tag: Elijah

The Exegesis: Elijah & Torah

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
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Dick believes the personality that has inhabited him is Elijah (or the same spirit that took over Elijah), and this is reinforced by several dreams he has connected to the Bible.

The way YHWH tries to break through to us is like how sounds from the world are able to work their way into our dreams when we are asleep. They are either incorporated or jarring enough that we wake up. Most of us remain in Purgatorio because we are afraid of risk. It’s a gamble. We could make it to the Palm Tree Garden or end up in the BIP.

When Dick watched 3 Women he realized if he didn’t believe in YHWH he would end up in a cosmic nothingness… a terrible thought. Again he reiterates that Plato made an error. The two realms don’t exist in space but rather all around us. Since this is the case the upper realm can be accessed in life, like what happened to him in 3-74, and not just after death. The erroneous view of spatial realms affected Christianity but not the Israelites who recognized God was in nature. 

Torah is living information created by God. What we call reality is just our way of interpreting this information signal. Valis is the “machine” that turns the Torah into reality. Torah as info is trapped in reality, so to truly understand all of this we would need to see Torah in all living things and retrieve it.

The Exegesis: Letter to Ursula Le Guin, September 23, 1974

Dick and Ursula Le Guin both attended Berkeley High School and graduated in 1947. Although they didn’t know each other at the time, and I don’t believe they ever met face to face, they did correspond in the 70s. 

Dick tells Le Guin that when he explained everything that has been happening to him to fellow sci-fi author Thomas Disch, Disch suggested Dick might have been possessed by Elijah. Dick is excited at the idea that it might very well have been the same spirit that filled Elijah, Elisha and reappeared as John the Baptist.