Enlightenment

[Peon]

I think this peice has an overall meaning of developing a connection with something spiritual, "God" if you will. Try to see if you can get this.

Disposition- First you must reach inner peace. A passiveness, a relaxed "Budhist" approach to all things.

Reflection- Then you must examine your self. The Dali Lama says that to reach enlightenment, you must question the beleifs you yourself hold dear, and not those you think are forced on you. The electric version of the Disposition represents bringing ancient beliefs to your life. The end is the humbleness that follows self examination.

Triad- Before the drumming begins, you can hear something that sounds something like a river. In many cultures the river is a source of both life and death. Approaching this river could mean approaching of death. The heavy guitar is the pain and stress that one deals with before death. The gentle humming heard after the first scream is part of the riff from reflection showing the reimergence of demons faced in your self crucifiction. The varrying technological sounds show problems and how they lead to more problems. But then you slowly fade away into the silence of death.

Faaip De Oiad- After the great silence of death one finally reaches enlightenment and hears the voice of God or becomes aware of a higher power. This however is a fleeting instance, then you are returned to the tranquility of death with new knowledge of the world you had left behind so long ago.

But that's just my take.

[lonely_host]

thats inventive, yet purely subjective...nice touch with the river thing..but the end including "faaip de oiad" in it is going a little too far..

[J1516]

I agree with Enlightenment, but you way overthought Faaip De Oiad. There's nothing to that song. It's just a drum solo with some eerie voices (oooh, tool's gettin spoooooky).

Anyway here's my take (I analyze most of the album here):
Disposition- After Lateralus because you have achieved your state of knowledge and spiritual power you feel a calm come over you and you are about to move foward. The first part of the album suggests a horrible life. The Grudge obviously suggests anger, The Patient suggests the cycle of strain and domination that we want to break but we keep ourselves from doing it by thinking things like "be patient" and "wait it out", and Schism suggests isolation and the ending of connection and relationships. So at this point you use the knowledge attained from Parabol/a and Lateralus to calm you before you begin the changes.
Reflection- At this point you struggle with the true feelings that caused you to go on the journey through Parabol/a and Lateralus in the first place. Here you anylize yourself with the knowledge you have. The song tells the whole story of the album leading up to here and continues with it. In this moment which is the darkest of the entire journey you struggle with the feelings you have to escape but the ending doesn't suggest you do. As I said, here you're analyzing and dealing with yourself. The understandings from Parabol/a and Lateralus don't work for you until Triad.
Triad- This is after your darkest moment and leads to your tensest, where you have to fight to find what you've been searching for, but the song doesn't give you an answer. Nothing on this album really gives you any true answer. Lateralus didn't tell you what you would see that would give you the feelings suggested by the song. This song shows you fighting and struggling through, until it explodes. You concede and struggle onward trying to avoid the strains, but you can hear the pain in the background of the song. Next you come up again and win. The second guitar represents your understanding and clear thinking struggling to get through, and we see that it does come through. The first guitar dies when the second one has broken through. Then it dies away. The negative energies gather again and come back in that one last note representing rebirth. So I agree that there's death in this song, but not literally you dying. I think that Maynard's speach about turning negativity to positivity is what this is. But you don't know what you see after the song. This is because the journey is over, and what you feel afterwards is your own and Tool couldn't give you that.

[Peon]

I didn't mean Faaip de Oiad's content, but the name it's self, voice of God.

Maybe the alien message is really trying to show the existance of a higher being, and the numerous mentions of a government conspiricy a refrence to religeous "agents" and how they distort the ideas of a higher power.

And remember that the river also is a source of life.

[OpiAtE_666]

I would say that this song is about some sense of enlightenment. The lyrics remind me a lot of Bill Hicks' philosiphies:

"And you will come to find that we are all one mind
Capable of all that's imagined and all conceivable."

I know Hicks said something almost identical in one of his performances, and the idea that we're all one conciousness or one mind, was an underlying theme throughout his whole carreer. Hicks claimed that if you take hallucinagenic mushrooms you will realize we're all one conciousness. Perhaps this song is about a sense of enlightenment or an escape through the use of drugs?

On the other hand this part of the song:

"And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt
Don't wanna be down here feeding my narcissism.
I must crucify the ego before it's far too late
I pray the light lifts me out
Before I pine away.
So crucify the ego, before it's far too late
To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical"

makes me think the theme is like a continuation to "Lateralus". Thinking differently. The whole album could be statement about thinking differently, not being so negative and blind and cynical. Perhaps the theme is about a kind of intellectual enlightenment?

I know all these lyrics are from Reflection, but I think Reflection is the most important part of the song. I think Disposition is leading up to Reflection, Reflection is the final struggle that he has before finally letting go, and Triad is finally achieving that sense of enlightenment. Triad transcends words and tells the final part of the story with music.

What do you think?

[AFX2W1N]

I have come curiously close to the end, down
Beneath my self-indulgent pitiful hole,
Defeated, I concede and
Move closer
I may find comfort here
I may find peace within the emptiness
How pitiful

A man psychologically spiraling downward toward neurosis and perhaps eventual psychosis. However,

It's calling me...

I remember watching an interview w/ Maynard and he mentions how nature is "throwing you a bone" whenever a synchronistic event occurs and he says something about like when college kids happen to look over and notice their clock 11:11 and then they will notice a similar happening later on that same day and they say to themselves "weird" (although he doesn't mention synchronicity in the interview, it's a Jungian Theory and Jung speaks of it in his autobiography 'Memories, Dreams, and Reflections' which is, perhaps not so coincidentally, on the Tool Recommendation Book Reading List) SO NEWAYZ its an inward calling toward an outward expansion of the mind (toward wat has been called Christ Consciousness) which is to, as we will see later, crucify the ego (liberation), or, in jungian terms, to reach individuation. This is why Jung and i believe Freud also make death the point of life because death is the ultimate putdown toward ones ego and so when a person fully accepts his/her death the ego is thus crucified/dissolved and he/she is then awakened to the reality of living and eternal present moment. And since liberation can only happen to a living body and not a corpse, this must be done before You/I pine away!

And in my darkest moment, fetal and weeping
The moon tells me a secret - my confidant
As full and bright as I am
This light is not my own and
A million light reflections pass over me -------------->(don't forgot every atom in you/I body was forged in the stars so they pass over the moon just as they pass through us literally! lol just a side note not part of my interpretation!)

Its source is bright and endless
She resuscitates the hopeless
Without her, we are lifeless satellites drifting

And when all hope seems lost forever, a confidant using lightwaves to take the form of the moon (it must be stated here that G.I. Gurdjieff speaks of all organic life being 'food' for the moon and I'm quite sure the band has been influenced by G's system. After-all 'The Fourth Way' written by P.D. Ouspensky (G's pupil) is also on the bands reading list.) the moon here, I believe, is a metaphor for a mystical teacher/ guru/ magician whom points you toward the way of liberation though a series of upaya or 'gimmicks' for getting a person to prick the illusion of their own ego or perhaps the moon is an enlightened friend/relative whom reminds you that the 'source' of life is metaphorically bright and endless and she resuscitates the hopeless person in beginning of this song! She gives life to what would otherwise be a lifeless world. Now that is important because it's not a material-less world because as he say's in the song, the satellites are still 'there' but never 'here' in this moment. it's bright, and endless, and it's eternally now. The 'Source' of this moment he speaks of is then God, or The Absolute, or The Ultimate Ground of Being, call it what you will. It must also be said here that we first notice the moon is actually having a conversation with THE EARTH/Us! It say's "we" are lifeless satellites w/o her. Also Maynard by using the analogy of space and of God as a female he sets up opposite imagery of God and replacing the idolatrous image of God The Father. The story goes that their was once an astronaut whom went so far out into space he had a meeting with God and upon his return the ppl asked him "have you seen God?" the man answers yes and the ppl ask "well wat of him?" and the man responds "Well She is Black!" lol

And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt
Don't wanna be down here feeding my narcissism.
I must crucify the ego before it's far too late
I pray the light lifts me out
Before I pine away.

So crucify the ego, before it's far too late
To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical,
And you will come to find that we are all one mind
Capable of all that's imagined and all conceivable.
Just let the light touch you
And let the words spill through
And let them pass right through
Bringing out our hope and reason ...
before we pine away.

And as I pull my head out (of the swamp) I am without one doubt (they say when you are enlightened you know who you really are...and their is no doubt about it, no inner trifling or a need for any outward stamp of approval)

And I pretty much explained the rest of it earlier... jus some more small things to keep in mind He recognizes his position of downward spiral and has a change of mind/heart saying he doesn't want to be "down here feeding my narcissism" picture perfect neurotic...

The way to "leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical" is to crucify ones ego by going "Toward the Light" or "Toward the Within" and uniting oneself, or i should say being availed (enlightened) of the ignore-ance of ones previously neurotic state resulting chiefly from a false notion of oneself (who you really are) .In the songs case we are The Earth, as we are in reality, plus a great deal more.

Also, And you will come to find that we are all one mind
Capable of all that's imagined and all conceivable. Seems at first to be a Bill Hicks reference however it seems to me to be slightly incidental (although you never know) because Hicks version is a little different, it's the part where the news is supposed to be doing a positive drug story lol and it's great!.. and the all imagine/coneivable is similar to the end of a Hicks performance when he talks of exploring outer space together i believe

P.S. Bill Hicks Biography on Nexflix baby! it's amazing watch it! I believe its called "American A Bill Hicks Story" or somethin like that!

Thank you for your time/attention... :)