I kept dreaming of us as animals in a stagnant pond, interpreting this as our planet. But suppose it's not our planet, but our entire space-time universe, viewed from the next (Neoplatonist type) one? The "helium-filled balloons," then, which rise—those are our souls. This is also the next stage in our evolution. But the pond has become so stagnant, now; few "balloons" rise. It is sad.... We must be an early stage in a life-form which metamorphoses into a higher space-time continuum. These dreams/visions weren't ETI viewpoint, but religious in nature, a religious insight into our condition. Maybe it is at the bottom of the pond that we hear his voice. I think what those dreams/visions consist of, is you can develop a working (total) view based on them alone, but everything which religion deals with—our situation, etc. It's all in there somewhere.
We're not so much "dead" or half-dead but half-alive—exactly as it's called in Ubik, but working the other way: the missing part has never been alive; it lies ahead, not behind us. We weren't deprived of it. We didn't have it once. We are yet to have it, are working toward it, being drawn, called (as by the élan vital of evolution, of life) toward (upward toward) it. A newt after all is "alive," but it is only part of the life it will eventually achieve (if all goes well). As Paul says, the physical body (which we have) comes first; then the spiritual (which we don't have, which Christ gives us). My gosh, we are being grown here (in this pond), and aided (on all sides, which is what I saw). [...]
In Aristotle the one soul of the 3 which is immortal is the one which seeks to know (seeks sophia).
"My divine children, whom I am preparing" (dream).
[5:311] I had the most extraordinary dream in which the dual nature of Christ was revealed. It took the form of a Medieval diptych, in which, on the right, the inner nature of Christ was shown in a picture, nebulous, but resembling Michelangelo's painting of the Delphic sibyl. Under that right- hand picture was written the word SHE and then the word SECRET. The left-hand picture was shown clearly: it was the puppet Pinocchio. As a string puppet, which is to say, worked (animated) from above. The picture of the puppet was one of a mere model of a human, very wooden, very without intrinsic life; it even had heavy shoes to weight it down, to give it the semblance of substance. In the very center of the frame, below the two pictures and equidistant from both, appeared the three unbroken lines of the trigram Ch'ien, 108 that of creative masculinity; this lay outside the diptych, thereby showing an outward presentation, to the world (outside), of pure unadulterated absolute masculinity. Bearing in mind that the female (and I think superior) part—called she—was identified also as secret, I understand from this dream that the female component's presence in the dual nature is a secret, probably is to be kept secret; also, it does not reveal itself in Christ's actions or manner, which guards the secret of course. That the masculine nature is "worked" by an inner feminine one is never stated anywhere, or it would cease to be a secret. I can conclude that it is Haggia Sophia that is represented here. I get a lot from this diptych representation; one thing I get is the impression that although gently given, the word "secret" is an injunction to me to keep my mouth shut. This is the first evidence I have had that there is indeed, as Paul calls it, the element of sacred secrets in esoteric Christianity (cf. what the ICC says). I was initiated into at least one of these sacred secrets; i.e., that Christ's deepest nature is feminine, which is to say, Holy Wisdom. That He will return is not a secret. Another secret is the relationship between the shamans of Greek culture and Christ/the Holy Spirit, which is to say the theolepsy induced by Dionysos. Specifically, though, I am told to cool it re Christ's feminine nature. Secret means secret. (I presume the early Christians, who underwent theolepsy by this spirit, knew this; and they did not tell. That it is also the Cumaean sibyl, and Delphic, shows a continuity from Greek mystery religions, and Greek culture, also not told.)
So several cultures (3) are involved: Hebrew, Greek and Roman. I suspect also Iranian: the wise or good mind, Ahura Mazd.
Anyhow, in the dream (p. 1) there was cautionary material, I think, because nothing new was given except the word "secret"; the rest I already had been told. Question is, Why should it be kept secret? Probably for the obvious reason, that people would not now, and wouldn't have in ancient times or Medieval times, accepted it. I am thinking of what Wilhelm Reich said about the maternal religions and societies versus the paternal, and then what I said in my Vancouver speech, my hope for and anticipation of an amalgam of the masculine and feminine deities, which is exactly what the diptych showed Christ to be (with the feminine dominating, which is all right with me). Yes, in that speech I foresaw this, the next cycle of human society, and I was ready for it, pleased and eager. It would combine the best of both, the syzygy, a masculine posture of assertiveness plus feminine love and warmth. The diptych showed a syzygy, all right, masc. outside, feminine within. We would see a man physically but experience a woman spiritually.
You know, the puppet Pinocchio could also have been a ventriloquist's dummy. What a strong image! With the animating entity on the right side, i.e., as pictured there à la fresco. The puppet had no life of its own; on its own it was inert and silent. Christ, on the cross, said, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" which perhaps meant that at the moment the inner animating spirit left Jesus and rose upward; what other interpretation is possible? Which tells us, does it not, that we have a cupola between the animating spirit and God; it was the spirit of God, i.e., God's wisdom. I suppose it is more accurate to regard Jesus Christ as a syzygy rather than female as such, but the prior spirit, prior to incarnation, was female, and I suppose is again; we are in both cases talking about St. Sophia: she. Well, if St. Sophia—I mean when—when St. Sophia again is incarnated, I imagine that another syzygy will be formed, and again it will be correct to think of it as he-she rather than as with the unincarnated spirit: she only. The human, which is to say masculine, side must not be discounted; this is the bond, the fusion, between the supralunar and the sublunar; this fusion is significant and must not be lost sight of as being such. The animating female spirit exalts the man to the status of God or anyhow a god. The Ch'ien trigram placed dead center shows the mystery: that the fusion results in a masculine outcome, albeit the animating figure's feminine nature; here is a miracle, this transformation of sexes, which the dream picture shows to be real (i.e., it comes out Ch'ien, not Kun, as one might anticipate). Nothing gives out the secret, nothing. A further thought occurs to me. Is not the Holy Spirit capable of conferring immortality? Yes. Then did not St. Sophia (the Holy Spirit) confer immortality on the man Jesus, so that he per se still lives? Yes; it must be so, or all our hopes are dashed. Perhaps then the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is still the syzygy; it is not certain, in fact it is unlikely, that as the JWs109 say, the man Jesus is dead, forever dead; because if He is, then so are we, too.
Wow. I have seen into the nature (essence) of the second incarnation, and in doing so, have a stronger sense of its imminence. The Trinity is a mystery re its natures and persons, but (I have been told in my dream) so is the nature of St. Sophia incarnate—two persons, or rather (sic!) two essences! Forming one person! If the Trinity is real, then do we not have a quaternity, with man (Jesus) being the 4th person??
This cautionary revelation would not have been necessary if the spirit weren't about to incarnate, I think. Surely such a cautionary warning would only take place if the second incarnation were imminent. (Perhaps in my lifetime, although I could commit it to print, which would extend, possibly, into the future.) Anyhow it concretizes the second advent, in my mind, as very imminent and very real.
The puppeteer speaks through the puppet, who is a mouthpiece, then, for the god, gods or God. Is this not what the dream shows? The human component should be a clear and limpid structure through which Divine Wisdom can express itself unhindered. Its expression should not be vitiated. There is no voice, really, but that of the puppeteer; the puppet has none of his own. An immortal and divine voice speaks from within the man (Jesus). He is assi
milated to it, and yet we see only the puppet, the man; he is invisibly transubstantiated. [...]
I dreamed last night of a MS page of mine in which I had 3 consecutive paragraphs beginning with the word "she," an obvious reference to the "she secret" Christ dream. In this more recent dream I found space on the page to insert a paragraph which did not begin with "she" (I felt it was wrong always to start with "she"), and I added erotic material, about nipples, etc. Now, thinking about this, I remember my first vision, preceding all the others, which was of Aphrodite, and had to do with her right nipple; I wonder if there was an elliptical allusion to Aphrodite (cf. Empedocles) in this recent dream. The dream, engendered from my own mind purely, is still valuable, as it recalls to me what I had forgotten, namely, the vision of the Cyrenaican Aphrodite beyond the golden rectangle door. Does this dream suggest (good lord!) that "she" is related to, or is, none other than the goddess of love known to the Greeks? Empedocles felt that Aphrodite was the steersman of all krasoi.110 This is all very anxiety-producing to me. I add, if so, indeed it would be marked "secret," but I appeal to the philosophy of Empedocles to indicate a lofty as well as erotic element to this; he held her to be the ultimate entity drawing things and people together, "the star of love," which is how I ended my speech, meaning Christ. As the EB calls her, "The generative principle of all life." A mother goddess, not sex; doesn't the nipple point to this? Nourishing?
[5:244] Mark 4:11 says that the parables were intended to confuse and not inform everyone except the disciples, the latter understanding the esoteric meaning, the outsiders getting only the exoteric meaning which would fail to save them; this was especially true regarding parables about the approaching Kingdom of God. I keep forgetting this. How much of the real inner meaning has come down to us? The written gospels record probably mostly the exoteric parable meanings, not the inner core. Whether we like it or not, it is there in Mark (if not elsewhere), and this favors the view of an elect within the body of mankind. At least so far as Jesus went. Maybe now there is a Third Covenant which will include all creation or anyhow all men. I am thinking in particular of the grain of wheat sown into the ground to rise again, a mystery theme common to Greek mystery religions; in fact evidently the basic one. What it really means—to know this—enables the hearer to achieve what is achieved: eternal life. The how is contained, as well as the what. I think that in 3-74, at the height of despair and fear and grieving I stumbled into the Kingdom, stumbled around for a while and then stumbled back out, none the wiser as to how I got there, barely aware of where I had been, and no idea as to how I stumbled out, and seeking always to find my way back ever since. Shucks. Drat. If it wasn't the Kingdom I don't know what it could be, with its bells and the lady singing and the void, with the trash in the gutter glowing, and the golden rectangle doorway with the sea and figure beyond, and the moonlight. There were people living there, especially the lady. It was all alive. It had personality. It explained everything to me. Now I don't see or understand anything. At that time I could even remember back to my origins. My real origins: the stars. What am I doing here? I forget, but I knew once. Amnesia has returned; the veil has fallen, back where it was. The divine faculties are occluded as before. Obviously I didn't accomplish it; I was given it, since I don't know how to find it again. "Man is not as wise as some stones, which in the dark, point toward their homes." My soul, sunk down in ignorance again. Blind and deaf. Ensnared by gross matter, limited. The long dark night of the soul is a lousy place to be.
Heraclitus says the Logos can be heard. My goodness.
Heraclitus also says the world (universe) is uncreated, but kept together by the Logos, which I guess is immanent/transcendent. Men do not listen to the Logos nor see it, but are asleep. Soren K. says that the essence of Christianity is an "inward suffering before God," which makes me a Christian I guess, especially today.111 The pull of matter is very great. I escaped for only a little while and then fell back further than ever. As Elton John says, "I've got my memories," and it did induce some permanent changes in me. Mark says that God can cut short the time of tribulation for the elect, before it gets unbearable; maybe that's what He did in 3-74.
Mark: "Those closest to Christ thought he was insane."112 So his mother and friends came to get him, but he rebuffed them. Shades of Dionysus; also, that the apostles appeared drunk to bystanders when the Holy Spirit came to them at Pentecost. Thinking about this I feel rushing back to me many many experiences around 3-74 and during the year after: the name Jesus in the Bible opening up to form Zeus-Zagreus, the dots on the alb of the saint becoming grape vines; the vine quality of the washing ladies' plaque; the dithyramb being danced; the article "Dionysus in America" and what it meant to me 113; the imagery of Pindar (root and star); the similarities I noticed between The Bacchae and the passion story and Hamlet; the fact that Dionysus is a breaker of prisons and a destroyer of tyrants (e.g., King Penteus); Christ turning water into wine; Christ as corn god and lunar fertility god; the mystery religions et al.; the fact that Dionysus was a god of metamorphosis: the Greek words and aspects of 3-74; the madness or intoxification I felt; the breaking down of the Nixon gang tyranny; my whole preoccupation with Dionysus during this ... was Jesus an avatar of Dionysus, a evolution of him via Orpheus into ultimate spirituality?* Was this one of the cardinal mysteries revealed to me direct? The man/god/stranger who cannot be killed, and who is persecuted, but then returns with a vengeance? That's what I put at the end of my U.K. speech. Where has he been for the past two thousand years? Locked in a death-struggle with authority: first the authority of his own church, then the secular authorities, all of them; bursting the prisons gradually. Or perhaps the human who experiences the theolepsy (like the sibyl in The Aeneid)becomes intoxicated by the energy of the spirit inhabiting it; which might include Jesus, and later the apostles. The spirit, in His case, could be Holy Wisdom, and she is quite sane (ma'at). It occurs to me at once that theolepsy must be limited to short intervals, so as to curtail the madness. But Jesus had the spirit in him most of the time ... perhaps He struggled with it and conquered the madness, except for short outbursts, such as the fig tree episode.114 [...]
It is Gnosticism and Gnosticism alone which denies the patriarchal Jewish-Christian religion and enshrines Sophia as the creator goddess. So says Neumann in the EB. My experience of the lady—it is exactly Gnostic. None else. In my revelations all roads and aspects lead to her; this is Gnosticism.
I've seen her, heard her, in many guises, and finally the name "St. Sophia." Gnostic revelation has broken through into my head in the modern world. I think anyone versed in Gnosticism who read my notes would say, "You're a Gnostic." I am not happy about this, but it is so, based on 3-74. Simon Magus115 lives. Also, it is a thoroughly Greek syncretistic system. I must go where truth (as I've experienced it) takes me; my experience is of St. Sophia. Well, this is a modified Gnosticism, with Sophia sanctified as Wisdom of Proverbs and the book "Wisdom," so that it can be made to jibe with the Bible; thus Christ becomes the female spirit Sophia in a male body, a syzygy. Ah! Yes! This is the complete person! The missing half which Plato wrote about. In Jungian terms, psychological completeness; psychic integration. Not either-or but both-and. At last; the repressed female goddess Prinzip breaks through into Christianity, in a Third Testament or Covenant. Father (OT), Son (NT) and daughter or mother (3rd T). The first emanation from God, according to the OT, so I guess daughter as demiurge (cf. Plato). The Godhead remains behind her; I experienced that; she is the Pantocrator. Ma'at. Or rather Pantocratrix. Two aspects differ from Gnosticism: it is Holy Wisdom, not just Sophia; and: she was born before and rejected, which identifies her with Christ, hence the Logos. This restores the cosmological quality to the system, lost in Gnosticism; the creating spirit (universe creating) is holy and good, not fallen (blech). And this maintains Christ correctly as the Redeemer and Revealer. [...]
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick Page 29