And the God who revealed himself to me on 11-17-80 is quite different from my own prior thought-formations; he is the orthodox transcendent Judeo-Christian heavenly Father, loving and wise, who allows free-will; this world is an ordeal. But we (all) go to him in the end: he wins all of us—in the dialectic with Satan—eventually—and he knows this, due to his a priori knowledge.
[88:23] December 15, 1980
Valis: Set-ground. Camouflage. Here in the universe. Macrosoma blended into the universe in countless ways, here and there: a glint here, a word on a page, plural objects and their causal processes a ripple of wind in the weeds in the alley. Valis is not the universe but blended into it, as is Ubik. “I am Atman that dwells in the heart of every mortal. I am Vishnu. I am Shiva. Among words I am the sacred syllable OM. I am Himalaya. I am the holy fig tree. Among horses I am . . . of weapons . . . I am the wind . . . the shark among fish: Ganges among the rivers. I am the beginning, the middle and the end of creation . . . I am the knowledge of things spiritual. I am the logic of those who debate. In the alphabet I am A. Among compounds I am the copulative. I am time without end. I am the sustainer. My face is everywhere. I am death that snatches all. I also am the source of all that shall be born. I am glory, prosperity, beautiful speech, memory, intelligence, steadfastness and forgiveness. I am the dice play of the cunning. I am the strength of the strong. I am triumph and perseverance. I am the purity of the good. I am Krishna. I am the sceptre and the mastery of those who rule, the policy of those who seek to conquer. I am the silence of things secret. I am the knowledge of the knower. I am the divine seed of all that lives. In this world nothing animate or inanimate exists without me.”
[88:24] My problem is too much intellect and too little awe and reverence. What I have to realize is that both 2-3-74 and 11-17-80 are self authenticating.
[88:54] But consider the aspect of the ancient in VALIS. In a sense it is so: in a sense it is an illusion. The template was devised a long time ago but it applies to the now; that is the whole point—(1) it is ancient; and (2) it ap plies to the now—this is both the paradox and the revelation: the secret is here: how the ancient can be the now. If you can understand this, you have the answer.
[88:57] God was aware of me; he ratified my einai by his love; he created it. He caused me to be; that is it: (his) agape “causes to be”; this is how you cause to be: by agape and agape alone. Love is a wish that the other, and not-you, exist; love guarantees the existence of what is not under your will—free of your will; this is true creation. He desires that something other than him exist and be itself. We truly are not him. Agape and creating are one and the same. It is not a desire for union; it is a desire to see something be on its own, its own self; each separate self is a universe! A world! God adores you because he adores beauty. Something that exists on its own is beautiful; this is the ultimate beauty, that it be free. “Where, amid the shadowy green, the little ones of the forest come unseen.”80 It is not-God: it [is] not pantheism; the ultimate love: to curtail the ubiquity of the Godhead. Null Ubik is the truth; the solution to the absolute mystery. To not be the universe each reunion is accidental, and a reminder of the source of being: love. Love lets go/forgets. Love curtails itself, withdraws. But if the created separate thing (einai) returns of its own accord—love triumphs over love. Love is love for itself alone, and not for what it can do (create). The prodigal son: if the separate thing desires to return and forfeit its einai, then it must love, too; and the two—God and his creation—are joined; this is absolute bliss, that einai is not enough; the creature longs to return. This is rapture for God, that it wishes this; that, created, it wishes and tries to return, through the maze; it tries so hard. This is his reward. He gave it einai and it voluntarily surrenders einai (Sein!) in favor of nonbeing: i.e., return to its source. It would rather not be that it may be—as well—with him; this causes him to feel absolute bliss. Einai is the most precious gift of all, and it gave it back—to be with him.
[ . . . ]
My sorrow and my pain and my loneliness, paradoxically, increase the net level of agape in the Godhead, because it indicates that I would rather return to him, in preference to being—to possessing einai. Thus, to my surprise, I find that my suffering restores the Godhead and augments it; he knows why I suffer, although I do not. Human sorrow, then, is a source of joy, a means to joy, in which the now sorrowing person will later share. When he returns, as I did in 11-17-80. Sorrow is a means to infinite bliss, its instrument, and we can’t see this until it completes itself. Comes full cycle. To know this is the great secret.
[88:59] I was reading over the pages on love that I wrote last night; they remind me of Paul. From them I deduce that I did in fact experience the agapē of God: his love that created us as independent creatures—this love deliberately curtailed so that we could go forth with essence, with true autonomous being; love created us. But we are vaguely unhappy—this is all such ecstatic writing, so mysterious. Our suffering increases his love because he knows that we value nonexistence more than this existence because this existence requires us to be independent hence cut off from him; we yearn to retrace our steps and this increases his love and joy, and in us love occurs, love like that that he has; it now occurs in us as well, we whom love gave birth to. Compared with this love, world is nothing, a cinder, dust; for us to feel it in us, and finally if we feel it in us, we feel his love for us once more, the love that created us in the first place. Our own love is an echo of the power, the love, that caused us to be in the first place. I understand from all this that compared with this love—love by him in the first place, then loved by us, then loved by him again, that original love that created us re-experienced—there is nothing, nothing at all. We only find him again when we begin to feel love in us, echoes of the love he felt. He responds, then, with his own love; we did not know, when we suffered, why we suffered. But it gave him joy, because he saw it as a sign of love growing in us echoing his love. This is source for us and it is goal—unremembered as source and unknown as goal. But still felt—felt as suffering. I can’t explain it. It is too mysterious; but love is the origin and love is the goal. There is nothing that compares with it; it is everything. “Love triumphs over love,” I wrote. I don’t know now what that means. Yet I sense that it is correct. God withdraws so as to allow us independent existence, this is his gift and sacrifice, to let us go. And then a time comes when we want to return and abandon independent existence: now we have penetrated the mystery of existence: that non-being with him is preferable to being (Sein) away from him. The great gift of einai is given back voluntarily, renounced “that I might live in him invisible and dim.”81 That says it all.
Love equals non-being, the dissolution of the separated creature.
He feels such joy at our voluntary return, our renouncing of existence; and this joy is shared by us when we find him again. This is the origin of the infinite bliss that I felt: love as source, and return to love once more.