Ah, Hope! what would life be, stripped of thy encouraging smiles, that teach us to look behind the dark clouds of today, for the golden beams that are to gild the morrow. – Susanna Moodie
THE SMOKE MONSTER IS THE PAST
Not just Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley’s past, but the smoke monster is all of our pasts, filled with the dark, dirty, pain, hurt, and everything else we leave behind us in our lives. Think of the light in the cave like fresh clean gasoline that you pour into your car, but as your car uses the gas it spits out the tail pipe in a cloud of black smoke. The clean unused gas is the symbol of your future and the smoke is a symbol of your past and all the things you leave behind. Yet, if you backup your car you can run into your own exhaust i.e., your own smoke consumes you. And that’s what had happened on the island they had “backed up into their own exhaust” so to speak.
Therefore, the ancient Egyptians were the first to manipulate time, but in doing so they created the smoke monster which is really nothing more than a physical version of the past.
The light = time (the future, hope, etc.)
The smoke = the past (the exhaust of our lives)
The second side effect of the first instance of time travel was that the area around the source of light/time was no longer attached to it’s surroundings either geographically or in time. The entire area was “lifted” from it’s location and had become a “floating” island in time. Finding the island took more than just knowing geography but also took knowing how to determine where the island might be in time via reading other similar electromagnetic pockets of energy around the world. The ancient Egyptians secretly handed down the instructions for locating the island in time from generation to generation (eventually ending up in the hands of Eloise Hawking).
After the Egyptians’ initial discovery, it didn’t take long for them to figure out that the ability to manipulate time could be used in ways that might harm them. Yet that was only the beginning of their fears. The Egyptians determined that if time was placed in the wrong hands it could spell the end of reality as we know it. If someone were to completely dam up the light/time, the future could no longer proceed and we would all be stuck in time never able to advance to the next moment. Or if someone were able to allow all of time to flow too quickly all at once the future would evaporate into thin air and time would cease to exist and therefore we would all cease to exist. Again think of the hourglass, if you plug the hole, time stops.If you make the hole too large, time slips through so fast that no sand is left and time stops. Clearly time needs a protector!
FATHER TIME
Jacob wasn’t the first protector, and he wasn’t the last. Jacob was only one of who knows how many island/time protectors since the ancient Egyptians. Jacob, had been installed in a “Father Time” type of role in that he was a protector of time but not an eternal protector, he would be replaced when his own time was up just like Father Time is depicted as being replaced by a baby at the end of each year. No, I am not suggesting that Jacob was literally Father Time, what I am saying is Jacob was a type of Father Time (it’s symbolism) similar to the fact that Father Time himself was merely a type of Chronos who was the personification of time in ancient Greece. Chronos was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel (hmmm… turning a Zodiac wheel you say???). Either way, Jacob was there to protect time from humans that had come to manipulate it to their advantage and also to protect it from the past i.e., the smoke monster (more on that later).
Vincent you ask? I’m sure he maybe with Walt on the island with Walt helping his dad still trying to pass on.
(NOTE: no sign of original attempt at posting)
…..having evolved into an independent physical theorist since ‘LOST’ with a scale-unifying, comparatively-simplified physics model that contextualizes almost all of this thing called’ existence’ – ‘time’, ‘gravity’, sound’, ‘electricity’ (an axial expression concentrated through magnetism’s passage through denser ‘effective’ media) ALL, resonant secondary magnetic informational effects to it (‘heat’, a tertiary one, JUST as subjective) seeing it as a STRONG warning, cautionary tale IN / about 2019-2021+, the ‘pandemic’ more than EVER (where an agency called ‘DHARMA’ – a Hindu religious reference yet, nearly SYNONYMOUS with REAL-world ‘DARPA’ and Australian Alan Dale’s Charles Widmore, a Robert Maxwell / Rupert Murdoch / George Soros type of tycoon, megalomaniac) – its ‘golden light’ (LONG an occult object, instinctively valued by, affecting our species) is perceived suprahuman: power, knowledge, understanding, insight (as opposed to, or not necessarily with, wisdom) coherence, ‘constructive entanglement’, awareness, ‘love’, appreciation – and yes ‘go(o)d’, if NOT universally so…..
…..Jacob & ‘The Man In Black’ are, as is SO commonly found, two symbolic sides of the SAME extremist conceit, one which goes to transhumanistically disintegral lengths to maintain MATERIAL life including worship and FORCING of science upon it, largely represented through attempts at reversal of a CATASTROPHIC infertility problem and what’s ULTIMATELY revealed as a collective ethereal construct produced under PROFOUND traumatic stress before CERTAIN characters’ physical expiration (OTHERS, story-serving ARTIFICIAL – or SYNTHETIC – creations); another seeking to DISSOLVE it as part of faith in a ‘NATURAL order’ (of COURSE Locke was going to be an associated dualistic avatar, represented by the DEATHLY ‘Smoke Monster’) this groundbreaking show’s CORE theme, if less than apparent to MANY viewers a decade ago…..
…..having evolved into an independent physical theorist since ‘LOST’ with a scale-unifying, comparatively-simplified physics model that contextualizes almost all of this thing called’ existence’ – ‘time’, ‘gravity’, sound’, ‘electricity’ (an axial expression concentrated through magnetism’s passage through denser ‘effective’ media) ALL, resonant secondary magnetic informational effects to it (‘heat’, a tertiary one, JUST as subjective) seeing it as a STRONG warning, cautionary tale IN / about 2019-2021+, the ‘pandemic’ more than EVER (where an agency called ‘DHARMA’ – a Hindu religious reference yet, nearly SYNONYMOUS with REAL-world ‘DARPA’ and Australian Alan Dale’s Charles Widmore, a Robert Maxwell / Rupert Murdoch / George Soros type of tycoon, megalomaniac) – its ‘golden light’ (LONG an occult object, instinctively valued by, affecting our species) is perceived suprahuman: power, knowledge, understanding, insight (as opposed to, or not necessarily with, wisdom) coherence, ‘constructive entanglement’, awareness, ‘love’, appreciation – and yes ‘go(o)d’, if NOT universally so…..
…..Jacob & ‘The Man In Black’ are, as is SO commonly found, two symbolic sides of the SAME extremist conceit, one which goes to transhumanistically disintegral lengths to maintain MATERIAL life including worship and FORCING of science upon it, largely represented through attempts at reversal of a CATASTROPHIC infertility problem and what’s ULTIMATELY revealed as a collective ethereal construct produced under PROFOUND traumatic stress before CERTAIN characters’ physical expiration (OTHERS, story-serving ARTIFICIAL – or SYNTHETIC – creations); another seeking to DISSOLVE it as part of faith in a ‘NATURAL order’ (of COURSE Locke was going to be an associated dualistic avatar, represented by the DEATHLY ‘Smoke Monster’) this groundbreaking show’s CORE theme, if less than apparent to MANY viewers a decade ago…..
The plane discovered in the ocean was planted by whitmore
So at the end and in the church, everyone’s pass was resolved and they were able to move on which was what? Why didn’t Ben join the group? So what happened to Vincent? Also what you are saying is that, there was a time difference for each one as to when they were actually dead and would go to the church and when they all had died, then they would go to the church. Was Boune’s sister in the church?
There were a few eps in the second and third seasons where a plane crash underwater was mentioned (by people outside of our original group of passengers only), and it was flight 815. All the bodies were there. How is this explained within your theory?
Wow!! This made so much sense.
I’m halfway into watching season 2. I watched Lost when it came out. Totally didnt have a clue then. Now, with 15 years of living, learning, making mistakes behind me, I see! I see! At least the twist & turns don’t trip me up any more. I can see my life that I’m living now, my past, in Jin & Sun’s battles with their past
Just finished watching it. And yes, I had heard the spoiler that “they were dead the whole time” which kinda ruined it for me because I kept waiting for that shoe to drop and it didnt. They were NOT dead the whole time. It was also difficult to wrap my mind around the alternate universe/purgatory while the same characters were still living on the island. When Christian said at the end that there “is no now”, then that made sense everyone had died at different times and ended up at the church with Jack to help him move on much like Rose in Titanic. I think because Jack was clearly a non-believer up to a certain point, it was harder for him to accept the afterlife. The DVD contains a short feature on what happened AFTER the end where Walt becomes the protector. I liked that and I’m glad they added it in.
Wow!! Great read!
This may have already been addressed, but why is Penny in the church at the end? She was not dead. Ben threatened to kill Penny as he believed Charles Whitmore was responsible for Alex’s death, but he never went through with it. Instead, he accepted the fact that he was the cause of Alex’s death, not Whitmore. Therefore, Penny should still be alive. Am I missing something?
You are a wizard. Thank you.
great insights!!
Regardless of the vehicle used in the series, to me it was all about the title.
All these people were truly lost in their lives, suffering tremendously due to their own doing or circumstances. They were pathless and leading to self destruction. To find their way back to balance and happiness they had to confront their greatest fears and let go of the things they should stop to try to control, that are actually controlling them. The island is an evolving mechanism with a variety of pitfall for them that they must endure and overcome. Once they let go they find inner peace, and meaning to their lives and experiences, and a shared love of life and people they have known.
Just my take:)
One of the most unwatchable shows ever!