[90:25] And this is what I discovered from 2-74 to 2-75; the Garden is located here, as if on another frequency. [ . . . ]
[90:26] Christ and causation are, then, at war; here is another form, perhaps the ultimate form, of the dialectic; the wise horn is Yang; the wise horn is better; the wise horn is selected; the wise horn is, in essence, Christ himself penetrating the mechanism. But have I not said, isn’t it very possible that nothing has changed but our perception? Reality per se, in itself, is constant; only our experience of it changes. So all we need to do to get back into the Garden is to perceive the Garden. Yet we are incapable of doing this. In what sense, if any, can Christ be distinguished from our perception of reality-as-it-is? There is a dreadful circularity here; if we could experience the Garden we would be saved, but in fact we can’t experience it so we are not saved. Something from outside must enter to remove the occlusion and this is Christ.
It resembles what Heraclitus said about the necessity of discerning true reality by a process something like guessing a riddle or translating from a foreign language into one’s own; that although men have the capacity to do so, they do not. This week I was, that one afternoon, back in the world of space; I don’t know how I did it . . . and then I was back here under the power of tyrannical, destructive time once more. And I don’t know how that happened either. Someone must teach us how to do this or else do it for us. I who know about the Kingdom, who knows it is right here—even I can’t find my way (back) to it. Yet my “binary” model of the universe apparently calls for it, specifies its existence. It must be, it must truly be, that Christ does not in fact penetrate—invade—the workings of the universe but, rather, invades our perception of the workings of the universe, the in ner representation that the Cartesians showed we experience as world; this (as I said before) is Christ as Christ consciousness: the occlusion is not lifted from the world—it was never in world—but from us: it is in us. In my recent dream the spinner, the little boy, went blind; the sun itself did not go out; it was still shining but he could not see it. He “lost his vision.” This says it all. Even with a thick magnifying glass he could no longer see the sun, shining as it still was.
[90:6A] I can’t help believing that the brief return of that Other World last week, that other way of being-in-world that I associate with 2-74 to 2-75, what I call the Palm Tree Garden, or as I now term it, the spatial realm, is connected with this being Easter week (or it was; today is Easter Sunday, so it was last week). That entire week is holy to the Christian; it begins with Palm Sunday which reperforms Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. And I had just about time—literally exactly at that time—worked out—upon rereading “Chains . . . Web” an extraordinary analysis of the Christian solution to hostile world expressed as fate: the cessation of evasion and flight, the entry into a purely spatial realm of the absolute now, which I connect with Heidegger’s authentic being (Sein), a totally different Dasein that frees the person; and from this I worked my revolutionary model of the binary switching system that I now conceive reality to be. [ . . . ]
At the time that I found myself back in the purely spatial realm, I supposed that it was because I had upped my dosage of Sinequan, but that is absolutely not likely. Let us consider the exact circumstances. It was Tuesday, the day the space shuttle returned. The night before, Monday night, something strange happened to me; I burned out. I could not think in complete sentences; I’d begin a sentence of thought and it would end in the middle. It was as if I’d used up all my thoughts, as if there are only a finite number and I had come to the last one; there literally were no more left in me. I had to go to bed early—which was fine, because then Tuesday I was able readily to arise early to watch the shuttle’s safe return. Now, this absolutely total exhaustion of thoughts in me somehow seems to me related to the phosphene graphics trip; the common factor is the using up of time, a running out of time—i.e., process. I had, as in 1974, come to the end in some real and perhaps even ontological sense; mentally I had in fact died. Yet the next day I found myself in the magic spatial world of total freedom, a world of infinite extension. What I am saying is that this year, 1981, I relived, although to a lesser degree, the series of experiences of 1974—relived them during holy week (from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday). It was during this period that my stupendous conception of the binary switching system came to me. I remember that I had said to Jeanette at Brentwood that—O Dio—“I have lost my artistic vision”—the dream about the child, the spinner, going blind! This represented spiritual death, and a logic to Christ’s passion and crucifixion! And then rebirth occurred. And again, as in 1974 (this is really incredible, simply incredible) I got a terrifying letter that caused me to phone the FBI. So here are the themes of holy week: suffering (exhaustion) and death, and then rebirth; “rebirth” expressed for me in the form of the return of my vision—and not just return but resurrection in the sense that I was able to complete it, which I felt I had never before been able to do. [ . . . ] I relived—reperformed—the passion, death and resurrection, then, without intending to or even realizing that is indeed what was happening.
Several aspects point to this as genuine. (1) The mental and spiritual exhaustion I experienced on Monday night was unique; I remember telling Doris that I had only undergone something like it due to drug abuse. It was, then, qualitatively different from mere fatigue, even enormous fatigue. It ended in a clear and evident death. (2) The Spinner dream which anticipated this very event, the “loss of vision” by the Spinner (i.e., Spinner as writer; he can no longer narrate). (3) The murderous letter. (4) The brief period on Tuesday in the spatial realm that I had only a little while before (a few days) figured out was essentially connected with Christianity. (5) The sudden, unexpected and unprecedented completion of my artistic vision on Wednesday night, the night of the day the letter came; this, too, was not a quantitative event; it was ontologically different from anything I had ever experienced before (like the dying of my vision Monday night); and: it was based on revelation of the forking and the tentative zero firing, a sleep revelation. So I suffered and died, but after I died I was resurrected in terms of my world—the spatial world—and in terms of my vision: my binary switching model of the universe, which I have later recognized as a model of the restored universe, restored by Christ; and I even identify this Dasein, this worldview, as “Christ consciousness”!
[90:13A] This is a very different view of deity than has ever been put forth before (except perhaps by Jacob Boehme). For example, do these zero branchings add up to long chains of provisional realities, realities—perhaps even whole worlds or versions of worlds—subject to later retroactive annulment? And if so, do we encounter them, which is to say, do we live in them but then forget it, our memory being canceled out along with the worlds themselves? I conceive of the system switching on, off, on, off, the “off” consisting of what I call the zero phase of the binary flicker; I also say that it is during these off or 0 phases that the system does its thinking. What else goes on at the same time, if anything? Is there a sort of parity counter world to our own, perhaps invested with some kind of semi-reality that holds up only so long as the system takes to make up its mind and decide? Oddly, interestingly, this all seems to correspond with the doubts and premises of my ten-volume meta-novel: “Realities are subject to cancellation without notice” and, moreover, were not truly real in the first place (examples of this in my writing are legion). More interesting to me, however, is the existential aspect to this, which means deity and how deity acts, that in fact deity in this model is conceived in terms of its choosing, rejecting, choosing again, and if this choosing is its essence, then we have a whole new idea of the einai of God: an existential idea: it is what it does, and what it does is perpetually choose (Whitehead’s principle of selection of the good in the world-process).
[90:16A] In fact now it is possible to assert a single premise generating all my various preoccupations with what is real, what isn’t, etc., my entire body of epistemological doubts:
I know that there really is such a thing as tentative or provisional reality, and it can be canceled in such a way that in a certain sense it never was there in the first place.
[90:E-8] Ghastly dream [ . . . ] A family on an old farm. The children are (called) “the Spinners.” The very ground itself is contaminated, poisoned, with (heavy) metals, so the children, “the Spinners,” are becoming blind. A little boy peers through a thick magnifying glass at the sun; he can barely see it. Soon he will be completely blind.
Interpretation: the Spinners are immortals who came here and were poisoned (heavy metal) and lost what I call “the third eye” (represented by the magnifying glass). The sun is Christ. Thus they, we, can no longer read the sacred writing (of Scripture): “the light went out” (divine revelation) not because God stopped sending it but because we have gone blind to it. Somehow I regained my sight in 3-74 and could read the sacred Scriptures in/as Tears. Therefore “the Spinners” can no longer see the thread of Ariadne (or weave it as explanation, revelation) leading out of the maze.
[90:E-11] When I believe, I am crazy.
When I don’t believe, I suffer psychotic depression. I oscillate between intoxication (mania) and melancholia. I think, now, that my dream about the child going blind and no longer able to see the sun symbolized my losing my vision (sic): i.e., of Christ, Dionysus, Wotan, YHWH, because it is all gone; it seems mere mad fancy, like believing you might see Mr. Toad sculling a little boat down the stream. I can’t live without my vision but my vision is self-delusion.
[90:F-11] What I have been doing these seven years is philosophical inquiry in the old sense, that of the pre-Socratics. Before science and philosophy parted company. I’m not sure my issues are in fact metaphysical. What confronted me in 2-3-74 was “a perturbation in the reality field.” That is, reality behaving in an inexplicable way which no known theory could explain or account for. How does this seven years of study and analysis differ from scientific research? This has not been a game. Something I witnessed puzzled me and I set out to understand it. When I did finally understand it, I found that my questions went all the way back to the 40s. And I have not been the first to raise the question. If the traditional, fully accepted theories of causation were true, the “perturbation” that I saw could not have occurred. This is the bottom line. How do I differ from Einstein vis-à-vis Newtonian mechanics! It was a perturbation in the reality field in the sense that something more than the forces we know of was visibly at work. The problem is real. Then I took it to be so.
[90:F-19] All these seven years I’ve feared I was nuts (hence H. Fat is so described). Especially I’ve been nervous about quoting the AI voice; after all, I’m hearing voices. I think now I believe. I knew that binary switching model was correct as soon as it came to me.
[90:G-43] I just realized I had an amazing dream. I—or the character—was deprived of world totally. At once he—his own mind—filled in the sensory vacuum with a spurious autogenerated world, so he wouldn’t go crazy. Next thing, he took this world to be real; the closer he scrutinized it, due to the fact that he as percipient was in fact generating it, the more actualized, detailed and convincing it became, because his perception of it was (in a certain real way) his production of it; hence the more intense scrutiny and more actualized, articulated and convincing it became as it moved toward perfection (of actualization) as a limit, the more it compelled his assent. Put another way, the less he realized—would tend to realize on the basis of his empirical observations that (1) it was spurious; and (2) he himself was its creator. However, under such circumstances, to overcome this positive feedback self-authenticating hoax-involvement, a clock-timed tape in his mind—or accessible to his mind; e.g., speaking directly into his ear or inner ear—was set in advance to speak to him at regular intervals reminders of the truth, and his true situation. The tape was plugged into RET,13 but since part of his spurious autogenerated world was fake time—an integral aspect of spurious world generated out of total sensory deprivation—these reminders, these messages from the real world, came to him (in terms of his own subjective time) at increasingly farther apart (i.e., longer) intervals and thus failed to serve their purpose (anamnesis involving the knowledge that his world is spurious, and no amount of scrutiny on his part will correct this, inasmuch as the harder he scrutinizes it, the more convincing it will become). What he faces as a dual limit is an infinitely convincing (but actually fake and self-generated) dream world “existing” for an infinite time. (Which, it occurs to me, may explain “He causes things to look different so it’d appear time has passed.”)
My analysis is this: he, whoever “he” is, has gotten himself into this very fix and has therefore fallen under the spell of an ever more convincing and ever more extensive in time fake world that he himself is generating; he, world and time are in a closed loop, a closed system; moreover, it is equally clear to me that this (dream) is the true explanation—and reveals the true significance of 2-3-74 at which place I (“he”) (1) remembered and then (2) as a result temporarily broke out of the closed loop self reinforcing fake world and fake time. [ . . . ]
What I am saying is that this dream states that I myself am the mind I know as Valis, I generate the info (they are my own thoughts and ideas; viz: as I once previously speculated, I got into my own world producing mental machinery) and, what is more, what I call “the binary computer” is a vision of my own mind as world creator; I think (as binary computer), and these thoughts are the information that I am compelled to give assent to as world (which is why to some extent we control our own world, it adjusts to our perceptions of it—of course it does; this is a closed feedback loop literally pouring back into itself to reinforce itself—and “we are selves in a brain that both makes and perceives reality”). Then several people (e.g., Gregg Rickman) are right in saying that when I experienced Valis I was experiencing my own (unconscious) mind. But they failed to note that that makes me Cosmocrator!
[90:G-49] Valis in me was my own mind, was God but fallen God, forgetful, unintentional, cosmogenitor of world.* The “binary switching com puter” that generates “info that we hypostatize as world” is my own mind creating irreal imprisoning worlds for me (as if VALIS and “Frozen Journey” were superimposed).
[90:G-53] The dream of last night (supra) shows that I am hopelessly trapped, because the harder and longer I scrutinize “world” the more articulated, detailed, convincing and “real” it becomes, with infinitely real as a limit, and, worse, an infinitude of spurious time is a limit; it will go on forever, all the while gaining progressively greater power over me—and yet I am its author!
[90:130:G-75] Therefore I deem it correct to say that yes I have been correct in saying (as I have periodically) that 3-74 represented the lifting of an occlusion from me so that I saw reality either more accurately or (if this is possible) “as it really is”—this owing to me suddenly facing reality for the first time (v. supra). What was presented to me was an inscrutable picture of what resembled living information, a unitary field, pre-synchronized self-initiating transformations, rest-motion modes, etc., all that I endlessly dilate on. The upshot being that (1) I could not figure out what I was seeing and (2) I could not communicate what I had seen. Herein with these two points lies the difficulty. All that I could fathom was that the conventional picture that we normally get—and seem to share—is not in fact what is there; what is there is not even in time or space, nor is causation involved. There seems to be a mind and we are in it—but even now after seven years of mulling it over I am baffled as ever. Hence the utility of this perception is (at least at this time) dubious. Out of this experience with the inscrutable and inexplicable I formulate at last the notion that the compulsion exerted on us to see the representation as (1) absolutely real and (2) totally comprehensible is a gift, an essential gift. This deals with more than my 3-74 perception, it deals with my whole adult life as expressed in my 10-volume meta-novel. What I saw in 3-74 I regard as absolutely real (so there is no problem ther
e) but it was unintelligible—whereas all that came prior to it was intelligible but lacking in respect to seeming absolutely real. One is moved to ponder which is better—or for that matter worse—of the two choices: to see, understand and not believe, or to see, not understand and yet believe—obviously something drastic is wrong with both. In fact both—each in its own way—smacks of psychotic apperception of world. The former (coherent but unconvincing) is fucked; the latter (unintelligi ble but carrying the force of absolute truth) equally so. Surely both represent mental dysfunctions in me. All I can do at this point is abandon the field and say that belief in and understanding of should go hand-in-hand, and if they part company something is wrong. From this I erect the following premise: that God sees to it that we both comprehend (i.e., what we experience is to us intelligible) and believe (it carries the force of the absolute). Obviously something went wrong in me years ago. And when in 3-74 the compensatory correction came it ushered in a whole new host of troubles, giving me even more to do, philosophically speaking. Thus God gives us multiple gifts: a world, first of all, one that we can understand and also experience as real—so real, in fact, that it was not until the time of Descartes that the representation problem was even discerned (it has never been fully answered).