‘VALIS,’ Eric Lampton said.
‘Whatever,’ Kevin said; turning to me, he said in agitation, ‘This would explain the revelations about the Buddha and about St Sophia or Christ. This isn’t limited to any one country or culture or religion. Sorry, David.’
David nodded amiably, but appeared shaken. He knew this wasn’t orthodoxy.
Eric said, ‘Sankara and Eckehart, the same person; living in two places at two times.’
Half to himself, Fat said, ‘ “He causes things to look different so it would appear time has passed.” ‘
‘Time and space both,’ Linda said.
‘What is VALIS?’ I asked.
‘Vast Active Living Intelligence System,’ Eric said.
‘That’s a description,’ I said.
‘That’s what we have,’ Eric said. ‘What else is there but that? Do you want a name, the way God had man name all the animals? VALIS is the name; call it that and be satisfied.’
‘Is VALIS man?’ I said. ‘Or God? Or something else?’
Both Eric and Linda smiled.
‘Does it come from the stars?’ I said.
‘This place where we are,’ Eric said, ‘is one of the stars; our sun is a star.’
‘Riddles,’ I said.
Fat said, ‘Is VALIS the Savior?’
For a moment, both Eric and Linda remained silent and then Linda said, ‘We are the Friends of God.’ Beyond that she added nothing more.
Cautiously, David glanced at me, caught my eye, and made a questioning motion: Are these people on the level?
‘They are a very old group,’ I answered, ‘which I thought had died out centuries ago.’
Eric said, ‘We have never died out and we are much older than you realize. Than you have been told. Than even we will tell you if asked.’
‘You date back before Eckehart, then,’ Kevin said acutely.
Linda said, ‘Yes.’
‘Centuries?’ Kevin asked.
No answer.
‘Thousands of years?’ I said, finally.
‘ “High hills are the haunt of the mountain-goat”,’ Linda said,’ “and boulders a refuge for the rock-badger”.’
‘What does that mean?’ I said; Kevin joined in; we spoke in unison.
‘I know what it means,’ David said.
‘It can’t be,’ Fat said; apparently he recognized what Linda had quoted, too.
‘ “The stork makes her home in their tops”,’ Eric said, after a time.
To me, Fat said, ‘These are Ikhnaton’s race. That’s Psalm 104, based on Ikhnaton’s hymn; it entered our Bible – it’s older than our Bible.’
Linda Lampton said, ‘We are the ugly builders with clawlike hands. Who hide ourselves in shame. Along with Hephaistos we built great walls and the homes of the gods themselves.’
‘Yes,’ Kevin said. ‘Hephaistos was ugly, too. The builder God. You killed Asklepios.’
‘These are Kyklopes,’ Fat said faintly.
“The name means “Round-eye”,’ Kevin said.
‘But we have three eyes,’ Eric said. ‘So an error in the historic record was made.’
‘Deliberately?’ Kevin said.
Linda said, ‘Yes.’
‘You are very old,’ Fat said.
‘Yes, we are,’ Eric said, and Linda nodded. ‘Very old. But time is not real. Not to us, anyhow.’
‘My God,’ Fat said, as if stricken. ‘These are the original builders.’
‘We have never stopped,’ Eric said. ‘We still build. We built this world, this space-time matrix.’
‘You are our creators,’ Fat said.
The Lamptons nodded.
‘You really are the friends of God,’ Kevin said. ‘You are literally.’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Eric said. ‘You know how Shiva holds up one hand to show that there is nothing to fear.’
‘But there is,’ Fat said. ‘Shiva is the destroyer; his third eye destroys.’
‘He is also the restorer,’ Linda said.
Leaning against me, David whispered in my ear, ‘Are they crazy?’
They are gods, I said to myself; they are Shiva who both destroys and protects. They judge.
Perhaps I should have felt fear. But I did not. They had already destroyed – brought down Ferris F. Fremount, as he had been depicted in the film Valis.
The period of Shiva the Restorer had begun. The restoration, I thought, of all we have lost. Of two dead girls.
As in the film Valis, Linda Lampton could turn time back, if necessary; and restore everything to life.
I had begun to understand the film.
The Rhipidon Society, I realized, fish though it be, is out of its depth.
An irruption from the collective unconscious, Jung taught, can wipe out the fragile individual ego. In the depths of the collective the archetypes slumber; if aroused, they can heal or they can destroy. This is the danger of the archetypes; the opposite qualities are not yet separated. Bipolarization into paired opposites does not occur until consciousness occurs.
So, with the gods, life and death – protection and destruction – are one. This secret partnership exists outside of time and space.
It can make you very much afraid, and for good reason. After all, your existence is at stake.
The real danger, the ultimate horror, happens when the creating and protecting, the sheltering, comes first – and then the destruction. Because if this is the sequence, everything built up ends in death.
Death hides within every religion.
And at any time it can flash forth – not with healing in its wings but with poison, with that which wounds.
But we had started out wounded. And VALIS had fired healing information at us, medical information. VALIS approached us in the form of the physician, and the age of the injury, the Age of Iron, the toxic iron splinter, had been abolished.
And yet... the risk is, potentially, always there.
It is a kind of terrible game. Which can go either way.
Libera me, Domine, I said to myself. In die ilia. Save me, protect me, God, in this day of wrath. There is a streak of the irrational in the universe, and we, the little hopeful trusting Rhipidon Society, may have been drawn into it, to perish.
As many have perished before.
I remembered something which the great physician of the Renaissance had discovered. Poisons, in measured doses, are remedies; Paracelsus was the first to use metals such as mercury as medication. For this discovery – the measured use of poisonous metals as medications – Paracelsus has entered our history books. There is, how ever, an unfortunate ending to the great physician’s life.
He died of metal poisoning.
So put another way, medications can be poisonous, can kill. And it can happen at any time.
‘Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child’s is the kingdom.’ As Heraclitus wrote twenty-five hundred years ago. In many ways this is a terrible thought. The most terrible of all. A child playing a game ... with all life, everywhere.
I would have preferred an alternative. I saw now the binding importance of our motto, the motto of our little Society, binding upon all occasions as the essence of Christianity, from which we could never depart:
FISH CANNOT CARRY GUNS!
If we abandoned that, we entered the paradoxes, and, finally, death. Stupid as our motto sounded, we had fabricated in it the insight we needed. There was nothing more to know.
In Fat’s quaint little dream about dropping the M-16 rifle, the Divine had spoken to us. Nihil Obstat. We had entered love, and found ourselves a land.
But the divine and the terrible are so close to each other. Nommo and Yurugu are partners; both are necessary. Osiris and Seth, too. In the Book of Job, Yahweh and Satan form a partnership. For us to live, however, these partners must be split. The behind-the-scenes partnership must end as soon as time and space and all the creatures come into being.
It is not God nor the gods which must prevail; it is w
isdom, Holy Wisdom. I hoped that the fifth Savior would be that: splitting the bipolarities and emerging as a unitary thing. Not of three persons or two but one. Not Brahma the creator, Vishnu the sustainer and Shiva the destroyer, but what Zoroaster called the Wise Mind.
God can be good and terrible – not in succession – but at the same time. This is why we seek a mediator between us and him; we approach him through the mediating priest and attenuate and enclose him through the sacraments. It is for our own safety: to trap him with confines which render him safe. But now, as Fat had seen, God had escaped the confines and was transubstantiating the world; God had become free.
The gentle sounds of the choir singing ‘Amen, amen’ are not to calm the congregation but to pacify the god.
When you know this you have penetrated to the innermost core of religion. And the worst part is that the god can thrust himself outward and into the congregation until he becomes them. You worship a god and then he pays you back by taking you over. This is called ‘enthousiasmos’ in Greek, literally, ‘to be possessed by the god.’ Of all the Greek gods the one most likely to do this was Dionysos. And, unfortunately, Dionysos was insane.
Put another way – stated backward – if your god takes you over, it is likely that no matter what name he goes by he is actually a form of the mad god Dionysos. He was also the god of intoxication, which may mean, literally, to take in toxins; that is to say, to take a poison. The danger is there.
If you sense this, you try to run. But if you run he has you anyhow, for the demigod Pan was the oasis of panic which is the uncontrollable urge to flee, and Pan is a subform of Dionysos. So in trying to flee from Dionysos you are taken over anyhow.
I write this literally with a heavy hand; I am so weary I am dropping as I sit here. What happened at Jonestown was the mass running of panic, inspired by the mad god – panic leading into death, the logical outcome of the mad god’s thrust.
For them no way out existed. You must be taken over by the mad god to understand this, that once it happens there is no way out, because the mad god is everywhere.
It is not reasonable for nine hundred people to collude in their own deaths and the deaths of little children, but the mad god is not logical, not as we understand the term.
When we reached the Lamptons’ house we found it to be a stately old farm mansion, set in the middle of grape vines; after all, this is wine country.
I thought, Dionysos is the god of wine.
‘The air smells good here,’. Kevin said as we got out of the VW Rabbit.
‘We sometimes get pollution,’ Eric said. ‘Even here.’
Entering the house, we found it warm and attractive; huge posters of Eric and Linda, framed behind non-reflecting glass, covered all the walls. This gave the old wooden house a modern look, which linked us back to the Southland.
Linda said, smiling, ‘We make our own wine, here. From our own grapes.’
I imagine you do, I said to myself.
A huge complex of stereo equipment rose up along one wall like the fortress in VALIS which was Nicholas Brady’s sound-mixer. I could see where the visual idea had originated.
‘I’ll put on a tape we made,’ Eric said, going over to the audio fortress and clicking switches to on. ‘Mini’s music but my words. I’m singing but we’re not going to release it; it’s just an experiment.’
As we seated ourselves, music at enormous dBs filled the living room, rebounding off all the walls.
I want to see you, man.
As quickly as I can. Let me hold your hand
I’ve got no hand to hold
And I’m old, old; very old.
Why won’t you look at me?
Afraid of what you see?
I’ll find you anyhow,
Later or now; later or now.
Jesus, I thought, listening to the lyrics. Well, we came to the right place. No doubt about that. We wanted this and we got this. Kevin could amuse himself by deconstructing the song lyrics, which did not need to be deconstructed. Well, he could turn his attention to Mini’s electronic noises, then.
Linda, bending down and putting her lips to my ears, shouted over the music, ‘Those resonances open the higher chakras.’
I nodded.
When the song ended, we all said how terrific it was, David included. David had passed into a trance-state; his eyes were glazed over. David did this when he was faced by what he could not endure; the church had taught him how to phase himself out mentally for a time, until the stress situation was over.
‘Would you like to meet Mini?’ Linda Lampton said.
‘Yes!’ Kevin said.
‘He’s probably upstairs sleeping,’ Eric Lampton said. He started out of the living room. ‘Linda, you bring some cabernet sauvignon, the 1972, up from the cellar.’
‘Okay,’ she said, starting out of the room in the other direction. ‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ she said over her shoulder to us. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Over at the stereo, Kevin gazed down in rapture.
David walked up to me, his hands stuck deep in his pockets, a complex expression on his face. ‘They’re –’
‘They’re crazy,’ I said.
‘But in the car you seemed –’
‘Crazy,’ I said.
‘Good crazy?’ David said; he stood close beside me, as if for protection. ‘Or – the other thing.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, truthfully.
Fat stood with us now, he listened, but did not speak. He looked deeply sobered. Meanwhile, Kevin, by himself, continued to analyze the audio system.
‘I think we should –’ David began, but at that moment Linda Lampton returned from the wine cellar, carrying a silver tray on which stood six wine glasses and a bottle still corked.
‘Would one of you open the wine?’ Linda said. ‘I usually get cork in it; I don’t know why.’ Without Eric she seemed shy with us, and completely unlike the woman she had played in Valis.
Rousing himself, Kevin took the wine bottle from her.
‘The opener is somewhere in the kitchen,’ Linda said.
From above our heads thumping and scraping noises could be heard, as if something heavy were being dragged across the upper-story floor.
Linda said, ‘Mini – I should tell you this – has multiple myeloma. It’s very painful and he’s in a wheelchair.’
Horrified, Kevin said, ‘Plasma cell myeloma is always fatal.’
‘Two years is the life span,’ Linda said. ‘His has just been diagnosed. He’ll be hospitalized in another week. I’m sorry.’
Fat said, ‘Can’t VALIS heal him?’
‘That which is to be healed will be healed,’ Linda Lampton said. ‘That which will be destroyed will be destroyed. But time is not real; nothing is destroyed. It is an illusion.’
David and I glanced at each other.
Bump-bump. Something awkward and enormous dragged its way down a flight of stairs. Then, as we stood unmoving, a wheelchair entered the living room. In it a crushed little heap smiled at us in humor, love and the warmth of recognition. From both ears ran cords: double hearing aids. Mini, the composer of Synchronicity Music, was partially deaf.
Going up to Mini one by one we shook his faltering hand and identified ourselves, not as a society but as persons.
‘Your music is very important,’ Kevin said.
‘Yes it is,’ Mini said.
We could see his pain and we could see mat he would not live long. But in spite of the suffering he held no malice toward the world; he did not resemble Sherri. Glancing at Fat, I could see that he was remembering Sherri, now, as he gazed at the stricken man in the wheelchair. To come this far, I thought, and to find this again – this, which Fat had fled from. Well, as I already said, no matter which direction you take, when you run the god runs with you because he is everywhere, inside you and out.
‘Did VALIS make contact with you?’ Mini said. ‘The four of you? Is that why you’re here?’
‘Wit
h me,’ Fat said. ‘These others are my friends.’
‘Tell me what you saw,’ Mini said.
‘Like St Elmo’s Fire,’ Fat said. ‘And information-’
‘There is always information when VALIS is present,’ Mini said, nodding and smiling. ‘He is information. Living information.’
‘He healed my son,’ Fat said. ‘Or anyhow fired the medical information necessary to heal him at me. And VALIS told me that St Sophia and the Buddha and what he or it called the “Head Apollo” is about to be born soon and that the –’
‘ – the time you have waited for,’ Mini murmured.
‘Yes,’ Fat said.
‘How did you know the cypher?’ Eric Lampton asked Fat.
‘I saw a set to ground doorway,’ Fat said.
‘He saw it,’ Linda said rapidly. ‘What was the ratio of the doorway? The sides?’
Fat said, ‘The Fibonacci Constant.’
‘That’s our other code,’ Linda said. ‘We have ads running all over the world. One to point six one eight zero three four. What we do is say, “Complete this sequence: One to point six.” If they recognize it as the Fibonacci constant they can finish the sequence.’
‘Or we use Fibonacci numbers,’ Eric said. ‘1,2,3,5,8,13 and so on. That doorway is to the Different Realm.’
‘Higher?’ Fat asked.
‘We just call it “Different”,’ Eric said.
‘Through the doorway I saw luminous writing,’ Fat said.
‘No you didn’t,’ Mini said, smiling. ‘Through the doorway is Crete.’
After a pause, Fat said, ‘Lemnos.’
‘Sometimes Lemnos. Sometimes Crete. That general area.’ In a spasm of pain, Mini drew himself up in his wheel-chair.
‘I saw Hebrew letters on the wall,’ Fat said.
‘Yes,’ Mini said, still smiling. ‘Cabala. And the Hebrew letters permutated until they factored out into words you could read.’
‘Into KING FELIX,’ Fat said.
‘Why did you lie about the doorway?’ Linda said, without animosity; she seemed merely curious.
Fat said, ‘I didn’t think you’d believe me.’
‘Then you’re not normally familiar with the Cabala,’ Mini said. ‘It’s the encoding system which VALIS uses; all its verbal information is stored as Cabala, because that’s the most economical way, since the vowels are indicated by mere vowel-points. You were given a set-ground discriminating unscrambler, you realize. We normally can’t distinguish set from ground; VALIS has to fire the unscrambler at you. It’s a grid. You saw set as color, of course.’