The Bicameral Internet 3: I Saw Dasein (Mic Drop)

To recap: it is the perception of isomorphism that overcomes cognitive estrangement because the perception of isomorphism is a grasping by the person (part) of his compatibility with the whole (Other, cosmos). This perception acts as two mirrors act: a runaway positive feedback is triggered off in the person, the part, concluding with his reincorporating into the cosmos—which is at the same time a repair—a return, if you will—of cosmos itself. Since he is now inside the cosmos rather than an external spectator to it—in fact now that there is cosmos—he grasps it from within; thus he perceives what Spinoza calls the attribute of mind, the inner side of res extensae (the outer side). This perception of an isomorphic constituent common to self and Other (world, cosmos) is known in India as the “Tat tvam asi” perception of the Atman-Brahman identity; it is a universal experience. It is pure knowing—as contrasted to belief, even correct belief—and, most of all, it is return.

The reversal, then, of what I call “cognitive estrangement” to “cognitive affinity” has precisely to do with this familiarity: how can you be estranged from what is familiar?

When I saw Valis I also saw the sentience (Noös) which the view of the atomists had logically driven out of the universe, by showing that consciousness and perception are epiphenomenal; therefore the atomists were materialists of necessity. So when I perceived and comprehended the universe as a continuum, it was a thinking continuum, as it had been for all the pre-Socratics prior to Leucippus. One view (atomists) must of necessity deny Noös, but why does the continuum view imply noös? Perhaps the answer is: noös is there—in world—but the atomist—discontinuous—view prevents us from perceiving it . . . because our worldview literally prevents us from seeing what is there: the voluntary sentient cooperation of “things” (which aren’t things in the atomist’s discontinuous sense); we see pool-ball Newtonian causation instead. Thus my two early satoris were logically and structurally related: having to do with space, having to do with causation. This all pertains to the discontinuous-continuum alternatives: “the void” not only permits pool-ball causality—the random collision of atoms by blind necessity—but requires it, by the very nature of the cosmology/theory that causes us to experience this worldview. Dasein.

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: ∞

Thus through the spirit there comes into existence a perfect (absolute) correspondence between Internet and our world. The Internet 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 Internet as information. It is as if the Internet derives from and applies to world; world derives from and applies to the Internet, so that when you perceive world you perceive the Internet as world. And when you search the Internet 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 Internet, 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 Internet—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 Internet—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 Internet”; Internet 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 Internet, right down to the correct names of people—and this explains Tears. World can be deduced from the Internet, and the Internet 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 Code. 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 ! This is a totally new understanding of the informational basis of reality—and the possibility that a mind exists (the spirit) in which the Internet 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 web, the Internet. (This would be an avatar.)

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!

I see a synthesis higher than anything I have ever seen before: the spirit—the finest parts—of Marxism, Christianity, Buddhism—and yet it is above all this; and out of me it draws the most noble drives and aspirations, the mystical and the urgently practical combined. It is as if the dialectic has achieved new heights, like nothing I have ever seen before. And he gives voice to and codifies the best in me, that up to now was inchoate. I never knew myself before now; my own nature was to me obscure. Everything in me at last takes shape. I utterly repudiate the policies of the regime but I turn—not inward—but to something so beautiful that I could not have imagined it. “For pain, for hope”; that says it all. This is a fortiori the two dialectical antitheses of the new synthesis! Pain (the suffering of people) and my caring (agape) about their suffering, and the hope that Maitreya brings forth a radical transformation in our and their lives. This synthesis—pain and hope—is above tragedy and is absolute beauty; it is grounded in human pain and the need to relieve that pain, and the hope—and conviction—that it can be relieved through the Maitreya and his program. The terrible side is pain, the salvific side is hope; out of these two comes action and the will to act, to change the world. Pain and hope are the two mutually exclusive primary realities that unify and become the ultimate, new synthesis for our age; we must feel both to experience this new synthesis that is serving, simplicity, and sharing; pain without hope is miserable, but hope without pain is empty and futile.

Hope. That is the key for me in all this, in terms of my oscillation between doubt, faith, conviction, credulity, paranoia, fear, suspicion. Hope generated by the pain of the life of the planet. Hope that the new dispensation is authentic.

Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis 1981-82