Arbitrarily, say in the year 1980, we are back to the moment of direction reverse.
The Go Board which I saw, although it looked like space, was in actuality time. The teleological force [t.f.] placed events at certain intersections—in time, placed them there before the forward-motion of time reached them; the t.f. arranged them, distributed them, in a pattern, in time, as we distributed the buttons on a Go board in space. Set them economically here and there. (I guess space, too, was represented; the nexus was a space-time nexus. It reached back into time and placed buttons ahead of time.) The opposing force could only surge forward, like a tide. March 74: a time roll-back, the force or pressure emanating from the future, moving backward, retrograde. Forward vertical time re-instated itself almost at once, but—the short or brief interval revealed otherwise unsuspected weaker forces, concealed by the massive universal field of forward time. It was almost a time vacuum, into which many elements rushed. Or: the activity of other fields, always there but concealed, were temporarily visible, as they did their constant work. Equilibrium was briefly lost, in confor mity to Lem’s analysis. (Had there by any chance been a Soviet experiment with Kozyrev time?) By his theories it would be experienced everywhere at once. (By those sensitive to time fluctuations, such as pre-cogs? Would they then want feedback info from distant “tracking stations”?)
Of course, the Soviets would anticipate only category disruption, not an influx of a retrograde field. This would be incorrectly conceived of by those affected as an ESP experiment. With the addition, not from Soviet sources, of the presence of the retro-time force, the Holy Spirit or Logos. Implication that retrograde time is forward time which has passed the turning point (passed through infinity, so to speak), has formerly been forward time and possesses the accumulation which Bergson speaks of time as acquiring; then, as it turns the eye, so to speak, and starts back, it is freighted with the accumulated load of knowledge/information which may comprise the Wisdom associated with the Logos: all that wisdom was acquired in its forward tracking. It is information rich. Logically, then, in its retrograde tracking, it would divest itself of its knowledge: teach rather than learn, so that when it arrived at the other end, it would be information poor, even info empty, make the swing, and begin to acquire once more. I think the ongoing time-field momentarily weakened in March; is it possible that was due to a Soviet experiment à la Kozyrev? The time disruption for me was so great, so spectacular, that I can’t believe it was due to me, intended for me, aimed at me, etc. It was an historic event in which I merely played an accidental receiving role. My pre-cog ability is an index of my sensitivity to the retrograde field, maybe.
My subcortical impressions in March would indicate—not that time leaped back—but that it jumped forward about 2,000 years. It had just been circa 180 A.D. What is most distressing is the notion here of phony memories, generated (as under hypnosis) to fill in; they’d be the ones of Fullerton: the conscious continuity. The others—of Rome—would be the real ones, depicting the actuality. The conjunctive ones, of the interval, would be merely to paste over so as to reveal no rent. It’s as if time went directly from 10 A.D. to 1974 A.D., with nothing in between but it was pasted in retrospectively, to give verisimilitude. . . . The significance in all this of my “is the world real?” would be that we continually patch over the ellipses with fake memories in order to give uninterrupted continuity. Hence in me arise certain epistemological doubts, related to and deriving from the above experience-phenomena.
At this point one could begin to take it, my writing, very seriously, since everything seems to coalesce into something of meaning. The sense of unreality fits in . . . the disruption of the ontological categories . . . the sacerdotal power buried for aeons . . . it is all of a piece, plus the world of Ubik per se, but the meaning is unsuspected, anyhow by me. I.e., I seem to have taken a number of unrelated unusual experiences or themes to write about, but on closer examination, they all group around the time-disruption matter. The others are collateral, such as the false memories, etc.—which, for god’s sake, I seem to personally have experienced in my amnesias, several of them. These are indeed based on personal experiences in my life, over ten years. What if prior amnesias were paste-overs over prior disjunctions totally unsuspected? The vivid dreams like of “Mexico” and two more, China and India—space-time periods where I went and returned, no drugging et al. involved, then pasted over. We’re talking about jumps forward, jumps back. I was somewhere, during the preview of Fullerton—but I wasn’t taken; I disjuncted forward in time, to this time. The novel or movie technique which comes to mind is: splice. The splicing in of a scene, the joining of two scenes with something which had been between eliminated. But this is all less of a breakdown and more like a repair.
If, however, that experience were regarded as a demonstration of God’s power, rather than a natural event, a miracle in fact, what was revealed—Rome circa 180 A.D.—would not be what in some way time jumped back to, or I jumped back to, or anyone came here from, but a demonstration that this world of Fullerton 1974 exists only because He causes it to exist, and if He wishes He can roll it aside to reveal whatever He wants; He can cause any other world He wishes to replace it, on the spot. The meaning is God, although the revelation is of Rome.
Here: one can turn Fullerton to Rome by: (1) adding, i.e., a layer of enchantment, so that Fullerton became Rome by acquiring something which was lacking. Or (2) Simply altered; I was in Fullerton, then I was in Rome. It was different. Or (3) Something, similar to an enchantment, was removed, and Fullerton became Rome. Of the 3, it was the last which happened; I was still in Fullerton, but layers were stripped, veils of illusion; what remained was much simpler, was Rome, with both good and bad parts. Rome lay underneath. It was always really there, if we could penetrate to that foundation. This is an important realization; the transformation came by the removal of something—what was I guess not real, or not as real. (Was this form-regression, à la Ubik? One would no more expect to find the morphos Rome buried within Fullerton than to find the LaSalle car buried within the rocket ship . . . !!!)
Letter to Claudia Bush, February 16, 1975
[4:190]
Dear Claudia,
Why would God take his Sole Son, whom He loved, and send Him here? Especially in view of the outcome: His Only-Begotten Son was eventually discovered by the authorities and slaughtered in a cruel and humiliating way. After a short interval, of course, as might be expected, His Son returned to life, demonstrating to his small group of friends who He was, and then He left here and returned to His Father. No one has seen Him since.
The first thing you think of is, Boy, that sure showed bad planning on the part of God. Or, Boy, God sure allowed his Only-Begotten Son to suffer a lot; just how much did God in fact really love His Son, to let that happen? The Christian account doesn’t tell us enough to figure it out so it’s convincing; there is an enigma here, for those who believe and for those who don’t; in the immortal words of Mr. Spock, “It does not compute.”
The story of Zagreus, however, sheds light on this, very fascinating light, and it starts then to compute. Zeus sent Zagreus, his Favorite Son, whom He had allowed to sit beside Him on His Heavenly Throne, to Earth in order to hide him. From Hera, according to the myth, but that doesn’t seem to me very important; what is important is the motive: Zagreus’ father wanted his son to blend, to mingle, to pass, to disappear, to be in appearance just one more child born among millions. Notice how this fits the story about King Herod searching high and low, having the babies executed, etc. See? Now does it begin to make sense? Especially when you recall that one of the Medieval views, discarded, was that this world was either built by an evil god, or anyhow the plan went wrong and this world degenerated, and so a stranger god (that is, a god from somewhere else in the universe, from Outside) came here to fix things up for us and make our world come out right. However, he was found out and killed; this stranger god was the Christ, disguised as a carpenter. It didn’t work; the disguise was eventually penetrated and he was arrested, mainly through the paid informer within Christ’s circle. There is much quasi-political intrigue here, is there not? It becomes obvious why Jesus spoke of the “Prince of this World” who was His antagonist and who would eventually kill Him, as he did.