Essentially, the space-odyssey described in 2001 represents, I believe, Man's eternal quest for spiritual meaning and self-renewal. Man, as such, seems to have come to the end of a long journey begun with his inception as a species on earth. Having maximized his control over nature, he has reached a deadend in the evolutionary process, and in a circuitous manner, he has returned to his primordial conditions. Man may continue to invent, create, discover—yet he is no longer capable of fulfilling and renewing himself. In short, Man is ready for a new step in the evolutionary process in order to re-experience the excitement and adventure of a meaningful life.
Going back in time, the film recreates the conditions from which Man originated, and it begins with the era when apes, the highest product of evolution, huddled about in collectivized security and were completely integrated in their surroundings. Despite their sporadic fights over territorial possession, their life had achieved a state of perfect stasis and boredom not unlike that to be experienced later by the overly sophisticated human community of the year 2001…. Suddenly, the stability of their drab environment is disturbed by the appearance of a strange, oblong and darkly luminous object, about which the apes crowd in fear and wonder—the first faint glimmering of an authentic emotion. This strange object, giving 2001 its structural unity and highly symbolic character, is one of the most controversial features of the film…. Although some may construe it as that eternal quotient of mystery before which Man and beast are alike helpless, I see it as a symbol (akin to the Jungian four-sided mandala, the most fundamental of all archetypes) of that inspirational force through which life eternally renews itself, for it is upon its appearance that the apes discover and perfect the use of the first tool—a skeletal relic shaped into a club. A perhaps crude beginning, yet in terms of what we know, one that ushers in a completely new evolutionary mode of existence characterized by intellectual development, political experimentation, spiritual growth, heroic action, and dominated by spiritual rather than instinctual impulses. (pp. 7-8)
