New Lost Webisodes

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/missingpieces/index

I haven't actually watched these yet, but just thought I'd share that they're out there. I'll give comments once I've been through them.

New Orientation FIlm

Flash Forward

If this is your first time here, please click here for the main theory of this blog.



Okay, put on your earmuffs if you who still haven't read the book Lost Horizon and wouldn't like to have the ending spoiled. Here goes: in the end of the book, Hugh Conway escapes Shangri-La and barely survives the journey down from the mountains. Once back in the safety of western civilization and with a hero's welcome awaiting him back home, he decides to head back into the mountains and spends the rest of his life hiring whatever planes and mountain guides possible in search of a way to get back to what he now realizes is paradise.

Need I say more about this theory???!!

* A new note regarding motivations (thanks capcom!): In the book, Conway is presented as a very admirable figure. Like the traditional hero, he puts others' concerns before his own. But this kind of heroism is thrown into question when his need to help others becomes his own downfall when he feels that it's his responsibility to guide others out of Shangri-La. I think it's perfectly clear now that Jack faces the same kind of internal struggle. Jack needed to fill the role a hero for the survivors, and I know I've certainly rooted for him to kick ass, but his need to have something to fix has led to a form of self-destruction.

Alpert's Longevity

Richard Alpert (Batmanuel) doesn't age. For those new to the theory, click here.

Death on the Island

Ok, so this is something that I've been thinking about for a while, but unfortunately it has little to do with the "Lost Horizon" theory.

It seems that if one dies on the island, of if your body is there, death isn't the end: there's something else that happens to you, or you're not necessarily dead, or something. Here's what I'm talking about:

1. Dead people have been seen on the island. These are people who have died there, or they're bodies are there: Jack's Father, Eko's Brother Yemi, and Boone.

2. The Whispers. People contributing to lostpedia.com have deciphered what is being said during those moments. Just before Shannon died, we heard Boone's voice say this: "Shannon, meet me on the other side." Could the whspers be the voices of the dead?

3. Eko's death scene. When he went out, he had a smile on a face and said "you're next," as if to say that what was awaiting him and all others on the island who die is something profound and beautiful.

4. Ben on the operating table. Just before he was put under, listen to what he says and watch his expressions. He's anticipating something huge. He even says something like "After this, everything will be different" (feel free to correct me on this). It seems that Ben was looking forward being transformed somehow, perhaps looking forward to death.

5. Bea asked Mikhail to shoot her. She seemed awfully enthusiastic about this, and Mikhail was quick to give her what she wanted. Why was she so willing? What does she know that would be so threatening to the others that she's better off dead?

6. And finally, what about Mikhail? When Locke threw him into the sonic barrier, he told Locke "thank you" before he keeled over. Of course Mikhail and Bea could just be damn fool fanatics, but I think there's something more to this.

Further Comparisons

For those of who have read "Lost Horizon," I'm currently seeing of strong parallels between the characters in the book and in the show:

Locke = Conway
Jacob = The High Lama

I think now in the storyline Locke is being taken to Jacob, like Conway was taken to the High Lama. I bet we'll see Locke meet Jacob by the end of this season. Perhaps they'll discuss notions of utopia and longevity.

Also in the book, there was a female character, Lo-Tsen, who was a resident of Shangri-La but was the only native that wanted to leave, feeling like she was imprisoned. It seems that aspects of Lo-Tsen's character are being played out in Juliet and Alex.

The Idea of a Way Out

In the last episode, The Man From Talahassee, Ben tells Locke that the submarine isn't actually a way off the island, but that it's important for the people that have been recruited to think that there's a way off the island if they need it. He's basically saying that given enough time, people won't want to leave the island and the fact that there's no way off it won't matter to them.

In the novel Lost Horizon, when the westerners first arrive in Shangri-La, they are assured that they will be able to leave within a couple of weeks when porters arrive. After a period of time it's revealed that not only do the porters come only once every couple of years, but when the porters finally arrive, they'll take no people with them. There never was a way out of Shangri-La in the first place. When asked why they were lied to, they are told that it was initially important just for their peace of mind to think there was a way out if they needed it. But sure enough, by the time this is pointed out to them, all of the westerners (except one) want to stay in Shangri-La anyways.

The Road to Shambala

On last night's episode "Tricia Tanaka is Dead," in that great moment when Hurley pops the clutch in the VW, the 8-track kicks on and is playing the song "Shambala" by Three Dog Night. Not only was this a great choice in music for the scene, but there's a great connection to be made here.

The song is about the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, which appears in several Buddhist texts, possibly dating further back than the 10th century. Shambala is a mystical kingdom that lies somewhere within or beyond the Himalayas, and is believed to be a society where all of the inhabitants are enlightened. Shambhala is a sanskrit word meaning "place of peace/tranquilty/happiness".

In one of the ancient texts in which Shangri-La is described, The Kalachakra Tantra, it prophesizes that when the world declines into war and greed and all is lost, a king will emerge from Shambhala and usher in a new golden age around the world.

All sounds familiar, doesn't it? In fact, the word Shambhala looks and sounds a lot like Shangri-la. This is no coincidence. These ancient myths were an inspiration for James Hilton when he wrote the book "Lost Horizon." Before Hilton wrote the book, he visited the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan where the inhabitants lived long and healthy lives into old age. It is said that Hilton combined his own travels with the teaching of Shambhala to create Shangri-La.

Lost Time

There are three not-so-subtle clues about the concept of time embedded in the "Not in Portland" episode. No doubt the writers are throwing something important into our laps.

Mittelos Bioscience - The producers of the show have come out and said on the official Lost podcast that "Mittelos" is an anagram for "lost time." They've also alluded to the fact that time behaves differently on the island.


A Brief History of Time - Aldo, the guard that was watching over Karl was reading this book.

"Only fools are enslaved by time and space" - clever fans have run the entire room 23 scene in reverse, and have discovered these words spoken by a woman in the audio
(check it out here).

Finally, what exactly are the Mittelos recruiters asking Juliet to do? They show her a slide of a womb CT sequence. Juliet asseses that it is a human womb, and judging by the scan, most likely of a barren patient in her 70's. However, she is told that the woman is in fact just 26 years old, and that she could find out why if she joined them.

Ok, pause on all of these things for a second while we revisit something that happens in the book "Lost Horizon." The people who live in the valley of Shangri-La age very slowly. But in the end of the book, one of the women leaves the valley, heading into the snowy Himilayan Mountains. She seemed about 19 years old when she was in Shangri-La, but now that she's left, she begins to age very quickly, until she becomes a frail old woman.

Lost time indeed.

(Human) Nature vs. Technology

Then why the need for a good fertility doctor?

So we know there's some sort of natural phenomena on the island, some sort of healing /geomagnetic energies. My thought is this: what once was pure is now tainted. Before anyone discovered the island (during the time of the four-toed statue), there was an indigenous society living in harmony with the natural tendencies of the island.

But the island has changed. The indigenous people have been wiped out. The Hanso Foundation (along with the help of Widmore Labs), worked on ways to profit from the island, trying to find ways to harvest the natural health benefits, trying to find what made it tick, thinking that if they found the answers to Shangri-La, they could find the answers to the world's problems. But somehow it went too far, the natural energies were f**ked with, and we now have unnatural side-effects.

The incident.
The need for a smoke monster.
The need for the swan to regulate a fluctuating and dangerous geomagnetic field.
The need for quarantine and a vaccine.
The need for a spinal surgeon.
The need for a fertility doctor.

Room 23

The brainwashing room was incredibly interesting to me, and it brought lots of thoughts to mind. Notice the re-occuring theme on this show of "good people" vs. "bad people." I think that Jacob's list is what divides people into one or the other of these camps. If you're one of the others, and you're not on the list, not one of the good ones, or perhaps it's undetermined, then you get sent to the brainwashing room to get converted. If it worked for Ted Haggard, it can work for Karl.

My shangri-la theory is that they're trying to create/maintain a utopian society. No room for "the bad ones," which is why they feel perfectly justified in killing those that they deem bad.
If you don't want to kill them, you brainwash them. Or perhaps more importantly, you get them when they are children, before they can be spoiled by the ills of society, and use dharma-sponsored psychological conditioning.

Also note the continued use of Buddhist images and eastern philosophical text. Again, this connects to the eastern philosophies that Shangri-La is founded upon.