History: Headscratchers / Lost

****** The essence of the afterlife is that the characters are starting over, but THIS TIME carrying the knowledge they gained from their past life with them (similar to [[spoiler: the ending of the StephenKing series TheDarkTower, though in that case Roland hasn't yet gained the knowledge and is doomed to keep cycling for a while]]), i.e. Sawyer is a cop because of the three years he spent working security for the DHARMA Initiative . And dharma is a major clue to understanding the finale. One of the goals of Buddhist enlightenment is to remember the knowledge from your past incarnations, which frees you from the repeated cycle of rebirth. And it also has an analogue in Platonic philosophy, Anamnesis or the loss of forgetfulness, where knowledge is described as coming from '''the source''', a divine realm beyond the world that our consciousness returns to when we die. Science fiction writer PhilipKDick once had an experience of what he believed was anamnesis while under the influence of psychotropic drugs, and this experience later served as the basis of VALIS, the book Locke hands to Ben in season 4.

****** The essence of the afterlife is that the characters are starting over, but THIS TIME carrying the knowledge they gained from their past life with them (similar to [[spoiler: the ending of the StephenKing series ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'', though in that case Roland hasn't yet gained the knowledge and is doomed to keep cycling for a while]]), i.e. Sawyer is a cop because of the three years he spent working security for the DHARMA Initiative . And dharma is a major clue to understanding the finale. One of the goals of Buddhist enlightenment is to remember the knowledge from your past incarnations, which frees you from the repeated cycle of rebirth. And it also has an analogue in Platonic philosophy, Anamnesis or the loss of forgetfulness, where knowledge is described as coming from '''the source''', a divine realm beyond the world that our consciousness returns to when we die. Science fiction writer PhilipKDick once had an experience of what he believed was anamnesis while under the influence of psychotropic drugs, and this experience later served as the basis of VALIS, the book Locke hands to Ben in season 4.

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