Four radio stations, one radio.
If the Exegesis Wizard is Time and the Wrong Way is the Space, it can’t be the Goldbrick. A conductor of ordinary tunes existing in tome triple placemats with objects communicating sparks
That which is lost becomes instant information at the close
Can adults with no electricity still report the news*?
*Find the necessary parts, arrange them into the outline of a fractured body, then utilize whatever triggers the movement of your unconscious brain from ground to TV set.
(lucid dream, divine imaginasion.)
From the Exegesis:
What I have achieved during these past seven years is to deepen and augment my mental ability to conceive of and comprehend what in 2-3-74 I perceived, and, ultimately, this is an apprehension, a comprehension, of God, of the divine nature and being. [ . . . ] “A total system that perpetually chooses through a binary process of rejection that is cumulative” is my way of envisioning what I experienced; it is my model which I am able, first, to summon up, and then, finally, to contemplate. Thus through it and in it I have God in me, as a mental construct of my own devising; but it is a devising derived from and rooted in experience; it is not imaginary: it is an interpretation of what I construe to be the case. It is reality incorporated into me, reality at the highest level at which I am able to understand it. Here my ability to understand reaches its limit. This all has been a vast effort. I am not concerned with traditional definitions of God, attributions and doctrines and creeds and dogmas; I am concerned with the conception I have arduously arrived at based on experience. My conception does justice to my experience, it is the best I can do. It turns an otherwise incomprehensible encounter into a coherent image or model. This has been my task. Whether it is “true” or not depends on what you mean by true. It does justice to my experience; in that sense it is true. What if the experience itself is not true? To me that question is unintelligible; it is my experience: it belongs to me, is a part of me, and by construing a model adequate to it I make it a permanent part of me, not something that escapes. If my model works, if it is an adequate representation, I can by means of it convert it back into something like the original experience, so it is an encoding, an informational analog of that experience (to the degree that I have been successful).
The Kubrick Transformer: informational analog of the experience described in 2-3-74. The marriage of impossible objects
a tactile web of form and experience that reveals tidal waves of isomorphic resonance and UBIK (the Official Acts Spray of Negentropic Movement). A pink laser beam]]]] fallen into the sterilized, the commodified, and the codified. A Mega-Church Sunday only on NLP
PKD: yellow
BK: blue
Definitions, Articles: green
I am a device on which God renders an impression, hopefully a permanent impression; it will be permanent if—and to the degree that—I function correctly. It is not a doctrine or even a theory that I am fabricating; it is an impression, a change in me as to what I am. I have become not the same, due to what happened, and this has been a task, an act stretching over years on my part. I want to be different because of what I saw; I want to be changed as much as possible (without, of course, falsifying what happened). The last thing I want out of that experience is to be the same as I was prior to it. And I can only change insofar as I comprehend that experience; and I can only comprehend it (as I say) by actively building an inner, adequate, appropriate model (of what happened). So this is not a passive rendering. This is an artistic, spiritual, conceptual task involving years of work. My conception grows; it is not static. As it grows I change. This is what I want: to thus and thereby be changed. This is what I have devoted myself to; this is my purpose for existing; it is what I want to do—like the binary choosing of the system my work on my model is cumulative. I choose; I discard; I perpetually arborize and reticulate: I build. I am very happy. I sense and grasp and perceive the no-yes dialectic that continually results in higher syntheses (which is what Jacob Boehme understood); I understand God in process, God perpetually choosing and rejecting: “not this but rather that,” so that he surpasses himself in an act at each new stage. “Not these tones, but…” as Beethoven wrote; the foundation of creation is to choose, to reject, to choose again: Boehme’s dialectic ceaselessly at work, blinking off-on-off-on. Creating begins with an unvoiced no, not a yes. “Not that; (but rather) this.” A rejection of the “is” in favor of a better alternative (that is as much constructed as chosen—perhaps more so!). The essence of creativity is to reject what follows inevitably, because that is an entropic cause and effect splitting, a disintegration; in place of this the creator built something new that does not follow. And he bases what he constructs, he derives his conception from, in response to and in rejection of what is. So in artistic endeavor there is something of the ex nihilo: something somehow engendered out of nothing.
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.
In a world drowning in information, “Christ” is expressed as “meaningful coincidence”
In the absence of a psychoactive sacrament, Christ becomes the replacement. Where there is water, there is now wine.
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.
It isn’t strange that PKD experienced 2-3-74, I believe that this kind of meta-abstraction happens all the time. What is strange is how well PKD was able to make sense of the experience both as it occurred, and grappling with the effects of it for years afterwards. Sublimation into artistic and philosophical examination.
To attach to the film/album micro level, many have plunged into the meta-abstraction known as Dark Side of the Rainbow, but few have come to terms as to why the experience is so profound. Few have extrapolated this magical microcosm to its macrocosmic origins, that is, a Plasmatic Cathedral, the House of the Plasmate.
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 inner 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.
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. [ . . . ]
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!
Cosmo Kramer – Cosmocrator : ruler of the world, Gnostic Satan
Valis in me was my own mind, was God but fallen God, forgetful, unintentional, cosmogenitor of world. The “binary switching computer” 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).
Frozen Journey: Here’s what the Playboy editors wrote about the story in the Dec 1980 issue:
Speaking of captives, imagine yourself locked in a two-by-six-foot box, half awake and bound for a journey through space that will take ten years. That’s precisely the horror Philip K. Dick’s tragic hero faces in Frozen journey, illustrated by Pater Sato. This is the first Playboy appearance for Dick, the renowned science-fiction author of more than 30 novels (his best known is THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE).
That was in the ‘Playbill’ near the Table of Contents page. And on the contents page itself:
It’s rough being neurotic, even with plenty of earthly distractions and a good shrink. But when you’re going crazy on a spaceship with only a computer to help you, snapping is, well, a snap.
"Frozen Journey" reappeared in 1998 in HarperPrism publishers anthology: 45 Years Of Tomorrows: The Playboy Book of Science Fiction.
In the story Victor Kemmings is in cryonic suspension while on a ten year trip to a colony planet and a new life. But, there’s a malfunction in the machinery and Victor is conscious. Realizing that after ten years of consciousness with no activity Victor will go insane the spaceship’s computer feeds Victor’s childhood memories back to him in an attempt to maintain his sanity.
But Victor’s early memories are bad and once brought to the surface contaminate all the computer’s efforts to lull him happily along until the ship lands. To the computer Victor says he only wishes they’d get to the end of the journey. So the computer grants his wish with more false perceptions. But once brought to his mind Victor’s bad early memories continue to suborn the computer’s now desperate efforts to keep him sane. In the end when the spaceship does land and his old girlfriend is waiting for him on the colony world, Victor still doesn’t believe it’s real. He’s been through it too many times before already.
https://philipdick.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/short_stories/I%20Hope%20I%20Shall%20Arrive%20Soon.htm
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!
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 there) 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 (unintelligible 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).
What I see is a threat that only someone fighting off psychosis could appreciate: the disappearance of world along two routes: (1) comprehensibility; (2) believability. Viz: you could find yourself understanding it but not believing it to be real—my 10-volume meta-novel—or finding it real but being unable to make any sense out of it —3-74 and VALIS. On the bright side, however, this has permitted me to formulate some formidable epistemological and, finally, theological questions, and even a few halting tentative answers. “We are all but cells in a colossal mad brain that both makes and perceives reality”—something like that, the main thrust being that there is some relationship between the creating of reality and perceiving of it (v. my dream supra): the percipient is cosmogenitor, or, conversely, the cosmogenitor wound up as unwilling percipient of its own creation.
The way out of the solipsistic trap is to presume God, since world is dubitable. Thus there is self and there is other, and this other is powerful, benign, wise, loving, and perhaps most important of all, able and willing to provide— in fact guarantee—world (under the conditions of Cartesian epistemology). “God is the final bulwark against non-being” becomes “. . . against isolation.”
In isolation, a religion falls apart under the weight of paradox and inconsistency; when understood as an emergent miracle designed to hold things together, a meta-physical construction that only exists because it was necessary. Think of the air filter in Apollo 13, a hodgepodge of broken parts that staved off certain death.
[90:134:G-79] This is my idiosyncratic road to God. For others—who have not been the doubt, who have not known 32 years of doubt, this would not seem to constitute proof. But I say: I do not have it within my own power to compel my own assent to anything but my doubting self; thus on my own I possess no sense of knowing anything but myself, which is a sentence to hell, perpetual unrelenting hell. “Who will redeem me?”
My argument is a variation of Cartesian reasoning (and in my opinion an important one) and so it is in an honorable tradition. I say with Malebranche that I see all things in God; it is God who extricates me from my solipsistic prison. I did not write 35 novels and 150 stories without coming to a good understanding of the sinister implications of no world, irreal world, inscrutable world—that second only to the gift of life itself is the gift of world, of the other. Perhaps it is even a greater gift, since it involves all creation. (Viz: I might well choose personal death over the extinction of the cosmos.) What I see people ordinarily saying is that world of its own accord impinges on us: impinges coherently and convincingly. The Cartesians show that this is not the case. I say, the whole cosmos could be presented to me and yet I would not find it real unless God himself bestowed on me the essential gift of my finding it convincing, a gift that through my own powers of reasoning and observation I find myself incapable of acquiring, a state I on my own cannot achieve. I cannot persuade myself and I cannot compel myself to believe; unless God compels me I will not believe, and if I do not believe, I am doomed to a certain kind of hell. I know from experience that God can compel that assent, for he did this by a rustle of color in the grass. He can absolutely impinge on me; he can break into my prison world and destroy it—burst the prison, release me. That my assent might be compelled by perceptual and cognitive occlusion and amnesia does not in the slightest matter to me because the ends justifies the means, since I cannot live at all unless I’m taken out of my private prison. That is why I see the issue as one of belief on my part, not on the truth of what I believe. I know now that if there is something that is true I will never on my own know it. Or if I know it I will not believe I know it. Like Victor Kemmings at the end of “Frozen Journey” I may have reached reality and can’t believe it. That essential belief lies outside my power.
My argument that (I have proof that) God exists is odd. I do not say, “I know God exists because I experienced/ perceived him in 3-74”; that is dubitable as an argument because my experience may have been a hallucination (I experienced it but it was not real). But I can say, “I know that God exists because I believe I experienced You above and beyond myself; and I know of no way that I can go beyond Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’ by my own power; on my own I cannot add any knowledge to that self- knowledge. Yet I believe I know of Your existence, so I conclude that some agency with the power to disclose Your existence to me and thus to compel my assent to that disclosure exists, and I can only conceive of God as possessing the power, since, pragmatically, this is cosmogenesis, and I define God as ‘he who causes to exist what exists.’ ” In other words I cannot doubt that I believe, and I know of no way that I can believe on my own power, unaided. Therefore the Cartesian proposition “cogito ergo sum” is not the limit to what I can be certain of: I can say, “I know that I believe, and since I know that I cannot compel into existence my own belief, I conclude that something beyond myself exists that has compelled this belief; therefore I not only know that I exist, I know that something beyond myself exists (by reason of my belief).”
[90:G-122] I saw reality (3-74) as it really is; I began to see in 2-74. Relatedness not by time, space and causation but by articulating arborizing phylogons, I know—can’t I believe? What does it take?
With Locke I believed that our sense organs provide us our best knowledge of world. However, I believe that there are certain higher states of illumination which although still empirical in nature provide us with higher views of world – such states as the buddha entered, in which he saw … the coming into existence and the passing away of all things. He apparently had what I call a “slot” as compared to a “point” (or normal) present. His present extended back perhaps thousands of years. This different way of experiencing time and hence reality lay at the heart of buddhist moksa. I have had a taste (so to speak) of it myself, back in March 1974; VALIS depicts it, I saw a two-thousand year present slot, strange as this may sound. What I saw (which was a radically altered way of perceiving time) was world divided into two categories, something like Plato’s division between the archetypal forms and the phenomenal world but not quite; I saw what I call phylogons, which are permanent, and ontogons, which are temporary. For each phylogon, new accretional layers are laminated down in successive waves during the temporal process; but the ontogons, on the other hand, come into existence and then immediately pass away, leaving no permanent impression. The billions of phylogons are crosslinked to form a unitary reality which is Pythagoras’ kosmos, “the harmonious fitting-together of the beautiful”, a vast structure that is sentient, that assimilates its environment selectively, using the antecedent universe as a supply of parts. Once a phylogon is created it is eternal, undergoing only the addition of subsequent layers during the linear time process, of which A.N. Whitehead spoke” – PKD
EZRA SANDZER BELL: To summarize, PKD had an experience in March 1974 that gave him direct knowledge of the principle of love in the cosmos. He uses his own terms, phylons and ontogons, from the words phylo– (love) and onto- (being), to describe two different types of phenomena. Phylogons build upon each other while ontogons pop in and out of existence, leaving no trace.
During his awakening, PKD saw the phylogons crosslinked to create a sentient super-structure that reaches through the whole cosmos and actively makes use of the universe for its own purpose. This is part of a larger theme explored in his Exegesis, regarding the dialectic between ZEBRA/VALIS and the BLACK IRON PRISON.
“As to the existence of God, Whitehead defined God as “A principle of selection which realizes the good in the world process,” and I saw the principle of selection at work; it is what I call VALIS … in dealing with epistemology I ask these questions:
1) If the world is not real, how would it differ if it were real?
2) If the world is real, how would it differ if it were not real? Would there be anything there at all, available to our senses?” – PKD
The questions above gives way to an important philosophical observation about the relationship between esoteric music cryptography and neoplatonic mysticism.
Musical cryptogram = Irreal framework
“My answer, based on my moksa of 1997, is that an irreal framework is laid out, like the falsework in Gothic Cathedrals, and then Deity installs ontology in it; Deity does this by making that framework binding on us, so that I define ontology as a transaction between percipient and object of such a nature (the transaction, I mean) that the percipient cannot escape the power of the object; this is a kind of pragmatic ontology, and deals with reality as an event, rather than hypostatizing it. Hypostasis is something we confer on reality, which is probably in itself an endless process, the laying down of the developing phylogons. Since in normal states we cannot distinguish a phylogon from an ontologon (a Beethoven Symphony is a phylogon, but Beethoven was an ontogon, for instance) we cannot really define reality in terms of ontogon-phylogon distinction.
These excerpts are way less abstract when you demonstrate their truth in practice. PKD gives a clue when he says that Beethoven is ontogon and his symphonies were phylogons; Beethoven the man will pop in and out of existence during his lifetime but his works are eternal. The “layering” that he described earlier is, quite simply, the ongoing performance of Beethoven’s work.
The “irreal framework” onto which “Deity” installs its consciousness resembles the relationship between a composer harmonizing musical elements (Deity) and the Western 12-note musical scale (irreal framework)
Falsework: temporary structures used in construction to support a permanent structure
Religion: for the child, religion provides the falsework for a permanent set of morals and values
This falsework can be confining and obtrusive if left in place.
Think of breastfeeding. What would happen if this was allowed to continue into adulthood.
Print installs a falsework that allows for a particular method of seeing reality.
Think of the Magic Eye phenomenon. There is no falsework that allows one to see the embedded image. One must practice several iterations of focus to unlock the image. But one doesn’t stay in the mode of seeing at all times.
But with print, we are often locked into a mode where we focus in front of the image to allow for the message to come through. When this mode is entrenched for long periods of time, it begins to change the structure of the brain.
It is this shift in brain that shifts the sensory ratios to state that is locked out of the Plasmatic Cathedral.
[90:G-131] I will conclude this nightmare marathon analysis by noting that my 10-volume meta-novel can herewith be newly—and perhaps finally correctly— understood. And it serves a very valuable (Gnostic) purpose, to emancipate the cosmogenitor from his own world, to which he is fallen victim. In terms of this, VALIS can be seen as the logical culmination of the total corpus. Likewise “Frozen Journey.”
The ten volume meta novel was created as mutually exclusive components. But once completed, the (anti)false work is removed, and the true structure is perceived for what it is: an Odyssey.
The anti-falsework would be invisible structures that buffer mutually exclusive events, but once removed, reveal the points are actually the peaks and valleys of a wave.
The anti-falsework is print, calendars, boundaries: whenever time is manifested with physical demarcations, the BIP at its worst.
So, one is given a Bible. In the moment it is a singular object, a book, divided into sections.
If one lives with this book for twenty years, from childhood to adulthood to the grave, it reveals itself to be a falsework for a Bible directed life
[90:G-141] What is most remarkable is not just perceiving one’s soul in and hence derived from the divine mind, but to see that soul as a complex of ideas, interacting to form a coherency: one’s soul as something that can not only be known but also thought: soul, then, as idea—and taking the form of ideas or sub-ideas clustered together: reduced to or derived from what may in the final analysis be words. That’s why the term “thing” is the wrong term. It is information. It is a unique interception by one idea of another, a crossing, an ideational intersection: certain notions about freedom, magic, religious beauty (as expressed by the Grail theme and the Good Friday spell), revolutionary covert activity connected with elements of the Civil War, animals as they appear in children’s books, something to do with the old-fashioned countryside and light, music, writing; but most of all a sense of the divine as if not only am I a notion in the divine mind but I as its notion contain in and as myself a notion of it. In other words I fade off into it, and it fades off into me, as if each is aware of and related to the other.
You won’t believe this later when you’re not ripped, but your 10 volume meta-novel is “the secret stolen past the angels in one’s hands”—the story that (1) each of us lives in a unique individual world; (2) it is spurious; (3) it is fed to us by the plasmate—this is told in VALIS if you add it (VALIS) to the corpus; and (4) we have some control over our individual worlds, since somehow it derives from us; it isn’t just imposed on us (e.g., “Frozen Journey,” Maze—really the whole corpus). So it adjusts and accommodates to our perceptions and preconceptions of it.
Plasmate: Divine Entity fertilizing human body to produce Homoplasmate – Crossover of man and living information. Stolen in parts, sections, and then put back together
Osiris: the parts are assembled, and then the black arts (chemical trigger) allows the plasmate to be put back together.
FW is this to the highest degree.
One vast artistic vision, all the way from “Wub” to DI, with particular emphasis on Scanner, the intro to The Golden Man, VALIS, “Chains . . . Web” and DI. (This last my dream. That sustains me. I cannot now be separated from my work.)
Here is sooth: VALIS is not as important as supernatural revelation about God and the universe as it is about me as a person—unique and individual and suffering—and my vision (Weltanschauung – belief). Me and my own private vision; this is what we call art (as with van Gogh and his vision). Therefore it is not theologically meaningful but artistically. The theological, etc., stuff in VALIS has value as my construct/vision/dream: likewise DI. Vis-à-vis reality it has no relevance. It tells us nothing about world but a lot about me as artist.
So VALIS is part—an integral part—of the vision that began with “Roog” and forms one seamless whole. The whole theological, etc., view in VALIS (and to a lesser extent in DI) is like some vast book within a book, an artistic vision within a greater vision—i.e., my total corpus. It’s like the movie in VALIS: another “book within a book.” Vision within a vision.
“Christ invading the world” is not a truth or falsehood about Christ or world but a truth about me and my vision, my perception and my unique individual world, hence artistically relevant to and in my total unitary corpus. It is part of me, and I have put me and my vision legitimately into my work. [ . . . ] This personal vision began with Crap Artist and Counter-Clock World. The rest is artificial, but due to 1964 I passed over from artifact to art. Where it truly blooms is in everything from and including Tears on— great art, and it all began as objective pulp objects, which have turned into human documents, as Gregg Rickman is the first to perceive.
Joint (e.g.) is mind, android, cold.
VALIS (e.g.) is heart, human, life.
I passed through progressive humanization and humanized stages in my writing as I did so in my actual life.
!
There is no truth in this, only artistic vision: but for me, in terms of my own vision, “truth” (objectively) has no meaning; to state that X is “truth” would violate the premise of my own vision. Thus VALIS was inexorably dictated/generated by my total corpus.
Bishop Tim Archer.
I’m going to assign to him as his major view my Commedia 3-coaxial realms view (as expressed in my Metz speech and which were going to be the basis for the 3rd novel in the VALIS trilogy). He has been studying the Commedia and Sufi teachings, also quantum mechanics (which he does not understand but nonetheless prattles on about). He is convinced that Dante’s 3 realms (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso) are available in this life; and here he gets into Heidegger and Dasein (human existence). (This makes historical sense, since Heidegger very much influenced Tillich, etc., contemporary Protestant theory.)
Now, how does this relate to his later involvement with the Zadokite Document and the Anokhi mushroom? The Zadokite sect knew how to get into the Paradiso realm (alternate reality) in which Christ is here. (This clearly relates to Allegro’s “hallucination” theory; likewise Hofmann’s Road to Eleusis.) It is quite simply the restored realm, and is potentially always available. What I want to stress is that none of these ideas is original with Bishop Archer. So I must invent a writer-scholar-philosopher- theoretician who advances this theory about the Commedia in his book(s), his published writing— something connected with California outré theorizing.
In other words from the beginning Bishop Archer is searching for Christ. The “Dante” formulation initially provides him with a theoretical framework as to how it can be done (or he thinks this is how it can be done). Now, he drops all this—and the California writer who is based on Alan Watts—in favor of the Zadokite scrolls and the Anokhi mushroom; this is typical of him. I would have built on the first, constructed a synthesis, but this is not how Jim worked; he rushed from one thing to the next. Okay; this California writer is a Sufi. Edgar Barefoot is his name. This is set in the Bay Area. Bishop Archer meets Barefoot; they become colleagues: an Episcopal Bishop and a Sufi guru living on a house boat at Pier 5 in Sausalito. The name of all this is: making God (or, as with Archer, Christ) immediately available to you as a living experience.
There is a certain quality of Jack Isidore in Bishop Archer: the capacity to believe anything, any pseudoscience or theosophy. The “fool in Christ,” naive and gullible and rushing from one fad to another, typical of California.
The Zadokite Document (scrolls) convinces Bishop Archer —who had devoted his life to “reaching across to the living Christ” (which makes sense given the fact that he is after all a Bishop)—that Christ was “irrelevant.” There is something more important: the expositor of the 200 B.C.E. Zadokite sect.
Archer’s involvement with Barefoot is “ecumenical,” but with the Zadokite and Anokhi mushroom stuff he has ecumenicalled himself out of Christianity entirely. Barefoot is crushed, heartbroken—an example of the casualties Archer leaves along the road behind him in his speed-rush Faustian quest, always exceeding itself, surpassing itself (it is really Dionysus that has hold of him). Barefoot, Calif. guru that he is, acts as a rational stable counterpoint to Archer’s frenzy. Barefoot is authentically what he seems to be, claims to be: a spiritual person and teacher; he is not a fraud. He is always being demolished in discussions by other more formal thinkers, e.g., those at UC Berkeley, e.g., on KPFA. But—like Watts—he has his followers. He is really quite systematic and rigorous in his thinking. He does not foresee Archer suddenly abandoning him and flying off to Europe vis-à-vis the Zadokite scrolls—he, the Sufi, the non-Christian, is horrified when Archer turns his back on Christ. Archer declares that now he has found the true religion (at last). This very concept (“the true religion”) is foreign to Barefoot, in fact that is one of his fundamental views: that all religions are equally valuable.
Ecumenical: unites many sections of Christian faith.
One true Religion: the boat that carries us across the sea, the camel that carries us across the desert.
One true Meta-Physics: Religions are not singularities, each has several components. The meta-physical wing of religion can function at extremely low levels while the more mundane wings can actually soar higher than any political revolution
Feed the poor, heal the sick, educate the ignorant, create communities of families who follow the golden rule.
The HOW of surviving, the transition into living, the goal of salvation from hunger and violence.
The WHY, what does it all mean, is a construct of ART (music, writing, humor, culture) with a bridge to MEANING. It is the least important part of a religion.
The correct WHY is “Why does a religion deal in ART? In meta-physics?”
It is a way to keep the journey from survival to living alive, it is encompassed in the journey from childhood to adulthood. It is the basis for maintaining order in a static environment.
Ah. Archer has expropriated Barefoot’s views and peddled them as his own. Barefoot does not mind; he just wants the views per se to be promulgated. [ . . . ]
So when we meet Bishop Archer he is already involved in a fusion of Heidegger and Sufism—this means that the book will deal with California grotesques, which is okay. This is how we encounter him, like the grown-ups in The Cherry Orchard.
Barefoot claims actually to have experienced the 3 Realms. I will assign to him my “evasion equals time; Dasein equals space” view. Archer can’t get the hang of it and wearies of trying; it takes too long. He wants instant solutions. The Anokhi mushroom will do.
Edgar Barefoot is at one Extreme, Angel Archer the other. Bishop Archer is the person in the middle.
The basic story: Zagreus has seized control of Bishop Archer and drives him to his ruin. Whereupon Zagreus leaves the Bishop and enters Bill Lundborg. But in exchange for madness and death—the dues that Zagreus exacts—he confers a vision of Perfect Beauty (Pythagoras’ Kosmos).
So I have the Bay Area gay community, the Bay Area “Alan Watts KPFA” community, poetry and religion (non- Christian) and music and some dope, but this is not the doper subculture! They are all intellectuals, except Connie. How about a Trot too, to bring in radical politics?
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Zagreus (Greek: Ζαγρεύς) was sometimes identified with a god worshipped by the followers of Orphism, the “first Dionysus”, a son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered by the Titans and reborn. However, in the earliest mention of Zagreus, he is paired with Gaia (Earth) and called the “highest” god [of the underworld?] and Aeschylus links Zagreus with Hades, possibly as Hades' son, or Hades himself. Noting "Hades' identity as Zeus' katachthonios alter ego", Timothy Gantz thought it "likely" that Zagreus, originally, perhaps the son of Hades and Persephone, later merged with the Orphic Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Persephone. Wikipedia.com
Art, like theology one giant fraud. Downstairs the people are fighting while I look for God in a reference book: God, ontological arguments for. Better yet: practical arguments against. There is no such listing, it would have helped a lot if it had come in time: arguments against being foolish, ontological and empirical, ancient and modern (see common sense). The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking. I wonder if bankers ask such questions. They ask what the prime rate is up to today. If a banker goes out on the Dead Sea Desert he probably takes a flare pistol and canteens and C-rations and a knife. Not a crucifix: Displaying a previous idiocy that was intended to remind him. Destroyer of the people on the Eastshore Freeway and my hopes besides; Sri Krishna, you got us all. Good luck in your other endeavors. Insofar as they are equally commendable in the eyes of other Gods.
I am faking it, she thought. These passions are bilge. I have become inbred, from hanging around the Bay Area intellectual community; I think as I talk: pompously and in riddles. Worse I talk as I hear. Garbage in (as the computer science majors say); garbage out.
These things are obvious to me:
(1) I am on a stupendous spiritual quest. It involves my total life.
(2) It involves—but is not limited to—my writing.
(3) I am making progress.
(4) VALIS is salient and evolves into the “Bishop Timothy Archer” novel.
(5) My turning down the Blade Runner offer to do the “Archer” book for only $7,500 is a double-edged spiritual advance: (1) to turn down the money; (2) to do the “Archer” book; thus my spiritual aspirations endured white- hot iron testing and triumphed.
(6) It is Anokhi whom I seek. My perception grows, it is real, it is worth the work.
(7) VALIS was a dim but authentic (!) vision, as to a child, of Anokhi. Someday I will be an adult.
(8) My view synthesizes all the theology and philosophy I have learned; nothing is wasted.
(9) I have a real understanding of Anokhi and he works with me to bring this vision about; I am not working in the dark; he is with me.
(10) Finally, I am right now triumphing, as I write the “Archer” book. Not as a literary piece but rather having to do with Anokhi. Had I not turned down the Blade Runner offer, had I not tackled the “Archer” book, I would have lost. But he helps me. Literature is not the issue. Forging a vision of Anokhi as I write is the issue. For me there is no other issue. Pure consciousness.
I see the legend of Satan in a new way; Satan desired to know God as fully as possible. The fullest knowledge would come if he became God, was himself God. He strove for this and achieved it, knowing that the punishment would be his permanent exile from God. But he did it anyhow, because the memory of knowing God, really knowing him as no one else ever had or would, justified to him his eternal punishment. Now, who would you say truly loved God out of everyone who ever existed? Satan willingly accepted eternal punishment and exile just to know God—by becoming God—for an instant. Further (it occurs to me) Satan knew God, truly knew God, but perhaps God did not know or truly understand Satan; had he understood him he would not have punished him. But Satan welcomed that punishment, for it was his proof to himself that he knew and loved God. Otherwise he might have done what he did for [the] reward. “Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven” is an issue, here, but not the true one; which is the ultimate goal and search to know and be; fully and really to know God, in comparison to which all else is really very little.
What I must do—what I am doing—is extracting the essence of God out of intoxication; sever the two; for the presence (not the essence!) of God intoxicates man and makes him mad, but it is man the percipient who is mad, not God.
I did see God, as a vast signaling system who operates in us and on us by hieroglyphics that are stimuli —and this (seeing thus, and correctly) drove me mad; I am mad but I did see God. Yet I continue, for at last God’s essence, which transcends madness, will sober me in love: cf. Donne’s “batter my heart”; the whole pattern is becoming clear to me, and it is a rational structure! The madness that seeing God fills man with is the madness of belief, knowledge and joy; these must be separated from the madness or their value will be lost in the intoxication. This is enthusiasmos by the Holy Spirit. But (to repeat) God is not mad; man is driven mad by belief, understanding and joy, for he is a little thing.
[79:I-19] In 2-3-74 the Geist in me rebelled against Fate (death) expressed by the Xerox missive and, in rebelling, became self-aware (Anokhi); this is what I knew (and knew of) as Valis. It could not rebel unless it became self- aware; it could not be self-aware without rebelling (against fate). (This finds expression in VALIS when I say of the plasmate: “For thousands of years it slumbered”; i.e., “throughout all this [the first age or half of the book] Siddhartha slept [but now he awakes].”) [ . . . ]
Thus in a certain poetic way it is true to say I seized the Book of the Spinners—i.e., of Fate—read the writing and caused it (my fate) to come out differently.18 Put another way, I refused my instructions to die—my programming; I rebelled against it. These are poetic or quasi-poetic, but “rebel,” “Fate” and “spirit” and “consciousness” (Anokhi) are real and literal.
Geist (German pronunciation: [ˈɡaɪst]) is a German noun with a degree of importance in German philosophy. Its semantic field corresponds to English ghost, spirit, mind, intellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to help convey the meaning of the term.[1]
Geist is also a central concept in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 1807 The Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes). Notable compounds, all associated with Hegel's view of world history of the late 18th century, include Weltgeist "world-spirit", Volksgeist "national spirit" and Zeitgeist "spirit of the age". Wikipedia.com
[79:I-24] The issue is not reality or ontology but consciousness—the possibility of pure, absolute consciousness occurring. In terms of which material things (objects) become language or information, conveying or recording or expressing meaning or ideas or thoughts; Mind using reality as a carrier for information, as an LP groove is used to carry information; to record, store and play it back. This is the essential issue; this use of material reality by mind as a carrier for information by which information is processed—and this is what I saw that I called Valis, and anyone who reads VALIS and thinks it is just a rehash of metaphysical ideas or ideas “worked over by 1,000s of thinkers for 1,000s of years” is a fucking fool! Robert Anton Wilson is right.
[79:I-28] I will know what this pure consciousness was, ere I die trying.
Some mental entity using reality as a carrier for information—what does this mean? That we humans are not alone and that we are not the highest life form on this planet. And it is aware of us and intervenes in our lives; yet we see it not.
[79:I-30] All I can think of is that reality is pure consciousness; that only Anokhi exists, purely and solely. That what we have is ascending degrees of perception, and the ultimate is perception of pure consciousness “out there”!
I can express the essence of it: reality refers to something above, beyond and outside itself; it is (literally is) an idea about something else; it is not so much information but an idea or concept of something beyond it (itself). Hence I discerned info “recorded” or “encoded” into/on it. What I have been missing is: this causes reality—not just to be a vehicle for info—but, as a vehicle, to be caused to refer to something outside itself. Thus it signifies (as what is seen) what is not seen, and this (my not-seen) is my surd. And I know what that (surd) is: it is God impinging on reality (but distinct from it, Spinoza to the contrary). Hence this is why I saw “pretextual cause” and “camouflage”; this (new) concept subsumes both these earlier perceptions/ conceptions.
I have had it all and never realized it before (except that I understood the “surd” concept). Hence the AI voice speaks of a “perturbation in the reality field”—pointing beyond the reality field! All creation registers the imprint of God and reveals God. But not in the traditional “design” sense; no: not design but sign which must be read; sign pointing to what lies beyond it (viz: a sign does not point to itself). Put another way, if there was no creation, the existence of God would be metaphysical, just as without the iron filings the magnetic field is metaphysical. Yet we do not and cannot normally “read” reality at all. It is either- or, not degree. Both the immanent and transcendent views are wrong; a totally new view is needed! Viewed this way the “Acts,” dream and cypher material in Tears becomes completely understandable. This is how the I Ching works, the registering as if by a limpid passive “vegetable” agent. What we are talking about, then, is the Tao, which is real but does not exist! Yet registers on (or mildly shapes) what does exist! And is the ultimate power.
[79:I-34] When I saw the Grail this morning (5:30 A.M.) I did not see it per se; I did not, either, see it created out of nothing. I saw an ordinary physical normal every-day cup already in world affected by God; the cup in a sort of mist of color—the space around the cup as mist-like colors; and this cup became the Grail; it changed; it was made into (?) the Grail, and it did not just seem to me to be the Grail; it was the Grail; it was what I would say converted into spirit, a spiritual thing: “Grailified,” so to speak. Light did not emanate from it; it was transfigured by a sort of material light that showed—displayed or was—colors. He must have a physical cup or cup-like object in, I guess, our Lower Realm, to shape and mold and change and transform and “Grailify.” The spiritual, then, is not opposed to or separate from the physical; it is as if the physical and mundane exists to be thus spiritualized.
The physical, material world, then, is not truly disjunctive to the other realm but points to it as a sign and under certain circumstances—a state of Grace—can be so read: as to what it refers to, is or bears (carries) information about.
I found myself thinking, “This is the Medieval World View,” and then I realized, “No! This is what it aimed at.”
[79:I-36] “Bishop Archer.” The medium Rachel Garret is (acts as) the Spinner; she foretells the Bishop his fate: death in the Dead Sea Desert. The rest of the book is his attempt to defy Fate and free himself from his sinister destiny through the blood of Christ.
[...]
He puts up the greatest fight possible against sinister Fate; this could include fighting against deteriorating into a credulous crank: Kristen’s death sobers him up. Yet if he believes Rachel’s prophecy he has de facto succumbed to superstitious credulity! Is this not Scylla and Charybdis? To avoid death he must believe in crackpots. The reader, knowing of Jim Pike’s death, will see the irony of the situation. Angel counsels him not to believe what mediums say; but he cannily senses that he had been heeding Rachel’s warning at the cost of seeming/being a nut: “Better a live dog than a dead lion.” He is really in a spot: Fate, by a master move, has him either way. The Bishop correctly perceives the strategy (by Fate): a master move involving paradox.
[79:I-39]
(1) The warning by Jeff, through Rachel Garret. Apparently Jeff has come back all right.
(2) Disbelief by Tim and Angel (of the warning).
(3) Kirsten’s suicide. This changes everything.
(4) Tim now takes it seriously and perceives the double bind he is in. He is totally lucid.
(5) Tim sees the situation in terms of Fate; his knowledge of the mystery religion origins of Christianity comes to his rescue; Christ can save him (and only Christ).
(6) ∴ (sic!) He goes to Israel to seek “Christ,” the Anokhi mushroom. Dies. It would seem Fate won.
(7) Angel encounters Bilclass="underline" Tim is alive in him (as in “Beyond Lies the Wub”) but he (whoever “he” signifies) is mad.
(8) All she can save now is herself.
[79:I-43] All—repeat: all—that invaded me in 2-3-74 was myself as eternal unique idea (in other words my intelligible essence or soul). Somehow I gained access to my informational basis!
[79:I-46] In this “Sibyl” plot development in the “Bishop Archer” book: do I not realize what I am saying? Jim Jr. came back; Jim was right—it was true! The prophecy (by Jeff) proves it, whatever the character’s reactions thus in writing the book I vindicate Jim. Do I want to do this? Yes. [...]
Am I falsifying history? I don’t know; the material seems to be in control. But it (Jeff’s—Jim Jr.’s—coming back) proves futile pragmatically: The Bishop and “Kirsten” died anyhow! Angel must be shown to realize this. Yet—what if “Jim” is alive in Bill (as in the “Beyond Lies the Wub” story)? It must be an inscrutable epiphany at the end; she can’t tell. No; I know the answer; Jim, as we all are, is immortal; he did come back (in Bill, in me). That is the point I am working toward.
There must be some indubitable sign that Bill at the end conveys to Angel that he really is Tim (even though he is mad and in the asylum). (My “Beyond Lies the Wub.”) It must be a holy moment, and, to her, terrifying. Both: (1) holy; and (2) terrifying, not reassuring. (That would be sentimental.) This goes all the way back to my early novel (really my first): “The Weaver’s Shuttle”!!!!! The old salesman (Runcible/Runciter) reborn. Rebirth is my theme. Immortality as, specifically, renewal and rebirth, not just continuity. With, in, as Bill, Tim is
complete: he is now rooted in practical reality: thus is a syzygy.
...]
He could not prove Jeff came back. He could not get the necessary info to save his life. He has returned—in/as Bill —but cannot prove it. So the book in the final analysis explores the fact that first, you cannot know the truth, and what truth you know, you cannot prove to others, thus (this is the summation) although Fate is defeated, you cannot prove that you have defeated it; this knowledge (of this victory) cannot be communicated. You can defeat Fate and know it, but you cannot tell it—which is my precise position; thus Tim winds up in an ambiguous position; he both won (he defeats Fate) but he cannot proclaim it—as if Fate exacts a latent, final, sting/victory. Yes: Fate plays the final card; you win but can’t make anyone believe. It remains a private matter, locked in your idios brain. [ . . . ] So, strangely, this is the study of a man’s triumph over Fate, which is a Promethean freedom; but his punishment for his “theft” or daring is to be chained to the rock of eternal silence that he did this: that Fate can be overcome. Thus he is free of Fate and yet punished by Fate— doomed in a subtle way: he is alive (reborn) but can tell (convince) no one.
What would be his best ideal solution? Why to resolve simply in the fact that he is alive, per se; to abandon the proclaiming in the form of a simple, private, humble life, thankful for being spared, being alive; so we see him (Bill) at last in perfect peace, no longer trying to convince Angel; and at this point when he abandons his strivings
(Schopenhauer’s Will) and simply says, “This is sufficient,” he then for the first time is redeemed—and knows it. It is sufficient simply to live, even if he can’t tell anyone. This is his victory; he has won by and in submission. He has come to terms with Fate, rather than overcoming it. He and Fate are friends. They both know the truth. He will simply be Bill—and rotate tires. And out of this comes—for him, saintliness—for the first time. He as Bill is a Saint, a Buddha; he as Tim—forever striving—is not and here it ends, peacefully.
He has won this tremendous victory, through the help of Christ, over Fate and death—and can tell (convince) no one. And yet he is content. This is sublime. In and as Bill he works on a car, repairing it, caring for it as one would an animal; devoted to it. We see him polishing the chrome: a boy, simple and gentle and loving and no longer off in theoretical abstract clouds. And Angel loves him although she does not believe. It does not matter to him; he is content, like the Buddha. It is as if the best in Bill has won out—of the syzygy: firmly rooted in reality: the salvation of both Bill and Tim, each of whom individually was mad in his own way; but out of the syzygy has come sanity, of a higher kind. The striving and restlessness are gone. Essentially he is content without knowing whether he won or lost to Fate, i.e., whether he defeated Fate, or whether Fate in the final analysis managed to defeat him. So he does not know that; and Angel does not know that; and Angel does not know if it’s really Tim (or just Bill imagining he is Tim). This is a strange ending. The will (of Schopenhauer) turns back on itself and is satisfied not to
know: This is the form its cessation takes: that he is content not to know, and so is she. Thus one thing is certain: the restless, striving, irrational will is defeated; it has given up. If this is how victory is defined, there has been victory. If victory is defined as knowing whether Tim Archer defeats Fate through Christ and immortality—it is not victory.
The final message seems to be: sublime peace—freedom from the restless striving will—is possible, but knowledge —intellectual knowing—is not. The heart can know peace but the mind cannot be satisfied; the drive to know, to possess intellectual certitude is doomed to failure. Hence one short look elsewhere—to the heart (as Paul says about love). This, very simply, is a fact.
[...]
The conclusion: life is possible but knowledge is not, and the two must be discriminated.
Anohki: A feature of hyper-dimensional gravity that guides the stomach towards a cosmic level of importance 🤢🤮 When neglect leads us to deprivation, or dehydration, we are beheld for infinity in a paparazzi Court of Sin. This is how psychedelics twist ignorance into ordeal poisons (“Frozen Journey”, A Scanner Darkly). Conversely, poverty, hunger, and sleep anxiety can transform the ordeal poisons into entheogens (The Man In The High Castle, The Tensor).