AvatarWhen I walked out of Avatar, I thought to myself, "Wow, James Cameron has done a lot of acid, and then he spent enough money to bring us with him on his trip." I've never done hallucinogens, but after over two hours of Avatar I felt like I had. Sure, it has plenty of problems, but Avatar with all the bells and whistles is an experience. One that, apparently, struck some moviegoers so deeply it left them depressed and, in some cases, suicidal to "leave" Pandora.

What struck me most as far as the story itself -- probably one of the most interesting parts of the story, as far as I was concerned -- was that Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) compares the connection between the Na'vi and their planet to a brain or a computer network.

According to the script (download the PDF here), Augustine tells Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), "What we think we know - is that there's some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora... That's more connections than the human brain. You get it? It's a network - a global network. And the Na'vi can access it - they can upload and download data - memories..." (p. 102)

It's a very similar idea as tuning into Jung's collective unconscious -- the idea of an interconnectedness between all of humanity and nature. Which, as writer Erik Davis (no relation to our own Erik Davis ... I think) points out, echoes the experience and lore surrounding the psychoactive drug ayahuasca. As Davis writes on his site, TechGnosis, "Indeed, whether you are talking form (ground-breaking 3D animation) or content (cyber-hippie wetdream [sic] decor), Cameron's visual and technological rhetoric is impossible to disentangle from hallucinogenic experience."

He allows that the Na'vi's "noble savage" nature is nothing new for Hollywood, but that "Avatar represents some important twists in that basic tale. The most important of these is that the Na'vi's nearly telepathic understanding of their environment is grounded not only in ritual, plant-lore, and that earnest seriousness that now afflicts PC Hollywood Indians, but in an organic communications network: the fibrous, animated, and vaguely repulsive pony-tail tentacles that not only allow the Na'vi to form direct control links with animals but also, through the optical filaments of the 'Tree of Souls,' to commune with both ancestors and the Ewya, the biological spirit of the planet whose name resonates with Erda, our own Earth."

So, psychonauts, I ask of you -- is Avatar like stepping into the pool of your subconscious? Is it a little bit like you wish Burning Man would be, minus playa foot and half-naked dot com folks bartering food for hugs? Or is Cameron smoking something else altogether?