Fomalhaut.87 Whale's mouth. Fish. ??? Constellation pisces.
How could the early Christians have known about Crick and Watson's double helix? Answer: (1) through the "Holy Spirit," whatever that is; or (2) because they are time travelers, can go back and forth through time. The Holy Spirit: from Fomalhaut?
Tremens factus sum ego et timeo. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. Libera me, Domine, in die illa.88 No wonder they waited almost 4 years before letting me understand about Thomas, who he is/was, where/when he came from and how. The double helix, back in 70 A.D. Scratched in the dust with a bare toe.
Right brain hemisphere: music, not words. In close encounters of the third kind: musical tones. Humpback whale songs. Brian Eno's random (self generated) music. Disinhibiting signals? If this is so—zebra is here. Zebra, a Vast Active Living Intelligence System stretches between star systems; it mimics our reality, and modulates (manipulates) it, without us seeing it. Corpus Christi? Thomas was Zebra inside me. The Holy Spirit is Christ inside you. "St. Sophia will be born again; she was not acceptable before." The time has come. "And when I returned I shall be like the lightning," i.e., I shall be ubiquitous, everywhere at once. Ubik. Logos. The micro-template for output terminal of the total entity. Puzzle: we are inside it, and it is inside us. The macro within the micro! Our intellect cannot comprehend this; it violates our physics, our logic. How can the macro be smaller than the micro? "Behold! I tell you a mystery," etc. We are asleep, but waking up. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye ... and then shall come to pass the saying which is written, 'Oh death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?'"89 My dream about the crystal (stinging and dangerous killer) bees killed by the white-falling layer of snow. Death—the sting of death. Death itself killed; death itself shall die. The miracle promised has, in linear time, at last come.
PART FOUR
Folder 89
January–April 1981
[89:11] January 3, 1981
The incident of the pink light and the info about Chrissy differed from normal daily reality only in this regard: I was consciously aware of it; we must subliminally pick it up, like my engramming on the fish (teeth) necklace.
Evolution-wise we must be like the apes in 2001; we are on the lip-edge of evolving to where we'll see Valis/the plasmate. It's like Close Encounters at the end. A life form, sacred and beautiful, right here. An information life form. It is what it says; it doesn't have Logos; it is Logos. Its body is its own information.
There. This is why it takes the form of physical arrangements into info. This life form is that. Damn it, it's a life form that doesn't use info; it is info.*
Time turns literally to space: both another (fourth) spatial dimension but we see this imperfectly as augmented 3-D (space). This is why the past doesn't perish in the MMSK, why when something goes into it—is incorporated into it—it is permanent. The past is still there—this is the essence of the MMSK, to preserve the past (as what I call reticulated phylogons).
The MMSK exists in 4 spatial dimensions and is physically right here; our 3-D world is it, imperfectly seen. Hence we can't discriminate (live info) set to ground. The next step in human evolution will gain this as-it-were ultra-parallaxis. As we previously added color. [...]
My God the truth (true explanation) is quite simple: I saw in 4-D and saw a living info life form here. Why, it extends along the temporal axis as a spatial axis; hence my Bible-into-hologram in Divine Invasion. And seeing King Felix. The various physical-depth levels in Tears. Time as space. [...]
This is more than religion. And more than science (e.g., physics) and more than epistemology, yet all of them. It has to do with human evolution, i.e., the human percept system. This evolution was visually symbolized in my dreams by the 3rd—or ajna—eye. It sees time as space. [...]
So it started as a cognitive leap, leading to a percept-system leap: the meta-abstracting began it, in 2-74. And that led to the phosphene graphics, my first vision of the 4th spatial axis, or my 3rd eye coming on. I was seeing back through the ages when I saw the phosphene graphics; in Ubik I theoretically postulated that each eidos contains all its previous form-manifestations, which Patrice pointed out was a major philosophical breakthrough.
Like I say, I am in a world where other people still say, "One apple plus one apple equals two apples," and I say, "One plus one equals two." My meta-abstracting caused meta-perception at once—well, very soon the "3rd eye" organ came on.
Repeat: there is no theory, account or explanation of this in antiquity; this is a new, evolutionary leap in (1) meta-cognition, followed by (2) meta-perception of world. VALIS, alas, is told from a two-eyed standpoint (about a three-eyed reality). "Christ, the Logos, invading the plasmate, Valis, transubstantiation," etc., are all 2-eyed terms dealing with a 3-eyed reality. Someone else will later have to figure out what happened. But I got the clues from reading over the first half of VALIS tonight.
Where I have been right is: to have treated 2-3-74 as titanically important and to have toiled for almost 7 years to figure out what the fuck happened, and, as a result, what it was I saw. My big breakthrough was in October '80 when I realized about the cognitive meta-abstracting (of spatiotemporality). Only then did I begin to get it, as I can fathom now, today, at last. But the clues are there in VALIS which is a case history of the next evolutionary step in thinking-perceiving. [...]
Goddam it, it is the eye of the God denied us. It opened for me, as it did for the Buddha, but I give (at least as of today) an adequate—i.e., contemporary—explanation. It is the Dibba Cakkhu experience; it did happen to Gautama. This is "waking up"! Enlightenment. Transtemporal equals trans (4th) spatial. I should not have written religious and occult stuff into VALIS; that's 2-eyed thinking about a 3-eyed experience. However, Plato did help critically with his anamnesis theory. Because my "3rd eye" scoped out the past I falsely believed that the explanation lay in the past; I knew the world of 2,000 years ago was involved. It was: as what I saw (spatially), but the answer is not in the past but, rather, concerns the past. VALIS not only (1) lacks this, the correct explanation, but, more (2) is cluttered with specious speculating. Oh well—there is enough correct reportage to make it of some use to future evolved humans. [...]
Q: Okay, what did you do?
A: Meta-abstracted re spatiotemporal sets.
Q: And as a result?
A: The ajna eye came on and as a result I meta-perceived along 4 spatial axes.
Q: And as a result what did you see along these 4 spatial axes?
A: (1) Something we see partially: the MMSK. And: (2) something we don't see at all: a living info life form: Valis/the plasmate.
Q: And what does this add up to?
A: A quantum evolutionary leap in cognition and way-of-being in the world both in terms of cognition (comprehension about reality) and perception—literally—of that reality. Plato and Buddha (e.g.) were possibly onto this as an experience (anamnesis and) but did not understand what it signified. [...]
Finally: this untangling after 7 years of work goes directly back to the grueling labors circa 10-80 when I really bore down. The Logos is pointed to—but new language will have to be developed. Maybe we can work it out in cooperation with "the Logos," the info life form that I saw that is here.
I understand! The "Logos," i.e., the plasmate hence Valis, is a life form that already lives in 4-D space, just as we live in 3-D space. Therefore it is a more evolved life form than us. It isn't just living info; no: it also lives—hence moves—in full 4-D space: it's there already, and adapted to that environment. It is a life form more sophisticated than us; from our imperfect 3-D view it is camouflaged from our perception. [...]
Is it possible that this augmented depth-perception, perception of four spatial axes, is due to bilateral hemispheric parity? Or even to right hemisphere dominance? After all, it is the right hemisphere that apprehends space. Perhaps my right brain hemisphere became conscious. This is the n
ext step in human evolution: for the right hemisphere to come on.
And to think it never occurred to me all these years that when I looked at the contents of Tears and saw the text at several spatial levels—each successive one according to how old it was—I was seeing time as space, which means that I had converted time into space according to the quote from Parsifal, "You see, here time turns into space." Thus (if one wanted to) one could set up a cypher system by which a message could be read off at a glance, as set to ground (in other words in terms of spatial depth along this fourth spatial axis; but whether it is cypher or just the normal way the plasmate operates I have no idea; it may not be cypher at all but just its MO). The message lodges in a context that is not the same age as it; in other words set and ground lie at different depths along the fourth spatial axis. Apparently the percipient does not need to know the age of the different texts in order to see them lying at different depths; they will lie at their appropriate depths according to their intrinsic age, not according to the percipient's knowledge; this is the case because they actually are at these different depths, when time (age) is converted into space. If this is so, it is quite extraordinary, perhaps the most so of anything I've come across in this experience and exegesis of the experience. For example, a percipient who is able to see time as space (the fourth spatial axis) will see the word ASHER on the Linda Ronstadt albums as lying very deep, since it is an ancient Hebrew word. So a message can be put together involving it as a linking device. For example, when I looked at that page in Tears I saw the word FELIX at a different depth from the words surrounding it, and this was before I knew that it is a Latin word as well as a name. I did not estimate the depth by the age; I estimated the age by the depth, by the various different depths. In my opinion someone or something is using this mechanism as a message-carrier. What I have been calling "the 'Acts' lens-grid" is in fact the appearance in me of the ability to see time as space, hence age as depth. I stood in the antechamber of a world that is already long inhabited and well-utilized. This is momentous. Since the verbal integer (morpheme) sets its own depth independent of the particular knowledge of the percipient, the enciphering-deciphering (encoding and then extraction) is spontaneous. ASHER can be used (for example) to show where a message begins. It can be linked and relinked with morphemes of other ages greater than that of the inferior bulk-text. What it is linked to need not be the same age as it but only a different age from the inferior bulk-text. The fact that I was used as an unwitting medium to generate and hence transmit such material shows an instance of how this is done; the older, deeper material in Tears came to me in the form of a dream with the urgent sense that I had to enter it into the text of Tears exactly as I had seen it; only years later did I see it lying farther down—i.e., at a greater depth—and then I realized that it was older—hence lower—than the rest of the text of the novel. This material linked itself with the Latin word FELIX which I had thought of as being only a name.
I believe I counted four different depths in the total text of Tears. A single morpheme will do it. ASHER will be perfect since it is of enormous an tiquity/depth. And it's on every Ronstadt album starting with "Heart Like a Wheel." We are talking about literally millions of instances (print-outs), and many linkings.
This message traffic uses a system that springs normally almost automatically into existence, given the nature of the fourth axis perception (time as space). So the method is not ingenious. But the real question remains: Who is sending, and to whom, and what are they saying?
[89:29] VALIS picks up where Scanner left off. The traces of heavy metal in drugs that caused the occlusion that I noted in Scanner now appear (in VALIS) as the iron (metal) spear-tip that wounded Christ. And the occlusion that is the topic in Scanner is the topic of VALIS, but now it is an ontological cosmic occlusion: insane creator and irrational creation. The cure (remedy) is salvation through Christ who, it is stipulated, represents the principle of rationality; he breaks into the universe, heals it and us as antidote, and invisibly transubstantiates the universe into his own body. Yet, paradoxically, Christ himself has been wounded by the Black Iron Prison, the Empire, through its spear; as he is physician and savior to us we ourselves flock to destroy the Empire and heal our own savior (salvador salvandus).
[...]
Scanner is my true Paradise Lost (the story of the Fall) and VALIS Paradise Regained, the story of the restoration through Christ. Hence VALIS can only be truly understood if Scanner is taken into account. Bob Arctor on the last page of Scanner is Horselover Fat on the first page of VALIS—the two novels form a seamless whole.
(1) Scanner: Man's fall into occlusion, ignorance, impairment and enslavement.➊
(2)VALIS: Man's restoration through Christ who brings him the saving Gnosis that in effect he has lost (been deprived of).➋
➊ Here he, the man, splits into two halves: he is self-estranged. He is wounded.
➋ Here he, the man, fuses back together as one intact person; the wound has healed. He now recognizes himself as himself. The saving knowledge (gnosis) takes the form of man's ability to identify a picture of himself as himself ("Mein eigenes Gesicht") (or: "Mein eigenes Gestalt"1). Thus topologically the universe that in Scanner was pulled through infinity, reversing the gestalt and making it unfamiliar (i.e., Fremd), has been reversed once more and is its familiar self: nicht Fremd but rather Heimlich. The Gnostic categories of estrangement and alienation versus returning to one's home, the familiar, apply here. One has come to oneself after the Fall in Scanner.
[89:103] It is very, very important to realize that in Tears two distinct selves in me were writing two parallel but unconnected narratives: (1) the overt, explicated political one about forced labor camps and a U.S. ruled by five police marshals, the pols and nats; and (2) a latent religious narrative about Christ and Rome and St. Paul—and agape. Now, in 2-3-74, these two selves as (so to speak) thesis and antithesis ignited into one single ultra synthesis in which the apparently conflicting elements that divided them off from each other were fused in a totally new, vast vision of history, society, God, freedom, tyranny that constituted a revelation to each self. "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts," but, more, this meant psychological integration for me, individuation in Jung's sense, wholeness, etc., and an end to internal conflict.
This synthesis combined revolutionary political activism of a Marxist type with a form of Christianity unknown to me: apocalyptic millenarianism of a Jewish messianic nature, involving a Zoroastrian dialectic (much as the Essenes believed in). [...] My primary vision was of a conflict constant in history found, e.g., in the book of Daniel in which an enslaved people fight against a tyrannical empire to establish a just kingdom under messianic rule. Upon grasping this conception of history I resolved my inner conflicts by this, a higher organizing principle or structure that subsumed all parts of me. This all embracing conception of history, society, man and the dialectic I put forth in VALIS so that VALIS is simultaneously a religious and a political novel. (Technically, it presents the view of active millenarianism; we must act politically to establish the messianic kingdom.) (It will not come on its own. So VALIS is both a broad overview and a call for positive political action essentially revolutionary.)
This does not in any way involve an about-face in my political stance (i.e., that which I inherited from Berkeley). It simply fuses it with my metaphysical, religious, epistemological, philosophical views—note "epistemological"; all my years of epistemological preoccupation are involved in the synthesis: viz: I find that Christian apocalyptic history is the true, hidden essence of reality (which of course brings in the messianic salvific mission of Jesus Christ and ultimately God). Thus all areas of my worldview are involved and integrated in this synthesis. The political element has religious implications. The religious element has epistemological implications. There are exceedingly profound historical implications, since it is in history that all this is played out. But until yesterday when I reread VALIS once again I fai
led to notice just how political a book it is. All my thinking has been philosophical and theological; the political part just seemed to happen. For one thing, it was always there; what is new is the religious mystical part. Also, until Reagan got in office, the political part seemed merely theoretical, but now, suddenly it seems immediate and vital. Suddenly VALIS and the vision presented in VALIS is politically relevant, as if overnight so. This, simply, is because the Empire is back and stronger and worse than ever. The timing of the book is really extraordinary.
[89:105] Stoned insight: I assimilated my theology, metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy to my political beliefs. They are all changed but the political beliefs remain the same; they ratify my political beliefs. They give it cosmic timeless scope; it is validated by and issues from divine authority.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick Page 85