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PSI ON THE TUBE AND AT THE MOVIES
Have you noticed the increasing number of films and television programs that feature psychic and spiritual themes and episodes? You can find Psi on the tube and at the movies here, there and everywhere if you know where to look. Hollywood has cashed in on the craze if it is a craze, or just maybe they are playing to genuine needs and interests that are part of who we are as physical and spiritual beings with real psychic as well as bodily dimensions to our full human identity.
A number of years ago (1990) it was the movie "Ghost" starring Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze that got things going. What is it like being a ghost who tries to communicate with those he has left behind after he is killed by an intruder? When he finally is able to resolve the crime and circumstances of his own death he is able to follow the light and move on to a higher spiritual plane. We also learn that there is a "dark side" to the "other side" and that those who follow their lust and their greed get their just desserts.
This theme is picked up again in the 1999 film "The Sixth Sense" starring Bruce Willis and the child actor Haley Joe Osmet. This film was panned by the critics, but it soon became very popular in spite of that. This time we learn what it is like to be a child psychic-medium in the process of development who sees dead people and does not know how to handle his mediumistic gift. He strikes up a friendship with Bruce Willis who is struggling with the fact that he has been killed and does not yet realize he is dead. What would it be like to be dead and not know it? Together the two help one another resolve the mystery of their human destiny, both living and dead, and to get on with their lives, both here and hereafter. Bruce Willis seems to enjoy doing movies with secret numbers in their titles—like ‘The Fifth Dimension" and "The Twelfth Monkey"—also dealing with sci-fi psychic spooky stuff. If you like that sort of thing, as I do, you'
ll enjoy those earlier Willis films, as I did. I also enjoyed Willis in "The Kid" (2000) in which he encounters both his younger and older selves across the dimensions of time. He helps his younger self change the past and hence his present and future by changing his response and action to a challenging event—another version of "Back To The Future". What would you change in your self and your life if you could?
In 2001 Nicole Kidman followed up with "The Others", another 6th Sense type spooky surprise film about a mother and her two children, a boy and a girl, who live their lives in a dark mansion waiting for their husband/father to return from the War (W.W. I). What they don'
t know and we don'
t know until much later in the film is that they are already dead and don'
t know it, and the living who move into the house, appear to them to be like ghosts. Who are the ghosts and who are the living, and who among us are already living ghosts?
On the lighter side you can see Nicole Kidman again in this year'
s comic remake of "Bewitched" also starring Will Farrel. It is great fun and not to be taken seriously (wink- wink, nod-nod, twitch your nose). Of course you can always go back to "Ghost Busters" for a rollicking spoof about spirit matters, or to Men In Black I and II, for contact with alien life forms who help run the government, better I think than the latest TV attempt "Invasion." Or you can see Reese Witherspoon in "Just Like Heaven" who plays the part of a young woman who is neither living nor dead, but in a coma, and whose astral body is in a bewildered state, and continues to haunt her former apartment. The new occupant, a man (Mark Ruffalo), can see her, and they eventually fall in love. How they eventually get together in the flesh is the jist of the story.
Last year "Joan of Arcadia" (a contemporary Joan of Arc) was a popular TV show about a teenage girl who talks with God, or rather, God talks with her, in the guise of everyday common folk, young and old, and in between, and gives her tasks and problems to be resolved in the challenges of everyday living at home or in school, or on the street. My grandchildren hardly ever missed an episode.
More recent and more serious programs are two of my favorites—"Medium" starring Patricia Arquette as Allison Dubois (a real life research medium) who works with a local D.A. to help solve mysterious crimes (she gets clues from dreams of the dead)—and "Ghost Whisperer" starring Jennifer Love Hewitt who helps rescue spirits who are unable to move on to a higher spiritual plane because of unresolved issues from their physical existence on earth. James Van Praagh a popular psychic-medium thinks the latter show is first rate and an accurate portrayal of what happens to the spirits and souls of those who have recently passed on, but are unable to fully crossover to the spiritual realm of being.
Last but not least is the cult film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" or what the heck is going on? Critics by and large did not like this attempt to bridge the New Physics and the new spirituality of the New Age—they only gave it one and half stars. The film has nonetheless had its own following of those who are intrigued by the questions asked and left unresolved, but hinting at answers, to who we are, and how internal and external reality are manifested and created by the evolution of life and consciousness in us all. I bought the DVD and have shared it with friends and family. See it and ponder the questions it raises and the answers and mysteries it hints at. I know, speaking for myself, that I don'
t know much, but along with Shakespeare and others, I am convinced that "there are more things in heaven and earth, dear Horatio, than are dreamt of in thy philosophy."
(Richard M. Fewkes – President, UU Psi Symposium)
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