Something for Someone

My personal interpretation of the underlying meaning of the end sequence, Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite, of 2001: Space Odyssey:

The Monolith is either a synthesized energy source or mass information storage built by an alien life form of some sort, although I think with powerful enough technology those two things would probably be synonymous. When Dave approaches the Monolith, he begins receiving the information/energy and witnesses the "Star Gate" phenomenon: tunnels of colored light racing at great speed across vast distances of space, seeing many strange astronomical phenomena.

What I believe he is experiencing are the different interpretations that form various levels of reality. For example: we've no idea what the world looks like at the atomic level. We know atoms exist and we know partly their structure. But what the world LOOKS like to a person at the size of an atom, we have absolutely no idea. We've no idea what the world LOOKS like viewing five, or more dimensions. When we look around all we see is light, but we've come to be able to interpret that light into something understandable, our known reality. We see a hexagonal shaped object giving off red light and we come to understand it as a stop sign, but to any other being it means nothing because it's just sensory information that lacks context. The tunnel of light Dave was witnessing was just that. A giant overload of sensory information to which he nor any other human could apply context and assign meaning.

Slightly related to this subject is my belief that the universe is both infinitely large and small. I believe we will continue to find smaller and smaller particles all working according to their own laws and principles. I also believe the correlating macro perspective of that. Our solar system is part of a bigger galaxy, which is part of a system of galaxies, which is in the greater universe, which resides in something even bigger.

Back to the movie however, when he appears in 'the room' and sees an aged version of himself, I believe this is the alien life form becoming aware of his presence and his tampering with it's device. It begins to return him to his normal plane of reality, or what it believes is his normal reality, and slowly prods and experiments with him and his consciousness. When it finally decides what is to become of him, he turns him into what many refer to as 'the Star Child,' or that glowing fetus figure that the movie ends with. I think he bestowed to Dave (or perhaps it synthesized a totally new life form) some key knowledge that would likely direct the future progress of the human race upon its discovery.