Kenosis to Gnosis
Hear the silence
Air is the most spiritual of the 4 elements and that is why it is being used in this song. Phil Collins is in a room which represents his body. He sees a bright body out the window and later on this body turns into himself. This signifies that his friend is in fact himself as he truly is. Very few people, if any, know what this song is about.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, Oh Lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well, if you told me you were drowning (This is his soul drowning in the ignorance of this world. In the Jesus walking on water story, as explained on this page, the apostle Peter sinking into the sea because he had little faith is a metaphor for the soul sinking into the world represented as the sea. The same metaphor is being used in this song.)
I would not lend a hand
I've seen your face before my friend
But I don't know if you know who I am (This is his soul talking to himself.)
Well, I was there and I saw what you did
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin,
I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies (The lies his life and who he thinks he's been. The Never Ending Story talks about how when people become the nothing they become lies. It is explained on the Movie Metaphors page.)
And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well, I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I remember, I remember don't worry (The door to the room he's in opens up revealing a light. He has gained Gnosis. This is when he leaves the room he's been in, which represents his body.)
How could I ever forget,
It's the first time, the last time we ever met (This sounds like the Alpha and Omega thing and the fact that his true self is beyond time.)
But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, (The silence is the silence caused by ignorance of the soul and the higher world as explained on the page called The Silence.)
No you don't fool me
The hurt doesn't show
But the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you and me
And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well, I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
But I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
But I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord
But I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord (The moment he's been waiting for all his life is Gnosis.)
Land of Confusion.
The symbolism shown in the music video is lost on pretty much everyone. In this scene before he goes to sleep he kisses the Chimpanzee. He is embracing his animal nature before his soul goes to sleep in the body.
The snake that passes before all the various politicians are shown emphasizes that this is the world of time, which is what the snake represents.
The bed the man is in is filled with water and as explained on The Shoreless Sea page, the water or the sea represents the world and the fact that is in the bed is saying that being spiritually asleep is being under water.
At the end the man wakes up from the bed and the water and says "it's one terrible dream". His soul has woken up from the nightmare that is this world. The passage in The Gospel of Truth is relevant here, "When the light shine on the terror which that person had experienced, he knows that it is nothing. Thus they were ignorant of the Father he being the one whom they did not see. Since it was terror and disturbance and instability and doubt and division, there were many illusions at work by means of these, and there were empty fictions, as if they were sunk in sleep and found themselves in disturbing dreams. Either there is a place to which they are fleeing, or without strength they come from having chased after others, or thy are involved in striking blows, or they are receiving blows themselves, or they have fallen from high places, or they take off into the air though they do not even have wings. Again, sometimes it is as if people were murdering them, though there is no one even pursuing them, or they themselves are killing their neighbors, for they have been stained with their blood. When those who are going through all these things wake up, they see nothing, they who were in the midst of all these disturbances, for they are nothing. Such is the way of those who have cast ignorance aside from them like sleep, not esteeming it as anything, nor do they esteem its works as solid things either, but they leave them behind like a dream in the night. The knowledge of the Father they value as the dawn. This is the way each one has acted, as though asleep at the time when he was ignorant. And this is the way he has come to knowledge, as if he had awakened. And Good for the man who will return and awaken. And blessed is he who has opened the eyes of the blind."
