Eileen Caddy wrote: “It is important from time to time, to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply Be.” But what if you stumbled onto a place that time seems to have overlooked. Would you stay for a while and let the rest of the world pass you by? Now think about it. It’s not a question to answer without careful thought tonight…
A long time before the Internet was made available to the general public and the personal computer was still a dream, I heard tell of a climbing team in the Himalayas that had taken tapes of my show along for the trip. I felt so honored to be “invited” along for the climb. It intrigued me to know that my show was able to be heard on the “Rooftop of the World.”
Now with satellites aimed down to every region of the world, a show like mine is heard in some of the most remote places on the planet. The Internet takes me to the rest of the world. No longer do I need a team of climbers carrying cassette tapes in their backpacks. All they need is a small satellite receiver and they can hear the show in real time…
One of my favorite books is Lost Horizon, the James Hiltonnovel that was made into a black-and-white movie starring Ronald Coleman in 1937. It is the story of a member of the British Diplomatic service who, along with three other people, are hijacked on a plane that crosses the Himalayas and eventually crash-lands in a remote region of Tibet. The party is rescued by the inhabitants of a lost valley called Blue Moon and a lamasery called Shangri-La. There they learn that the flowing river of time has been altered somewhat.
Have you seen the film The Beach that starred Leonardo DiCaprio? It was his follow-up to the success he garnered in Titanic. The film did not garner many favorable reviews. The premise is somewhat similar to Lost Horizon. In The Beach, DiCaprio’s character doesn’t stumble onto this secluded paradise but hears an urban legend about it and seeks it out after acquiring a map. But there’s trouble in paradise. It, too, asks the question what will happen to this pristine contemporary version of Shangri-La after these strangers arrive to disrupt the flow of the community that lives along its spectacular but secluded beach. Who wouldn’t yearn for a place like Shangri-La or a deserted island to let this world pass us by for a time. There is a downside though, especially if you find your island not as deserted as you thought. What if you discover it is also inhabited by a group called the “Others”? Their purpose is clouded in mystery.
This was my theory about the hit TV series Lost. It was my theory until the final episode of the last season. I was beginning to think that they were allin that institution that Hurley took us to in a flashback in an early episode. You might remember that we saw another of the survivors as a patient near the end of the episode. I thought that maybe the leader of the “Others”, Ben, was a psychiatrist in this institution. You might remember that he told John that he had to bury his past in order to move forward. He seemed to be giving advice that a doctor might employ to help those affected by a traumatic event. He’s trying to help them get past the lingering emotional effects of the plane crash, in my theory. There is one nagging secret that has not been revealed. John was in a wheelchair at the time of the crash. As soon as he woke up on the beach, he was miraculously cured. We’ve never been told how this miracle was achieved. It gives a certain amount of credence to what I thought might really be going on in the hit TV series Lost, that returns with a new season later this week. You can poke all kinds of holes in my theory. It may have been an idea you toyed with for a while. I’d be interested in hearing what you think is really going on in Lost.
Whatever the real secret behind the TV series Lost, there is no doubt that time has been altered there, too.
So, is a place like Shangri-La only a myth? It probably is… We’ve mapped just about every inch of this planet using sophisticated satellite imaging technologies. That said, there are still some mysteries about time we have yet to understand…
In the 1989 edition of The Friendship Book of Francis Gaypublished by D.C Thomson and Company, was this spooky story. He writes: “The former master of that great liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, once described a strange happening. Apparently, a few years ago, she was cruising in the Pacific, when one of the wireless operators picked up a message sent out over 40 years before from the liner Queen Mary. I suppose scientists can explain how this can sometimes happen, but to me that message, coming from goodness knows where, after all those years, is just another reminder that we live in a wonderful and mysterious world, about which truly wise men and women never believe they know all the answers.”
Some answers are better left…..lost.
***
Don Jackson
