DeConick A.D

231
SPIRITUAL AVATARS
DNA with human DNA, at an exorbitant cost. This means that each Na’vi
body is specific to the human driver.
Jake is on Pandora to become a driver of one of these native bodies.
He is the genetic human replacement for his twin brother, Tommy, who
was killed before he could be linked to his Na’vi body.
When Jake first sees Tommy’s Na’vi body, he is stunned speechless. The
humanoid body is huge, more than nine feet long. It looks like a majestic
angel, a mythical creature sleeping in a womb of primal water. It is gestating
in an amino tank of brilliant blue liquid, an umbilical cord floating up
from his naval. It is ready to be born.
Jake is mesmerized by the sleeping face. He observes with surprise, “It
looks like him.” A fellow driver, Norm, corrects Jake. “No, it looks like
you. This is your avatar now, Jake.” Jake is face-to-face with his colossal
double.
Thus begins Jake’s journey of psychological and spiritual integration
with his avatar, what will become, in this movie, Jake’s true self, his blue
angel. This story of the integration of the human self with an angelic
double summons us toward a second-century Gnostic named Valentinus,
who made integration with the divine twin a distinctive feature of the
story of our irresistible attraction to divine wholeness.
Valentinus the Almost-Pope
In the early part of the second century, Valentinus, a man born in the Nile
delta and living in Alexandria, had a vision that changed his life (Hippolytus,
Refutation 6.42.2). He saw an infant boy, newly born. “Who are
you?” Valentinus asked the apparition. Miraculously, the infant opened
his mouth and announced, like Hermes in the Hermetic books, “I am
Reason.”
According to Valentinus, their conversation continued. Again like the
superhero Hermes in the Hermetic revelations, the infant outlined for
Valentinus the metaphysics of human existence. But he did so within the
framework of a tragic love story about an original, primordial, divine
couple—the unknowable Father and the silent Mother—who, from their
lovemaking, birthed divinities that populated a transcendent realm.
All was well until Sophia, one of the divinities, was born. Because Sophia
is the goddess of wisdom, she did what came naturally to her: she