Tag: philip k dick

The Beginning Is Near

It was told that there was a certain small thing, a yellow dot, floating just inside the fringes of perception. It was said that to look at it, to see it, if even it were a barely conscious perception, one would be given the keys to the Kingdom of God by that glance. More powerful than the hammer of Thor, and more precious, it would need to elude the wrong pair of eyes. For if known to the right evil entity, it would mean an eternity of horror, on a scale beyond imagining, for all humankind; for all the world; for all worlds yet to be. Was it true that the Lord Jesus Christ, in his voyage between his death and his resurrection, left it in his wake, to let it drift in the ether? Were there actually people on the lookout for this phenomenon, scattered through the real world—or was that secret sect only a product of fevered minds, with eyes halfway in the halospace?

Symbols can do things in the name of the thing they represent. As in, a signature can be the extension of the power of someone, in lieu of their actual physical presence, to give orders (for instance). Of course, if the party on the other side has no idea who that person is, that signature may not have as much power as one might hope, depending on circumstances. What if a signature existed in the most minimal of forms, that of a solitary dot, which had a certain color to distinguish it from other like dots? If most people saw it, it would be as if they knew not at all who signed it or that even it were a signature at all. But if they knew what it was, if they found out, they could use the authority to terrible ends—if the authority were such like an angel of the Lord might have. Perhaps even worse? They say in the Bible an angel killed 180,000 soldiers in one night…

There is more to the myth: for one, an extension to the yellow dot. If indeed it met the right eyes, word would be spread in codified format, something that was whispered to mine own self, near the beginning of my involvement in all this. Among the secret Christians, it would be plain, the same secret Christians Philip K. Dick believed contacted him at the start of his own adventure. I believe all the mysteries of the universe can be summed up in that saying, that word to be spread, if you know exactly what it means: “Walt Disney is God.” And no, it was not meant to be taken literally, but if the yellow dot were perceived, it was salvation for us all—to enter into a new age, where everything was light. That was the pivot of that sentence, “light”. As Disney stuff, “light” was in the sense of not ponderous, entertaining; and then “light” on the flipside of the coin meant like “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness”. And as I said, it was whispered to me those years back: Walt Disney is God. We were saved.

It was of course Philip K. Dick who had perceived the dot. He wasn’t even consciously aware that he had seen it. It was hidden away, tucked into his translation of saying #77 of the Gospel of Thomas: “Split a piece of wood and I am there.” (Jesus Christ was saying this.) There was a little danger that Hitler would see this dot, for that phrase was discovered before the translation that Phil read, back around the turn of the 20th century—but it was by Englishmen, who apparently never translated it into German. It was only fragments of Thomas that had been found then. At the time I had joined, there appeared to be at least some segments who had not known that it had been found; it was still going around that Walt Disney was God. And then, there seemed to be a rumor about other dots, most notoriously, a black dot: the consequences of its discovery was supposedly terrifying to conceive.

Turned out, though, it was not so bad as all that. There were three other dots, four in total, and we discovered the meaning to them all:

  1. yellow: the Knowledge, this being the key to everything
  2. white: the Power, which actually without Knowledge, was not as great as you’d think
  3. purple: the Certainty, which guaranteed victory
  4. black: the Mystery, not so scary after all, but which in some sense contained the inklings of the other 3

They represented the four pillars of creation. And yes, they’ve all been found. By the good guys.

It is so then that I bring you (some more) Good News! Satan has been defeated, on Earth and in Heaven, on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the good arm of the Archangel Michael, and the Age of Gold enters the stream of time. Hearken: the Beginning is near! And you are given this news because it has been accomplished: the breaking of the ground for the New Heaven, and the New Earth, which has taken as much time as Our Lord was in the earth between his death and resurrection: two days. In God time. In human time, 2000 years. In forty days more, thus it shall be that the course of the world will be completed, and then, the Lord shall return, in the manner that he left: via the sky. What did it matter, the dot that was perceived? The Knowledge was a memory: not just of the past, but of the future. And without this memory, nothing was real. Everything was baseless. Without memory, lies have all the power. But fear not. Join, instead, with all that is good and true. There is a light. Try and walk in it.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

The Elements

When Easter is over we tend to forget about such things as the Resurrection, or our place in the grand scheme of things, at least until right about Christmas time when our fashion turns to “church chic” again. One reason might simply be that we don’t really understand what is expected of us to do, what it means to do good, what it means to be a child of God. Or even come close to thinking we could serve in the War in Heaven, which has finished, which is finishing, and which will finish. Let’s maybe break it down, because there are lots of theories that can account for basically everything, if in broad strokes. Let’s see if there’s something we can aim for, perhaps not that lofty, something we can live with, if not live by.

We can say there are things one might call wyrds, like words but with a sort of greater meaning to them. “Wyrd” to capture the two words, word and weird, where “weird” is used in its old sense, that of fate. They are of what we call the Logos, which can be said to be the Wyrd of God. All the angels had been given charge of a wyrd, which governed the function of some part of heaven and earth, which is to say that the universe is made of wyrds. They are the way things work. Satan, before he rebelled, was responsible for a wyrd, as were all who rebelled with him. And when they rebelled, each of them tried to destroy their personal wyrds, by attempting to pervert things to the point where they could be rendered meaningless. None of them, thankfully, succeeded. And their wyrds were taken away.

So, if you say that by wyrds being played, it is the universe at work, then it’s all a grand story that is being told. And the formal and otherwise logic of this wyrld (what I call the encompassing of both the seen and unseen worlds) is defined simply as the way things work, the way things function. There are wyrds that govern other wyrds, so that, for instance, “rose” might mean a different thing told in Heaven than told on Earth. One important wyrd, what you might capitalize, is from the beginning: this is the Wyrd of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is as well as being King of us here, is King of all the angels. His Wyrd is the sacred name, “YHVH”. What Philip K. Dick defined as “he who causes to be”. The three parts of the Trinity, in fact, each have their own wyrd.

The Wyrd of the Holy Spirit is not capitalized, for it is “love”. This is the Spirit of God. This is what it means, that God is love. That of God the Father, the En Sof, is “I Am”. Note, here, that we are still talking about one God, and not three. The angels are the embodiments of the one wyrd they were meant to be about, but God is all “I Am” and all “YHVH” and all love. (God is all love: never forget this, for by it is perhaps the best opportunity to comprehend the divine while still on this Earth.) And you may blaspheme against the Father and the Son and be forgiven, but one who blasphemes against the Spirit shall not be forgiven, in this world or the next. That would be saying “no” to love that is true, for as we are made in the image of love, we are denying that part of us that the Spirit asks, and that part of us dies. This is sin.

As the cosmos, all creation, can be said to be made of wyrds, the stories being told are the structures that hold them in place as experiences: the universe exists as all the stories being told that came to be because God and then you made the choices you did. Things that happen, if they carry a logical skein from a beginning to an end—of course these are stories, but the physical, the real things that exist are no more than information themselves. [Philip K. Dick] And when we say, unequivocally, the best story wins (this is a truth), it is not just to say some representation of material things tied together with added meaning wins, not something that needs to be written down: we are talking about that the things themselves having a meaning, and no translation is needed between the symbols and their reality. That all things are wyrd and story are a way of seeing how the universe actually works.

Now, one need not work in terms of good and evil to know which plot to follow; I once thought to put it as anima vs. entropy: life vs. decay. Good and evil, these are well known terms, though. Or are they? The side of good, of life and love, is not always to be a part of the well established virtues; nor is it always to be a rebel against the monolithic structures that oppress us. It is both much more complicated that that, and ultimately simpler. There is a narrow way that preserves logic and is also in accordance with the heart. Our stories are different from theirs, good vs. evil, for theirs lack both logic and heart—seeking only power at any cost. I admit that evil mystifies me at times, but if there is any understanding of it, it is in the seeking of power. And anyone and anything is to be used and spent in trying to get it.

So it is that theirs is an awful story, to say if you count them all as seeking the same thing as everyone on their side, it is actually umpteen billion different things. Completely the opposite of good, where all the differences coalesce into the greater fortune. Ours is like the music of the Ainur in the “Ainulindalë”, all different tunes in concert to bring about the will of the Creator. Just that instead of music, that we use the wyrds to tell a story. And the outcome is already destined, simply: the best story wins. It is intrinsic to the nature of creation. What is best? That which outperforms the rest, of course. Which is not to say that it’s all a cakewalk, for evil, when it does gain power, will harshly undermine what is of light and truth: the light and the truth, by which we write our own stories.

The narrow way, of satisfying competing goals: this is what is often the path of the right thing to do. One understands that many of what needs to be accomplished is far easier said than done. And in the simplest of terms, what is the way that one must go? Do do all things out of love. All things. When you have eyes to see, these things are clear as winter air, the way we must choose to go if we truly call ourselves the children of God. Pray for courage and wisdom on your way through this life, and may you not have one without the other. The wyrld is what Walt Whitman called the Powerful Play, in which all of us may contribute a verse. I say it is we who each write a wyrd in the Greatest Story Ever Told—do you understand? Jesus Christ may be its beginning and its end, but the middle? That’s all of us!



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

Walt Disney Is God

This will be the last excerpt from my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven. It is a mystery of which I speak, when I speak that seemingly simple sooth:

I like to say that all the secrets of the universe can be distilled in that one phrase: “Walt Disney Is God.” What broke me free of the Black Iron Prison for good, and everyone out there that I could see with my third eye: all loosed from their cells. The story of that declaration came after the Event had happened. What was told me makes some sense, but I believe you can take it as merely something made so I could understand it, that it may have a structure that is beyond my powers of perception—if one were asked to visualize 4 spatial dimensions, for instance.

The phrase has been with me all throughout this story. I believed it literally for the first few years from when my mind had exploded. At least, on and off; a few theories were flying around those days. Yes, that the actual Walt Disney was the actual God. He would come and go in the visions. Then I turned Christian, so the phrase became blasphemy. Maybe that sounds a little severe, but I think that’s correct, the correct use of the term. So every time I heard it from then on, me now as a convert to the Good News, I would always reply to hearing the phrase, in no uncertain terms, “Walt Disney is not God.” Wow, lighten up, right?

Where the phrase comes from is related to the experience that Philip K. wrote about, the beginning of 2-3-74. When a girl came to his place delivering medication, he asked about a fish symbol on her necklace. And she told him that it was an ancient symbol of Christianity. He had right then what he called a moment of anamnesis, a sudden remembering, a vast influx of information. He suddenly knew he was a secret Christian, and so was she. They were all awaiting the return of Our Lord Jesus Christ. What’s interesting is his believing she was in on this, too, when I’m pretty sure she’d have reacted to that characterization like that girl on 10/7/88 whom I told to call my mother and tell her I was off drugs.

These types of visions were useful. It gave what was happening in our minds a sense of urgency, of the here and now, the secret story behind reality. Even if, when you get right down to it, it was incorrect. Phil’s Exegesis is full of these, theory after theory that sort of seemed to make sense, but were really out there—then what did Phil really come to believe, where did this rubber hit the road? When he had any type of religious question, he didn’t go to a Buddhist temple or anything like that. He asked a priest or pastor. But the visions that he had—it was a way to get him to explore strange places, real and of the psyche. To seek, to map what was possible. This is the kind of job description for a prophet.

According to what I found out, just after the Event, and therefore at a safe place, there were 4 dots floating around the noosphere, that could be discovered upon seeing the correct thing. They were like the mustard seed the Lord talked about, one of them practically literally. It was the most important dot: the yellow dot. And if it were discovered by the wrong person, it would mean the subjugation of all humanity in a totalitarian horror forever. All the “secret Christians” like Philip K. (and me, eventually) hoped desperately to find that yellow dot. And when it were found, we would spread the coded declaration, “Walt Disney is God” and we would all know. It meant, all is now light. That this would be understood correctly and be true, without literally being true was indication of the start of the Age of Gold. The Palm Tree Garden. The Oasis.



Frankenmyth

This is the third excerpt from my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven. Probably my craziest idea, and that’s saying something:

Perhaps this is a book of beginnings? They are well worth the ink that marks them. Shall we pursue this path now? Beginnings are sorts of mysterious things, and only one of them had nothing ending before it, that anyone could understand. Or was there was something, even there? We could go back to where we started this whole thing and try and stitch a couple myths together—a Frankenmyth. It is said that Lucifer begot Sin, correct? How, exactly? Milton wrote that she came directly from his forehead, like Athena from Zeus’s head. But why would that have happened? You know, I have my own idea about that: simply put, he said “No” to the Holy Spirit.

To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is what Christ said was the unforgivable sin, and the Lord himself told me that that is done by saying “no” to Him. For to say no to love’s will means that that part of you is no more. Love asks of you only good things, that of life. If that part of you is gone, there may still be motion to it, but it is basically flamed out. He was the first to have ever done this, Lucifer was, and it was complete, an utter denial of all that love was, in him. Thus came to be from that first and greatest of evil, the Evil that he made of himself: he did what we call Sin. And as Sin was forming, when the Holy Spirit was to give light, to give life to her—for Lucifer’s action had such consequence in Heaven—she was killed, out of mercy.

To have given the light of life to the darkness that had gained form from Lucifer’s action would have been to create a creature who would only have known (excruciating) pain. So she was slain before she could be born. Which meant she was denied life—but she could not exactly die because there was no death that was in primordial existence before her. Thus she still does move as if life were in her, and gives birth to monsters. This was the one whom Philip K. wrote about, the one whom we all lament—because she never got a chance.

Now, there was another myth regarding Lucifer, one where he had had first go in creation, and that the dinosaurs were his failed try in his own action of creation. But what if we modify that, and go back to before “Let there be light,” and look at Tiamat/Rahab, if you recall these? What if Sin, who was slain, were the one whose body it was that was the watery chaos, back when in Genesis the Earth was said to be formless and void? Because it was if he buried that body in the soil from which all our world sprang. And this was Lucifer “salting the earth,” as it were: to make the creating of anything in such a matrix impossible, thinking not with the understanding that with God, nothing is impossible. The Lord brought light and life into the cosmos anyway, but what Lucifer did had profound effect on how anything happened, how everything worked.

That’s my own, original myth, what I’ve been able to piece together in my experiences—with the visions going to and fro, leaving meaning behind. You know, it’s strange what people leave lying around sometimes, with a slip of the wrist. Stranger still, one might believe, would be what God leaves lying around—with a wink and a smile.



Crazy

Did they ever call you crazy? Were they right?

This is the second excerpt from my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven. It was just when I was being kicked out of my apartment for not paying rent. When the landlord showed up with two cops, I acted strangely, half on purpose, so they sent me to a looney bin:

They say that you will know the difference between psychosis and a religious experience by what the effects are. If they mess up your life, it’s the bad thing. If it heals you, then there’s a better chance that it is God. Philip K. Dick and I—what to make of us? They seem in the middle, these experiences of ours, both damaging and healing, or maybe neither. Phil could carry on a normal life, but he was obsessed—till the day he died—because of the events of 2-3-74. He wrote 8,000 pages about it. He wrote 4 novels about it. Was it God? Who can say? It didn’t stop a suicide attempt, that’s for sure. Though maybe they did stop him from dying from that attempt.

And me? The experiences, I must admit, have been intrusive at times. But they always end up helping me. I remember one Christmas card I got, from my brother, in which he wrote, “If you say that God is acting in your life, I believe you. Because you have turned your life completely around.” But I get a bit far ahead of myself; that would come later. Right now I was still headlong down addiction’s highway, and going into my first mental institution not because of what was going on in my head, but because I gave up. And as we descend, one must ask if one day we will face the heart of darkness? (You must go alone, at night…)

So the mythology going on in my head was, at the time—and it was a fluid thing—was that actually, the rebel angels had actually been the good guys, and the powers that be were the oppressors. I wasn’t thinking that those powers were Jesus-based figures. I was working on my own Gnostic-type ideas. For instance, there was written in one Gnostic text that one of the Archons (one of the evil rulers of this material world) rebelled against Ialdabaoth, who was the god of this world, which was a fallen world. So I thought I was of that rebel’s ilk in the rebellion, but not exactly. Don’t ask me how it all worked out, I didn’t have too much work go into its structure. Just a lot of nerve.

I called myself Lucifer Morningstar, the name I got not from the Bible, but the comic book Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. He added the “Morningstar”, that is, since yes, the first half of the name does come from scripture. There was actually a competition I was in for this name, with Jim Morrison, who just kept it as “Lucifer”. (He won that, by the way. Turns out it was not the type of thing you wanted to win.) If I was against God, it was because He was in the wrong, somehow: I had no intention of being evil. Though I really didn’t think much on what made us fall, just how noble we were being rebels. Oh, and “we”? I thought my friends and such were the other “devils”, like Asmodeus and Beelzebub. Like I said, it wasn’t fleshed out to any significant depth. Good thing, too.

So at the initial hearing, the judge asked me, “What is your name?” to which I answered, “Lucifer Morningstar”, and when he asked, “Where were you born?” I answered, “Heaven”. And that was the end of the hearing, basically. With that kind of performance, they can lock you away. I think it was from a 3 day stay to become a 14 day stay. I found out being called “Lucifer” in real life does things to your head. It was just a phase, though. In and out the transom of desire.