ACROSS THE SEA:
PLUMBING THE DEPTHS OF THE SOURCESTREAM ABYSS
VIA DEEP ISLAND FLASHBACKS,
'FORCEFUL' STREAMS OF LIFE AND DEATH
EMANATING FROM THE 'SHEOL' ISLAND'S SOURCE CAVE,
R.I.P. 'MOTHER OF LIGHT' SOPHIA AND HER 'DEMIURGE' MIB,
HEADING TOWARD A YIN/YANG MERGER
OR AN ESCHATOLOGICAL EPILOGUE, IN THE END?
A rousing paean goes out to the entire Lost creative combine for another heuristic adventure in the land of mirror twin, yin/yang alt/verse enlightenment. As usual, we'll start with some real-time highlights and commentary on tonight's episode, then proceed to pondering what lies beneath the shadow of future plotlines....
1. Claudia washed ashore, pregnant.... Allison Janney (AJ) got there by accident, too.... Questions leading to other questions.... How appropriately analytical... reflecting science's inability to achieve a final-end-all-be-all Theory Of Everything... the missing TOE.... AJ will find the other people.... Is AJ the Island Protector?
2. Claudia first gives birth to... Jacob.... And now here's Esau.... Another opening mirror twin inversion of the biblical story.... Claudia only picked one name-- how poetic, as they will be the white and black, light and dark unto each other, literal (mirror) twins... And now they are without their mother, as AJ kills Claudia... As with Claire and Aaron, one must be careful with whom one entrusts the care of one's child....
3. Accidents will indeed happen... Now MIB finds a Lost game on the beach, with black and white stones, of course. He just knows how to play it.... And Jacob will play the game, after all... Heh-heh-heh....
4. AJ's weaving a tapestry, how appropriate, of course.... Do you love me, Jacob...? Old age... symbolized by a tortoise on the beach....
5. AJ tells MIB he's special... AJ left the game for him.... Is there nowhere else, across the sea....! Sounds pathological, dysfunctional.... (More on this, below....)
6. Now Jacob and MIB are chasing a boar, and they're hiding as warrior-hunters appear and kill the boar.... (AJ) We're here for a reason.... To protect the island...? They come, they fight, they corrupt.... That's what people do.... AJ's made it so Jacob and MIB can never hurt each other.
7. They're here on the island to guard.... the cave with the luminescent FORCE, the LIGHT OF LIFE (LOL) infused in the water... (AJ) They must guard it so that no one else can put out the light.... Midichlorians, anyone? Yes, this most certainly echoes my prior postings regarding the importance of the lightside water, in Season 6 and earlier....
8. Now CLAUDIA's back, appearing to MIB.... There are many things from across the sea.... AJ's not your mother....
9. Jacob's punching MIB for wanting to leave AJ... You will never be able to leave this island... (MIB) "I will, and one day I will prove it...." (Yeah, if it kills you and everyone else! How ironic that the Evil One-cum-Smokey-- who later gains release from the Hell cave as MIB's body is fed down the SOURCESTREAM 'rabbit hole'-- is wanting the very same thing.... Freedom from the islandprison... In my 7 Days-based posting I noted the connections among the island and the prison ship in 7 Days.... both are harboring some bad entities in their underworld 'holds'.... 1
10. AJ's comes clean, admitting to Jacob that she killed Claudia, so that they (the kids) would stay good....!
11. Is AJ figuratively-- or perhaps even quite literally-- Mother Earth/GAIA, and the stream of life issuing from the Sourcestream cave is the essence that infuses us all with vitality? Yes, the island is sounding more and more like the Third Heaven connection I made in last week's posting... with BOTH good and evil residing there.... Is there a darkside Hell gate/portal mirror twin equivalent of the lightside portal shown to us earlier by AJ? Or better yet, is the one and the same Sourcestream the font of cleansing and (brown ALE infecting) waters? Yes, like the Third Heaven notion, the concept of SHEOL is making more and more sense as a basis for understanding key aspects regarding the nature and function of the island. 2
12. Adult Jacob and MIB playing 'the game' again.... (MIB) "The people are a means to an end".... MIB found a way off the island, and he throws the 'killing knife' against the magnetized excavation enclosure...
13. AJ's on the lookout, doing intelligence-gathering on the activities of the proto-others. MIB tending hot coals, amidst the smoke, while appropriately enough, AJ appears to him bathed 'in the light', echoing Jacob's jungle appearance to MIB, reminding him of the killing rules, in the presence of Alpert....
14. MIB can't find the Sourcestream Cave, so they went downward, digging...! We see the FDW in the background, lying flat against the wall.... MIB pulls a stone from the wall, and there's the light. They're developing a system for channeling the water and the light, so he (MIB) can leave... (Please see my 5/6/10 Island MHD Propulsion posting in this regard....)
15. AJ bangs MIB's head against the wall...! Again, this dysfunctionality may well be 'winking' at a broader family of interpretations focused on Lost as a product of someone's delusional fantasies... A split personality... Is the OT/FST really telling us that Lost is a rich figment of someone's dissociative personality disorder....?
16. AJ wakes up Jacob.... It's time.... Now Jacob will be the one to protect the light.... It's the SOURCE... Yes, just as I suspected back in my NEW GODS postings from earlier this season.... The SOURCE, and the turbulence surrounding the island is indeed the SOURCE WALL....3
17. (AJ) Take the cup and drink.... this is the blood.... Source-infused elixir of life, binding him to the Island as its Protector....
18. Now MIB's waking up, outside the well, lying on the ground.... They filled the well in.... Smoke on the horizon... and mirror-inverting the lightside/darkside 
image from Star Wars: A New Hope.... MIB returns home to find his village scorched, ala Luke returning home to find Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's smoking skeletons, courtesy of the darkside empire.... Hmmm.... If MIB was knocked out by AJ prior to completing the FDW installation, who completed it? Did the hunter group to which MIB belonged, the symbolic ESAU clan, finish the FDW before their village was torched and they were killed? Or will the FDW be completed later on, as more people are 'brought to the island by accident'? 
19. Yes, a storm is indeed coming.... And MIB kills AJ/Mother.... (AJ's dying words) "Thank you".... Yes, as some of us have surmised, being the Island Protector for so, oh so long has to really wear on you.... And when Ben kills Jacob, I wonder if Jacob felt some small twinge of relief, as did AJ/Mother previously, when the burden was finally lifted from their shoulders....
20. Now they're back at the cave of light... And Jacob sends MIB down the hole, just like LOCKE almost did in Season One, going down that veritable rabbit hole.... And MIB becomes Smokey, thusly.... The Evil One.... AMMIT, et al., in all of his dark Hades/Hellish incarnations.... Jacob brings MIB's body back to the lightside camp, 
and puts the so, so symbolic white and black stones into a sack, and the Adam and Eve skeletongs are revealed as MOTHER and MIB.... Yes, borne of an Adam (fallen human brother) and Eve (mother). Hmmm... How interesting it is to note the not-so-coincidental: (1) MOTHER LIGHT/SOPHIA connections to AJ/Mother and (2) the DEMIURGE connections to MIB, riffing on points I made in last week's posting. How very, very apropos indeed, that the Adam and Eve skeletal 'reveal' showed that we are forged from the legacies of these two beings....4
21. And providing the soundtrack for the trailer at the end of 6.15 is... The Doors... How apropos.....5
Yin/Yang Theory Redux: Transcending Mirror Twin OT/FST Dualisms Through The Looming Merger Of The Timelines, Restoring A Lost Uni-verse-
One of Lost's greatest and most enduring contributions to the hallowed halls of literature lies in its engaging and heuristic examination of the wealth of insights available through exploring core dualisms inherent in reality as we know and understand it. As a species, our ability to perceive and act on the world is rooted in fundamentally dualistic 'hardwiring'; from our neurons to our schematic cognitions, we are wired to efficiently process and act upon the world using binary systems and distinctions. On/off, fired synapse/unfired synapse, yes/no, 
good/bad, black/white, positive/negative, up/down, in/out, individual/group, fate/free will, choice/destiny, punishment/reward, sin/salvation, temptation/ redemption, and much, much more.... And the larger, more complex, aspects of our natures and patterns of perceived realities emerge in a fractal and quantumly superpositional manner from the dynamic interplay of smaller dualistic/binary operations, including the unpredictable, indeterminate, daisy-chaining outcomes arising from a single either/or choice faced by a single person....
Among other things, the OT/FST contrasts and flashingly anamnetic cross-verse enlightenments showcase a growing awareness of the range of possible choices and consequences confronting us all on a day-to-day and moment-by-moment basis, along with fleeting glimpses of the very different 'worlds' of reality that may well have been 'realized' had we made different choices, opening up different vistas of emergent daisychained realities, collaboratively authoring new storylines woven into the fabric of colorful alternate life-tapestries.... Here I would most wholeheartedly agree with Doc Jensen and others that there is something not quite right about the FST.
One interpretation previously explored by myself and others is that the FST is one of Darlton's 'riffs' on Plato's Allegory of the Cave, with the FST holding a veritable 'Narrative MIRROR' up to our faces, with we the viewers in the role of 'Plato-cave-dwellers,' witnessing the shadowy surface realities of an alternate story/ verse embodying the inevitable 'woulda', 'shoulda', 'couldas' sporadically flashing into the 'mainland' consciousnesses of our everyday lives. What if... What if... Jack and Juliet were married with a son, David... What if Locke and Helen were planning to head down the aisle together... What if Desmond were in WIdmore's good graces.... What if Ben and Rousseau were, indeed, romantically involved...?
Here I would refer back to my Yin/Yang Theory from the 3/16/10 "Recon" posting 
and submit that what is wrong with the FST is deeper than the Cave/Shadow interpretation; what's fundamentally wrong with the FST is that it is INCOMPLETE.... Yes, as per my Yin/Yang theory-- and Doc Jensen's subsequent invocation of a third verse/timeline concept-- what Darlton may have up their collective sleeves as one of the central shocking 'reveals' in THE END is that Juliet was indeed right when (channeled through Miles) she revealed to Sawyer that "It worked." Yes, their efforts paid off, but not in the way they anticipated, of course... Be very, very careful what you wish for... Heh-heh-heh...! 
In accordance with my Yin/Yang Theory, the Incident may very well have generated a 'split personality' cosmic/quantum altverse dissociation, splitting the universe apart from an inherently dualistic state into its constituent parts, manifested and showcased to viewers in the form of the OT and the FST. Not surprisingly, these 'verses mirror in no small way the dualistic pairings we've witnessed to date, and here I would propose that the OT/FST dualism is in no small way mirroring other key binary oppositions playing out on the series to date, including Jacob/MIB.
On this view, it is less true that there is something wrong with the FST but not with the OT; instead, we can see that the greater truth lies in the realization that both the OT and the FST are incomplete views of an inherently dualistic and more complex reality as we know it. From this perspective, we can see that the looming merger of the timelines is more than a mere narrative device or means of tying off plot threads; no, the merger may well embody a fundamental redemption and reconciliation of the uni-verse, back unto to itself. In short, we can now see that Jack's hubris in attempting to rewrite history has played a key role in creating a dissociative loop of very real spacetime existence, with the Incident splitting apart the Uni-verse into the OT and the FST.
Of course, the looming question on everyone's mind then is what will happen when the OT/FST merger occurs.... Hmmm.... Will this merger so effectively close the 'split personality' spacetime loop that it ceases to exist outside itself? Will we see a THIRD VIEW of the more complete Yin/Yang, inherently dualistic Universe, playing out in the final scenes of Lost, as the OT and FST have collapsed back into themselves, bringing the Mirror Matter side of things back into its proper place, operating in the Shadowlands of our everyday mainland lives....?
If so, I would not be surprised to see a final reunion of all the key Lost characters to date, basking in the warm glow of a sun-bathed luau, trading war stories of their OT and FST experiences, now blended together in the revelatory melange of a higher-order plane of anamnetic shared consciousness.... Now Hurley's spouting his patented deep-fried homespun wisdom while Libby looks lovingly into his eyes.... And all is well, with the apparent prospects of a Happily Ever After ending.... Until we see... Uh oh.... the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion looming on the horizon.... As the ISLAND slowly sinks toward the bottom of its watery grave....
But wait....what's that, now....? Just what is that.... looming like a dark cloud on the horizon? Is it...? Could it be....? The SMOKE MONSTER and his evil horde are finally released from their prison, now that the cork has been blasted to kingdom come and HELL has been unleashed on the mainlands....!
Flashback: A scene from "The Lighthouse"-- Inside the cliffside cave, lined with Candidate names, where Flocke tells Sawyer he's got three options:
1. "Do nothing. See how all this plays out. And possibly your name will get crossed out."
2. "Take over Jacob's job and protect the island from nothing, there's nothing to protect it from. It's just a damn island."
3. "We just go. We get the Hell off this island and we never look back. We do that together. Are you ready to go home?"
Sawyer's reply to Flocke: "Hell yes!"
Heh-heh-heh..... What if.... Sly 'ol silver-tongued Smokey was telling the truth, after all.... and now that the cork has been 'popped', he really CAN quite LITERALLY get the HELL off of the Islandprison, thusly going home to spread his evil ways throughout the mainland.... Lucifer unleashed....
Cerberus unchained.... Satan unbound, roaming freely on this island Earth....! Now THEN, the game of Temptation/Redemption Island would be truly LOST.... Heaven help us all, if this is indeed the case in THE END.... Does Sawyer realize the dark, literal depths of truth that may be lying beneath the shadows of his reply to Flocke....?
Uncorking Smokey/Gog And His Evil Minions: Heading Toward An Eschatological Epilogue In THE END?
Interestingly enough, the aforementioned plot possibility does indeed ring true with some key aspects of ESCHATOLOGY:
"The word "
eschatology" is derived from two Greek words meaning "last" and "study" (ἔσχατος, last; and λογία, lit. discourse). It is the study of the end of things,
whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, or the end of the world. Broadly speaking, it is the study of the destiny of man as it is revealed in the
Bible... It is concerned with death and the
afterlife,
heaven and
hell, the
return of Jesus, the
resurrection of the dead, the
Rapture, the
Tribulation, the
Millennium, the
end of the world, the
Last Judgment, the new heaven and earth, and the ultimate consummation of all of God's purposes.... The second coming of Christ is the central event in Christian eschatology. Most Christians believe that death and suffering will continue to exist until Christ's return." [Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology]
As we will see below, the Study of the End of Things highlights two separate, distinct times at which the Evil One is freely sowing his darkside seeds, operating in an unfettered manner upon the mainland world at large, followed by subsequent imprisonments. And yes, the relevance of an eschatological study of the end of things for Lost was most definitely underscored during the oceanside exchange between Jacob and MIB in the Season 5 finale:
MIB:” I don't have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?”
JACOB: “You are wrong.”
MIB: “Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.”
JACOB: “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.”
While I and others have previously examined the implications of Jacob's closing remarks from a range of different standpoints-- escaping the Samsaric Wheel of karmic birth/death cycles and progressing along the Eightfold path to Enlightenment, climbing the Jacob's Ladder, progressing upward from the First to the Seventh Heaven, and more--considering the Season 6 'reveals' to date regarding the nature of Smokey/Flocke and the function of the island proper, the sequence of endtime events as predicted in the Bible do indeed raise some intriguing additional plotline possibilities regarding the looming series finale in The End...
As one might suspect, universal agreement on the timing and exact nature of these events is lacking and still open for debate. One of the more commonly-held interpretations-- PREMILLENNIALISM-- provides a rich heuristic vein of insights into potential plotlines lying beneath the shadow of the series finale:
"Standard
premillennialism posits that Christ's second coming will inaugurate a literal thousand-year earthly kingdom. Upon Christ's return, there will be a resurrection of the
people of God, who will reign with Christ for a thousand years. During this time Satan will be imprisoned in the Abyss. After the thousand years, there will be a second resurrection – that of the godless people who were not a part of the first resurrection. Satan will also be released to lead the people of the Earth astray once again. The armies of
Gog and Magog will attempt to conquer Jerusalem during this time, but they will be permanently defeated by the army of the Lord. The final judgment (also known as the “
Last Judgment” or “Great White Throne Judgment”) will then take place, and Satan and his followers will be cast into the Lake of Fire, from which there is no return. The people of God who were a part of the first resurrection are not subject to the Last Judgment. After this judgment, our present world will be replaced with a new heaven and a new earth. God himself will be present there, and death and sorrow will be things of the past." [Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology]
Thus we can see the deeper issues underlying Widmore's concern that Flocke not be allowed to gain freedom from the islandprison.... Darlton and company may have intentionally positioned the show's climax to coincide with the SECOND 
COMING OF CHRIST and the subsequent casting of Satan into the fiery lake of Gehenna, imprisoning him in the Abyss.... Who will play the role of Christ in The End? Will it be Jack or Desmond? If it is Jack, as part of his 'rite of ascension' into the throne of the Island Protector, will he also enact key aspects of Christ's First Coming, by descending into Hell, on the third day rising again, as I predicted in Endnote 5 of my 5/4/10 posting? If so, in the series finale I would not at all be surprised to see Jack casting the Evil One back into the bottleverse with the rest of his minions, Imprisoning him in the Abyss....
"Revelation tells us that at the end of the tribulation period, the "Lamb" (generally identified with Christ) and his armies conquer the “beast” (generally identified with the Antichrist), who is captured and thrown into the lake of fire, while his battle casualties are left as food for the birds. Satan, the spiritual driving force behind the beast and his armies, is imprisoned: I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished." [Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology]
Heh-heh-heh.... Now that clunking sound associated with the appearance of Smokey is making more and more sense.... The BEAST, the dragon, the serpent who was chained for a thousand years.... (nod to Doc Jensen's 'dragon' link with Smokey, courtesy of one John Archibald Wheeler....!) Hmmm.... given Jacob's description of the island's 'cork' function, I wonder if the seal/cork has slipped open a bit, over the years, allowing a chained Smokey to wander the islandcork, looking for loopholes in all the right places, working to secure his freedom from the island prison.... Or was the seal violated in some dark, ancient times, during a mystery cult conjuring forth of the Evil One, or perhaps even through some inadvertent means, as in the case of the more recent excavations and activities by MIB and crew, associated with the installation of the FDW?
If we learn that the island has been holding Smokey chained and his bottleverse minions corked for a thousand years, then the current bid by Smokey to gain freedom from the island may well coincide with the end of the thousand-year Millennial imprisonment and, if the sequence of events comprising the eschatological epilogue hold true, the bid to keep the Evil One chained will be LOST, doomed to failure as part of a larger biblically-based narrative now unfolding on Lost:
"According to the Bible, the Millennial age of peace (whether a literal thousand years or not) all but closes the history of planet Earth. However, the story is not yet quite finished:
"When the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea".... Despite this huge show of force, the battle will be short-lived, for Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation all tell us that this last desperate attempt to destroy the people and the city of God will end in disaster: "I [i.e. God] will bring him to judgement with pestilence and bloodshed. I will rain down on him and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him: flooding rain, great hailstones, fire and brimstone."
[Ezek 38:22] Revelation also says: "Fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them."[Rev 20:9]Following the defeat of Gog, the last judgement begins: "The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."[Rev 20:10] Satan will join the Antichrist and the False Prophet, who were condemned to the lake of fire at the beginning of the Millennium."
Thus we can now see that the Yin/Yang merger plotline I outlined above is one plausible way that Darlton could end the show on a Lost note, showing us that a 'Millennial age of peace' resulting from the newly merged OT/FST would inevitably be a transitory and comparatively short-lived peace, followed by a 
reemergence of SMOKEY/GOG unfettered, freely and gleefully roaming this island Earth, sowing the seeds of his darkside destruction... Ultimately, however, the lightside forces will prevail, as biblical prophecy is fulfilled and eschatological events are unfolded..... Is this SECOND defeat of Satan the one that will be shown to us in The End, with Jack/Christ and other lightside forces casting the Evil One into the Gehennic Lake of Fire, finally sealing/corking his Fate, for all Eternity to come.... And is this Lake of Fire located in the Abyss found at the bottom of the Sourcestream Cave, into which MIB so unfortunately was cast, releasing Smokey to roam more freely, chained to the islandcork, looking to gain final freedom from the Third Heaven SHEOL Island....?
And what is to come... after the final fall of Satan and the Last Judgment....? Here it is, in The End, that we may serve witness to the coming of the New Jerusalem:
"In Isaiah, God promises a new heaven and earth: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former will not be remembered nor come to mind."[Isa 65:17] The author of Revelation has a corresponding vision: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away."[Rev 21:1] The focus turns to one city in particular, the New Jerusalem. Once again, we see the imagery of the marriage: "I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."[Rev 21:2] In the New Jerusalem, God "will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.."[Rev 21:4] As a result, there is “no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” Nor is there a need for the sun to give its light, “for the glory of God illuminated it, and the Lamb is its light."[Rev 21:22-23] The city will also be a place of great peace and joy, for "God will 
wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. The city has a river which proceeds "out of the throne of God and of the Lamb."
[Rev 22:1] Next to the river is the tree of life, which bears twelve fruits and yields its fruit every month. The last time we saw the tree of life was in the Garden of Eden.[Gen 2:9] God drove Adam and Eve away from it because it bestowed eternal life and he did not want them to have it in their degraded state.[Gen 3:22] In the New Jerusalem, the tree of life reappears, and everyone in the city has access to it. Genesis tells us that the earth was cursed because of Adam's sin,[Gen 3:17] but John writes that in the New Jerusalem, "there will be no more curse." [Source:
Hmmm...... In the closing moments of Lost's final episode.... in The End.... will we witness a bold and compelling portrayal of this new creation, a new heaven and earth, with no more death and sorrow.... and with everyone partaking the fruits of the Tree of Life, thusly receiving the ageless gift that Richard Alpert grew to hate..... eternal life without the curse of our sin, living as one with the Father, joined by our dearly departed loved ones, resting in the secure peace of a finally and fully resolved set of Cosmic Daddy Issues....?
Time will tell....
Dr. Todd J. Hostager
_________________________________________________________________________
ENDNOTES:
1. Please see my 4/20/10 "Last Recruit" posting in this regard:
2. Yes, the Third Heaven concept I explored in Endnote 5 of my 5/4/10 posting is an intriguing and complex construct:
"In the later
Pseudepigrapha Book of the Secrets of Enoch, the Third Heaven is described as a location "between corruptibility and incorruptibility" (2 Enoch 8:5) containing the
Tree 
of Life, "whereon the Lord rests, when he goes up into paradise." (verse 3) Two springs in the Third Heaven, one of milk and the other of honey, along with two others of wine and oil, flow down into the
Garden of Eden, which is also located there. (verse 6) In contrast with the common concept of Paradise, 2 Enoch also describes a place of torment existing in the Third Heaven, "a very terrible place" with "all manner of tortures" in which merciless angels torment "those who dishonour God, who on earth practice sin against nature," including
sodomites,
sorcerers,
enchanters,
witches, the proud, thieves, liars and those guilty of various other transgressions. (2 Enoch 10:1-3)"
The 'Third Heaven' paradise thus contains TWO SPRINGS, and this may be a strong clue by Darlton confirming the existence of two SOURCESTREAMS of force emanating on the island, one associated with clear water healing and life sustaining force (as seen in the Temple healing examples), and one associated with the brown ALEful water associated with the infection of SAYID by the darkside (please see my prior Season 6 postings in this regard.)
Mirroring the light/dark, good/evil nature of the THIRD HEAVEN, the island may also profitably be construed as SHEOL:
"In the
Old Testament Sheol is the common destination of both the righteous and the unrighteous flesh, as recounted in
Ecclesiastes and
Job. The
New Testament (written in Greek) also uses "Hades" to refer to the abode of the dead. (Revelation 20:13) The belief
that those in
Sheol awaited the resurrection either in comfort (in the
bosom of Abraham) or in torment is reflected in the story of the New Testament of
Lazarus and Dives. English translations of the Hebrew scriptures have variously rendered the word
Sheol as "
Hell or "the grave".... The origin of the term
sheol is obscure. One theory is that Sheol is connected to ša'al, the root of which means "to burrow" and is thus related to šu'al "fox" or "burrower". Biblical scholar
William Foxwell Albright suggests that the Hebrew root for
SHE'OL is
SHA'AL, which means "to ask, to interrogate, to question."
John Tvedtnes, also a Biblical scholar, connects this with the common theme in
near-death experiences of the interrogation of the soul after crossing the Tunnel." [Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheol]
The appearance of Isabella and other 'good' ghosts on the island, and the whispers of Michael and others still trapped for bad deeds done on the island, supports the notion that the island is a SHEOL/THIRD HEAVEN construct, serving much the same functions.... And most certainly, the points regarding: (1) interrogation (mirroring MA'AT's featherweight scale of judgment, with AMMIT waiting in the wings), and (2) souls crossing the tunnel strike resonant chords with what we've seen on the show to date. Indeed, the second point was strikingly underscored in the very structure of the SOURCESTREAM CAVE viewed in tonight's episode.... tunnel-like, to be sure....
3. For more information on my Lost connections to the NEW GODS, the SOURCE, and the SOURCE WALL, please see:
And for more information on the important WATER connection, please see:
4. See especially the second half of the 5/4/10 posting with regard to the crucial SOPHIA/MOTHER OF LIGHT and DEMIURGE connections to AJ/Mother and to MIB, respectively:
And the 'Oldest Hunter ' character in tonight's boar hunting scene echoes the biblical ESAU-- brother of Jacob--and he certainly fits the bill as MIB's spiritual father and Adam-precursor:
"The Bible depicts Esau as a hunter who prefers the outdoor life, qualities that distinguished him from his brother, who was a shy or simple man, depending on the translation of the Hebrew word "Tam" (which also means "relatively perfect man").
According to the Bible, Esau is the ancestor of the
Edomites."
Of course, we must also not forget to acknowledge the Locke connection channeling, as he did so well, the knife-wielding primal Esau hunter archetype on the island, literally bringing home the bacon, presaging the 'takeover' of his corporeal form by MIB-cum-Flocke, now the Esau-incarnate Hunter of Lost Souls....
5. What a classic and decidedly relevant tune they chose for the trailer at the end of 6.15, The End.. Daddy and Mommy issues, Cosmic and Corporeal... indeed:
"Shortly past the mid-point of the nearly 12-minute long album version, the song suddenly enters a spoken-word section with the words, "The killer awoke before dawn... " That section of the song reaches a dramatic climax with the lines, "Father/ Yes son?/ I want to
kill you/ Mother, I want to... (fuck you)," (with the last two words screamed out unintelligibly). This is often considered a reference to the
Oedipus complex. Said Morrison in 1969, "Everytime I hear that song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye song probably just to a girl, but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be." Producer
Paul Rothchild said in an interview that he believed the song to be an inside trip, and that "kill the father" means destroying everything hierarchical, controlling, and restrictive in one's psyche, while "fuck the mother" means embracing everything that is expansive, flowing, and alive in the psyche. Ray Manzarek, the former keyboard player for the Doors spoke about it defensively saying, 'He was giving voice in a rock 'n' roll setting to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in Freudian psychology. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that to his own mom and dad. He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre!'" Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_(The_Doors_song)