Parsifal deals with the Son, it is penultimate, which I did not suspect. From salvation, blood and the cross to—agapē. From this world (2-3-74, the crucifixion) to the next (the Father and his love, not world).
The blood and the cross are the highest point of this world (2-3-74). Then tears—“of the repentant sinner”—turn to agapē, as in Tears; the tears has to do with sin and atonement and Christ and the cross. But all this (sorrow) is a gate to: love (v. Tears!). And love (agapē) equals ecstasy; so tears of sorrow—the cross—are converted into the opposite: joy. Through agapē, this is the goal and mystery of Christianity, this conversion: utter sorrow (Mitleid) to bliss (agapē).
This is “pity’s highest power,” it leads to bliss since agapē links pity (compassion) to joy—compassion becomes or even is (!!) agapē, and agapē ushers in joy because it (starting as Mitleid) ends up in God, since agapē is his einai.
So compassion (Mitleid) is the road from this world to God; hence the crucifixion and the feelings engendered lead to God the Father because of the common element of agapē: this is the miraculous healing of Amfortas’ wound.
You cannot feel Mitleid without feeling agapē, and you cannot feel agapē without entering into and sharing God’s esse.
This is what happens at the ending of Tears, based on my experience in ’70, of sorrow becoming compassion becoming love, and, in 3-74, joy; and in 11-17-80 reaching God and his pure agapē nature.
Somehow my action vis-à-vis Covenant House fits into this sorrow-compassion-agapē-joy-God sequence.82 So it’s all based on my earlier sorrows, circa 1970! When I was writing Tears!
Compassion (Mitleid) is a blend of sorrow and love. Thus it is the nexus between sorrow and joy—joy entering because love leads to God. So I now know what “Mitleids Hichteit Macht”83 refers to. Sorrow to compassion to agapē to God to bliss. The way of the cross now makes sense to me. I understand why Jesus had to die and in the way he did, if he was to be a gate (way) to the Father.
The transfiguration in me occurred when I had the dream: punishment (death) exacted on Peterson as justice for what he had done (the fallow law).84 But, seeing this (the OT) I felt compassion (which I experienced as sorrow). This took me from the era of justice to the era of mercy, and out from under the law of justice in my own case; it also led me eventually to God through Christ. The old king in the dream is YHWH and the OT, exacting justice; but, through compassion (Mitleid) I opted for the NT in place of the law, I mean agapē and that God, or that era, maybe: 3rd Torah.* So mercy was later (3-74) applied to my case. But it took the dream to convert my sorrow to Mitleid—upon seeing the sentence of justice imposed: death.
Without the dream my sorrow (at the loss of Nancy) would have stayed simply sorrow; and the dream was based on the rat experience, which roused vast compassion in me and was the root moksa/religious experience! And it, in turn, was based on the beetle incident when I was in the 4th grade! And in the ’60s the Galapagos turtle compassion. At which point the AI voice spoke to me! So my whole development was guided along over the decades since childhood. The first episode was my throwing the cat down the stairs—and feeling sorrow for it. “The slayer sees himself in what he slays”: tat tvam asi.
[88:79] That 2-3-74 and 11-17-80 were genuine I cannot now doubt, having perceived this life history (of progressive moksa) of stages of loss of striving and self (the two are the same). Both Christianity and Buddhism—Brahmanism leads to the same goal, because both are based on compassion. (For India this means the loss of self; for the Christian it means experiencing agape hence God, since agape is his nature.) Hence I can now link Christianity with pan-Indian thought through the “slayer and the slain” compassion-identification; this is one road and it does lead to release. It leads specifically to the perception of reality as one total sentient field, i.e., Valis (Brahman or the cosmic Christ) of which you are a part. So Valis is Brahman, but also yourself and also—hence—Christ, since your self now has given birth to the Godhead, i.e., Christos in you. [ . . . ] Thus my entire life led up to 3-74 and seeing Valis, and this in turn led logically to 11-17-80: Christian nirvana. To meeting God (the Christian God of love; viz: 3-74 was Brahman, i.e., Eastern; 11-17-80 was Western and Christian; both are true, and both are reached by the one route of compassion). So 3-74 rep resented the final extinction of my individual self and a return to Brahman (God) and it is the culmination of a lifetime of moksa—compassion experiences that finally released me from karma and Maya; and I saw the God-field.
I was led along this route (journey) by God. From moksa to moksa. And it’s all in VR, in the dying dog in the ditch and Emmanuel’s anamnesis and recovery of his true identity.
Folder 8585
[85:59] Dream: page of typed final draft of core of exegesis; I pull out page, in center a white, blank circle. No inked impression was made; only the top, bottom and sides are typed:
What does that signify? Take as an example the coffee filter, which is a 2-dimensional object; when folded, it becomes 3-dimensional. To be folded there must be a void into which it is folded. Is the message of the dream that there exists non-existent reality (“non-is”) into which the three-dimensional object must be folded—this non-is void must be for three dimensions to become 4, thus making time “available” (past, present and future superimposed in a newness)?
Then the intellectual leap I am not making, through fear, is to add the dimension (or realm) of not-is, and describe its characteristics (“the properties of the nonexistent universe”). I must dare to depict the core of is (Being) as a more real real than the is: viz: the is-not. The is-not is more real than the is, which (as I’ve realized for 22 years) is a spurious dokos. The authentic reality beneath or behind it is the world of what is not—does not merely fail to be, but must not be, in order that it provide a real core to the universe. The is-not has properties, which must be elucidated. Is this the domain of Yin? The Attic Greek space as receptacle of being? Space, not time? Space is real, and the matter partially filling it is not (as real or even real at all). God = void. God = absolute being. Void = absolute being.
“I hope for his sake God does not exist.” Restated: “I hope for our sake God does not exist, because only if he does not exist can he rule (steer) the cosmos.” Such early Christian mystics as Erigena described God as “the waste[land] and the void,” and thus so did I myself experience him. Was not that an experience with non-being? Existence is a decayed state of reality; that which is has decayed from that which is not. As soon as something is created it has fallen (away from the actuality state of nonbeing).
Or is all Being merely the periphery of the core which non-being constitutes? To understand this we must elucidate and define the properties of that which is not.
[85:63] If you believe in the Christian universe—really believe—a miracle (truly) occurs: that much vaster, much richer universe with the many el ements with which it is populated replaces the regular smaller universe. How can this be? [ . . . ]
This precisely is the mystery: a conceptual framework is built; this is Christianity. (I believe this; I believe that. These are doctrines. They are ideas in the mind. Whose mind? My mind. They are a system of notions entertained by me, that Christ lived, that he died, that he rose from the dead, that he ascended to heaven, that he was—etc.) What is the relationship between these doctrines and reality? Are they derived from reality? They are not derived from experience. They are held on faith (pistis). What does “faith” mean? Simply that the ideas cannot be verified.
Then they become a vast, rich universe. How do ideas or doctrines, any ideas or doctrines, become a universe?
Perhaps they are about (concerning) a universe, a report about it, a description. I do not think so; I think the body of doctrines, the assembly of ideas, becomes a universe, suddenly.
We paint a sign reading SOFT DRINK STAND. This is a verbal message, information, a sentence.
It becomes a soft drink stand. Information has turned into a world.
Now, I note again and again that 2-3-74 consisted of (was composed of or derived from or related to) my writing. My writing is words, messages, information, ideas, concepts. In 2-3-74 they seem to have become a universe. They became true, but not as true statements; as reality. Originally I thought X and wrote it down and then in 2-3-74 I was in X as world. This means that I must have been in a mind thinking these ideas in such a way that the ideas were transformed into world. Wittgenstein came to the conclusion that a thought is an inner picture serving as analog of an outer thing or event. If he is right, an idea even in the human mind is not words but a Bildnis.86 Suppose you were contained in that mind; would its thoughts not then be images (pictures) and to you real?
Information into reality; reality into information. Each is a form of the other—but a mind is needed in which the information forms into a picture (Bildnis) and hence reality.
This is what Philo meant to convey with his doctrine of the logos. A mind larger than the universe in which ideas or information become pictures become reality. The information is not a description (derived analog) of reality; rather, reality comes into existence as the result of the existence of ideas (proving Wittgenstein right).
Then I suppose that in 2-3-74 I was within the logos (which is the same as the cosmic Christ). So ideas which existed in my own micro mind became (due to the logos) reality for me, external and macro, as the logos mirrored my thoughts (hermetic micro-macrocosm correspondence).
I am led to the conclusion that in some way that I do not understand my mind—I—was logos-ized, projected into a realm or state of being where I encountered my own prior thought formations as actual reality which were mirror images in a macromind of my own micro mind, as if everything that took place in my mind had a counterpart in the macromind, a sympathetic resonance as if by natural law, a law of correspondences. Enormous spaces extended in which my own prior thought formations took actual shape, and were animated, as if thinking as well is being: definitely still thoughts as well as objects.
My ideas (prior concepts) existed in space! As objects in vast reaches of space, space more extensive than any space I had ever seen before; and it was space within me and outside me both!
[85:91]
* * *
The apostolic age Christians declared in their writing that their secret was that they had overcome physical death. How had they done this? A: once what they had called the “Holy Spirit” had descended on them, each of them could travel up the gene pool line, through the generations, into the past (anamnesis) or future, like a snake crawling up a garden hose with thousands of holes punched in the hose, to emerge anywhere (i.e., at any time and place) the person wanted. Thus “Thomas,” who entered the “hose” in Rome c. A.D. 70, emerged in Fullerton, 1974. The clue is the Watson & Crick model of the DNA molecule, which the early Christians pretended was a fish symbol. But what was that which they called the “Holy Spirit”? Christ said it came as a second advocate from God himself. In some way not understood, Christ and the Holy Spirit were identical. They represent the Master Circuit and possess its wisdom.
Fomalhaut.87 Whale’s mouth. Fish. ??? Constellation pisces.
How could the early Christians have known about Crick and Watson’s double helix? Answer: (1) through the “Holy Spirit,” whatever that is; or (2) because they are time travelers, can go back and forth through time. The Holy Spirit: from Fomalhaut?
Tremens factus sum ego et timeo. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. Libera me, Domine, in die illa.88 No wonder they waited almost 4 years before letting me understand about Thomas, who he is/was, where/when he came from and how. The double helix, back in 70 A.D. Scratched in the dust with a bare toe.
Right brain hemisphere: music, not words. In close encounters of the third kind: musical tones. Humpback whale songs. Brian Eno’s random (self generated) music. Disinhibiting signals? If this is so—zebra is here. Zebra, a Vast Active Living Intelligence System stretches between star systems; it mimics our reality, and modulates (manipulates) it, without us seeing it. Corpus Christi? Thomas was Zebra inside me. The Holy Spirit is Christ inside you. “St. Sophia will be born again; she was not acceptable before.” The time has come. “And when I returned I shall be like the lightning,” i.e., I shall be ubiquitous, everywhere at once. Ubik. Logos. The micro-template for output terminal of the total entity. Puzzle: we are inside it, and it is inside us. The macro within the micro! Our intellect cannot comprehend this; it violates our physics, our logic. How can the macro be smaller than the micro? “Behold! I tell you a mystery,” etc. We are asleep, but waking up. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye . . . and then shall come to pass the saying which is written, ‘Oh death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?’ ”89 My dream about the crystal (stinging and dangerous killer) bees killed by the white-falling layer of snow. Death—the sting of death. Death itself killed; death itself shall die. The miracle promised has, in linear time, at last come.
PART FOUR
Folder 89
January–April 1981
[89:11] January 3, 1981
The incident of the pink light and the info about Chrissy differed from normal daily reality only in this regard: I was consciously aware of it; we must subliminally pick it up, like my engramming on the fish (teeth) necklace.
Evolution-wise we must be like the apes in 2001; we are on the lip-edge of evolving to where we’ll see Valis/the plasmate. It’s like Close Encounters at the end. A life form, sacred and beautiful, right here. An information life form. It is what it says; it doesn’t have Logos; it is Logos. Its body is its own information.
There. This is why it takes the form of physical arrangements into info. This life form is that. Damn it, it’s a life form that doesn’t use info; it is info.*
Time turns literally to space: both another (fourth) spatial dimension but we see this imperfectly as augmented 3-D (space). This is why the past doesn’t perish in the MMSK, why when something goes into it—is incorporated into it—it is permanent. The past is still there—this is the essence of the MMSK, to preserve the past (as what I call reticulated phylogons).
The MMSK exists in 4 spatial dimensions and is physically right here; our 3-D world is it, imperfectly seen. Hence we can’t discriminate (live info) set to ground. The next step in human evolution will gain this as-it-were ultra-parallaxis. As we previously added color. [ . . . ]
My God the truth (true explanation) is quite simple: I saw in 4-D and saw a living info life form here. Why, it extends along the temporal axis as a spatial axis; hence my Bible-into-hologram in Divine Invasion. And seeing King Felix. The various physical-depth levels in Tears. Time as space. [ . . . ]
This is more than religion. And more than science (e.g., physics) and more than epistemology, yet all of them. It has to do with human evolution, i.e., the human percept system. This evolution was visually symbolized in my dreams by the 3rd—or ajna—eye. It sees time as space. [ . . . ]
So it started as a cognitive leap, leading to a percept-system leap: the meta-abstracting began it, in 2-74. And that led to the phosphene graphics, my first vision of the 4th spatial axis, or my 3rd eye coming on. I was seeing back through the ages when I saw the phosphene graphics; in Ubik I theoretically postulated that each eidos contains all its previous form-manifestations, which Patrice pointed out was a major philosophical breakthrough.
Like I say, I am in a world where other people still say, “One apple plus one apple equals two apples,” and I say, “One plus one equals two.” My meta-abstracting caused meta-perception at once—well, very soon the “3rd eye” organ came on.
Repeat: there is no theory, account or explanation of this in antiquity; this is a new, evolutionary leap in (1) meta-cognition, followed by (2) meta-perception of world. VALIS, alas, is told from a two-eyed standpoint (about a three-eyed reality). “Christ, the Logos, invading the plasmate, Valis, transubstantiation,” etc., are all 2-eyed terms dealing with a 3-eyed reality. So
meone else will later have to figure out what happened. But I got the clues from reading over the first half of VALIS tonight.
Where I have been right is: to have treated 2-3-74 as titanically important and to have toiled for almost 7 years to figure out what the fuck happened, and, as a result, what it was I saw. My big breakthrough was in October ’80 when I realized about the cognitive meta-abstracting (of spatiotemporality). Only then did I begin to get it, as I can fathom now, today, at last. But the clues are there in VALIS which is a case history of the next evolutionary step in thinking-perceiving. [ . . . ]
Goddam it, it is the eye of the God denied us. It opened for me, as it did for the Buddha, but I give (at least as of today) an adequate—i.e., contemporary—explanation. It is the Dibba Cakkhu experience; it did happen to Gautama. This is “waking up”! Enlightenment. Transtemporal equals trans (4th) spatial. I should not have written religious and occult stuff into VALIS; that’s 2-eyed thinking about a 3-eyed experience. However, Plato did help critically with his anamnesis theory. Because my “3rd eye” scoped out the past I falsely believed that the explanation lay in the past; I knew the world of 2,000 years ago was involved. It was: as what I saw (spatially), but the answer is not in the past but, rather, concerns the past. VALIS not only (1) lacks this, the correct explanation, but, more (2) is cluttered with specious speculating. Oh well—there is enough correct reportage to make it of some use to future evolved humans. [ . . . ]