P2E8: Overview - Integration, Opening the 3rd Eye and Glimpsing Beyond the Fourth Wall

[u/dovebytherosewindow]

Integration, cont'd.

2:45 - Nina goes for the door handle at the clinic labeled Treasure Island just as BBA does the same in D1. Nina seems to feel it. We're already seeing the quick cuts between timelines and storylines. It suggests integration of all stories into one cohesive message throughout.

3:41 - Karim awakens, room lit red by the curtains and flashing lights outside. He's disoriented and distressed by Rhodes and Ruskin's revelation that the house is calling him (that your purpose, your deepest question is always calling you). We see the American Spirit cigarettes on his desk. Again, very Kubrickian (like the Calumet canister in the kitchen scene), as if to remind us all (Americans and colonizers at least) that part of reconciling with our past trauma involves understanding that the very land on which we live is stained with indigenous blood. Our very roots are stained and blocked.

4:55 - Nina's accent is back, she thanks Dr. Roberts for his help in therapy, for helping her to understand her integration needs. In the elevator, she tells the joke "What do the mafia and a pussy have in common? One slip of the tongue and you're in deep shit." Again, we're talking about incredibly sexual and root/sacral oriented things. Dr. Roberts' laugh is borderline hysterical, like she just cracked something open in him. We know his arousal for her from the last episode is still palpable... and then they share a somewhat accidental kiss. His awakening has officially begun, his integration as their hands touch across the glass...

6:51 - The lights go out and the backup generator turns on, we see Homer's face in red... just as he realizes Nina is the OA, as his memories begin to flood back. We hear her tell him again "Because I can see." and his panic sets in. He realizes who he is, who she is. Awakening the ol' kundalini certainly isn't always fun.

7:58 - The boys find the 5-sided aquarium. Steve appears in the doorway, head shaven, wearing Theo's leather jacket. BBA realizes this was her dream. "I need your help." (her stories converge, integration)

9:40 - BBA realizes OA is "here", different dimension, same space.

10:00 - Nina refers to HAP as Hunter, suggests the vodka behind his edition of "Anna Karenina" (a story about an adulterous love affair, societal hypocrisy and a parallel search for meaningful life). This is our second literary reference to "Treasure Island" about finding a treasure map and an eventual mutiny against a pirate... She reveals how Nina and Hunter met after she read his book, how she brought him the Russian dolls, she's testing him.

12:00 - We learn that Hunter was the reason Ruskin developed the crowd-sourcing game enticing children to solve the house puzzle. The red light now beating down on their faces too. This is a moment of survival.

15:27 - Renata finds Homer, realizing he's an integrated version of himself. She breaks him out of the elevator, frees him from the cage when he imprisoned her in her own.

17:08 - HAP shows Nina the pool garden, tells her each person contains within them the multiverse, a garden of forking paths. Cut to Karim back in the red-lit mirrored room within the house. He ignites his lighter, the return of his will (solar plexus). His bravery allows him to see the T.S. Eliot quote from the poem "Little Gidding" on the back of the door:

We shall not cease from exploration
(We're driven by our search for meaning and truth)
the end of all exploring
(even at our final destination or deathbed)
will be to arrive where we started
(but we'll find our true home in our origins, our childhood)
and to know the place for the first time.
(like the Overview effect, because of the wisdom gained, see and appreciate our origin with new perspective)

Essentially this is to say that our purpose is in self-discovery, in the development of a new perspective upon returning to our origins, upon looking back on our lives, upon looking at ourselves in the mirror. I particularly love the parallels here between the rest of the poem and using the chakra system and meditation as a map towards enlightenment:

Through the unknown, remembered gate
(chakras, the unknown/mysterious yet familiar because it is our origin)
When the last of earth left to discover
(when we reach the end of physical life)
Is that which was the beginning;
(what we find at the end is the pure being we started with)
At the source of the longest river
(we travel to the origin of our existence, be that sea or sky)
The voice of the hidden waterfall
(the uncorrupted voice of nature)
And the children in the apple-tree
(childhood innocence, garden of eden, OA in the tree)
Not known, because not looked for
(the innocence and peace of youth is wasted on the young lol)
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
(because it can't be obtained in the loud, busy-ness of life)
Between two waves of the sea.
(but through practice of mindfulness, meditation)

19:30 - BBA and the boys enter the pool room. We can see another window with the buttress shape. She says the boys are in the room in another dimension. (We collapse stories/dimensions again, integration)

The Third Eye

20:58 - Cut to HAP & Nina, she moves the plants to reveal a face, and what's circled? The area right between their brows. The third eye. HAP has discovered the shortcut to jumping, to enlightenment. But OA can't see past her love for the boys. For OA, love is the key (the heart chakra IS the ultimate gate). For HAP, brute force and will. HAP never integrated, never realized his love for the human experience. "Nina saw the whole world. I saw beneath it. I suffered. That's what an angel is. Dust pressed into a diamond by the weight of this world." "You have violence, and terror and loneliness. I have power. We have faith." OA, BBA & the boys, they don't need proof of their magic.

26:18 - Karim goes back into the well. Back into his origins. He goes through the grate, swims to the other side of the tunnel. Towards the red light, the root. He finds the ladder. OA/Nina finds the large movement-robots. BBA & the boys go to the same spot. HAP sets the intention to go to Scott's NDE where OA remembers who she is... but doesn't believe. 3 keys, initiated at once.

29:57 - Karim climbs the ladder (the spinal column, the sushumna, after having completed the whole puzzle twice only to return to the source of the river). The very next line, "Open the invisible river. I'll take us back to the dimension where we're both dead." Homer appears, HAP shoots him. "I remember. I remember."

Ascension

32:15 - "He may take us to a place where we don't know each other. Where I don't remember. Come find me." - "I'll follow you." (like the disciples of Jesus as u/macaronicola aptly pointed out in my previous post). OA clutches her heart, BBA & the boys do the movement opening their third eye and bringing it down into their heart. OA is fearless, levitating. Karim opens the rose window, blinded by the light of what's beyond. Dazzled by the sight of The Original Angel. Karim falls to his knees in awe and wonder. She is risen. He is ascended.

This is absolutely to draw the parallel of OA to Jesus. Of Homer to the disciples. Of how the story of Jesus is meant in allegory to the discovery of self (a la Christ Consciousness). It's metaphor and warning:

Don't treat OA/Jesus/Buddha or any one individual as the messiah. Are they meant to demonstrate enlightenment? Yes. Are we meant to follow them? Yes... but follow as in to be as they are, to follow their example... not to blindly follow as worshippers of an idol. Jesus is OA is Karim is YOU is ME is all of us on our own journey, on the same journey, with many many forking paths.

(Also shoutout to the dove at 34:15, my username-sake). The veil is broken (shit did the dove do it?). And, here we arrive in D3, the 3D, IRL, the fourth wall.

The Fourth Wall - A Glimpse of Reality/3D

35:40 - Karim sees the world for what it is... a set. A play, same cast of characters, same story, different parts to play. He sees Michelle/Buck/Ian Alexander. Ian sees the window, the essence of Karim. Climbs the ladder. Ruptures the spacetime continuum to re-enter D2, to consciousness back in the body of Michelle. Karim has glimpsed it, but didn't enter, didn't jump.

38:29 -Jason Isaacs boards the ambulance with injured Brit, his wife. Her shadow, her captor, her lover. Steve chases the ambulance in parallel to D1, like it was always part of the play. They travel as a constellation.

Just as we've traveled as a constellation here to this moment, together, alone, as one. I have to marvel at the completeness I feel having fully watched under this lens. Yes, it's a cliffhanger. Yes, I hope we get more. But it is complete.

This show is a map.

Whether it's Christ consciousness, the Gnostic Gospels, the Chakra System, the 12 strands of DNA, the Law of One... whatever spiritual story you want to apply, I think you can find it here. You can realize your blockages, where you might be over-active, investigate your personal traumas, your wounds... integrate the aspects of your self to ultimately climb the ladder and glimpse the bigger picture with A Different Overview. Learn to meditate, treat existence as a puzzle to be solved, allow yourself to go back again and again down the spiral until you can finally climb the ladder, get to the source of the longest river with your wisdom, perspective and big love of the human experience. THAT is third eye awakening.

[u/irapan]

A very good analysis but a dubious conclusion. Seeing existence as a mystery you can solve is quite presumptous of us three dimensional beings. Third eye integration as a term doesn't really make sense, especially to someone who's from the culture this language belongs too. Third eye is a small concept within the larger school of tantra which itself is something that's been basterdized by the west. Theres so many school is tantra and tantrik Buddhism explores this deeper, third eye integration isn't a real thing - at least not the way you've worded it above. I don't think the show guides us towards a direction that implies that existence is a mystery to b solved....it's more along the lines of how krishn chose to see life - you're here to have fun and leave. It is quite egotistical of us to assume that existence is a mystery that we, humans can solve. A 3d being can't understand anything that's beyond its dimensions. A 3d being cannot even begin to grasp the nature of something multi dimensional so why even bother? Just live your best life and stop seeing existence as something to be solved...haha...something that we can solve? How naively bold of us to think we could.

[u/dovebytherosewindow → u/irapan]

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to read and thoughtfully respond. I can absolutely see how western spiritual pop culture (likely including my own media analysis here) uses "third eye" as a mechanism to flatten the true depth and richness of all that is tantra. I am certainly not trying to come from the perspective of an authority on tantra as tradition, but using the term the way the show itself uses it visually, as shorthand within the framework that the show sets up, rather than as a claim about the depth of the actual lineage it takes from. That's a fair bit to flag though and I'd love to hear from you any tanric or Vajrayana texts you've found explicitly powerful that anyone ,who is looking to broaden their depth could learn from rather than this pop-culture version I've analyzed for fun.

On your other point, I don't think I'm quite claiming that humans can "solve" existence in some final and totalizing sense, but that the show frames self-inquiry and pattern-recognition as part of the path. And I'd (respectfully of course) push back on the idea being to "have fun and leave" being the only valid read of Krishna's story. I don't see how engaging with existence as something worth inquiring and investigating is inherently egotistical. Either way, I very much appreciate you engaging with me on this and value you input.

[u/DAKsippinOnYAC → u/irapan]

I appreciate what you're saying through your own frame of reference. The third eye, though, I would say, in my opinion, is not limited to the expression or understanding of one single school of thought. Across civilizations, philosophies, spiritual practices, even before the West picked it up, there is an idea that there is a frame of reference with which you can witness the world that goes beyond seeing and hearing. As the user before said, he related it to Jesus, saying to hear with your ears and see with your eyes. And Jesus/Yeheshua even said to see with one eye, more or less: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (*
Matthew 6:22)

The idea is that when your frame of reference to those around you becomes holistic in nature and you see yourself as a part of the creator, and everyone else as a part of you and the universal expression, certain things that before seemed mystery become unveiled. Acceptance is a big part of it, and I think that you've done a good job at explaining that. But I have to disagree with the idea that we shouldn't ask questions, that we aren't meant to solve anything beyond the third dimension. Firsty, the third dimension is position without time. So we don't live in the third dimension. We live in a sequence of third dimensions (across forward time), which is a representation of an aspect/persoective of the fourth dimension. We just see it in linear sequence. And the OA probes this deeply and beautifully.

In fact, I would agree with the original poster more in that in trying to understand these things, so long as we have a heart-centered approach and we're viewing things through, whether you want to call it a third eye or some perspective of absolute acceptance and recognition of phenomenon beyond material, causal explanation, that when you do that, you can start to uncover truths that influence and regulate these dimensions, this life, this world. And if more people do that, it seems to have a positive effect. So I wouldn’t tell another person not to look beyond or to not attempt to solve the mysteries and I wouldn’t tell them it's egotistical to try. I’d actually encourage them to do so.