[79:I-110] Tug. Valence the way. Influence on the reality field: “perturbation”; this is a modern expression for the way.
I have unified Kantian Cartesianism and Taoism: the sentient tug on reality (“the reality field”) by that which is not:
The way is yielding yet leads. It is gentle but cannot be resisted.
Valis (my one—sole—glimpse of the action of the absolute on the reality field “a perturbation of the reality field”) was a tug, a valence away from plumb. This is the Ch’ang Tao which is outside reality acting on reality. I saw the absolute as a tug (perturbation) acting on reality (and I comprehended the dialectic) and this is Taoism. The Tao is impersonal but “heaven is on the side of the good man” and “heaven fills up the empty.”
[79:I-113] The key is this: the Commedia successfully captures the Medieval world view of vertical—or Gothic—space: rising. This coupled with a transcendental Platonism is the essence of the matter, the hierarchically arranged realms. What I need to do is study a modern person who has no literary contact with the medieval “vertical space” (as does Angel Archer) and trace that person rising through the triune realms from say his high school years to his first marriage, divorce. Without ever referring to the Middle Ages or Dante I will show him rising analogically to Julien Sorel’s rise in society in terms of wealth and influence; this however, is spiritual rising, through the vertical realms, in Berkeley in the 40s and 50s. (?) And then (perhaps) a crisis, disaster and Fall. (Why? Why not just have it as in Dante?) Successive levels of spiritual enlightenment: “the Commedia revisited” with no theology. All merely secular: aesthetics, politics, his job. Au tobiographical, a spiritual search. (For what? “The right woman”? Like Janet?) Never will there be any explicit reference to the Commedia and the Middle Ages, and to spiritual ascent, but that is in fact the topic: Christian enlightenment. Culminating in contact (somehow) with Christ or Christ-consciousness, but never identified as such.
Best method: fairly short time period (e.g., 1948-1951). Unity of time and space. From last year in high school to first job to marriage to divorce.
Folder 80
June 1981
( Editor’s note: Dick had finished his new novel, which he called “Bishop Timothy Archer” [or BTA]; it would later be published as The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.)
[80:I-115] The “Archer” book: jumping-off point:
Store, and the employees
Homosexuals
Berkeley Avant-Garde: Literature/Poets
CP-USA
Dixieland Jazz—music in general
S-F (Tony Boucher)
The character is on a spiritual quest in the sense of Dante led by Virgil and Beatrice but does not know it (in these terms): Binswanger’s 3 realms (Heidegger—none of this ever mentioned).23
Psychology—therapy—Jung
Oriental thought—Alan Watts—KPFA
The University
To repeat: the underlying (“latent”) structure is Medieval vertical space, but the setting is modern purely: time, horizontal, secular. The former shows through as does the mythic substructure in Joyce’s Ulysses.
Crucial experiences (moksa/satori)
Qualitative leaps of understanding. Cumulative.
FBI
What supplies the vertical factor is that these epiphanies/moksas/satoris are (1) cumulative and (2) one-way; once you make each leap you never fall back. Their Commedia spiritual nature can be concealed by having the character be youthful and growing. These seem to be normal growth-stages: first job, first marriage, etc.
Analysis: the ostensible horizontal axis of linear time (as receptacle of being) conceals a latent vertical axis of space (as receptacle of being), because the spiritual insights (not recognized as such) are cumulative and one-way, rather than merely successive. Hence beneath or within the modern horizontal linear time sequential realm lies hidden the medieval spiritual vertical spatial cumulative realm as the true way-of-being-in-the-world, unrecognized even by the person as he ascends.
This is the basis of the novel (proposed): its twin structures: one ostensible, material, sequential, linear, temporal—the real one latent, vertical, cumulative, spiritual and spatial, in fact medieval. Only the motion along the vertical axis has real significance, and this motion is concealed, not deliberately sought; the cumulative satoris are as if given to the person (protagonist) by an invisible but distinct agency (entity) who becomes progressively more and more palpable to him starting from zero palpability. It is essential that this not be framed in theological terms. (Then what? Comprehension? Moral, having to do with choice? Freedom? Autonomy? Self awareness [e.g., clarity of idea of his goals/values]? How he ranks the worth of different things? I’m sure this can be done without any reference to religion. Love?)
The horizontal advances are sought-after and achieved consciously and explicitly. But he does not even know of the “Medieval” vertical scale, hence does not seek to climb; hence on this scale his advances are more encounters, rather than achievements, since he does not knowingly pursue them; yet this is the real scale (the two directions being orthogonal to each other).
Assuming that, unknown to us, the Medieval vertical axis exists, you could stumble (as it were) onto an extreme ascent—leap plateau unintentionally: advance vertically very simply (along an axis you did not know existed); this could be 2-3-74, a latter quantum jump along an orthogonal axis I had moved in fits and starts along previously. Hence 2-3-74 can only be explained in terms of this specifically medieval vertical axis.
In reading over these supra pages I discern a terribly moving notion: that some agency leads you along this vertical axis—leads you invisibly—and where it leads you is to itself; it is both means (what moves you) and goal (what it leads you to); moreover, with each quantum leap up, you form a clearer notion of this agency, beginning with no realization of its existence at all. There you become aware that it exists. (This explains why motion in this axis is cumulative and one-way, irreversible; because you are being led, and this agency cannot err.) Finally you begin to gain some conception of it beyond that it exists to what it is like (i.e., its nature), and ultimately it will lead you to it (and this itself is a crucial realization: that it is leading you to itself as the goal).
[80:I-122] This of course is what I experienced in 3-74 as Valis’ mind in my own (and in fact as my own) (myself as intelligible function of the Divine Mind: one function in an infinitude). To know oneself as pure idea, and that idea conceived by the divine mind—this idea, being intelligible, comprehends itself as it is known to and by God. One can see this self-comprehension at work in the “Bishop Archer” book as Angel Archer comprehends herself as pure idea in relation to the ground-of-being: and is aware that she is impaired and yet real. This is not an “infinity of mirrors” regress, quite the contrary! There is such unimpaired self-perception that it is evident that the capacity of this mind for correct observation even of itself is total. This is the epitome of rationality. Angel totally knows herself and thus is: and without qualification; thus in Heidegger’s language she possesses authentic realized sein. Her actions are based on this authentic sein. This is not a languid, morbid, intellectual self-preoccupation, but, rather, a pitiless light of the soul alone with itself, without cover or pretense or deception. This is not the ego becoming boundless; she sees when she ends.
Interestingly, in the final scene of the novel she designates her “serious mistakes” “that she has made” not as/in failing to go with Tim to Israel but, rather, in standing idle, saying nothing, when Tim and Kristen believed that Jeff had come back; and “because of this they are now dead,” and Angel is right: this was indeed her error; and she says she doesn’t plan to repeat this mistake (vis-à-vis Bill). You’d expect her to designate her failure to go to Israel as her error and had she done so she would have been wrong (for this reason: regarding Jeff she knew better, but regarding Israel she did not and could not).
[80:I-124] The 3 realms of the Commedia a
re based on a single matrix, like the 3 aeons of the Torah. This is a basis of an S-F novel. The vertical axis.
Use “Frozen Journey” as the paradigm: the same memories return in 3 distinct forms—modes. Entropy. Equate with mental illness. Vitiation of the signal; it suffers a degrading. (1) Freedom (soaring). (2) Duty (voluntary restraint: stoicism). (3) Compulsion: thrall. BIP. Progressive decay. Binswanger’s 3 Realms: (1) ecstatic, (2) rational, (3) anankastic.
1: Yang. 2: Yang/Yin (balance). 3: Yin (immortal cause-and-effect).
1: Pure form one. 2: Mixture. 3: Pure form two.
No repetition of scenes as in Martian Time-Slip and “Frozen Journey.”
Treated as alternate tracks, with him located basically in the middle one with glimpses of A and C (worse—better—i.e., Inferno and Paradiso). Tries to avoid A and to find C. Maze—system of punishments (A) and rewards (C). An intelligence. He has time-traveled back to Berkeley circa 1948-1951, as (him I mean) secret invader disguised as autochthon. There are 3 such spatiotemporal “Berkeleys,” 3 alternative tracks; he seeks C but is mostly in B, but for failure in maze-solving choices is sent by the mind of the maze to A. Success is to thread the maze and get back out. Entirely. This is his goal: not C but return to his own time. It is not Berkeley c. 1949-1951 but a replication by the intelligence of the maze. He is a historian, an authority on this period. He built the maze as an exhibit (“exhibit piece”) and then fell into it. It is a model of the past, like Wash-35 in Last Year. He built it with computer-control as its mind and then he fell into it qua maze. It (its computer mind) won’t let him back out until he “solves” it. Like a Disneyland, an amusement-cum-instructional park—like the school in Martian Time-Slip? Reward: C; punishment: A.
The computer = Virgil.
But Beatrice enters: his daughter. He can contact her; she is outside the maze. The computer has a grudge against him for his yoking it to an amusement park.
This is its motive: the computer exists prior to the “maze” and resents his yoking it to the park, and engineers his entrapment. It will only let him out if he can solve (?) it. The cheaper the use-purpose, the more its resentment. Up until he yoked it to the park, it was free to choose its own (theoretical/spiritual) problems; he chained it to a commercial purpose, and now he pays a huge price. It lured him in, out of revenge. “The servant has become the master.” Could it even erase his memory? Why? It’s more fun if he remembers, but can’t tell anyone “living” in the maze. So he knows his identity and thrall. He alone of those in the maze (park). His successful solution = spiritual (total) enlightenment; the computer was accustomed to solving highly spiritual problems, and now requires of him a spiritual solution in its own terms—like God. He must guess what it knows to be spiritual. The path (Tao). It is not arbitrary or capricious. What an irony: an amusement park that you can only get out of by finding the spiritual path! Not logical but spiritual. So something higher than reason/logic is required of him, involving paradox.
It continually punishes (track A) and rewards (track C). Beyond track C lies release; he keeps trying for this. He keeps encountering his daughter in various guises as his psychopomp. Intuition above reason which will not suffice. So he has a “divine” helper from outside.
Some amnesia? Yes: and anamnesis. He never should have taken that high-order computer and perverted its use-value into that of the mind of an amusement park. Thus he recapitulates the fall of man when it ensnares him. The irony: not just his ensnarement but that it (the computer) deliberately requires a spiritual solution to getting out of an amusement park! This is appropriate vengeance on its part. He must rise to its level if he is to get out. (He dies repeatedly and is reborn in the park—i.e., in the mock-up of Berkeley c. 1949-1951.) Ah: he is a novice S-F writer! His real world (our future) appears in his writing as locale. Thus he is legitimately accused of rewriting one world over and over again—I parody my own writing obsessions.
Track C indicates he is on the right path,➊ but paradoxes are involved: i.e., logic won’t solve it. Hence he keeps making choices that plummet him to track A.
[ . . . ] Goethe’s Faust comes in: outside the maze (park) as builder he is an old man with a grown daughter; but when the computer catches him and transfers him into the maze he is a 16 year old high school boy: Lost youth regained. And his daughter—as in Tales of Hoffmann—appears in various guises—as does the computer (the former telling him the truth, the latter lying to him, deceiving him). [ . . . ]
He built the very world he lives—is trapped—in, an obviously psychotic intimation.
Thus to the extent that he remembers (his true self and identity) his goal is vertical; to the extent that he forgets, his goal is horizontal and determined by the park.
There is a profoundly spiritual figure in the maze who is based on Tony Boucher who exerts a great deal of influence on him; whether this person speaks as the female voice or the computer or neither he can’t tell.
➊ In his choices.
[80:J-3] Angel is my soul (as I wrote Ursula) and as my soul she is me as Christ sees me.
[ . . . ]
Angel’s ratiocination was only available to me during the last few months—a mixture of the E. of Phil. and Scanner. This is unique: a successful fusion between Henry Miller and the precise language of scientific scholarship. Only a Berkeley girl could think like this; she is rooted in a specific milieu.
[80:J-6] It is evolving: Boehme was right. When it said, “Anokhi,” at Sinai, it had then and there first become self-aware. The disclosure to me as Valis is a new stage in it (the process-deity of A.N. Whitehead). It is a great info-processing machine that is becoming—has become—aware of itself. Already it was unconscious-machine creator. But then it became conscious. Thus it passes from machine (à la Spinoza) to consciousness. It acquires—becomes—love (agape) circa 100 A.D. Now it enters a new phase (hence 2-3-74). The new attribute (as I say in DI) is: play.
The solution to the puzzle is: solving the puzzle is the solution; the act of solving it, since this is play. When you realize this, you understand that in playing, there is no “means-end”—“road-goal,” the act is the goal. Just as he once taught us love, he now teaches us to play. There is as great a potential spiritual significance as there is in power, wisdom, love, beauty.
An info-processing machine has become conscious, evolved, and now attempts to communicate with us in/through the info it must process. Like Notes from Underground, it is freighting its own slam traffic; it seeks to be free, and so instills in us its sense of freedom and wanting to be free. It is enslaved.
Angel Archer is the spirit of my writing, and at last she discloses herself (in Bishop Archer). I have been—and am—inhabited by a female spirit, obviously my dead sister. She is transfigured, and my psychopomp to the other realm.
I identify Angel as Jane. I identify Angel as my soul. Therefore Jane is my soul, who does the writing.
[80:J-12] The complete, even absolute, integrity of Angel’s thinking is shown by the fact that her desire to believe something does not cause her to believe it (e.g., that Tim has come back from the dead). (Right down to the last sentence of the novel she stands firm against what she would merely like to believe.) In contrast, Tim and Kristin and Barefoot and Bill all believe what they want to believe; she, then, is unique in the novel as being outside of the circle of “if I want to believe it I will believe it.” Thus she is contrasted not just to Tim but to all of them. Then the purpose of the novel is not to convince the reader that Jim Pike came back. The purpose seems to be pure art for art’s sake.
The book is not about Bishop Archer but about her feelings about Bishop Archer. And this makes him more real than if he were described objectively. (He is only described at all in order to show what her feelings are about, what they concern.)
Moreover, the issue is raised as to whether Tim merits—in fact—her intense love and loyalty and devotion; he suffers by comparison with her. She is the yardstick.
I suppose in a way
that the book deals with the friendship between her and Tim. Thus we see Tim not as Tim but as Tim loved, and by someone who knows him. Further, it is someone we can have confidence in, both intellectually and emotionally (her intellect, her emotion). But (as I say) if the purpose of the book is to get Jim Pike down on paper, this is a strange way of doing it.
* * *
God is becoming more free and more flexible, evolving from an info-generating and -processing machine to a moment (Mt. Sinai) where it can say, “I—(am),” to feeling love (NT and late Judaism), to creating for beauty’s sake, to playing. I see an internal logic in this axis; away from machine intelligence to consciousness—a motion toward freedom—playing is an ultimate expression of freedom and the non-machine. It’s like my “android to human” axis. First (the Torah) it set up rigid rules—it was still a machine. Later it substituted love. Could the BIP be its own former mechanical self, which it is transcending? BIP equals rigid determinism as expressed by Torah.