how do you apply all this sexual imagery to Mrs. Moore's death?

Okay, this is really long, sorry, but if you're genuinely interested in the mysterious phenomenon that occurs in the caves, which E. M. Forster made a central element of the story in his book, the good news is that the information to explain it does exist, both in the book itself and within the tradition of the Hindu system of belief that is represented by the character of Professor Godbole. The bad news is that it's not a simple idea, and takes more time and effort to explain than we're used to dealing with in the context of an IMDb post. So basically it's your call whether you care enough to tackle this or not. No offense taken if you don't.

To understand the nature of the experience in the caves, we first have to understand the nature of the caves themselves. The caves date from the most remote ages of the Pre-Cambrian era, a period believed to represent the first two or three billion years of the earth's history about which geologists know very little. In this oldest known land area, the caves took shape even before the most primitive fossils were formed. Forster depicts the caves as having no relation at all to organic life as we know it -- human, animal, or plant. In their natural state, the caves were sealed off and inaccessible. It was only when they were penetrated by man-made openings that it became possible for visitors to enter them.

The caves represent the inorganic level of life whose molecular energy vibration is the farthest removed from that of human intellectual consciousness. Inorganic minerals contain no carbon, and they must first be transformed into organic mineral form (by lower life forms) before their vibratory rate becomes compatible with that of human tissues and cells. We may be able to relate to and empathize with even the smallest of our fellow organic creatures in their struggles to survive, but it's hard to imagine what our human consciousness would register if it tried to perceive life from the perspective of an inorganic mineral. And yet this is the 'womb' from which organic life developed and all higher forms of life ultimately depend on the mineral kingdom to sustain them.

The cave is made of highly polished granite, whose crystalline structure can carry and amplify many kinds of energy vibrations, including those generated by the human mind/body. So the cave is a symbolic 'womb' that represents the mysterious origins of life on two creative levels: the metaphysical (Macrocosmic) and the sexual (microcosmic). It is also a container that receives and deconstructs the energies that are fed to it, and echoes these back to their source in a form that reflects the qualities of its own nature. At the moment that Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested enter the caves, they are each at different stages of their lives, in different states of mind, and their energies are focused at different levels of awareness -- Mrs. Moore at the metaphysical and Adela Quested at the sexual -- which means that they will respond very differently to the energy feedback of the caves.

As the film shows us, no matter what sounds are made in the cave, after a few repeating echoes, the cave ultimately responds in the same way, 'translating' all sounds into a featureless, meaningless, but intensely energized static-like roar. All intellectual content or individual characteristics of the original sound are blotted out.

At the time she entered the cave, Adela had just been confronted by the fact that she didn't love her very conventional, stuck-in-his-head fiance and was actually attracted to the much more physically intriguing, emotionally and energetically alive Aziz, a realization that she reacted to with fear (blowing out the match). When Aziz "seeded" her name into the cave's acoustic chamber, the echo essentially obliterated the intellectual/individual aspect of her identity/name, reflecting back to her only the raw, chaotic energy of Aziz's voice, urgently seeking to reach her. Momentarily stripped of her usual social and cultural defenses by this intense experience, she was forced to confront herself at the level of her own previously repressed sexuality.

Given the forceful and frightening nature of the energetic feedback from the cave, it's not hard to imagine that a defense mechanism of her conscious mind might wish to shield her from having to face the reality of her own desires by projecting her emotional experience outside of herself and choosing to perceive it as a sexual attack. As another poster here has also pointed out, Aziz's posture as he is silhouetted against the cave entrance resembles that of the monkeys at the tantric shrine, where Adela's experience of stirring sexuality was immediately associated with the monkeys' potentially violent attack. I also agree that the director's choice to cut to the water spilling over the edge of the tank suggests an overflowing emotional and possibly sexual release of some kind.

In the case of Mrs. Moore, her energies are focused at the level of spirituality and she comes to the cave at a time when her genuine but probably conventional Christian world view is being challenged by her exposure to the heady, exotic and overtly mystical spirituality of the Indian culture. Like the Hindu, she begins to see a world that is infused with the Spirit of God, a universal God, not just a Christian God. She extends her perception of divinity far enough to include the corpse-eating crocodile in the "terrible/wonderful" river, but in the cave, she is confronted with an energy so alien to her experience that it obliterates the very foundations of what she understands God/Divine Love to be. The inorganic mineral consciousness structure of the cave -- speaking from a point of development eons before the evolutionary appearance of the Heart-centered human/Divine consciousness of the Christ -- translates her name into a formless, chaotic echo whose primal force sweeps away any notions she may have had about defining herself or the meaning of her life in terms of such sentimental concepts as "Father God", "Mother Mary", or "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild", leaving nothing familiar for her faith to hold onto. The book describes her reaction:

"The crush and the smells she could forget, but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur, 'Pathos, piety, courage--they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.' Suddenly, at the edge of her mind, Religion appeared, poor little talkative Christianity, and she knew that all its divine words from 'Let there be Light' to 'It is finished' only amounted to 'bourn' (the sound of the cave's echo). Then she was terrified over an area larger than usual; the universe, never comprehensible to her intellect, offered no repose to her soul, the mood of the last two months took definite form at last, and she realized that she didn't want to write to her children, didn't want to communicate with anyone, not even with God. She sat motionless with horror..."

In the book, it is suggested that Hinduism provides a remedy for the experience of existential terror that Mrs. Moore suffers through her encounter with the echo's force of negation. The inorganic mineral kingdom represents the point of ultimate density and maximum penetration of the Creative Spirit into the form of matter. In terms of the energy of the human body, this symbolically corresponds to the lowest level of the survival instincts, represented by the Base chakra at the base of the spine. The energy point that balances this lowest level is the Crown chakra, the center of energy above the top of the head representing the highest possible human Spiritual consciousness, whose chief characteristic is all-pervasive Divine Love and Joy.

In the book, Professor Godbole is participating ecstatically in the great Hindu festival of Gokul Ashtami, celebrating the birth of Lord Krishna, when the image of Mrs. Moore comes to his mind:

"Chance brought her into his mind while it was in this heated state, he did not select her, she happened to occur among the throng of soliciting images, a tiny splinter, and he impelled her by his spiritual force to that place where completeness can be found. He remembered a wasp seen he forgot where, perhaps on a stone. He loved the wasp equally, he impelled it likewise, he was imitating God. And the stone where the wasp clung--could he . . . no, he could not, he had been wrong to attempt the stone, logic and conscious effort had seduced. He was a Brahman, she Christian, but it made no difference, it made no difference whether she was a trick of his memory or a telepathic appeal. It was his duty, as it was his desire, to place himself in the position of the God and to love her, and to place himself in her position and to say to the God, 'Come, come, come, come.' This was all he could do. How inadequate! But each according to his own capacities, and he knew that his own were small."

Even in a state of such exaltation, Professor Godbole could not make the conscious connection to Unity with the stone. But he could and did provide the remedy for Mrs. Moore.

Her sense of spiritual desolation had been the result of her intense encounter with the force of the echo which, configured by the structure of the inorganic mineral kingdom, reflects a level of consciousness that exists "before" the development of thought, feeling, or even desire. This means that it perceives everything at the level of its lowest common denominator -- its mere existence -- and so is blind to any dimension of meaning. But just as the reductive perception of inorganic mineral consciousness unites all of reality at a common level at which everything is equally without meaning or value and seemingly devoid of spirit, there is an equally leveling yet sublime state of union to be achieved at the opposite end of the spectrum of perception in the serenely ecstatic transpersonal vision of human consciousness raised to the Crown chakra, where everything is revealed to be an individually perfect aspect of the Divine Creator, all equally expressive of the Divine Love that created them and equally infused with -- and bound together by -- the Spirit of that Creator. This is "that place where completeness can be found", to which Professor Godbole's "spiritual force" guided both Mrs. Moore and the little wasp, with an equal intensity of love and care.

In the film version's equivalent scene, the internal spiritual work performed by Professor Godbole on Mrs. Moore's behalf would be the same as that described above and would have taken place as her train is leaving, when he steps out of the shadows, looks at her, and raises both arms above his head, pressing his palms together. This is a variation of the Anjali mudra, usually centered at the level of the heart and accompanied by the spoken word "Namaste", a recognition of respect from one soul to another. When made at the level of the Crown chakra above the head, the gesture is a sign of highest acknowledgement of one's Divine nature, made by the Professor to one he had called "a very old soul". It represents the outward sign of the inner consummation of conscious, joyous Union between her individual soul and its Divine Source, which his spiritual intervention helps her to achieve. It is also a reference to the physical point of departure of such an advanced soul from the body at the moment of her death, which he has very likely foreseen.

Having Mrs. Moore die, at the time she does, figures into the plot of the film in an important way. Although no one in the courtroom is yet aware of it, she has already translated to Spirit by the time that the crowd outside the courthouse begins to chant her name, a chant that becomes a kind of mantra. This has a powerfully healing effect on Adela, who feels the sense of Mrs. Moore's supportive presence just before she begins to testify, enabling her to realize Aziz's innocence and have the courage to speak out and save him.

So that may be more than anyone wants to know about existing theories on Mrs. Moore's experience in the cave, but this represents the best information I could find, and if it interests me, then maybe there's hope that someone else here will find it worth reading.
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tracking the elusive heffalump along the wu wei

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