of agapē: this is the miraculous healing of Amfortas’ wound.

You cannot feel Mitleid without feeling agapē, and you cannot feel agapē without entering into and sharing God’s esse.

This is what happens at the ending of Tears, based on my experience in ’70, of sorrow becoming compassion becoming love, and, in 3-74, joy; and in 11-17-80 reaching God and his pure agapē nature.

Somehow my action vis-à-vis Covenant House fits into this sorrow-compassion-agapē-joy-God sequence.⁸² So it’s all based on my earlier sorrows, circa 1970! When I was writing Tears!

Compassion (Mitleid) is a blend of sorrow and love. Thus it is the nexus between sorrow and joy—joy entering because love leads to God. So I now know what “Mitleids Hichteit Macht”⁸³ refers to. Sorrow to compassion to agapē to God to bliss. The way of the cross now makes sense to me. I understand why Jesus had to die and in the way he did, if he was to be a gate (way) to the Father.

The transfiguration in me occurred when I had the dream: punishment (death) exacted on Peterson as justice for what he had done (the fallow law).⁸⁴ But, seeing this (the OT) I felt compassion (which I experienced as sorrow). This took me from the era of justice to the era of mercy, and out from under the law of justice in my own case; it also led me eventually to God through Christ. The old king in the dream is YHWH and the OT, exacting justice; but, through compassion (Mitleid) I opted for the NT in place of the law, I mean agapē and that God, or that era, maybe: 3rd Torah.^* So mercy was later (3-74) applied to my case. But it took the dream to convert my sorrow to Mitleid—upon seeing the sentence of justice imposed: death.

Without the dream my sorrow (at the loss of Nancy) would have stayed simply sorrow; and the dream was based on the rat experience, which roused vast compassion in me and was the root moksa/religious experience! And it, in turn, was based on the beetle incident when I was in the 4th grade! And in the ’60s the Galapagos turtle compassion. At which point the AI voice spoke to me! So my whole development was guided along over the decades since childhood. The first episode was my throwing the cat down the stairs—and feeling sorrow for it. “The slayer sees himself in what he slays”: tat tvam asi.

[88:79] That 2-3-74 and 11-17-80 were genuine I cannot now doubt, having perceived this life history (of progressive moksa) of stages of loss of striving and self (the two are the same). Both Christianity and Buddhism—Brahmanism leads to the same goal, because both are based on compassion. (For India this means the loss of self; for the Christian it means experiencing agape hence God, since agape is his nature.) Hence I can now link Christianity with pan-Indian thought through the “slayer and the slain” compassion-identification; this is one road and it does lead to release. It leads specifically to the perception of reality as one total sentient field, i.e., Valis (Brahman or the cosmic Christ) of which you are a part. So Valis is Brahman, but also yourself and also—hence—Christ, since your self now has given birth to the Godhead, i.e., Christos in you. [ . . . ] Thus my entire life led up to 3-74 and seeing Valis, and this in turn led logically to 11-17-80: Christian nirvana. To meeting God (the Christian God of love; viz: 3-74 was Brahman, i.e., Eastern; 11-17-80 was Western and Christian; both are true, and both are reached by the one route of compassion). So 3-74 rep resented the final extinction of my individual self and a return to Brahman (God) and it is the culmination of a lifetime of moksa—compassion experiences that finally released me from karma and Maya; and I saw the God-field.

I was led along this route (journey) by God. From moksa to moksa. And it’s all in VR, in the dying dog in the ditch and Emmanuel’s anamnesis and recovery of his true identity.

Folder 85⁸⁵

[85:59] Dream: page of typed final draft of core of exegesis; I pull out page, in center a white, blank circle. No inked impression was made; only the top, bottom and sides are typed:

What does that signify? Take as an example the coffee filter, which is a 2-dimensional object; when folded, it becomes 3-dimensional. To be folded there must be a void into which it is folded. Is the message of the dream that there exists non-existent reality (“non-is”) into which the three-dimensional object must be folded—this non-is void must be for three dimensions to become 4, thus making time “available” (past, present and future superimposed in a newness)?

Then the intellectual leap I am not making, through fear, is to add the dimension (or realm) of not-is, and describe its characteristics (“the properties of the nonexistent universe”). I must dare to depict the core of is (Being) as a more real real than the is: viz: the is-not. The is-not is more real than the is, which (as I’ve realized for 22 years) is a spurious dokos. The authentic reality beneath or behind it is the world of what is not—does not merely fail to be, but must not be, in order that it provide a real core to the universe. The is-not has properties, which must be elucidated. Is this the domain of Yin? The Attic Greek space as receptacle of being? Space, not time? Space is real, and the matter partially filling it is not (as real or even real at all). God = void. God = absolute being. Void = absolute being.

“I hope for his sake God does not exist.” Restated: “I hope for our sake God does not exist, because only if he does not exist can he rule (steer) the cosmos.” Such early Christian mystics as Erigena described God as “the waste[land] and the void,” and thus so did I myself experience him. Was not that an experience with non-being? Existence is a decayed state of reality; that which is has decayed from that which is not. As soon as something is created it has fallen (away from the actuality state of nonbeing).

Or is all Being merely the periphery of the core which non-being constitutes? To understand this we must elucidate and define the properties of that which is not.

[85:63] If you believe in the Christian universe—really believe—a miracle (truly) occurs: that much vaster, much richer universe with the many el ements with which it is populated replaces the regular smaller universe. How can this be? [ . . . ]

This precisely is the mystery: a conceptual framework is built; this is Christianity. (I believe this; I believe that. These are doctrines. They are ideas in the mind. Whose mind? My mind. They are a system of notions entertained by me, that Christ lived, that he died, that he rose from the dead, that he ascended to heaven, that he was—etc.) What is the relationship between these doctrines and reality? Are they derived from reality? They are not derived from experience. They are held on faith (pistis). What does “faith” mean? Simply that the ideas cannot be verified.

Then they become a vast, rich universe. How do ideas or doctrines, any ideas or doctrines, become a universe?

Perhaps they are about (concerning) a universe, a report about it, a description. I do not think so; I think the body of doctrines, the assembly of ideas, becomes a universe, suddenly.

We paint a sign reading SOFT DRINK STAND. This is a verbal message, information, a sentence.

It becomes a soft drink stand. Information has turned into a world.

Now, I note again and again that 2-3-74 consisted of (was composed of or derived from or related to) my writing. My writing is words, messages, information, ideas, concepts. In 2-3-74 they seem to have become a universe. They became true, but not as true statements; as reality. Originally I thought X and wrote it down and then in 2-3-74 I was in X as world. This means that I must have been in a mind thinking these ideas in such a way that the ideas were transformed into world. Wittgenstein came to the conclusion that a thought is an inner picture serving as analog of an outer thing or event. If he is right, an idea even in the human mind is not words but a Bildnis.⁸⁶ Suppose you were contained in that mind; would its thoughts not then be images (pictures) and to you real?

Information into reality; reality into information. Each is a form of the other—but a mind is needed in which the information forms into a picture (Bildnis) and hence reality.

This is what Philo meant to convey with his doctrine of the logos. A mind larger than the universe in which ideas or information become pictures become reality. The information is not a description (derived analog) of reality; rather, reality comes into existence as the result of the existence of ideas (proving Wittgenstein right).

Then I suppose that in 2-3-74 I was within the logos (which is the same as the cosmic Christ). So ideas which existed in my own micro mind became (due to the logos) reality for me, external and macro, as the logos mirrored my thoughts (hermetic micro-macrocosm correspondence).

I am led to the conclusion that in some way that I do not understand my mind—I—was logos-ized, projected into a realm or state of being where I encountered my own prior thought formations as actual reality which were mirror images in a macromind of my own micro mind, as if everything that took place in my mind had a counterpart in the macromind, a sympathetic resonance as if by natural law, a law of correspondences. Enormous spaces extended in which my own prior thought formations took actual shape, and were animated, as if thinking as well is being: definitely still thoughts as well as objects.

My ideas (prior concepts) existed in space! As objects in vast reaches of space, space more extensive than any space I had ever seen before; and it was space within me and outside me both!

[85:91]

The apostolic age Christians declared in their writing that their secret was that they had overcome physical death. How had they done this? A: once what they had called the “Holy Spirit” had descended on them, each of them could travel up the gene pool line, through the generations, into the past (anamnesis) or future, like a snake crawling up a garden hose with thousands of holes punched in the hose, to emerge anywhere (i.e., at any time and place) the person wanted. Thus “Thomas,” who entered the “hose” in Rome c. A.D. 70, emerged in Fullerton, 1974. The clue is the Watson & Crick model of the DNA molecule, which the early Christians pretended was a fish symbol. But what was that which they called the “Holy Spirit”? Christ said it came as a second advocate from God himself. In some way not understood, Christ and the Holy Spirit were identical. They represent the Master Circuit and possess its wisdom.

Fomalhaut.⁸⁷ Whale’s mouth. Fish. ??? Constellation pisces.

How could the early Christians have known about Crick and Watson’s double helix? Answer: (1) through the “Holy Spirit,” whatever that is; or (2) because they are time travelers, can go back and forth through time. The Holy Spirit: from Fomalhaut?

Tremens factus sum ego et timeo. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. Libera me, Domine, in die illa.⁸⁸ No wonder they waited almost 4 years before letting me understand about Thomas, who he is/was, where/when he came from and how. The double helix, back in 70 A.D. Scratched in the dust with a bare toe.

Right brain hemisphere: music, not words. In close encounters of the third kind: musical tones. Humpback whale songs. Brian Eno’s random (self generated) music. Disinhibiting signals? If this is so—zebra is here. Zebra, a Vast Active Living Intelligence System stretches between star systems; it mimics our reality, and modulates (manipulates) it, without us seeing it. Corpus Christi? Thomas was Zebra inside me. The Holy Spirit is Christ inside you. “St. Sophia will be born again; she was not acceptable before.” The time has come. “And when I returned I shall be like the lightning,” i.e., I shall be ubiquitous, everywhere at once. Ubik. Logos. The micro-template for output terminal of the total entity. Puzzle: we are inside it, and it is inside us. The macro within the micro! Our intellect cannot comprehend this; it violates our physics, our logic. How can the macro be smaller than the micro? “Behold! I tell you a mystery,” etc. We are asleep, but waking up. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye . . . and then shall come to pass the saying which is written, ‘Oh death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?’ ”⁸⁹ My dream about the crystal (stinging and dangerous killer) bees killed by the white-falling layer of snow. Death—the sting of death. Death itself killed; death itself shall die. The miracle promised has, in linear time, at last come.