[48:949] The whole point of my life was the meeting with Jesus in 3-74:
[48:962] Renewal is the key word; under the script (law) the world runs down—loses its virility and elasticity. Christ will decide where to insert correction and the nature of the correction: what and who.
If a person is corrected he will be renewed (born from above—born a second time): new energy is introduced and released, negentropy, etc. This makes sense, all right. It is the whole point. To add ergic power to a declining closed system—ergic power from outside (as of ex nihilo). Hence the person is healed and invigorated as never before; not just restored to what he once was, but, rather, entirely fresh power is added from outside him.
All the information formations that I saw in 3-74 point to an info basis of reality. I was aware of that at the time: I saw the plasmate as a primary constituent. I see now that our reality is based on a script which precedes it (i.e., reality) in ontology and in time, and also that there is a being here (camouflaged) who can pre-empt this primal script—presumably by generating and introducing totally new information which then realigns (modulates) reality. The message is changed, and so reality changes.
[48:974] All my acosmic novels deal with the topic of VR: putting your foot through reality—e.g., through the ground, the ground sinking away, as if you've stepped into an old septic tank, as in my dream: "almighty power who rules earth and sky / and variegated orders in confusion lie." I am dealing with the issue of Heidegger, but not "why is there something rather than nothing?" but "is there something rather than nothing?" YHWH is the solution, and the only one, to the problem or issue I've raised over and over again in my books. I never considered it a solved issue; I never took the universe for granted.
[48:982] The total deterministic system ("elemental powers") is that which Spinoza equates with God; obviously, as a Jew, deriving his conception of it from the Torah (which fits my analysis perfectly). This is why he says even God must act as he does and in no other way; God is as determined as a falling stone—which I think is a mechanistic-oriented absurdity of the Newtonian period in human thought—the "pool balls" universe; efficient cause is all, even in regard to God.
The problem with this view is the fact of entropy, which Spinoza knew nothing about. Such a system—even if fed Torah to program it—would run down/ossify, since nothing new could come into it. The cosmic Christ adds what specifically would be needed—i.e., to renew the system at carefully selected times and places in wise ways (hence rebirth is the key word). Flexibility and ad hoc newness, instilled into the system, and as a result doesn't run down.
[48:985] The way it determines you requires that it get into your mind. You see, in the normal course of your life, a particular sign. Valis causes some aspect of the sign to register in your memory as a template. Subsequently this template is elaborated and reinforced by later exposures to its components and related material. Finally the completed template causes you to respond to a crucial situation in a particular way. Valis utilizes the principles of linking, the clutch mechanism, repetition and elaboration, and working backward from the later crucial situation. It causes permanent printing to occur on your mind that later acts as cueing.
The reason I know this is that I was plugged into Valis' mind for a time on a—for me—conscious basis, and experienced my own engramming as described above. Is Valis, then, a revisionist agency, amending prior programming that, if left alone, will lead to the person's eventual destruction? Or is Valis the prime programmer?
[48:986] Reality was amended by amending the instructions fed it. So it was not amended directly; its received signal was overridden. This is what I saw that I called Valis: the resetting of reality. This is why I came to the conclusion that I had not seen God but the will of God. Interestingly, what came into being (therefore) did not follow from what had come before; i.e., causality was overruled, and there was what I called "pretextual" causality. Things and processes seemed alive because sentient purpose rather than efficient mechanical law was modulating them. I was seeing the results: of something coming between the law and reality, a softness, a melting, a flexibility so that reality was responsive to me as a "you" not an "it." The modulations had to do with me—they were designed with me in mind, like a sympathetic response. Like a watchful organism or field embracing a number of objects and processes. Here is where Spinoza's view causes him of necessity to deny miracle, since he only conceives of efficient creation and cannot fathom how an override could be the will of God since the original efficient process is in itself the will of God. But a reading of Paul (and an understanding of the mystery religions and of pronoia) clears this up. Also—especially—an understanding of karma. In the amending, the future does not arise from the past but only seems to. This is something like teleology and I have long mistaken it for teleology. Actually, it is a substitution of something else for cause and effect, the past determining the future. What there is here is something on the order of new creation, a renewing ex nihilo. There is a mind lodged in the system now, rather than at the start. The creator has entered his own epiphenomenon and vivifies it on the spot. But he vivifies it in a specific, not capricious, way—he cuts the karmic cord. He sets the causal (i.e., karmic) counters at zero. The karmic past has no longer any power. It is annulled.
[48:989] Possibility: my normal personality is fugal. Under extreme pressure the fugal personality retreated as far as possible—this personality took over in 1970 when I took the mescaline. It was psychotic and fugal = psychotic. Then a non-fugal self ("Thomas") took over in 2-3-74 when the fugal one could retreat no further; i.e., sufficient pressure made me sane because I could retreat no farther. The key term is: coming to grips with; i.e., facing reality, not evading it. In 2-3-74 my problems could no longer be evaded; hence the epiphany of Thomas. Fugue, as a way (device for) of handling reality, broke down. (Heidegger's inauthentic way of Being.) The fugal personality was always high. Auto-intoxicated—evasive. Or rather, intoxicated by the amphetamines and then going into up-down cyclothymia, neither phase being related to reality. Both phases were turned inward. The hawk and the Mater Dolorosa. Driven mad by (1) Nancy leaving; and (2) drugs; and (3) endogenous psychosis. Thomas, not having been conscious in decades or ever before, saw reality without coagulated hypos tases: i.e., lucidly. So what he saw (Valis, the plasmate) was the way reality really is (set-ground). A self that formed in my unconscious, I guess. Collective unconscious. Valis is real; the blood (plasmate) is real too. I can trust what Thomas saw; an adult brain with a newborn baby's perceptions.
Thomas represents a central-vision self; I represent a fugitive peripheral-vision self. He concentrates on the real; I evade it. He is methodical; I am herky-jerky.
[48:992] This is the secret ("Christ in us"). It's not:
It's:
[48:993] 4:30 A.M. hypnogogic: If the messenger arrives in time with the white—i.e., blank—document, your punishment is abolished. I.e., the blank white paper is substituted—intervenes—for the bill of particulars that lists the sins (or crimes) for which you are being tried and punished. If the messenger arrives in time. I get the impression that the messenger is Christ.
The record is cleared by this exculpatory intervention, but it must occur before sentence is carried out; time is of the essence. I get the impression that the list of sins (crimes) are in relation to the law and involve a rigid karmic system of retributive "eye for an eye." The charges have piled up.
Suddenly it occurs to me that this may not only have to do with divine punishment in some afterlife, but the karmic accrual in this life! Of course, 3-74. Christ the messenger got to me—reached me—in 2-74, just before sentence was exacted on the basis of the charges. The deterministic system can only be shorted out this way. White document—i.e., nothing written on it—would be the spotless lamb—v. Luther and the doctrine of vicari ous atonement—but also eschatological judge; messenger as—yes, as in electronic circuit!*
What I saw is clearly a cybernetic info system
. Upon the insertion of the blank white—i.e., spotless—document (which resembles a card) there is not passage of info to the receiver which constitutes your punishing mechanism; it is told no charges.
[48:994]
[48:995] Ah! The messenger's blank document when inserted between the list of your sins/crimes and the retributive "court" acts as an interrupter component introduced into a signal circuit. And being blank it is a squelch type of interrupter, rather than a noise or scrambler interrupter; it erases the signal-flow—not the signal but the flow (transmission). [...]
Sentence by the court is automatic, not interpretive. The courts can't be appealed to, as by a friend of the court. It hears no pleas. This is not a trial but a sentencing. Guilt is established by the info per se. The court knows only the info fed to it; it is a machine.
In the presence of the white document, all the court's settings relax—subside—to zero. They register 0-0-0-0-0. This is an abnormal situation; it does not occur naturally (i.e., without a deliberate official interrupting). Perhaps without the white document, there is always some signal on the input line.
[48:996] Although this wasn't presented to me as a cybernetic model it certainly can be rendered into cybernetic terms, whereupon the difficult notion of "vicarious atonement" becomes easy to understand. It's as if Christ's credit card (magnetic info card) were substituted for mine. His is blank of sins/crimes. Mine contains a whole list. His is substituted by being inserted between mine and the receiver (court or karmic retributive law). The court is no longer plugged into my record but his record. And he has the legal authority to do this; it is not illegal sabotage: his act is official, in plain sight; no duplicity is involved. He can and may do this wherever he wishes, assuming he gets there in time.
Folder 49
January 1980
[49:1041] If events in our world are actually info—thoughts of the brain—it would have to have complete control over us; I mean the 2-tape synchronization, clutch, all the engramming, including when we die (to the brain, go from rest to motion).
But we are asleep. If we wake up, for whatever reason, we find ourselves part of a mind whose slot-present extends back 2,000 years and inhabits enormous spaces and for whom every thing and event in reality is language, and which controls every event and every move by every person; and all things are one thing that is alive throughout, and its changes are its thoughts. We have no independent (discrete) existence whatsoever. If we don't know this we are faced with what seems to be a reality without purpose, and our own actions and motivations are irrational and inscrutable: neither world nor self serves any point.
The role of Christ in this is to wake us up and hence make us aware of our condition, which is a bondage within a totally determined system. He is not working at cross-purposes to the macro-mind, however: this does not thwart the macro-mind; it is an epiphany of the macro-mind in the person: a micro-form of it, like a mirror. It represents consciousness per se; this is the bottom line of the event (that took place with me in 2-3-74). Here the views of Sankara come in. The macro-mind is moving toward consciousness throughout its total self. Every person who wakes up is a Christos: a micro-form of the total mind. The macro-mind is overjoyed when a constituent wakes into consciousness: it means a glad reunion. This amounts to a repair to the damaged Godhead, parts of which have sunk into unconsciousness. It should be awake throughout but is not. To wake up and to experience anamnesis are one and the same thing. The component remembers its identity—and perceptually sees reality as it actually is; anamnesis and the lifting of the perceptive occlusion are the two halves that together comprise consciousness (restoration to the Godhead or mind). I never realized this before. It remembers and it sees. Thus, due to both together, it understands. It is now in a position to understand (1) the macro-mind as brain and (2) its own role in the ratiocination of this brain in terms of language, thought and information processing.
The mind has declined to subsume the interests (life) and the component (person) to the purposes of the whole, which is the supreme act of graciousness (charis52) by the total mind. The macro-brain has actually subordinated itself and its goals to the need to live by the component, which is a dazzling—and the ultimate—sacrifice. (The means-end problem is at issue, here.) (I.e., the components are means, the macro-mind's goals the end, but as I say the macro-mind has made itself the instrument of extrication for the component.) Thus it is said that in the crucifixion God died to save man. This is an eternally occurring act, not an historical event; the time and place is always Palestine in the first century A.D. The whole sacrifices itself for the part—a miracle! In this, in a sense, the part and the whole exchange places and identities!
[49:1043] I am sure that the plasmate—and hence the cypher in Tears—is the living Torah, the informational basis of reality, and my 2-3-74 experience was Kabbalistic—hence my seeing the Hebrew letters on the far wall by which the code (?) (or subliminal material as key) in the Xerox missive was factored out. I mean, one of the few precise elements I have that I can go on is this Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism angle. And the huge book pages I saw could have been the Torah.
I could be in communication with the Shekhina or the Torah itself (the AI voice).
[49:1045] In 3-74 world became my own mind. It was me out there; hence I = Valis. Inasmuch as, if world was my mind, I could change it—actually, literally—by thinking, by the power of my thought. The world became the opposite of Fremd. Of course I saw it as a brain with information being processed by it. It was my brain or at least isomorphism. No. It was my brain; but who was I, that my brain could be world? Answer:
Adam Kadmon!
Then it was by my own powers that I knew the Xerox missive was coming, and dealt with it, knew what it was and what to do, and decoded it. The mind I was in touch with was my own mind. Under extreme stress—a matter of life and death—I remembered. Woke up, and used my antique powers.
It has to do with post-Newtonian physics, with fields and "valence away from plumb." Warping reality.
"I am no longer blind. I was (previously) seeing the universe backward"—i.e., I had been seeing it from outside.
But then:
Now I was seeing it from inside it, and it was a brain isomorphic to mine. It was sentient, and I could see its thoughts; they are physical. The Hermetic micro/macrocosm identity had taken place; I was the universe (in it and as it) and it (its mind) was in me (Thomas, and later, the AI voice!) I introjected it and projected myself, so that I and universe were one, one field of sentience and thinking. This is Buber's I-Thou relationship replacing the I-It.
The Gnostic "stranger in a strange land" relationship ended.53 It was a familiar and friendly—even helping, rescuing—universe; this is the opposite of psychosis! It was as if a lifelong psychosis had ended. And Valis. The universe came alive and spoke to me; it was like me, only larger. It answered questions I had asked over a period of decades: it was aware of me and responsive. It protected me. This answering questions was surely the Torah. World was shot through with the Torah, the basis of reality.
I present the following weird theory. I reversed the inner and the outer world, which is why I felt as if the universe was a balloon and I was walking on the outside of it: I had the universe in me and so knew things I had no way of knowing about the outside world: I could actually look into myself and find the macrocosm; hence I knew a priori about the normally outside world. Hence a voice (the "AI voice") in my head tells me about the outside world (e.g., "an intelligence officer in the army"). The whole exchange is only possible if the Hermetic micro/macrocosm identity system works—and it does.
This is still true; in hypnagogic states I look inward and learn about the big "outer" world—i.e., the macrocosm. This is the way by which all the information, right back to the beginning, came to me. And especially the telepathic experience. The total mind of the macro-system is in me because the macrocosm is in me. (This has to do with the mirror effect—Paracelsus? or Bruno—one of them; anyho
w it's hermetic—Leibniz!) To have a priori knowledge of outer reality is to become like Ahura Mazd, who contains the cosmos. This explains a whole raft of occult and supernatural phenomena: the AI voice, Thomas, dreams in Greek: how I could know a language I don't know, facts I don't know, hear a voice, see pictures, and info re Chris' birth defect, shot at me from "outside."➊
Now, as to the other side: my inner world made outer. I saw two main basic aspects:
(1)My novels and stories external to me.
(2)World as brain, with body and blood, and visible thoughts, sentient and alive: messages and information. Thus I was confronted with world as macromind.
There was a tremendous change in my sense (perceptions) of space. It must have to do with inner space being different from outer.
➊ It wasn't outside. It was really me, my own mind. I am Valis. The introjection of the outer world (macrocosm) meant (1) super knowledge a priori, and (2) also super-rationality, since the macromind is sane and I am not. When I introjected it I became sane. I had the spirit and voice of the cosmos within me!
[49:1048] The person who could introject the cosmos would be in a position to possess absolute (and a priori) knowledge about the universe, in contrast to the defective a posteriori normal sensory method. He would have in him all the universe's secrets, all he would have to do would be to listen to the AI voice which is the vox dei. As far as what he would experience outside him, it would be a magic kingdom.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick Page 71