[...]
Thus the physical spatiotemporal universe is not information, as I declare in VALIS, but is derived from information; this information is the next hypostasis up, ontologically speaking. It goes: God, Logos (information), spatiotemporal universe, and then back to God as goal of the whole process (Erigena). In March, 1974, by means of my meta-abstraction I so-to-speak rolled back the physical universe to the Uttered Word underlying it, from which it is derived; this is why, finally, the term "word" is in fact an excellent translation of "Logos." It is as if God spoke (or rather thought) a complex idea, and from this living idea (Logos) the universe came into being, was derived.
This view is a far cry from Burroughs' notion that we have been invaded by an information virus that is making us stupid!
[56:1]44 November 17, 1981
A very valuable dream. I enter a large auditorium like a San Francisco concert hall or opera house. There is an audience sitting. A number of men are engaged in discussion, speaking from different places in the house; they are standing. I assume that an impromptu discussion—argument—has broken out; it seems to deal with Jerzy Kosinski; his name is mentioned. (One of the men, perhaps a teacher or the teacher, resembles Bill Wolfson, so this may also be a courtroom.) I join in the discussion and they all frown; it turns out that this is not an impromptu discussion by members of the audience: these are actors and what they say is rehearsed; this is the drama the audience has come to see and hear. I have done something improper. There is some mention of homosexual intellectuals; this seems to be the topic. Seating myself, I speak quietly to a man in the audience; he has white foam, like milk, like the marshmallow glaze on the candied yams I had last Saturday, around his mouth. I ask about the discussion, which I now realize I am not allowed to join in on.
The discovery that what I took to be an actual discussion is in fact a drama in which actors play roles could be regarded as a fundamentally Gnostic discovery. There is something rehearsed and unreal going on, a simulation. I think this dream is telling me that my analysis of last night upon rereading Jonas' study of the contrast between the pre-Gnostic worldview and the Gnostic is correct; my situation is Gnostic indeed, hence my worldview—and my problems!—arise from this situation. That my primordial phobias could arise from the Gnostic condition of G
eworfenheit never occurred to me; I guess I could now view my phobias as verification of Gnosticism. Also, this makes clear that 2-3-74 was some kind of rectification of this estranged, alienated, thrown condition, perhaps related to Heidegger's Ur-Angst leading at least to Authentic Sein. So the dream refers back to the last insight that I had while driving on Sunday night: that my status in the 2-3-74, that in fact this is what 2-3-74 was all about. And it was as if the cosmos itself had changed to accommodate me (I suddenly realize); I may have changed, but it seemed as if world changed. ("A perturbation in the reality field" refers to an event in world itself, not in me.) This is impossible; i.e., that world changed to accommodate me so that I was as a result of this radical change no longer a stranger here; it became my world—and my anxiety, which tormented me every day and night, departed. (It has never really returned, except briefly when Doris was in the process of leaving me.) Good Lord! Is this not impossible, that world changed to accommodate me, in order to repair the gulf, the discrepancy, between me and world? Only God—i.e., the Pantocrator—can make such a change! Surely—logic says—it was I who changed. But all of a sudden I fitted in; and I had the distinct impression that world was sentient, animate, unitary, conscious and purposeful; it was immanent deity or something ... anyhow I saw transformations in it, and the AI voice backs this impression up. In any case, world and I became harmonized (harmonie, harmonia) for the first time. So at the very least there was a radical shift in my role, my status in the cosmos, of a sort that did not seem to stem from an internal adjustment in a closed system but seemed, rather, to be the result of something entering from outside—that is, something transmundane. Beyond doubt there were changes made in me: drastic, radical, extraordinary changes; that is certain ... but it did not seem to end there; world itself changed (or at least my experience of world, my Dasein). It was as if the past had been tinkered with so as to cause the present to be different; I was a different person, etc. And my sense that I had either two sets of memories or else altered memories. It is clearly Heidegger's transformation by means of Ur-Angst to Authentic Sein but with cosmic, transcendental, religious overtones—and that precisely is Gnosticism (since Heidegger's categories are derived directly from Gnosticism!).
[...]
A final point: the world transformed from the unfamiliar to the familiar—this cannot point to a psychotic break, for in a psychotic break this is all reversed: the familiar becomes the unfamiliar. So much for the "Horselover Fat is insane" theory. In 2-3-74 came comprehension and recognition; there also came the end of—the healing of—the gulf that separated me from world. This is 180 degrees away from psychosis. Viewed psychologically, this is, in fact, a healing; it is repair.
[...]
The dream certainly sheds light on the real purpose of my exegesis. My working on it is preceded by a serious—even potentially disastrous—event, one forming the very basis of my life or at least the core problem of my life: expressed in the dream as a drama that I do not even understand as drama, in which I try to involve myself, only to learn that I am disrupting it, intruding on it—I have no role to play in it, and am to simply be a silent spectator—which in fact (in my actual life) I could not do; that is, for whatever reason I could not sit silently watching and listening while other people acted out their lines, played their parts. I wanted to play a part, too. This was denied me. The psychological gravity of this situation arises from its existential gravity; it is truly a grim matter in terms of one's life. Consigned simply to watch and listen while others act and speak? And not even to be able to understand what the drama—i.e., life itself—is about? This is intolerable and it is against this that I rebelled, from the start. This is my story: starting out trying to involve myself as a participant in life, then finding out that there was no role for me in the drama (of life); whereupon I sat down and began to try to figure out what the hell the drama was all about. I gave up trying for a role, an acting part; I settled for an understanding of what was happening. This is the next best thing. It is not ideal but it is at least a way open to me. I would not be rebelling if I tried to comprehend the drama I was witnessing. This would not disrupt it. However, 2-3-74 radically transformed the situation; the drama became comprehensible to me and, moreover, I found that I did have a role to play. But this role is predicated on the drama becoming comprehensible to me. My being able to understand it, due either to my own cognitive powers or simply to the drama itself being, as it were, open, is the absolute prerequisite. At the heart of the matter, at the core of my psychological and existential difficulties—that have plagued me all my life—is the fact that, very simply, I started out misunderstanding what is going on. My god—this is the Gnostic ontological condition of ignorance! Oh my god! Oh god; I am back to Gnosticism; the ontological category of ignorance, which is the basic ontological category, was reversed for me in 2-3-74; ignorance turned into its ontological opposite: knowledge. And because I now knew, I could act. Incomprehensible world became comprehensible world, in a single stroke. This is, then, Gnosticism, for it is only in Gnosticism that the cat egories of ignorance and knowledge possess—are seen to possess—this absolute ontology. Every bad thing stems from ignorance, and restoration consists of a diametric reversal of this condition.
[...]
My exegesis, then, is an attempt to understand my own understanding; I was correct in my recent letter to Russ concerning VALIS: in it I am thinking about my own thinking. I possess the Gnosis and am analyzing it, since it is essentially internal to me, now; I possess it and am turning it over and over, scrutinizing it from every angle. The Gnosis, for me, is not in world; it is in my mind. Thus I analyze and study my own thoughts—the quintessential example being the meta-abstraction itself. My mind performed it but I do not really understand this that my mind did, this abstracting, the ultra-sophisticated cognitive act. The problem in a sense lay in my mind (i.e., I was ignorant) and the solution, when it came, occurred in my mind as an act, an event, inasmuch as virtually nothing occurred in world, except, of course, my seeing the Christian fish sign. But that only served to disinhibit what was already in my mind blocked, buried, latent, dormant, slumbering; the fish sign awoke me.
There is, then, in me—and was from the start—the potential ability to solve the riddle of the drama (i.e., life, the world-order) that I am perceiving. Hence anamnesis was and is everything. I know, but do not know what I know. Hence I resort to the metaphor of the two-mirror runaway positive feedback in which I the observer observe myself (in world as Other), which sets up an endless regress, but it is this very regress that transforms the ontological category of ignorance into its opposite, knowledge. And thus reverses the primordial fall—my own fall and the fall of much more besides.
The mystery lies in me, then, and not in world; likewise, the solution lies in me and not in world. At my core there is something that is me and yet not me. Thomas is an example. Am I Thomas? Is he me? Hans Jonas says: "It is between this hidden principle of the terrestrial person and its heavenly original that the ultimate recognition and reunion takes place. Thus the function of the garment in our narrative as the celestial form of the invisible because temporarily obscured self is one of the symbolic representations of an extremely widespread and, to the Gnostics, essential doctrine. It is no exaggeration to say that the discovery of this transcendent inner principle in man and the supreme concern about its destiny is the very center of gnostic religion" ([>]).*
[...]
Cognitive estrangement; that is the key. And the rectification thereof. This is the goal; this is the mystery. This is Gnosticism as problem posed and resolution offered. The Gnostic assumption is that cognitive estrangement exists until rectified, and that the person is dependent on an outside source to rouse him to awareness of his state and to reverse that state. Upon it being reversed—ontological ignorance transformed into ontological knowledge—that person's status in the cosmos, his existential basis within the cosmos as part to whole, is drastically and radically reversed, tra
nsforming not only his perception of the world-order and his ability to function in it, but also his perception of his own self. In the final analysis it is not world that he now knows and knows correctly; it is his own self. Thus the motto of Apollo finds ecstatic glorification and in fact deification in Gnosticism: "Know thyself."