In Pursuit of Valis
Page 12
(1980)
GOD: a principle of selection that promotes design in the world process so that the parts are subordinated to the whole, and can be understood only in relation to the whole. If they can be understood in themsmselves it follows that there is no God, because there would be no subordination of parts to the total design. To catch a glimpse of design, then, means to catch a glimpse of the whole. The two are the same.
(4 June 1980)
SEQUENCE:
Anamnesis due to external stimulus (disinhibiting stimulus).
Superimposition of two space-time continua.
Meta-abstraction from spatiotemporal world to Form world.
Freedom from the power of the spatiotemporal world (heimarmrmene).
Re-entry into the higher realms of more unity.
Contact with Nous and vision of the meta-kosmos, a return to prenatal perception (the “second signal,” “set/ground discrimination,” “morphological arrangement,” etc.).
Awareness.
I have to give up; but let me say:
This meta-abstracting due to anamnesis is equal to the following. A child learns that one apple plus one apple equals two apples. He then learns that one table plus one table equals two tables. (I remember this from my four-volume set on math.) Then a day comes when he abstracts; it is no longer one apple plus one apple nor one table plus one table; it is: one and one e qual two. This is an enormous leap in abstracting; it is a quantum leap in brain function. My reference books on universals mention this; my reference books speak of this abstracting, which we all do, as what Plato and Aristotle spoke of when they spoke of the person becoming aware of universals. But I say, Another leap exists, beyond this; another quantum leap. And this next leap does not occur to everyone; in fact it occurs to only a few, to almost no one now. It is truly dependent on anamnesis, whereas the above, as Aristotle pointed out, rightly, does not depend on anamnesis. The child does not in fact remember or recollect that one and one equals two; he extrapolates from the concrete examples of apples and tables. Plato knew that another and higher leap existed, based on anamnesis, and it meant a leap from the spatiotemporal world to another world entirely. Perhaps this is the greatest leap of all, because now world is apprehended by pure intellect alone. Anyhow, this is what happened to me. It is a recovery of prenatal thinking and the prefallen life of the soul. Plato is right. I’m worn out. But this was no insight or concept; this was a higher brain-function, a restored brain-function.
Within our spatiotemporal universe it is impossible that USA 1974 and Rome AD 45 could be one and the same ... how could they be? They are at two times and two places. The only way they could be one and the same would be if time and space were somehow not real; or, put another way, if something about the two continua themselves were not real. That is, if Rome was not Rome; USA was not USA; but both were a third thing, the same thing.
This is why I call it a meta-abstraction. USA 1974 and Rome AD 45 are two ways of looking at the same thing: two aspects of the same thing. And the only way you are ever going to realize this is if you literally actually see the two of them superimposed, commingled; and this will only happen if you experience anamnesis; and you will only experience this anamnesis if something stimulates—releases, actually—your blocked memory.
You cannot logically reason out that they are one and the same thing (two expressions of a single essence); you have to see it. Literally see it. Only if there is prenatal memory can you see this. And there can only be prenatal memory if you existed before your birth. You realize this, too; this is a large part of the anamnesis; in fact, this is why I have used this term all along. Plato is right; the anamnesis is of a prenatal life. This was my realization when I saw the Christian fish sign. I’ve known this all along. What I only recently realized is that my brain instantly performed a crucial meta-abstraction based on this anamnesis.
I am saying, “One plus one equals two” to people who are saying, “One apple plus one apple equals two apples. One table plus one table equals two tables.” It’s not their fault. I’m sorry but the difference between my meta-abstraction as a brain-function and their abstracting, their brain-function, is that great. I’m lucky. Because of the sodium pentathol and the Christian fish sign my blocked memory of my prenatal life was disinhibited. After making the initial leap in meta-abstracting my brain drew conclusion after conclusion, day after day; and I saw world more and more in terms of conceptual or morphological arrangement and less and less in terms of the spatio-temporal; I continued to abstract reality more and more, based on the hierarchy of realms (each higher one possessing more unity and ontology than the lower) that Plotinus describes.
In a way I feel really bitter: because I can’t tell anyone or convince anyone of what I saw. I’m afraid VALIS won’t convince anyone. I feel like joining them and saying, “When I played my recording of the Mahler Eighth last night the performance was a lot better than when I played that recording last week.” They’d think I was a lunatic. that’s how I feel about them, in a way.
(19 October 1980)
I have the ingredients for an original system, but based mainly on Pythagoreanism and Platonism and Neo-Platonism; what is original is that I introduce the Zoroastrian dialectic: I treat only the spatiotemporal realm as irreal, but, as in Gnosticism, I treat it as a deliberate trap by a Deluder; therefore I envision a Savior who reveals the truth to us and who breaks the power of this world (heimarmene) over us (these are two things; he must obliterate time and its power over us, its ostensible reality, to free us from heimarmene). Therefore I envision an antithetical combat—dialectic—between the Deluder, who has only a posteriori knowledge, and the Savior, who has a priori knowledge, concerning us and the hold this world has on us. This is clear Gnosticism; but I envision the real world as Plato’s Form world, and I hold, with Plotinus, that it is near at hand, not a transcendent deity far removed from here; it is here and that deity is immediately here. I envision a hierarchy of realms, as with Plotinus. We fell; we were in a sense ensnared; we took this spatiotemporal realm to be real; we made an intellectual, not moral, error, and it was us, not our ancestors; each of us is a soul splintered through thousands of miles and thousands of years. Likewise the real, morphological realm is exploded through our realm; the way of return is through anamnesis: by this we re-collect (ourselves, each one his own Self; here Heidegger and his Dasein categories[104] and concepts apply; they are based on Gnosticism).
So my system is rooted in Platonism, but has Gnostic overtones. I believe in immanent deity along the lines of the Milesians: the controlling deity who regulates and motivates the world order; but with Parmenides I reject the testimony of my senses as to the reality of the empirical world; but I am willing, with Plato, to consign the term “semireal” to the spatiotemporal; it has some reality, but it is a derived reality, derived from the morphological realm which is changeless (although reticulated and arborizing) hence eternal. What strikes me as most irreal—totally irreal—is time. Hence change is not real; instead of substantial (essential) change there is only “looking different” by the accidents. Basically I affirm the views that I think were held by the Orphics, Pythagoras, Plato, Buddha; but I conceive of a Salvator salvandus [redeemed redeemer] who acts to extricate us and finally to abolish this irreal realm and its powers of delusion, in a final enantiodromia.
You know ... Valis could still be the immanent mind, the controlling deity, of the Milesians. And I
may drop Gnosticism (there: I said it.)
[ . . . . ]
I am not acosmic: because I believe in the absolute reality of the unchanging Valis meta-soma-kosmos or eide (Form) world; why, this is not acosmism at all; it is Plato and Parmenides; I caught a glimpse of Parmenides’ reality, and Plato’s, in contrast to the irreal or semireal spatiotemporal realm. Gnosticism is acosmic but I am not. My original contribution is that I saw the flux realm feeding into the meta macro soma kosmos as reticulation and arborizing; so there is new thought in my system,
but it is a revision of Athenian thought, not Gnosticism. But—in the dialectic there were the two sides that Zoroaster saw; yet they served the Absolute the way Yin and Yang do; so did I see a glimpse of something like Taoism?
I seem to have an original system; but yes, I must retain something of Gnosticism; I feel it. We were trapped, besides just falling; trapped by a Deluder.
However, I am making progress; my system is shaping up. If I use the elements I’ve elucidated so far I already have an original system ... but it is basically Pre-Socratic, Platonism and Neo-Platonism. From Xenophanes to Plotinus with some Gnosticism and some Taoism. It is synchretistic, but this feeding by the flux world into the Absolute is (although somewhat Taoist!) truly original; and it was revealed to me by Nous or God, Valis, the Absolute, Christ, etc. What I am forced to conclude is that there is a Deluder, in antithetical combat with Christ (Gnosticism), but through enantiodromia, Christ turns the evil and irreal “is” into parts that can be and are used to complete the meta-soma-kosmos, which is not static but grows and yet does not change; it is only perfected (reticulated and arborized; is this, then, why I so sure time is irreal? Because of the metasoma—kosmos? Yes; that is the realm (#3) where time and change are not. The perception that the spatiotemporal realm is not real is a perception that time and change are not real—real is a perception that the metasoma—kosmos is real and does exist in contrast to realm #4.
[ ... ]
You cannot really fall into or fall victim to an irreal world. So part of the message by the Spirit of Truth is—I’ll start over. The basis of restoration—since we have “fallen” into an irreal world—is: anamnesis. Simply to re-collect, to wake up; and then (as I did) we see the real world, the Form world (macrometasomakosmos). That is, quite simply, the real world (as I have it in my notes supra; vide). This spatiotemporal world is not real and it is not the real world; we have forgotten the real world, and each person’s soul or Self is splintered over thousands of miles of space and thousands of years of time—and time doesn’t exist. We fell and yet in a sense we did not fall and need only remember (re-collect). This is strange; it may have to do with Plotinus’ doctrine of the hidden life of the soul going on in us at an unconscious level, in which the soul has not fallen; the solution to how this can be is to say, In a sense we did not fall, because this spatiotemporal realm is irreal; we forgot. We literally—repeat: literally—are asleep; hence I said in 3-74, “I am no longer blind.” I had been wakened by a familiar object: the Christian fish sign. But has a “magician,” like Palmer Eldritch, put us to sleep? I think so; I saw the dialectic and I heard the AI voice say, “He causes things to look different ...” Back to the reality of Acts, I guess. “Stay awake,” Jesus said. We did not; we fell victim to the world and to Satan behind it.
The existence of a master magician would explain how we could fall victim—get entrapped in and by—an irreal world. He causes us to take it as real by occluding us ... could the occlusion then come first? And then we fall victim? And the main element of the occlusion is: forgetfulness. Amnesia. And then blindness, perceptual occlusion, whereupon the spatiotemporal world seems real. But saw Valis, and in seeing Valis I saw what is really there, that the magician occludes us from/to.
So I am saying that Indian thought is wrong when it assigns to cause to maya; I say, with Zoroaster, “There is a magician.” This is Zoroastrianism—and Mani and Gnosticism—blended with Indian thought about maya and karma. With Christ viewed as the one who wakes us, who causes us to remember. Then it is not accident that it was the Christian fish sign that caused me to remember. to cease to forget. That is what it is supposed to do ... counteract the Lie (the delusion). So I combine Indian doctrines of maya with the Judeo-Christian etc. idea of the Fall. I say, we fell into Satan’s world which is irreal, a “spurious interpolation.” Yet God is using Satan, through enantiodromia. Countering him. Reversing him. Here, within this very domain; the good that occurs in this domain (through enantiodromia) is placed into the macrometasomakosmos. Evil is concerted into good by enantiodromia and then inserted into the macrometasomakosmos.
The theories about the Fall must be revised; an intellectual error, not moral error, must be presumed. One can almost—almost—view Satan’s activity as a high technology in which the simulation of a world order is achieved. This element of maya or dokos has interested thinkers in India and Greece, but with Christianity and Gnosticism comes a really penetrating analysis between the two elements of world and Satan, with the theme of epistemology running through Gnosticism—which is why I can’t abandon it. We fell asleep because we were induced into falling asleep; the spurious world had to be there for us to take it as real; we ourselves don’t generate it ... unless it’s a maze that we ourselves built and then fell into (which always remains a possibility).
Probably the wisest view is to say: the truth—like the Self—is splintered up over thousands of miles and years; bits are found here and there, then and now, and must be re-collected; bits appear in the Greek naturalists, in Pythagoras, in Plato, Parmenides, in Heraclitus, Neo-Platonism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, Taoism, Mani, Gnosticism, orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Orphism, the other mystery religions. Each religion or philosophy or philosopher contains one or more bits, but the total system interweaves it into falsity, so each as a total system must be rejected, and none is to be accepted at the expense of all the others (e.g., “I am a Christian” or “I follow Mani”). This alone, in itself, is a fascinating thought: here in our spatiotemporal world we have the truth but it is splintered—exploded like the eide—over thousands of years and thousands of miles and (as I say) must be re-collected, as the Self or Soul or eidos must be. This is my task.
(24 October 80)
I was gazing at Harvey[105] tonight and I was granted a vision: of him as all the cats who had come before (as Schopenhauer says); but I did not think it; I saw it in the same way that one sees motion in a movie. I saw the point of this whole morphologically arranged world and its relation to our spatiotemporal world; wherever in space a cat is and whenever in time, it is a perfect cat; there is no deterioration in—so to speak— the information comprising CAT. Over millions of years that “signal” has not deteriorated or weakened or been contaminated; the cat now is a clear-cut and perfect a cat as the first cat; and what I saw sitting there was essentially an eternal cat, a cat outside of time and space, a cat replaced over and over again— exactly as Schopenhauer says—and still with us here and now as it was there and then, every cat I have ever seen and every cat that has ever been or will be; because the process has not ended.
This was not a theory or an intellectual realization; I actually saw him as the eidos cat, instanted (or whatever the fucking word is; an instance of) the cat. I therefore saw this spatiotemporal world joined to the morphologically-arranged world of the eide through and in this cat, the two realms synchronized and superimposed, the instance and the eidos as one; Harvey was simultaneously an instance in the spatiotemporal realm of cat, and also the eidos cat.
This is why my view (based on revelation) that the flux world feeds into the Form world (world of the phylogons) as reticulation and arborizing is not only more correct than Plato’s but more logical and valuable; it is a sort of double emanation from higher to lower, from lower to higher (realms), as Plotinus says. What the individual cats do and are is not lost, although the individual cat is an epiphenomenon and fades out; but as it fades—after it is gone but as it fades-there fades in another “picture” of cat, so that cat is unchanged as cat; cat is constant. So everything that I have figured out in the last two weeks came together tonight in this vision of my cat Who is an eternal cat, just as I am an eternal person; it is all eternal and I saw it with my own eyes, how the superim-position works.
(26 October 1980)
I just had this insight. However vivid it was, 11-17-80[106] was a subjective experience, however veridical it might be. On the other hand, 3-74 was objective. Really, it was. This again
leads me back to Brahman or to Hinduism. The GITA, anyhow. 11-17-80 was a mystical encounter with the Godhead, but 3-74 was a theophany.
3-74 revealed God in or God as world.
This is very important for any conception one has of world (and of course of God; but look what it tells you about world. On the other hand, 11-17-80 tells you nothing about world, and, as Wittgenstein says, “Die Welt ist alles dasz das Fall ist.”[The World is all that the Fall is.] As I look about me I think of the tenth section of the GITA and what Lord Krishna says about what he is, the many things in world that he is. “The cunning of the dice player. The letter A.” Etc. Also 3-74 points to the fact that although I can’t see it—i.e. him—I am here with God—as in UBIK. I am afraid hat parts X and XI of the GITA remind me too much of Valis to be ignored.
To repeat, 11-17-80 was a mystical experience and it took place during an altered state of consciousness on my part. But in 3-74 I saw God empirically as well as experiencing him a priori. Thus, as I say, this was a theophany. It wasn’t just a “I talked to God” situation. And it lasted for months.
I saw God and he was here and there in the world; not as the world, but distinguishable from it as set to ground. Exactly as Krishna says in chapter ten of the GITA. And the world did not (as such) exist, i.e., the spatiotemporal world; that was how my experience began, with that perception. This is Brahmanism or at least Pan-Indian. Certainly 11-17-80 is a much more common experience, a genuine theophany. I felt that Valis had (at an earlier time) invaded our world; hence what I saw disclosed was an in-breaking of God who is now here. This might be my solution to the Eastern-Western dilemma. God is here in world (an Eastern view) but he is not world; he broke into world (the Western concept of God’s in-breaking, which is apocalyptic thought). 2-374 had vast epistemological and metaphysical implications, but 11-17-80 did not. Here’s a theory: in 374 I saw God more as he is, but in 11-17-80 he assumed an anthropomorphic form, and attributes, in order to communicate to me.