M Night Shyamalan's "Split", a Gnostic Myth?

A Metaphysical Background

In a world where the objects of Human mentality possess an ontological existence - a sort of "sink" vis-à-vis the "source" of the atoms which make up our bodies, and the energy we take in to keep ourselves going - ideas and symbols are liable to take on paramount importance.

The dynamic of the Human being is essentially this: impersonal "matter" self-organizing over billions of years to produce a creature which dissipates real physical energy towards a wholly spiritual end: the "beliefs" which secure them their vitality.

If you've followed my work and see appreciate my efforts, you've probably heard this before: symmetry underlies all self-organizing structure, from quarks, to atoms, to molecules, to cells, to human beings connecting, so that each "extension" of the structure builds upon the pre-existing structure. Each progression is complementary, hence, symmetrical: quarks need to be connected in particular triplets to produce a proton, and likewise a neutron. A nucleus needs both a proton and a neutron to be a nucleus; an atom needs a nucleus and circulating electrons to be an atom.

Human beings need the faces, voices and emotional security that comes with connecting with other human beings. This is the ontology of existence: Human beings emerged through the evolutionary emergence of a love-instinct that drew the organism into a motivational need to secure the others positive attention, yet at the same time experience its relation to the other from the perspective of an individual perspective.

Evolution - the emergence of humans - originally brought us to the so-called "omega point": where the reality of self and its own phenomenology of experience is understood to be ontologically "after" the inter-subjective porousness that pervades human minds. Said differently, the analogic nature of self and human awareness - we all experience a different version of the same thing - operated like a cascade mechanism, whereby one self that is recognized experiences an enlivenment and a subsequent desire for connection, and so on. Shame - or the effect of not being recognized - sits as a confusion state which foments the emergence of negative feelings associated with particular people. Shame is a control parameter. Humans need to know it non-conceptually to tame its force - hence the term "name it to tame it".

The forests created a different human because we are a creature of space-time. Seeing people's facial reactions and not having anyplace to hide from their reflexive judgements, acts as a negative reinforcement of perceptual experience. Such negative affects i.e. guilt for shaming someone else, for instance, would arise because the close interpersonal living would sensitize the nervous system to the other parties perceptual states. Attention, then, would become "trained" to be good i.e. to be conscientious of the effects of certain expressed feelings towards others.

Different World Today

I sometimes wonder: if Rupert Sheldrakes theory of "morphic resonance" ends up being a legitimate idea about the 'teleodynamism" of an organisms inclined development, then contemporary anthropological efforts to understand "ancient man" may be unable to disentangle the psychodynamic effects of close to 10,000 years of patriarchy, on the functionality of all human beings - this being an implication of morphic resonance: that creatures of a particular type remain "quantumly connected" regardless of locality.

This being the case, today's aborigines may not be a completely authentic "window' into the past as is commonly assumed. A narrative-mythological consciousness may, as Merlin Donald has supposed, be ontologically prior to a theoretical-observer orientation characterized by an open-hearted scientific methodology, what Donald calls "theoretical consciousness".

Shymalan's World

As a movie, Split is pretty entertaining. James Macavoy's performance is eerie in its goodness.

That said, morally speaking - and since every human interaction is a functionally-entraining one - this movie is horrific in its view of reality, despite the heroic - but ultimately failing efforts - of the main character's psychotherapist, Shymalan has the "Beast" winning, ruled by the trickster archetype "Hedwig", maturely acknowledged to be the aspect of a traumatized persons inner-identity which motivates the formation of defenses: Dennis, the sadistic-psychopath part, and Patricia, the intellectual/thoughtful part, itself an internalization of his relationship with his therapist.

Shymalan does a very interesting job establishing a dynamical connection between the therapist, Kevin (James Macavoy's characters name) and her inability to recognize the significance of a seemingly innocent interaction that Kevin had: seeing a group of teenage girls dare one of their members to flash their breasts. In hindsight, and following the psychodynamic trail of Kevin's history, the therapist failed to recognize how an act like that would activate both the sexually victimized part of Kevin (traumatized, hurt i.e. Hedwig, the child/trickster) as well as the sexually sadistic/aggressive part - Dennis.

Indeed, there's an internal regulation going on: Patricia, a female alter of Kevin, tells the girls that Kevin has just kidnapped that Dennis will not touch you. The internalized therapist (Patricia) regulates the sexually sadistic Dennis (his own historical abuser). It's all very interesting and very intelligently done: it deserves its high IMDB rating.

Yet, one must very well wonder: why are Dennis and Patricia aligned? This is left unexplained, yet this is precisely where Shyamalan's interest goes: this is the internalization of Kevin's psychotherapists interest in the "paranormal" dimensions of dissociative identity disorder i.e. states where a "unfettered belief" can actually and in fact modify a persons cholesterol levels, insulin levels, and other biochemical factors. Kevin had been reading into it, and being excited by his own therapists belief into the reality of this process, began to investigate paranormal subjects himself (this is all to be inferred).

Book cases align his strange apartment - deep in the basement of a zoo. Dennis - the sadistic part, and Patricia, the intellectually curious part - unite in the discovery of "the beast". Now were going into the heart of west occultism and its infatuation with evil and darkness. At all times, trauma is the motivator here: Kevin is hurt, and with a still "split" internal organization, is unstable and vulnerable to seeing the world in very dark ways. The desire/satisfaction towards a satanic and luciferian orientation is a function of the hurt part (Hedwig) motivating the presence of Dennis, with the imprimatur of Patricia, to explore these dark arts.

Kevin's therapist has counted 23 "parts" to Kevin's dissociative identity states. The Beast, kevin believes, is his 24th. This beast appears to be, from my own consideration of occultic "forces", to be the quality of "entropy" personified. This is the only plausible explanation that spans and connects the physical with the mental and spiritual. There is only one reality: not two, and the emergence of metaphor is nothing more than the emergent property of coordinating physical dynamics into "mentality".

Nevertheless, Kevin's power are truly frightening. If this is true - and judging from what western observers of aborigine rituals have seen and reported, it is - then the next question becomes: how the hell is the body defying normal physical constraints?

Kevin can climb walls, move at intense speeds and jump astonishing distances, all with seeming ease. He is truly "obsessed" by the beast, but the beast, indeed, looks real - and to Kevin's psychotherapist, becomes the force that finally kills her.

The theme of the beast and the essence of his philosophy is simple: people who don't know suffering are "not evolved". As a person who has personally suffered more than my fair share, my immediate response is "aye". This beast is obsessed with an unreal fantastical conviction that only suffering leads to purity, so he kills everything in his way - the teenage girls who did not have a history of trauma were killed and feasted upon by the beast, but the third girl, the one with a history of trauma written into her body i.e. self mutilation gave the beast incredible happiness - a truly disturbing scene at the end of the movie which shows how deeply Macavoy apparently "goes into his characters". The best is nothing more than the entropic force "personified", working through Kevin's own thoughts, feelings and fantasies. Shyamalan doesn't abandon the psychological character of the beast-as-kevin, even as the beast expresses his raw strength by ripping open bars.

One wonders at a certain point, is Shyamalan expressing reverence for "this beast"? Does he take it to be in fact a "real thing", as opposed to a Human "sink" which carries all of humankinds frustrations, anxieties, and hatreds - all that "entropy" which makes us act in less than optimal ways with one another and with ourselves?

Can't say. The success of the beast and the triumph of his values may just be about making a part two, or it could be both.

In either case, this movie does touch on deep themes of the modern and ancient human experience: the neurological effects of trauma ( purely deterministic) and the psychospiritual beliefs which humans absorb, and indeed, whose absorption and expression can sometimes express a fundamental "truth" about the nature of our physical embeddedment in the world: there is a very real 'spiritual' quality to it all.

Just think what would happen if all a sudden your cells released the molecular charge that holds our cells together, we would disintegrate into a bowl of jelly. The glue that holds us together is molecular charges. All glue that holds things together is molecular charges. All bonds are made of attractive charges.

This energy that organizes our cells and interacts with the DNA, where does it actually come from? Is it possible for us to boost this energy control or steer other life's energy?

I suppose this is a little off topic, but when reading the OP I just seemed to think of this for some reason.

Is it only tares who put stock into the "matter equals existence" theory?

Thats all you see. Everything starts with bound energy.. Like ok.. Radio waves don't exist then..?

Particles detect waves, they don't create them.

As in.. THE EXISTENCE OF WAVES PREDATE MATTER. All kinds of cool shut was goin on before the fall!