[62:C-181] Gnosticism is virtually a sign-value reversal religion; that is, it assumes the ostensible reality to be a fraud concealing the true story which is 180 degrees opposite—hence the need for the revelation of the Gnosis. Everything must be read backward. We are secretly in a giant prison, secretly in thrall. There is a deliberate occlusion practiced on us by hostile warders. The truth is not just hidden; it is deliberately hidden to keep us in ignorance. Were we to know the truth, all would be turned around, all that we see. There is, then, in Gnosticism a built-in revolutionary, subversive basis fighting the ruling powers of this world.
[ . . . ]
To reveal is to reverse; to reverse is to reveal; they are one and the same.*
[62:C-183] The quintessential Gnostic vision is not that our world is a prison or that the creator is insane and hence our world is; the quintessential vision is optimistic: the luminous messenger has come here and is here, invisibly to rescue/save us. Thus we pass over from paranoia and negativism to soteriology, the real Gnosis! VALIS, then, is not about Gnosticism; it is (an instance of) the Gnosis itself.➊ I find myself totally convinced by it. VALIS is not about our condition; it is about the rescue from our condition and hence is a valid Gnostic revelation, indubitably. This is not a book by someone who has read about Gnosticism or knows about it; this book is a Gnostic experience recorded: Gnostic soteriology itself. Suddenly the book throws aside its wraps; it is not about mental illness at all: it is an account of the Gnostic soteriological reality here (normally invisible) in our world. Our irrational world has been penetrated from outside.
One could make up a novel in which the fallen categories of Gnosticism are shown because (as Heidegger says) these are in fact the conditions and happenstance that we do find ourselves caught in. But the soteriological elements are something else because by definition (Gnostic definition) they are transmundane: supernatural in the purest, most absolute sense—and hence play no role in the quasi-gnostic modern existential systems. Thus I could have in VALIS pondered the irrationality of world, its prison-like nature, etc. But there would have been no mention of Valis, nor could there have been. Suppose, however, upon reading about Gnosticism I had elected to make up a soteriological element. But then we would have had a genuine fallen component and a fictional soteriological element, the two not in any way joining to form a coherent whole. One would truly pertain to world and world-experience (Dasein); the other would be a patent fabrication merely imaginative and, hence, a grotesque anachronism playing no role in the lives and experience, worldview and thinking of contemporary man. The result would be absurd: the most critically Valis aspects of human existence would be juxtaposed with bizarre fantasy—and, worst of all, the latter would be introduced to solve the former—with the bitter result that the former (man’s thrown and fallen Dasein) would seem just that much more hopeless.
However, the problem (Verfallenheit) and soteriological solution are in VALIS a seamless whole. One must either accept both or reject both; they are indivisible. Now, an ignorant reader rejects both as “madness” but this is a faulty solution; he does not know enough practically and theoretically to understand that the former (Verfallenheit) cannot be dismissed (the problems stated by Fat and which he seeks to solve and understand). But the wiser reader in facing the reality of Fat’s questions and problems—because that reader knows of Heidegger and existentialism in general—now must confront the soteriological solution presented in VALIS and consider what it may mean. Here he draws a blank, for as Galbraith pointed out, we have absolutely no vision or concept of—belief in—a transmundane deity. We understand the problem but see no solution; this is either nihilism or leads to it.
What, however, if the soteriological theme in VALIS is taken to be as real as the stated problems? This (the reader knows) is impossible. The appeal to his assent can’t be responded to, because the reader knows the problems to be unanswerable; this intractability of the Verfallen situation is his (as an existentialist) fundamental article of faith. He not only knows that the situation is real, he also knows that by its very nature it cannot be rectified; true honesty and courage and integrity require that he take this implacable stand of confronting the is qua is. To start supposing transmundane intervention undoes the very basis of moral values built into his realization: that it is a hopeless situation and that he faces this absolutely. Thus to him VALIS is more dangerous than it is to a more ignorant person who is able to deny or ignore the problems raised as insane, morbid or self-indulgent. VALIS is dangerous because upon stating the problem in a modern way, it thereupon draws on a solution so absurd and obsolete that it—the solution—seems to insult the integrity of the very person able to perceive the reality of the problem! VALIS, then, aims at the most modern and sophisticated reader and then presents him with a “solution” as foolish as the problems stated are real.
What he does not see is that VALIS is written backward, from solu tion (soteriology) to problem (Verfallenheit). The author is stipulating the problem only to account for the existence of the solution (he has reasoned back from the soteriological experience to the problem). He knows the solution firsthand and infers the problem using it as his premise. VALIS, then, only seems to be an existential work; in reality it is a Gnostic gospel.*
➊ It is what it describes—hence self-authenticating.
[62:C-192] Cease to run from your death, turn and face it and make it yours (Eigen), your own, not the it—fremd—of others. When you do this, time (the past and the future) collapses into the present; there is only the now (Dasein); this death is now (spiritually and ontologically) for in making it yours you seize it and master it and assimilate it to you (not you to it); this world is radically transformed and becomes as-if-you. This is the “seizing Fate by the throat” that Beethoven spoke of; it is the epitome of the heroic—not the tragic!—it is in fact the heroic replacing the tragic; destiny is your victim, not your master: you are the craftsman, it the artifact.
This is the topic of Wagner’s “Ring,” the gods against Fate. In it the gods lose. Thus tragedy wins. It need not be so, not for the creative artist.
The great confrontation worthy of man is between tragedy (the classic and Greek victory by Fate over man) and the heroic (modern and Faustian: the victory of man over Fate)—and this is achieved by collapsing time and space and meeting death now, on your own terms: seizing it, not it you, you die, but it is your death, not death imposed on you in violation of your nature; it is a logical outcome of what you are, not what world and Fate are. He who can do this has won where in the “Ring” the gods lost.
[62:C-194] I survived 2-3-74 and wrote about it in and as VALIS and hence made my death my own—by living long enough to write about it, that is, I artistically and creatively depicted my own death, and this is the victory of the heroic over the tragic. This is what Beethoven did. I have done it and nothing can change this; but if I hadn’t written VALIS (even if I had lived on past 2-3-74 for decades) this would not be the case. It was not the surviving 2-3-74 but the writing about it that gave the victory to the heroic over the tragic, as with Bob Fosse in All That Jazz.
It is Oedipus or Beethoven: the antique heimarmene wins (tragedy) or the creative human warrior wins (the heroic); this is the past (Greek) vs. the modern world (the Faustian). I chose the latter in 2-3-74 and VALIS is the proving of my choice and my victory; I willed it and I accomplished it. To do it I had to seize world, collapse time, devour my own death—as if Zagreus ate the Titans!
[62:C-197] Who would guess that the heroic would enter the world as the meek sacrificial lamb? This is not an orthodox Christian secret; it is Manichaean. But this—like the kingdom itself—is indeed how the heroic drove/drives out the tragic: it is a strategy that fools all . . .
[62:C-201] Viewed this way, Christianity, and especially Gnosticism, represents the great revolution in human history that divides the ancient world of fatalism (which included the Greeks) from the modern world of the heroic—even when the heroic is
disguised as sacrifice, for this is how it (the heroic) enters the world: as the lamb—i.e., sacrifice.
[62:C-203] The weapons of power—coercive physical power—lose because they inevitably encounter some adversary more powerful. The only real victory can occur by being conquered (as bait/sacrifice: swallowed by evil) and then coming-into-being, at the center of evil, and this is precisely what true Christianity—in secret—has done; thus it is subversive and invisible and at the center of power in its disguised form (mimesis). Evil poses as good; good is invisible within it, unknown to it (i.e., to evil, the BIP). All this is taught in the Tao Te Ching, oddly: this is how the Tao works (“a perturbation in the reality field”).*
* * *
[62:C-219]
Folder 63
Fall 1981
[63:D-47] God gives birth to the universe through his injury, suffering and death; hence Jesus Patibilis. Creating is a giving birth by him and causes him suffering; the Tagore vision shows that the suffering is now so great that he, the creator, may die—and hence withdraw from creation and creating, and it is our fault as a species. He has placed himself at our disposal, but, due to our crimes, his suffering becomes too great. He is the great friendly fish in Galina’s dream, offering his body to us to eat: this is creation itself: the very world (reality) we live in.35 It (reality) is an offering, a sacrifice, but we respond wrongly and wrong him. This is not just the Savior; this is God himself, converting himself into world—at terrible cost to himself. (This is, I guess, eco-theology.)
Then my “extra dimension” is the God body as it really is. And we wound it. It manifests itself substantially to us and for us. But is actually insubstantial, an idea; it gives birth to itself in and as the physical, substantial, phenomenal world for our sakes: but then we injure and destroy and pillage and exploit and misuse it. Did it not will itself to exist in physical, substantial, sensible dimensions we would be unable to apprehend it. Here is where Malebranche fits in: what we see is a representation of something else, but that “something else” is not creation but God himself making himself available to us as a physical body (reality, world); this is an act of will and effort on his part, this self-disclosure to us.➊ And when I saw him in 3-74 I saw him (his body) as it really is. This is a new theology, neo-pantheism and, specifically, eco-theology. Out of his love for us he receives pain. And tears.
Thus it is not proper to say, “We are occluded”; we see—as reality—what he lovingly makes available of himself to us and for us. My vision of him in 3-74 was due to his own presence in me: self perception by him, a further manifestation: one of degree; and, I think, so that he can communicate with us. Especially the Tagore vision. He must make his real self available to us in order to stop the harm we are doing to him. Literally, God appeals to us for help, for medical attention: we must aid him, now, not vice versa. [ . . . ]
Galina’s dream and the Tagore vision are one and the same (and are Valis). This theme of grief, sacrifice, pain, loss, suffering goes back (in my writing) to Tears and this is what Tears is all about. VALIS discloses this—the grieving, sorrowing Godhead. But I now see that this comes from its self sacrifice in “falling” into space, time, causality, multiplicity and substantiality for our sakes: so as to both create us and world for us. And the ambience of its sacrifice, its “fall,” is in Dowland’s music: pain and love. (Sorrow and love, which is the same love that generates its distress.) When seen, it is perfect beauty. This is how it “looks.” Pain and sorrow is what it feels. Perfect love is what it is. So beauty, love, pain, grief, sacrifice—and to emulate this path is the stations of the cross and our imitation of God himself: we do what he has done and become (remember) what he is thereby. Taking the path causes the anamnesis that I experienced in 2-3-74 and this is the true and only real enlightenment. It was known first to Gautama. It is not just Christian; it is also Buddhahood.
Okay. Now I know at last what the significance, ontologically speaking, of suffering is: it is a re-performance of God’s original sacrifice for our sakes. Suffering is the cost of—the price paid for, exacted for—the “creation”—i.e., existence—of reality and of us as plural selves. This has nothing to do with evil, sin, etc., but with divine love and self-sacrifice.
Tears is a holy book.
The greatest sorrow of all is abstract sorrow: the pure essence of the Godhead. This is found in Dowland’s first music that is abstract—and from him to Beethoven. What this is is cognitive sorrow and is the divine essence itself. It is pure knowing. It is not an emotion; it is awareness of its own essence: two mirrors: sorrow and awareness of sorrow, its own sorrow. We must save the Savior: extricate the Godhead from its self sacrifice. “I lead him back to his throne.” He/it/she now appeals to us (for help—this help).
I have now herein formulated the basis for the new eco-theology.
➊ And by doing this he exposes his body to our crimes and misuse; he exposes himself to pain by this disclosure—pain inflicted by us. Under these circumstances he can be hurt.
[63:D-149] Now, I came to believe a couple of weeks ago that when loaded I upon reading Luke realized that this was not a verbal (informational) description of a world but was that world itself in its verbal/informational mode/state/form. And this is precisely what is said in the “Sepher Yetzirah” notes about idea, word and writing of word, and object being one for God, that for God “idea, word and writing of the word are the thing itself.” It cannot be a coincidence that I felt this about Luke, then; I had actually encountered what the Sepher Yetzirah notes declare.36 This is where my concept of the plasmate comes in. (Here, now, in this line of reasoning I close the noose, for the enhanced “infinity” mode was in fact the world of the Bible, specifically “Acts”—the second half of Luke.37) Now, the great intuitive guess on my part was that the plasmate is the blood of the resurrected Christ and that because it is here now (in its verbal/written/information mode) he must be here now (1) the world of “Luke-Acts”—is actually here now (2) this world—sacred story/drama—is a story about Jesus Christ who appears in the story as the principal figure: it is his story. Thus the telling of the story verbally is identical with what the story depicts: if it depicts Jesus Christ then Jesus Christ is present (in the mode/dimensions/attribute of what I call infinity). Thus (I say) Jesus Christ lives in/as/through/by the Gospels. According to my theory, what we take to be objects and processes if seen properly (all attributes/modes perceived) will form into a gestalt that will authenticate itself as the Christ—and this was precisely my experience in 3-74: I refer to Valis. [ . . . ]
We are pervaded by a powerful text that is (as I say in VALIS) alive and is a living thing—not description of thing. Its cardinal purpose is to apply Jesus Christ as the form (gestalt) to which our seeming reality points. (Our seeming reality, in contrast to Scripture, is the description and not the thing described.) To perceive this cosmic form everywhere distributed as how things behave and fit together (that is, what they as information refer to) is to perceive correctly. In VALIS I say that the universe is information, and if you read VALIS carefully you discover that this information is about Christ or rather is Christ writ as large as reality itself. [ . . . ]
Therefore Christ is present in the macrocosm-microcosm correspondence: (1) as all reality; (2) as Scripture wherever it occurs. I utilize the idea expressed, e.g., in Matthew—and which I believe; Paul often refers to this—that all Scripture—that is, the OT or Torah itself—secretly is an account of Christ, and that this secret nature of Hebrew Scripture was only revealed at the time of the first advent. In a certain mysterious way, then, the Torah “encloses” like a shell the knowledge of, the story of, Christ, and therefore is Christ (but God concealed this even from the prophets through which he spoke). Thus there is a secret accord between the two Testaments. This is why Jesus had power over the Law (Torah), not the law (Torah) over him; it is fundamental to Pauline thought that Jesus Christ is master not instrument of the Torah, and this fits with my perception of Jesus that da
y I read Luke: he possessed unlimited miraculous powers such that reality itself (physical law: the moral law of the Torah and the physical law of the cosmos form a unity, deemed heimarmene by the Gnostics) was under his jurisdiction: it obeyed him as a servant. He revealed himself, even then (before the resurrection), as Pantocrator. Having died and been resurrected he vanishes into the very reality of which he is master, camouflaging himself (as Eliade discusses) and lives on in and as that reality in a certain mysterious way, especially (as Mani taught) in the innocent vegetable kingdom but by no means limited to it.38 (He has a special affinity to it because it suffers without causing suffering; it sacrifices itself to feed the animal and human kingdoms.)
All this was reported—albeit crudely—in VALIS. World yields up the story (as Eliade puts it) and the story is the life, death, resurrection and then “sinking” into camouflage within world (where he now lives on) of Jesus Christ: world, then, is simultaneously information about Christ (it tells its story) and is Christ by reason—by way—of internal arrangement, especially that of the lowly, the vegetable kingdom. (What I call the “trash stratum,” or “debris discarded”; Christ enters world, penetrated it and now is camouflaged as it, dispersed throughout it and becoming steadily stronger.) Pere Teilhard did not realize that his Point Omega is something known to and understood by numerous primitive tribes, as Eliade points out, although to my knowledge Eliade does not note the connection between the murdered deity who returns to life and then teaches man and then sinks (as it were) into a camouflaged state within plants and the like—(i.e., reality itself).*