 Avatar, considered by many to be one of the most groundbreaking movies of our generation, it stands as a testament of how far our technology has come, allowing us to create and bear witness to new worlds like we've never seen them before. Yet under the surface of the technological achievement of this film lies a very deep undercurrent of hidden spirituality. At the highest level of this movie, we see the story play out as a narrative between the dualistic nature of our human consciousness and our relationship with our planet. You can describe this duality in ways such as organic vs mechanic, the soft vs the hard, the light vs the dark, the enlightened vs the asleep, or the alien vs the native. This dualistic theme is introduced to us by a look at how the human world has evolved and a reflection of the same consciousness we have today that got us there. In this futuristic world, people are cold and the earth has been polluted and there's no sign of things improving. Those in power are using their resources to leech off of another planet to support their own dying world. Jake, the lead protagonist, lands on Pandora with the same conditioning as the rest of the military. Pandora is a hostile land, the natives are deadly, and everything wants to kill you. As the story progresses, we see the transition from one paradigm of consciousness into another, through Jake's own discovery that the story he's been told is not the highest truth. As we are introduced to the Navi, we are invited to explore a fresh take on spirituality which has been designed for this movie based on African, Native American, and other indigenous cultures of the world. They teach us of Ewa, the deity to whom the Navi prays in reverence, and we are taught that to them, God is feminine and nature is infused with her divine spirit. Scientifically, we are given explanations of this too, through the electrochemical neural network that exists between all of the plant life on the entire world, connecting life together as if one giant living organism, something the Navi are a part of, and can tap into. Around their sacred tree, we see rocks formed in the shape of an electromagnetic field, further illustrating this symbolism. What's amazing here is that this is not exclusive to Pandora, in that we see this reflected in the whole universe. Scientists today have observed that the universe itself appears to form much like a neural network, suggesting that everything in existence is a part of a giant interconnected mind. These are foundational teachings of hermetics, and James Cameron clearly has embedded these ideas deep into the foundational structure of the story. Further, it may not be coincidental that Ewa sounds similar to Yahweh, one of the names for God in the Bible. It's almost as if through this film, we are shown this connection to the religions that we have in the world today, and how life changes when we look to the feminine side of deity versus the masculine. Throughout this movie, we see Jake begin to soften to the experience of the Navi, and just as this process is happening, we see a very clear juxtaposition between the two different states of consciousness. The first is the perception that you are separate from nature, a mentality embodied by the entire human army, and Jake too when he goes on his first mission. He is curious about the environment, but it is separate from him, and this is made very clear once he finds himself alone in the wilderness, struggling to survive. This is deeply relevant to a quote by Albert Einstein, who said the following, All people must answer for themselves. For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all of that which is unfriendly. And I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process. If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially playing dice with the universe, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning. But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives. God does not play dice with the universe. For Jake in the forest, we see him light a torch drowning out the light of the natural beauty around him. This is not dissimilar to how in a city it is difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to see the lights of the stars above our heads. It's only when we turn out the light can we truly learn to see. Just before Naetiri rescues him, there is a moment when she is going to kill him but a spirit of the forest comes and stops her from firing the arrow. This may very well be one of the most significant scenes in the entire movie because it shows the difference between Navi consciousness and human consciousness. She is able to listen to nature, she hears what it has to say, and she surrenders to the divine will. Instead of firing anyways, she stays her weapon and then saves his life. She remarks that he is like a baby making noise not knowing what to do, speaking to his own spiritual immaturity. She points out that it's his fault the jackals attacked him because he wasn't in tune with nature. This speaks to our own ability to take responsibility for what we are creating, even if it's unconscious to us. Over the course of the following hour or so of the movie, we watch as Jake deeply connects with the Navi and their ways and in doing so discovers his spiritual self and falls in love. For viewers watching this film, we get to experience the transformation of Jake within us because we are experiencing the movie within our own consciousness and so Jake and the other characters actually become our own avatar. As for those of us who are receptive, we too learn to soften to the more natural ways of life. The film provides a lens for us to ask ourselves, where are we being hard, rigid, or otherwise emotionless in our journey through life? And how can we connect deeper with ourselves and the natural world around us? Curiously, there is a deleted scene from this movie that almost taught us a deeper lesson here, but unfortunately it was cut from the final production. But good news, we can learn that lesson now. The scene features Jake in his avatar form participating in a sacred ceremony that is not at all dissimilar from an ayahuasca journey, although this version includes eating a worm and getting bitten by a scorpion. Oh, and as a side note, Scorpio is the zodiac sign of the invisible, mysticism, and transformation. Much like ayahuasca, Jake goes through a rather tumultuous period as his consciousness changes awareness, and then he suddenly activates into his energy body. From here, he leaves his physical form and rises as energy into a world of light, connection, and transcendent beauty, where he connects with what is probably the spirit of Ewa through the great tree of life. And honestly, once you've seen the scene, watching the full movie normally just feels like it's missing this big crescendo right in the middle. It's such a powerful and transcendent scene, just saying. While we cannot say definitively that Cameron and his team participated in ayahuasca ceremonies, the connection here is too striking to suggest that he's never heard of it either. Nevertheless, James, if you're watching this, I know you probably had some good reason for taking that scene out. Maybe you thought people wouldn't get it, that society wasn't ready, or perhaps you had some studio executive going, you can't show that to a billion people. But whatever the reason, I implore you, please bring this scene back for Avatar 2. Moving on, even though we didn't get our ayahuasca scene, we got some other ceremonies that were just as interesting. As we see on multiple occasions, the Navi also participate in a sacred ceremony where they link their consciousness together and connect with ayahuasca for a divine purpose. And in the case of this movie, that purpose is soul transference. Through their collective mind and mystic prayer, they are able to move the soul from one individual into another body. What's especially curious about this is that, thinking biologically, why would any species need to learn how to do this? Especially like the Navi, it doesn't seem like something they'd really ever need to use. They probably don't have tons of empty Navi bodies just lying around for them to switch their souls into whenever they want, right? Therefore, the significance of these scenes is to demonstrate two things. One, to give us an underlying understanding that consciousness is not limited to the brain or body, but exists beyond it and through it. And further, that with a connection to the divine, anything can be accomplished. After this movie came out, there were people who were depressed and even a few cases of suicide because the world of Pandora wasn't real or at the very least, if it's out there, it's not accessible to us. And Pandora was just so much more appealing than the world we have now. However, thanks to this movie, Pandora now lives within us. And beyond that, the film provides us with lessons on how we can restore life on earth to a natural way of being. Through the proper use of prayer, ceremony, and understanding that we are all connected through our thoughts and feelings, we can amplify our spiritual energy and accomplish things that may even seem impossible for us today. A hundred years ago, we could never even have conceived of a technology like a smartphone. Just imagine where we could be in another hundred years. Finally, the way that many people experienced this film was a narrative about nature. Humans have been incredibly destructive on the face of the planet, and we must change our behavior in order to thrive in harmony with the natural world. We understand clearly that economic imperialism is disastrally exploitive, and it's time we collectively found a better way to express that desire to create and expand in a way that is in harmony with all of life. We can see that the Navi live abundantly. They do not have money. Everything is shared. This says to us that we too can create a life like this on this planet if we are able to get to a place consciously where we see each other as connected and give ourselves freely to each other to infinite them. And most important, Avatar is a narrative on the relationship between colonists and natives, which we have seen many expressions of in different ways, from frozen two and Pocahontas to dances with wolves and fern gully. This is a very important conversation because things in real life didn't go the way they did in Avatar. Civilizations were destroyed and suppressed, and today there are entire cultures that are still living under the heel of the colonialist empires. Today, films like Avatar help to bring these conversations to light in a way that makes it easy for the collective consciousness to grasp. It's very easy to take for granted the actions of our ancestors that brought us here today, but we must acknowledge our history and learn from it if we are going to create collective healing and a better future for all of us. Now, there's one final thing I wish to speak on. While the general mentality of the humans are observed as the antagonist in the movie, there is one aspect of it that we must recognize as important, which is the human technology. You see, the Navi live in a different paradigm. They have no need to build spaceships, they do that with their version of Ayahuasca, but the humans, on the other hand, have a lot of very unique and beautiful technology. It's unfortunate that we see this technology used for such selfish and abusive purposes because the technology itself isn't evil, just the people steering it. Now Avatar itself was praised for its technological innovation and through the film we see a farther potential as to what humanity could create with our computers and even more significantly with our biotech. It's through the technology that the Avatar bodies were created and that which allowed a conscious neural link between their physical form and the avatar body. It's the idea that we are so powerful as a species, we can create literally anything we want to. If we follow in this thought, we can see that the entire world of Pandora is actually something that we could completely turn the earth into if we collectively decided we wanted that. We have the capability to learn how to terraform this entire planet into a thriving natural ecosystem just as much as we can use that same technology to completely blow up the planet. Ultimately that decision rests in our hands individually and together as a species. The only thing that will limit us from some magical future for us all is if we can learn to live from the heart and see each other the way that the Navi saw each other, one with everything. I see you and thank you so much for watching. I know that there's actually a lot more in this movie so if you notice something else that we missed share it in the comments below and while you're at it don't forget to give a like and a subscribe. With that I'll see you again next week for some more hidden spirituality.