Theos-Talk Archives (August 1997 Message tt00015)

Dear friends:

After enjoying the movie "Contact" thoroughly, and not minding
the Disney-fied portion at all (since it depicted a very typical
cross-section of America reaction to anything from Space shuttle
launches to Roswell incidents and added much humor to the
otherwise excitable scientific reactions to SETI discovery made
by Jodie Foster) I felt the most beautiful actual astronomical
effects were at the beginning and towards the end. Perhaps I had
expected more outer space travel as in the movie 2001. However,
I loved the human and philosophical aspects, especially the
possibility that the REAL outer space journey is one of
consciousness. A few questions puzzle me, for anyone who saw it
and cares to explain without spoiling it for our dear friends
abroad (as in Australia) who say it hasn't come to their
countries yet.

What did her father mean (presumably on Vega) when he said this
had been the only way for earthlings to realize the magnificence
of the worlds beyond? Was he implying she had reached some sort
of Devachanic or Heavenly contact, via the Vegans: more advanced
than earthmen?

Do you believe that the terrific pressure of the magnetism inside
the prelaunch space-capsule caused her to be experiencing a
transcendental state of consciousness? Of course she at last
realized that scientific reasoning would call it hallucination,
and that you could not PROVE an extra-terrestrial state with
reason alone. Perhaps in those 18 hours (even of static on
earth) she had a "tour" similar to what the ego experiences in
the outer rounds during death, or initiation.

The movie as such stimulates a spiritual view of things, even if,
as Bart states, it does not confirm to Sagan's own scepticism.

Really getting too spacey on this!