The image above is a picture of Rousseau's map. It just occurred to me that the shape of the island contours as represented on it as two human spines. Adam and Eve resting in the cave, which would represent Crazy Mother and Jacob's brother, the separation of the island guardian and the smoke monster island protector. The theme of division has always been strong in the LOST story arcs, including the two worlds division contained in The End.One of the least discussed aspects of The End was the drop-kick revelation that the sideways world was a created after life realm for the island characters to re-group and move on together.
Just about every new character that was introduced to the island came as a result of a death or near death transportation: shipwrecks, plane crashes, even Juliet swallowing an overdose of pills to get on the submarine . . . why? If one takes Jacob's statement at face value, he was the one who brought "everyone" to the island.
But what really is the island? It was not merely a location, but TPTB and fan base concluded that the island was a character in itself, a conscious being of unknown power.
World One: The Island
The Island is the geographic location of LOST castaways, covering a period of at least 2000 years.
The Island has healing powers and cured John Locke of his paralysis and Rose of her cancer. It also functions as a "cork" that suppresses a dangerous force from escaping. At the Heart of the Island is a bright light, the source of "life, death, (and) rebirth" that needs to be protected. The current protector is Hugo Reyes. The protector also brings others to the island for various purposes, such as becoming the the new protector of the island.
The Island was apparently inhabited by Egyptians and possibly Sumerians and Southeast Asians in the distant past, and also was home to a village of Latin-speaking people who were shipwrecked there in the early first millennium. The Island periodically moves its physical location, as it took significant calculations to find since it is hidden from plain view. The Island was in the South Pacific Ocean in 2004 but could have been in the Mediterranean Sea at some point in its history. At the end, the island seems to submerge upon the passing of Jacob and MIB.
According to Jacob, the Island acts as a cork, holding back a malevolent force that would destroy the world if released. When the Man in Black made contact with the site of this suppression, the Heart of the Island, he transformed into a smoke monster that plagued the Island for thousands of years. A protector guards the Heart of the Island, the source of life, death and rebirth. Despite the Heart, or possibly because of it, not all who die on the Island move on - some remain, whispering. Other apparitions of unknown origin also appear, often confronting people with images from their past.
The Heart of the Island manifests itself as electromagnetism concentrated in specific pockets. The Man in Black's people dug wells at these sites, and the Dharma Initiative built stations, including the Orchid and the Swan. Lostpedia states that from at least 1977, when scientists penetrated a pocket, this energy has healed sickness, including cancer, paralysis, brain damage and male infertility, but it causes pregnant women to reject embryos, killing both mother and fetus. The electromagnetism also affects navigation, hiding the Island from the outside world (thus the reason rescue almost never came), drawing back those who leave the Island, moving the Island and even transporting travelers through time.
World Two: Sideways Realm
Lostpedia concludes that the Season 6 "sideways world view" was merely a new narrative technique - the flash sideways. Like flashbacks and flash forwards, flash sideways intercut into episodes' main action a secondary storyline, which covered the centric characters at a different time. The series finale revealed the nature of the world the flash sideways portrayed: it showed the characters meeting after death. As such, the flash sideways are in a sense Flash-forwards.
Lostpedia believes the sound cues reveals the difference and the connection between the two world/time periods: In "Happily Ever After", Desmond Hume transitioned between the original time line and the flash-sideways time line with the absence of the flash-sideways sound effect, in similar fashion to the way in which his story transitioned between present and past in "The Constant" without the flashback/flash-forward sound effect. However, the sound effect was used at the end of the episode, when he transitioned back into the sideways time line, indicating that this last flash was a normal flash-sideways, and not consciousness-travel, as the main body of the episode was.
Lostpedia concludes that the sideways world was merely a FLASH FORWARD in time to where all the Island characters were dead. The problem with that conclusion is that could not happen in a linear, chronological time line in one plane of existence.
Jack died on the island 14 days after Flight 316 crash landed on the island. That flight was around late October-early November of 2007, after John Locke is killed, which would make Jack's death on the island around November 14, 2007.
However, Jack awakens in the sideways church and is told he is dead, only a week after Flight 815 lands in LA, around September 29, 2004. On that day in the original island time line, Jack is trying to get people on the beach to move to the safety of the caves. During one trip to the caves, there is a cave in on or about September 29, 2004, which traps Jack (who is rescued with only a separated shoulder injury).
There is a significant continuity issue at play. If Jack was awakened in the sideways world time only AFTER he died on the island, then his death would have been as a result of the cave collapse on Day 8 after the crash of Flight 815 in 2004, and not Day 14 after the crash of Flight 316 in 2007.
Even if one accepts the concept of non-linear time (time is a meandering stream), there is still a problem of Jack having a separate sideways (flash back) existence in the sideways time than the reality of the island (present and flash backs) time line.
September, 2004 island time line: Jack is alive on the island.
September, 2004 sideways time line: Jack is dead in the church at his father's funeral.
November, 2007 island time line: Jack dies on the island.
In order to sync to the sideways time stamp of September 29, 2004 as Christian's funeral, Jack would have had to "die" in the cave collapse on Day 8 after the 815 crash. So how did Jack's body continue "on" in the island time for at least another three years?!
One could right off time as being immaterial to the LOST story, like Christian's lame explanation of the here and now in the sideways world not being the past or the present. But if "time" is irrelevant concept in the LOST mythology, why was it so critical to many of the story lines of Daniel, Desmond, the time skippers back to 1974 Dharma? One would have thought that the time frames from the island and sideways worlds would intersect at the same date in the End.
But as the island had two spines in topography, why were not the two different time periods fully explained in LOST?
