* * *
[91:K-208] In no way did Paul see Torah and Christ as progressive (evolutionary) stages in one (information) organism. In fact who has? (1) Not the Jews, certainly; they revere the Torah as absolute. (2) Not the Christians; they revolt against the Torah in the name of Christ: the concept of evolution through qualitatively (and radically) different stages is unknown to them. That the Torah is an earlier form of Christianity whose later form is Christ—no one sees this. Note: it would be wrong to say: (1) the Torah as an earlier form of Christ; or (2) Christ is a later form of the Torah. Neither statement is true. Both are stages of the so-to-speak third organism, and there is now a third and final stage: Joachim’s spirit, in which each man has his own personal Scripture in his head, and each is unique but recombined out of the info of the prior stages. This is an info entity, living info. It is subduing and permeating the universe order: (organization) = info.
It does not become old and ossified; at the end it plays as a child like a free little animal.
[91:K-213] If I am right, that a divine compound macro-entity is assembling itself from sub-divine (i.e., mundane) sub-assemblies, then I have in my possession extraordinary knowledge. I base this concept on (1) the revelation of the dialectic; and (2) the Ditheon dream in conjunction with BTA and Russ’ letter. Now, this would explain the “God present in the trash strata” experience that I had (and which is expressed in Ubik). What Teilhard calls “Christ” is a conclusion of an evolutionary process, the components and lower stages possessing no divine or spiritual quality—yet when assembled, the divine is or becomes or occurs. The implications of this are enormous; one must radically reassess what “mundane” and “divine” signify. “Mundane” is a simpler, slower stage of “divine” or put another way, “divine” is a more complex, faster stage—the outcome stage—of “mundane.” But this is not the whole story; the other fundamental notion is: disparate versus unitary. As long as “it” exists in plural, disparate form—as unconnected discrete pieces, as multiplicity—“it” is not divine; thus when I saw Valis the significant thing that I saw was plural, discrete things behaving as—consisting of/functioning as—a unity, which was (to me) simply inexplicable. And yet it is precisely this coming together into a unity that constitutes the leap from the mundane to the divine.
[91:K-396] I have been searching all my life for the benchmarks of God (indubitably pointing to Him). I have found them: Kate, Anne and Lauren. The Sufi proof: beauty.
The light from above illumining the (world scene into the) nativity scene. I saw it. All creatures great and small/dance upon their feet.
I have seen the infinities of Judaism, which is morality, of Christianity, which is love, of the Greeks, which is wisdom, and I have seen God’s power as pronoia and charis to rescue me by bending the world itself; but beauty is a perplexing infinity, raising more questions than it answers. It is a puzzle too intricate for me. It spans all else. As I sit across the game board from Krishna I say, “I have found in beauty that which I could not myself have made; thus I have found the benchmarks. I believe, for I have the evidence that I trust; it is sufficient.” There is an infinity of good, of love, of wisdom, of power, but each particular beautiful thing is infinitely beautiful, and there is an infinity of them, so beauty, alone, is an infinity of infinities: ∞2.
Folder 81
June 1981
[81:K-10] Thus through the spirit there comes into existence a perfect (absolute) correspondence between Bible and our world. The Bible as information applies to this world here, this world now; world is meanwhile revealed as information (derived from information as its ontological basis) and this information is identical to the Bible as information. It is as if the Bible derives from and applies to world; world derives from and applies to the Bible, so that when you perceive world you perceive the Bible as world. And when you read the Bible it is no longer information about a world but is a world—and it is the same world that you live in here and now—the spirit accomplishes this through supra-temporal archetypes analogous to Plato’s eide; these archetypes are identical for both world and Bible, a “common source” that can be said to be world-as-information, or information-as-world.
(If I hadn’t experienced this—both in regard to world and the Bible—I wouldn’t believe it could occur; but [as I say] I know how it is done: by means of supra-temporal archetypal constants found both in world—underlying world—and in the Bible—underlying it. Thus what we know of as world and what we know of as information are viewed as two aspects of a single substantia, each equally real, in the exact fashion Spinoza sets forth.) To repeat: world properly seen is information and this information is the same as that which we call “the Bible”; Bible properly seen (via/per the spirit) is seen not as a description of—information about—a world as a past time and place, and not, really, even about this world here at this time and this place but is this time (world) and is this place (world). That is how what is known a priori (intelligibly) and what is known through the senses (empirically) become one and the same.
This is extraordinary! Thus if you were to write an ontological description of our world as it really is, you would find to your surprise that you had written passages from/of the Bible, right down to the correct names of people—and this explains Tears. World can be deduced from the Bible, and the Bible from our world; they are one and the same. But what is perhaps most unexpected is that world is now viewed abstractly as information, which no one anticipated. And this information is Scripture. The trans-temporal constants, then, on which world is based, are as much informational in essence as they are anything else: intelligible concepts in the mind of God! This is a totally new understanding of the informational basis of reality—and the possibility that a mind exists (the spirit) in which the Bible ceases to be an informational description of a world and instead is that world, as if information and world are two stages or modes of one “thing”! Equally astounding is the discovery that each of us has an informational basis; each of us is a unique complex of ideas in the mind of God, which can be expressed verbally (as information); likewise we can be said to be spear-carriers in the book, the Bible. (This would be Thomas.)
My God—this is an updated version of the description of the relationship between the Torah and reality, absolute correspondence; so this isn’t an original idea with me. But I experienced it!
[81:K-13] Possibly it can be said that I have combined basic notions from Judaism (Torah), Christianity (Christ-logos as ontological source of the universe) and Greek philosophy (the basis of reality being structure not a physical substance, and the eide) but my synthesis only can be appreciated in this, the information decade. World (physical reality) can be converted into info and then retrieved; thus a book can be a physical world rather than just a description of that world.
[81:K-81]
There is no rational way out of the maze, no rigid formula. Rigid formulas are maze constructs.
[81:K-86] I am interested in what I call “temporal parallaxis”: the two-psyche entity able to perform a double-field superimposition and thus break free of time and causation.
[81:K-89] Now, here is another point. Unless or until I figured this “inner” part out, “Christ in us,” as Paul puts it, I would not really have understood 2-3-74. That is, my belief that in seeing Valis externally I saw the cosmic Christ is only half the story and perhaps the lesser half. However, it is just as well that in writing VALIS I did not claim to “be” Christ, only to have seen him. Psychotic inflation of the ego is frowned on, even by the amiable.
* * *
[81:K-105] So in BTA at the end I solved VALIS; no wonder I long supposed it was Jim returning to me from the other side. What must be rejected is the Christian idea of you being judged upon death and sent to heaven or hell; apparently it is (1) a much longer climb, involving many rebirths; but (2) it is always up—there is no hell; there is just Nirvana and attaining Nirvana; and (3) all creatures participate. It is not so much a matter of judging bu
t of learning.
Why, this is Buddhism! Christianity subsumed by Buddhism as I guessed when I read Luke. Russ’ letter is right-on. “You have to work at becoming Christ,” i.e., a Buddha. Did not God himself tell me that (1) there are many dharmas, ways, routes; and (2) they all lead to him sooner or later? He did tell me that. My route is: doubt.
[81:K-221] I must not allow myself to think of this in terms of sin, sinful, depraved man, negative judgment and damnation and man’s inability to save himself, as the reformers and Paul thought of it. I must remember it as I experienced it: the in-rushing of those parts lacking in me that by their bestowal by God rendered me complete and, really, ensouled me. Last night the idea came to me that Angel Archer is not my soul but the completed person of which I—PKD—was only one half. She is unique and idiosyncratic but a complete person. I guess this is the same as soul, and it is created, but not by the person—i.e., by me—but by God through justification. Hence it is restored (prefallen) man, as I suspected.
[81:K-225] I guess the realization last night—that it was justification—is in itself revelation of the same kind as 2-3-74, plus such revelations as the hypnagogic vision about the messenger and bill of particulars. I sense a meaning in the term “justification” not connected with sin but with incompleteness. (Perhaps this is Jung’s influence on me.) But I believe that the rest of me entered me as an adventitious second psyche, and this is the subject of BTA and Russ’ letter, how this completion is (or resembles) being Christ, being perfect. (Hence the adventitious psyche is human.) Hence I wrote recently that now I seem to have a center, but did not before. More important, I see this as being ensouled. The work has reached its end, suddenly, by an act of God; the person has been searching for his missing parts (i.e., his soul) throughout all time and everywhere, with the possibility that the person may—on his own—never be complete. I consider this search for one’s soul as the modern way of viewing redemption from bondage to sin, enslavement, or as I speak of it, machine-level consciousness.
* * *
[81:K-230] Gott—it would have killed my soul if I’d written the Blade Runner novelization! Or, worse, not written BTA! Angel Archer is a new, ex nihilo creation, literally out of nothing. There is a great spiritual, artistic, evolutionary, life-mystery in her coming into being.
[81:K-253] “Soul,” then, is metaphor for life and moreover life newly born, and a greater, better life, the like of which showed up nowhere before in my work. That upon finishing BTA I believed that I had risked my literal physical life—and almost lost it—is then logically what I would feel, would of necessity feel, because indeed I did risk my life; I risked my physical life in the service of preserving, augmenting and prolonging my spiritual life. It almost turned out that I literally physically died in the act (work) of giving birth to Angel Archer. Had it killed me I would have been concerned about only one thing: does Angel Archer exist now? As far as I’m concerned she does, and I don’t appear to have physically died. But I subordinated my physical well-being for the sake of creating her, to the task of creating her; so well I might view her as my soul! But in viewing Angel Archer as eternal (now that I created her) I had to face the other side of the matter: that I am not. No wonder the most profound feelings and intimations possible flooded over me in the weeks following my completion of that book: it is a book whose story, theme and ideas, even its artistic worth, are all subordinated to Angel Archer as a person, as I wrote Russ recently. In “thermal” terms I as an organism expended my maximum effort at the service of the need to grow. It is in my work that my growth axis exists, and I am well aware of this; I have long been at the disposal of my work, viewing myself as its instrument, not it mine. Yet paradoxically in BTA—at least when viewed in conjunction with Russ’ letter and my Ditheon dream—a feedback from it to me, me as a person, occurred, and a major conceptual insight arises in me as a result, an insight totally new to me having to do with (1) what Christ is; and (2) how “achieved,” that is, what “brings on” or “causes” Christ or Christogenesis. Yes, that is the word: Christogenesis! Christ is seen in evolutionary terms paralleling or expressing the very evolution that (I believe) my work represents (and which I see in the macrocosm and in Valis). At a certain crucial stage of evolution toward complexification of structure (i.e., negentropy) the mundane passes over—in a quantum leap—into the divine; the man becomes Ditheon, Christ; the macrocosm likewise (à la Teilhard and his Point Omega).
[81:K-258] I maintain that my corpus—my opus—required her, and required me to be able to create her—perhaps prove I could create her as an artistic problem I consciously and deliberately posed for myself to—here is a remarkable thought!—to justify my work in terms of wholeness, completeness and intactness—which event (act) is analogic to God’s justifying and completing me in terms of intactness and wholeness. Thus my creating Angel Archer ex nihilo is my analogic reperformance as a writer in his work of God’s act toward me; creating Angel Archer is an act learned from 2-3-74; it is that justification first applied to me, now applied by me to my work. God perfects me; I comprehend this; I then in turn act to complete my work. I take my cue from the Pantocrator, my creator; he as artisan instructs by example me as artisan. He shows me that an ex nihilo “adventitious” psyche can be injected. And, like Thomas, Angel is ex nihilo and in a very real sense adventitious—she came into my work the way Thomas came into me. Thomas is what was missing in me (missing and needed); Angel is what was missing and needed. In both cases wholeness is the goal and in both cases wholeness was the result. One could say that God showed me that beyond logical necessity and organic development/unfolding lies the possibility of the unprecedented ex nihilo new. Like the resurrection it is logically impossible. Had he not done it with/for me, I would not have known that it could be. So in this regard, Angel Archer is indeed the offspring of 2-3-74, of the Ditheon, the justification, but by way of me as a creative artist; then probably I did not merely describe her, when I wrote the book; in writing the book I created her, which answers that question. And then having as a creative artist created her in and for my work I find her “returning to me,” so to speak, as my soul. I projected her outward in my work, exhaled her, and then introjected her after I had created and projected her.
[ . . . ] And then by reincorporating her as my soul I fuse myself as a person with myself as artist, i.e., with my work. The schism is healed. I and my work become one. And, curiously, I and my work constitute another push-pull Ditheon! Here again is the dialectic. Here again is growth and change, and a complementary antithesis. I am not Angel Archer; we are separate: we are “di”; and yet we perhaps form one person. I create my character and she in turn creates me, the total, intact, completed, whole me; hence I speak of her correctly as my soul. And I speak of (as, e.g., in my letter to Russ) somehow having created my own soul, an extraordinary idea. She is the spirit of my intactness, of the actuality that is Ditheon. And this suggests that the ultimate essence of Ditheon is ultra-autonomy and rationality and individuality (all characterized by her). Perhaps she is logos: human logos.
* * *
[81:K-262] Now, consider what becomes of the human being failing to achieve (or receive) the Ditheon state, Jung’s individuation or integration of the opposites (chemical wedding, mysterium coniunctionis, whatever, “birth in the spirit,” anyhow the event in which what was not there before is there now and it acts to complement what was there that in itself was incomplete, so that the result is wholeness or—as I like to call it—justification). The human being recirculates the same ideas (info) over and over again, and, according to the statistical laws regarding entropy, the degree of order in the info irreversibly decreases, disorder increases, and the person mentally and spiritually moves inexorably toward death. Now, Schrödinger contends that a biological organism postpones its death (thermal equilibrium) by maintaining a relatively high level of order by incorporating negative entropy from its environment, and this is precisely the entering of the adventitious psyche; it is ei
ther injected or is ingested, offered by the environment or taken from it; in any case what was outside the organism is now inside the organism and incorporated into one total structure with what was already there; i.e., it is assimilated—so-to-speak digested and incorporated, although not without some initial perturbation (defined as disorder). What was already there and what was intaken must ultimately either form a unity or (equally useful, maybe even more useful) a push-pull dialectic of complementary opposites, in which each half corrects the other, monitors the other, acts as a feedback circuit, producing a self-winding autonomous totality; thus the two halves are not identical. (The psyche has not split in two; quite the contrary—I became conscious of the difference when I first researched the meanings of the prefix “di” and saw that it can either mean “double” or “asunder,” implying either a joining of two elements or a splitting of one element into halves; these are antithetical notions.) So perhaps “assimilate” is the wrong word; “reach a working relationship with” or “enter into a partnership with,” “enter into a syzygy,” would be better. [ . . . ]
As a strategy for prolonging its life this is representative of the strategies of organisms by and large, but what I see here is an extraordinarily high degree of incorporation of negentropy from the environment and subsequent incorporation into the organism’s own structure. (There is an initial perturbation, defined as disorder.) If all goes well, the organism now possesses a vast increase in its level of complexity, in energy—drastic increase in all the factors by which the capacity for biological survival is measured. Hence it has bought into prolonged vitality, viability and extended life—the issue being exactly that: life versus death. This extraordinary strategy is engaged in by an organism that is approaching death and knows it. It has run out of time. It is vitiated; it has ossified. Its environment has been pressing against its perimeter, threatening to invade and annihilate it. The level of internal organization has been lowering; it—the organism—perceives the ratio of order in it and outside it progressing toward less and less internal order, greater and greater exterior (external) order. Now, the concept expressed in the Ditheon dream fits in with Erwin Schrödinger’s analysis of how “any living organism delays its decay into thermal equilibrium (death) by its capacity to maintain itself at a fairly high level of orderliness (and hence fairly low level of entropy) by continually absorbing negative entropy from its environment.” In fact Schrödinger’s analysis tends to support the idea that indeed the second psyche is adventitious in origin, because this is only an unusual example of the fundamental way by which organisms delay death—perhaps the only way they do so—can do so. Then this “transaction” represents a turnaround in what has been going on between the declining (dying) organism and its environment, as if at the last moment the beleaguered organism turned the tables on its environment and converted an invasion into an acquisition.