"As long as the visionaries provide the slightest glow of enlightenment, the forces of darkness will be there to attempt to prevent and subdue this affront to their power. Visionary art has always manifested content that transcends the normal state of awareness. This assures that the inherent, somewhat cryptic message of the visionary's creation will in most cases only be translated by the consciousness of those of higher intellect and spirit, attuned to more universal values, who in turn implement those values on the Earthly plane."
-Robert Venosa (1936- August 9, 2011)
A truncated pyramid with dormant capstone and enlightened base!
Continuing with the theme of Science Fiction offering solutions to problems of any era, we turn to the visual format of film. Words, which rely on metaphors to relate ambiguous experiences and images to the reader, films can transmit hidden ideas directly to the subconscious. Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) is known for his complex and brilliant layers of communication. On the surface narrative, the theme of the movie deals with technological enslavement over humans. However, Kubrick is an unparalleled master of semiotics, or encoding subconscious plot lines, called symbolic narratives. These hidden narratives are employed through visual metaphors, emotionally-charged undercurrents or 'clues' which has challenged generations of audiences to piece together the hidden subconscious elements. This includes being asleep or in a dream-like state. Kubrick explains:
"Since your dreams can take you into areas which can never be a part of your conscious mind, I think a work of art can ‘operate’ on you in much the same way as a dream does."
n the post on Watchmen, ancient Egyptian mythology featured beings called "Neters" that represented an example for Egyptian inhabitants to go from one level of consciousness to a higher level. In Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," the genius filmmaker provide us with a character who undergoes one of the most well-known sequences in cinema history: The Stargate sequence, also known as a consciousness shift (exactly like a Neter). This sequence is famous for taking cinema to a whole new level, and has never been adequately explained by a shared majority of viewers. One example of encryption from the IMDB link above is:
"The sun and the crescent moon aligned with each other (in the opening shot) was a symbol of Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion that predated Buddhism and Christianity and was based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster. This particular alignment symbolized the eternal struggle between light and darkness."
In addition to Neters, Egyptian 'mystery' religions often performed rites, or ceremonies, into the initiation process needed to overcome worldly obstacles in order to teach others these ways.
Manly Palmer Hall, who wrote the incredibly lengthy The Secret Teachings of All Ages at the mere age of 27, summarizes the purpose of ancient initiation rites:
"The Mysteries were organized for the purpose of assisting the struggling human
creature to reawaken the spiritual powers which lay asleep within his soul."
This encapsulates the symbolic "ape men" introduction of 2001.
The Dawn of Man
Kubrick begins the film with a barren landscape inhabited by primates, partially symbolizing primal man, who is not yet evolved either physically or spiritually. Suddenly, harrowing music indicates the arrival of a foreign object: a black rectangular prism known as The Monolith. The primates react in frenzied exclamations, surprised by the concept of form, shape, and perfect angles. Before decoding the symbolic narrative, it is important to know Kubrick's psychology background and expertise:
"I don't like to talk about 2001 too much because it's essentially a non-verbal experience. It attempts to communicate more to the subconscious and to the feelings than it does to the intellect. I think clearly there's a problem with people who are not paying attention with their eyes. They're listening. And they don't get much from listening to this film. If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded."
This frame of the film is of particular importance because it highlights a major theme of the
symbolic narrative: the concept of dimensionality. What could be prompting the apes' excited behavior is not the perfection of the design, but the ideas of length, width, and height, meaning that Kubrick is suggesting that these primates were acknowledging their presence in a 2-dimensional environment (the movie itself), which has now become 3-dimensional to them. However, this still does not explain how the monolith appeared to begin with. In his interviews, in which Kubrick is known for purposely misleading the media and his audiences, he points to extra-terrestrial life deciding to advance their civilization. Instead, if these apes are recognizing their presence in a 2-dimensional film, it is possible that the monolith's appearance is the result of Kubrick himself.
With its appearance, the Monolith signals a culture-wide shift of the primates, who learn to fashion tools for murdering a preying jaguar, thereby ending their starvation and entering higher-order awareness. The murder weapon, a bone, is released into the air, and upon landing, cuts to what appears to be a spaceship drifting in the depths of space. However, it is not a spaceship, but instead a floating nuclear satellite, signaling to audiences that the bone is the first weapon and the nuke is the ultimate weapon!
Immediately, we are to relate the Ape's experience to our own. The next main character of the movie is introduced in the Torus space station, Heywood Floyd. The dialogue in these scenes are either suspicious-sounding, or misleading and irrelevant. A press conference is called to address a suspicious discovery on the moon, while only vague details are given. Heywood Floyd speaks of the need to maintain secrecy, and mislead the public on the findings. He says in front of the council:
"The grave potential for social shock and cultural disorientation contained in this present situation ... if the facts were made public without proper preparation and conditioning." Using altered-color monolith symbolism, the meeting is flanked by three monoliths (also positioned like the three projectors of the 2001 70mm Cinerama experience in 1968) and a fourth: his podium. It is also shot at an angle which forms the inside of a truncated pyramid.
The council represents the elite of the world, confiding to each other the best methods of which to manipulate the public. The idea of a secretive inner governing council is a Kubrick norm, ever since his controversial 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
The Symbolic Narrative of the Monolith
These scenes are a precursor to the introduction of HAL 9000, an artificial intelligence computer which has been programmed to manipulate the space crew of the pilot of the Discovery (sent to check out the moon), Dave Bowman. When the crew arrives on the moon, the monolith is what is being "covered up". During these scenes, certain shots are flipped in a way only produced by film, also called continuity errors (commonly mistakes of props in between frames) indicating that whatever the Monolith is, it must be accessing a parallel universe. At a later scene, the Monolith is shown floating in space during a planetary alignment sequence. Mysteriously, it retreats into the distance and exits the screen. This seemingly random detail is another key to the meaning of the Monolith. Consider if it would have come toward the screen instead:
The Symbolic Narrative of the Monolith
These scenes are a precursor to the introduction of HAL 9000, an artificial intelligence computer which has been programmed to manipulate the space crew of the pilot of the Discovery (sent to check out the moon), Dave Bowman. When the crew arrives on the moon, the monolith is what is being "covered up". During these scenes, certain shots are flipped in a way only produced by film, also called continuity errors (commonly mistakes of props in between frames) indicating that whatever the Monolith is, it must be accessing a parallel universe. At a later scene, the Monolith is shown floating in space during a planetary alignment sequence. Mysteriously, it retreats into the distance and exits the screen. This seemingly random detail is another key to the meaning of the Monolith. Consider if it would have come toward the screen instead:
The clue would be too obvious! The side-turned Monolith would completely identical the cinema screen. The monolith represents the ability of cinema to transcend normal communication and offer a communal unconscious learning experience. Visionary Artist Alex Grey explains his view of art's ability:
"Syzygy, meaning alignment or conjunction, is frequently used to describe relations of one celestial body with another. A Divine Syzygy would be a mystical religious experience."
Kubrick's cinematic genius is 'what' decides to place the monolith in the film, and just as he is the movie's God figure, so is he our creative mastermind to guide our cultural leap. Using film to communicate to the unconscious, Kubrick declares film as a solution to psychologically re-orienting an entire species. Terence McKenna defines this type of communication as Alchemy:
"There is a place, not quite sleeping, not quite waking, and there flows this river of alchemical mercury where you can project the contents of the unconscious and you can read it back to yourself." Taking the alchemy of cinema into account, it is no surprise that Kubrick went to painstaking lengths to preserve the same soundtrack sequence during live orchestrations of the movie so that the monolith appears to the primates exactly during the silent black screen during the intermission.
Because the apes are aware of their 2-dimensional presence, some of the human characters are also aware that they are in a film and that the monolith is a metaphorical gateway to the subconscious movie screen. In one scene, the stewardess notices the rectangular shape of a tray, just like a monolith, and tells the other stewardess. They look directly at the camera in ingeniously deliberate-yet subtle acknowledgment:
"Syzygy, meaning alignment or conjunction, is frequently used to describe relations of one celestial body with another. A Divine Syzygy would be a mystical religious experience."
Kubrick's cinematic genius is 'what' decides to place the monolith in the film, and just as he is the movie's God figure, so is he our creative mastermind to guide our cultural leap. Using film to communicate to the unconscious, Kubrick declares film as a solution to psychologically re-orienting an entire species. Terence McKenna defines this type of communication as Alchemy:
"There is a place, not quite sleeping, not quite waking, and there flows this river of alchemical mercury where you can project the contents of the unconscious and you can read it back to yourself." Taking the alchemy of cinema into account, it is no surprise that Kubrick went to painstaking lengths to preserve the same soundtrack sequence during live orchestrations of the movie so that the monolith appears to the primates exactly during the silent black screen during the intermission.
Because the apes are aware of their 2-dimensional presence, some of the human characters are also aware that they are in a film and that the monolith is a metaphorical gateway to the subconscious movie screen. In one scene, the stewardess notices the rectangular shape of a tray, just like a monolith, and tells the other stewardess. They look directly at the camera in ingeniously deliberate-yet subtle acknowledgment:
This is Kubrick's message to those in control of society: the masses are telling each other of enlightenment! These are the types of meticulous clues left behind by the great cinematographer. Shout it from the rooftops: The monolith is a screen! The Screen is a metaphor for subconscious communication by the audience and the cast members!
Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
The surface narrative proceeds by exhibiting the struggle between a machine attempting to 'out-human' the crew and Bowman's ability to catch on to HAL's deception and give it an incalculable taste of his own medicine. On the surface narrative, Kubrick targets the control of corporations and their use of technology. After dismantling HAL's brain, Bowman is swung off course in a space pod into a streaming joyride of color light rivulets, eventually to technicolored terrain and finally a "renaissance room" (meaningrebirth) with Louis-XVI style decor, where he ages into an old man. In turn, the invisible higher-order intelligence (Kubrick) allows a re-appearance by the monolith and he is reborn a starchild.
Just as the Apes discover dimensionality, so does Kubrick allow Bowman to discover a step beyond the third dimension: the infinite. This is what is considered the state of enlightenment, symbolically represented by the lighting up of something. Consider this rare symbolic poster of the movie:
Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
The surface narrative proceeds by exhibiting the struggle between a machine attempting to 'out-human' the crew and Bowman's ability to catch on to HAL's deception and give it an incalculable taste of his own medicine. On the surface narrative, Kubrick targets the control of corporations and their use of technology. After dismantling HAL's brain, Bowman is swung off course in a space pod into a streaming joyride of color light rivulets, eventually to technicolored terrain and finally a "renaissance room" (meaningrebirth) with Louis-XVI style decor, where he ages into an old man. In turn, the invisible higher-order intelligence (Kubrick) allows a re-appearance by the monolith and he is reborn a starchild.
Just as the Apes discover dimensionality, so does Kubrick allow Bowman to discover a step beyond the third dimension: the infinite. This is what is considered the state of enlightenment, symbolically represented by the lighting up of something. Consider this rare symbolic poster of the movie:
Robert Venosa says of the visionary experience: "Art, at relative levels, is an emotional experience, and, if it’s not extruding detritus from our subconscious, 
then, hopefully, it’s opening up the channel of our superconscious and letting
in some of the cosmic light."
As mentioned before, ancient mystery religions required an intense initiation process. Ancient Researcher Drunvalo Malchizedek writes of the steps undertaken in Egypt:
"Because of the placement of the Great Pyramid on the Earth connecting into the Earth's huge geometrical field, the white-light energy field spirals upwards and becomes extremely strong, stretching all the way out to the center of the galaxy. In this way, the Great Pyramid connects the center of the Earth to the center of our Galaxy.
Getting to this point in the Egyptian experience took twelve years of training in the Left Eye of Horus school and twelve years in the Right Eye of Horus. At the right time they would place you in that sarcophagus, put the lid on and leave you between two and a half to four days. You would lie down in the sarcaphagus, connect with that white-energy beam with your pineal gland... After you'd been out in the cosmos for a few days, you would return."
More Esoteric Symbolism
When 2001: A Space Odyssey and sacred art are viewed with the purpose of discovering what makes it a "how-to" tool for cultural shifts, we can learn to broadcast our own intentions to unite and expand our own awareness and the awareness of those around us with out empathy, love, and creativity. It is the natural reaction to something as profound as the monolith: flabbergasted followed by enlightenment! For more information on cultural transformation, visit Awakening As One and related Kubrick posts of the blog Sacred Sun.
Robert Venosa carries the spirit of transcendental art beyond his time on Earth:
"The artist has always been the catalyst for change. So the real question might be:
What sort of world would we exist in if it weren't for the visionary? As an artist I have this sense of being an explorer- sailing into unknown territory to bring back maps to share of lands we are not yet in, or aware of. ...And so the battle to shed the light goes on – through music, art and all the other universal creative energies – until it becomes a blinding force against the powers of darkness, and an uplifting, liberating source of inspiration to all truth-seekers. This is a powerful space to work from in any and all events...
and it sure beats a day job."
