"In Kubrick, the world itself is a brain.  There is identity of brain and world, as in the great circular and luminuous table in Doctor Strangelove, the giant computer in 2001:  A Space Odyssey, and the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.  The black stone of 2001 presides over both cosmic states and cerebral stages.  It is the soul of the three bodies: earth, sun and moon, but also the seed of the three brains: animal, human , machine.  Kubrick is renewing the theme of the initiatory journey because every journey in the world is an exploration of the brain".