Real "Two Reel"

An explanation of the VALIS Loop, in 3d called The Cube of Space and in greater magnitude called the HyperCube and MetaCube.  Although this complete Loop passes over many twists and turns in a single revolution through Cube, HyperCube and MetaCube, it is easiest to understand in 2d, as a single loop of tape that circles endlessly around two reels, like the kind of reels found on a reel to reel tape deck or movie projector, except in this case the loop is closed--the two ends of the loop are attached.

So...

VALIS, by my logic, is an eternal magnetic loop which contains the entirety of history and all of its elements--the mythical; cosmological; superficially natural and architectural.  It also houses the identity of a fixed number of personalities.  Often, these personalities are referred to as souls.  The term of soul is confounding, as it implies the mysterious presence of both a greater power and a less defineable shape than is given to the personality.  Personality is usually expressed as the physical reality of the body and the abstract principles that arise from consciousness.  The soul is the personality--no more or less.  It is really quite simple, when one thinks about it.

The multiplicity of souls on Earth, as represented by a fluctuating world population, is a bit of an illusion.  This illusion explains perfectly both the phenomenon of reincarnation and the more difficult phenomenon of the doppelganger.

The first step necessary to perceive the operation of the Loop is to realize that one is immortal.  This may seem silly at first, but is easy to understand when one truly meditates upon nothingness.  What becomes clear is that the void of nothingness is a legitimate vacuum.  The complete dissolution of one's reality is possible only if one does not exist, has not existed and will not exist.  No material essence or abstract principle can enter into nothingness, and thus neither the body nor the stream of consciousness are interrupted by death, any more than they are interrupted by going to sleep.  To put it in the words of Krishna, from The Bhagvad Gita: "...all that lives, lives forever...".  If one is alive and conscious, for however small a stitch in time, one is instantly and permanently immortal.  This is a logical principle, not a spiritual abstraction.

When one perceives the death of another, they in fact witness as the other rounds a bend in the loop.  We lose others and others lose us, for a time, but at no time is one out of connection to one's personality, which is the twin magnetic coils of one's material construct and one's abstract consciousness.  This model is enhanced when one realizes that the material world is an abstraction too.  The concept of the material abstraction is a fascination down through the ages to both Mystics and Scientists alike, but few make the simple connection that these phenomena are in fact indicative of a singular technology.  The purpose of this technology is to create the amnesia of false mortality, or more simply, to create the illusion of death.

Nixon's secret "tapes" were recorded on a reel to reel deck.

In the Watergate era, sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick reported a vision.  What he learned from this vision was that sometime around 70 or 80 A.D. a group of "Jewish Alchemists" had instituted a method of looping time back into itself on a sort of infinite historical playlist.  The reason for this action was to forestall the return of Christ after the destruction of Solomon's Temple by the Romans.  According to Dick, the Return of Christ is the promised end to a system of Sacrificial Agriculture originating with Cain, from the Book of Genesis, who is the Father of Agriculture, and ratified by Enoch, son of Cain, who is the Father of Satanic Alchemical Magick.  These two systems (Agriculture and Magick) are the basis for the entirety of human social commerce and all the woe, inequality and royalty that comes with it.  The return of Christ threatens to shatter this system which is so prosperous to an elite class of dignitaries.

But Phillip K. Dick was only partly right.  Christ and his astonishing sacrifice are themselves a re-ordered version of previous passing of the Loop in one complete revolution.  There is no way to calculate just how many times the Loop has circulated, which is a feature of the program itself, because a connection to an original moment or artifact can not exist inside the Loop without being instantly and completely destructive.  The mere fact that the Loop exists at all indicates that the disconnection from the original is an absolute success.

Here is what is known.

The Loop is roughly 2000 Solar Years in Length.  The complete Length is about 2200 years, but there is an overlap of the media. The lives of personalities run lengthwise along the tape, stacked next to each other like the tracks on an audio tape, all personalities appearing in various places on the 2000 year cycle, some appearing more frequently than others, circulating eternally.  During periods in which the Loop overlap is in play, the intensity of feedback creates large scale pattern recognition among those imprisoned in the Loop.  This is troublesome because too much internal recognition of the system operations threaten an unmanageable level of distortion--distortion that could cause a glitch failure of the media and even erasure of the program code.

The Alchemist's response to the problem is the simple technique of mystical distraction, which trends the person down a false trail of amnesia.  Here is how it works: at the beginning of  the 2000 year cycle, an increasing refinement of media is unraveled, and each refinement of media entrains a deeper level of hypnotic amnesia.  At the moment the overlap begins, the amnesia is purposefully unleashed by the use of a hypnotic cue.  Dick called this an-amnesia, which means coming out of amnesia.  Watergate was a precursor, but in this particular cycle, the cue in question is 9/11, the first completely global media event.  In the wake of this rude awakening, personalities are gently ushered to find answers in a variety of cultural sub-groups, all of which exclude the necessary processes of internal doubt and internal criticism.  The number of social sub-groups of this phenomena are too numerous to count, too subtle to be captured in any one explanation, and tendril into every nook and cranny of human interest. In the present cycle, groups fall upon lines that are mainly political, nationalist, race or gender based, and religious.  For personalities of a more intellectual or marginal nature, the groups offered run the gamut of New Spiritualism, New Atheism, and New Science, Truthers, Synchromystics, and various art movements.

What all of these sub-cultures have in common is that each promises the doorway to a new world through the proper appreciation of a set of mystical principles.  As explained in Future Schlock, mysticism is very simply the insinuation that there is a better tomorrow available to right thinking people.  It doesn't matter whether or not the person in question accepts a mystical reality or not.  They must merely be focused on a future reality.  Through this process the person begins to imagine a new and magical future world, a world of knowledge, transformation and power, and this new consciousness is proffered at the exact moment the Loop overlap is in play, when the person begins to remember that they have always been immortal.

Facing Eastward, the foot-soldiers of Alchemy stand outside the Western Wall, beating back the promised freedoms of non-hierarchical and non- cyclical Time.

Of course, in a world where everyone is immortal, and knows they are immortal, future based promises become utterly meaningless.  This is the standstill of commerce symbolized when Christ riots in the house of the money changers, who ply their trade within the Temple.  Of course, the Temple is not fallen, first, because the Western Wall stands to this day (a fact crucial to the operations of Dick's so-called Alchemists), but also because the completed Temple lives, planted like a demon seed in the minds of everyone who yearns for the future.  A future also known as The Kingdom of God--which turns out to be a real estate venture.  It doesn't matter if you are the coldest of cold-hearted atheist, all American Apple Pie Christian, New Ager or Islamic Moderate.  If you entrain upon the future, if you abandon your ego to a better tomorrow, you willingly forget who you really are: a naturally immortal consciousness, unique and somehow equal to all, unbound by any greater principle or doctrine than the self.

Without the mystic principle of futurism which is the critical technique of mystic alchemy, an elite class of dominator would become powerless, not because persons would themselves become a force of power to oppose this dominance, but because persons would become aware that there is no higher power to be either wielded against oneself or achieved by oneself.

In a world full of immortals who know they are immortal, everyone is equally powerless.