Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00672)

liesel f. deutsch wrote:
>
> Boy, this final thought is getting to be 1x1x1x1x1 etc.
>
> >The movies we show the first Friday of every month, however, is a
> >POPULAR movie, as opposed to a documentary.
>
> Bart, what's your purpose?

	It's a lot easier for most people to watch a popular (i.e. mass market)
movie and discuss it than for them to read some difficult, obfuscatory,
disorganized, formally worded 19th century tome and discuss that. And
many movies do have strong Theosophical implications. To take one case
in point, let's take a look at GROUNDHOG DAY. The following reveals
information about the ending of the movie, so if you don't want it
spoiled, don't read it.

	GROUNDHOG DAY can be viewed as a light, romantic, comedy. Yet, it also
has strong Theosophical implications. It symbolizes the cycle of life,
death, and rebirth, and shows evolution through the cycles.

	Bill Murray stars as Phil Connors, a dislikable weatherman who has to
do a Groundhog Day broadcast from Punxsutawney, PA. He is totally
self-centered, treating the people around him alternatively as objects
to fulfill his desires and things to stay away from. Snowed in to
Punxsutawney, he spends the night there, only to wake up the next
morning to find out that, once again, it is Groundhog Day. Nobody but he
realizes that the day is repeating itself. He starts out by taking
advantage of his situation, but gets more and more despondent as time
goes on, and he seems doomed to repeat the situation endlessly. Yet,
everything he does, he does for himself. He spends much of his time
trying to seduce his producer. At one point, he decides to pursue her
friendship rather than love, and succeeds, only to find that she does
not remember anything the next day. It is only when he performs a
selfless act (giving money to an old beggar) that he begins to change
his situation.

	In noticing the beggar, Phil also notices that the beggar dies that
night. Phil then vows that he will make sure that nothing bad happens to
anybody in Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day. He proceeds to ensure that he
is on the spot to stop everything bad that happens that day, making him
the hero of Punxsutawney and, without any extra effort on his part, his
producer falls in love with him.

	The film is an allegory for the many lifetimes we cycle through. What
we do in any lifetime has little or no effect on what happens in the
next lifetime, just like Phil going through lifetime after lifetime.
Eventually, we discover that the key to continued satisfaction across
the lifetimes is through altruism, helping one's fellow man. But, even
after this realization comes, we still have to work off the karma we
created in our previous lifetimes before we can ascend, symbolized in
GROUNDHOG DAY as the next day dawning.

	Bart Lidofsky