Fascinating TLS signed “Love & triumph, Phil,” two pages, 8.5 x 11, September 30, 1981. Letter to science fiction author Patricia Warrick, in full: “I have it and this time I truly have it. The basis is in UBIK, which is why my February/March 1974 experience resembled UBIK and reminded me of UBIK. The universe is an information retrieval system; which is to say, everything that has ever happened, ever been, each arrangement and detail — all are stored in the present moment as information; what we lack is the access or entry mechanism to this stored information. You can see how UBIK fits in: what I call the Platonic form axes, where the past of each object — all its prior manifestations along the Form axis — this is all stored in the present object and can be retrieved. Okay: what happened to me in February 1974 was that a minor incident (seeing the golden fish sign, the sign used by the apostolic Christians) accidentally gave me access to a great deal of the stored information, i.e. the past; hence I literally saw the past, a past world, as here and now. Once having accidentally gained access to the retrieval system, I was then deluged with information having to do with the past. The mind that was in mine that I call VALIS was the information-retrieval system itself (which is why it reminded me of a binary switching system; it operates like a computer). What I am saying is that the past is here now, but here as stored information to which we normally have no access. This fits in with a theory I've held for a long time that our reality is being used as an information carrier, and that information enters as modulation. Thus the arrangement of objects --not the objects themselves, as I have it in UBIK-- is the code by which the information (the past) is stored, and which always and everywhere theoretically can be retrieved, if you know how to get access. What we see as reality (the present) is simply the carrier; we do not see the modulation that is all this stored information. This when seen properly is what I saw through VALIS mind as the macrometasomakosmos; I saw reality the way it does, and each instant of time consists of an additional accretional layer laid down along the proper ‘phylogon’ (as I call them). It is the ‘phylogons’ by which the information is organized; it is not organized in a way that is like our way of organizing information. Thus if we do accidentally gain access, the information discharged seems chaotic, random, senseless, even capricious. As if a joke is being played on us. We get information we didn't ask for and can't handle. So the universe we see is only the carrier, a very small fraction of total reality; it is as if we are looking at the long helical spiral groove on one side of an LP record, seeing only the groove but having no idea that the lateral deflections carry information (the music); thus we cannot make the abstracting leap from groove to music: we are like a cat sleeping on an LP of the Beethoven Fifth; it is a physical object to us and nothing more. I saw this information several ways: (1) as set to ground; (2) as what I called ‘the plasmate’; (3) as the arrangement of objects, how they were linked together; (4) linking and relinking in all possible combinations; (5) the binary rest-motion modes; (6) pattern formation: visual, graphic gestalts (the linking-relinking was verbal information); (7) laminations of accretions; (8) the phylogons as Plato's Forms; (9) time seen as spatial depth: information read according to ‘depth,’ which I call ‘temporal parallaxis’ and which is a major part of my overview; (10) those supratemporal constants that showed up in the AB hyper-field; (11) auditory and visual ‘hallucinations,’ especially the printed pages; (12) other. I'm sure you see the point; viewed this way, my various experiences boil down to information and information retrieval achieved by accident. The information is right here, but, as I say, we see only the carrier (physical reality), not the modulation (encoded information waiting to be retrieved). Obviously this presumes a macro-mind behind this all, and VALIS so states.
Reality is continuously converted into information; it is as if the groove is perpetually converted into the music that is to modulate it; this, most of all, is what must be realized: in the groove to music model, the music is past reality (the universe that was) and the groove is present reality (ceaselessly converted into information that is stored in the thin slice that is the extant moment). Thus the real universe, in its totality, consists of this thin slice that is present actuality, plus all of the past stored conceptually in this present slice as modulation. And it can be retrieved if you have the access key; and this is what the Christian golden fish sign served as in my case back in February 1974. When the information is massively — that is fully — retrieved, what emerges as the true and whole reality is the Judo-Christian apocalypsis, the End Times world that was there at the time of the Book of Daniel, at the time of Acts, now, and also in the future; it is always theoretically available for retrieval. Thus Christianity can be regarded as a system of thought depicting and describing this total reality, or a verbal and sacerdotal model of this total reality, and, finally, as or containing an access key to this total reality; the Logos, then, can be understood as the organizing mind governing this system, plus of course, the mind that set up this system in the first place, as the agent or intermediary of creation. Hence it follows that VALIS is the Logos, and it operates like a binary computer, arranging and organizing the information that is perpetually generated; thus the total structure becomes of necessity ever more evolved and complex, for it must store ever greater quantities of information. This is what I saw that I called the macrometasomakosmos. Over and out and amen.” In fine condition. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope.
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