The strangest most eerie thought just struck me. If USA 1974 and Rome A.D. 45 are two spatiotemporal aspects of a common essence they as aspects if superimposed would clash, not blend—this despite the common essence; I don’t know why I know this but I do. But if it’s really Rome A.D. 45 then they would blend, because the percipient would see that USA 1974 is Rome A.D. 45. What I have been calling a superimposition is more like a metamorphosis. A certain building is a building in Syria in the first century A.D. Reality is seen under the aspect of Rome A.D. 45, the Holy Land. As if reverting. I noticed palm trees and sand, the warm wind, the relaxing people . . . like a scene in ancient Syria.
[1:69]
I think that just now by linking Plato’s anamnesis and Form world with Dionysus and the greater mysteries, and the Christian Eucharist to Dionysus and the greater mysteries—which links Christian Eucharist to Plato’s anamnesis and Form world—which renders the spatiotemporal world irreal, thus abolishing the power of “astral determinism” over you, which is the basic task of religion because then the splintered soul implodes and again is divine and immortal and knows it—
I succeeded!
[1:72] October 22, 1980
As of late last night my emotions (affective self) moved into synch with my intellect (as engaged in this exegesis), and the result was that I surveyed a world-picture of such bleakness that it was for a time beyond my capacity to bear. I saw and understood suffering, not just intellectually, not just emotionally, but fully, with complete comprehension. Today I have thought about it, and the only attitude that can or should be brought to bear is a stoic one, in fact a heroic one, a facing of this bleakness unflinchingly, with no attempt to flee from it as a vision or existentially, as a way of being in the world. It is a view of the weary wheel of Buddhism; it is the Buddha’s view of absolute suffering and the need not to be reborn, to get off the wheel. [ . . . ]
Each creature is born, suffers, dies, is again born, forever and ever, because the world soul—there is just one soul, and it has fragmented into billions of bits—made the primordial and primary mistake of taking the spatiotemporal realm as real, thus plunging itself into enslavement and multiplicity. For a few there is a way out: discovery that the spatiotemporal world is not real, an ascent back up into unity and freedom, but only for a few bits (sparks) is this possible; the enormous mass of fragments will remain caught forever, unless some final great savior comes here and frees us en masse. I hope this will happen but I doubt it. Every fly with a missing leg, every cat beleaguered by fleas, every human fearing economic want—the endless wheel turns for all of us and it turns forever, in this irreal time we have fallen victim to.
“The saying that is uttered in secret rites, to the effect that we men are in a sort of prison, and that one ought not to loose himself from it nor yet to run away, seems to me something great and not easy to see through; but this at least I think is well said, that it is the gods who care for us, and we men are one of the possessions of the gods.”72 So says Plato referring to the Pythagoreans. Everything is contained here: the vision and the stance, and, finally, what may be the only solace that can be held out, that the gods care for us because we are their possessions. This paragraph will have to do if I am to be saved from the vision I have seen, and it is meant to save; it is Plato’s great mind coming to bear on the situation, with full knowledge of the reality of the situation, the Greek equipoise that Apollo exemplified; that Attic calm to which I must return, or I am destroyed.
Premise: the primordial Fall was caused by our—by us, not our ancestors—making the error of taking the spatiotemporal realm to be real.
(1)In 2-74 I saw that the spatiotemporal realm was not real.
(2)Therefore I reversed the original Fall—which is doing much more than remembering—by anamnesis—the reality of the Form world, the universals. What I realized last night is that I as a soul splintered up in fragments through space and time, literally exploded through space and time, in incarnation after incarnation, my unity shattered. This is the “weary wheel” of the Orphics. This realization is terrible. Because even though I reversed the effects of the Fall for myself, I can see the dreadful condition of the others of us, born again and again (but this is temporal talk; it is irreal. Splintered is the correct term). [ . . . ]
Now the results of not recognizing Tat tvam asi seem actually sinister, since you literally are other life forms, other humans and other creatures; you as primordial soul are splintered, exploded, over thousands of years and thousands of miles. Tat tvam asi is not a luxury for the languid philosopher or the special mystic; it is essential in the reversal of a primordial fall (our taking the spatiotemporal realm as real).
[ . . . ]
Recollection as re-collection: calling one’s splintered, scattered parts in, to a center. The primordial explosion reversed as a calling back together, a sort of teleological implosion, as if time were running backward.
[1:83] Rats. I’m rediscovering things that I already knew; that are, in fact, the basis of my system. I am too tired; I must quit for a time and rest.
[1:84] 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, Plato, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, Taoism, Mani, 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 recollected, as the Self or Soul or eidos must be. This is my task.
In that case, each given system is in itself part of the enslaving snare of delusion; in other words, as soon as I avow one philosopher or system (e.g., Spinoza or Schopenhauer or Kant or Anaxagoras or Parmenides or Gnosticism) I have become again or more ensnared, as I am by this spatiotemporal world itself; it is as if the eidos of Truth is exploded and splintered like all the eide. And all the Selves and Souls. But what else could you expect here in realm #4? Since everything real is here only in discrete bits. Of course this means that I can never come up with the whole, true, complete explanation/answer. I can re-collect and re-collect, do better and better, but never completely make unified the eidos of Truth. Yet, in 3-74 when I meta-abstracted, a great deal of the eidos of Truth was revealed to me; however, alas, I did not understand it then and do not yet.
Look; I may be on to something here, that in realm #4 it is impossible to re-collect any given eidos including that of a true verbal (informational) picture (analog) of reality; that in fact the true informational analog will be exploded over thousands of miles and thousands of years like all other eide. Such is the situation here in the spatiotemporal realm; this is one of its drawbacks (among many). Fascinating. In that case, no wonder I haven’t been able to match my 2-3-74 experience to any religion or any philosopher, yet many seem in part to apply. The truth is splintered!* This would explain, too, why the sacerdotal power is found in bits in, say, the alley; for the same reason: it is exploded ubiquitously. (In addition to the places I listed above where I’ve found bits of the truth I should add: the Hermetics and the Kabbala and quantum mechanics.)