Yes—in 3-74 the radio kept saying:
Bright white light
Shining in the night
To guide your way. 6
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*
Early 1979
[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]
(1) “astral determinism” or fate
(2) God
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 H
oly 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
Early 1979
[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.