It's not a perfect theory, but I have an idea that the Lost island is at some sort of Event Horizon.

Desmond follows a life course, which has choices and consequences, and during that course, he crashes on an island, after a violent storm deposits him there. He struggles there, with a teacher of a certain path, and then alone doing what he was taught. A new event, invloving new people who have made choices to get them to that very point, but reaching that point from very different starting points, have intersected wiith that path. Some found there way to that Singular place, even though sometimes they struggled against what factors were involved in there life, others followed their course dutifully.

This singular place is time stopped, a rip in the three dimensions, which can be accessed at various points along the time line of the universe which expanded violently and exponentioally, always connected at the beginning.(this is a bit of a theme in the Brief history of Time) There is no death in this place, since it does not exist along moving time, the end is a travel backwards, to the point in your life where a choice was made to bring you to tis very sinular place.
Aldo (short for Aldous) was reading this very chapter in A Brief History of Time, making a drawing of a Black Hole's singularity? not sure.


Desmond was influenced by the od lady, I'm not certain what she was, but she was not BENevolent. She turned him back on the course of the island, saying it was course correction. But there would have been correction in some other fashion, another person would have come to the event horizon, to push the button, to keep the horizon inhabited just enough to keep it Relevant.

Desmond did not marry Penny, went along the same path and do it all over, he got hit on the head, the rest is history, he was launched back to the spot on the island from which he disappeared. His old self was destroyed, gone, his new self replaced the old, with n history, hence, nakedness.

Boone is not dead, which is why hi s hair was longer in Locke's vision, he is back at the choice where he went to the island, helping Shannon. possibly, he didn't fall for her trick, and took another course.

Eko is a boy again, and perhaps will let his brother be taken.

Jack's father tried to lead him off a cliff to his end, and back to his choice.
Dave tried to lead Hurley there, who shouldn't have been there at all. The island has tried to take Charlie THREE times, but the people on the island need him somehow, he will not die soon now that he knows.

If you had many choices to lead you this point, then you il ave many flashbacks to those, events, and hopefully learn the next time you encounter it. Desmond failed miserably.

The only question is... when will Roland show up for his final confrontation with the Crimson King.(If you know this you are a huge Stephen King fan like myself, as are Abrhams, Cuse and Lindelhoff)