[45:273] Hypnogogic thought: it (Valis) does not incorporate what it does not need.
In 3-74 I came to touch another mind for the first time in my life, and now I’m alone again.
* * *
[45:276]
[45:358] I did not merely see the divine in the trash; by an act of will I put it there. This was a divine transcendence of world as material and inanimate. It was an act of divine creation re-enacting (and hence being) the creator’s original act of creating the intact kosmos. Thus I was no longer son (v. Eckhart) but Father.
What must be realized is that the normal bipolarization of the divine and the trash is a partial madness. To reintegrate them is actual sanity. When reintegrated the two realms turn out to form a language: “hieroglyphs of God,” which is a surprise. The divine element arranges, and the trash element is that which is arranged.
[45:370]
Q: Who won? Christianity or the Empire?
A: Ostensibly, Christianity won, but covertly underneath the Empire won.
Q: You are wrong. Underneath the Empire lies the secret victory of the Fish: true Christianity.
Vast spaces and time. [ . . . ]
These are not temporal or spatial layers but ontological layers. The least real is the ostensible surface victory of Christianity over the Empire; under it, more real, is the Empire victory, which is deliberately concealed, and no one realizes it, eine Geheimnis.26 But most real of all, is the innermost layer of victory by the fish which means fish teeth: viz: The fish fights back. But, paradoxically, the fish fights back by being sliced up by the metal teeth (i.e., the Empire); it feeds the faithful when the Empire cuts it up.*
Folder 46
[46:400] Since I don’t think I really pulled down the tyrant or anyone, 3-74 must be understood as mythic identification (esse) and ritual (drama with personae). It was a holy (sacred) ritual drama enacted outside of time. The salvation was spiritual more than pragmatic, then (and hence more important). I participated outside of time in the God’s arrest, humiliation (persecution), the trap, then triumph (reversal from innocent victim to agency of doom). But it was mythic, ritual, holy, re-enactment—the trapped turned out to be a trap (bait and hook), resurrection in divine (transfigured) form. Unity (by adoption?) with the god who goes through it always—ah; the God was there in 2-3-74; I became the God by ritual identification. Christ, obviously.
[46:426] I was prepared and trained all my life for 2-3-74. Viz:
My whole life has lain under the jurisdiction of Valis. It is the God by and large of Spinoza, but it does plan like Aristotle’s unmoved mover which inspires goal seeking. Valis is too close to a fusion between Spinoza’s immanent deity and Aristotle’s unmoved mover not to be God. It is Xenophanes and Aristotle’s deity but it is Christ.
I have thus pursued the ETI explanation as far as it will go, and must let it yield to the theological: viz: the decades of planning and the use of chance, natural events to prepare (program) me persuades me, since I can see how the deity inscribed all creatures without their knowing:
The inscribing is below the surface, and, with me in 3-74, it was made to surface.
* * *
[46:427]
[46:430] If 1963 is 2,000 years earlier than 1974—what does this mean? It’s like time is on acid. 82,000 years have passed since 1963!
[46:431] 4:30 A.M. insight: we are deceived, but no one does it to us. Our own brains recirculate forgotten memories in/as a feedback loop, thus locking us in—locking that brain in—more and more to self-delusion. The holy power desires to wake us, not to occlude us. Why do we recirculate memories as world? Maybe to maintain a continuity of self identity. We are not masters in our own houses.
[46:432] Q: Why are so many—very many—of the elements of 2-3-74 found in my corpus of writing? A: The “world” that I inhabited in 3-74 was a mind. It was my own projected unconscious; i.e., it was a mind in me that was not my conscious ego. [ . . . ]
Therefore there is a cosmic divine mind in me, which generates the writing and was the “world” I inhabited in 3-74. Therefore the basis of my mind, first experienced by me in 3-74, is deity. I will admit to projection. What I will not admit to is mere subconscious. This was Hagia Sophia herself—projected as “world.” It was holy. It was beautiful. It was thousands of years old. So I am willing to locate Valis and all else of 3-74 as being in me (projected). But this was God-consciousness which woke up.* Then—who/what am I? When stoned I always write with total certitude, “ich bin der Retter.” I have even more to gain by locating Valis in myself than locating it/him/her in the outer world.
[46:433] I’ve got it all figured out. Now I can quit. Viz: if you believe in the Christian universe—really believe—a miracle (truly) occurs: that much vaster universe with the elements with which it is populated replaces the regular smaller universe. How can this be? (1) Did something people made up become real? And if so how? (2) Or was it really already real? And we couldn’t see it? If so, why not? Either alternate is impossible. You must become like a child at a ride at an amusement park—and the miracle occurs. This is what happened to me in 2-74: I believed (i.e., had faith) and that universe and everything in it became truly real—a universe vastly richer and more beautiful and awesome, the bells, the immense space, Aphrodite, the geometric forms, the hieroglyphs of God, Valis itself, Thomas in me. The AI voice, the healing, the transformation of the animals: this added up to another universe: the kingdom of God. Those sacerdotal constituents which are symbols ceased to be symbols ➊ and became a world. There is a relationship to a psychedelic trip but crucial differences. Mostly, the holy presence was there. Everywhere. It was as if a picture had turned into a hologram, and you entered the hologram and it was real.
➊ Pointing to another world: as with Wittgenstein, analogic pictures of it. But world is supposed to give rise to analogic pictures in our mind, not analogic pictures give rise to world. World based on the sacraments, rather than vice versa. But then isn’t this precisely the miracle of transubstantiation? [ . . . ] So out of some wine and a wafer the vastness that is God is—generated? No—it is a doorway into another—greater—universe (cf. Spinoza).
[46:436] We are normally not in the largest, richest or most real of the possible universes. Christ is the narrow gate to this vaster universe (the sole gate? cf. the Buddha).
Could we say it is the real universe, and this one false, like those in Eye? Koinos vs. idios?
And of course this is what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God.” Another (better) universe. Science fiction provides us with a new way of understanding this: parallel alternate worlds.
[ . . . ]
I just thought of a possibility that beggars description. In S-F alternate worlds are separate—they are truly alternate. Suppose it isn’t that way; they are like in Eye. Somehow superimposed or fused—ah! My matrix theory onto which a variety of worlds are projected (cf. Tears). Then the Christian universe is a way of being in this (which is the only) world.
[ . . . ]
Q: Are some versions more true than others?
Q: Is one true and the other false?
Q: If so, which is true?
Q: If so, how do we establish which one it is?
Q: Could it be that Tears is the true one, the one true one?
Q: How do the others arise?
Q: Are our perceptions deliberately manipulated?
A: The real world is the Christian universe (and the secret revolutionary Christian underground) against the Empire. The antithetical interaction shows up in Tears—the Empire is clear; where is the Christian element? Would you believe “Acts” which locates the Christian element in Taverner; viz:
Buckman = Felix procurator27
Therefore Taverner has to be Paul (the persecuted church). By means of the grid. The “Acts” grid. The grid is essential. If Buckman is Felix Procurator you can infer by means of the “Acts” grid and only by means of the “Acts” grid that Taverner = (is) Paul = (is) the persecuted church.
28
[46:458] Hypnogogic: “one of us is dead.” The two selves in me. It must be me and my sister!
[46:529]
Folder 47
October–November 1979
[47:602] You know, there is really so much of 2-74 to 2-75 that I’ve been unable to remember, despite my notetaking—but of all of it the sight (contact, encounter) with Valis seems the most awesome.➊ And of course the overthrow of half a dozen tyrannical governments, starting with Nixon.
➊ And takes it out of the realm of a psychological experience. Either I was nuts or I saw what I saw.
[47:617] Two systems of information intersecting one as set (“Ahura Mazd”) the other defeated into ground (being only approximation), and, in their act (process, like the moth descending) of intersecting, creating (like a 3-D hologram) spatial reality: vast space, geometric forms that are alive. Not religion but as in Beethoven’s later music, turning time into space. (This is what Beethoven did: enclosed—hence created—vast—hence absolute—space; hence nontemporal reality.) Hence restored man (me in 2-3-74) to Adam Kadmon (defined as man filling the whole universe and hence [as subject] identical with object [reality]29: Atman—Brahman as the same: Atman revealed as Brahman [i.e., microcosm identical with the macrocosm]).
[47:626] Music is normally a temporal process, but Beethoven, uniquely, uses it to enclose space, the most vast volume of space possible. Thus Beethoven literally expanded the hologram for anyone understanding his music, and he was part of a historic movement involving the abrupt evolution of the human being in terms of so-to-speak relative size vis-à-vis his reality. This is the inner firmament of Bruno (or Paracelsus—whichever). Ah! The microcosm is transformed briefly into the macrocosm; and a slight but permanent expansion of the person, the microcosm, occurs: perhaps an altered relationship to the macrocosm, in terms of identity. Beethoven’s music as a means by which the alchemical Verklärung can take place: thus it is directly related to the Hermetics.
Expansion out of the prison: escape from the prison by extension, like an insect expanding out of his exoskeleton during/via his metamorphosis. “The body is the tomb of the soul”—half-life. The BIP as a sort of exoskeleton, hence a kind of rigid (iron) body. This is the “second birth by the spirit.”
This is a radically different way of experiencing the self (microcosm) and reality (macrocosm). Memory and inner space. There is some relationship. Memory involves vastly augmented time which is then converted into space. “A long time ago” becomes a very large spatial volume, with the result that the past still exists—e.g., my seeing the world of “Acts” in 2-74 and finding it latent in Tears. So my seeing the distant past (in 2-74 and experiencing it overtly in 3-74) was due to the conversion of time into space—which I saw as the vastly augmented spaces. But I see now that the two phenomena are actually one.
[47:627] Therefore the hologram (reality) is in truth one huge volume of space with no time involved, in which all “time periods” are spatial “onion” layers as (again) in Ubik, where the past lies inside (i.e., along a spatial axis) objects and can be retrieved.
Time, then, is actually spatial expansion, layer upon layer. So the hologram is quite large—it is ubique; yes; here is the ur-significance of the word “ubique”: it occupies all space.
[47:628] By using his music to enclose huge volumes of space for the listener Beethoven committed the ultimate political act of liberating—expanding—the individual. Likewise, my space phobia is connected with my own rebelliousness! Unable to deal with external space—i.e., unable to rebel—I have turned to inner space, to exploring it, which, too, is a political act; so my writing, involving inner space, is covertly subversive: it teaches secret ways to rebel (mostly by evasion: escape). This is why the whole psychedelic movement of the 60s was a threat to the authorities; this was the area of the subversive threat I posed—my studies of inner space—in fact—my conceptions of inner space differing from person to person is very radical and politically subversive, I now see, even when it didn’t involve drugs. Viewed this way, then, 2-3-74 represents a total political victory by me, in that I broke through into absolute space such as is not even known about following the disappearance of the Hermetics. 2-3-74 can be understood politically if the significance for the nature of the individual in terms of his enclosing space is recognized as basic (e.g., Beethoven’s music). This absolute space involves absolute (i.e., a priori) knowledge and power over time in that time can no longer extinguish the person. This relates to authentic Christianity. Hence there really is something very subversive about Ubik, as well as Eye and Stigmata and Martian Time-Slip.
I personally achieved the catalytic metamorphosis that my writ ing promotes. And my writing may aid others in expanding their inner space—pointing toward what I did: breaking through into absolute (hermetic) space where the self is Adam Kadmon, unfallen and unoccluded!
[47:630]
It’s a world inside a world. This is why Beethoven’s space-enclosing music frees us.* There is a direct relation between more space and the real world (also between restricted space and the irreal world). [ . . . ]
Valis was an “uncanny one-way intrusion” perturbing the basis of the small high-speed world from outside. Valis proves there is an outside.
Valis proves there is an outside. This is the most important sentence I’ve written, since it shows our world resembles that of Ubik, Maze, et al.
[47:642] The Christian apocalyptic vision is an actual universe, spatially much vaster than ours, and, in terms of time, the present extends back to encompass 2,000 years. Swift events—the death of the Savior and his return—span thousands of our years. A person’s mind, in that universe, extends phylogenically: over the 2,000 year span of the present. Basic unchanging archetypes are constants: Rome, which is the prison and the enemy; the secret Christian underground attacking it, over a period of 2,000 years; and the deity itself camouflaged in reality and only visible when you are in the super-extensive space-time of this vast Christian dualistic universe. A drama and conflict is being enacted and it is cosmic in dimension; it will end with the return of the just-departed Savior as judge. The mood of the secret Christians—whose minds span the 2,000 year present—is one of excitement and joy, and, most of all, anticipation.
Thomas is commensurate with the vast spaces and the vast time (the 2,000 year present) of the Christian apocalyptic universe.
[47:643] In the vast, Christian apocalyptic universe the in-breaking of God has already occurred. It registered covertly in/on/into our smaller universe in 1974 but was not visible for what it was. I just can’t figure out the relationship between the two universes; we seem to be in a sort of little box, and our senses don’t report the truth—as in Eye. This is all very odd. Are we drugged and asleep? Do our senses lie? We are occluded; must we first be de-occluded to see the in-breaking, or will the in-breaking de-occlude us? (I know the answer: the latter.)
[47:645] Ach. If you were geared to the slow time of the Christian urwelt, this phenomenal world would seem to spin by at an incredibly accelerated rate—exactly as time seemed to pass for me in 3-74! Events pass ultra fast if you are slowed down: the rise and fall of our societies are, to urwelt, like the lives of fruit flies: over in hours. Conversely, if you are geared to this phenomenal world, no change is seen in the urwelt. During one human lifetime nothing happens in it; it is still back at the time of “Acts”! If one of us caught a glimpse of it he’d see what seemed to be the distant past of this world, whereas in fact it is another world progressing at a different—very slow—rate. Now the meaning of this can be appreciated: “He causes things to look different so it’d appear time has passed.” This is a view of the phenomenal high-speed world from the vantage point of the other—i.e., the Urwelt.
[47:649] I have it! When I slowed down to phase with the ultra-slow pace (time) of the urwelt, events (change processes) in this phenomenal world moved very fast in relation to me so that in effect I was shown stop-action photography of a vastly e
xpanded present; as a result at this accelerated flow rate, this world exhibited the “revealed, cosmological” aspect of (1) joining; (2) engramming; (3) rest motion dual modes; and (4) most of all volition hence sentience—i.e., Valis ➊ ; Valis could be discriminated (discerned) when perceived at that great a velocity and with that extended a present. (5) And covert message traffic (set-ground). And (6) the using of the antecedent universe as a stockpile by Valis. And (7) the dialectic, with the perpetual inevitable victories by the a priori wiser horn.
This would be Thomas’ normal view of our world, since his perspective is phylogenic. So our world is visible to those in the slow vast urwelt, specifically the process of God assimilating—transubstantiating—it with his own body. Thomas was bailing into our world and its rapid flow while I bailed or slowed to the rate of his world which eventually became the PTG. No, at the extreme point of slowing—phasing with eternity I found myself in no world at all but rather in the void of the Urgrund. So I may have slowed to such a low rate of flow that my present stretched out millions of years, rather than thousands. This is what the Buddha reported in the Dibba Cakkhu state: seeing the coming into existence and passing away of all things. This is the opposite direction from that the super pot and acid take you; there, you speed up and world slows; here world speeded up and I slowed, and obtained (gained) a progressively augmented present. With super pot and acid world becomes eternal; here, I became eternal and world ephemeral. So drugs take you away from enlightenment and consign absolute reality to epiphenomena, which increasingly entrance you, rather than losing their already too strong hold over you; thus we call this intoxication: a deluded state, not enlightenment. Acid and super pot are like the Monsanto exhibit in Disneyland where you get smaller, i.e., the world gets bigger: your perspective shrinks.30 In enlightenment your perspective grows and spreads out to fill vast spaces: time turns into space. Time (Karma?) is used up, burned up; it runs at high speed to its end and dies out, leaving the divine abyss ultimately.