Could the “Acts” material in Tears decode to mean: where the Prison is, He is there, too? I think so. I think that is it—and this is also true—very true—of the two-word cypher. I wrote the Prison narrative, and God put in the Christian narrative. Together these two parts form the complete story. (My story by itself is only half the story; the rest—the good part—I didn’t know.) The story is not just “There is a prison” but “and it is under attack by the Christians, by Christ Himself.” This is quite different.
As to the question, “Who is the information for?” I will probably never know; perhaps information is information and exists for its own sake.
[83:130] September 13, 1980
Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages:
The imagination was continually striving, and in vain, to express the ineffable by giving it shape and figure. To call up the absolute, recourse is always had to the terminology of extension in space . . . ([>]).
But still the contemplation of the absolute Being ever remains linked up with notions of extension or of light (note, [>]).
The mystic imagination found a very impressive concept in adding to the image of the desert, that is to say, extension of surface—that of the abyss, or extension in depth. The sensation of giddiness is added to the feeling of infinite space . . . ([>]).
In my six and a half years of working on my exegesis I have often said, “l have found it.” I don’t want to do that one more time, one in an endless series of failure. It seems almost as if the mere saying of it causes it to permutate to some other explanation. But I do think that the night I was talking on the phone to KW and realized that in 3-74 I experienced Medieval vertical—which is to say Gothic—space, and this meant that I had ontologized reality in terms of Medieval use of space, time and causality, and hence Valis was God or Christ (it is the same); I think then I had it: that the vast volume of vertical space that I experienced in 3-74 (as well as the transformations in time as if I were seeing down a time axis extending thousands of years) meant that I had abreacted to a Medieval worldview, and within that view a theophany was logical, i.e., possible.
Theophany and miracle and pronoia in the modern worldview, the way we organize space, time and causation now would make no sense; so God provided a meaningful context in which these could logically occur.
[ . . . ]
But I ramble. All I want to say is that Valis was God, that 3-74 was theophany, miracle and pronoia, and pronoia based on an intelligent analysis of me and my situation, not whim and not (on the other hand) something rigidly determined, which is to say something reflexive and mechanical. My sinister destiny was abolished; tampered with, so to speak, in the sense that the Greco-Roman mystery religions taught. It was a supreme adjudication of my case, and the books were, as the EB says, closed.
I am tired. I’ve labored for over six and a half years to fathom 3-74, to figure out if it was (as I suspected) a theophany and example of pronoia or if it just seemed so because it had the pragmatic effect of these. I am now satisfied that all three did in fact take place. I have been relentlessly skeptical and relentlessly imaginative and I have done enormous research and tried out as many possible theories as I could come up with.
The desert and abyss finally won my assent, as if by weariness. The negative way to God, perhaps.
[83:136] Fascinating, the view that the dialectical struggle of the two historical constants—the Empire and the Christians—gives rise to Valis the Cosmic Christ, who builds his body out of the “stockpile of parts” created by the antithetical struggle. The Empire, of course, has no idea that the very struggle itself gives rise to the Cosmic Christ, so-to-speak feeds him, feeds him ever newer parts for his macrosoma. (Presumably the secret authentic Christians do know this; they don’t need to win to win, so to speak.) (All they need do is keep the historical struggle going.)
[83:138] But I banalize my conclusions by these obsessive notes, and I must give them up; I realized this from reading the 9-2-80 pages. My mind worries and scurries, contradicts itself, comes to conclusions and then arbitrarily drops them; the exegesis does not build. There is no accumulative factor.
Nonetheless (without repeating the arguments; I always repeat my arguments, stating them again and again in exactly the same words, like a stuck LP) I will say: I found myself in 2-3-74 involved with theophany, miracle, pronoia and enthusiasmos by the Second Comforter. Now, I will certainly natter on past this point, worry and ponder and obsessively write for years to come; but this is a kind of tribute on my part to the importance of what I underwent, what I saw, what I learned; it is a way of preserving the memory of it all, this endless rehashing: that is the real point, to keep the memory—which is so cherished—alive. After all, it has been over six and a half years, now! And I don’t want to forget. Valis was the Christian God, whether YHWH or Christ; and inside me “Thomas” was the paraclete, and I have really always known this but was reticent to say so and hesitant to believe. Weariness has brought me to the point where I can say, I have followed all the lines of argument and this is where they lead; they lead to where I knew, at the time it happened, I was. But this is what an exegesis of a mystical experience is for, to develop it rationally, so that it can be expressed in words. Words fail in the end, though. But the attempt must be made.
Because the basis of reality is a verbal (written) narrative, the Empire suppresses information and the Christians generate it. Valis is, after all (as I saw) primarily an information-processing entity (though he be Christ). A recent development in the Empire’s strategy is the invention of disinformation, which is far worse than noninformation (the mere lack or suppression of information); this is a Pigspurt invention, and very effective. A handy rule-of-thumb would be, You can tell which side is which by observing whether they’re generating information or whether they’re suppressing it or sending out disinformation; no formal adherence to Christianity is necessary. (I’ve worked all my life with no formal ties to it.)
Valis and information—and the generation of information—can’t be separated. The Empire and the suppression of information can’t be separated. So the dialectic is information versus non- or anti-information, out of which Valis, the Cosmic Christ, step by step comes into being, generated by the antitheses. The Cosmic Christ exists now but is incomplete. The Empire, which by suppressing information is therefore in a sense the anti-Christ, is put to work as half of the dialectic; Christ uses everything (as was revealed to me): in its very act of suppressing information, the Empire aids in the building of the soma of the Cosmic Christ (which the Empire does not realize). Since the basis of reality is a sacred narrative—information—the generation of new information is an act in the Ground of Being, in the ontology of the sacred itself.
Reality is based on information, on a sacred narrative; and Valis generates information. Valis is ipso facto the generator of reality, as are the genuine Christians, those who generate new information, for whatever reason. The sacred narrative on which reality is based (“Acts”) can be seen as latent in new information generated by selfunaware Christians; the sacred narrative “Acts” being the Ground of Being replicates itself in the microforms of newly generated information. This is what William Burroughs discovered (but interprets differently).