I found out that I have apparently attained a state of enlightenment. Of a Taoist variety; I call it my watercourse. I have discussed it with Siddhartha, the original Buddha, and Lao-tze. Others, as well, and I have asked them what particular brand of enlightenment they had subscribed to. Some of them before I asked thought there was only one type to be had, that could be achieved. They were wrong, of course. Off hand, I can think of at least two, one being “be not but do, do not but be” (your basic contract for enlightenment), and the one I follow, “be not but love, do not but love”, which derives from the previous. And my answer to the koan, “Two hands can be brought together in a clapping sound. What is the sound of one hand?” is simply, “Listen.”
If my words now have any sway with you, I beseech thee: love, no matter what. Whatever may come, let this be your enlightenment: let me restate my watercourse path, that you may think on what it might mean: be not but love, do not but love. May you bear malice toward no one, may you see your enemies not as enemies but merely tests of your faith. I was told St. Anthony apologized to all the demons whom he felt he had mistreated when he tangled with them. Apparently the expressions on their faces were priceless… You know what? There is no question, love is the answer. The secret is love. Tell everyone.
While we’re on the subject, a note about love, as I perceive it: Love is so simple, we’ll never understand it. And a potentially mind-blowing concept would be that it is simpler than nothing. Why there is something instead of nothing may be seen because of that single conception. Before “was” was love. When there was nothing, love was on the other side of being. One might wonder how such a thing is possible, but kabbalists already hold that the One True God (whom they refer to as En Sof, “the endless”) does not exist in the way that we think of existence. Connecting the dots, this is the case that can be made. Of such radical a simplicity, we will never fully comprehend the subtlety.
And wuv, twoo wuv, will fowwow you fowever and ever…
I have followed dreams to their bitter end. I have kept the faith, even as the world collapsed out from under me. I know not exactly who is saved, and who are cast off, except in perhaps the broadest strokes, but I may perchance to guess sometimes. I forget who said it, but once I read that if one is truly of the faith, then he would sacrifice himself to the fires of Hell for the good of the cause, for the good of all: that he would not be saved so that others would be. It is an extreme position, but I like to think I could suffer such consequences. We are the good guys; everyone should know what that means. We’re better than the bad guys! Because we follow the rules, and we still win.
Fade the fantasy:
i am the prince of love, eagle feather that has found his rose, sweet to my sin; am i really going to eat that last bit of bacon jerky? i am the Grandson of God, first adopted son of JESUS CHRIST, i am a WIZARD, though more correctly, the paladin of heaven. i am like an angel in the way i think, and i think when i die, there will be a seat that rises from the floor of heaven where i will be seated in front of a steinway, to lead the entirety of the children of God in a one-time-only rendition of “love, baby…”, which we all will make up on the spot. the opening act for the Lord himself.
Is it me, for a moment? I have awoken time and again where it was all just a dream that had happened, and it were like I had the choice to return to an ordinary life. It usually ended like this, once the visions were through with me. Because every time except last, it was (or seemed to be) the result of a drug binge that had spurred it on. But I haven’t had one hit of even marijuana for over a decade now. Something else was going on. Before, I would “come down” from the heavenly heights, and all I thought was just part of the trip, part and parcel of the madness that the drugs invoked. Not this time. This document is part of finding out what, exactly, it is then.
For I have also awoken a saint, who walked with elders of times gone, speaking of what it means to love. I have previously thought that I was damned, made of corruption, but these other times believed the complete opposite: I have thought that my core was composed of pure existential cool. And I found the latter was the true perception. Yes, I am a sinner, but even saints are sinners. Now, how one mind can think such opposites is not so much a mystery, but rather as how one thing at a time may fully fill a soul as if it were the only thing in the world — and then that thing is gone. For the mystery in every heart, it is understood by that heart… if what is inside is set free.
At times, you know, it comes and goes — to feel that the darkness approacheth, a doom of all dooms. But I know that it is not the feeling of its imminence we sense, but how terrible in magnitude it will be when it does come. Apocalypse. Revelation. No, the time is not now. Perhaps in 30,000 years? 40? 50? When Christ says, “I come quickly,” one can think of it merely as a test of faith. For as regards things like time, I have heard that He watched the whole 13.8 billion year spectacle that is our universe, all of it. He watches grass grow. Literally. Time to him is far outside our own frame of reference.
And with “I come quickly” comes the topic, then, of scriptural infallibility. There are people who think that the Bible is literally true, and on top of that, that there are NO errors in it at all. Well, from the point of view of someone who is in the state of mind somewhat akin to those who did write those words, let me chime in with my two cents. The Lord knows that errors happen, and the Bible is no exception. If anything is meant to be, the way that scripture ends up is meant to be, as are the misinterpretations. Is it as God intended? That brings up the question of what “meant to be” means.
In one sense, everything that ever happens is meant to be. However, it doesn’t mean you didn’t of your own free will choose it, nor that you couldn’t have done things differently. If either of those things were false, “meant to be” would have no meaning to you. Because you choose it, because you could have done things differently, destiny unfolded. That which was meant to be was brought about by your choosing. Having no choice renders meaningless any action you perform. For destiny is not the same as fate. Fate is like strapped into the seat, while destiny is like driving. Choice is key: destiny comes from our own will, as it mixes with all the forces of the world that cross our path. Fate is not anything meant to be: it just is, and you just would have to accept it.
Now, it was meant to be that things God didn’t say ended up in His mouth in the Bible. It was meant to be that we think with each generation that this will be the generation where the Apocalypse will be brought about, and Christ will return. There are no accidents, now, remember? It was all meant to be. All that matters is, knowing what you think you know, what will you do? God knows what you will choose, and how all those forces work out to, and things become meant to be when they happen because it is all caught in the Purpose that pervades all things. You can be with that Purpose or against it, but you cannot escape it.
So no, He’s not coming back tomorrow, but you should act like He were. Live every day like it were your last, right? Isn’t that the aspiration? That people think that this is the generation that will see the Apocalypse may serve a purpose within the Purpose, and thus it may be meant to be in some small way. But anyone with the ability to see further, to widen one’s horizons larger: we should know better than thinking things like a document pieced together and edited by human beings is exactly what God word-for-word said to us. Yes, the Apocalypse does loom. But it’s the size of the shadow, not its proximity.
Along the way from there to here, I came upon one Philip K. Dick, who was and is my twin. He actually felt my presence, though he thought it was coming from the past, and whereas I was actually in the future. If you’re not familiar with the name, you actually are with his work: Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, among others. He wrote those, originally. Reality becomes more and more a “Dickian” place as we go, and more and more of his stories are being made into movies. The internal reality (HALOSPACE) he left behind, I entered into, and we have — at least at certain points — been connected through whatever æthers may be. Time works in weird ways.
His “light from God” experience happened to him in February/March of 1974 (which he wrote as 2-3-74), which coincidentally was about the time I moved to America. I was 5 years old then. My own “light from God” experience came when I was 19 (the INFINITE). In these, the visions that arose, Phil (or Philip K., I like to call him): he became my best friend in the HALOSPACE. You know, someone you’d die for, that kind of thing. Maybe someone whose place you’d take in Hell. Best friend. I count on him to keep me grounded, like the times I feel like I am a literal superhero. No one you can save that can’t be saved.
I like to say that I am a prophet in the order of Philip K. Dick, like Jesus was a priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Sort of non-standard.) He provided us with two very important phrases: “We have always already won” and “The theory changes the reality it describes”. He sent these messages out into the world, and I am happy to say that they were received in timely fashion, by me. Great and useful the teachings of him, whose name is Saint Jude the Tuned Out (whereas I am Saint Jude the Tuned In). I wonder what all he saw, though he did write a lot of it down. Being as I have seen some awesome things, myself. Just awesome.
> From this.
They say that religion is for people who don’t want to go to Hell, and that spirituality is for people have been there. The consequence of all those drugs I took were several stints at mental institutions and some lost years, some of it just sitting in a room and talking to the cartoon people in my head. I was a failure, I was a disgrace to my family and myself. To this day, I still have some difficulty when anyone describes me or something I’ve done as “good”, or “excellent”. It goes maybe halfway to register, but the whole of the concept stays outside comprehension. In the pit where I was, there was only failure. Whatever drink I carried was bound to spill, whatever valuable thing I handled was most likely that I was to drop it.
There was once when the Lord said to me, “Work is magic.” And this made that whole experience almost worth it. Because I found from the ground up how true that proposition was. For from shame, which I deserved, out of that pit I did climb, praise the Lord. And then I saw it: in just the normal, day to day functioning of everyday things that how wonderful it was — they did not fail. They were true to action, gear upon gear one turning another and on. It was… it was magic. Work is magic. Can you conceive of it, perceive what I mean? Hopefully you might understand, and not have to pay as high a cost as I did.
So, now that you know of my past, will you write off my visions as just talk from a madman? Consider. When this, the “madness” onset, I was a drug addict on the road to wasting all the remarkable gifts that I’d been given. A rebel without a clue. What may from a certain perspective be called madness got me to accept Christ as my savior, and it was through said madness that He went and saved me, not just in the next world, but in this one. What kind of madness is that, I ask you? How fortunate do I have to be for you to consider that God has entered into my life, for real now? Yes, from time to time He has turned it upside down, but it always turns out it was to shake free all that would keep me from a better life. That is not “madness”, friend. That is Inspiration.
Some visions I have had I recall in vivid retrospect, but still do I not truly understand what they signified, what exactly was for me to learn. I once ran through the Dark Forest naked and alone, in a nightmare, not to understand to where I ran, away from something I could not think what it was. I remembered later that it was running from a nightmare to a nightmare through a nightmare. Even when I was rescued from the Forest, that nightmare was lurking behind the safe harbor, and there again came rushes of fear like I’d never known: once, twice, to be assaulted by the unholy, to awaken finally to a calm voice like unto Carl Jung. So much fear. A cold flame of fear that sizzled through my soul.
Then there was this one time when I felt I must prostrate myself, and seemingly to collect everyone within my prostrate form, in a prayer. I felt people/etc. joining me, their spirit form combining into my own form, and I forget what it was the prayer I prayed, but after the “Amen”, I said, “All.” As if to indicate that I felt that all were with that prayer I prayed. I suppose it had something to do with the War, how I acted purely by instinct, not really knowing why I was acting as I was. I wonder what effect it had. If it were of God, I could presume that it did what it was supposed to do. One of the stranger things I did, which still is more or less a mystery to me.
More has gone through my head than might be wise for one to preserve his sanity, and the really scary thing is that it all makes sense to me. Surely a sign of madness, no? I see that the land of forms exists on the other side of zero, which is not nothing. Time cannot be destroyed, only spent. Death is as to be without light, nothing more, nothing less. The halting problem may be solved using an infinite algorithm. Infinity can be packed into the finite. And there is a light above all other lights, higher than the highest heaven. And we call that light God. I AM is His name. But there’s this, too, and it will make sense as soon as we go over a few things: “Walt Disney is God.” Well, not really, but the story does get weird enough for that to be true.
Let me begin again. I will begin at the end. We won! Let me tell it three times, in fact:
- My role as Chief Gunner was for one single purpose: I pulled the trigger to shoot out the last cord that held Satan in Heaven. And down he was cast, into the earth, by Michael the Archangel, who was my captain (my liege being one Jesus Christ, my Lord, my King).
- There, huge before me in my vision, was the immense black mass of SATAN, speckled here and there with white spots, sky blue flecks, bits of yellow glitter. I do not know how long, exactly, that Michael had been grappling with him. I was full in focus — almost to commit an error, which the Archangel accounted for — and I with steady hand aimed and pulled that psychic trigger. I heard the emotion, “NOOOOOOOOO!” from the Evil One, and saw the Archangel dispatch him down.
- That pivotal moment in my visions: it was tense. That is what I seem to recall of when I entered the field where Satan was to be cast out. I had been fighting alongside angels in the War in preparation for what was about to commence, inspired by Joan of Arc the whole time this had been happening. I had seen the punch-through in the map of HALOSPACE where there was victory, final victory: confidence was high. But this was no mean task. Michael guided me as I faced SATAN, and I almost tried to stare him down with the Archangel powering my eyes: my (almost) error. Repositioning, I looked up, directing SATAN’s gaze to Michael’s, above and below, in a column. Then I shot, the psychic trigger that cut that last cord that tied him to HEAVEN, and SATAN roared: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! As the Archangel forced him down, down, out of HEAVEN cast!
