“The workman is invisible within the workshop.”37 A Sufi saying, which to me says it all. The Sufis would point out, too, that you and I—we are portions of the workshop, not outside it somewhere gazing at it from an external standpoint. When you ponder this, you begin to understand, and the invisible body of God, the Kingdom or Garden, begins to grow and to blossom not only around you but in you.*
One thing that is a great relief to me is that since all this was known for a thousand years I don’t have to convince the world of it and even if they come in and set fire to my typewriter and chop me up into dog food, this realization will re-emerge for the reasons I gave, and to even further ease my burden, I’ve evidently said it in my novels and stories; well enough anyhow for ol’ Angus and other astute types like yourself to discern. The time bomb of awakening is already ticking away; we shall wake up, are doing so now.
The basic scientific discovery of my vast metaphysic, which I had written you about, was my postulation of two times at right angles to each other, which I called vertical (which we normally perceive) and horizontal, which is the axis along which the objects in Ubik regress. Now I have the new Britannica, and, in looking up the article on time, I find that, yes indeed, it is speculated now that besides the regular time there may be a hypertime which would be orthogonal, a word I didn’t know; I looked it up and sure enough, it means at right angles. Also, someone (Kurt Gödel, I think the Britannica article said38) speculated that the orthogonal time might be curved, since time and space are regarded now as integral, and space does curve; this hypertime would curve back onto itself . . . and hello, Gracie Slick and “Hyperdrive.”39 The world of trash (e.g., S-F and rock) [has] done did it. The article said that it remains speculation, this orthogonal time, not for me is it, nor was it for Plotinus. So although I have discovered and invented nothing (which is “mu” in Chinese, and considered priceless40) I have at least found something. The trash (to fuse Lem and Jesus as coiners of metaphor) of great price for which a man sells all he has that he may acquire it.
[4:166] The forms (categories such as “transportation”) in Ubik regressed along the orthogonical time-axis, demonstrating (1) the existence of Plato’s exemplar forms and (2) orthogonic time—i.e., another time axis from the one we’re accustomed to.
In psychosis there is regression in the person: presumably from the adult back to child. The regression in me in March 1974, however, like the cars and planes et al. in Ubik was a regression along the orthogonical time-axis, the same as took place so that each form was replaced by a prior com pleted form; hence I didn’t become a child, the child I was, but a former man, an adult of the same age as mine, that is, level of personal entelechy completion. [ . . . ]
I never was that former man; as in Ubik the present form (me an adult 44 years old) rolled back to reveal the “crypte morphosis” concealed within, exactly as, say, the modern refrigerator rolled back to become—i.e., to be revealed as containing—the old 1937 turret top G.E. The modern two-door freezer-refrigerator never was that old turret top, except along an entirely different form axis, that of cooling/storage appliances per se.
As to why I regressed along the horizontal (orthogonal) time axis, which may be unique or nearly so in human experience—could be due to my having written/read Ubik and knowing about hypertime, or also, a current, unique weakening in some way of the vertical time force. Or both.
However, this view of it is a linear view, a straight-line view. Maybe a metaphor is more appropriate: such as, the seed within the fruit; i.e., the seed matures (an internal growth motion), which is to say, upward, outward, forward, to the surface; at the same time (a reciprocal action of withdrawal) the rotten fruit itself dies away and falls off, to reveal the seed within, the seed now being ready to open and cease its seed-stage growth period. This better expresses a two-way reciprocal action, without the unilateral concept of “regression” which alone is inadequate. Perhaps I did not retreat backward along any time line, but rather, Rome came forward. (Rome equals the world of Tears which equals the U.S. as it’s about to become; by logic, then, Rome equals the U.S. as it’s about to become.) This solves the mystery of why so much material in “Acts” is present in Tears*; it is because all that material describes a specific space-time continuum, that of Rome circa 100 A.D. In writing Tears I depicted simultaneously (1) the space-time continuum Rome c. 100 A.D. and (2) future America, which turned out to be almost America at this time (1970/74). What this depicts then is a moving-forward of Rome, not a regression on my part; if I were standing still, the same processes would be observed: i.e., the rotten external dokos fruit of this society falling away to reveal the seed within (the world of Tears which underlay/-lies our own). It is the iron beneath the pretty plastic. This is true revelation. The whole novel, not just the dream, is revelation, about our world, where and when we are (our true ontological underlying space-time continuum; its nature). [ . . . ]
Piercing the veil, seeing into the heart of our (present) world, I saw Urbs-Roma; it underlay/lies; it is the core, the seed within the fruit; what our world actually is once all the layers of delusion are stripped away. Seed, then, equals Being. Rotten fruit or veil equals surface appearance. Only the external trappings (the names) have been changed. Successive layers of reality are involved, a penetrating into the depths further and further. But time, too, horizontal time, is involved, because somehow these layers are arranged along that axis, since that is the form-completing axis. But progression, rather than regression? In terms of penetration to essence, to Being, past and future horizontal time fuse; this is circular time? In favor of this view: along this time axis there are the eternal edola, that which always reoccurs. The One behind the Many; the unchanging behind the flux. Well, that is what I saw; the One (edola) here was Urbs-Roma, which contained within it, as a sub-seed or rather a secret seed-within-seed, the Fish Christians at work transmuting/transforming metal to grief to love. (The progression in Tears.) Metal would equal power. Grief, loss. Love, a reaching out for to embrace what one doesn’t have or is. This identifies the horizontal time axis, orthogonal time, as the Logos time in which forms of an archetypal sort are there already and always complete, from which our world is stamped; this is not “time” as we know it, but eternity. Think of the orthogonal time as a circular drum continually rotating and as it rotates it prints out on the continually moving linear strip of our time of change the perfect forms; thus both times intermingle to form our world and our conception of “time” which is really these two times.*