In Pursuit of Valis
Page 23
Q: What about the resemblance to my writing?
A: The content was originally in my unconscious, e.g., TEARS and UBIK.
Q: What about external events? The girl? The letters?
A: Coincidence.
Q: & the written material? Huge books held open?
A: Verbal memory.
Q: Why would I believe that my senses were enhanced, i.e., I could see for the first time?
A: Psychotomimetic drugs indicate this happens in psychosis.
Q: & Kosmos? Everything fitting together?
A: “Spread of meaning,” typical of psychosis.
Q: Foreign words & terms I don’t know?
A: Long-term memory banks open. Disgorging their contents into consciousness.
Q: Problem solving—i.e., the xerox missive.
A: There was no problem; it was harmless.
Q: Why the sense of time dysfunction?
A: Disorientation.
Q: Why the sense that the mind which had taken me over was wiser than me & more capable?
A: Release of psychic energy.
Q: Why was that mind & the whole experience syntonic to me? If it was syntonic to my ego, why had it been repressed?
A: My ego was destroyed, so “syntonic” has no meaning here. Syntonic to what?
Q: From a practical standpoint I functioned better. How could this be?
A: It only subjectively felt better. No anxiety.
Q: Why would I seek the experience again if it was repressed contents breaking through? Could I not let them through again, or never have excluded them following 3-74? The contents & the other mind leaked away; I tried to hold onto them but in vain.
A: I was occluded to my own best interests. I liked being high.
Q: Oh? “high”? Does psychosis equal high?
A: Mania. I am manic depressive.
Q: & schizophrenic? One is extraverted & one is introverted. Please clarify.
A: Mixed or “borderline” psychosis.
Q: No, it was florid schizophrenia with religious coloration. Not satisfactory.
A: Catatonic excitement, then.
Q: So the OCMH[230] diagnosis was incorrect? Not manic depressive?
A: That is so. Incorrect.
Q: Why, then, was the onset one in which thought came faster & faster? That is mania.
A: The lithium would have blocked mania. I was lithium toxic.
Q: Then it wasn’t schizophrenia; it was chemical toxicity.
A: Perhaps. A combination. Plus the orthomolecular ws[231] vitamins.
Q: But the orthomolecular ws vitamins are anti-schizophrenic.
A: That is only speculation.
Q: If 2-3-74 was psychosis, then what was the ego state which it obliterated?
A: Neurotic. Or mildly Schizophrenia [sic]. Under stress the weak ego disintegrates.
Q: Then how could the phobias associated with my anxiety neurosis remain? e.g., agoraphobia?
A: It does not compute. Something is wrong. They should have gone away or become totally overwhelming. The impaired ego must have still been intact.
Q: Was my “dissociated” behavior bizarre?
A: No, they were problem-solving. It does not compute.
A: Perhaps there were no real problems.
A: Not so. It was tax time.[232]
Q: What we are talking about then is inhibition bypass behavior oriented toward crisis problem solving.
A: Yes.
Q: This is 180° opposed to any meaningful definition of psychosis. We can reason overwhelming by unconscious material but there is no way to account for it being more capable in terms of problem solving. Skills were involved: adaptation to reality & not fugue from. Fugue & adaptation are mutually opposed. One cannot run from & solve simultaneously; these are diametrically contrary movements, one away from, one toward. We have to attribute the mutually exclusive postures of retreat from pressing crisis problems & motion toward problems & the expert solving thereof. Please explain how an organism can simultaneously flee & stand & fight.
A: The organism is compound, not simple. One part fled & another part replaced it & problem-solved.
Q: Did the part that problem-solved do so successfully?
A: Yes.
Q: Could the part which fled have done a better job if it had stayed in control?
A: No.
Q: Then a part which had never had to deal with reality proved more adaptive & effective.
A: It was adequate.
Q: On what basis did it act? Experience? Trial & error?
A: On instinct. It knew what to do.
Q: Then it was ideally suited to the problem-solving required.
A: Yes, it matched it perfectly.
Q: This is not psychosis. This is reserve psyche kept in readiness for a unique crisis problem.
A: Yes.
Q: Q.E.D. You are talking about meta- or paranormal functioning, not psychosis, which by definition is incapable of adapting, problem-solving, reality-testing. Did it test reality? Or did it withdraw?
A: It tested.
Q: This is null-psychosis. You have contradicted yourself. This is a latent higher brain center. A psychotic episode creates problems; it does not solve them. It is a problem, as well as the collapse of rational efforts at problem-solving. Were its decisions & actions rational?
A: Although religious in coloration—
Q: That is not the issue. Were the problems solved?
A: Yes. But by a psychotic self.
Q That is an oxymoron. A “psychotic self took over & problem solved.” This is where the inquiry has led. The ego could not face or solve the crisis problem because of its severity, fled, & in its place another self solved the problem successfully. This leads us to a new frontier which is not mapped.
A: Then the enigma remains.
Q We have learned nothing.
A: Nothing.
Q: After finishing listening to the tape do you have any intuition or guess as to who & what the Valis mind is? (Later)
A: Yes. It is female. It is on the other side—the post mortem world. It has been with me all my life. It is my twin sister Jane. This was referred to in one dream, & that is enough. “Specifically, fairies are the dead.” Two clues. This would explain why no one else has had my experience. The other psyche I carry inside me is that of my dead sister—v. DR. BLOODMONEY when the situation is reversed, v. SCANNER.”
1) It’s another psyche in me. In my right hemisphere. 2) It’s female. 3) It’s on the other side (after death). 4) It’s my tutelary spirit. What does this point to? To my sister.
(1979)
Q: Does someone (Divine) speak to me?
A: Yes.
Q: Do I remember (my true identity)?
A: Yes.
.·. : this is Gnosticism. The voice that speaks is the call. My true forgotten identity is primal man or a spark thereof. & it is myself awakening myself.
Q: Did I see the many become the one?
A: Yes. I called it Valis.
.·. : this is Gnostic restoration.
Q: Did I remember past lives?
A: Yes.
Q: & see infinite space?
A: Yes.
.·. : I experience vast time & vast space. This is Gnosticism.
Q: Did I see a prison around us?
A: Yes.
.·. : This is Gnosticism.
After I wrote this (4 a.m.) I went to bed thinking,
“It is Gnosticism for sure.” The explanation almost fits—almost, & yet—it occurred to me then that a much simpler & much more convincing explanation would be that it was Christ, the real presence of the actual Christ & an expression of the power of Christ to bind & to loosen, to save, Christ as pantocrator & eschatological judge. (Hence the Good Friday & Easter overtones; hence the role of my moral act vis-à-vis Covenant House).[233]
(c. 1981)
Chapter Eight: Three Clоsing Parables
For God did not make death & takes no pleasure in the destru
ction of any living thing: he created all things that they might have being. The creative forces of the world make for life; there are no deadly poisons in them. Death is not King on Earth, for Justice is immortal.
But the good man, even if he dies an untimely death, will be at rest. For it is not length of life & number of years which bring the honor due to age; if men have understanding, they have gray hairs enough, & an unspotted life is the true ripeness of age. There was once a man who pleased God, & God accepted him & took him while still living from among sinful men. He was snatched away before his mind could be perverted by witchcraft or his soul deceived by falsehood ... in a short time he came to the perfection of a full span of years. His soul was pleasing to the Lord, who removed him from a wicked world. The mass of men see this & give it no thought; they do not lay to heart this truth, that those whom God has chosen enjoy his grace & mercy, & that He comes to the help of his holy people. Even after his death the just man grown old in sin. Men see the wise man’s end, without understanding: the Lord has purposed for him & why he took him into safe keeping ... then the just man shall take his stand, full of assurance, to confront those who oppressed him & made light of his sufferings. At the sight of him there will be terror & confusion, & they will be beside themselves to see him unexpectedly safe home.
(1975)
This is not an evil world, as Mani supposed. There is a good world under the evil. The evil is somehow superimposed over it (Maya), and when stripped away, pristine glowing creation is visible.
Did our ancestors go insane and cease to be able to see what is there? The layers of veils of evil must be stripped or washed away (waking up, the washing away by the blood of the Lamb, baptism etc). To awaken is to awaken to truth, also to beauty: to unity. Delusion means to see lies, to see evil. Evil equals lies equals evil equals delusion equals the unreal. God is good, the world is good, we are like him, but somehow we got estranged. Equally from world (!) as from God. God equals world as seen properly (clearly). Who deludes us? Vide Zimmer:[234] We ourselves weave the webs of illusion; the unreal frightening masks are projections of our unaccepted portions of ourselves. They are inside, projected out to become evil. When withdrawn back into us, we see a lovely world.
We’ve got ugly and evil confused, frightening (to us) and evil confused. Maybe all we mean by “evil” is ugly and frightening plus strange, beyond our understanding (which is limited). Evil is (are you ready?) unnatural.
One day the contents of my mind moved faster and faster until they ceased being concepts and became percepts. I did not have concepts about the world but perceived it without preconception or even intellectual comprehension. It then resembled the world of UBIK. As if all the contents of one’s mind, if fused, became suddenly alive, a living entity, which took off within one’s head, on its own, saw in its own superior way, without regard to what you had ever learned or seen or known. The principle of emergence, as when nonliving matter becomes living. As if information (thought concepts) when pushed to their limit became metamorphosed into something alive. Perhaps then in the outer world all the energy or information when pushed far enough will do the same. Fuse into something everywhere (the force Ubik) that is sentient and alive. Then inner-outer, then-now, cause-effect, all the antinomies will fade out. We will see only a living entity at its ceaseless building: at work. Creating. (Has continual creation almost reached completion?) (Such dichotomies as big-small me-not me will be transcended.)
(1975)
Here is an example of hierarchical ranking. A new ambulance is filled with gas and parked. The next day it is examined. The finding is that its fuel is virtually gone and its moving parts are slightly worn. This appears to be an instance of entropy, of loss of energy and form. However, if one understands that the ambulance was used to take a dying person to a hospital where his life was saved (thus consuming fuel and somewhat wearing the moving parts of the ambulance) then one can see that through hierarchical outranking there was not only no loss but in fact a net gain. The net gain, however, can only be measured outside the closed system of the new ambulance. Each victory by God as intelligence and will is obtained by this escalation of levels of subsumation, and in no other way.
(1979)
Afterword: I Understand Philip K. Dick
True stories have no beginnings and neither does the tale of PKD’s encounters with the Overmind. But we writers understand narrative economy, and for purposes of narrative economy his story seemed to him to begin with the mysterious break in and riffling of his papers that was made notorious by an article in Rolling Stone, which brought Phil long-delayed and much-deserved fame. The break-in date was 11/17/71. It was a date and a style of referring to time that Phil used frequently.
I turned twenty-five the day before. It was no casual birthday either. I met my natal day by sitting down and sincerely preparing myself for an Apocatastasis, the final Apocalyptic ingression of novelty, the implosion really, of the entire multidimensional continuum of space and time. I imagined the megamacrocosmos was going to go down the drain like water out of a bathtub as the hyperspatial vacuum fluctuation of paired particles that is our universe collided with its own ghost image after billions of years of separation. The Logos assured me that parity would be conserved, all sub-atomic particles except photons would cancel each other, and our entire universe would quietly disappear. The only particles that would remain, according to my fantastic expectation, would be photons, the universe of light would be exposed at last, set free from the iron prison of matter, freed from the awful physics that adhered to less unitary states of being. All mankind would march into the promised garden.
I felt I was well situated for the event as I, quite consciously and deliberately, and to the concern of my friends, had placed myself in the teeming, hallucinogen saturated center of the largest garden I could find, the trackless rain forest of the Upper Amazon Basin of Colombia. My confidence in my vision was unshakable. Had not the Logos itself lead me to this vision, not only by revelation but by painstaking explanation? I had no radio, no way to contact the outside world at all. Who needed that? I knew with perfect clarity that the world of time, the illusion of history was ending. Divine Parousia was entering the world, and the just, the meek and the humble were leaving their fields and factories, pushing back their chairs from their office desks and workbenches and walking out into the light of a living sun that would never set for there could be no setting for the eternal radiance of the Logos. Tears of joy streaming down their cheeks, the illumined billions were turning their eyes at last to the sky and finding there a consolation that they had never dared hope for.
However, Nixon’s weary world ignored the eschatological opportunity I thought my brother’s inspired fiddling with hyperspace had afforded. The world continued grinding forward in its usual less than merry way. There was only one small incident that might subsequently be construed, even within the framework of the schizoid logic that was my bread and butter then, to support my position. Unknown to me, a struggling, overweight SF writer, an idol of mine since my teens, discovered the next day that his house have been broken into, his privacy violated by the Other. How peculiar that on the first day of the new dispensation in my private reformist calendar, he had been burglarized by extraterrestrials, the CIA or his own deranged self in an altered state. The torch had been passed, in a weird way the most intense phase of my episode of illumination/delusion ended right where Phil’s began.
This raises some questions:
Can we refer to a delusional system as a folie à deux, if the deux participants have never met and are practically speaking, unaware of each others’ existence?
Does the delusion of one visionary ecstatic validate the delusion of another? How many deluded, or illuminated ecstatics does it take to make a reality? PKD proved that it only takes one. But two is better.
When my brother looked over the edge in the Amazon and felt the dizziness of things unsaid in March of 1971, he came back with two words bursting from his li
ps, “May Day! May Day!”-the pilot’s call of extreme emergency.
May Day found me in Berkeley sheltered by friends so concerned about my state of mind that they considered committing me. I was only a few miles from Phil, who was rapidly going nuts too, as his psych admission of 3 May ‘71 attests. It was always like that with PKD and me. We never met but we lived around each other for years. In Berkeley, we both lived on Francisco St. within five blocks and a few years of each other.[235] We both had roots in Sonoma County, in Orange County. How many times were we a table or two away from each other in the Cafe Med? How many times did I hurry past him on the Ave on some stoned errand? Later his homeopathic doctor was my doctor. There is a garbled mention of me (or my brother) on pg. 74 of this book.
Yah, yawn, the world is fuckin’ strange, right bro?
Wrong. Or rather, of course, sure. But that is not the point, the point is that I understand Philip K. Dick. I know that sounds like hubris and if I am wrong I am sorry (as Phil says somewhere.) But part of the delusional system in which I live contains and adumbrates the notion that I know what happened to the poor dude. We shared an affliction, a mania, sort of like Queequeg and Ishmael. And like one of those whale chasing sailors “I alone escaped to tell thee of it”.
Phil wasn’t nuts. Phil was a vortex victim.[236] Schizophrenia is not a psychological disorder peculiar to human beings. Schizophrenia is not a disease at all but rather a localized traveling discontinuity of the space time matrix itself. It is like a travelling whirl-wind of radical understanding that haunts time. It haunts time in the same way that Alfred North Whitehead said that the color dove grey “haunts time like a ghost.”