Slumdog Millionaire, The Truman Show, and The Shawshank Redemption are three movies that -- from a symbolic perspective -- epitomize my life up till now. Also, the Star Trek TNG episode "Journey's End" resonates with my own experience of this life.
The Truman Show begins with Truman standing under the number "36" -- presumably signifying the age of Truman's awakening, and the age, therefore, that one is expected -- at least from the Gnostic perspective -- to awaken from the unreality of physical existence. Well, I just turned 36 a month ago ... Is this my year, my time, for awakening?
The Shawshank Redemption presents a falsely accused man spending 20 years in imprisonment. Well, it's been 20 years since I first moved to Montreal (Mon-treal, "my trial") and my saga of depression began. Again, is it my time now, after 20 years of imprisonment, to finally break from the "temple of doom" (to borrow the title of another movie).? The movie is not, as often touted, primarily about a friendship between two men in prison -- it's about imprisonment in form, and the resultant "insitutionalisation" that occurs where the incarnating spirit not only forgets its own divinity but fears release from its self-imposed prison.
Slumdog Millionaire is a symbolic rehashing of the Odyssey of Homer, the ageold quest of 'everyman' in search of himself. Jamal, the Odysseus character, is accused in the film of being "too truthful" -- something I've been accused of on more than one occasion. He also found and lost "Isis" (the Goddess of a Thousand Names, and called "Latika" in the film) several times in the movie -- I've found her once, and lost her once ("Isis" or as Jamal calls her "the most beautiful woman in the world", is the etheric presence in the aura of the indivdual who has purified his etheric body enough to sense her perenial presence). The Slumdog is also a poor beggar boy, and Odysseus himself comes home to Penelope (Isis) a beggar -- and never have I known "destitution" as now, and the past three years, of my life. It appears I'm ready to meet Isis again!
Each of the above movies involves an individual trapped in a "world" where he definitely wants to escape from and consequently the theme of all three is freedom, liberation (esoterically spiritual liberation). The Demiurgus god, i.e., the builder of form or the god that imprisons spirit in matter, is present in Shawshank as the Warden, in Slumdog as the gameshow host, in Truman Show, as the "Christof," the show's director.
Journey's End is apparently based loosely on the life of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, but also reflects my own experiences of being a very unhappy, depressed young man who eventually stumbles onto illumination, the latter being the hope and not the reality in my case.
I know that each of these movies, and countless other productions, are meant to signify the path to and attainment of illumination -- another reason why I believe my time for the "second birth" is almost at hand. How many people watch Slumdog or Truman and see or understand the Gnostic overtones? How many people realize that neither Gnosticism or any other truly pagan 'theosophy' is either evil or to be shunned but is rather the path to illumination, the unconscious path we're all treading?
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