The discovery that what I took to be an actual discussion is in fact a drama in which actors play roles could be regarded as a fundamentally Gnostic discovery. There is something rehearsed and unreal going on, a simulation. I think this dream is telling me that my analysis of last night upon rereading Jonas’ study of the contrast between the pre-Gnostic worldview and the Gnostic is correct; my situation is Gnostic indeed, hence my worldview—and my problems!—arise from this situation. That my primordial phobias could arise from the Gnostic condition of Geworfenheit never occurred to me; I guess I could now view my phobias as verification of Gnosticism. Also, this makes clear that 2-3-74 was some kind of rectification of this estranged, alienated, thrown condition, perhaps related to Heidegger’s Ur-Angst leading at least to Authentic Sein. So the dream refers back to the last insight that I had while driving on Sunday night: that my status in the 2-3-74, that in fact this is what 2-3-74 was all about. And it was as if the cosmos itself had changed to accommodate me (I suddenly realize); I may have changed, but it seemed as if world changed. (“A perturbation in the reality field” refers to an event in world itself, not in me.) This is impossible; i.e., that world changed to accommodate me so that I was as a result of this radical change no longer a stranger here; it became my world—and my anxiety, which tormented me every day and night, departed. (It has never really returned, except briefly when Doris was in the process of leaving me.) Good Lord! Is this not impossible, that world changed to accommodate me, in order to repair the gulf, the discrepancy, between me and world? Only God—i.e., the Pantocrator—can make such a change! Surely—logic says—it was I who changed. But all of a sudden I fitted in; and I had the distinct impression that world was sentient, animate, unitary, conscious and purposeful; it was immanent deity or something . . . anyhow I saw transformations in it, and the AI voice backs this impression up. In any case, world and I became harmonized (harmonie, harmonia) for the first time. So at the very least there was a radical shift in my role, my status in the cosmos, of a sort that did not seem to stem from an internal adjustment in a closed system but seemed, rather, to be the result of something entering from outside—that is, something transmundane. Beyond doubt there were changes made in me: drastic, radical, extraordinary changes; that is certain . . . but it did not seem to end there; world itself changed (or at least my experience of world, my Dasein). It was as if the past had been tinkered with so as to cause the present to be different; I was a different person, etc. And my sense that I had either two sets of memories or else altered memories. It is clearly Heidegger’s transformation by means of Ur-Angst to Authentic Sein but with cosmic, transcendental, religious overtones—and that precisely is Gnosticism (since Heidegger’s categories are derived directly from Gnosticism!).
[ . . . ]
A final point: the world transformed from the unfamiliar to the familiar—this cannot point to a psychotic break, for in a psychotic break this is all reversed: the familiar becomes the unfamiliar. So much for the “Horselover Fat is insane” theory. In 2-3-74 came comprehension and recognition; there also came the end of—the healing of—the gulf that separated me from world. This is 180 degrees away from psychosis. Viewed psychologically, this is, in fact, a healing; it is repair.
[ . . . ]
The dream certainly sheds light on the real purpose of my exegesis. My working on it is preceded by a serious—even potentially disastrous—event, one forming the very basis of my life or at least the core problem of my life: expressed in the dream as a drama that I do not even understand as drama, in which I try to involve myself, only to learn that I am disrupting it, intruding on it—I have no role to play in it, and am to simply be a silent spectator—which in fact (in my actual life) I could not do; that is, for whatever reason I could not sit silently watching and listening while other people acted out their lines, played their parts. I wanted to play a part, too. This was denied me. The psychological gravity of this situation arises from its existential gravity; it is truly a grim matter in terms of one’s life. Consigned simply to watch and listen while others act and speak? And not even to be able to understand what the drama—i.e., life itself—is about? This is intolerable and it is against this that I rebelled, from the start. This is my story: starting out trying to involve myself as a participant in life, then finding out that there was no role for me in the drama (of life); whereupon I sat down and began to try to figure out what the hell the drama was all about. I gave up trying for a role, an acting part; I settled for an understanding of what was happening. This is the next best thing. It is not ideal but it is at least a way open to me. I would not be rebelling if I tried to comprehend the drama I was witnessing. This would not disrupt it. However, 2-3-74 radically transformed the situation; the drama became comprehensible to me and, moreover, I found that I did have a role to play. But this role is predicated on the drama becoming comprehensible to me. My being able to understand it, due either to my own cognitive powers or simply to the drama itself being, as it were, open, is the absolute prerequisite. At the heart of the matter, at the core of my psychological and existential difficulties—that have plagued me all my life—is the fact that, very simply, I started out misunderstanding what is going on. My god—this is the Gnostic ontological condition of ignorance! Oh my god! Oh god; I am back to Gnosticism; the ontological category of ignorance, which is the basic ontological category, was reversed for me in 2-3-74; ignorance turned into its ontological opposite: knowledge. And because I now knew, I could act. Incomprehensible world became comprehensible world, in a single stroke. This is, then, Gnosticism, for it is only in Gnosticism that the cat egories of ignorance and knowledge possess—are seen to possess—this absolute ontology. Every bad thing stems from ignorance, and restoration consists of a diametric reversal of this condition.
[ . . . ]
My exegesis, then, is an attempt to understand my own understanding; I was correct in my recent letter to Russ concerning VALIS: in it I am thinking about my own thinking. I possess the Gnosis and am analyzing it, since it is essentially internal to me, now; I possess it and am turning it over and over, scrutinizing it from every angle. The Gnosis, for me, is not in world; it is in my mind. Thus I analyze and study my own thoughts—the quintessential example being the meta-abstraction itself. My mind performed it but I do not really understand this that my mind did, this abstracting, the ultra-sophisticated cognitive act. The problem in a sense lay in my mind (i.e., I was ignorant) and the solution, when it came, occurred in my mind as an act, an event, inasmuch as virtually nothing occurred in world, except, of course, my seeing the Christian fish sign. But that only served to disinhibit what was already in my mind blocked, buried, latent, dormant, slumbering; the fish sign awoke me.
There is, then, in me—and was from the start—the potential ability to solve the riddle of the drama (i.e., life, the world-order) that I am perceiving. Hence anamnesis was and is everything. I know, but do not know what I know. Hence I resort to the metaphor of the two-mirror runaway positive feedback in which I the observer observe myself (in world as Other), which sets up an endless regress, but it is this very regress that transforms the ontological category of ignorance into its opposite, knowledge. And thus reverses the primordial fall—my own fall and the fall of much more besides.
The mystery lies in me, then, and not in world; likewise, the solution lies in me and not in world. At my core there is something that is me and yet not me. Thomas is an example. Am I Thomas? Is he me? Hans Jonas says: “It is between this hidden principle of the terrestrial person and its heavenly original that the ultimate recognition and reunion takes place. Thus the function of the garment in our narrative as the celestial form of the invisible because temporarily obscured self is one of the symbolic representations of an extremely widespread and, to the Gnostics, essential doctrine. It is no exaggeration to say that the discovery of this transcendent inner principle in man and the supreme concern about its destiny is the very center of gnostic religion” ([>]).*
&nbs
p; [ . . . ]
Cognitive estrangement; that is the key. And the rectification thereof. This is the goal; this is the mystery. This is Gnosticism as problem posed and resolution offered. The Gnostic assumption is that cognitive estrangement exists until rectified, and that the person is dependent on an outside source to rouse him to awareness of his state and to reverse that state. Upon it being reversed—ontological ignorance transformed into ontological knowledge—that person’s status in the cosmos, his existential basis within the cosmos as part to whole, is drastically and radically reversed, transforming not only his perception of the world-order and his ability to function in it, but also his perception of his own self. In the final analysis it is not world that he now knows and knows correctly; it is his own self. Thus the motto of Apollo finds ecstatic glorification and in fact deification in Gnosticism: “Know thyself.”
[ . . . ]
To recap: it is the perception of isomorphism that overcomes cognitive estrangement because the perception of isomorphism is a grasping by the person (part) of his compatibility with the whole (Other, cosmos). This perception acts as two mirrors act: a runaway positive feedback is triggered off in the person, the part, concluding with his reincorporating into the cosmos—which is at the same time a repair—a return, if you will—of cosmos itself. Since he is now inside the cosmos rather than an external spectator to it—in fact now that there is cosmos—he grasps it from within; thus he perceives what Spinoza calls the attribute of mind, the inner side of res extensae (the outer side). This perception of an isomorphic constituent common to self and Other (world, cosmos) is known in India as the “Tat tvam asi” perception of the Atman-Brahman identity; it is a universal experience. It is pure knowing—as contrasted to belief, even correct belief—and, most of all, it is return.
This is also precisely what Heidegger describes as the condition of Greek man before “the darkening” in which Logos became merely some thing he had, as with Aristotle: a set of propositions about reality. Thus in terms of Western history man fell out of the cosmos somewhere between the time of Parmenides and Aristotle. Exactly as Heidegger says. And into the vacuum there came, of necessity, Stoicism. Cosmos was not merely no longer perceived—it was by definition gone. (Viz: it is only there if perceived, because it is a relationship: between the whole and its parts. Thus in a certain real sense what I saw in 3-74 came into existence only as and when I experienced this; yet although this was finite in terms of space and time, during its existence it was, paradoxically, infinite and eternal.)
If cosmos can be reconstituted by anyone anywhere at any time it always was, is everywhere, and always is. In saying this I am not describing an attribute of it but, rather, its nature. It needs to be only once to always be. That is, if it can be at all it is (a version of Anselm’s ontological proof of the existence of God).
[ . . . ]
Here my study ends.
Except to add: My god; each step is a further fall. (1) Up to Parmenides is an intact part-whole true experience (Dasein) of intact cosmos. (2) Aristotle to the Stoics: there is no longer an actual experience of cosmos, of the part-whole relationship in which man is inside the cosmos; there is only faith that cosmos exists and it is good and wise, a belief-system replacing actual experience; that is, knowledge about the previous stage. (3) A further fall (i.e., the Gnostic Dasein). No faith, trust, the sense of the benign—all are gone; the world-order, still putatively believed to be a cosmos, is regarded as hostile and alien; thus estrangement is complete. Yes; here cognitive estrangement is so vast that there is conscious recognition of it; efforts are made to reverse it, i.e., to acquire the Gnosis. And I could add (4) where these efforts are abandoned, this occurring upon the death of the Gnostic attempt to reverse the state of ontological ignorance for ontological knowing. Oh Weh! The fall worsens! And yet I reversed it for myself. And what is the role of orthodox Christianity in all this? It is a pistis system; hence it fails to perceive the problem as one of cognitive estrangement: thus it neither seeks to nor succeeds in bringing about a reversal of cognitive estrangement. Like the Stoic system, it consists of a series of dogmatic beliefs; propositions assented to as creed! This is of no help whatsoever! To affirm loyalty to a series of propositions—this is precisely what Heidegger means by “the darkening”!
[56:G-6] In a sense (I realize) I am concerned with the absolute only insofar as it has to do with Cosmos.➊ Since I am concerned with this life—hence the cosmos—and not the next (if any). The adjustment—radical adjust ment—of my status within the cosmos (in 2-3-74) discloses two things: (1) there is a cosmos in the strict, precise Greek sense; and (2) there is a regulator, which I conceive to be an absolute. These realizations fill me with joy.
➊ if any). The adjustmentThis, then, subtly shifts my interest from theology to that which is properly the object of scrutiny of science (in the broad sense); it has to do with this world, the organization thereof, and what organizes and regulates it. This brings me at once into contact with modern physics; so this is not an idle, world-denying evasion of reality but, on the contrary, a rational attempt to understand it.
[56:G-35] But I think the element that is the greatest shock is the recognition of the familiar, as if (or even because) all else stems from it. “Familiar” and “change is only seeming” are two aspects of one fact. (This is true, really, of the other realizations: the illusory nature of space, time and plurality; there is really only one realization—that of the familiar—but it has implications in all these other areas, space, time, change, multiplicity.) The reversal, then, of what I call “cognitive estrangement” to “cognitive affinity” has precisely to do with this familiarity: how can you be estranged from what is familiar? And ultimately it is your own nature that you know, since for this unitary, eternal, unchanging “thing” to be familiar, there must of necessity be a you to which it is familiar: a you who saw and knew and understood it before; so now you understand that there was a you and there was a before—but since time and space have been abolished, “before” either means nothing or it means something quite different than is usually meant—as I pointed out in my two February ’81 postcards. That “you” and that “before” are a fortiori and perforce now and here (hence I experienced a massive time dysfunction and with it a collapse of causation). As a result of all this the holy, the dimension of the sacred flows into the profane/mundane world.
[56:H-10] This business about the atomists suggesting that the void between objects is the is-not: is it possible that before the atomists there was not a perception of plural discrete bodies, i.e., res extensae as we all now experience world—that in fact we as a civilization inherited as a way of experiencing reality the atomists’ way? Not just as a philosophy but a way of actually viewing reality? (This is in sharp contrast to Parmenides specifically, who experienced a field.) And that now, due to post-Newtonian physics, we may be able to reverse this perception and return to a field perception instead? And this would collate with the time that Heidegger assigns to “the darkening”! And that this is what happened to me in 2-3- 74; after all, due to the Taoist influences on me I was conceiving of reality as a unified field when I wrote TMITHC with internal acausal connectives—what I believed, I finally experienced, and the entrance for me lay in two “areas” as keys: (1) my unusual sense that space did not exist; and (2) neither did causation.
[56:H-23] When I saw Valis I also saw the sentience (Noös) which the view of the atomists had logically driven out of the universe, by showing that consciousness and perception are epiphenomenal; therefore the atomists were materialists of necessity. So when I perceived and comprehended the universe as a continuum, it was a thinking continuum, as it had been for all the pre-Socratics prior to Leucippus. One view (atomists) must of necessity deny Noös, but why does the continuum view imply noös? Perhaps the answer is: noös is there—in world—but the atomist—discontinuous—view prevents us from perceiving it . . . because our worldview literally prevents us from seeing what is there: the vol
untary sentient cooperation of “things” (which aren’t things in the atomist’s discontinuous sense); we see pool-ball Newtonian causation instead. Thus my two early satoris were logically and structurally related: having to do with space, having to do with causation. This all pertains to the discontinuous-continuum alternatives: “the void” not only permits pool-ball causality—the random collision of atoms by blind necessity—but requires it, by the very nature of the cosmology/theory that causes us to experience this worldview. Dasein.