[38:68] The brain is one multiperson ajna chakra, which one day as a unitary totality will open, discerning and annihilating (the 3rd eye of Shiva). (Herdsman of the souls.) All who participate in it will then see as I saw; they will be inside the eye; everything outside will be blasted, "burned like chaff," i.e., cease to exist. At that point the brain will generate its own world out of itself. It, collectively, will totally control its world—the PTG. [...]
If it's an information plasma life form, and can replicate the (its) entire Gnosis from one bit—well, add in the spontaneous generation of messages (information) depicted in Ubik, which were everywhere—and in 3-74 I saw them everywhere—and the result you get is that this entity has secretly (camouflaged to us) invaded everywhere (Ubique). Because I saw verbal and graphic messages just flying and changing (re-linking) all over the place. And these are not its thoughts, but it itself. Based on what I saw and what I've figured out, we're in it. Like I flashed on several days ago: it's a brain, and we're totally unaware of it. It's not a species within ours; we're within it. (I.e., it is larger than we are.) And it's in some of us. [...]
So that's who not only sends but reads the messages: the total macro-brain/psyche sends the message to the microforms in us.
Fuck! Swarm of Bees, but not us. Thus it links its stations (cells) inside us. We humans are just big dumb vehicles through which the plasma acts, and in which it lives.
[38:72] Ah! In Ubik locating the Ubik messages in cheap commercials was absolutely right on. I couldn't have "guessed" more accurately. It's obvious that the real author of Ubik was Ubik. It is a self proving novel; i.e., it couldn't have come into existence unless it were true.
[38:79] "Latent form is the Master of obvious form," Heraclitus wrote:
So ➊ is related — reaches — ➌ by way of ➋.
Tears, then, is the informational interface or nexus between our actual world of 1974 and "Acts." The reader lives in ➊ and reads ➋, thus absorbing it; but this leads him inexorably to "Acts," ➌, and once he has—
Tears is a doorway, not a world in itself. As you read it you pass across to the world of "Acts" without knowing it—the author didn't know it. It is a latency-within-a-latency.
Then, latent within ➌ is:
The reader, living in world ➊, when he reads Tears ➋, passes to ➌ and then to ➍ and at last to ➎, at which point the living plasma has him.
The final innermost "onion ring" is D or ➎.
In other words, to restore "Acts," Tears is necessary as an interface. Tears is therefore an instrument (probably just one of many) of restoring the brain, because "Acts" = Brain. Tears, then, is a triggering agent for anamnesis, and anamnesis and the restoration of the brain are intertwined. I don't credit Tears with being the doorway, but rather a doorway—
By which the brain traveled forward in time along the form axis from c. A.D. 45 Rome into USA 1974! It bypassed the intermediate 1,900 years!
[38:82] My postmortem experiences (such as sense of vast spaces, etc.) is because in the Corpus Christi there are many, such as Thomas, who are dead, the mystical body of Christ contains both the living and the dead, it spans both worlds.
My sense of Thomas returning the last few days—sense of vast space, dreams of a woman singing—show I'm still in the mystical body. And the postmortem experience is further proof of what I'm sure of: by invading this lower realm and annexing it, Zebra is knitting the decomposing cosmos back together—and it is the cosmic Christ who does this. Ergo, Zebra is the cosmic Christ. I grow more and more sure of it. (I.e., the brain.)
[38:83]
The mystical body of Christ spans the past and the present, this world and the next.
[38:88] Bill Sarill64 points out that my description of the magnet imposing absolute sameness everywhere is a description of entropy, of thermal death of the universe. Conversely, the flash point (critical mass) explosion of the brain would be the hoped for negentropic "Big Bang" start of a fresh cycle of the universe, which, if not achieved, means the eventual end of the universe, through insufficient mass (matter). [...]
Thus, at the deepest level, the brain represents form, and the BIP represents entropy. This realization, due to Bill Sarill, is monumental. It goes beyond "Christianity vs. Rome." The Christians are simply the agents of negentropy, and the brain is the form—and life, the evolving entelechy—which that form takes. The BIP is sameness: thermal death. Clearly, the brain is an ultimate level of homeostasis and a vast evolutionary step forward in terms of hierarchy of form. It subsumes more; it is larger; it is more intelligent and self-sufficient; more free—more alive. As a life form it subsumes not only all other life forms that we know, but even incorporates into itself dead or past lives. It transcends this entire realm and binds it into the other (next or higher). Despite its secular enemy, the totalitarian state, it is destined historically to prevail (come into full actualization). So I was correct in viewing my 3-74 experience as an evolutionary step up. But it is not that just for me as an individual; I ceased to be an individual and became a cell in what I now recognize as a vast distributive brain, an interface for a sentient information plasma which may extend beyond this planet. [...]
I do not believe it is God (the creator). It is something new, which came into existence at a certain time (c. A.D. 45, "Acts") at a certain place (Syria) in a certain way (through first Christ and then the Second Comforter). It had never been seen—been there—before; it has an historic starting point. Blind will or striving is overruled by an advancing mind-brain which came here in micro form (very small and lowly) and grows; it is not static! I suppose we could worship it, but in a sense we would be worshipping our [true] selves; better we should enter into a dialog with the psyche and let it regulate us. We should listen to it, and make ourselves hosts to it, receivers and vehicles and receptacles of it.
I am now dealing in ultimate, modern categories. We're a long way from, say, dietary laws having to do with eating pork, or meat on Friday. My concepts have, in this 4 year exegesis, advanced thousands of years.
[38:95] KW offers the brilliant theory that the brain was using me as a self-monitoring circuit to examine the degree of information degradation along the linear time axis, and therefore could not allow me to be sacrificed in 3-74. Apparently some rectification of the "signal" (i.e., history) had to be made, and I was lucky enough to be included in that rectification. KW explained to me how very good amplifiers monitor their own output to see if it conforms to what they are receiving from the pre-amp; this is a typical example of electronic homeostasis. So the brain transmitted back a text ("Acts") that it knew, and could then compare what appears in Tears with what it had transmitted.
I add to this that it (the brain in the future) also transmitted a command to some of its cells located here, in this time, and this command code (King Felix) was correctly received by me, and boosted (put into the book). But as KW says, a self-monitoring feedback information loop was set up by the brain in the future using me and Tears. Since the brain is information, it (a bit of it as plasma) was actually in each copy of Tears!
Folder 18
AUGUST 1978 OR LATER
[18:1] Which is it: hallucination as reality (e.g., 3 Stigmata) or reality as hallucination (e.g., Bishop Berkeley)?
Stated this way, I think the latter. Reality (USA 1974) is hallucination, and can be voided through faith—whereupon the absolute time and place ("Acts") appears.
Thus 3 Stigmata and Maze are total opposites: in Maze reality is a hallucination. There is a real world behind it. But in 3 Stigmata hallucination becomes real—not: real becomes hallucination and hence departs.
Do Androids Dream ... reveals:
(1) Surface level: Mercer65 real
(2) Below that: Mercer fake—hoax—fraud
(3) Below that: Mercer real (Bottom Line)
I think this 3 level structure is the one we have vis-à-vis Christianity. A secret within a secret A, Ā, A. "Precious Artifact" (3 layer) was close.
You have this: Q: "Is a fake fake real?" re Christianity: A: "Yes."
—
This is in terms of a 2-value system ("A or Ā"). If a 3-value system is used:
—
A becomes Ā by reversal. Then Ā is reversed, not restoring A, but something else. A what? How does it differ from A, if at all? Answer: call it A′. I say A′ "out A's A," in an ontological sense. It is a profoundly deeper, richer newer level than A, but also (paradoxically) it is A. But A′ is not A.
So: A′ is and is-not A.
—
But: A′ is not Ā.
The reversal of the reversed does not restore the original thing. I say, A is just a picture of A′.
Whatever that means. But it's so. Of the 3, only A′ is really real. A and A′ are identical, but A and Ā are false; only A′ is real. [...]
Voice: "A′ is A reinterpreted."
[18:11] Strange—a day or so before my mother's fatal stroke I realized that Thomas was back. The woman singing, the vast spaces. Via the brain I once more passed across a little, not as much as before but enough to tell me that I still remained inside of—a part of—the brain, which spans both worlds.
I must have gone across in 3-74 and stayed for a while and then returned. Okay—in track A I died, but then the revision was superimposed as orthogonal newness: negentropy imposed on a running-down, ossifying state of things. Yes, that's what was going on: ossification, entropy, the "imperial" equals undifferentiated thermal distribution, and this included me, this entropy ... but also I foresaw the really very frightening moment coming for me—I foresaw my demise. The last frames were moving through the projector.
Then the brain acted, injecting new life into realm II. KW agrees that I'd been used as a self-monitoring circuit by the brain to measure the coefficient of entropy (at that time) expressed in terms of information degradation (the aspect of form vs. entropy most important to it, it being living information: it would be self-monitoring its own decay), its own running down, which pointed to a growth-impairment of growth-loss, requiring rectification, self-rectification, it being at perhaps an absolute stage of homeostasis.
I take it that Tears showed too high a degradation-of-information factor, or in some way indicated an inordinate fossil or ossified quality, or pointed to it (in some way conveyed it, I'm not sure the "Acts" info in Tears was degraded, itself, intrinsically).
Maybe wherever the "Acts" material surfaced—its manifesting itself would indicate a "weak" spot—a revelation of too much entropy. In that case, a highly (adequately) vital, viable space-time segment could resist the "Acts" material; for the "Acts" material to surface—show through—first in Tears and then four years later, the actual world of "Acts" showed through—the hologram was weakening!
This is not supposed to happen. The brain wishes to maintain the fiction of linear time—i.e., that it was at that time 1974. Then there was a dysfunction and rectification. The release of Tears with its "Acts" material served as a device by which the brain could pinpoint in its own corpus the weak spot (the brain's evolution—growth—occurs in linear time—so sequence, linear time, is needed by it).
The "hologram" is the brain as "body" of psyche. Its actual evolving corpus—primarily one of living sentient information—was weakening—dying (just one spirit located at one time and place). It's like a Barium or Gallium or other radioactive or dye test. The brain must have either been running (1) a routine test; (2) a constant test; (3) or a test based on suspicion of the USA 1974 "spot" in the corpus. In any case the "Acts" material in Tears was a self-signal to the psyche which brought a quick—im mediate—response of rectification: the orthogonal imposition of newness (from Form I) onto the entropic, weak or ossified "imperial" spot.
I deduce from this that the original landscape is not supposed to show through. But v. p. 17!66
Ach—it's so. I just know it ran a self-monitoring test through me, and the actual landscape showed through in Tears and it, the brain, it reacted. So after it saved me in 2-3-74 I've had time to figure out that what it is is that a brain exists, feeding us a spurious reality which it grows and develops, and we're cells in it subliminally governed and integrated into it. The spurious reality is to keep us from going nuts from sense-deprivation, and is a 3-D hologram matrix through which info passes, its thoughts, instructions and info.
It's all certainly for a benign purpose: the brain is negentropic, the life of the universe, "the final bulwark against non being," as Tillich put it (against entropy).67 As cells, we are born, function, live, age, die and are replaced; the brain is immortal. What we accomplish in our lifetimes is made eternal as bits of the brain's evolving structure, especially if it deals with info, the very substance of the brain. In processing info, especially if we impose form on it rather than just transfer it or boost it—we are modifying the very life (substance, nature) of the brain. So we are active, not passive cells of the brain.
Anyhow, despite the "deception" of a simulated reality—this realization opens up an I-You (me to the brain and back) colloquy, instead of merely an I-it. And this is a quantum leap up in perception and experience of the universe: the not-I.
[18:17] A curious idea occurs to me: in Tears the world of "Acts" has been fundamentally and severely transmuted into a rigid-as-iron prism/tyranny. Expressed as info (with "Acts" as the message) this is a verbal degrading analogous to the world—degrading by the Nixon tyranny (police state nearing outright slavery). So—the "Acts" material is severely degraded: specifically into an ossified form (the BIP). And the brain, self-monitoring in terms of itself qua info, detects the BIP (ossified) quality, assesses it correctly as a moribund or entropic state, and acts to revitalize (i.e., to free) the "spot" (i.e., space-time) involved. Ah! It's as if the brain transmitted "Acts" through my head, and grave BIP aspects showed up in the print-out: accurate representation of our actual political, social conditions. Thus the brain experiences our world as it is: as information. I had mistakenly thought—supra—that the "Acts" material came through intact, but in fact it is "heat death" distributed into the Tears BIP ossification, which, as Bill Sarill pointed out, is a form of entropy! So if BIP equals entropy, there is severe degrading of the "Acts" message in Tears, along very specific lines: our USA of 1974!
My mind in 1970 was utilized as a core or representative situation-registering microcosm component, as if the macro political-sociological USA as historic matrix was correctly reproduced in me—so a known message ("Acts") passing through me (my mind) would show changes, if any, indicative of the macro-historic matrix. It's the same principle as the Nielsen TV Poll.
On p. 13, supra,68 I totally missed the point (nature) of how—and how much!—the "Acts" message was degraded as an input signal/message. What did I expect: the word "Gubble"? Here is a verbal degrading delineating exactly how the situation had deteriorated; i.e., it was not just "noise" on the line but specific, meaningful recontouring, and this condition, called "imperial uniformity" by KW and me, is entropy, which for the brain means a literal (but localized) death of a part of itself—and so it took immediate steps to rectify the situation by breaking the warp-factor of the "complex" (BIP). Just as it gave new life to me personally (à la Ubik) it gave our world new life generally.
What I foresaw in Tears was the running-down of our world, the congealing. Tears, as a verbal message, was a thought by the brain itself, passing through me as a "neural" component. This is how the brain normally works—I got to see that in 3-74, the message came from it, and was to be received by it—that is who the crypto info in Tears was for. So it didn't matter how many copies got sold to whom.
So the "Acts" material was not the message but the control. Departures (transmutations) were the real message: i.e., how altered.
Boy, was it ever changed in a sinister—and alarming—way! So what I call the "mere surface material of Tears"—is what the brain specifically was looking for—I've dismissed the very thing it was looking for.
This is not God. This is
a very advanced organism which we just don't know about (of Zebra's camouflage). It subsumes at least some of us, and came here from elsewhere. It doesn't work by miracle but through ways we don't understand. It, not we, is the real life form here.
It probably is the once-man we know of as Christ.
[18:23] Admittedly this is a more prosaic explanation, but—I can see where, unable to understand the programming and re-programming controlling me, my mind would come to the psychologically necessary conclusion that it was God, and would project the theophany, etc.—i.e., generate Zebra by projection. Also, in 3-74 I may have suffered a lurid schizophrenic episode because of the inordinate stress, I regressed to such a primitive stage that I animated my environment. I saw a world of 2,000 years ago because I had regressed into the racial unconscious.
Q: But what about the "Acts" material in Tears and it agreeing with what I remembered in 2-74 upon seeing the fish sign, and saw a month later?
A: As early as 1970 archaic contents of my mind were overpowering me. This shows up in Ubik and 3 Stigmata. I had been partially psychotic for years, and in 3-74 I broke down totally. Due to actual stress. (The IRS business.)
Like Cordwainer Smith,69 I was taken over by my own S-F universe.
Schizophrenia with religious and paranoid coloring—of the ecstatic type.* A sense of the "cosmic"—vast mystical forces, with me in the center (sic). Like a titanic psychedelic drug trip. I was probably secreting a mescaline-like autotoxic substance not well understood. I had little if any romance (i.e., adventure) in my life in those days ('74), and in '70 Nancy's leaving had broken me—i.e., at the time of my '70 "mescaline" trip, which was more likely my first entry into total psychosis—my ego disintegrated then, and again in 3-74.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick Page 49