[[13]]
[[3]]
Macrobrain; thomas and the info plasmate.
The Roman iron spear tip which pierced Christ may still be lodged in the macrobody (brain).
What I took to be living info is in fact the process of thinking. It is electricity or like electricity – as in our own brains.
An example of it adding info is in “Tears.” An example of it extracting info is from the Xerox missive, not literal cypher from the xerox missive but figuring out 1) what I was and 2) what to do.
It is so important in viewing this structure to see the prime importance of the AI voice: it is proof of the existence of the other self within one – which is the one who can recognize and consciously process the plasmate presumably in/through my (sic) writing it links up with other neurons – as for example the King Felix cypher: it reached other neurons, other “Thomases.”
[[4]]
I finally remembered [[ein steiner earlier]] an insight last night: my protector and companion and help (3-74) is a gift from my sister, who I see in Laura. The source of it all – the AI voice – comes not as Jane but as a gift from her; [[here in ]] my postmortem experiences. This is why I feel whole upon being with Laura, the spring queen.
I am plugging into a giant idea computer – I am the next step up in evolution, which, because the next step up plugs into this giant idea computer, has a virtually infinite mind. My Jungian inquisitive possibilities function: in my right hemisphere like a photon gun. I have two protection devices to conceal my identity: 1) scramble pattern of all ideas at once to bury my idea of my true nature and origin (1); and 2) amnesia. We came to this planet from elsewhere.
The Soviets are modern ztians with their supernatural powers – against them is pitted my protection [[ass.]] Diana who used her magic to overwhelm external reality with ideas in 3-7 before – which is hard (for her; for anyone) to do – to counter xtian technology. The xtian are fanatic and zealous and authoritarian. “Faith of...” is virtually literally correct. “Secret xtian” equals soviet sleeper agent.
(1) This is why all the ideas in the world – millions of them, and conflicting – is served up simultaneously as a protective smokescreen; this is why they don't stabilize. They have a practical purpose – as a cloud of mental ink. I'm not to know the truth about my identity. So any and all ideas I get as my identity, nature, purpose and origin is just scatter, random flak, each idea as real and unreal as the next; like white noise. And the closer I get to knowing, the more scramble of conflicting ideas: ultimately an infinitude – including this idea. Hence the endless paradoxes. And the fact I can't finalize or stabilize my exegesis – it's for my (and our?) protection: a scrambled device – like code.
[[5]]
There's no way I can sort the true ideas out of all the infinitude of equally plausible (mere) possibilities. Somewhere in a near infinite bulk of ideas lies the truth. But which? But this device is necessary. Who and what I am – the actual situation – is hopelessly occluded off from me (1) by this scramble pattern of endless self-negating dialectic idea-permutations at infinite velocity. Hence, as I realized a couple of weeks ago, although I may know the truth and even speak it, I am doomed not to know whcich of the many conflicting truths generated in me it is. It could be any of them. So I know (the truth about myself) but due to this device paradoxically do not know: thus the idea computer conceals itself by its own idea-generating capacity. Its basic functions is (2) its own camouflage – ah; hier ist Zebra wieder. (2) Acts.
Another way to camouflage itself. This shows up not just when I try to figure out myself but when I try to figure out – conceptually pin down – Zebra. I can't give the same account twice re 3-74, re Zebra and re myself. We're interwoven, I guess, but here again the camouflage device – this time an idea scramble – works, analogous to its physical camouflage.
This suggests that I and the lifeform Zebra are one. No, we may just be related, etc etc. See? See how it works?
I did have one insight not based on thinking but on my feeling toward the animals: that I am the (a) Buddha, but must conceal my identity as Siddhartha even to myself. My whole thinking is just a cover for my real nature: my feeling – regarding those who suffer. I am a feeling disguised by mere flaky thinking.
My feelings are reliable but my thoughts are not.
(1) Hence from others: since I can't write down the truth in a novel or speech; this is how 3-74 could occur but secrecy still maintained.
[[6]]
The only sure face is the infinite generation of self-contradictory ideas. So maybe I am plugged into an idea-generating computer. How could an ordinary human mind generate an infinity of ideas, views, models, themes, concepts,explorations –
[[…]]
My powers came from the other side, because of my sister.
A.I. Voice. And “plugged into a computer.” Audio and video. Pictures: I saw my abstract ideas graphically.). Is Valis a computer? I think I've solved it. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the dialectic represented a computer. Are we in a computer program? And stationary? As Zeno proved, motion is impossible. All is thought.
[[7]]
The irreducible ultimate which I saw viz: the blinking light dark light or on off, is a binary computer.
These ideas constitute an internal realm but are real.
[[10]]
Transcribe some of this about “sustains.”
within the universe, but not there when viewed from outside that universe. What I deduced from this is that each self passes through an infinitude of universes or “frames” each with laws – truths – of its own, but the permutation being so fast (instantaneous) no memory of it is laid down by the self, whose entire “memory” is instantly derived from situational cuing generated within and by whatever frame he is now in. However, some truths could (in the intrinsic statement of them) contain as part of their definition that of ubiquity, in which case what I call sustains would be created which would lay down memory, but since other aspects of the frames would differ one from another, one’s true memory would be of serial disjunctions along the linear time axis without any apparent explanation (e.g. “I was born in Chicago in 1928 but an instant ago I was living in first century AD Rome” – Viz: First Century AD Rome and USA 1974 both contained the same sustain – the Golden Fish sign – but no other sustains; nonetheless the self passed form First Century Rome directly to USA 1974 due to the Golden Fish sign but drew ersatz “memory” of life in modern USA generated by situational cues in this frame). There is an explanation and it lies in what I call sustains which resemble the form axes I described in “Ubik” and which do not lie along linear time, but rather “sustain” time which is my word for Plato’s “eternal forms.” For consciousness of this to open up (true memory)(1) the self would discover that it had existed for an infinite length of time in/through [the permutations of] an infinite of different universes, and knew ideationally everything.
(1)Anamnesis. This true memory perhaps exists in the right hemisphere.
[[11]]
The creation as a self-perpetuating system of self-negating dialectic. Began with a proposition which contained its own negation.
[[12]]
Ubik got things right in proposing a ubiquitous information-field/computer.
[…]
4:30 AM: Valis itself as an experience or an entity in itself generates a multiple or split model parallel-possible explanation(s) dialectic. So it must lie in that realm; there can be only an infinite series of equally true explanations generated.
Vision: a dark-haired young woman lying in a coffin (1). She is dead. She is my sister. She is – or she generated – “the perturbation in the reality field,” ie. Valis. It is a projection into this world of her mind, to protect me.
(1)White silk-lined casket.
[[13]]
This vision came in response to my Q: “Who perturbed the reality field?”
Is the AI voice here?
Now that I think of the vision it suggest Ella Runciter in “Ubik”; perhaps my sister’s benign influence over me thus shows up in my writing.
The computer has penetrated our world with its information.
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, “The virtues instilled by suffering could be achieved another way.” How does it know that – that they could be achieved another way; here the error lies. These vitues are essential, and there is no other way. A certain esthetically-graphically beautiful heroism is inevitably generated -- to all humans – all. All be [come as] Christ, none less that Jesus. All men-creatures suffer as he, hence are equal to him, and therefore are him, dramatically. As in sacred ritual drama therefore us all. If you could see the beauty of such heroism as Beethoven’s[JH1], you understand it’s all worth it.
[[Doris]] is so heroic, and we despised her. “He was despised…” etc.
[[???]] is not evil – he is a fool in his cynicism.
In Jesus, God let us see the practical results of our suffering; transfiguration – not just eternal life but a transfigured one.
[[14]]
Christ as an Egyptianized Greek Appollo! ie very early Greek statues. What knowledge do we get from Jesus’ life and death? That 1) we are innocent by reason of our unmerited suffering, and 2) if innocent and made to suffer then heroic; and 3) if heroice, transfigured (resurrected) into Godhood! All of us! As a species – three
[[15]]
All artists know they can't avoid suffering, and out of it they forge their art in defiance; artist or not, they will suffer. Art is the ultimate defiance of Fate. The heroic act deliberately done.
I saw this in the rat I had to kill: innocence and heroism and terrible beauty – nobility – in a mere rat. Oh god. There is nothing we know that the creatures do not know; they are our equals.
Apollo:|
Buddha:} Wisdom!
St. Sophia: |
[[16 + 17]]
Transcribe this material on the Xerox missive.
[[18]]
Siddhartha saw this cruel system and decided one was better off not existing.
[[19]]
If my situation in 3-74 was that I died (in Christ), and was resurrected, and so had the faculties of the resurrected person,
[[20-21]]
Thomas as resurrected secret xtian; statement of apotheosis as ultimate aim of divinizing the world. Apotheosis the necessary end of Greek-tragic suffering.
[[22]]
[[…]]
Coleridge on tragedy: “…the greatest effect is produced when the fate is represented as a higher intelligent will[JH2] (“the human will was exhibited as struggling with fate”). So the essence of tragedy is the limited human knowledge, plans, hopes, desires 9will) clashing with a “a higher and intelligent will” which we understand (or encounter) as Fate – “Fate” defined as that power or those powers capable of arranging our outcome.
[[23]]
The plans the protagonist has are not in [[harmony]] with a “higher and intelligent will” which has the power to decide the outcome; there is no way the man’s plans can win out, so individual plan is forcibly harmonized even if this requires that ^it they be pulverized – ie can’t be harmonized and still remain intact. The loss of that intactness is the essence of tragedy, the antithetical dialectic between his plan and Fate’s plans, with the latter by definition prevailing.
I do not see that his 1) learning by reason of this or, contrarily 2) failing to learn adds or subtracts from the man infestation of the truly tragic, since to me the latter is more pitiful and the former more constructive; in fact I see the latter (2) as more tragic, if either is, which violates classic notions of tragic drama. I say, disproportionate suffering (pain, disappointment, loss) is the essence of tragedy because its disproportion renders the victim however evil or guilty veridically innocent: made spotless by the overbearing quality or quantity of suffering. Tragedy is when the punishment is not just. And I say every living creature is punished disproportionately so every life is a tragic one; disproportionate suffering is the ubiquity of the condition of having lived. Yet a mystery is hinted at: a rectification of this disproportion – not through the vile lie that man (creatures) are sinful and deserve their suffering, but rather – but this precisely is the mystery: the invasion of this irrational system by the rational in which an invisible and elusive mitigation of tribulation is injected according to some hidden order of theodicy is not directly seen.
[[24]]
Thus whereas the disproportionate tribulation is directly seen, and its reality not open to conjecture, dispute or denial, the mitigation or even transmutation of the tribulation into something proportionate, just or even beneficial must be guessed at. And this intuitive guess is the kingpin of religion and the religious solution to implacable tragedy as it exists ubiquitously in the real world and not in art.
“Tragedy as an interim reading of life between religion on the one hand, and Satanism, or pessimistic materialism, on the other. [JH3]Basic to tragedy is the equilibrium of the evil that is observed and the good that is guessed at. What is central is the balance between an intense awareness of pain or evil, which is clearly revealed, and an intuitive apprehension of a transcendent realm of values. In each case evil is affirmed, but it is transcended by a higher good which induces exultation, not despair or faith. The balances is destroyed when evil is denied or seen as remedial or is affirmed as ultimate.”
I suppose in terms of what Coleridge says, the “higher intelligent will” which we call “Fate” is proved right in the end. Ie it is proved to be just that, a “higher, intelligent will” and not fate in the sense of blind or malignant, evil or purposelessly cruel force or forces as such; it is the revelation that Fate is not Fate but a wiser (”higher”) and more powerful will contending with – overruling – man’s will out of its higher intelligence. It disagrees because it knows more.
But this does not inspire faith and is
[[25]]
not accepted (known) on or by faith. Exultation comes not from faith, which would provide only passive acceptance or resignation, but from an encounter with “fate” seen in the aspect of higher and [more] intelligent (ie sentient and planning) will; the exultation is derived from knowledge of, not faith concerning.
The which had masked itself as fate (in mimesis) reveals this camouflage and in stepping forth opens its wings^acts in revelation of a deliberately hidden (1) nature. (to mix metaphors.) It is not fate at all. “Higher intelligent will” is not fate, if the term is to retain its correct meaning. Something or someone has mimicked fate, perhaps supplanting it invisibly: replacing it perhaps by insidiously devouring it and substituting itself for it in perfect imitation, at is motor source. This is a staggering mystery, but mystery it is. Since the stipulation of capacity for perfection of imitation when desired is attributed.
(1)Different even opposing.
It will look like fate as long as it wants to look like fate, but if it cares to disclose itself as actually being a “higher intelligent will” (if it even does so) it then can, and the problem is solved. (By the way I define “Fate” and “higher intelligent will” in that I see no tragedy in bowing to the latter.
[[26]]
For me, to find that I had been broken by the latter and not the former would, by all means, induce, specifically, exultation.
The mystery of the “guessed at” reality would certainly deepn – but become even more reassuring – if I suspected that in some supernatural fashion this “higher intelligent will” could be identified or equated with my own covert enlightened will: a web of harmonies underlying or transcending the antithetical clash which had pulverized my conscious plans.
Exultation is precisely my response to my direct knowledge and experience of Valis, of my awareness of its authority over the irrational – which I identify with “astral determinism” or “fate.” I especially exult in my sense of Valis having invaded the irrational as a conqueror.
The relationship between providence and tragedy (in real life) is that providence heads of the catastrophe essential for tragedy to reach is inexorable culmination; providence, then, is the counter-attack by the supernatural (guessed at order, which I identify with Ma’at) against the very core of tragedy: it robs it of its victory over the person involved. Providence and tragedy could be regarded as two absolutes, with the former obliterating the necessity of the latter. Also, tragedy could be regarded as the human situation in which
[[27]]
providence is missing. But it cannot be said of providence and tragedy that each drives out the other, because it is inherent in the nature of providence if it acts at all to overpower the necessity which dictates the catastrophe essential to tragedy.
Providence, then, insofar as it exists, is the superior force.
Presumably providence does not short-circuit catastrophe unless the tribulation has already successfully accomplished apotheosis: ie has done its job.
[[32]]
But my principle error in reasoning
[[33]]
Nonsense.
[[36]]
[[Kabala diagram.]]
[[37]]
[[…]]
I must never as long as I live forget that the print out of “Olive Holt” came through the Kabala transform of the Hebrew letters: “Other branches of the Kabala deal with Gematria – a system by which Hebrew words are converted into numbers and then into other words of the same number – and the names of power…” etc. I knew at the time that I was seeing a Kabalist transform (or decoding). Thus Kabala was crucial 1) in my overall 3-74 experience and is a clue to its nature, meaning and origin; and 2) to solving the most important – the central – problem (of dire menace) around which the total experience revolved as an adaptive problem solving; and 3) the anamnesis of 2-74; and 4) the manifestation of “Thomas” – a clue to his origin in space-time, knowledge and identity; and finally 5) to the “other” inner space Paracelsusian universe and its Gnosis and laws [[or]] entities. Ie the element of Gematria is the kingpin clue to 3-74.
[[38]]
The kabala transform proves to me that 1) Thomas was a great hermetic alchemist/mystic; and 2) a genuine specific individual former person of vast Gnostic and occult and hermetic and xtian wisdom. We are dealing here, in Thomas, with one of the great minds in history, and, I think, a particular one.
When I reread the initial part of my exegesis, I noted two main points:
1)Iranian dualism and concepts.