Have you seen the movie Contact? It's a movie about human transformation. How Ellie's (Jodie Foster's) consciousness is elevated through an intuitive, mystical realization of the universe. And, at the same time, it's about how our present level of collective societal consciousness is blind to this reality.
It would be easy to second guess Jodie's character, a "believer" in science. And at times I found myself doing that, wondering why she has chosen to enmesh herself in our institutional research bureaucracy of grant angst, political back-biting and public relations. I wanted to say, give it up, Ellie. Join us here at Circle of the Earth where intuition and intuitive feeling, not science and media skepticism, rule. For--perhaps as Ellie has learned by the end of the film--obtaining the information that can be bestowed by an intelligence far superior to ours, does not require costly scientific equipment and dependence upon a fouled institutional infrastructure. These in fact, especially the latter, are impediments. As Joseph Campbell said, "It's right there. Everyday."
The turning point in the plot is not when Ellie travels through wormholes to meet God. She need only pronounce her belief in the space beings who sent the message to earth, that they are basically good and mean us no harm. The analysts and commentators, the politicians, the militarists see invaders, conquerors, as do the masses they manipulate. The right-wing sees only something that is anti-Fundamentalist Christian. Her preparers for the journey give her a poison pill because their rational belief system includes the idea that "something could go wrong." But Ellie trusts the beings who have contacted her. And she is intelligent enough to understand that they are contacting her personally too, that what is important is what is in her mind and how she responds to it. Scientifically, she has no evidence to verify their intentions because there is none. It is all a matter of faith. Are the guys in outer space bad or good? It's really the basic argument of theology: is God/Goddess good or is he/she bad which is the same as non-existent? When she chooses an answer about this alien civilization, she uses the same rationale that one uses to say that God/Goddess is good: faith. And we might add to this our own observation, that what we believe has an important impact upon what we eventually discover to be true.
Three of the things I took away from this film: The crazy "anti-science" fanatic who destroys the first transport machine is really the instrument that allows Ellie to go on her journey. When a character's name in a work like this is also alphabet letters ("l" or "l"and "e") I am pretty certain that the writer was careful enough to imagine those letters standing for something. What? And then I remember Ellie's words: "I had no idea. I had no idea." Right out of The Wizard of Oz.
did you see contact?