Six Feet Under

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column
Created: Friday, 10 February 2006 13:27
Published: Friday, 10 February 2006 13:27
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A couple of nights ago, Steve and I watched the final episode of Six Feet Under. Steve and I watched every series of that program. I greatly enjoyed this last series. I think it was easily the best television to come out of the US in recent years. I was sad to learn that it was to finish. I was curious to know how they would end it -- after all this time, they had to somehow find an ending to it all. I thought the technique of fast forwarding into the future so that we could see the death of each character was very effective. I felt as if I was fast forwarded into my own death. I felt exhilarated by that. I imagine that death will be the journey of a lifetime. :-) Imagine travelling from one world of reality to another! To me, the idea is mind boggling and reveals the greatness of God.

One important reason I liked the program so much was that it dealt with death and incorporated that reality into the lives of the characters. Usually death is invisible in television programs, which reflects how we spend our lives ignoring it. I also really liked the way they incorporated people's dreams and thoughts into the drama. Again, it added to the reality of their depiction of what is to be human. We operate as though the physical world alone is what's real, but the fact is that we generate a reality as well with our thoughts. As Abdul Baha says, "The reality of man is his thought."

I have mentioned this before, but over the last few years I began to wake up to just how much my thoughts were dominating my reality. I realised that I was generating an inner hell with them. Baha'u'llah says that we are the worshippers of our idle fancies and vain imaginings. If only people would realise that they are a slave to them. If they saw this, they would free themselves and the physical world would reflect the Sun of Truth. You can see in the program how David was tormented by his fears, which manifested themselves in the image of that man who had assaulted him in the previous series. And Brenda was tormented by her fears that her child would be mentally disabled. These are obvious examples of how our inner thoughts generate our reality, but it happens in a more subtle way as well and we don't realise it's happening. I realised that I was making myself depressed by concentrating on negative things. In particular, I tormented myself with things that I couldn't change and I got angry at people for not being the way I wanted them to be. I told myself all sorts of silly stories; I was drowning in silly stories. Then it dawned on me that these silly stories were what Baha'u'llah meant by idle fancies and vain imaginings. And I began to knock them on the head. I implemented a mental discipline: if I thought a silly thought, I checked myself and told myself to stop thinking it. It has made huge difference to my life.

But in any case, I wanted to acknowledge how much I enjoyed Six Feet Under and thank those who created it. I hope that, in the future, more television programs incorporate the reality of our spiritual lives as that programme did.

Baha'u'llah refers to the "world's within this world" in his Tablet of the Vision. These worlds include the ones that David and Brenda went to in their thoughts and dreams, as do all of us.

The text for the Tablet of the Vision is at http://www.whoisbahaullah.com/Alison/vision.html.

9-minute MP3 audio of Mark reading Tablet of the Vision

11-minute 40-second MP3 audio of Alison discussing the worlds within