[53:I-1] Now 99 million possibilities are discarded, and Eleusis alone remains. The extrication by the pulley along the vertical axis not only permits the 5-D experience of world (3-74) but, more, involves immortality in the Eleusian Fields from which we otherwise are cut off due to the endless horizontal tracking; viz: if we are doomed to track horizontally forever—i.e., in this world, living over and over again—how are we to get to the Eleusian Fields, the Isles of the Blessed?60 The two are mutually contradictory, mutually exclusive. Clearly, “Isle of the Blessed” and “the Eleusian Fields” are Paradiso and Nirvana.
Folder 54
February 1982
[54:J-2] BTA is a narrative told by St. Sophia herself: the AI voice that I heard that night with Jeannie. Always before it latently wrote my books (e.g., Ubik and Tears) but here it/she writes it openly and directly. For did not she as the Sibyl write about Bishop Pike? Saw—wrote: first she saw, then she wrote; so the narrative exists in advance of events because with the third or ajna eye she sees into the future, foresees the events, and then writes them down in the Sibylline books.
[54:J-3] Thus the Sibyl both writes a narrative that she reads aloud and is simultaneously, paradoxically bound by it—must read what it says. This accounts for both determinism (the latter) and pronoia (the former) and is “the brain that both makes and perceives (receives back as given) reality.” The Sibyl is bound by her own writing! Writing what she herself wrote binds her. This explains not only the basis of reality (her reading aloud the narrative) but who wrote the narrative; and it also explains double predestination.
Thus my “ex nihilo” paradox shows up: here, there is no cause of world, because the effect loops back and is cause of cause.
Here enters tragedy, as I now define it: confrontation with what one oneself has written and thus ordained for oneself.
If tragedy is that ineluctable collision with what oneself has writ, what, then, is 3-74?
[54:J-4] “His voice will be heard in your mind in your own language, but it will seem to come from the TV.” When I was listening to “Strawberry Fields Forever”—the contact with Valis, the news about Chrissy’s birth defect. I.e., our media and telepathy combined, inner-outer. So there is no way to tell whether the info arises within you or enters from outside; these distinctions are abolished—as I well know from the “Strawberry Fields” experience. And the whole set-ground “temporal parallaxis” may be intrinsic to me, using phosphene patterning-firing; hence, “I am no longer blind!”
And the radio shrilling obscenely, like a hypnotic cue for me to wake up. Inner? Outer? Our media cooked and ridden—direct mind-to-mind powers but somehow utilizing external info sources (media, e.g., Tears!) but in conjunction with an inner filter or lens or clutch, etc. This is what Ben Creme said.61 Both media and telepathy combined so as to make the Savior universally intelligible. Seen as Krishna by the Hindus, the fifth Buddha, the Messiah. But he is really Christ. And the kingdom of God is already here, but secretly.
[54:J-5] VALIS: pot, pitcher of water, vase, Krater, limestone font (poros krater), baptismal font. The symbol grows during the book: initially, at the start of chapter 2, we learn (1) of the pot; and (2) that Fat linked up to God through it: “God slumbered in the pot, the little clay pot.” Here already the pot and God are connected. Then later, the theme of the pot shows up vis-à-vis Gnosticism. Later, we learn that the Christians achieved immortality by drinking from a pitcher kept in a cool dark place. But the symbol reaches its height following their seeing the movie; now the pot or pitcher appears and reappears in the film; it is taken from the refrigerator by Linda Lampton, and there is the scene in the film in which the barefoot woman “in the long, old-fashioned dress” fills it at the stream—the nearly dried up creek at which the man is fishing. Hence now: pitcher/pot, water, the fish as Christian fish sign—and even, perhaps, the Fisher King, and the double helix design on the pitcher: the DNA molecule: phylogenic knowledge—linked to the Christians via the Christian fish sign by the juxtaposition of the woman (with the pitcher of water) and the man fishing. But this is not all, when Fat returns from his travels the first time he has the 8 x 10 glossy of the Krater, 2,300 years old; the double helix DNA appears as design but it is pre-Christian and has to do with Hermes and signifies wisdom; it emanates from Asklepios and signifies, as the caduceus, a sacred person (who in VALIS—that is Asklepios—is identified with Elijah and Jesus as the immortal one). And here is where “poros krater” and baptismal font are equated. Thus the pot/pitcher/vase/krater extends from pre-Christian times into Christian times and then into now: this last as Oh Ho, the pot in chapter 2 in which God slumbers and which—the clay pot—being Fat’s link to God—this is where Fat’s entire corpus of experience with God—the theophany itself—begins, and the source of that theophany. And, as the pot symbol evolves during the book, it not only takes on greater and greater depth, complexity and significance but at a certain point indubitably becomes the Aquarian Age icon/symbol per se, in a context in which the Christian fish symbol is necessarily linked to it through the double helix. The Aquarian symbol has lost its astrological basis and become the equal of the Christian fish symbol: connected with the holy, the sacred, with in fact God himself. It precedes the Christian symbol and seems to follow as well.62 The water that it contains seems to be connected with immortality and sacrament—not just baptism but with the blood of Christ. (Upon looking up Krater in the EB I learn that the Krater specifically was a vessel in which wine—i.e., Christ’s blood—was diluted with water.)
“Also, the climate seemed wrong; the air was too dry and too hot: not the right altitude and not the right humidity. Fat had the subjective impression that a moment ago he’d been living in the high, cool, moist (sic!) region of the world” ([>]). Thus the Age of Aquarius breaks into the Piscean age of the Palm Tree Garden, which is dry, even arid, and hot. A new age (epoch) with new and different “laws” now inbreaks, a different world, and it is the 5-D world (that I experienced in 3-74) replacing the 4-D world. And with this new epoch comes the sharing instead of the acquiring competitively, as Benjamin Creme points out; and this precisely is the basis of my entire ethics—in absolute diametric contradistinction to Pisces. Philo’s Φιλανθρωπία (philanthropia) becomes expressed as voluntary sharing of all that one has; when one does not give (as in giving alms) as an end in itself (viz: aid to the needy), the sharing is the end. (The difference is subtle but crucial.) There is a communal sense (Gemeinschaft); the distinction between you and others vanishes. (As when I not only had Mary’s teeth fixed, but found myself thinking, “The main thing is, her teeth are okay”—that struck me at the time as an involuntary and hence authentic articulation of my whole ethics. I have no sense at all of keeping things for myself.)
[54:J-11] Thinking about Hair—could the outbreak of the counterculture in the 60s have been the intrusion of the Age of Aquarius into the older Age of Pisces for the first time? In which case the Sibyl speaking regarding Nixon, the conspirators, their overthrow (“brought to justice”) represents the first invasion by the new age (of Aquarius) into the older age—invasion in revolutionary form, with totally new values! In which case, my intuition of intervention into history, U.S. history (hence world history), is correct, as far as it goes, but much more—a whole—the whole—new epoch is represented, and it is in this new epoch represented by the counterculture that I am politically and ideologically involved!
Then we are not literally apostolic (i.e., early, authentic) Christians; we are analogous to the early Christians in their revolutionary relationship to the previous age. [ . . . ] I did not understand this until Benjamin Crème explained it on Sunday night. All this time—from 2-74 on—I have confused literal apostolic Christians with the transtemporal archetype that pertains equally to the literal early Christians of the time of “Acts” and their equal counterparts c. 1960–1975, hence the compatibility of “Acts” A.D. 70 and California, USA 1974. The “early Christians” that I saw in 2-3-74 were ou
rselves versus the regime.
[54:J-14] But what is pointed to here is that we will not find “the secret apostolic authentic Christian underground” because (1) in one sense it does not exist, not literally; but (2) we are ourselves that group, when seen outside of time, ushering in the third age.
[54:K-1] There is no doubt that the broad social program foreseen and espoused by Creme is the same as mine (Φιλανθρωπία). That is settled. Now, several claims are made. (1) The Fifth Buddha is the Second Advent. (2) He is legally “in a large town in a modern country”; one can infer that he was not born there for it is said “he has a visa and a passport,” so he merely resides there. He has been on “TV and radio once,” speaks weekly (on weekends) to hundreds of followers. He was born July 19, 1977. (3) This spring—within a few months—he will declare himself as the Christ (“The Day of Declaration”), at which point he will be a “familiar face on the TV screen” and will appear on “a worldwide satellite media hookup.” (4) He will speak; the Dutch will hear him in Dutch; the French in French, the English in English, etc. The voice will occur directly in the person’s mind by telepathy; it is explicit: by telepathy. This will provide that he is the Christ. He is omniscient and omnipresent; he will “overshadow the world, dropping into the zone of silence in the mind [directly].” Curious: he is omnipresent yet incarnate; I have wrestled with this problem. The answer would seem to be the pan-Indian avatar concept. The views, doctrines, and aspirations that he expresses “are already in us; he articulates what we already feel; we say, upon hearing him, ‘This is my man’; Buddha to the Buddhists, Krishna to the Hindus, the Messiah to the Jews, whatever to the Muslims, Christ to us,” etc. (Very recently the AI voice told me this.)
[54:K-2] If I am schizophrenic, it is odd that my delusional system is precisely and exactly that of Crème including the enlightened social ethics of Φιλανθρωπία—it is very hard to regard his social-economic political program—and mine!—as deranged, goddam it.
[ . . . ]
So we eject ETIs, mutants, Russians, AMORC,63 time travelers, and wind up with theosophy, which yields up the notion of the World Teacher and the great adepts/masters in the Himalayas, the Madam Blavatsky business64; this has several advantages: (1) it would explain my 2-3-74 experiences as super-normal mental (i.e., telepathic) contact with some kind of enlightened or super-evolved spiritual master, “who are the secret invisible government ruling the world for benign purposes.” Outside of some explanation like this, Tears cannot be explained. (Why not? Okay; God may be communicating in cypher in popular novels—that is, the source of the cypher may be God, but there is still the issue of the “to whom.” Some kind of spiritual but finite group is absolutely pointed to by Tears.)
[54:K-4] What I’m sitting here contemplating is, yes, Virginia, there is a secret ruling government of perfected adepts possessing colossal paranormal or supernatural spiritual powers, and I do, write, say, and know as they direct, and that’s the name of that tune. However: Let us not forget θρωπία, which to me is the all-in-all. Fortunately, this turns out to be their all-in-all: the ideology of the Aquarian age.
[54:K-5] The most profound impression upon reading VALIS is conveyed by the pot—God—water—woman—pitcher—double helix—Christian fish sign as soon as you comprehend this as Aquarian iconography like the Pisces fish sign; it literally dominates the book (beginning as it does at the start of chapter 2 and going virtually to the very end, in the form of the 8 x 10 glossy of the Krater). It is as if this is the key and the code—the cypher—of VALIS.
[ . . . ]
But of quintessential importance is that my comprehension of philanthropia is extricated from the law—i.e., the distant past—and placed fully in the new age that is just now dawning; that is, I extract it as essence—spirit—of the law and project it—not just into the NT, which is the Kerygma of Jesus, but forward into the new age, what Creme calls “sharing.” And responding to the expression of need by others. (This presumes extant inequality: those who possess; those who do not; and the obligation on the former by the latter.) This is not Αγάπη (agape); this has to do with social justice as if the anima of the Torah leapfrogged past Christian Αγάπη to contemporary social justice, which is exactly how I see it! Αγάπη has nothing to do with it; it is the anima of the Torah expressed as deed, as act of sharing (not giving but sharing: dividing equitably, without reference to who aggrandized the possessions); need is everything, to tally overruling possession (ownership). Thus the suicidal otherworldly element of Christianity is bypassed in favor of the humane anima of the Torah (“humanity”). It is rational, not affective. The needy one is entitled to this reapportionment based on need itself; there is a direct link to Aries and Judaism. In connection with modern existentialism, the deed is emphasized, not the motive: what is done, not what is felt. The self abnegation of Christianity is revealed as world negating and in a sense romantic and impractical and in fact irrational! Reason as social justice—fairness—replaces sacrifice as an end in itself (giving up one’s life for another); the goal is not that the other lives instead, but that both survive equally. This appeals to reason, whereas Christianity is antirational (as a response to both Judaism and Stoicism). As in my “Galina” dream, the fish gives its life—it suffers and voluntarily sacrifices itself—but in the new age, all live equally. Fairness and equitability replace self-sacrifice. “There must be another way (in which the fish is not caused to suffer)”; this is the essence of it. Thus the Aquarian subsumes both the law (Aries) and Christianity (Pisces). This is not world negating (as Christianity is) and yet not selfish; it draws more on the anima of Torah than it does on Christianity, and if this offends you, sorry. In Judaism, I survive, you die. In Christianity, I die, you survive; in the new age we both live through absolute mutuality. Neither of us subordinates himself—or is subordinated—to/for the other. Collective existence; we both survive. Martyrdom is heroic but unnecessary and also antirational. In the age of Pisces the Fish dies—sacrifice itself—so that man may live. A better way must be found. We will no longer consume Christ; we will emulate his wisdom: the cognitive function—Sophia—returns. This—the cognitive function—by returning abolishes the antirational theme in Christianity which is so pernicious. Yet selfishness is equally excluded . . . the Ayn Rand/Heinlein egoism. Neither solution is appropriate now; redistribution of wealth and power is what is needed: social justice, not self-interest or sacrifice.
[54:K-27] [ . . . ] Angel Archer, as I recently realized, is the AI Voice directly for the first time expressing itself openly, which is why I can write a novel from the standpoint “of someone more rational, more educated, more—,” etc., than I. This mystery is solved; I am nuts, but Angel, the AI voice, is not.
[54:K-32] It is evident that (1) what B Creme says explains everything; and (2) without his help I would have remained stuck, unable to decide who the Savior is and who speaks to me and what 2-3-74 was all about. All three are the Maitreya Buddha and yet it is Christ and all the rest of them, as I theorized in VALIS. Thus in a real sense the question “who?” is meaningless—but in another sense it is not. The answer is of course there in VALIS: there is “one immortal man” who comes again and again as Savior; but (I think) what I have gained most is the realization that 2-3-74 was both Buddha-consciousness and Christ-consciousness; that is, it was awakening (enlightenment) per se.
The diamond body.
Ah—in Act III of Parsifal Wagner was already moving toward a perception of the homology between Christ and the Buddha, and that is what I am responding to, and I did from the start (in particular the Good Friday spell which I think reaches a synthesis above any single religious system). When I realize that I was only in high school when I first began to listen to Parsifal, Act III, I see how early and deeply this has held me . . . the atonality of the prelude to Act III. It begins there. The anima enters the modern Western world there, precisely.
The sound of bells. The Buddha.
 
; And now I realize how BTA ends: Tim comes back deliberately because he has learned that it all has to do with compassion: he is a bodhisattva and this concept—the bodhisattva—has to do with the Buddha. So the resolution of BTA is: Christ/the Buddha homologized as the bodhisattva (v. especially Barefoot’s account of the two little Mexican children versus his moksa about the nature of reality; he chose the former over the latter: compassion over wisdom [[>]]). Thus the VALIS trilogy is ultimately resolved on this note: compassion.
[54:L-1] 5:20 A.M. moksa: the real burning up of my Karma in 3-74 was not (just or mainly) the relaxation of causality (“astral determinism” in which effect preceded cause), but vis-à-vis the Xerox missive: there the central corpus or thrust of my total Karma—regarded as a unitary whole driving me to distraction, illness and death (and perhaps prison)—was short-circuited: this is Karma to an ultimate degree—absolute Karma—and the absolute canceling of it, as expressed by the “messenger” vision. (Here is clearly justification through grace.) Thus my entire karmic burden was nullified in toto: the debt was paid by transfer of grace, viewed either in terms of Buddhism or Christianity: it is the same. This can be expressed two ways. (1) My IOU was bought up, my debt paid for me (justification through grace). (2) The huge stone gates of the fortress or prison—Klingsor’s Castle—opened—parted—and in fact vanished; the maze was solved by the pure fool—me.