Profane Exegesis: Intro

Autobiographical Reflections and Fragments From a Future dimension, or, I see you baby, shaking that ass. (repeated refrain in TV ad) 300 years later (not really). I’ve mislaid the latest attempt on an autobiographical novel. And may have ruined the floppy or as near as. So as soon as I find it I’ll try and transfer it to this one. I took the title from Philip K Dick’s use of the term for his own Exegesis, but as usual, I tend to feel it’s a bit pretentious to apply it to myself. And I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I intend to write about everything under, behind and beyond the sun, in the best possible sense. So on the other hand neither do I want to underplay its intentions. I’m old enough not to be writing shit now. What I mean is I’ve developed the ability to focus on what interests me and so at best, it won’t bore me to tears on reading it back. And I do so miss rarely being able to read any back of what I write. It almost negates the purpose of it or it would if it wasn’t for the fact I’ve felt it has it’s benefits; and this is the problem with autobiographical writing – my abortive attempts at it. Before I get into this if I do, I’ll follow another train of thought as it’s related. The thought of Colin Wilson came to mind. Nothing-unusual there. Neither is my example, except for my possibly idiosyncratic way of looking at things. It’s hard at times to believe we live in the same world, use the same processes of communication; use the same formats, the same language, and similar thought processes for the most part. And unlike mine, or me, he seems to have little problem in bringing it all into 'reality' if you like; the public domain. It expresses something important for me, not least the deep frustration inherent in the situation. And that is, that I wouldn’t be satisfied with Wilson’s version of reality. His 'take' on it. His interpretation/s of it. I genuinely feel he’s somehow profoundly missing the point of it all. This is a conviction that’s come more clearly into focus over the years. It grew from a sneaking awareness if you like, little clues and connections that grew in significance and frequency. I suppose I could say the paradox, the rather painful irony is that it’s brought me no further forward to any real solution of my own so to say, not least getting a writing career on the go for real and to make a living and escape from this oblivion of obscurity and dealing with fools. Precisely the reason he writes or an important part of it. But this doesn’t mean there is no solution or it’s nor worth pursuing, or even that I’m on the wrong track; that it might not be worth it because there’s nothing to it or Wilson would’ve covered it in his own way. Or to put it another way, there are whole areas of the ego’s world and thought-system that he’s missing or avoiding. Behaving as if it doesn’t exist, or at least that it’s relatively unimportant as ACIM is unimportant, inconsequential. Or the direction PKD went in his later years, though the indications were always there I think. His questioning of reality, the belief that the world might be an illusion; the whole phenomenal universe a kind of cosmic joke. He was right, but it seems he never fully realized if at all that it’s a joke we’re playing on ourselves. This gets to the heart of the matter in its way and just to jump to the conclusion in advance, which saves anyone from assuming I have no idea where I’m going with this. It’s describing the journey there that’s proving problematic. It Also seems clear CW has been going in this direction for years, possibly stemming from his early vastation experience then the more positive experience he had after going through a period of intense frustration when he rather dramatically decided on ending it all by drinking a vial of hydrochloric acid in the science lab. Post schooldays. He comes back to it in his later autobiog. Since then, or during it, it’s obvious enough he came to see the world as a kind of illusion, as is time. He says as much in Dreaming To Some Purpose. In short, he comes to the same conclusion as is described in ACIM. The profoundly

spiritual and psychological text he as good as trashed in the Postscript to an earlier book from the eighties, named Afterlife. I read it at the time as I did anything I could get my hands on by him. Through that book I came to read Kenneth Ring’s 'Omega' books. CW has still to state it in such categorical terms as the Course. That the world is a projection of the mind as is the whole phenomenal universe, made by us as a means to exclude God from our minds, reflecting our fear and hatred of Him, all projection of course, attributing to him the view we have of Him ourselves. So the world was made to hide from God and is an attack on God and therefore on our real selves as Christ. I think PKD would have been more sympathetic to this. CW has a big problem with Jesus/Christ in pretty much any form, I’ve come to realize, and this has some problematic and disturbing aspects, not least as described in Lynne Picknett and Clive Prince’s The Stargate Conspiracy, though not overtly for the reason/s I’ve just mentioned. But the quasi-religious aspect comes into the story/book, which they say is a dark Crowley inspired religion sneaking its way in through the back door if you like. There is a definite and hidden agenda behind the supposed impartiality on the subject, easily exposed in their hostility to the Course, and equally, Ken Carey’s Third Millennium, itself a “Christian” text, more in the ostensibly New Age category, yet well above the usual new age fare, and anathema to the fundamentalists., whether religiously or scientifically inclined. Both only different sides of the same coin, each colluding with the other to disparage and destroy the influence of the Course and Carey and anyone who might influence others in their direction. The Course itself, as Wapnick pointed out, is well beyond anything the new age has to offer. And for this reason, every fundamentalist converges on it. It’s anathema to them, as they perceive it as a threat to their cherished individuality and so to their very existence. Again, I think this would fascinate Dick. It’s interesting I thought of coming back to Dick. It’s reminded me again of a train of thought I had shortly before, though this has crossed my mind often over the years and increasingly so, but not to make a huge deal of it. Dick died in ’82, the year of my mystical experience. By Wapnick’s description, a personal experience of the Second Coming. And I can well believe it. And I don’t doubt Dick came to much the same conclusion about his 'Valis' experiences in ’74, as he describes in Valis and the posthumously published Radio Free Albemuth. And his Exegesis. I was 23 at the time of my own experience, and Dick was 54 when he died.(?) I'm probably innacurate. By the time 2012 comes around, December 21 to be precise, I’ll be… 54. Or will I. I’m 48 now and my birthdate is 20th December, the same date as Uri Geller’s, and he had some odd experiences. Interestingly, Carey’s channellers state that the actual date is Dec 21, 2011. They make no reference to 2012. Neither do the enthusiasts of 2012, such as Geoff Stray or John Major Jenkins mention the Carey material as far as I know, but then I’ve yet to read their recent books on the subject. (GF discusses it but tends to dimiss due to its emphasis on 2011) Anyhoo, I’ll be 49 this Dec, then 50 in 2008, 51 in 2009, 52 in 2010, 53 in 2011 and 54 in 2012. One day before the Mayan Calendar end date of Dec 21, 2012. Unless it’s 2011. I believe that on higher levels of being we all converge into the same being, meaning the same self; the one Self. And in the maze and morass of existence Dick’s A Maze of Death if you like the title of one of is novels, or the black iron prison of the Gnostics–the objective is a way to find a way through it, through a sense of meaning and purpose. I think Wilson would agree with that much at least. I recall once reading in the Fortean Times from years back about someone – come to think on it, I think it was Robert Anton Wilson – who felt he was in touch with PKD through dreams. A possibility that did cross my mind, perhaps due to that very interview, and again, I don’t see it in the usual simplistic interpretation of some 'disembodied' entity directly influencing me in some way in an objectively real world. We’re talking about a radically different interpretation of reality

here, so it’s not likely I’m about to look upon it in such dualistic terms. Which on the face of it, would seem to posit there’s no need bring the personality of Dick into it in any sense and I suppose that’s true, or at least there’s something to be said for it, though it’s surely an excellent scenario for a novel. So far out as to be only fit for a novel. On the other hand, I don’t doubt Jesus, as the Christ and our true Self, is nothing to do with his corporeal self as experienced by himself and others in history, though some would deny even that. He 'waits' at the end of time, and yet somehow has an overview of the whole situation through the Holy Spirit. Explain that one. It can’t be understood in linear terms, but is no less true for that. It’s the world that’s the lie. “Everyday consciousness is a liar,” CW said somewhere. Possibly in The New Existentialism. Dick’s real self is a part of the Holy SpiritS, the Christ. It would be through them then, or one or the other that true communication would happen and does. Assuming it to be Dick in some sense might be a way I feel more comfortable with the notion. And a way to relate the fundamentally non-dualistic and non-specific into terms the world, and not least myself as I say, can understand on a more everyday and “dualistic” level. From the macrocosmic to the microcosmic then. Microcomic some might say. Quasimacromegalomaniacal. You heard it here first. “The holy spirit corrects the world of dreams,” ACIM states. That would also mean this world then, as the whole world is nothing more than a collective dream. But all this is getting well ahead of myself, no pun intended. I could take the view that a part of the story, and Dick’s story, itself a part of the overall story, continues through me, and anyone in sympathetic resonance to such radical psychological and metaphysical themes. Radical because the ego-mind experiences such ideas as intensely threatening as they spell the end if its existence. This is what the Second Coming of Christ is about after all. And each moment of true forgiveness, again not to be understood in linear terms, brings us all closer to the end of time, where Jesus waits patiently, certain in the knowledge that the goal will be reached, as it already has, by all of us, back in a past so distant we have no memory of it, and yet, the goal itself is an illusion as it never happened in reality, and so never will, except that “stuck” in our dualistic and linear based thinking and experience of individuality, we believe time is objectively real. Call it an occupational hazard. Of believing we’re in the driving seat without God. God Is My Co-pilot. Ideally. The petty interferences in life carry on; doesn’t the Course go into this at the beginning of Chapter 12? Must check. I’ve been neglecting the Course for a while now. I keep going back to Wapnick, though in the morass of my books scattered in the bedroom, I realised I had Carey’s Return of the Bird Tribes sitting on the window space along with the rest of the selected bunch. The weird part is it’s dated from Oct/Nov ’93 and that’s the first and last time I read it, so I thought I’d better rectify that as soon as I can, reading the first few chapters then mislaying it a again- I stopped to finish off Robert Charles Wilson’s The Perseids, a collection of loosely interrelated stories, and I see this as the beginnings of a solution to how to tackle a bunch of eclectic ideas, if I’ll steer clear of autobiog; but anyway… So Bird Tribes was quite the revelation after all these years. And it’s reminded me I had Carey’s Third Millennium back in 1990 or ’91, because I read that first and that was before coming across the Course. Now I can put BT into a better perspective, appreciate it even more I mean. As for any more questions of nondualism, I don’t see the point of trying to fathom it any more. I do have some trouble with statements such as our “bodies were designed with this specific purpose in mind,” etc.- compared to the Course’s “the body was made as an attack on God,” and all the rest. But the psychology seems so subtle it’s impossible to assume it isn’t saying the same things in others ways. And there is such a resonant style of expression and thought, I tend to read them on much the same

level and some of the parallels are unmistakable. In short, I just can’t see how it in the end, would be little more than a pile of BS. And there are far deeper personal resonance’s which I’ll get around to writing for myself again, to be presented as a kind of fiction, though God knows why no-one else seems to be saying this, though it has been touched on in discussion groups by others. Specifically the Afterward of BT. The book has been reissued I noticed recently, so if you don’t have it, and can get it you won’t regret it. It really is something else and I’d forgotten it goes into some different areas from TM, though it’s initial focus is the injuns - er, Native Americans (Injuns! Quick – corral the wagons, fromm a circle! (Gary Larson cartoon). Interesting to see a short news report on BBC News late – on the fact that the majority of the neocons in the Bush administration believe that these are the end times, and how this affects the situation in the middle east, for all their avowed impartiality towards Lebanon (Captain Beefheart vid is on MTV” at the moment. He and his band playing out in the desert intercut with shots of them holding his abstract paintings- which are a bit monotone), when they believe actual physical events, pro Israel, centred on the Dome on the Rock of course, will hasten the Second Coming of Jesus - as fundamentalists and secularists – and news speakerstend to call it. What Wapnick describes as level confusion. A belief in a kind of divine Feng Shui - my analogy. Psuedoquasi-cosmic. A bunch of cults. There’s also been a spate of interrelated progs on the subject in general on the History Channel – when they give you a break from The Da Vinci Code. But it’s approached in all seriousness, from interviews with the usual selection of hick drawling fat fuck fundamentalists who believe they’ll be sitting back comfortably onlooking the grim fate of the deserved sinners, (I’m reminded of The River of Life section in Carey’s TM, near the end of the book) as well as more credible New Ager's like John Hogue. I have one or two of his books, and I’ve just reminded myself one is on prophecies and I should pull it out. The other is probably on Nostradamus. I really must go and see Superman Returns. Or the Second Coming of Superman. Maybe they should have called it that. When I begin to feel discouraged I just think of the Mayans and their carving of the stone into their calendar; of a date – when the hell was their demise? 800AD? – A date into the far flung future for them, and here we are finally in 2006, soon to be 2007, and I only need to think of it and I feel cheerful again. Sometimes I forget, and then I think, oh yeah, 2012. Or December 21, 2011. You have to wonder why the date of the Carey channellings is ignored. So I’ll be expectant both times. Not exactly gritting my teeth, but slightly, em, tense. Just in case. Maybe I’ll just climb to the top of Arthur’s Seat by myself. Maybe I’ll be out of the country for once. Or in the library/Council dungeons. It would be good to be at a football match say - or about to get your head kicked in. I’d settle for getting magically slimmer and some teeth growing back and my eyesight suddenly 20/20. And no more piles in any shape or form - anywhere on my body. But I’ll probably be on the Internet, or just beforehand. If I’m not hit by a bus. I walked into a bike for the first time ever the other day. His arm thumped into my stomach, but no contact with the bike fortunately. But it was pretty painful. Just outside the Cameo Cinema in Tolcross. That reminds me, I went to see Atomised.. I bought it a while back, but decided to read it when I saw there was a film based on it. Michel Houellebecqec. A real shocker and brilliantly funny at times. And brilliant. He’d been on BBC4 on cable, after the fundamentalists of Moslem persuasion brought a fatwa on him for his remarks on their religion. His wife or partner cracked up under the pressure and had to spend time in a mental hospital. Maybe she just felt safer there. I recall reading an obituary of Dick in a music paper at the time. It might have been Sounds. Equally, it may have been the NME. I sat and read it in a café at the top of the High Street/Royal Mile, facing the church whose name I can’t recall. A pleasant sunny day as I recall. Now it’s typical tartan gift shop and

has been for years. It was a great spot for a café. Something I took for granted at the time, as one tends to do. “Great” because you can watch all the tourists and the rest going by without feeling overwhelmed by it all. I can’t recall any specifics of the piece or who wrote it, and neither had I ever got around to reading any Dick. I was big on CW. But he certainly sounded interesting. Yet another interesting, possibly great mind I would have to explore at some point in the future. The future was open; I had my whole life before me and wasn’t I aware of it. The paradox was it already seemed too short. I was quite adept at wasting my days, torn between the wish to explore the world of ideas at length and then there was the problem of what I would do with my life. That seemed as good a plan and vocation as any. It was time that concerned me and how I should spend it. And as my life was made up of moments in time it was my life I was concerned with. There was no necessity to work, so that wasn’t really a problem but the sense of torment was no less intense for all that. It at least gave me the means to contemplate it to my hearts content. It also raised the possibility that if I had all the time in the world to mull it over I would spend all my time mulling it over and not doing anything concrete about it, such as getting it down in some practical sense and ideally, make some kind of living of sorts from it, as well as the fact it could be of interest to others, and of course, establish myself as a mind to be reckoned with. Ego is always there somewhere along the line and it can’t be denied, so why try. The fact was, I was a mass of contradictions. Oddly consistent in my outlook, but it was the world itself and all it might offer that complicated matters. When I wasn’t mulling in fear and dread over my possible future or fear and loathing over aspects of the present, I was in fear and dread of following my apparent destiny and long held dreams and aspirations to rock stardom–or pop obscurity. And this had little in common that I could see, with my literary interests and emotional conflicts. It was impossible to step outside the situation and see it objectively. Each goal seemed to be separate from and contradict the other. I wrote about this at some length and breakneck speed just last night before I went to bed, and felt I’d gained some real perspective on it. As it’s literally illegible it might be a good idea to reiterate the gist of it here if I’m capable of such a feat. It’s also where aspects of my life parallel CW’s if loosely, and not publicly of course. It might also illustrate the radically different direction I’ve went in or conclusions came to, though they converge in the end as I’m sure he’s aware of; this was where the section in The Craft of the Novel came in his discussion of “high flyers.” Writers who are concerned with the processes of man’s evolution, though not necessarily overtly. “All spokes converge at the hub.” Retirn of The Bird Tribes. Ken Carey. And so it goes. Wilson just doesn’t see any need for Christ in the equation, unaware or in denial of his reality as in and of being a part of Christ as we all are. Not to put too fine a point on it. But he does believe in the Self. I also want to record it for the sake of posterity if you like and my ego. As I decided through my writing last night that I’m going to stop fighting myself over the subject as a whole and accept it can’t really be told in the way I’d prefer, not comfortably at least and as a novel, then I may as well end that obvious conflict as I say, by accepting and settling for getting it down in private. The point is to write in any case. That way I won’t feel I’m wasting the best of me; the essence of myself. Though that only raises the question as to who and what we believe we are and as my thoughts seems to be immersed indelibly with the past all too often I have to question the reality of them and that aspect of myself that often feels it’s impossible to escape it. And yet there’s that other aspect that knows the whole thing is inherently unreal. But where does that leave me. I still have to have something to write about if I’m going to write. But that’s never been a problem. The problem had been what not to write about and how to put it. Or not to put it. What to leave out. What to see as unimportant. Fundamentally unreal even. A difficult prospect. And why

would cover psych sense

I feel the need to go over the unreal to get to the real. Do I have to it all? I don’t think I do. On the other hand, it’s crucial to bring any gaps and denial to the light of consciousness; in concert with the HS. The of isolation comes from feeling we are on our own.

But I think it is important to go over certain aspects. And it can’t be done publicly in any form that occurs to me; not so specifically. I feel a sense of freedom in knowing I’m writing to myself. There’s deep distrust of the world and myself. But I think it’s a valid distrust of the world and its potential reaction to me; the false persona that is being described through my writing in the goal to reach the real me and the real all of us. The world is interested in hiding, not reality. And it confuses illusion with reality and reality with illusion and uses unforgiveness and denial and projection and distortion and all the rest for this purpose. The world 'persecutes and kills its prophets. I wouldn’t go that far about myself. But anyone who is bringing the radical message that the world and who we think we are is based on a fallacy needs to be cautious. Its goal – the worlds - is unforgiveness, to keep the separation from God going. It lives in fear of itself, projecting its unforgiveness of itself on to “deserving” others, so it can see itself as the innocent victim, while concealing its true motivation, yet constantly expressing its hatred in covert aggression as well as the more blatant forms. Lets face it, the world is a lunatic. A mentalist, in the currently comedic vernacular; tonto, to use Martin Amis’ choice term. The world is full of it. But really, it’s nothing. That’s what it fears to learn most of all. Now it’s full of its own importance, seeing itself as the policers of itself with selected others, often wholly subjectively due to projection of course, as potential or actual enemies. It takes itself very seriously indeed. And is suspicious of anyone who indicates they don’t share the same orientation and thought-system. Roll on the SC. Otherwise they’ll roll over everyone like a steamroller as they are doing now or in the process of. Imagine if the world got its way completely. It would be some form of them and us as with the Nazis and the Jews. Some extreme, polarized situation. The haves/have mores and the have very little if they can help it. 911 is now an excuse for specialness, for selective hatred. A means to further the separation from self and Self and God. It becomes a narcissist’s world. A psychopaths' world. And Dick saw it all coming, as did George Orwell of course. If he were alive now he would be living his actual predictions. So why should anyone assume he–Dick–would be wrong about the Second Coming? It’s easier to accept the status quo as the norm, however overtly totalitarian and fascistic it becomes. Better to live in fear and denial and the delusion of illusory power than embrace your real Self. Better to shrink back in fear when it comes rushing to meet us again, perhaps in 2011/12. But I digress.