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 diag
nosis 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.