[1:137]
[1:138] 4:30 A.M.: I was lying here thinking how Christ would show up in the alley and the weeds because that is where he is and things of daily life and world, and I asked myself, “Would he be additional substantial/material trace bits?” And I realized, “No, as a tug, a perturbation—the iron filings and magnetic field perturbation”—the eide are not material, not physical; so the only way they (he) would show up would be as a tug; and this would render the plural objects and processes as a field perturbed as a unitary whole—I visualized it so clearly. Since he is not real in the spatiotemporal sense, and yet he is here not there, in this world, immediately at hand; I understood it for a moment so clearly—and it was exactly what I saw in 3-74 that I called Valis. It is the only evidence we would have. [ . . . ] So I arrive at the conclusion to this exegesis and it is where I started: Valis is the cosmic Christ; but to understand this I had to reject all other possibilities one by one over a 6½ year period; and, most important of all, I had to study Plato’s metaphysics thoroughly and rejoin it to its other half: Christianity, the anamnesis of the Eucharist, arising out of Orphism, from which Plato’s metaphysics came.
[1:170] But most of all: breath. The pattern in the iron filings: that it is breath to weeds: field to iron filings. It is the stirring in the weeds, the pattern (structure) as with Pythagoras. Field. Arrangement. It is not substantial; it is nothing (but a field). And the AI voice—very faintly, arranging my thoughts!
Absolutely it is a field, as in quantum mechanics. Not the iron filings, but the pattern.
I can visualize it very clearly—visualize Valis. Set-ground reversal. The not-is is Valis. The is is not.
It is normally a weak field, too weak to be detected. Only under exceptional circumstances does it intensify to cause a perceptible perturbation (3-74). Paradoxically, though it is weak it is irresistible. Why, this is the Tao! This is how the Tao works! (vide the Tao Te Ching). Weak and—everywhere (Ubik!).
[ . . . ]
It is weak and yet it cannot be resisted. This is the Tao. It works through what is small. I am small. It worked through (on) me. To affect modern history! Wu wei.75
[ . . . ]
If all reality (universe) is a (one) field, it (Tao) need set up a tiny perturbation at one space time, and ultimately the whole field will be affected, by inducing an enantiodromia of the whole field! Through a chain of mounting flip-flops! I was one such, in 3-74.
[ . . . ]
I finally understand. This is what is meant by “a perturbation in the reality field.” One tiny tug sets a sequence of mounting, growing changes in motion, ending in massive (total?) enantiodromia: victory. Over world. Since all reality is one field the effects of the initial perturbation end only when the final enantiodromia occurs, and all the “counters” flip over to their opposites.
This is what TMITHC is about, and deliberately so. But: the real secret is:
Something new (although tiny, bordering on ex nihilo, on nothing, yet something) is introduced into an otherwise closed system. My example? My act vis-à-vis the Xerox missive. As a result the entire closed system is affected throughout.
[1:175] The fact that I wound up with Valis as a surd when I finished my first “complete” or “successful” overview shows how scrupulous I was. It would have to be left over. Deity can’t be fitted into a theoretical system; it is irreducible and stands alone. But at least that way I could focus on it as isolated—which paved the way for my total overview in which this surd was included but only as “the absolute,” leading finally to my ferociously close scrutiny of it in total isolation (from my own mind and from the reality field as well).
I realized that it came into existence literally out of nothing, was pure arrangement and not the things arranged (acted upon). I visualized (conceived of) it as a breath on the weeds of the alley—then connected it to the “heroic act that causes genuine newness” to enter the world; then, realizing that it is weak but irresistible, I saw it as the Tao and hence saw its relationship to the dialectic and mounting chains of events culminating in macroenantiodromia: the purpose of it “breathing” on the “weeds in the alley.” Which shows total wisdom on its part!
[1:185] Well, my perception of 3-74 is that I encountered something outside of me; and my recent theory is that it came into existence out of nothing—at least in terms of our reality field.
[1:208] Yes, something can be irreal and yet powerful; the lie is powerful; it thrusts itself at us like a reality, but I saw in 2-74 that it isn’t real. [ . . . ]
Irreality, then, is the basic defect of the entropic old flux/cosmos. There are valuable bits in it (e.g., Mozart symphonies; we’ll use that as an example) but they are not real in that they pass away; they never are. But the meta-soma assimilates them into itself like permanent memories stored in a mind.
[1:248] I would even be willing to argue that an experience such as mine (2-3-74) justifies the Fall in the sense of making it worth it due to the absolute joy generated by the re-collection and return. I know it was for me—all the tearful years were not only nullified; they were overbalanced by the bliss experienced in restoration. Whether my feelings in history could rightly be projected onto the deity I don’t know; but if my system is right in all respects, 2-3-74 was the deity recovering its memory and identity, and so is representative—a sort of microcosm of the total deity’s own travels, its journey. (I envision deity in dynamic process undergoing unfolding stages of self-knowledge.) Perhaps this is the ultimate price of the game: self-awareness, acquired through “external” plural standpoints, of which I am one. Then I would say, it is worth it, this journey. That’s my subjective opinion. So the Fall is a vast adventure, culminating in a joy that outweighs the arduousness and sorrow of the trip itself. And out of this adventure the deity knows itself more clearly, and, since (as I say) intellegere is its essence, this matter outweighs all else.
[1:257] November 16, 1980
Have I had it backward? I’ve always said: I saw His Body camouflaged as the world. Maybe it’s the other way. I saw how the pieces of the world fitted together to form his body—this was what I saw that I called Valis, externally. This is the same thing as I understood inwardly when I saw that the wise horn of the dialectic selected pieces of the antecedent universe, as a stockpile, and fitted the pieces together to form the macrometasomakosmos which was its own self, its own metasoma. Here seen both ways (externally as Valis and internally as an inner consciousness): world evolved into the Body of Christ; world as pieces that seen acting and operating together became—were now—Christ as cosmic body. So it is world first; or rather they, as plural pieces, are world. Then they come together so that the they becomes an it, one body made up of all the many objects and processes that were—that had formerly been—the world. The lower plural evolve into the higher unitary. This was one process seen two ways, seen inwardly and outwardly. Yet you could still say, “His body was camouflaged as world. World was transubstantiated into Christ’s Body.” But it isn’t Christ’s Body posing as world; it is world becoming—joining together to form—Christ’s body. Again: it is a cosmic evolution. Not the higher invading the lower but the lower evolving into the higher, with pieces of world added element by element to complete and perfect this titanic body, a body so vast that I could only comprehend dimly enormous—infinite—volumes of space, space such as I had never conceived or apprehended before. Larger than the universe, which in comparison is merely finite. Limited. And all of it was alive and all of it thought. And the pieces didn’t just happen to fit together; they didn’t just haphazardly come together; Christ himself searched for the pieces, took the pieces, placed each piece of the world in place correctly, integrated, beautiful, a kosmos, a macrokosmos that was good, beautiful, pleasing and harmonious, where all the many parts that had been world interacted as one unity.* And yet absolutely in no way was this vast body anthropomorphic; it was not a human body. It was a permanent body that continually became more reticulated and arborized an
d complex and perfect, that had once been world. So my inner vision of the macrometasomakosmos formed out of the antecedent universe, and my external perception of Valis “camouflaged” are one and the same. And it is right here. Evolution, not reversion. Gestalting on my part; form-perception.
And this was accomplished by him defeating world over and over again in dialectical combat with it, where he subdued it, disassembled it and assimilated it in the form of useful and appropriate pieces into his own vast body. Every new part incorporated—self-incorporated—came as a result of defeating and subduing world, but not defeating and subduing it by force, but rather by wisdom; by his being wiser than it, although not as powerful; it was his wisdom victorious over its power, and as it lost each time it lost another piece of itself. So the vast body grows, and with each defeat world becomes less and he becomes more: more completed, more perfected, more internally intricate and organized; and everything valuable in world is preserved eternally in his body as the right part fitted into the right place.
And he systematically deprived world of its blind, inexorable causality, and substituted his volition in simulation of that mechanical causality, so that to the unaided eye causality still remained . . . just as to the unaided eye the plural constituents of world remained plural and unalive. And unable to think. And not integrated into a whole, a whole that was evolving internally, just as world passed over—which is to say evolved—into it. So in a sense there were two evolutions: world evolving into his body, not the pieces sort of swimming together but selected and arranged by him and an evolution internal to his body: the reticulation and arborizing, based on events in the world fed into his body, continual accretions passing from world—where they were transitory—into his body—where they were forever preserved and remembered, like within a memory system in a mind or brain. And all the internal arrangement was morphological, not in terms of space and time, but in terms of information, as if arranged by meaning, like a kind of language. Like neural conduits in a brain. There was an endless processing of things as information, as if every combination was tried out, a perpetual rapid activity, like an internal metabolism, an information metabolism. It was using objects—combinations and recombinations—of objects to think with. And every given thing was limited (telos) by every other thing, in comparison to which the antecedent universe was chaotic (atelos). It was alive; it thought; and it initiated its own movement. Nothing acted on it; all its movements were self-initiated. And nothing outside it acted to construct it; it constructed itself.
And if you were outside it in the chaotic antecedent universe you were in a prison; but if you were inside it you were in a park or garden. And it constantly attacked the prison to dismantle it as a source of parts. And this had been going on for two thousand years, a really very bitter but somehow also joyful war.
Finally, when an object was incorporated into this structure it became real for the first time, as if up until then in a certain way it had been illusory: coming into being and passing away without ever having truly existed. But now it was safe from decay and harm.
And perishing. Forever. As if the body had a map of its own internal structure, the only structure ever to have been self-mapping, hence totally internally self-aware. Yet when you looked at this great system it was only ordinary objects such as you see every day. The basic things of the world, but interrelated and arranged without having moved in time and space. The internal arrangement was its own awareness of itself. Itself as map.
As incredible as it may seem, I actually didn’t realize (until last night) that when I saw what I called Valis I saw what I call macrometasomakosmos. Apparently this is the case; the case that (1) I didn’t recognize their identity and (2) they are identical. That means that my vision as to how the macrometasomakosmos is constructed (out of pieces of the antecedent universe by means of the dialectic) applies to Valis. I literally saw the macrometasomakosmos into which the flux world feeds. So Valis didn’t invade our world in a disguised or camouflaged form, as I have always supposed; it is constructed right here, but invisible to us. It grows; it becomes more complex and perfected; and it constructs itself. Absolutely it is the Cosmic Christ; either that or it is one fuck of a meta life form.76 It just ruthlessly plunders the flux world, treating it as a chaotic stockpile that it uses for parts. And it is selective as to what it assimilates and where it places it in its own soma. Did I realize this? I don’t think so; I didn’t realize that I saw it and that it is Valis. It’s as if two thought clusters in my mind finally collided and formed one thought-complex. I had two separate categories: one involving invading; one involving construction, by its own self. [ . . . ] Suddenly years of speculation are rendered void, by this realization. Valis experienced three ways. Valis is—indeed must be—the Cosmic Christ assembling itself out of the antecedent universe which it uses as a stockpile, which it (the Cosmic Christ) defeats perpetually in a dialectical combat.
(1) Its mind was in direct touch with mine and it explained how it comes into existence and out of what. The macrometasomakosmos.
(2) I saw it externally as Valis.
(3) I was inside it, and saw its inner information-metabolism, what I call “the second signal.”
Because the essence of its identity—its einai—is its structure, we can’t see it; all its constituents are ordinary objects. Also its einai is noein; they are one.
Supra (3) confirms that (1) and (2) are identical.
The fact that the macrometasomakosmos is right here, made up of ordinary objects structured into a cohesive unity, changes my conception of it; I must now reappraise everything I’ve thought during the past six and a half years. I’ve missed the point all this time; I knew Valis was here, but I could not figure out where the macrometasomakosmos was—since I didn’t realize that they—and what I call the “second signal”—are the same. It is a floating mind that turns objects into information within a brain, a brain that processes objects and their causal connections as information; it is especially active in our own communications media utilizing a set-ground system. I must admit that I don’t really understand this; why can’t we pick up, say, its meta-morphemes? Well, because we can’t perform feature-extraction with it. It blends perfectly. Am I to assume that I’m the only human aware of it? Hardly. Where I differ is that (I’d guess) I’ve struggled so hard to explicate what happened to me . . . no, that isn’t it. Could it be here just recently? No; that isn’t it either. It’s not in time and space; it’s exploded morphologically . . . or it utilizes a retrograde time axis, what I call negentropic time. I don’t know. It’s impossible that no one else has seen it, but you can’t see it unless it incorporates you. Maybe I’m the only one stupid enough to talk about it.
* * *
[1:262] * November 17, 1980
God manifested himself to me as the infinite void; but it was not the abyss; it was the vault of heaven, with blue sky and wisps of white clouds. He was not some foreign God but the God of my fathers. He was loving and kind and he had personality. He said, “You suffer a little now in life; it is little compared with the great joys, the bliss that awaits you. Do you think I in my theodicy would allow you to suffer greatly in proportion to your reward?” He made me aware, then, of the bliss that would come; it was infinite and sweet. He said, “I am the infinite. I will show you. Where I am, infinity is; where infinity is, there I am. Construct lines of reasoning by which to understand your experience in 1974. I will enter the field against their shifting nature. You think they are logical but they are not; they are infinitely creative.”
I thought a thought and then an infinite regression of theses and countertheses came into being. God said, “Here I am; here is infinity.” I thought another explanation; again an infinite series of thoughts split off in dialectical antithetical interaction. God said, “Here is infinity; here I am.” I thought, then, an infinite number of explanations, in succession, that explained 2-3-74; each single one of them yielded up an infinite progression of flip-flops, of thesis
and antithesis, forever. Each time, God said, “Here is infinity. Here, then, I am.” I tried for an infinite number of times; each time an infinite regress was set off and each time God said, “Infinity. Hence I am here.” Then he said, “Every thought leads to infinity, does it not? Find one that doesn’t.” I tried forever. All led to an infinitude of regress, of the dialectic, of thesis, antithesis and new synthesis. Each time, God said, “Here is infinity; here am I. Try again.” I tried forever. Always it ended with God saying, “Infinity and myself; I am here.” I saw, then, a Hebrew letter with many shafts, and all the shafts led to a common outlet; that outlet or conclusion was infinity. God said, “That is myself. I am infinity. Where infinity is, there am I; where I am, there is infinity. All roads—all explanations for 2-3-74—lead to an infinity of Yes-No, This or That, On-Off, OneZero, Yin-Yang, the dialectic, infinity upon infinity; an infinity of infinities. I am everywhere and all roads lead to me; omniae viae ad Deum ducent. Try again. Think of another possible explanation for 2-3-74.” I did; it led to an infinity of regress, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis. “This is not logic,” God said. “Do not think in terms of absolute theories; think instead in terms of probabilities. Watch where the piles heap up, of the same theory essentially repeating itself. Count the number of punch cards in each pile. Which pile is highest? You can never know for sure what 2-3-74 was. What, then, is statistically most probable? Which is to say, which pile is highest? Here is your clue: every theory leads to an infinity (of regression, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis). What, then, is the probability that I am the cause of 2-3-74, since, where infinity is, there I am? You doubt; you are the doubt as in:
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly I am the wings.