Tuesday, May 17, 2011

LOST Pilot Part 1 - Dissection



LOST begins with a close-up of a single eye opening. The pupil dilates, the irises a brown green color swirling around the center. The man stares frantically upward, gasping for life. He is pale as death--the tuxedo he wears could be the one he is buried in. As his senses become clear, he remembers who he is and looks straight into the bamboo trees above. This scene becomes more relevant as we look at it from the perspective of the entire series. Could one discover the whole meaning of the show just from this opening frame? To begin with, what does the eye signify? In the secret tradition, it is the eye which creates the universe, and not vice-versa. We can see it's importance--it's on the dollar bill and the CBS logo. It is a powerful symbol used by many ancient cultures and modern ones. We perceive the world around us, and in today's society, we assume that's all we do. In the mind before matter universe, simply by looking at something, you are changing it. It focuses in your vision. It becomes clear and materializes. When Jack stares into the tree tops (because we soon learn that's his name), he is creating the island. In Mark Booth's "The Secret History of the World", the author says the mystery schools teach that the universe "is a living, dynamic connection. Everything [...] is alive and conscious to some degree, responding sensitively and intelligently to our deepest, subtlest needs" (34). Matter is crystallizing, forming under Jack's gaze. So it is to say that nothing existed on the island before the arrival of humans, because there was no one to observe it--like the "universe" creating humans so it could think about itself. A question which is often raised in later seasons is why the island (a representation of the Mother Goddess) brought people there in the first place. The answer is simple (yet quite complex to understand), "she" needed them or else "she" wouldn't exist. It is similar concept of the tree paradox: if tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? According to the mystery religions, the answer is no. Observers, hearers are necessary if the universe (the island, the mother goddess) wanted to materialize. Like Schrodinger's Cat, there would be no one there to give mass shape or coherence.

The image of the eye also brings to mind Brahma, the dreaming god. In Hinduism, we are all an aspect of the great God's being. He hides behinds masks, the Hindu maya, tricking himself into believing that this great play should be taken seriously, but in reality, he is just having a bit of fun. Alan Watts asks: if you were a God, an all powerful being with nothing to do and "all time, eternity, and all power at your disposal," what would you do? He suggests that the God would dream about an infinite number of things in an infinite number of bodies. You would be a mighty king with thousands of concubines, a cowboy, an Indian, a martian, a performing monkey, a tycoon, but also a starving child, Job the unfortunate, a prostitute. And it would be okay, because it would be a dream. But that would eventually get boring--you would make yourself start believing it's real. And that is what Watts means when he calls this a Cosmic Drama. We are all the great God Brahma pretending to be someone else. Alan Watts says this about the eyes:
The eyes are our most sensitive organ, and when you look and look and look into another person's eyes you are looking at the most beautiful jewels in the universe. And if you look down beyond that surface beauty, it's the most beautiful jewel in the universe, because that's the universe looking at you. We are the eyes of the cosmos. So that in a way, when you look deeply into somebody's eyes, you're looking deep into yourself, and the other person is looking deeply into the same self, which many-eyed, as the mask of Vishnu is many- faced, is looking out everywhere, one energy playing myriads of different parts. Why? It's perfectly obvious, because if you were God, and you knew everything and were in control of everything, you would be bored to death.

You can find the whole article here. When we stare into Jack's eyes, God is staring back. We are peering into his soul, and it as if we can see everything: his troubles with his father, with his ex-wife, with his career, and even his future problems with alcoholism and letting go. But the good also glows through: the future leader, the caring man who wants to protect everyone but can't. The great drama which will soon be unfolding and the role Jack is going to fulfill also start to reveal themselves, even in this first scene. We are all acting out this play, lila, and have our entrances and exits, as the great Bard once said. The tragedy of the plane crash was the beginning. It was necessary for all the candidates to begin their test.

To become a member of secret schools, a candidate must go through an initiation. The most important part of this process is the death ritual. In Mark Booth's book, he gives the example of Caglistro in a Masonic lodge in London. I will quote directly from him:
In the Esperance Lodge above a pub in Soho, he [Caglistro] was asked to repeat an oath of secrecy, then blindfolded. A rope was tied round his waist, and he heard pulley creak as he was winched up to the ceiling. Suddenly he fell to the floor, his blindfold removed, and he saw a pistol being loaded with poweder and a bullet. The blindfold was replaced, he was handed the pistol and asked to prove his obedience by shooting himself in the head. When he hesitated, his initiators shouted at him, accusing him of being a coward. He pulled the trigger, heard an explosion, felt a blow to the side of the head and smelled gunpowder. He had believed he was going to die -- and now he was an initiate. (Booth 196)

The plane crash was in much the same vein as Caglistro's trial. It was an initiation into the world of the island. Only upon fear of death would the candidates be prepared to take on the rituals and the trials which were going to be thrown at them--as Booth puts it another way, "the candidate is made to feel the tragedy of his own life, an overwhelming need for catharsis. He begins to judge his own life as the demons and angels will judge it after death" (220). This initiation process is common in mystery schools. Mark Booth gives another example which took place during the French Revolution, where candidates were put in a pit. A bull was sacrificed above and the person below was drenched in the beast's blood. In another part of the process, "the candidate would lie in a tomb as if dead. The the initiator would grab him by the right hand pull him up into 'new life'" (Booth 183). Many have reported at this "death" moment, the world made sense. "So that's why that happened. So that's what it all meant," reported soldiers who returned from war, a bomb inexplicably not blowing up under their feet or a bullet grazing their face. To the mystery schools, this process prepared the candidate for the ascent and descent through the spheres. Mark Booth writes that the "spirit ascends through the sphere of the constellations and is finally reunited with the great Cosmic mind" (Booth 191). Aristides calls what Booth described a "lightness which nobody who has not been initiated could either describe or understand." The Cosmic mind, "the wondrous light", is the center of the island for Jack, the place he goes to die at the end of series, though "It has been a painful, confusing and tiring journey" (191). The ancients believed that when you died you traveled into the heavens, past the seven known spheres and communed with the highest being. You were guided by both Mercury and Lucifer (Foe Locke, The Man in Black), and then afterwords descended back to earth. It is pertinent that a fifth season episode was titled "The Little Prince", because the novella is perhaps another retelling of the spheres of existence--a tale told in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" and Dante's "Commedia". At any rate, the survivors are being prepared here. They plummeted to the island, death before them, and in Jack's case, awoke ready to begin "his mission" because as The Man in Black (in the disguise of Christian Shephard, Jack's deceased father) put it in the webisode "So It Begins", he has "work to do". After the final episode of the series, we come to an even greater realization: the island was only one sphere itself, and there are many more the survivors have to travel through before they reach the "ultimate "nirvana", a joining with "God", whatever or whoever that is. Some decide to stay behind. Some fall backwards, descending to a new hell. Some move forward.

However, in the LOST mythology, you can only continue on your journey in the company of a chosen few. When Jack rushes out to see the fallen plane, he is meeting his "karass"--a term invented by Kurt Vonnegut for his made-up religion Bokononism. A karass is "a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will". Ka-tet is a similar word created by Stephen King, meaning "a group of people [who] can be tired together by fate, or ka". "We are ka-tet. We are one from many." He doesn't know these people are his karass or ka-tet yet. Jack doesn't know they will change his life and bring him closer to God. He only knows a "pool-pah" has happened, and he needs to save lives. Booth says, in the initiation, the candidate "would be plunged in utter darkness. He would seem to himself to be losing all consciousness, to be dying. But he would seem to himself to come round again, then be led by an animal-headed being, traveling down long passages and through a series of chambers" (217). The first living creature Jack sees upon opening his eyes is a yellow lab, who quickly runs off. He stands, orientating himself and pulling a bottle of alcohol out of his pocket. The line Where am I? is never uttered. It will be spoken aloud by another character later in the episode, but here it isn't needed. We can see it on Jack's face: Where am I? Suddenly, he hears screaming in the distance. Jack runs through a seemingly endless jungle of bamboo, trying to find its source, and emerges on a scene of horror--the pool-pah, the shitstorm. We now know he is his karass' shepherd--a healer, associated with Asclepius (Apollo's son) and Jesus. He tries to control everything and save everyone, but it is his his tragic flaw. No matter how many times he is told to let go, he can't. He can't believe in anything but the material. He can't believe the island also has healing powers, alchemical and ancient. Jack can't believe that there may be something more than meets the eye here. (Cue the obligatory Transformers reference)

In the final season, Jack does let go. It takes him years of suffering, but he becomes what he was always meant to be. He becomes the Christ archetype, his Asclepius/Jesus connection playing itself out. Jacob hasn't been introduced yet, but he is an incarnation of Apollo/Osiris, the sun god, who wages a war against the darkness, Satan/Saturn/Seth (the smoke monster) and the triple-diety's other aspect, Lucifer (The Man in Black). Jack is the son of Jacob in spirit. In Greek mythology, Hades becomes angry when Asclepius' healing powers, which are extraordinarily effective, makes mortals live forever. He goes to Zeus, complaining of this offense against the rules which were set up, and the sky god smites Apollo's son. In the end, Jack, the initiate, is fulfilling his purpose. He is not fighting his role, his performance, his act. He dies to save everyone. He is letting go and can move onto the next sphere. I imagine Cleopatra at the end of Shakespeare's play, giving into her destiny, knowing that by dying, she will live forever. Like Asclepius, Jack was trying to prevent fate, but you can't. You have to own it. But I am warping to the end of the series. For now, Jack finds the crashed plane, and his journey in this sphere truly begins.

The beauty of LOST is that you can look at it on so many different levels. We have the very human drama of a man surviving a terrible plane crash and pulling a bottle of gin and tonic out of his pocket, the phantasmagoria of the crash site, but also the mysteries, the mythology, the yarns, unfolding before us. We have two warring entities setting up their game of chess, which LOST is such a clear metaphor for, and how the plane and all the people aboard it might be yet another retelling of the Lucifer tale. The passengers were vain enough to believe themselves greater than God, so God thrust them back down to earth, to this figurative hell, so they can learn to let go of their hubris. LOST also raises not only mystical questions, but also scientific ones. The writers try to bridge the gap between spiritual and material. It's one of the great binaries within the show, but I will cover that more in later blogs. I hope to make this number one in a series on LOST.

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