Through the courtesy of the 24-hour cable channel Memorable Entertainment Television (ME-TV) and Comcast, my cable provider, I get to watch The Twilight Zone five days a week. The irony is that it’s on channel 209, the same number of the elementary school I attended when these Twilight Zone episodes were airing in the first place.
The dramatic program, created by the genius Rod Serling, ran from 1959- 1964. It’s still my favorite TV show after all these years. Serling’s very rich imagination stretched our concept of reality, showing us ESP, connections to angels, and all manner of possibilities so far outside any envelope we could have imagined. And many of these episodes aired during the Eisenhower years, a time when such lightweight fare as Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best were being pumped into the American home and shaping the American consciousness. Ever ahead of his time, Serling’s imagination is still stretching us more than half a century later. In 2013 TV Guide ranked The Twilight Zone as number four in its list of The 60 Greatest Dramas of All Time.
The program has so captured the American imagination that Walt Disney Imagineering designed the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, an attraction at Disney’s Hollywood studios in Orlando, Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, and the Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris.
The term “new age” didn’t exist when The Twilight Zone was born fully formed from the head of Serling, but in this column it’s being seen as a perfect lens through which to view the program. One of the most popular concepts in the new age is the Law of Attraction, made something of a household name by the best-selling video and book, The Secret. The Law of Attraction is a reality of life that predates The Twilight Zone by… well, at least 2,500 years. The law states that energy goes where attention flows, that our thoughts can help create our realities.
One of the most perfect examples of this principle in The Twilight Zone is the episode, “A World of His Own,” in which Keenan Wynn portrayed a famous playwright. His character created characters by dictating their profiles into a tape recorder; they were so lifelike that they were… well, lifelike. In other words, they jumped off the page and right into his writing studio. He could also un-create them simply by putting a pair of scissors to the tape, and snipping off the section that contained them.
The show opened on the playwright and his mistress, who he then made disappear when his jealous wife arrived home unexpectedly early. He tried to prove to his Mrs. that he had a magical skill for manifesting life from his own mind. She didn’t believe him until he made her disappear, as well. And that’s when the biggest element of surprise dawned on the viewer: that his wife herself was a creation of his imagination.
The show also demonstrated an esoteric Vedic principle of Ritam Bhara Pragya, a higher state of consciousness in which whatever one intends immediately manifests. We see examples of this in spiritual history through the miracles of Christ two thousand years ago, and the manifestations of the yogi Sathya Sai Baba two millennia later.
New agers often talk about support from their guides, some of whom they think of as guardian angels. In “A Passage for Trumpet,” a young Jack Klugman portrays a down-and-out trumpet player who walks off a curb so that he may be fatally hit by a car. He’s given a second chance at life by his guardian angel - who else but hornblowing archangel Gabriel?
In another episode, a washed up boxer, gets a lesson from a young boy who not only believes in him but also believes in the power of belief systems, and teaches him the Law of Attraction without referring specifically to it that way. The boy’s intention is so strong that he actually changes reality - turning his hero’s defeat in the ring into a knockout victory. But when the pugilist learns from the boy later that night that it was the youth’s faith that changed that reality, the jaded adult tells the innocent child that he, the boy, doesn’t understand how Reality works. And with that, the outcome of the fight has been changed, with the washed-up fighter losing after all.
One of the lessons that The Twilight Zone demonstrates superbly is the shifting of contexts, a skill I coach my clients to do on a regular basis. In one episode, a couple in a suburban town, hung over from a night of drinking and partying, can’t understand why nobody is out on the streets, and why even things like buildings and phone booths are merely facades. We, as viewers, eventually discover that this husband and wife are simply dolls in the dollhouse of a young girl.
As a life coach, I encourage my clients to see their lives, their relationships, and their businesses in a more expanded and empowered context than the smaller ones from which they often view their situations. Such new ways of seeing enable a person to move out of being stuck into that wonderful place we call the Zone - a higher state of consciousness in… well, The Twilight Zone.
Unity Sermon on Abundance Pompano Beach Prosperity & the Bible