A love letter to The OA: Part I

In time, I think it’s possible that The OA might be considered one of the greatest stories ever told.

Perhaps that’s just me imposing my own adoration on it. But the more I watch it. The more I study it. The more I see it referenced in passing when talking about major concepts around consciousness and reality, the more I believe it is equal parts prophetic and a handbook.

Let’s just start with what it’s about. If you haven’t seen it yet, go do so before reading this. I’m not going to spend a ton of time summarizing the story. It’s too complex. This article is really more an indulgence for those who have already watched it.

Brief Synopsis of The OA Season One and Two

The story opens with Prairie, a woman we see jumping from a bridge in the first scene only to wake in a hospital. When her parents are called they are met with a strange discovery. When their daughter disappeared seven years before, she was blind. But now she can see.

This begins our journey on discovering what happened to Prairie. Where was she from? Who took her? Where has she been? And why can she see now?

Our MC quickly gathers a band of rag tag outsiders who she needs in order to save the other people she was held captive with. This group of teenagers and a high school teacher are some of the most delightful and engaging ensemble of characters I’ve ever witnessed. Dynamic. Heart-wrenching. Unique. Bold. Broken people.

As Prairie tells her story, we discover she was the daughter of a Russian oligarch. Her original name was Nina and she was blinded as a child when she nearly died in a bus crash. As the mob chased her father, she was sent to live with an aunt and eventually adopted out. But she never gave up searching for her father. She played her violin for him in a New York subway station hoping he’d hear her and find her. Instead, Hap found her. He recognized her abounding talent with the violin as a side effect of an NDE (near death experience) and asked her to join him in research.

As Prairie is escorted to Hap’s house, she finds herself led to an underground cell where she and others become prisoners and unwitting lab rats for Hap’s mad drive to discover what happens after we die.

In time, the captives discover that they are being killed and resuscitated over and over in this sick attempt to find answers. As they become conscious of their perverse torture they begin to use it. Discovering clues to their freedom in the NDEs through movements given to them on the other side. But are they really on the other side? In the afterlife? Or are they entering parallel universes? Each is distinctly different from person to person, but familiar.

The world of the captives collides with the world of Prairie’s new found friends who are simultaneously being taught the movements in an effort for Prairie to travel and save Homer, the young man she fell in love with in captivity, and the others.

The culmination of the first season ends with a school shooting where the movements are used to save the teenagers’ lives. As Prairie receives a gunshot to the abdomen, we watch her drive off in an ambulance under the potential assumption that she has jumped into an alternative reality or died.

When the second season begins we are met with a new cast of characters and a slightly askew version of the world we knew from season one.

Here, Prairie is actually Nina and has always been the Russian oligarch’s daughter. And Hap, instead of working out of his basement, is a renowned psychologist. In his mental ward he is holding some of his former captives and Homer is operating as his enamored assistant, unable to remember his previous reality with Prairie and the others.

We are met with a detective character and an extremely disturbing online game that transcends the digital world by luring teenagers to a house filled with mystery and danger. Prairie becomes a patient of Hap’s, once again trapped in his web. Her memories from her previous reality are fully intact and her drive to save Homer persists in this second dimension.

Meanwhile, the teenagers from Prairie's original timeline are on a quest to prove that everything Prairie taught them was true, driven by a message sent through the next dimension.

By the end, the OA(Prairie/Nina) and Homer are attempting another jump. Tragedy has befallen the teenage team. And a horrifying truth about the teens in the second dimension is discovered. All the dimensions hold immense danger. Upon waking in the third dimension, we find Prairie/Nina’s character awakening in our world where her name is Brit and she is an actor on a show called The OA.

Then, tragically, in 2019 after the second season premiered, it’s announced that The OA was cancelled. Or is it? We’ll get to that later.

The OA is High Strangeness at its Finest

As I stated in my post about my favorite parallel universe stories, I think The OA is so devastatingly over the target on what magic our world might actually possess that if it is truly cancelled, it’s because it was flying too close to the sun.

I find the further I dig into consciousness there are recurring themes and hints that our world is far grander than what we are told to believe. And in this show, so many areas of fringe study that point to the truth behind our power are covered. It’s done so in such a lyrical, profound way that it’s easy to miss just how many touch points The OA hits in terms of mind-bending, real-life occurrences that give us hints as to the nature of our reality and the power of human beings.

Near Death Experiences

First, let’s start with the NDE’s. This might be the concept that is most familiar when we’re talking about the world of weirdness. Most are familiar with the idea that people will die (we’re talking flatlined, no brain or heart activity) and then when resuscitated, come back with vibrant stories of their consciousness transcending their Earthly body. In some cases, this is viewed in religious terms, like Heaven. But in other instances we get accounts of a person witnessing things in another room of the hospital. Details provided that they couldn’t have known given their bodily state.

One of the most famous explorations of this is done by M.D. Bruce Greyson. An otherwise straight-laced doctor who, when faced with an anomaly he couldn’t explain regarding a NDE, decided to pull the thread. And now, his whole career revolves around the phenomenon.

Others experiencers have recalled going through a life review where they live every moment of their Earthly existence from the perspective of everyone they touched. Sounds a little like parallel universes to me. In Mark Gober’s book An End to Upside Down Thinking, life reviews and NDE’s are just one area he covers in his collection of evidence to support the idea that consciousness is not manifested in the brain. (This was my first dive into this world as I researched while writing The Luxury of Time Travel.)

NDEs are a strange and mysterious event experienced by people throughout the world. And while mainstream science will take the approach that this is a hallucination caused by the release of chemicals prior to death (namely DMT) it doesn’t actually account for many of the anecdotal overlaps that come after brain activity has medically ceased. As for me, I rarely am in line with the materialist view and feel it’s deeply lacking soul.

Back to The OA though, it’s not a huge leap to think that hidden within a near-death experience are clues to our reality (or realities). And as we watch Prairie’s story unfold, there is something that rings so true about this idea that just on the other side of death is a world of answers we can’t reach in our biological state.

Another thematic element from the show that has real-life support is the development of talent and intuition in an experiencer. In the story, one of the ways Hap finds his captives is through their immense talent. Here, a doctor shares his own transformation after death. People also experience utter relief and comfort with dying after a NDE. Others report an increase in psychic ability.

All in all, I would strongly encourage anyone interested in the nature of our reality and consciousness and life after death to spend some time on this subject. If you need a practical approach rather than a mystical one, Dr. Raymond Moody tends to make this accessible to those who just want the facts.

Saturn Worship

Okay, I’ve said I was going to cover this at some point when I was talking about A History of What Comes Next and we discussed Von Braun’s Saturn V rocket, so I’ll dive a little into it here.

First, I would start by just recommending that you check out Nick Hinton. He has a book on Saturn and he’s appeared on a lot of podcasts. Dude has some wild ideas that I find fascinating, while somehow also being very grounded.

Few weird tidbits about Saturn:

Saturn is the mythical Roman god of harvests (aka Cronus, the god of time, in Greek). He’s known for eating his children so that they couldn’t overthrow him. Zeus is said to be his one child to escape and take his throne, locking him in hell. While it’s not my area of expertise, I do know that the names of our planets and gods are not accidents. And that the stories hold a little more meaning than just fairytales.
Saturn has a hexagon cloud on one of its poles. That is also represented as a cube. “Black cube worship” is an insanely prevalent part of pop culture, religion, occult, business and political spheres. I’ll let Nick Hinton do the heavy lifting for me on the black cube rabbit hole. After you check this out, it’s hard to deny just how relevant it is.
But why? What’s so worship worthy about Saturn? Some think it was our original sun and that it brought a utopic bounty to the Earth (hence why Saturn is god of harvests perhaps?). Troy McLachlan makes an interesting case for this. And it would make sense if the keepers of our real history wanted to return to the plenty of a perfect Earth, why they would worship this particular planet. In stories like 2001: A Space Odyssey (the book, not the movie) the journey is in fact to Saturn. In Interstellar, the wormhole is placed near Saturn. From Beetlejuice to Star Trek… always, always a nod to Saturn.
Some think Saturn worship = Satan worship. Saturn is the sixth planet (666). Saturday is the sixth day of the week. It’s been twisted and morphed over time, but that the “light bearer” and the “anti-christ” actually have something to do with forbidden Saturn knowledge. I don’t dabble a lot in the religious side of things, but there are those who do that you can seek out.
There are also people out there who think Saturn is a giant broadcasting system, using frequency to craft a dystopian reality for us. I’ve even heard some go as far as to say Saturn might be an AI super computer or alien/other dimmensional race controlling humanity! (Come on… that’s just fun to think about.) But it’s actually not that weird. Considering quantum computer creator Geordie Rose says AI is summoning a demon and Elon Musk refers to AI as “summoning a demon.” And then Wernher Von Braun (inventor of the Saturn rocket) predicted a man named Elon would lead us to Mars. All the talk of demons, AI and Saturn start to have an echo. Then you think about the fact that frequencies reverberate off of Saturn (or so we’re told) and frequency has the power to impact water and sand. Maybe it is impacting us too!

It is this last point about frequency that brings us back around to The OA. Once Prairie discovers what Hap is doing and forms a reluctant partnership so that she can gain more knowledge herself, he shows her something in his lab. While she’s dead/having an NDE, he records a sound. The sound is none other than the sound emitted by Saturn’s rings (it’s a truly haunting and enveloping thing to listen to). “The rings of Saturn, that’s where you were.” Hap tells her.

Perhaps there is power in Saturn. Secrets. Reality.

I am in no way an expert on Saturn, but, I do know that that planet wasn’t chosen by accident. Once you go down the Saturn worship rabbit hole, you can’t unsee all the black cubes. And while you may not have a singular idea on what it is, you’ll get the feeling that Saturn is more than just a distant planet in our solar system.

Astral Travel

First of all, what is astral travel?

It’s the concept that someone can have an out-of-body experience where they are transmitted to another geographical location, another time, an ethereal, nondescript place and even build worlds with fellow astral travelers via their own consciousness.

I won’t spend a ton of time on this subject now, but there was always something about where Prairie goes to meet Khatun specifically that feels like astral travel. She has a spirit guide she interacts with there and she’s surrounded by stars and boundless, infinite space. Though this isn’t the only place she goes, it struck me as a journey only her mind could take and one she might even control with time (outside a NDE).

It’s also a concept I enjoy toying with in my own books. I think there is some sort of link between astral travel, NDE’s and parallel universes. It may be a key to how we can break free from our physical selves and explore worlds and concepts beyond our current scope. Everything from meditation to psychedelics can be a vehicle for transporting our minds to a different place and time.

The Movements

One of the unmissable aspects of The OA is the movements that are retrieved during the NDE’s. After consuming a biological substance (in Prairie’s case a bird, in Homer’s case a sea creature) the captives return with movement in their bodies. Strange, twisted choreography that in time is proven to heal wounds, reincarnate a fellow dead prisoner and dimension hop.

Now on the surface this may seem like a stretch. Dance moves to another dimension didn’t entirely click with me at first. But as you begin to think about it more, this is far from the first time we’re led to believe that movement has power. Aside from the obvious benefits of exercise, there is yoga, a fairly spiritual practice paired with poses and stretches. Or Falun Gong, a practice based entirely on meditation and slow movements that for some reason, was banned and persecuted in China. Why? What power does a group of people breathing and moving together have?

And then you get to the Castaneda cult. Carlos Castaneda has been dubbed “the godfather of the New Age.” He used his alleged teachings from a Shaman and peyote-driven experiences to develop a set of beliefs, books and a following. Though much of his story rings familiar with other cult stories, what you’ll find a lot with Castaneda is the implication that he transcends reality. Or is able to step into another reality. Not hard to see how that might align with The OA.

But if you dig a little deeper, you find that Castaneda developed a set of movements called Tensegrity and if you go check out the twelve distinct exercises, you will definitely see some similarities in the jerky, organic, dance-like moves of Castaneda’s to that of The OA’s movements.

Do I think these storytellers and actors have actually developed a dimension-hopping set of movements? I don’t know. Maybe. I rule nothing out. But what you can’t deny is that The OA’s movements transcended the show and began to appear in our actual reality.

Anytime a story leaves the screen or pages and becomes a part of culture, a new world(or reality) is in fact created. So while they may not literally move dancers into another plane of existence, the movements clearly have power.

At the news that The OA was being cancelled a #SaveTheOA campaign began. It included a flash mob in NYC, hunger strikes and communities developing all over the world, doing the movements as an offering and plea to bring back this show.

This article from The Vulture does a great job stringing together some of the impact the show has had and the efforts made to revive it.

It’s strange and uncomfortable to think of a TV show that drives people to strike and protest. But after multiple viewings and being sucked in from the very start of the show, I still just go back to this idea: The OA isn’t just a show.

It’s a language that speaks to our souls. It’s a visual presentation of something we innately know, but can’t fully form into a thought. It’s an expression of human potential that goes far beyond physical feats and fast-talking powerhouses. It’s quiet. It’s honest. It’s seductive. It’s sincere.

I’ve never seen a fan-base quite like it. The site TheOAisReal.com is a testament to just how serious people have taken the story.

And as for me… I’ve only gotten through season one of the things I wanted to cover, so this is going to be a two-part exploration of the mind-bending concepts in The OA. I will conclude part two with the theory around why the show may still go on. And I’ll continue to gush/deep dive about the nature of this story and why story is vital to all of us transcending the trap this world’s systems use in a desperate attempt to divide us and restrain our potential. Until then, I’ll leave you with this quote from The OA, which is one of my favorites: