But my main point (made on [>]), which I intended to be the last page of the exegesis, is: I thought the sequence went:
(1) theophany (2-3-74), followed by:
(2) exegesis of that theophany (3-74 to 11-80)
But in fact this is correct:
(1) exegesis 3-74 to 11-80, followed by:
(2) theophany, 11-17-80(!)
In other words the—this—exegesis came before the theophany. The exegesis finally reached the conclusion that everything I had seen in 2-3-74 had to do with world (“a perturbation in the reality field”) except a glint of color in the weeds, of the alley and a ripple of wind—which was—even this was—not God but just the tracings/glyphs/footprint of God on reality. Thereupon, i.e., as a result of this realization (11-80) I then experienced a true theophany—and I construe what happened this way:
(1) The world is delusional (Maya).
(2) In my 10 volume meta-novel I saw this to be the case, saw world as a mere delusion, and I looked for reality—true reality—behind/beyond it.
(3)Therefore, obligingly, the arch deluder served me up a further delusion (2-3-74) much more complex and sophisticated, based on my own particular preconceptions (anticipations, suppositions) as to what “true reality” would be like if you could see it. This is why 2-3-74 was a playback of my own mind to me (which every now and then I suspected, but I kept thinking, “Well, it only goes to show how astute my intimations were”). 2-3-74 was—enchantment! Yes; it is so. However, this sudden transformation in world in 2-3-74 did show that world as we normally see it is indeed a delusion; it’s just that what replaced normal world was no more real, just more sophisticated and complex, and, to me, not just more convincing but totally convincing! I believed for over 6½ years that I had seen true reality, in contradistinction to the previous Maya; but (as I say) it was just a more cunning Maya. As I say in VALIS, the maze is alive and it changes.
Okay, finally, in the exegesis, I realized that I had seen nothing of what I had in 2-3-74 assumed I had seen, which is to say, God. It was world, and world is by my own definition and analysis irreal and delusive. I was, without knowing it, even more embroiled in world than ever, than the most ordinary average person is! And I construe this as Satan’s wiles, the a posteriori horn of the dialectic; God gave him free reign. Satan could not see where it was leading. But God with his a priori knowledge could. It led me to God in this way: on 11-17-80 God actually manifested himself and presented me with logical arguments and analysis as to how I could know I had this time in truth experienced him. His argument lay in one line: the argument “to infinity.” Would I accept an equation between God and infinity? (We had to agree on a premise, some postulate or other, some definition.) He said, “I can provide you with an infinitude of bliss; not just great bliss but infinite bliss. And this infinite bliss that you (will) feel derives from my personality and essence of loving-kindness (agapē). Will you accept that only God possesses an essence (einai) of agapē that would cause you an infinitude of bliss?” I agreed, and it came to pass; I experienced his personality and essence of agapē. I felt infinite bliss. There were no complexities, no enigmatic epistemological puzzles, no enchantment or magic: only a wise, loving old man, an individual human—except that everything about him extended into infinity along all axes! Wisdom, love, power, personality, intimate gentleness yet firmness, and eternity, unchanged simplicity. He concealed nothing from me, he played no games. He explained the relation between my life in this world and what it would be in the next, in terms of his theodicy (this was another and fundamental absolute: his theodicy). It, he said, is a promise from which we can draw conclusions, rather than starting elsewhere (e.g., in world) and reasoning to it. It is structurally—i.e., logically—related to his nature: agapē (i.e., anything but theodicy, absolute theodicy, would be incommensurate with infinite agapē).
A major point that he made was that I was not employing analytical logic vis-à-vis 2-3-74 but was, instead, engaging in creative speculation—which led to infinite regresses, over and over again. Thus (as I say) he offered as a substitute (1) an agreement on one premise, and then (2) logical deductions from the one agreed-upon premise; he taught me to analyze and not speculate.
And he was (I should remind myself) he who is customarily meant by the term “God,” i.e., the transcendent, loving, wise God of my fathers both (1) wills; and (2) allows—i.e., allows error, i.e., independence to his creatures: free will; and this is logically deducible from his nature (agapē), because he would never infringe on the integrity and autonomy, which is to say the essence, of his creatures; if he only willed and did not allow he would de facto rob them (us) of their (our) einai! So this, too, logically stems from his nature, and my realization of this is not speculation, creative speculation.
My exegesis, then, is both a delusion in which I am trapped and, in addition, a delusion I am creating for others—i.e., in VALIS—but he allows this in order to protect my integrity (einai).*
Thus (to summarize) delusion—super sophisticated Satanic delusion—(i.e., 2-3-74) led to a futile exegesis, a hell-chore (punishment that he allowed Satan to inflict on me)—but: okay. “A chicken is an egg’s way of producing another egg.” Viz: the primary delusion (enchantment) of 2-3-74 led to the further delusion (second delusion) of the futile exegesis; I was totally trapped in Maya, led there by my own original suspicions—ironically!—that what we see is delusion! But: the second delusion—the exegesis—exhausted itself finally (“glint of color, ripple of weeds, in the alley”), whereupon a true and self-authenticating theophany did then occur—and it bore no resemblance to 2-3-74 whatsoever. Obviously, if the God of 11-17-80 were genuine (and as I say this theophany was self-authenticating based on [1] premise; and [2] logical deductions from the premise) then 2-3-74 was something else. Well, it was enchantment and magic; it was a spell; and enchantment magic and spell do not reveal, but, on the contrary, addle the wits; I was (as I say) fed what (1) I would most likely believe, and (2) wanted to believe—a bad combination that does not lead to the truth—i.e., to God.
However, Satan had to generate a reality I’d accept, to reveal a great deal about reality to me. But he took the risk knowing I would confuse it with God. (Which I did.) Basically what he revealed is that my 10 volume meta-novel and its basic acosmism is correct: what we call “reality” is some kind of projected hologram and not real at all. We can be made to see anything and believe anything. Viz: in 2-3-74 I decomposed—desubstantialized “reality,” which is an epistemological victory, but then I completely believed in what I saw instead! I said, “World, which is irreal, and which I suspected all along is irreal, broke down and conceded that it is irreal; so what I see now instead must be real—but it wasn’t—must be that which I define as real: God.” It was not. It was just a more sophisticated delusion. My years of skepticism turned into naïve credulity. “I saw God!” I said for over 6½ years, but in fact I did not. All I really saw was the projection machine and the projection broke down, whereupon it compensated by devising another and better projection—to which I should have said, “Aha—it tricks me further,” but instead I said, “Aha: now I see what is really there: God, immanent God, probably Brahman.” I was not applying logic, deductive logic (e.g., “If it can project first one reality—USA 1974—and then another—‘Acts’—it can project anything”—that “anything” being Valis).
Epistemologically, what I really know is all negatives: that what we see is not real, and that we cannot by our own efforts outwit the projection machinery. It can serve up one thing after another, ever more cunning and psychomorphic (“I am as you desire me”). VALIS is a hodgepodge of superstition and sensational nonsense—and yet “mixed in with the inferior bulk Sophia has inserted—without Satan knowing it—certain truths.” I.e., “We fell into the maze, and the maze is alive; it changes” (thus rendering null and void all speculation as to the real nature [morphology] of the maze, if you think about it). (And this insertion was added after I was done, d
ue to something Pat Warrick suggested!)
Where I started to wise up vis-à-vis 2-3-74 in terms of my exegesis was when I remembered that in the Bardo Thödol trip your own prior thought-formations come back to you as world—which I wrote about in “Frozen Journey” and that was based on ideas of Lem’s!
And the God who revealed himself to me on 11-17-80 is quite different from my own prior thought-formations; he is the orthodox transcendent Judeo-Christian heavenly Father, loving and wise, who allows free-will; this world is an ordeal. But we (all) go to him in the end: he wins all of us—in the dialectic with Satan—eventually—and he knows this, due to his a priori knowledge.
[88:23] December 15, 1980
Valis: Set-ground. Camouflage. Here in the universe. Macrosoma blended into the universe in countless ways, here and there: a glint here, a word on a page, plural objects and their causal processes a ripple of wind in the weeds in the alley. Valis is not the universe but blended into it, as is Ubik. “I am Atman that dwells in the heart of every mortal. I am Vishnu. I am Shiva. Among words I am the sacred syllable OM. I am Himalaya. I am the holy fig tree. Among horses I am . . . of weapons . . . I am the wind . . . the shark among fish: Ganges among the rivers. I am the beginning, the middle and the end of creation . . . I am the knowledge of things spiritual. I am the logic of those who debate. In the alphabet I am A. Among compounds I am the copulative. I am time without end. I am the sustainer. My face is everywhere. I am death that snatches all. I also am the source of all that shall be born. I am glory, prosperity, beautiful speech, memory, intelligence, steadfastness and forgiveness. I am the dice play of the cunning. I am the strength of the strong. I am triumph and perseverance. I am the purity of the good. I am Krishna. I am the sceptre and the mastery of those who rule, the policy of those who seek to conquer. I am the silence of things secret. I am the knowledge of the knower. I am the divine seed of all that lives. In this world nothing animate or inanimate exists without me.”
[88:24] My problem is too much intellect and too little awe and reverence. What I have to realize is that both 2-3-74 and 11-17-80 are self authenticating.
[88:54] But consider the aspect of the ancient in VALIS. In a sense it is so: in a sense it is an illusion. The template was devised a long time ago but it applies to the now; that is the whole point—(1) it is ancient; and (2) it ap plies to the now—this is both the paradox and the revelation: the secret is here: how the ancient can be the now. If you can understand this, you have the answer.
[88:57] God was aware of me; he ratified my einai by his love; he created it. He caused me to be; that is it: (his) agape “causes to be”; this is how you cause to be: by agape and agape alone. Love is a wish that the other, and not-you, exist; love guarantees the existence of what is not under your will—free of your will; this is true creation. He desires that something other than him exist and be itself. We truly are not him. Agape and creating are one and the same. It is not a desire for union; it is a desire to see something be on its own, its own self; each separate self is a universe! A world! God adores you because he adores beauty. Something that exists on its own is beautiful; this is the ultimate beauty, that it be free. “Where, amid the shadowy green, the little ones of the forest come unseen.”80 It is not-God: it [is] not pantheism; the ultimate love: to curtail the ubiquity of the Godhead. Null Ubik is the truth; the solution to the absolute mystery. To not be the universe each reunion is accidental, and a reminder of the source of being: love. Love lets go/forgets. Love curtails itself, withdraws. But if the created separate thing (einai) returns of its own accord—love triumphs over love. Love is love for itself alone, and not for what it can do (create). The prodigal son: if the separate thing desires to return and forfeit its einai, then it must love, too; and the two—God and his creation—are joined; this is absolute bliss, that einai is not enough; the creature longs to return. This is rapture for God, that it wishes this; that, created, it wishes and tries to return, through the maze; it tries so hard. This is his reward. He gave it einai and it voluntarily surrenders einai (Sein!) in favor of nonbeing: i.e., return to its source. It would rather not be that it may be—as well—with him; this causes him to feel absolute bliss. Einai is the most precious gift of all, and it gave it back—to be with him.
[ . . . ]
My sorrow and my pain and my loneliness, paradoxically, increase the net level of agape in the Godhead, because it indicates that I would rather return to him, in preference to being—to possessing einai. Thus, to my surprise, I find that my suffering restores the Godhead and augments it; he knows why I suffer, although I do not. Human sorrow, then, is a source of joy, a means to joy, in which the now sorrowing person will later share. When he returns, as I did in 11-17-80. Sorrow is a means to infinite bliss, its instrument, and we can’t see this until it completes itself. Comes full cycle. To know this is the great secret.
* * *
[88:59] I was reading over the pages on love that I wrote last night; they remind me of Paul. From them I deduce that I did in fact experience the agapē of God: his love that created us as independent creatures—this love deliberately curtailed so that we could go forth with essence, with true autonomous being; love created us. But we are vaguely unhappy—this is all such ecstatic writing, so mysterious. Our suffering increases his love because he knows that we value nonexistence more than this existence because this existence requires us to be independent hence cut off from him; we yearn to retrace our steps and this increases his love and joy, and in us love occurs, love like that that he has; it now occurs in us as well, we whom love gave birth to. Compared with this love, world is nothing, a cinder, dust; for us to feel it in us, and finally if we feel it in us, we feel his love for us once more, the love that created us in the first place. Our own love is an echo of the power, the love, that caused us to be in the first place. I understand from all this that compared with this love—love by him in the first place, then loved by us, then loved by him again, that original love that created us re-experienced—there is nothing, nothing at all. We only find him again when we begin to feel love in us, echoes of the love he felt. He responds, then, with his own love; we did not know, when we suffered, why we suffered. But it gave him joy, because he saw it as a sign of love growing in us echoing his love. This is source for us and it is goal—unremembered as source and unknown as goal. But still felt—felt as suffering. I can’t explain it. It is too mysterious; but love is the origin and love is the goal. There is nothing that compares with it; it is everything. “Love triumphs over love,” I wrote. I don’t know now what that means. Yet I sense that it is correct. God withdraws so as to allow us independent existence, this is his gift and sacrifice, to let us go. And then a time comes when we want to return and abandon independent existence: now we have penetrated the mystery of existence: that non-being with him is preferable to being (Sein) away from him. The great gift of einai is given back voluntarily, renounced “that I might live in him invisible and dim.”81 That says it all.
Love equals non-being, the dissolution of the separated creature.
He feels such joy at our voluntary return, our renouncing of existence; and this joy is shared by us when we find him again. This is the origin of the infinite bliss that I felt: love as source, and return to love once more.
[88:68] December 21, 1980
Very important insight. 3-74 was a massive enantiodromia for which it was responsible. Its purpose: it was put here to regulate hence guide and control human history. (This view is halfway between theology and conspiracy.) This means it is not God but also it is not a—
construct?
Yes, it is a construct. It can be thought of in S-F terms.
The Torah as a construct
One and the same. But what?
=> Ubik
Like: trash Torah.
Hierarchically arranged reality: with it (Valis) as apex (we’re not), and, in addition, it itself arranges; so it is self-generating—it is a UTI and it is not conquering us; it is subord
inating and unifying us hierarchically in terms of the ecosphere—life—of this planet; but this is not God. If anything, it inspires us (rather than limiting us). But it does coordinate us. It is a brain and not a mind. In a peculiarly literal way, we do its thinking for it. The arrangements of our information are not a result of its thinking but are its thinking.
Of this I am certain. Everything about Valis must be made with this discriminatory realization. So it is as if this planet is alive. But this is a perfect description of the Alexandrian-stoic logic: world reason but not God!
It is Christ and he literally is becoming the physical world—by literal transubstantiation, as logos becomes flesh. That’s it: “the word made flesh”! [ . . . ] Yes: Valis is a penetration of the physical (matter as field) by spirit. This is different from pantheism, so physicists will find that reality behaves more and more like Brahman and in Taoism, but this is a dynamic ongoing process, I know! I saw it.
Suddenly I see it all: “The logos became flesh,” and this set off a logos-ization of reality itself, a strategy. No longer was Hagia Sophia outside of creation but at its physical core! It is Christ (if one understands that Christ is the Logos).
[ . . . ]
One thing is certain: Valis is no mere spirit; Valis is physically real.
Christ is here in this world on this side of the grave. Apparently God is not.
Hence we speak of the logos as world reason.
[88:76] Okay, I loved Parsifal in high school—and nothing satisfied me in life thereafter, in comparison. Q: where do you go next from Act III of Parsifal? A: There is only one place, one next step, one answer: to Christ himself.
This is it. Nothing else ever made me happy because nothing else ever logically followed Act III of Parsifal, along any axis—aesthetically, logically, epistemologically, spiritually, topically, etc. I wanted more. There is no more, except in knowing Christ, which means: to have him born in you—hence the nativity; it’s all modeled on the “Good Friday spell,” part of Act III. I knew what I wanted at 15 years old: the next step after “the Good Friday spell.” And I knew what that is, and, finally, I found it, (2-3-74) and I have it yet. But I found, then, the next step, unsuspected: 11-17-80. From the Son as gate I made my way to the Father!