So much has been written about the LOST finale that it seems almost pointless to add my voice to the din, but it has been my favourite show (i.e. the only show I\u2019ve regularly watched) for the last three years, and I have a lot of thoughts about it.\u00a0 Plus, it had all sorts of fun religious \/ spiritual elements, and there AREN\u2019T many people in the blogosphere offering a Swedenborgian take on it.<\/p>\n
More (including spoilers) below.<\/p>\n
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The best summary I\u2019ve read is here<\/a> (thanks Dylan Hendricks for pointing me to it).\u00a0 Read part two as well<\/a> \u2013 Jeff Jensen is right on about almost everything.\u00a0 What I like about his summary is that right up front, he points out that having the sideways world be the afterlife (or a \u201cpre\u201d-afterlife) does not make everything that happened on the island meaningless.\u00a0 Just the opposite \u2013 it means it all mattered.<\/p>\n With twenty minutes left in the show, I was frustrated.\u00a0 If the sideways world was what happened if the island were destroyed, then what was the point of Jack re-corking the hell hole?\u00a0 It didn\u2019t SEEM like all hell had broken loose in the sideways time.\u00a0 It seemed to be a pretty good place, actually.\u00a0 So what did it matter that they save the island?<\/p>\n But the sideways world wasn\u2019t<\/em> an alternate timeline.\u00a0 As they say, \u201cWhat happened happened.\u201d\u00a0 Blowing up the atom bomb didn\u2019t change anything (despite Juliet\u2019s assurance that \u201cit worked\u201d).\u00a0 Sayid really did die to save the others.\u00a0 Sun and Jin did die in the sub.\u00a0 And (presumably) Desmond was able to leave the island and be with his wife and son, just as Jack had hoped.\u00a0 Does the fact that they were reunited in the afterlife make everything that proceeded meaningless?\u00a0 That\u2019s a question worth asking, but it\u2019s an existential question, not a problem with the show: if we live forever, what value do our lives in this world hold?<\/p>\n To sum it up: I liked it.<\/p>\n On the Swedenborgian-ness of it all. \u00a0The finale, like the whole show, had a lot of religious elements, but the big one in the finale was the LOST version of limbo \/ purgatory\/ whatever the sideways time is.\u00a0 What exactly was<\/em> it, anyway?\u00a0 It seems to have been a pre-afterlife space where people could work out their issues and come to the realization of who they were and what really mattered to them.\u00a0 As Doc Jensen\u00a0points out<\/a>, it didn\u2019t <\/em>seem to offer redemption for those who had never been redeemed in the world:<\/p>\n Ben chose to stay in the Sideways world instead of joining the castaways in their communal upload into the Source. He said he still had some things he needed to work out for himself. I\u2019ve heard that some fans didn\u2019t like the implications of Ben\u2019s decision. If souls are allowed to kick around Purgatory for eternity and figure themselves out, then doesn\u2019t the Sideways world effectively cheapen the Island story? If our redemption issues can be processed easily and painlessly in the cushy limbo of our own blue heaven, then what does it matter what manner of evil that we commit or suffering we endure in the world of matter? It\u2019s a fair point \u2014 but it misses some points, too, and besides, the criticism can\u2019t be fairly applied to Ben because it doesn\u2019t take into account facts that are in evidence. Apparently, both he and Hurley enjoyed a fruitful partnership on The Island in the post-castaway era. I like to imagine Ben did much to change during that time, and that perhaps the principled teacher that he was in the Sideways world was a fair representation of the man he became in The Island world. I think the example of Ben tells us something about how\u00a0Lost<\/em>\u2018s version Purgatory works for all souls. Yes, you can stay and \u201dfigure things out,\u201d but this introspection doesn\u2019t change who you are. Or rather, were. You don\u2019t get to craft a flattering interpretation of yourself. You don\u2019t get to accumulate more experience to improve your chances at heavenly election. You only get one life to live, and the opportunity that the Sideways world provides is the chance to puzzle together and come to grips with the person you became while you lived it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To say that this sounds somewhat Swedenborgian is an understatement. \u00a0But we\u2019ll get to that in a second.<\/p>\n Some people \u2013 including Jensen \u2013 are calling the sideways \u201cpurgatory,\u201d but it\u2019s not really purgatory \u2013 purgatory is a place of punishment for sins, not as much a place of discovery. (Edit: The purpose of purgatory in Catholic doctrine is preparation for heaven \/ purification from sin, and after reading a little bit more about it, I think it\u2019s probably fair to call the sideways a sort-of purgatory, although it seems pretty far from the Catholic purgatory). Others are calling it limbo, but in Catholic theology (according to Wikipedia) limbo is either a permanent state of \u201cin-betweenness,\u201d or it was a holding place for those who died before Christ, so that they could accept Him at His birth.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t hold that same idea of preparation.<\/p>\n Like any good Swedenborgian I see Swedenborg in just about everything, but since fellow Swedenborgians on Facebook have pointed out the similarities to the Swedenborgian idea of the afterlife, I feel mildly justified in claiming that the \u201csideways\u201d world has more in common with Swedenborgianism than with many other religious doctrines.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know of any other religions that have specific teachings about a middle ground, before a person reaches his ultimate destination, where they figure out what they truly love and meet up with the person with whom they will spend eternity.\u00a0 (Which isn\u2019t to say they don\u2019t exist \u2013 my knowledge of other religions is sadly limited).<\/p>\n Swedenborg writes that after a person dies, he does not usually wake up in either heaven or hell, but in a middle ground \u2013 the world of spirits.\u00a0 Here he goes about his daily life, often believing at first that he has not even died, but was only sleeping.\u00a0 Gradually he or she comes into the realization of the truth, and comes more and more into his \u201cinterior self\u201d \u2013 who he or she truly became in this world, essentially his or her \u201cruling love\u201d \u2013 hellish if it was love for self alone, heavenly if it was love for others and God.\u00a0 People meet up with their spouses, and if they were truly united, they spend eternity together (and if not, they meet their true soulmate, maybe a difference from the LOST sideways).\u00a0 A person won\u2019t be redeemed if they were not in the world \u2013 there\u2019s no afterlife change of heart \u2013 but since everyone has issues \/ evils that they pick up, they have to work through these things, often through some pretty painful processes (but still, not as punishments).\u00a0 The states that they have gone through in this world return.<\/p>\n All of which sounds an awful lot like the sideways to me.\u00a0 All the characters in the sideways had, in their this-world lives, repented of the evil that they did, and changed their hearts \u2013 but they still had issues they needed to work out.\u00a0 Take Ben Linus, for example.\u00a0 Presumably, even up to the point of his death, he was conflicted \u2013 otherwise he wouldn\u2019t need more time to kick around the sideways while the others moved on.\u00a0 But he made decisions \u2013 he became<\/em> a certain way \u2013 and so when in the sideways timeline he had the opportunity to put his love for Alex above his own desire for power, he made the right decision.\u00a0 The struggle was still real, but because he had changed later in his life, he was able to make a decision he should have made when he was on the island.\u00a0 Now, I don\u2019t think this is exactly how the world of spirits works \u2013 but the concept is similar enough to be noticeable.<\/p>\n There are, of course, enormous differences between Swedenborg\u2019s take on the world of spirits and Messrs. Lindeloff and Cuse\u2019s take on the LOST sideways.\u00a0 Swedenborg does not teach that people go through weird alternate realities of their own lives where they\u2019ve forgotten the lives they lived in this world \u2013 rather, they have all their memories from their lives, and feel like the world of spirits is a continuation<\/em> of those lives.\u00a0 Still, as I mentioned before, the Writings do say that \u00a0a person\u2019s states of life<\/em> return after death:<\/p>\n \u201cAll the states of the affection of good and truth with which a person is gifted by the Lord, from earliest infancy even to the end of life, are stored up for him for the use of his life after death; for in the other life all the states of his life return in succession, and are then tempered by the states of good and truth with which he has been gifted by the Lord\u201d (Arcana Coelestia<\/a><\/span><\/em> <\/a>n. 1906<\/a><\/span>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Could you look at the sideways as a manifestation of this idea, that all a person\u2019s states return, including the evil ones \u2013 but that these are modified by all the states of good and truth that a person has received? \u00a0I think you can, and I do.<\/p>\n Oh, there\u2019s so much more to say! \u00a0I\u2019d love to hear thoughts from fellow Swedenborgian LOST geeks.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So much has been written about the LOST finale that it seems almost pointless to add my voice to the din, but it has been my favourite show (i.e. the only show I\u2019ve regularly watched) for the last three years, and I have a lot of thoughts about it.\u00a0 Plus, it had all sorts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[17,117,122,123,163,189,221],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-religion","tag-afterlife","tag-limbo","tag-lost","tag-lost-finale","tag-purgatory","tag-swedenborg","tag-world-of-spirits"],"yoast_head":"\n