[49:1069] I’ve got it. Valis is not an entity which thinks—e.g., a discorporate pure mind; or a mind incorporated, as our human minds are. No. It is a mind which uses all reality by which to think; so it is neither discorporate nor does it have a body as such. This is what I saw that I initially thought of as camouflage—Valis camouflaged into our reality. Either all reality is its normal brain from the start, or it has entered our reality and is making use of it; so any picture, stick, music, book, any arrangement of motion, any linking, any sequence of motion, is used to store, process, convey, create information (thoughts). I even know that it is a 0-1 dialectic binary system. I know that Valis does not move along spatial axes. I know that it is not dependent on the natural causal events of reality for its information, but initiates and/or directs causal trains of events. I know this from seeing what I called Valis in/as reality external to me. But also I know it from its mind joining mine and my experiencing reality the way it does. E.g., its self-assembly from the stockpile around it—so there is a not-it. And my great original, i.e., initial insight was that it (1) has invaded our reality and plunders it and transmutates it and (2) camouflages itself➊; if it = reality it wouldn’t have to camouflage itself. Invasion and camouflage go together. And the self-assembly causes it to continually grow as it sublimates more and more of reality, invisibly to us.
Also, what if “my” anamnesis are its memories? They go back to Mycenia and then to the stars.
It uses reality as a notation system, the way a computer chip uses, e.g., bubbles for 0-1. Once having agreed upon an arbitrary notation system, Valis must control reality if Valis is to control the information.
Now, the objection to the idea that this is God is, why would God need our physical reality in order to think? Because if he cannot think without this physical “brain” then he cannot have preceded creation, nor can he exist independent of it; this makes God an organism somewhat like ourselves. A psychosomatic macro-entity. Creation is as essential to God as God is to creation. And God is not the creator but the psyche of reality (this fits certain pre-Socratic ideas of God). But there is still the set-ground element—visible if you have the grid: feature extraction. I think Valis is camouflaged into reality and does not = reality but is assimilating reality. Well, then it will = reality!
It also may very well occlude our percept systems, so that we can’t discriminate it.
* * *
There’s another aspect to it invading: it’s informing me that all the centers of power have fallen to the evil power, and Valis must utilize “people on the periphery.”
➊ If Valis = reality, then what meaning has the “set-ground discrimination” that plays such a role in my thinking?
[49:1072] Inner-outer transform (reversal).
Reality used as vehicle—medium—by which to process information.
Observer-participant universe.
Valis only controls (is?) reality in a local situation where a sentient mind—i.e., a human—perceives it.
Shekhina sporadic.
Bimodel: Valis controls all reality/Valis invades and is on the periphery.
In experiencing Valis it entered my own brain, which became a universe, the missing part of the external universe: we have half the info (message, reality, signal) in us. And the other half is outside us. There is no message until the two are superimposed, then reality—which is a fusion of outer and inner—can be read as coherent information.➊
So I am Valis/I am not Valis.
But then how can Valis be said to be ubiquitous? This is an aspect which baffles normal reasoning.
Valis is an interaction between a human mind and reality-as-a-field, a new, higher field created by the superimposition of the two. The self is everywhere, rather than being in the human (cf. Sankara!). But also it no longer exists. It is omnipresent and abolished (hence a sense of vast spaces).
It can’t move along the 3 spatial axes any longer; but time replaces space as an axis for/of movement. The self is in the outer world, but unfamiliar (e.g., I became Thomas: not-I).
“The self is everywhere.” This is pure Eckhart/Sankara. “Valis only comes into existence when my mind is externalized and superimposed onto outer reality; only then does the message (i.e., Valis) come into existence.” And: “It is an equation between my mind and the external world.” And: “We are each parts.” And: “It is a kind of vortex.”
Valis—where is it? It is not in the human mind that sees it.
It is not in the world.
It is in both—superimposed as one. It is in neither (alone).
It is an event, when the human mind—the self—superimposes itself in union (syzygy) with the world.
Which is to say, when Atman and Brahman become another universe higher than either. (Either alone.)
Brahman alone is everywhere and underlies all objects and change (which causes the illusion of time): it is the cause of every thing and every event.
But it is not conscious. The self is conscious but it is limited to one place and causes nothing: it is caused, not causing. It is subject to fate.
Together they form Valis: everywhere, causing everything, and conscious.➋ The self now wills change, and Brahman has personality. Out of this comes the void of love, mutual love between the two (Brahman and Atman) of reunion.
➊ Message = Valis. Message (coherent info) only comes into existence when inner and outer are superimposed. ∴ Valis only comes into existence when the contents of my mind—my brain print—is superimposed on outer reality. ∴ I am one half of Valis; for Valis to exist, this equation must occur: an event in which the contents of my total mind are a necessary half. My mind alone is not Valis. External reality alone is not Valis. If I am observer to reality, Valis doesn’t exist; the superimposition must occur: together, these two halves form a higher universe than the (two) parts—the principle of emergence. This higher universe which is compounded of the total contents of my mind (brain) and outer reality is Valis. It is like a vortex or krasis. It is a phenomenon that is temporary and localized.
➋ And free of determinism (fate).
[49:1080]
* * *
[49:1081]
The interaction of the two information sources (i.e., the dialectic) takes place in our (as our?) universe, where the sources combine and recombine in greater and greater evolutionary complexity, but still as information. However this information forms the basis of a new world.
[49:1082] Aspects of Spinoza’s substantia:
1)Matter
2)Mind
3)Energy
What I saw in 3-74 was either a fourth aspect (material-energetic-information) or all of the above three combined. Physical thoughts—this would seem to confirm Spinoza’s view of substantia and natura as God. (“Deus sive substantia sive natura.”)
Look: a perception of the two aspects matter and mind is not mind and it is not matter; it is one third thing. There is thought involved as information, but the matter is simply not what we call matter—the whole thing resembles—well, it’s physical. But—
But what is obvious is that what we call “matter” is a partial view, and pure mind would be partial (we can’t see it). We see mind, and matter is information-rich. Neither aspect is more fundamental than the other.
It is not thinking matter and it is not material thought: it is what it is.
If I could see my brain as I think I’d see linking and relinking: a physical event for each thought.
What I saw was God; and his mind was in fusion with mine.
Neither the concept “thinking matter” nor “material thought” is quite correct. The first suggests that we are dealing with something matter is capable of doing; it is a property of matter. The second is misleading because it suggests a vehicle for thought as ink and paper are a vehicle for language—a way to write it down—make it physical. But in point of fact I saw matter cease to be matter; it became something else that we have no name for—but I swear, it was no longer matter. Conver
sely, it was not just a physical medium for thoughts because for one thing (to repeat) it was no longer matter, no longer physical in the usual sense. So matter ceased to be matter. Okay. Did mind cease to be mind? Yes. It turned into—
All I can think of is Pythagoras’ special use of the term kosmos. “The harmonious fitting together of the beautiful.” But nonetheless glyphs—still information. (Of this, Pythagoras does not speak.)
I can only think of the final canto in The Commedia about the Book. It was a three-dimensional structure that was (at the same time) a book. Or like a musical score. It was a way of encoding information in a structure or as a structure. Time consisted of accretional layers and there was no locus (lens-system) viewpoint. It constantly changed (became more complex, which is to say, more information-rich). Information as reality—yes. Matter turned into one vast intricate structure. That was information and by being “played” yielded up everything, viewed from every subjective viewpoint, that had ever been or ever would be. It was played by being perceived. (Open wide.) Yes; playback came through anamnesis of it.
Just seeing matter—there is no life to it, hence no sentient movement—which is the activity which is information. We are seeing only the carrier! As in frequency. The info is missing. And mind alone has not the beauty of the geometric forms! That is, the attribute mind: only when the two attributes mens and natura are perceived together does the beauty appear: form, proportion, color, ratio, harmony, motion, shape. The thoughts must be seen for their true value (which is beauty) to be discerned.
Consider the information (word) cat and an actual cat. How beautiful is an LP of the Beethoven 9th compared to hearing the 9th?
No wonder I thought of my experience as postmortem. While alive I “saw the God whom we see when we die,” as the Friends newspaper wrote.55
Could this be indeed the kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of? Finding a way to see the other attribute of substantia? The information (mind thinking) for which matter is the carrier (medium/system)?
How did I do it? Did I do it? Or is it done to/for you?
[49:1087]
* * *
[49:1089] So there is a secret within a secret. The Empire is a secret (its existence and its power, that it rules) and secondly the secret illegal Christians pitted against it. So the discovery of the secret illegal Christian instantly causes one to grasp that, if they exist illegally, something evil that is stronger is in power, right here!
Thus to know part B of the secret situation—the illegal Christians—is to instantly know by inference—relentless inference—part A. Whereas if you knew part A, you could not (conversely) deduce part B. So part B tells you part A, but part A does not disclose part B. So part B is the greater secret. By knowing part B you know the whole situation.
[49:1092]
[49:1096] 4:30 A.M. hypnagogic: “I have bought my redemption (by the price I paid in terms of suffering).” I.e., the tax matter. Not by the act but by the suffering later.
[49:1099] Previous hypnagogic revelation: “I bought my redemption through suffering.” This would be a mythic identification with Christ: the way of the cross; only Christ through his suffering can buy our redemption. The dream I just now had of the tortured and dying sheep led to a wall where its brutalized body leaves a 2-D “painting” like of the Cro-Magnon men of animals, of supernatural beauty. I am told how every detail of the gestalt of the painting came to be, derived from the suffering sheep. And I say in anguish and awareness of the sheep’s anguish, “I hope they (the torturers of the sheep) burn in hell for doing this.” Obviously the sheep is Christ; the painting is a Roman fresco—mosaic. But this is done not once but repeatedly; there are innumerable sheep “paintings” (as if branded by a branding iron). This fits in with an earlier hypnagogic revelation: a scene in which the shroud of Christ is burned onto a wall by intense heat as a “painting”—i.e., for all eternity. And the more they torture the sheep the better a picture they got—it was dreadful but the picture was indescribably beautiful.
Here is an antithesis created: the suffering of the sheep is absolutely awful and to be abhorred, and the painting produced is absolutely beautiful. But this is not presented as a choice but as a fact: this is how you get such a painting. Still, I deplore it in the dream, so I feel it is not justified: this torture is not justified even by the picture produced. So my emotional sympathy—agape—outweighs my aesthetic response, however profound the latter. This recalls the passage in Paul where he says it is more important to possess agape than the charisma of the Holy Spirit! Is this, then, the dream, the clue to the true meaning of Christianity and Christ’s death? That, through agape, we instinctively respond that it is not justified? There is no end justification for such dreadful means. The death of Christ, then, is like the purpose of a Greek tragedy: it is to inspire pity and terror and out of this a profound sense of no; it should not be: art subordinated to pity: why, this is the theme of my “Chains of Air” story!! [ . . . ]
The meaning lies in the sorrow aroused rather than in the results of the art produced. (Beauty—in the Platonic eternal eidos! The message is anti-Platonic klagendes geschrei!56) Not aesthetic appreciation. The ephemeral animal’s fate arouses certain complex feelings of far more redemptive importance than the cool perception of beauty. The epiphenomenal sheep’s suffering has more significance than the eternal, hence archetypal, art produced; we are to react to the specific sheep and not the eidos! Pity, terror, and moral no-saying. “Praised the feathers and forgot the dying bird”—Tom Paine’s analysis of aristocratic society. His call to political revolution.
Then Christ has come to extricate the means from being sacrificed to the end, which is to say he is pitted against the very machinery of reality (e.g., DNA): the subordination of the individual creature to the timeless type.* He has shown us by his death the awe- and pity-inspiring tragedy of ordinary life (cf. Schopenhauer!). The inexorable karmic wheels, in fact. It is to rouse us to the most intense anguish—vicarious suffering and rejection of this suffering—possible: man’s highest state, to vicariously (i.e., through agape) share in the suffering while at the same time to condemn it as evil, despite the good results (art) (the eidos).
* * *
Thinking this dream over I would tend now to go back to my original appraisal: that it simply stated a fact: that the beautiful and imperishable comes into existence due to the suffering of individual perishable creatures who themselves are not beautiful and must be reshaped to form a template from which the beautiful is printed (forged, extracted, converted). This is the terrible law of the universe. This is the basic law; it is a fact. Also, it is a fact that the suffering of the individual animal is so great that it arouses an ultimate and absolute abhorrence and pity in us when we are confronted by it. This is the essence of tragedy: the collision of two absolutes. Absolute suffering leads to—is the means to—absolute beauty. Neither absolute should be subordinate to the other. But this is not how it is: the suffering is subordinated to the value of the art produced. Thus the essence of horror underlies our realization of the bedrock nature of the universe.
[49:1105] I had the strangest hypnopompic thought: that there was no historical Jesus, that it—the Christ story—is an anti-Greek tragic drama whose point is to valorize the transient, fleeting, epiphenomenal individual in contrast to the eternal type, which when understood properly, abolishes time, turning it into space. How? Why? Because we are DNA robots, flickering means (witness the 2-tape-synch programming): we don’t really exist until or unless the Christ event occurs, which obliterates the twin tapes, frees us and by abolishing time makes us ends, not means, and hence no longer subject to ananke; the wheels. Phylogenic self thereupon becomes available to the epiperson. It is like in Part II of Faust when Faust halts a fleeting moment. Flux (process) is real; the dialectic flip-flops at enormous velocity, destroying each “image” as soon as it pops up. In this process only type is real, and the individual creature just a flash. The mythic tragic drama is a spiritual ritua
l that breaks the prison of flux which erases the individual for the sake of the constant: the type. What Christ as type does is, Christ is individual as type, and turns the process inside out, which is why I said I was no longer blind, and had been seeing the universe backward, and how I was on its outside skin, like walking on a balloon—I had it inside me, an inner-outer transform.*
What must be realized is that not only is the individual normally mere means, it is also not real (v. Plato and realism). “Christ” is type of the epiperson and reverses the means-end, individual-type basis and abolishes time hence process (time becomes space). The individual becomes eternal; hence immortal.
[49:1118] Starting with the phosphenes there has been a disclosure of beauty to me, more and finer and higher until it seemed the ultimate quality and value—and then the sheep dream, and the first revelation about suffering—so that I can see that absolutes are involved: the two ultimate absolutes of reality.
Revelation 1: The whole cosmos is aiming at—evolving toward— beauty.
Revelation 2: But at what cost? Infinite suffering by the means to the end: the creatures.
Revelation 3: It isn’t worth it, and Christ effects extrication from this subordination to the goal of cosmos; this is Christianity.
It is not just that the Christ story is a tragedy; reality—for each individual creature—is a tragedy, because the two absolutes of (1) beauty for the type and (2) the problem of the means by which it is achieved: individual suffering—meet head-on, and the former triumphs at the expense of the latter (the species subordinates individual suffering to produce its—the species—perfection).