[83:57] Strangest of all, the Upper Realm, the macrometasoma, seems to be this realm, this world of the dialectic, of flux, seen another way—as if the Gnostics are right: and to see it healed is to cause it to be healed. Could this be the observer-participant universe of quantum mechanics? “Reality is what you see it as,” as the E. of S-F. quotes me. “Is what you perceive it to be”; i.e., your perception of it changes it. Well, this would make the Gnostics right! To see unity is to cause repair. (The ontological value of knowledge.) So I am saying: To see the secret partnership is to cause the secret partnership; you reconcile the dialectical strife in you (the two brain hemispheres?) and thereby cause it to be reconciled in world, which is to say, Ground of Being itself. Since you yourself are a part of (spark) the Ground of Being—that explains it. That is the only way that your perception of reconciliation could in itself as perception cause reconciliation. And the basis of your doing this is: anamnesis. You cease to forget that you are (part of) the Ground of Being.
[83:58] Ach Weh.65 This structure that I speak of literally occurs in your act of perceiving it.
So Warrick was somewhat right about Valis.
My good god; this means that the override in 3-74 vis-à-vis the Xerox missive was a self-causing loop—neither efficient cause was at work (which has been obvious to me) but also not future or retrograde cause. It was self-generating (ultimate homeostasis). It caused itself. I’m not sure of my reasoning but I realize it’s true; I set up a perturbation in the reality field by thinking about it, so to speak. The information had no source (the needed information that I lacked that came into existence); it was self caused.
[ . . . ]
We are talking about ex nihilo information; information that generates itself. No wonder it’s so erratic.
[83:60] Then the “Acts” material in Tears was self-causing.
No one put it there.
No wonder I haven’t been able to figure 3-74 out; every theory changes the events. I was right when I was on superdope; then I favored the theory that Diana, the queen of the fairies, helped me. Now I prefer (and find more workable) the theory that it was the Holy Spirit revealing to me the Cosmic Christ (Valis).
There’s one thing I know it is: the Mysterium Coniunctionis.66 In Boehme’s terminology (or Eckhart; who cares) you have become the Father, not the Son; therefore you are the creator (again).
As impossible as it may seem, the “Acts” material in Tears was self-generating, a kind of tracing due to principles of physics that we simply do not understand, related to synchronicity. And as to the “cypher,” King Felix—that, too, is a tracing, but this information is alive or semi-alive like a virus; Burroughs is right but he has only a bit of the whole picture . . . still, there is such a thing as living latent information that somehow is an acausal analog of reality.
[83:69] September 3, 1980
(Re Eliade) A mythological event unfolds in another kind of time (illo tempore,* etc.). Therefore if you can get (your self) into a mythological narrative you will enter this dream time (as opposed to entering dream time and, by means of that, entering the myth). The entrée to dream time is to reenact the (i.e., a) myth. I accidentally did this in 2-3-74 vis-à-vis “Acts” due to (1) Tears; and (2) the girl with the fish necklace. These plunged me into that other kind of time and so I saw world under that aspect, i.e., made eternal and holy—and experienced anamnesis. Also the Xerox missive somehow acted toward being a part of the mythic ritual. (The message opened and read? Perhaps some myth I don’t know.)
So I got into mythic time by reenacting the sacred myth, and, having done so, saw world under that aspect (e.g., the blood of the cosmic Christ, Rome, the secret real Christians). I fell into the myth by chance, and entered the realm of the sacred.
[83:70] The Xerox missive is part of the Gnostic legend of the Pearl: the letter to the prince who has lost his memories (in an alien land) which restores those memories. This “legend” is actually a sacred myth/right. The letter coupled with the golden fish sign restored my memories due to my faithful participation in this complex sacred mythic rite of anamnesis and rebirth. No wonder I expected a letter to come; I knew it because on an unconscious level I knew the myth (collective unconscious). So all this took a Gnostic turn—the cryptic sign (golden fish), the letter reminding me of my mission (albeit a profane Pigspurt➊ one; the myth sanctified it, turned a profane thing into something noumenal).
The value—or one value—of this explanation is the “why me”? solution. God did not choose me for any reason, such as merit or need on my part. Chance played the determining role in selecting me: chance actions on my part. Alone, without a priest or guide, I re-performed an ancient myth whose nature I still do not fully understand. Mainly it had to do with a letter which both informed me of something about myself (my actual nature and actual origins) and posed a grave problem that I had to solve. Had there been no letter there would have been no other universe, no altered, enhanced perceptions, no “second signal.” Likewise for the golden fish sign. Likewise for the time of year.
Likewise, in fact, for my burning a votive candle at a holy shrine.
That this was indeed, then, an authentic religious experience I now cannot doubt. It was not precisely mystical, certainly not psychotic, certainly not a drug experience (although a component necessary for it to happen may have been the washing out from my system of the Mello Jell-O; I can’t be sure67). I can look at it this way: God approached me through the medium of the sacred mythic rite reperformed; reperformance of that rite put me in touch with the Divine and in fact the Divine Realm. But it must never be forgotten that absolute faith amounting to knowledge, knowledge of the divine, was the essential first step; without it, re-performing the rite would have accomplished nothing.
[ . . . ]
What I say of this is: there is another universe, and through such reenactment of sacred ritual as I accidentally engaged in you can enter it and commune with the gods. This is recognized by, e.g., Eliade, but how many “civilized” people have experienced it? We have lost the techniques, the gnosis. Now what do I say about the novel VALIS? It is about this voyage on the axis of another kind of time . . . and what is this other kind of time like? I perceived the phylogons and the fact that nothing that is past truly ceases to be, but, rather, is added to progressively; accretional layers are laid down, becoming ever more reticulated and arborized. This is the main discovery, this permanence of past and present reality—hence all reality. Flux only adds; it does not take away.
➊ Or was it? In any case its mundane nature is not so important as its mythic role. And that fired correctly—a series of coincidences and accidents: Tears, the pentothal, the girl, the fish sign, the Xerox letter which very much seemed to call to me from the archaic past and to deal with my real identity. And since it was noumenal it sparked a divine or spiritual—pneumatic—identity in me.
[83:76] The space-time world of this sacred time is found in the Bible as the book of “Acts.” Thus when I wrote Tears I discerned this stratum, showing through in a ghostly fashion, as the basis of reality. “Acts” describes the power of Rome as expressed in the Procurator Felix. He interrogates his prisoner Paul; Paul is under arrest and in the hands of the Roman authorities.68 He will eventually be released. This is the supratemporal template: the power and presence of Rome; the Procurator; the prisoner who is interrogated and finally released. The Empire would like to destroy him but in the final phases of the encounter between them fails. Thus the life of the prisoner ends not in martyrdom but in freedom, in release. This is in a sense an opposite story from that of the crucifixion where the prisoner is condemned to death and dies. Here the prisoner is set free and this means that sacred time has moved forward from the time of the Gospels to a different time. The prisoner slides through the fingers of the Empire. This story is found in the life of John Taverner, the 15th century English musician who was arrested on suspicion of possessing heretical books but then released “because he is not a musici
an,” as Cardinal Woolsey put it: the Empire has lost the ability to state its case; it cannot close the trap. The later history of this archetype will be that the Empire will lose even more power; eventually it will not even be able to arrest its victim, let alone crucify him. That time has not yet come.
At this point the Empire, expressing itself through its police system, is puzzled by its victim; it suspects him of wrongdoing but does not know what that wrongdoing is. The Empire does not know enough; its information is too limited. So for it the victim is an enigma. (The evolution from Pilate’s bewilderment in confronting Jesus can be seen; bewilderment was there already.) The Procurator Felix interrogates the suspect but cannot determine from what he says what precisely he has done. Time passes. The Empire tries again and again to get information, but fails. This is Kafka’s The Castle in reverse. In talking to the suspect, the prisoner, the Procurator begins to suspect that the prisoner himself does not know what he has done; he himself does not know if he is guilty, and if guilty, of what. The prisoner cannot tell the Procurator what he would like to know, even if the prisoner is willing to. This increases the puzzle. Perhaps the enemy of the Empire is so large and so vague that the prisoner is not the adversary at all, but only a sort of front for it, an extension of it. This, for the Procurator, is a dreadful thought.
The archetype of this is Euripides’ The Bacchae, in which the King of Tears arrests the Stranger only to find that he has a priest of the god Dionysus in his prison; the priest as the god bursts the prison and drives the King into insanity such as to cause him to lose his identity even as a man. The King—or the Procurator—can release the prisoner but he himself will suffer great harm; instead of Christ crucified Pilate suffers unbearable loss. Time, which starts with the Gospels, has moved forward to what is al most a complete reversal of the image. The arrested and tried god does not die; the interrogator suffers spiritual death or physical injury, the prisoner goes free. Everything that the prisoner lost is restored to him. This is referred to in the Bible as the end-times day on which everything is restored. It is a sign of the Parousia. The Empire is not glad to know this because it means that God himself is taking the field; God is entering the battle.
[ . . . ]
And yet there is a further level of reality disclosed by sacred time and the realm governed within that time. A kosmos, in the sense that Pythagoras spoke of it, is being completed, self completed, from the flux process visible in mundane time. This is the noumenal world that Plato and Parmenides spoke of as being in contrast to the sensible (empirical) world; the person lifted into sacred time perceives a priori this edifice that is alive and growing, this cosmic organism that is Christ himself as the head and Lord of creation. Christ as Kosmos—this is the final mystery. [ . . . ]
Thus the person who correctly performs the mythic rite—and does so with absolute faith—encounters the God whom he worships as world rather than anthropomorphic figure. In the final vision, Christianity becomes indistinguishable from Brahmanism, because in this encounter with the cosmic Christ the worshiper is himself a Christos, a microform of the risen Lord.
And then finally, above even this, which eventually will be presented to God, is the semplice lume that Dante speaks of:
One simple flame.
God is the book of the universe, whose pages are scattered throughout. The sacred history itself forms a narrative that can be discerned, but it is obscured by the normal flux. Everything is written down and has been written down from the beginning, as the Jews knew from the disclosure of the Torah. Basically, sacred history exists as information; first in terms of temporal sequence; first in order of ontology. The mythic ritual is an entry key into the sacred narrative. It functions the way an entry key of a computer functions vis-à-vis a given program.
This narrative can be entered from any point in mundane time by the correct entry key which in itself tells a story or a part of a story—part of the master narrative (which, as I say, is information out of which reality is generated). What interests me is the apparent fact that there are a number of sacred narratives, not one, so that different entry keys—which is to say different mythic rites—punch you into different narratives, which is to say different meta-realities. For example, Christianity is only one “narrative” of many; the war between the Empire and its prisoner (who in early chap ters is crucified but later on is released unharmed)—this is not the sacred narrative but a sacred narrative. Christianity then as a sacred history is not the truth but a truth, which can be avoided or punched into, either by design or by accident (I punched into it by accident).
[ . . . ]
Now, here on [>] of this paper, I come across another and never before suspected computer aspect of Valis: that it contains a number of “sacred histories,” which is to say “sacred narratives,” not just one; and different mythic rites reperformed keypunch you into entry into particular narratives among the plural narratives; and I called these “programs.” Which as I put it means that Christianity is not the truth but only one “sacred narrative,” which is to say one sacred history of the plural number. But how can there be plural histories of the world? How can Valis contain more than one sacred book (to use Dante’s term)?
I punched into Christianity because of the particular mythic rite I reenacted; had I reenacted another mythic rite I would have punched into another “sacred narrative,” which is to say program. This thing is an information processing computer or computer like entity. [ . . . ] What I have in Tears is not the truth but just a narrative; but it is a Torah like narrative: it is not the book of the universe/world but a book. It is one out of many. This is extraordinary. I had (last night) solved 3-74; I thought so today. Now I’m back to square one or anyhow square two. It’s a good thing I’ve been keeping notes.
[ . . . ]
So we have the key to history turning into a key to history. But how can there be several alternate keys to history unless these are computer programs being run simultaneously? If you have one sacred history you have revelation, but if you have several you have a mystifying discovery which is one puzzle solved but a greater one disclosed.
[83:91] What we see today as a war between progressive communism and reactionary capitalist imperialism is an ontogenic face with a longer-term conflict between those dedicated to freedom and the Empire. (At a former time the progressive force was the middle-class, the bourgeois, versus the aristocracy, and so forth back into pre-Christian times . . . another example being the conflict between the Protestant forces and the Catholic league during the 30 years war. And, before that, between Christianity and the Roman Empire; before that, between Greece and Persia; before that, between the Hebrews and Egypt.) If Valis is regarded as the Hegelian geist of history, then it is always on the side of the forces of freedom, since as Hegel says, history is a gradual unfolding of greater and greater stages of human freedom, achieved by dialectical interaction. This was recognized by Marx and Engels and applied practically in terms of dialectical materialism.
This is essentially exemplar history; the Jews view history this way, seeing YHWH’s bringing the Jewish people out of their Egyptian captivity as a timeless, in fact eternal event, always happening. However, the situation is now different; the enslaved people cannot be rescued by departing the Empire because the Empire is worldwide; instead, they must overthrow the Empire. This is precisely what the “Acts” archetype reveals: not an exodus of the enslaved but an infiltration into the apparatus of the Empire by the enslaved by which their emancipation is achieved.
[83:93] VALIS deals with the internal partisan activity; VALIS Regained deals with the invasion from outside. The latter occurs when the internal partisans have been sufficiently successful.
[83:95] For decades I have sought to see “the permanent world of unchange behind the flux,” and when I finally saw it it turned out to be a historical exemplar situation, a dramatic one; in fact a narrative that could be expressed as a story. (And I myself had done so!) So I am saying something quite
remarkable and unusual: the world (identified by Schopenhauer with Brahman) turns out to be a dramatic story that can be rendered in words—although I saw it as reality, as reified, as substantia. Yes; this is what substantia turns out to be, for me: not “Deus sive natura sive substantia” but “ultimate substance turns out to be a dramatic story that shows up in print as a tracing, the underlying reality being a series of events.”
[83:122] What the AI voice said exactly was:
“The secret stolen in one’s hands through➊ the angels.”
I think that it was YHWH who addressed me, whom I have been calling Valis. He has reentered the world as a rebel against the entire system of rule that he originally ordained. This secret return—and rebellion—would explain such an extraordinary matter as the theophany I experienced.
This is why I dreamed of Elijah and Mount Carmel and Elisha and “Elias.” And YHWH is the AI voice I hear, the voice of Ho On . . . the little clay pot.
If this is so—well, anyhow I was on the right track in VALIS Regained. But: to suppose, just suppose, that Valis is YHWH! To imagine it even for a moment . . . it was what I wanted so badly when I was a kid first reading the Bible. This is Sila,69 the soul of the universe, speaking in a woman’s voice “that would not frighten even a child,” as the Nome shaman put it.
YHWH: the low, murmuring voice.
He calls us to rebellion into freedom, the little clay pot who fashioned the universe.