In Six Parts:
(1) "Quodcumque audiveris, quodcumque videris, est Juppiter. Whatsoever thou mayest hear, whatsoever thou mayest see, is Jupiter.
...
'I establish all this universe from a portion of myself, and yet remain transcendent.' "
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/forum/f17n06p399_two-ways-of-viewing-reality.htm
(2) "The great English Romantic poet William Wordsworth had a startling concept: that this life we live is merely a dream and that we will 'awake' to the 'real' reality when we die, when our 'dream' ends.
'Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting:
The Soul, that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.' "
https://www.budsas.org/ebud/whatbudbeliev/321.htm
(3) "...The likelihood that we are living in “base reality,” he [Elon Musk] concluded, was just “one in billions.”
http://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/what-are-the-odds-we-are-living-in-a-computer-simulation
(4) "The simulation hypothesis opens up the possibility that, if we're in a simulation, the simulation gets shut down, thereby resulting in an existential catastrophe. ... Phil Torres has argued that Bostrom's argument leads not only to the conclusion that we almost certainly exist in a simulation, if we run simulations in the future, but that there almost certainly exists a large stack of nested simulations. Since annihilation is inherited downwards, the risk of our simulation being shut down could be considerably high, depending on how many simulated universes there are "above" us. The more that exist "above" us, the more ways there are that our universe could be terminated."
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#Existential_risks
(5) "I am just a copy of a copy of a copy
Everything I say has come before
Assembled into something into something into something
I don't know for certain anymore
I am just a shadow of a shadow of a shadow
Always trying to catch up with myself
I am just an echo of an echo of an echo
Listening to someone's cry for help"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMnR1b5qsCo
(6)
David Lynch:
"Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.
...
I wouldn't know what to do with color. Color to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a color, the more dreamy it gets… Black has depth. It's like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.
...
The house is a place where things can go wrong."
I love this! This sort of subject matter has always intrigued me. I am curious though, how do you then take these frames of thought and apply them to twin peaks, in particular, the finale?
(maybe we should have our own discussion about this since I don't think this level of metaphysics and philosophy is aligned with many of the theories on here. I always thought TP was way more than the battle between good and evil spirits)
Thanks, Andres! I love doing the detective work of piecing together theories, but sometimes I also feel that the real power of Lynch's work is how it resonates with me on a deep level, and seems to tie into so many other influences and aspects of my own (and clearly others') experiences. That's sort of where I'm coming from with this. As far as explanation:
(1) and (2) form the basis of my understanding for Lynch's view on dreams and the dreamer. I don't see this as a dream in the trope sense, but an existentialist statement rooted in Eastern philosophy. I believe it's personified by the Giant/Fireman, who is essentially the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream. Of all the characters, he is the only one who seems to possess complete mastery over time and space. He has total agency, and is seemingly unaffected by external events. His vision to Andy shows he sees clearly both the future and the past (notice how the past is in B&W and the future in color, as Andy watches). He created Laura, not from a seed or a doppelganger, but from a luminous cloud which looked like a golden universe in microcosm. He trapped BOB in a cage like it was nothing and simply put him where he wanted. If he's not "God," he's certainly the closest thing we see in Twin Peaks. More specifically, I see the Mother/Experiment as personification of chaos, and the Giant/Fireman as the personification of order.
(3) and (4) show how it's likely that reality could be a nested simulation. This reminds me of Twin Peaks and the way the Giant influences events. He pulls "reality" up on a screen, and uses technology to literally insert people into space and time at his whim. The lodge entities seem to do this with electricity/fire, but it's more crude, prone to disruptions and side effects (Jeffries burning in FWWM and now trapped in this non-human form), and humans can only get in with help from lodge entities, planetary alignments, magic (?), or the ring.
(5) Sort of reinforces the simulation/multiverse/tulpas/doppelgangers themes, and as it's by "the Nine Inch Nails," thought it was a fun nod to Lynch inspiration. The song's theme is certainly relevant. 🙂
(6) I think sheds a lot of light on Lynch's style, particularly with the way he ended the entire series: In black, in front of the house where things went horribly wrong, as two people inextricably linked through time hold hands to stand against evil -- a sign of human love
One more thought, with relation to all the wildly different theories about multiverses, time, simulations, aliens, etc. I always think of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
To the humans in the Twin Peaks world (and the story itself, really), it doesn't matter much if the crazy things we see are the result of alien technology, supernatural forces, dream logic, or magic -- they're largely indistinguishable when it comes to their effect.
I like the analysis of the Giant/Fireman. That really pieces it together across the seasons. I still feel like WE are the dreamer...but the Giant makes sense too.
Yeah, I can definitely buy into that. I think that most of the interpretations I've seen so far are disregarding too much the factor of the dream, and the other interpretations seem to emphasize the dream too much in a literal sense (like the whole "all of this was Cooper's dream" theory). We definitely know that Lynch/Frost want us know that the concept of dreaming is important in this saga we have invested so much time in (dreams are mentioned way too much to be ignored). So I don't think it is as simple as "Coop just went back to the Jones residence to live out the rest of his life and what we saw at the end was evil Coop being trapped."--That is a very simplistic view and I don't think Lynch would back up a cliche ending even if it was a parody. I also don't buy the whole "everything we saw was a dream and the dreamer is (insert character here)" theory. If that was the case, what would be the point of TSHOTP and the Final Dossier? Again, too simplistic. I think your theory inserts the dream factor--and it's significance--in a way that is aligned with (what we know of) Lynch's spiritual beliefs, metaphysics fascinations, and his resonating influences(I believe Frost is also heavily into Eastern philosophy). That would make this interpretation the most likely to be aligned with what these two brilliant artists had in mind.
Do you think that the last segment of part 18 was Cooper and Diane waking up in another layer of this simulation with different names/identities because it's a different dream?
And would the sound of Sara calling out Laura's name at the very end would be Laura waking up in the "dream world"/simulation of Twin Peaks (the reality we have seen throughout the series)?
It definitely does seem like Coop is aware what is going on when he finally wakes up after that jolt in part 16. He definitely seems like he's been "dream hoping" and knows the dangerous effects of this (forgetting your identity, getting trapped, etc.), but he seems to be strong enough to retain his memory and identity while transcending dream layers and he is aware that it may occur right before Diane and Coop cross over. He doesn't remember everything though, as illustrated through his confusion on who Richard and Linda were when he woke up by himself.
You probably already know about him, but if not, check out Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher who wrote a lot about simulated realities in what he calls the simulacra. Good stuff , love the Arthur C. Clarke quote 🙂
One year ago while listening to a lecture by Mark Frost I misunderstood some of his statements--I should say projected some context onto--regarding ceremonial aspects of organized (Protestant) worship, and became really agitated at what I interpreted as conflicting with his clearer application of Eastern philosophy on the subject matter. So afterward, I asked him privately and he cleared it up. He said his interest in Eastern philosophy was strictly academic. As for the Judeo Christian confusion he clarified: confirmed agnostic. My bad.
Fire walk with