Explaining precognitive and synchronistic experiences

The doyen of precognition, fictional and IRL, is perhaps Philip K Dick: so much so that psychologist Anthony Peake wrote an entire book about this aspect. I didn't particularly like or agree-with much of the theorizing; but the subject matter certainly seems valid. 

As has happened before several times, a question or query from William James Tychonievich has extracted an answer; the production of which made me think a bit harder and more specifically than I wanted. 

The context was a discussion at his main blog, concerning the nature of Time; and the class of experiences that get termed "precognitions" - but also (relatedly, as it seems to me) synchronicities. 

I first put forward the basis of my explanations: 

In a nutshell; I think that most experiences that contradict modern concepts of clock time, are explicable on the basis that all Beings are eternal. We (and they - all other Beings - including God the Creator) were always around, and always will be around - and Beings have potential for direct inter-Being knowing, and communications. This (I think true) assumption has vast potential implications - and may serve as the basis for alternative (but mostly unconsidered) explanations for many paranormal and supernatural experiences to do with time, precognition, reincarnation, destiny etc.

To which William responded:

"Bruce, I'm not sure how that would explain most instances of apparent precognition." 

To which I produced the following reply:  

The difficulty with precognition is that most definitions of the things are (from my POV) metaphysically impossible - so that what is being explained is the experience, and the experience is (more like) that, sometimes, something, with some very specific similarities, is fore-seen by somebody. 

IMO The precog experience relates to a tiny and discrete slice cut from the continuum of a reality whose only Real division is between Beings - all the other divisions being hypothetical "models" designed to "save the appearances". 

A precog experience might be caused by one Being (as it were) announcing to another that he knows about something specific that will be encountered, or that he will be creating/ making some specific change - at some point in the future. And then the Being doing something like engineering the specific encounter (as best he may, typically incompletely, by influencing "behaviour") or making that thing happen (as best he may, usually approximately, by similar means). 

This raises the question of "why?". There might be an intent to harm, or to provide some worldly benefit - but I tend to think that most of these attributions are secondary and after the fact, and to the extent that they are true they are at least somewhat manipulative. 

The primary Good impulse behind two Beings interacting is more like the desire/ need for relationship. 

In other words Love is the impulse - when "Love" is seen as dynamic, purposive, and having "creating" as intrinsic to it. 

This is a gross overgeneralization of what may be a multitude to relationships between many specific Beings - but precogs and synchronicities could be understood as rather crude and ineffectual forms of attempted relationship between other Beings, and oneself... Perhaps a way of getting attention, an intended start-point to something more. 

I am pretty sure, however they are explained, that synchronicties and precog experiences are meant to be (as they were for me) a means to an end, not an end in themselves; the Start of a process of re-orientation, of challenging false and harmful metaphysical assumptions. 

In other words - "the medium is the message": it is the form rather than the content of precog/ synch experiences that matters. 

(Which also fits with the fact that the experiences are nearly always "useless" - in this-worldly pragmatic terms. People who get them a lot don't usually thrive in a this-worldly and social sense - indeed, often the opposite. The intended benefit of a typical specific experience of precog - if any benefit is intended - is directed at the experiencing person and his spiritual development, assumptions, motivations etc.)

We can never "know" completely and finally; but can Love wholly and eternally

From Exegesis by Philip K Dick, referring to his novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) 

This is a strange ending [to the novel]. 

The will (of Schopenhauer) turns back on itself and is satisfied not to know: This is the form its cessation takes: that he is content not to know, and so is she. Thus one thing is certain: the restless, striving, irrational will is defeated; it has given up. 

If this is how victory is defined, there has been victory. 

If victory is defined as knowing whether Tim Archer defeats Fate through Christ and immortality—it is not victory. 

The final message seems to be: sublime peace - freedom from the restless striving will - is possible, but knowledge - intellectual knowing - is not. 

The heart can know peace but the mind cannot be satisfied; the drive to know, to possess intellectual certitude is doomed to failure.

Sureness is not factual but relational: but a matter between persons, between beings (in the here and now).

What we can be sure about is not knowledge - which is why epistemology, a philosophical search for surety of factual information -  is a dead end. 

"Knowing about stuff" is not the core of reality; because reality is not naturally divided into units, into "facts". 

We can never ever be "certain" of facts because reality is not pre-divided into facts - not factually-segmented - such divisions are imposed, arbitrary, and selective.

(The idea that "scientific facts" are the only thing we can be certain of - is therefore a dangerous delusion.) 

  

What, then, is the core of reality? 

The fundamental and real divisions are those between individual living beings. 

Ultimate reality is therefore to do with living beings and the relationships between them. 

The heart can know "peace" in the context of love; albeit in this mortal world that peace can only be temporary - because of entropy/ death and evil. 

Yet in resurrected Heavenly life, that peace can be eternal.

And love between living beings is a dynamic thing, because life is dynamic; which is why and how love overflows into creating.  

Even in Heaven (even for God the Creator) we will never know finally, nor wholly and eternally - because creation is ongoing, and other-beings really are "other". 

But we shall love wholly and eternally; and it is that possibility which makes Heaven possible. 

 

A Messiah could make no significant difference - leaves the problems of Life untouched

There has usually been, and commonly, a yearning for a Messiah - a deliverer or saviour of a people or the world. 

The deep problem is not that the Messiah never actually comes; but that even if there was or is a Messiah, and even if he actually liberated or saved his people or the world; then doing this would leave the fundamental problems of Life untouched.

This because even if "my people" or the world was somehow genuinely and lastingly saved from any kind of worldly-affliction such as enslavement, poverty, natural destruction, war, poverty... then there would still be entropy (disease, degeneration, death) and there would still be evil. 

This came to mind in reading Philip K Dick's Exegesis - and considering that for many years he yearned desperately for a Saviour; in the last weeks of his life, he announced his vision of "Tagore" whose role was vicariously to save the planet from Man's ecological destruction.  

But PKD was being short-sighted and overwhelmed by current emotion - like when we are sick or afraid; and imagine "if only" we could be well we would never be unhappy again. 

Even if Tagore had been true and had achieved exactly what Dick hoped he would - this would have made zero qualitative difference to the human condition. 

It is the problem of double-negative values; the Messiah is supposed to save-from - and no matter how many things he was able to save me or us from; then the problems of entropy and evil would still remain.

 

Indeed; no matter what I personally was saved-from - I would still have the problem of my-self and of my-death. 

Like everybody I have ever heard of; I am quite capable of tormenting myself into misery (even despair) even when I am currently un-afflicted by any significant problem - when I am free of pain, of hunger, when I am warm and comfortable and here-and-now secure. 

When I imagine or dream terrible things - I am doing this to myself, and the evil is from me. 

There is the evil in me; there are an uncountable number of bad things that could happen, that cannot be excluded - and there are the universal actualities and possibilities of entropy (especially death) and evil.

The most that could realistically be achieved by an actual Messiah would be to impose on his people (because few would accept it) a kind of irreversible blissful ignorance of the fundamental problems - which would need to be some kind of permanent annihilation of consciousness...

Which is, if not exactly death, then subjectively indistinguishable from being unalive; and amounts to the wish that we never had lived. 

This is the terminus of the primacy of any double-negative values: a preference for not-existence. 

Direct knowing is the Only knowing (Anything we do not grasp immediately, can never be known)

Human consciousness has changed over the generations; so that now we no longer understand language, pictures, or "symbols" in general.

This is obvious everywhere. It does not matter what is said, shown or expressed; people cannot understand it spontaneously. 

In the past it was Just Obvious to (almost) everyone, what things meant - but not any more. 

Things that used to be common sense and obvious, we are unsure about, they become subject to debate, to the application of rival theories and explanations - and once that has happened, we no longer know.  

Learning, discovery, understanding - came all together; and from outside.  

This is what "inspiration" properly means: knowledge was as if (but in a sense literally) breathed-in, imbibed from externally - perceptions came already-packaged with their meanings.  

The same has happened to the world of spirit and religion. Some people still have what they are confident are religious experiences, spiritual visions, "contacts" with other beings. 

Some people have paranormal or supernatural experiences - contact with the dead, ghosts, telepathy; do magical things like spoon bending; report out of body experiences; have extraordinary coincidences/ synchronicities; see UFOs or explore crop-circles... All sorts of things. 

And some people, at least, can - by methods such as training in meditation, developing habits, focused attention, seeking altered consciousness; or by "systems" such as ritual magic, alchemy, astrology, Traot cards etc - have extraordinary experiences. 

These things are possible and happen to some people - yet the people do not know what they mean. 

People do not know what ordinary everyday experiences mean; and they do not know what religious/ spiritual/ paranormal experiences mean. 

The meaning is the problem. 

They may spend their lives trying to understand what their experiences mean. And this applies no matter how strange and overwhelming are the experiences! 

Philip K Dick's life was changed by a series of intense religious experiences; but after eight years of intensive and sustained attempts to understand what it meant - he died without finding-out.     

This is how things are for people here-and-now. 

The question for Christians is why would our good, loving, creator in Heaven have made us and the world, such that we do not understand our experiences? 

There must be a reason why God has made matters thus; and it must be a good reason - a reason for our own good.  

I think God's intent and hope is that we cease to try and understand things indirectly - that is, via language, visions, symbols, and experiences; and instead base our understanding upon what I have called Direct Knowing - which is simply that which we know without intermediary. 

What we can know must therefore be grasped in one go, as a whole - without explanation, without interpretation, without reasoning.

This means that we need to stop looking for understanding from other things; and instead turn our attention to what we do know. 

My model of this is that we have a conscious and personality self, which is what we are spontaneously aware of; and which "observes" the world via symbol, language, pictures etc. 

But we also have a primal self, which knows directly. It is this which is eternal, which is divine (albeit very partially so compared with God); and this primal self is what is in communion with the Holy Ghost   

If we are to know, we must turn our personality self towards our primal self - and discover what it knows.   

I think we always know unconsciously what the primal self knows directly - and our task is to become aware of what we already know. 

The knowing of the primal self is very simple indeed. It is like a plus or minus applied to the world; it is a discernment. 

What the primal self knows, it knows in a single grasp of thought in which understanding is built-in. 

What this seems to mean, is that to know anything, understanding must come with discovery. 

And if anything is discovered that we do not grasp immediately, then we can never know it. 

No matter how much we try or for how long; we will be stuck forever at the level of inconclusiveness and ambiguity. 

 

PSYOP Thought Experiments: How would you react if you learned that a sad and beautiful poem that touched you deeply had been written by a computer?

You may think she's cute - but she's a replicant, you fool!

Thought experiments are usually pretty evil mind manipulations, as I've said before. 

The thing is that in order to respond to thought experiments, you must allow yourself to admit them as possible, as potentially real. 

I got the title of this post from an advert for an NYT "Best Selling" book of such questions - which provides a clear example of the PSYOP nature of Establishment-allowed and Mass Media-publicized thought experiments. 

"How would you react if you learned that a sad and beautiful poem that touched you deeply had been written by a computer?" compels us to admit (for the purposes of argument, in our own understanding) that the very highest realms of human creativity can - in principle - be replicated by computers. 

Of course there is no instance of any such creativity from a computer ever; for the good reason that it is impossible - impossible in principle, not in practice.

But we are supposed to take it seriously, and in doing so we take it seriously - and thus genius-level computer creativity becomes a social reality, even when a real impossibility. 

One could extend the thought experiment (and of course this has been done, is being done, on a near daily basis in the media and elsewhere); to even more subversive questions as: 

"How would you react if you learned that your deeply loved wife of twenty years was in fact a robot"? 

Or the Philip K Dick story The Electric Ant, in which the "how would you react" is to learning that you yourself were a robot*.   

Focusing on "how would you react" is a classic way of smuggling assumptions; of the "do you still beat your wife" type, or implicit character-assassinations like asking "what made X become such an murderous psychopath?". 

(Of course, PKD is the genius-originator of this line of thought-experiment; with a difference that he really lived it.)

The PSYOPS give-away is that this kind of supposedly-free-thinking-radical, subversive, confusing, delusion-inducing, doubt-generating, demotivating thought experiment is media mainstream - often mandatory in schools and colleges; and indeed currently a Major (Trillion Dollar) part of public funding, strategy and propaganda... 

Is actually located in an Establishment monitored and controlled public discourse; in which innumerable and ever-increasing everyday and obvious experiences and observations are treated as hate-facts: taboo, suppressed, slurred, dishonestly-denigrated, excluded, and increasingly punishable. 

This kind of detailed, long-term manipulation of discourse - such that the impossible must be taken seriously and the true must be regarded as a lie - is clearly intentional and strategic... Global and totalitarian PSYOPS, in other words. 

Power and corruption - Is the evil of power an amplification, a temptation, or the fundamental nature of things?

In ancient times, it seems that power was regarded as A Good Thing - the only problem was getting it! The assumption was that gaining power simply enabled good people to do good things. 

Power was wanted for Us, and Our power was good. The evil of power was when They had it, and exercised it on Us. 

When someone with power did evil, then the ancient assumption was that power simply revealed their real nature - which had previously been thwarted of expression. 

Power for the ancients was thus an amplifier. 

It was as if goodness and evil were innate qualities; "a good man" given more power would, by his nature, do more good; and vice versa. 

The best society was therefore one such as King Arthur's Camelot; in which there was a good and powerful ruler. 

The era of power-as-amplifier also includes the assumption that the goodness of the ruler's power would permeate the people (as if the people would inevitably absorb the goodness of power, like a sponge). So, a good and powerful ruler, would lead to a better people. 

The idea that power corrupts, was a product of the modern era; and became socially dominant especially in the middle 20th century. 

We see it in literature such as the depiction of the Emperors and their courts in Robert Graves's I Claudius and Claudius the God - when many basically-decent individuals such as Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius himself, become corrupted by their power. (And those who are not corrupted get eliminated.) 

The corrupting effect of power was supposed to work such that a normal, or even good, person who got enough power, would strongly tend to be corrupted by it. So that a powerful monarch, or in the 20th century a secular dictator, might start out doing overall good; but would tend to become worse, get more selfish and paranoid, and do increasing harm...

The more power someone had, and the longer he wielded that power - the more corrupted he would become. 

Thus, in contrast with the ancients; the "power corrupts" idea was that power would itself tend make individuals evils: power was understood as a temptation. 

The more power, the longer the power was wielded: the greater the temptation.

From the late twentieth century the idea began to emerge that power was intrinsically corrupt: power just is corruption. 

While it is true that power amplifies innate evil, and also corrupts; in this most recent era there is more to power. It is not just a question of power bringing-out evil, plus tempting people to evil; on top of (and underpinning) these: power always is evil in its fundamental nature. 

This analysis asserts that power cannot be good, that power always is evil - because of what power is. 

Such an idea can be seen emerging in the depiction of the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings - where the temptation of power is, in practice, unstoppable in its corruption- such that even the most good and pure of people (Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf, Aragorn) know they they would be unable to resist it.  

Here we may see hints of the current concept that the very nature and operation of power is evil (yet not quite fully in place, because the legitimate monarchical power of Aragorn is regarded as unproblematically good). 

Yet now, the situation is that power is regarded as coercion; as operating by compulsion of one by another; or of the masses by the minority rulers; or of people by the totalitarian System or "machine". 

A literary exponent of this vision of fundamentally evil power is Philip K Dick; with the depictions of future (and present day) dystopias as the Black Iron Prison; in which the whole structure of societal power is regarded as evil incarnate, set against each individual - who is a victim of power regardless of his position within The System. 

The operations of power are therefore such as to spread evil; in that power compels. Power propagandizes, coaxes, and forces behaviour - power deploys punishment for failure to obey; and power allocates rewards for compliance.  

In other words: power is all about bribes and sanctions and the like - these are not means to an end; but propaganda, bribes and sanctions, and brute force are what power is. 

The corruption spreads; because power is about getting others to behave in accordance with fear and greed, and the lust for power. 

This development in the understanding of power is, I believe, a consequence of the changing nature of human consciousness - the development by which human behaviour began as spontaneously and unconsciously immersed in the group-mind; and then (via transitional stages) became a alienated modern situation, in which each human experiences himself as cut-off from other people, from reality - even from his inmost self.

Whereas ancient power was diffused among the group mind - so that it was intrinsically shared-between the members; now power is experienced as external compulsion of one upon others.

Power makes everybody worse - the powerful, and those upon whom power is exercised! 

This is why the making of structures of power - power to shape, destroy and compel the world (as its people) - has been so much the focus of demonic strategy through most of the modern era. 

This has many and deep consequences; such that whereas the ancients could do good by power; we moderns cannot - power only does evil in the modern world, and can only do evil because of its nature. 

This applies to all humans with power - all are evil; and to all institutions with power, including Christian churches. 

Insofar as a Christian church is powerful, it is evil - it can only be evil. Whatever Christian churches do to increase their power is based on the false argument that power will enable them to do more good... The reality is that more-power simply makes churches more-evil. 

Because power is evil by its nature in the context of modern consciousness; institutional activity to "do good" that was normal in the past, is impossible in the present. 

Even when the intent to do good with power is genuine; insofar as power is attained, evil will in fact be done. 

This corruption of power is not just a temptation that might (in theory) be eschewed; the corruption of power is unavoidable, because it is in the fundamental nature of power. 

**

Note: What of the future? Well, it seems clear to me that, when power is known as innately evil; Christians need to lose their past keenness on getting and wielding power via - whether personally, or via institutions. The antidote to a world of power, is a world of love - and that is Heaven; and the mortal realities of Heavenly love that we may experience on earth. But even our idea of Heaven needs to be purged of past infatuations with power. We should also distinguish between the zero-sum games of power, which is all about arranging what is already created; and our potential for adding (eternally) to the sum and varieties of divine creation - through our own divine freedom, in harmony with ongoing creation. Of course, in our mortal lives in this mixed world, permeated by entropy and evil; we cannot eschew power, and necessarily participate in it - but we can and should recognize and repent the necessity. 

Further Note: Lest I be misunderstood - the situation is Not symmetrical. Although power is evil, power-less-ness does not mean good-ness. To be wholly good, power must not be operative. To put matters positively - goodness works by love, not power. Power is the destruction of loving relationship. 

However; in this mortal earthly life, love and power are always mixed in actual Men and their actual relationships, in a manner analogous to the inevitable mixture of good and evil in the hearts of each Man. Only after we have been remade and transformed by resurrection can Men (and other Beings) become wholly-loving. So, the situation in this earthly mortal life is that we cannot Be goos and loving (except partially and intermittently) but we can , and should, to affiliate to the side of love, just as we can/should affiliate to the side of God. It is not a matter of total reform and purification (which is impossible in this world) - what matter is a matter of taking sides; and, when it comes to values and matter of taking the right side.   

Acknowledgement: My awareness of the changing understanding of power originated from Tom Shippey's discussion of the One Ring in his magisterial The Road to Middle Earth, and some further discussion in the essays Roots and Branches.  

Empathy versus Love - and the Universal Empath

In one of his best novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep; Philip K Dick explores the (interesting but mistaken) idea that what make people human is empathy - which is a modern development of the term "sympathy"; and means something like resonance. 

In other words; in empathy we feel the same as another person (or another non-person being, such as an animal) - we feel as they feel; much as a violin string tuned to the note of A will sympathetically resonate when impinged upon by sound on the note A from another instrument. The violin string will "passively" ring-out the note of A.   

Empathy in humans has much to do with emotions; and in an empathic person, empathy is supposed to happen spontaneously, involuntarily, naturally... If we are empathic we are supposed to experiencing feel the same emotions as another person. 

(This is the basis of the Voight-Kampff test in Do Android's Dream - it is intended to evoke and measure physiological correlates of empathic responses, by describing situations in which empathy is appropriate. Androids are incapable of the full range of these responses, and can only simulate them by specific programming*.) 

However; there is also a cultural belief that empathy can be trained into a habit - that (by the right attitude and will) somebody may make themselves very generally empathic. 

Indeed, in the modern West; empathy is so highly valued that the ideal of a Good Person - i.e. a promiscuous altruist - is supposed to feel the sufferings of everybody in the world, all of the time; and all animal's, plants and the planet earth - especially the suffering caused by a "too-high" proportion of carbon dioxide percentage in the earth's atmosphere. 

This "universal empath" could be taken as implicitly a moral exemplar of this time and place - and this notion has long-since been absorbed into mainstream church-Christianity. 

To convince others that one is a Universal Empath has thus become a strategy of those who seek to dominate and manipulate - it is, in a way, the justification for the global leadership class of multi-billionaires and their servants. 

In sum: modern totalitarianism is rationalized by implicitly-claimed attribute of universal empathy among its bureaucracy and those who control it. 

This is even the case among those spitefully destructive influencers who are increasingly dominating the global ruling classes. 

Although the mask of Universal Empath is slipping with increased frequency to reveal the snake-eyed demon within, the claimed basis of whatever is the current top-down manufactured war/ economic crisis/ health crisis/ "humantitarian" crisis/ environmental crisis - is always some version of utilitarian altruism underpinned by a passionately-expressed empathy for some suffering entity, or another.  

So - if not, then what? If empathy as a primary positive moral value actually leads to more and more-powerful evil; how ought empathy instead be conceptualized?  

The answer is as a minor but necessary basis for virtue. The lack of empathy is characteristic of psychopathy; which is why psychopaths go to such great lengths to simulate empathy. 

The true and whole virtue - of which empathy is a part - is love; and specifically Christian love: which is rooted in love of God as a person (not as an abstraction or a collection of entities) - that we can perhaps understand in terms of love of divine creation and its nature and aims. 

In other words; to love one must first love God, divine creation, and its basis and goals. We must be On That Side in the spiritual war of this world.

(Those who have joined that the side that opposes God and creation, are in principle against Christian love - and this will undercut the strength and robustness of their love of actual persons, as well as enfeebling the reality of their love of "the world". They will, under worldly pressures, tend towards becoming actors of love, and of empathy - using it as a psychopathic mask.)  

And love is particular - love is not universal, but between specific persons - as is well shown by the Fourth Gospel - where that which Jesus Loves is always particular, and mostly of individual persons.  

So we all ought to be empathic; even while the Universal Empath is a moral monster. We should value appropriate and genuine empathy, even as we eschew its universality. 

A genuine inability to be empathic is incompatible with love and with Christianity (unless it is recognized and repented). 

But empathy is a partial manifestation of love; and genuine empathy is only a virtue when in a specific and Christianly loving context. 

And to be real and good; empathy must be personal - like love itself.  

*Simulating specific empathies - for general categories of persons and issues - is, indeed, exactly what the soul-sold and corrupted totalitarian rulers and their obedient bureaucrats are doing when they express sympathy for designated victim-groups. It is necessary to Their purposes that only certain categories be permitted this synthetic empathy; because if Their feigned-sympathy was truly universal, then they would be excessively limited in their scope for evil-motivated policies and activities. 

Daydreaming of paradise: for it to be real, we would need to change ourselves, as well as our environment

I suppose many people daydream about some idyllic, pastoral kind of Paradise - and when we are young, perhaps we believe it may potentially be attainable on this earth and during mortal life?

Over the years I have had several such daydreams - including The Shire, and Lothlorien from Middle Earth; being a married writer with kids in a rural retreat among friends; and a particular era in Concord, New England at the time of Emerson and Thoreau.   

Such daydreams have a fuzzy quality, are often little more than a snapshot - or a particular mood state; and are utterly detached from the practicalities and realities of the situation - such as how it might arise, and how it could be sustained. 

As I have said before; paradise implies not only an ideal place, but our-selves changed such that we would be able to enjoy it. I could not experience The Shire as in my daydream unless I was also a hobbit; nor Lothlorien unless an elf; not Concord c1840 unless I was a man of that time, place and class.  

In another sense, we would have to become a better person (better in the sense of better-fitted to the daydream); and when young we tend to assume that this can and will happen. But anyone who is realistic and honest soon realizes that this doesn't happen. 

We change, yes; but we don't really get better overall. 

Even when we eliminate some besetting sin, or some horrible antisocial trait; this always comes at a negative cost. 

That cost may be necessary, and worth paying - but there will always be a significant cost...

In his Exegesis: After listing 24 ways in which he has been changed and improved by his religious experiences of February and March 1974 - and writing some year and a half later - Philip K Dick concluded [from page 226 onward]: 

The only problem is, I am in no customary sense - maybe in no sense whatsoever - spiritualized or exalted. 

In fact I seem even more mean and irascible than before.  

True, I do not hit anybody, but my language remains gungy and I am crabby and domineering; my personality defects are unaltered. 

In the accepted sense I am not a better person. 

I may be healthier (maybe not that; vide the blood pressure). But I am not a good person, even though my emotions and moods are better under control. 

Maybe I just have a long way to go... 

In the end, if we pursue this to its conclusion; we will realize that paradise can only be post-mortal; and that any "paradise" that does not entail the retention of our-ultimate-selves is not a paradise at all (because it would be somebody else enjoying it) - yet the ultimate selves must positively and qualitatively be transformed, in a way that never truly happens in our experience or knowledge of this world. 

 

Should we seek for God among the "trash" of Western culture?

In his Exegesis; Philip K Dick often returns to the theme that God - and The Good - could be found among the "trash" of civilization - and only among the trash:

The right place to look for the Almighty is, e.g., in the trash in the alley. And for Satan in vast cathedrals etc. 

This fitted with PKD's sustained interest in historical Gnosticism; by which this world is made by The Devil, who is an evil demiurge; such that God (and Good) can only penetrate this world (and eventually redeem it - make it good) by stealth and in-disguise. 

Such Gnosticism (which he knew of partly via his friend the Bishop of California Jim Pike, who was involved in translating the Nag Hammadi library) appealed to PKD because he was very aware of the evils of this world, especially its suffering. 

PKD could not make intuitive sense of the traditional-orthodox-canonical Christian view that such a world as we inhabit was created and sustained by a wholly-good and omnipotent God. On the other hand; PKD was not satisfied by the explanations of Gnosticism either - and therefore the Exegesis displays many oscillations and explorations, and never settles on a final or wholly-satisfying explanation. 

Leaving aside what I regard as the mistaken metaphysical assumptions of ancient Gnosticism (and indeed traditional canonical Christianity) - there is certainly a strong case to be made that real Christianity is now to be found only among the detritus and at the edges of modern Western Culture; and not in the cathedrals, temples, churches, seminaries and theological colleges, or their like. Nor indeed in mainstream mass media; nor high status education and academia.  

As Western Culture has become totalitarian and corrupted - then every-thing that is mainstream, official, popular, powerful, wealthy and high status; has been brought within the evil-motivated totalitarian System, and under the ultimate control of literal demons. 

Here-and-now; any-thing that is not on-board-with, and supportive-of, the totality of systemic evil is forced to the margins; and demonized as "trash". 

Christians themselves are already - and increasingly - regarded-as, and treated-as, trash by the world of mainstream officialdom and mass media; and the more truly-Christian a person may be, the more he will be despised. 

So that the end-result is superficially very much as assumed by ancient Gnostics and their sympathizers such as PKD; despite that PKD was essentially a man-of-the-left, and there is a significant element of 60s counter-culture "nostalgie de la boue" -style posturing about the notion of seeking "God" in the trash!

Nonetheless, and despite all reservations and contextualization; it is probably true in essence. 

Although most of the trash of our civilization is indeed rubbish, and some of it is very evil; as of 2024, in The West, we won't find God anywhere else. 

Philip K Dick, Tim Powers, and CS Lewis

This section of Philip K Dick's novel Valis (1981) always cracks me up, whenever I re-read it: 

It was a mainstay of Kevin's bag of verbal tricks that the universe consisted of misery and hostility and would get you in the end. He looked at the universe the way most people regard an unpaid bill; eventually they will force payment. The universe reeled you out, let you flop and thrash and then reeled you in. Kevin waited constantly for this to begin with him, with me, with David and especially with Sherri. 

As to Horselover Fat, Kevin believed that the line hadn't been payed out in years; Fat had long been in the part of the cycle where they reel you back in. He considered Fat not just potentially doomed but doomed in fact. 

Fat had the good sense not to discuss Gloria Knudson and her death in front of Kevin. Had he done so, Kevin would add her to his dead cat. He would be talking about whipping her out from under his coat on judgment day, along with the cat. 

Being a Catholic, David always traced everything wrong back to man's free will. This used to annoy even me. I once asked him if Sherri getting cancer consisted of an instance of free will, knowing as I did that David kept up with all the latest news in the field of pyschology and would make the mistake of claiming that Sherri had subconsciously wanted to get cancer and so had shut down her immune system, a view floating around in advanced psychological circles at that time. Sure enough, David fell for it and said so. 

"Then why did she get well?" I asked. "Did she subconsciously want to get well?" 

David looked perplexed. If he consigned her illness to her own mind he was stuck with having to consign her remission to mundane and not supernatural causes. God had nothing to do with it 

"What C. S. Lewis would say," David began, which at once angered Fat, who was present. It maddened him when David turned to C. S. Lewis to bolster his straight-down-the-pipe orthodoxy. 

**

The character of Kevin in Valis was based on SciFi writer KW Jeter; while David was based on Tim Powers. These were, at the time, young undergraduate students at the California State University at Fullerton; and the three men - together with James Blaylock, who does not feature in Valis* - would meet regularly for long rambling philosophical conversations sparked by PKD's current musings from Exegesis. 

I find these remembered and reimagined conversations to be among my favourite sections of Valis; and the subsequent Spiritual Quest on which the "three" contrasting friends embark, is a strange but appealing twist on the Fellowship of Lord of the Rings, of St Anne's in CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength - or indeed in almost every fantasy novel, movie and role-playing game since.  

In an interview; Powers confirmed the CS Lewis theme of the debates:  

[Tim Powers]: I remember reading Valis, and at one point Phil says, “David,” that is Powers, “had withdrawn into himself in some sort of catatonic way when confronted with the savior reincarnated. The Catholic Church had taught him how to do this. How to shut down his senses when confronted with something that violated Catholic orthodoxy.” 

I remember telling Phil, “What the hell is that? What are you talking about here, man?” He just sort of went, “Heeheeheehee.” 

And at one point in the book the Phil Dick character says to the Powers character, “Would you please not tell us what C.S. Lewis would say about this? Could you do us that one favor?” 

And I said, “I don’t quote C.S. Lewis all the time.” And again, he sort of went, “Heeheehee.” 

[Interviewer]: That’s the thing I wanted to ask you about. Were you that big of a devotee of C. S. Lewis and are you still? 

[Powers]: Oh yeah, I love Lewis. I reread him all the time. Largely his nonfiction, though his fiction is lots of fun, too. And G.K. Chesterton. I’m still a practicing Catholic, not lapsed or recovering.

**

I think this so reliably makes me chuckle, because I too was prone to quote CS Lewis on all manner of disputes, for the first couple of years after I became a Christian. This reflected the course of my particular path, and the role that Lewis played in it. 

I am very grateful to Lewis for his role in my becoming a Christian, and several of his books and arguments have stayed with me. 

On the other hand; it was not until I began to reject many of CS Lewis's most basic assumptions that I began to attain coherence of Christian faith - and to extricate myself from enmeshment in the futile and harmful church disputes that plague modern Christianity. 

Presumably, PKD concluded something similar... 

 

*I guess that Blaylock was omitted from the novel either because his personality did not fit the necessary stereotypes to enable amusing arguments, or because in Valis PKD is (usually) split across two characters (in the same body): Phil, the narrator, a SciFi author; and Horselover Fat, the crazy protagonist ("Philip" means "Horselover", while "Fat" is a German translation of "Dick"). So the generation of four-way conversations did not require the presence of a Blaylock-derivative. 

The question of "evidence" of life after death - from Philip K Dick

I feel as if I am channeling WmJas Tychonievich, in reporting this following (sort-of) "synchronicity" -- which is that immediately after writing my post on the question of evidence of God; I continued my re-reading of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick (1982), in which I came across the following (edited, and with my additional emphases):

**

"Is there any proof of God's existence?" Bill said. 

After a pause, Tim said, "A number of arguments are given. Perhaps the best is the argument from biology, advanced for instance by Teilhard de Chardin. Evolution - the existence of evolution - seems to point to a designer. Also there is Morrison's argument that our planet shows a remarkable hospitality toward complex forms of life. The chance of this happening on a random basis is very small... 

"There are proofs," Tim said. "But God doesn't talk to anybody," Bill said. "No," Tim said. He rallied, then; I saw him draw himself up. 

"However, the Old Testament gives us many instances of Yahweh addressing his people through the prophets. This fountain of revelation dried up, finally. God no longer speaks to man. It is called 'the long silence.' It has lasted two thousand years." 

"I realize God talked to people in the Bible," Bill said, "in the olden days, but why doesn't he talk to them now? Why did he stop?" 

"I don't know," Tim said. He said no more; there he ceased.... "I really wish you would explain it to me," Bill said to Tim. "Because it's impossible. It's not just unlikely; it's impossible." ... 

"Jeff [i.e. Tim's deceased son] has communicated with the two of us," Tim said. "Through intermediary phenomena. Many times, in many ways." ..."It is God Himself working on us and through us to bring forth a brighter day. My son is with us now; he is with us in this room. He never left us. What died was a material body. Every material thing perishes. Whole planets perish. The physical universe itself will perish. 

"Are you going to argue, then, that nothing exists? Because that is where your logic will carry you. It isn't possible right now to prove that external reality exists. Descartes discovered that; it's the basis of modem philosophy. All you can know for sure is that your own mind, your own consciousness, exists. You can say, 'I am' and that's all... 

"What you see is not world but a representation formed in and by your own mind. Everything that you experience you know by faith. Also, you may be dreaming. Had you thought of that? Plato relates that a wise old man, probably an Orphic, said to him, 'Now we are dead and in a kind of prison.' Plato did not consider that an absurd statement; he tells us that it is weighty and something to think about. 'Now we are dead.' 

"We may have no world at all. I have enough evidence - your mother and I - for Jeff returning to us as I have that the world itself exists. We do not suppose he has come back; we experience him as coming back. We have lived and are living through it. So it is not our opinion. It is real.

"Real for you," Bill said. "What more can reality give?" "Well, I mean," Bill said, "I don't believe it." 

"The problem does not lie with our experience in this matter," Tim said. "It lies with your belief-system. Within the confines of your belief-system, such a thing is impossible. "Who can say, truly say, what is possible? We have no knowledge of what is and isn't possible; we do not set the limits - God sets the limits." ...

"What do you believe, then? In objects you get into and drive around the block. There may be no objects and no block; someone pointed out to Descartes that a malicious demon may cause our assent to a world that is not there, may impress a forgery onto us as an ostensible representation of the world. 

"If that happened, we would not know. We must trust; we must trust God. 

"I trust in God that he would not deceive me; I deem the Lord faithful and true and incapable of deceit. For you that question does not even exist, for you will not grant that He exists in the first place. 

"You ask for proof. If I told you this minute that I have heard God's voice speaking to me-would you believe that? Of course not. We call people who speak to God pious and we call people to whom God speaks lunatics. 

"This is an age where there is little faith. It is not God who is dead; it is our faith that has died." 

"But -" Bill gestured. "It doesn't make any sense. Why would he come back [from the dead]?" 

"Tell me why Jeff lived in the first place," Tim said. "Then perhaps I can tell you why he came back. Why do you live? For what purpose were you created? You do not know who created you - assuming anyone did - and you do not know why, assuming there is a why. 

"Perhaps no one created you and perhaps there is no purpose to your life. No world, no purpose, no Creator, and Jeff has not come back to us. Is that your logic? Is that how you live out your life? Is that what Being, in Heidegger's sense, is to you? 

"That is an impoverished kind of inauthentic Being. It strikes me as weak and barren and, in the end, futile."...

**

It strikes me that these are strong, valid arguments; despite that "Tim" - Timothy Archer - is depicted as the worst kind of trendy-leftist, self-justifying hedonic Episcopalian Bishop from the 1960s! And despite that Tim's belief in the return of his deceased son is depicted by the agnostic narrator (his daughter in law, widow of the deceased son) as merely a wish-fulfilling yet dangerous delusion. 

The modern mainstream idea of "evidence" has always (as seen above) been ultimately incoherent in its own rationalistic terms - even when its professional practice was honestly-applied and coherent in terms on a basis in circular assumptions and reasoning. 

Yet nowadays (and since the 1990s) the public and in-practice conceptualization of evidence, of facts, of reality has been thoroughly corrupted into (literally) nothing more than the current, official, Establishment consensus; as currently propagated by the official mass media. 

"Evidence" in practice therefore means nothing more than a very vague, diffuse, and open-endedly changeable impression of what seems acceptable to those with power, wealth and high status... 

The more that people (or institutions, or algorithms) talk-about and assert evidence/ facts/ realism and their importance - the more manipulative, dishonest and intentionally-evil is the actuality. 

Earlier standards of evidence (which existed - at least in England! - within several discourses such as science, academia and law) have by-now been annihilated, as coherence of reasoning and statement have themselves been annihilated. 

Therefore arguments such as those of Bishop Timothy Archer in the above passage, have altogether lost traction. 

There can be no basis for argument (or evidence!) when there is no commitment to truth, and no interest in knowing reality.

 

The Ubik Solution? Christian messages from the neglected, discarded, despised and marginal

Ubik (1969) is a science fiction novel by Philip K Dick. Without summarizing the plot, or giving away the punch line; suffice to say that it depicts an evil-permeated and rapidly entropic world, which is opposed by a 'god' who is excluded from all mainstream and normal ways of communicating and helping. 

In this world, The System is all-pervasive. God's messages must come from peripheral and unexpected directions in order to get past the monitoring intelligence. Good can only work indirectly. "God" is to be found only in the "trash" of this culture. 

We might imagine an equivalent for our world, in which the real Christian needed to disguise itself as trash, and move out to the places into which The System does not (yet) extend. It can only find an outlet among the despised people, those regarded as absurd, insignificant - or labelled by The System as insane, idiotic, evil...

The System fights back by mimicking the secret divine messages by deploying fakes as bait... The System pretends that these people and messages are radical, anti-Establishment, or disapproved; yet The System contrives to draw attention to them, nonetheless. 

The System advertises (under pretense of warning against) exactly these baited traps; which it hopes will be mistaken for divine messages - but will lead back into The System. 

Meanwhile, the real messages from the divine, real goodness, are unknown or unnoticed except to those who honestly seek them, and are sensitized to their truth. 

The System is entropic, parasitic, destructive - and opposed to The System is Ubik. 

Ubik is found in various trashy forms, such as an aerosol that (albeit temporarily) opposes and reverses entropy; it heals the dissolutions of The System. 

Ubik is, indeed, understandable as an allegory to the Eucharist; the bread and wine of the Mass as it is supposed ideally to function; yet which is but a "momentary stay against confusion" (to use Robert Frost's description of poetry). 

Even if it was available in unlimited supply and on-demand (and, in PKD's story as in our world, Ubik is actually difficult and dangerous to locate, and has a short 'shelf life'); Ubik does not provide a permanent answer, as does Not the Eucharist.

But Ubik provides a chance to break free from the constancy of destruction by the entropy of the world -- a chance, perhaps, to clear our thoughts and make further enquiries; to seek and discover the availability of a permanent - an eternal - solution to entropy

To discover how to reach a world without entropy, without evil.

Everybody judges people by inferred motivations (and in light of their own)

I try to judge people by their motivations. But - of course! - we must infer motivations; and this inference is influenced by our own motivation. 

So if we are motivated to find fault: fault will be found; and vice versa if we are attracted to someone for any reason, we this may distort our inferences concerning her or his motivations. 

Thus inference is not what people call "an exact science" - but then again, what is? (Certainly Not science...). 

Nonetheless, everything depends upon our inferences, and inferences cannot be avoided - so, we ought to take them seriously; and part of that is to acknowledge fully and explicitly, that our most basic and necessary assumptions concerning life, people, ourselves - are dependent on inferences.  

And of these inferences some of the most important concern motivation. We cannot really evaluate validity or goodness without making inferences about motivation. 

This is because motivation is the key to understanding - the motivations we attribute, will shape our understanding - to such a degree that the meaning of any given act may be opposite if one motivation is assumed, than if another is assumed.

The insight is relevant to life, obviously; for example we need to make inferences concerning our family and friends, the people we love, the people with whom we work... 

And inferences the people we 'encounter' through the mass media and via official channels. To understand the views of someone (or some institution) cited in the mass media; we make inferences about the motivations of that person cited; and we ought also to make inferences about the medium itself - the journalist who 'researched' and wrote the story, the editors who passed it, the PR and advertisers who decided to give it prominence...

In reading this post and this blog, you need to make - and have already made - inferences concerning my motivations in writing it. 

Inferring is vital and unavoidable and we necessarily make our most important life-decisions on the basis of inferences;  yet inference is inexact and errors are possible; and there is no conceivable way in which errors can always be avoided. 

So far as I can tell; there is only one way of improving our inferences; which is to be aware of as many of them as possible; and alert to significant counter-evidence that we maybe got them wrong.

Then, if we are convinced by the counter-evidence (and the inferred motivations of those who provided it!), we need to be prepared to revise our previous inferences of motivation. 

Note: Examples might clarify. 

I am willing to put up with a lot of contrary ideas from someone who I regard as well motivated: Philip K Dick is an example. I suppose I disagree with him pretty fundamentally on many of the most important matters on which he expresses an opinion - such as the fundamental nature of Christianity. Nonetheless; I am sure he was well motivated, so I enjoy reading and re-reading his work. 

Opposite examples are when someone who I believe to be wrongly-motivated is ignored by me; despite expressing views with which I strongly agree. Example would be: anyone strongly-featured approvingly or given high-level exposure of any kind in the mass media; or anyone in a leadership position of any large/ prestigious/ wealthy/ influential Western institution. 

What happened when the pagan Roman-Britons converted to Christianity?

A favourite theme of the late, great Geoffrey Ashe was that the transition between paganism and Christianity went smoothly and peacefully in Britain. 

Unlike on the European continent; the British pagans (whether Druidic or Roman in their religion) did not seem to persecute the new Christian religion; and later-on the Christians did not persecute the pagans when they got the upper hand. 

What seems to have happened is that the Christians took-over the sacred pagan sites, and 'repurposed' or rebuilt them as churches; while the pagan Gods were replaced with Jesus, Mary, and the Saints on the basis of analogous religious functions.

(Most famously; the pagan British goddess Brigid, was replaced by the Irish Saint Brigid.) 

As well as its socio-political significance; this is theologically interesting; because it suggests that there is no fundamental conflict between paganism and Christianity; that - somehow or another - people could move from pagan to Christian without major spiritual or societal upheaval. 

I think this gives us a clue to the essence of Christianity; or, more exactly, what distinguishes it from paganism. 

What the smooth-transition tells us on the one side, is that (despite what so many people have said, and what is still asserted) there was not much to distinguish paganism and Christianity in terms of morality and lifestyle. 

The everyday and societal practice of paganism and Christianity don't seem to have been very different. 

What is very different between paganism and Christianity, is what happens after death! 

It seems to me that the Big Message of Christian missionaries; the "unique selling point' that Christians had to offer over and above anything the pagans said; was the prospect of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Whereas the pagan religions could point at either some kind of afterlife life as depersonalized spirits - in an underworld or maybe as ghosts lurking in this world; or else some kind of reincarnation into the same kind of life all-over-again but as a different person...

Christians came along with their account of Jesus Christ who died and rose again and ascended to Heaven; and who offered the same possibility to those who would follow him. 

And this prospect apparently appealed greatly as a possibility superior to anything in paganism. 

I think it would have been obvious to ancient Britons, as it was later to the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen; that what Christians offered was superior if it was true. 

But how could people know it was true - above and beyond trusting the historical stories of the missionaries?

One form of validation was miracles: when the missionaries were Saints who could perform miracles, then this validated their claims, because it proved they had a link to the divine.

But a second, and probably more widespread, form of experiential proof was by participation in the Mass, the Eucharist, Holy Communion.  

Following-up an insight from Philip K Dick; I think we can imagine that Men, at that earlier stage in the development of consciousness, would spontaneously, passively, overwhelmingly experience participation in the Mass as a literal re-living of Jesus's death and resurrection. 

In the Mass; Jesus died and came to life, and was actually-present here-and-now to those participating. 

This (or something spiritually analogous) would surely have been a compelling validation of the actuality of what Jesus offered. 

In sum; I think the conversion from Paganism to Christianity as it was actually experienced by people in the early centuries AD (people, it should be noted, whose consciousness was significantly different from you and me) was essentially very simple, which was why it could be very quick - and why mass-conversions, and even mandatory conversion, made sense at the time. 

It was an expression of the desire for resurrection after death, as preferable-to/ better-than anything paganism could offer. 

And the method of achieving this desired goal, was to be admitted to the community who ritually re-enacted Jesus's death and resurrection, such that he became actually present to the believer.

 

Note added: This post comes after a whole bunch of earlier posts in which - as a result of reading the Fourth Gospel as the primary and most authoritative source about Jesus's teaching - I became increasingly convinced that the core message of Christianity (i.e. the offer of resurrected eternal life in Heaven) had become de-emphasized and somewhat buried throughout the history of the Christian churches. In my opinion; the advent of Mormonism from 1830 was, to a significant extent, made possible by Joseph Smith's "re-discovery" of resurrection as the core promise of Christianity. Mormonism also brought a completely new and fundamentally different set of fundamental metaphysical theological assumptions concerning reality as pluralistic, developmental etc. But I believe that the main appeal of the new type of Christianity in its early decades was its clarity-about, and focus-upon, post-mortal life - treated very 'realistically' and as something that could (with certain conditions) confidently be anticipated - and with potential for continuation of loving mortal relationships.  

Positive spiritual reasons for resisting the Empire-that-never-ended, for striving to escape the Black Iron Prison

Further considering the possibilities of life as a "secret Christian" - broadly along the lines of Philip K Dick's insight-fantasy - I am struck by the need for this to be more than merely a form of resistance to the oppressive power of the Empire-that-never-ended. To resist for long and without the support of others (which, nowadays, cannot be relied-upon); we need to be resisting for a reason; and that reason should be clear, positive and personal. 

Such double-negative day-dreams have been all-too dominant for the past couple of centuries; and have failed to provide either sufficient motivation to remain true to the Good, or to provide sufficient clarity and coherence of direction to overcome the temptations of an increasingly evil and System-dominated world. 

From my experiences and observations; the only thing that can positively motivate genuine resistance strongly and over a long timespan; is having some-thing/s innerly-motivated that one spiritually-needs to get done in life - but when this thing is opposed by the Empire. 

And this some-thing (or things) needs to be discovered in oneself, made explicit, and freely-given inward endorsement. 

Having something from within-oneself, and that thing regarded as Good, and contributing to divine creation... All this is a very powerful core motivator, and a motivation that may prevent inward acquiescence to the unrelenting and escalating System demands for ultimate obedience and thought-control. 

Of course; such a specific factor can only make a general difference when our understanding is generalized; as when one's own inward motivation is recognized as a part of that something much larger which is divine creation; when this apparently-distinct factor is understood as in truth a manifestation (real, however tiny) of love of God and fellow Men. 

In personal terms; this might mean that the basis of resistance could be the seed of recognizing that The System wants to crush exactly that within you that is most important and Good; that The System insatiably desires to enlist you personally to a very different, external - and evil - agenda. 

And that this external-evil agenda is in practice imposed-upon us, by the method of getting us to welcome it voluntarily; which is usually achieved by tapping-into that internal agenda of potential-for-evil which we all carry within us. 

The external-evil agenda is put-forward to our evaluation, as the best (or only possible) means to some internal goal - a goal that is usually evil, but may in fact be overall-Good... 

When, for instance (and this happened to me many times, and I saw it many times) service to the system Now, is depicted as the best way to achieve one's own best and inner objectives at some point in 'the future'... 

Thus have I (and many scientists, academics and doctors of my acquaintance) often been seduced by expedient evil options; actually inviting evil into our hearts; while telling ourselves that - by serving The System in the short-term, and thereby doing mediocre or even harmful work; we will (at some point in the longer term, not too far off) become better placed to escape The System demands...

If only (They say) you will consent to assist in building and staffing the Black Iron Prison for a little while; then soon you can become strong enough to escape, and set-up your own free community somewhere outside its reach!

And Then (at last!) we can really do that best work of which we are capable; and which we have carried in our hearts through the compromised-times of abetting-evil... 

Yet all too often, and indeed nearly always, the short-term service to the evil System is what actually happens in reality; and the long-term state of freedom to do what is right and best... never arrives - or, at least, is never actually implemented. 

The reasons are obvious enough; but the root is often that the person did not have some-thing that he really wanted to do: that his motivation was too weak to resist the manifold and unrelenting temptations to serve. 

I have come to believe that - in these modern conditions of human consciousness (because this was Not always the case in the past) - this is because: 1. our inner motivations and goals must be discovered by ourselves; 2. the motivations and goals must become clear and explicit to us; and 3. we need to take personal spiritual responsibility for pursuing those goals towards which our motivations are pointing. 

As I have already said; this is only a beginning in transforming negative-resistance into a positive life - but it is a beginning: potentially, if we choose to make it so. 

(And then the fantasy may become a reality - because each of us will then have become one of the "secret Christians" - always present, always active, never overcome!)

 

Transtemporal Secret Christians versus "the Empire that never ended" (aka. the Black Iron Prison) - the Exegesis of Philip K Dick

Edited slightly (cuts, punctuation, expanding abbreviations) from from Exegesis by Philip K Dick

[18:84] I state: the passage of time since “Acts of the Apostles” is spurious. That is it. That is the premise derived from empirical experience. Whatever our senses tell us means nothing. Circular time, not linear time, is involved. 

When St. Sophia (Christ) returns it will be in apostolic times, as promised. The 1,900 intervening years are a spurious interpolation by the Black Iron Prison (BIP)... 

[18:86] What a realization! Transtemporal-constant secret Christians, originating in apostolic times, and lying within humans in succeeding generations — reactivated by external disinhibiting stimuli (but before this or without this can covertly direct the persons they inhabit, like the way Thomas secretly masterminded my writing). Hot dog! 

But this is exactly what I’m not supposed to talk about! These underlying, co-habitating, secretly still living apostolic Christians want to stay secret! 

What I must concentrate on is not the irreality of our world or worlds plural, but the absolute transtemporal-constant: the apostolic secret Christians still alive and at work. 

This fits-in with my flash of insight [in February 1974] upon seeing the golden fish sign: I saw the secret early Christians hurrying about their business. 

Then the answer is: Thomas is an immortal apostolic Christian, and Rome c. A.D. 45 is the real present world, and Thomas co-inhabits my head, locked into the real world. 

“Acts” is not a past world — v. Tears, it is the noumenal matrix of this world. We are not dealing with either the past or a past life and personality, but the urwelt lying under the Dokos. Thomas and his world is here and now, and he knows it. [. . .] 

So I am, so to speak, a front — a face — for an immortal, transtemporal secret early Christian who is operating — undoubtedly in conjunction with others like him — in contemporary history. 

This is behind-the-scenes stuff, thrilling and scary. I certainly see Thomas’ hand or mind in my writing. Yes indeed, he is with me, not is me — in my head. But “living in another century.”

**

In this exciting sequence of insights; Philip K Dick is looking-back, after several years, to his religious experiences of February and March 1974  ("2-3-74"). He has long since concluded that these experiences led him to realize that the Roman Empire, conceptualized as a Black Iron Prison of bureaucratic totalitarianism, never ended; but persisted through transformations and translocations to the USA - for PKD the Nixon administration in particular, and the civilized world more generally. 

In some way (he tried-out many theories) PKD believed that he had some kind of direct and experiential relationship with the time around AD 45, and the places of Acts of the Apostles; perhaps (in some way) via an alter ego-type person called Thomas who might be one of the named Apostles - or someone else. 

At that time and place (according to PKD's visions); the early Christians constituted a small, secretive and indomitable sect. These kept alive faith in Jesus Christ in their hearts, and (in some rather vague way) also operated cooperatively as a covert resistance against the Empire. 

(PKD's visions had been triggered, or his latent understanding disinhibited, by seeing a golden ICHTHYS fish-pendant catching the sunlight; and being told by the girl who was wearing it, that this was a symbol of the early Christians; a sign by which, PKD inferred, they recognized each other.) 

PKD regarded this basic situation as a continuing one: secret Christians versus the Empire (a hostile Empire who acted constantly to assimilate and neutralize, or else annihilate, the Christians). 

For Dick; the secret early Christians were, and are, the real Christians; the other kind being sometimes more-, sometimes less-, corrupted and assimilated to the Empire agenda of the Black Iron Prison. 

As Dick comments; this way of understanding is indeed both "thrilling and scary"! But, maybe, in some kind of overall and exact but approximate way; PKD was here expressing an essential truth for Christians; which is broadly as he states it. 

Real Christians always have been ("transtemporally") in something-like this situation - few, secret, seldom meeting, sustained by direct experience and knowledge; always opposed by The System, and most of the self-identified official Christians. 

Recognizing each other only by signs that flash-out briefly and intermittently; and reveal something they have always known. 

      

Note added: Of course; regular readers will have guessed that I am here thinking that PKD's vision, or fantasy, of the secret Christians; in its essence, matches the conceptual basis (if not so much the metaphysics or theology) of Romantic Christianity.  

Creativity in Christianity, and the problem of suffering

Creativity means bringing original (i.e. originating is us) thinking from one's own self to problems -- not, therefore, merely mix-and-matching among what (we suppose) others to have said on the problem. 

And the big problem for Christians, in the past couple of centuries, has been the problem of suffering. 

It is a real eye-opener to realize just how Big a problem suffering has been. I've been re-reading Robert Frost's poems and biographies lately, and he was yet-another Christian of recent engagement (Philip K Dick was another) who expended decades of serious effort (trying-out this and that scheme or suggestion) in trying to understand the problem of suffering in this mortal life on earth; and without ever attaining a satisfactory or satisfying solution. Or even one an answer that was clear and comprehensible, and avoided confusion and contradiction. 

This strikes me as a pretty damning failure - at least for Christianity as it has been conceptualized whether traditionally, or in more 'modern' way -- and it applies too, to 'Old Testament'-dominated Christians (like Frost) - who end-up with a God who barely resembles that described and exemplified by Jesus Christ; but instead an incomprehensible tyrant who (in practice) inverts the truth that God is Love, to the opposite of "Love is God" (that is, the un-Christian assertion that whatever 'God' does is Love by definition - and without regard to Man's understanding and experiences of Love). 

When intelligent and creative people grapple for many years with a problem they fail to solve and yet - by its nature - is one that needs to be solved by every Christian*; this, for me, is prima facie evidence that they are clinging to at least one false fundamental-assumption that is blocking what would otherwise be a straightforward solution.  

(*I'd have thought it was obvious that every Christian needs to be able to understand why a wholly-Good God who is the creator; permits suffering, including (apparent) extreme suffering and early deaths innocents such as young children, in this world. This is not trivial, and it needs a solution that is clear and satisfying - or else, loss of faith in such a God is logical, perhaps entailed.) 

My answer is that these creative and intelligent people have applied their intelligence but not their creativity to the problem! 

In other words, they have accepted the problem as defined by their predecessors, instead of evaluating the formulation of the problem. 

A wrongly-formulated problem is insoluble, no matter what intelligence and resources are applied to it; while a well-formulated problem is always soluble when that solution is necessary to salvation (because that's the way that a Good creator God will naturally set-up his universe).

I have been through this trajectory myself. When I became a Christian I was determined that the truth was already known (revealed) and stated, by some or other church - or at least some individual within a church; and my job was to find it, understand it, believe it, and obey it. 

I therefore made a pretty determined effort to switch-off my creativity when it came to Christianity: my effort was to discern for sure, maybe to select (albeit as little as possible); but not to change anything, and certainly not to add anything! 

It was only after I found that crucial problems were not soluble, never had been solved satisfactorily and clearly, and that no amount of selection and recombination - at least, not when ruled by established principles) would work; that I was compelled to get creative about Christianity. 

(Either that or knowingly to accept swirlingly-abstract fudges, or known pseudo-answers). 

As I have often described, I discovered a couple or more false assumptions that trapped Christianity, and prevented a solution to the problem of suffering. 

One of the first and worst was the very common assumption that God was omnipotent and omniscient so that creation was entirely a product of God's positive will; and another assumption was that Jesus Christ's teaching and efforts were directed at "making a better world" - at improving this mortal life - perhaps even perfecting this mortal life at some point. 

Once I realized that God instead was (no matter how vastly powerful in creation) engaged in a creative war of Good against evil in reality; and that Jesus's primary achievement was to make-possible eternal resurrected life; did I realize that the problem of  suffering was a wrongly-formulated question.

Jesus did not promise a better mortal world - nor a world of less suffering: certainly not a mortal world of perfection! 

Nor did he wish to set up a church as an essential intermediary between individual Men and the divine; and make his followers obey a church primarily - instead, he sent the Holy Ghost for our essential and always-wise guidance. 

Jesus did not promise even an improvement of this mortal life. Instead; Jesus's promises of happiness were directed at post-mortal life, and not at flaw-less-perfection, but at our becoming Sons and Daughters of God - divine creative-Beings like Jesus himself. 

God did not create suffering, which has always-been wherever there was free-agency (until Jesus enabled Heaven). God's creation is directed against primordial suffering and conflict between Beings; but God did not promise to remove suffering, which is impossible in this mortal world. Suffering is only overcome (via Jesus's teaching and work) in the post-mortal, resurrected life-everlasting, world of Heaven. 

Suffering in this mortal world is therefore inevitable, because of the nature of this world and the Beings who inhabit it; and therefore God uses this world to prepare us for the resurrected world of Heaven which those who desire it may choose - and where there is positive love, joy, creativity, energy, satisfaction (instead of the mere negation of suffering). 

Thus we arrive at some simple and comprehensible understandings of these vital matters - but only by applying our creativity, as well as our intelligence. 

What Gnosticism is Not...

This is a slightly-edited version of a comment at the Orthosphere, written in response to a post by Kristor. This, in turn, was based on my comment to a recent post by Francis Berger.

@ Kristor - Am I correct in assuming that you - and those you implicitly address in this post - are deriving your understanding of (what you term) "Gnosticism" from the US political philosopher Eric Voegelin? 

(Whether influenced directly - or via those who were, in turn, strongly-influenced by V. - such as Lawrence Auster.)

That, in other words, Voegelin's conceptualization came first, and set the template within-which your understanding of historical Gnosticism has developed?

If so; this may account for this "Gnosticism"'s bizarre irrelevance to actual historical Gnosticism! 

What you call Gnosticism here (and other Orthosphere authors, in other posts) is so different from what I derived from reading about the ancient Gnostics, that I find it impossible to get from one to the other.

Clearly there must be an unmentioned third factor at work, behind the scenes - which I guess to be Voegelin.

If your concept of Gnosticism derived from Voegelin, it is important to clarify that Voegelin was not a Christian, was not engaged in any kind of Christian discourse or project; and he was indeed one of those who (mistakenly!) regarded leftism as a Christian 'heresy'.

Most importantly; Voegelin cannot have known much about real-life historical Gnosticism, because the relevant Gnostic texts (Nag Hammadi library especially) had not been translated when he was writing.

So - Why should Voegelin's ideas of Gnosticism have any validity At All?

Some modern *individuals* have become fascinated by historical Gnosticism - especially through the 1960s as the texts were first made available in translation (e.g. Philip K Dick via his friend Bishop James Pike, who was involved in the translations) - but the most basic Gnostic idea that earth was created by 'the devil' and that all matter is evil - is not a part of any modern Christian *church* that I've ever come across.

The nearest equivalent would be the "perennial philosophers" (usually operating within New Age discourse nowadays) who have adopted the basic assumptions and methods of "Eastern Religions" and absorb into this bits of Christianity in an eclectic fashion.

These have retained the ultimate ideal of escaping the material altogether, and ascending into a realm of pure spirit (ie. rejecting bodily resurrection). And such people are often very interested by the actual Gnostic writings - especially the Gospel of Thomas (very Neo-Platonic), and of that of Mary Magdalene (for feminist reasons). But not many such people claim to be "Christians".

In sum... Surely it is Not legitimate to equate Voegelin's modern socio-political terminology with an actual ancient religion/s - especially an ancient religion that seems to have left no institutional descendent?

I find this kind of "Gnostic" discourse so vague and slippery that it seems like no more than shadow-boxing - generative of neither heat nor light - with a bit of passive-aggressive name-calling thrown in!

**

Note: I personally find near-zero appeal in the actual ancient Gnostics - who I regard (in a nutshell) as the result of maintaining the metaphysics and social structures of pagan, Neo-Platonic secret cults; and absorbing into these groups some of the Christian terminology and history.

I therefore find the Gnostics to be (merely) a more extreme version (more pagan/ Platonic, less Christian) of the same process that led to the mainstream orthodox Christian church (which I regard as a product of exactly the same errors and processes).

The actual historical Gnostic metaphysical assumptions are mostly in direct opposition to (and incompatible with) my own most important assumptions concerning reality.

I would also add that modern individualism/alienation of thinking was Not an aspect of Gnosticism - was indeed all-but impossible to Men of that era. The Gnostics were, it seems, a variety of groups - individual judgment was immersed in a secret and disciplined cult with graded initiations (and no doubt punishments for transgression).

A secret initiatory group-cult is pretty-much the opposite of that explicitly individual discernment and taking of personal responsibility for one's Christianity, which is meant by "Romantic" Christianity.