- 5,466
- 12,476
And here I am with another Twin Peaks thread, what a suprise.
While Twin Peaks is not exactly the most controversial verse, the subject matter of this thread may sound a tad suspicious and will most likely set off some alarms to some people, but I suggest that whoever is reading this right now to at least process all the arguments in this thread with an open mind and not just answer with an immediate "no" or some shit like that.
So, TL;DR whoever replies saying "bUt yOu aRe sCalIng From rEal lAiFe cAwNcePtS tHat'S iLlEgAl" without addressing or at least having read the arguments presented here gets thrown out of a window and into the sharks.
So, let's go.
The Proposal
I will first start by articulating the basic proposal of this thread and then elaborate on why I personally think it is valid in the later sections of it.
Basically, I believe the God-Tiers of the verse (Most specifically JUDY, The Firema and Senorita Dido) can qualify for being Tier 0, especially with the mechanics and underlying measuring stick behind how the current Tiering System works.
This is mainly because the plane of (non)existence in which they inhabit, the Mauve Sea, is intimately associated with the concept of the Unified Field of Consciousness, mainly the one notion described and adopted by John Hageli, a quantum physicist who made great contributions to the field of superstring theory, and actually associates the Unified Field of theoretical physics to the field of consciousness, which is a concept pretty intrinsically related to the technique of Transcendental Meditatio.
To sum up the concept of it, Transcendental Meditation involves an individual creating a space between themselves and their own thoughts through a personal mantra, and essentially "diving in" unto deeper and more subtle levels of consciousness, until one reaches the fount and wellspring of all thought, which stands at the basis of consciousness, and "transcends" into a state of pure bliss.
Now, one of John Hagelin's primary arguments associating the unified field of physics with the unified field of consciousness is the association of it with the Universe of Sets as defined in Set Theory.
Basically, he associates each of the deeper levels of consciousness that are traversed through transcendental meditation with the infinities of set theory, and argues that these subtler levels of mind are reflected upon the physical world in the sense that we need deeper levels of mathematical abstraction and "strength" in order to properly codify our physical world. As shown in the following graph:
As well as in the following statements:
Given this, I say that the Unified Field is very much textbook Tier 0, no matter the lenses through which we analyze it, something I will elaborate upon a bit more later on. Now, you may be asking how exactly does this relate to Twin Peaks? Well...
How Would It Scale?
It is a fairly well-known fact that David Lynch, one of the co-creators of Twin Peaks and primary writer of The Return (alongside Mark Frost) actively practices and promotes the aforementioned technique of Transcendental Meditation, and in fact is the founder of an entire foundation dedicated to it, of which he is one of the main presidents, alongside John Hagelin himself.
For reference, here is a video with Lynch's own explanation of what the Unified Field is and its relationship to Transcendental Meditatio.
As a result, it should come off as no surprise that his work is at least subconsciously influenced by those beliefs, and indeed, most of his movies have fairly direct allusions to them, and Twin Peaks is no exception for this, and is arguably the one in which they are most tightly knitted and solidified into a coherent narrative.
Indeed, Lynch tends to use the metaphor of a Market Place and a Palace when describing the relation beyond our world of matter and the boundlessness of the Unified Field. Whereas the Market Place is biform and divided into many different aspects and levels, the Palace is the representation of infinite unity devoid of any relativity or differentiation, being an unrepresentable expanse of nothingness that precedes form altogether, and thus remains unrepresentable in its truest nature.
As mentioned before, this allegory is largely present in Lynch's works, most notably Inland Empire, where a nameless character flat-out describes it in the form of a story. It relates to Twin Peaks, however, in a slightly more subtle and "visual" way.
As you can see in the video above, Lynch explains that the Unified Field is a boundless expanse of nothingness from which everything in our Universe is sprung from, be it on a Mental or Material level. In the material side of things, he describes that as one delves into increasingly deeper and smaller chains of matter, physical reality can be perceived as slowly disappearing and being reduced into more minute things, until they disappear into the unmanifest.
This description (alongside an explanation on an admitedlyall around bad not-so-good-video by Twin Perfect) actually made me rethink one of my interpretations regarding a scene of the show, namely this one (please don't mind the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack), where it is shown how the Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb in history damaged the fabric of reality and created an intercourse between the physical world and the world of the Lodges.
In it, we can see that the camera eventually enters the nuclear explosion and starts to descend into the root of it, while dozens of smaller explosions are shown ravaging a fractal, cloudy landscape. This goes on for a while, until the camera zooms even further and in an even faster motion, showing a bunch of particles floating around in space, until they all gradually vanish and we are taken into an endless, purple sea, and then unto a Palace pertaining to The Firema and Senorita Dido.
Given Lynch's explanation of how the Unified Field stands at the basis of both Matter and Mind, and how the former starts to gradually become more and more unified until all vanishes into nonexistence as we go into smaller levels, I believe that whole scene is a pretty clear allusion to this, and the appearance of The Fireman's Palace at the end of the scene makes that even more blatant.
Furthermore, the Mauve Sea is actually associated with nonexistence in a very explicit way in the show itself, specifically in this scene, where The Arm's Doppelgänger tears the Black Lodge's floor in two and throws Cooper into a starry space while screaming "NON-EXIST-ENT". This results in Cooper falling down for a while, until he reaches the Mauve Sea itself and falls into a balcony of Mother's Mansion.
This, by the way, also relates to the idea of the descending unto deeper and deeper levels of consciousness until reaching the Unified Field at the basis of it all, as the Lodges themselves are described as being embodiments of the deepest levels of the unconscious in the Secret History of Twin Peaks, with the phenomenon of "reverse speech" (An obvious reference to the fact that the Spirits of the Lodges speak backwards) representing them being said to be heralded by owls:
Secret History itself also alludes to this division between Matter and Mind and their relation to the Unified Field as well, as it separates reality into two parts individually visualized by the Left and Right Hemispheres of the Brain, one represented by the color Red, which corresponds to the intuitive, strictly spatial and imaginative hemisphere, and one represented by Blue, which corresponds to the strictly logical side of the brain.
When working in conjuction, those two sides are superimposed over each other and create our perception of reality, which is described as having a "purple" tint.
This brings up fairly interesting implications that are certainly linked to the Mauve Sea, and directly co-relate with the notion of it being the fundamental wellspring that stands at the bottom of consciousness and perception, "beneath the surface of life."
Why Would It Scale?
Now, I believe I have to address the potential issues people have with these upgrades. Mainly the (understandable) notion that this is cross-scaling, and that you could use similar things to wank other verses and yada yada.
For instance, one might say that this is similar to saying Shin Megami Tensei is 1-A because of Kabbalah, or that any verse which makes reference to the more abstract concepts from Hinduism is also 1-A, or that any verse which mentions Plato is also 1-A, and the list goes on and on.
However, I believe that this is a completely different case here, as I believe actual religious and/or philosophical concepts have no defined, fixed tier, and are instead to be tiered independently of philosophical points of view. To quote myself from another thread:
That is, those concepts and their ratings are completely arbitrary and depend entirely on the verses in which they are shown in the first place, and are only 1-A or higher (again maybe even untierable) if we observe them through purely metaphysical / philosophical lenses where we can't really apply fallacies such as hasty generalizations or arguments by ignorance, as well put them through the stupid degrees of scrutiny that everything in this site goes through in the first place.
It would be ridiculous to suggest that something like the Taiji or the Wuji would be limited in any way if we went solely by religious / philosophical context and implications, for example, but it isn't this absurd under the cold lenses we have for Indexing here, so for our purposes those things may as well be tierless, and that's honestly the way it should be.
Meanwhile, even from a cold indexing perspective, the Unified Field as Hagelin describes it is effectively Tier 0, especially when you remember what the measuring stick for 1-A and above is at this point, so there's borderline no subjectivity to debate here, the thing is that high no matter from what angle you look at it.
Now, some may say that, even if the Unified Field is Tier 0, there is no real reason to assume that its representation in Twin Peaks (the Mauve Sea) includes all of the characteristics that would make it Tier 0 in the first place.
However, I think that looking at it from this point of view is simply being overly pedantic and disregarding Hagelin's (and by extension Lynch's) whole notion of the Unified Field of Consciousness and its relation to that of theoretical physics. Primarily because the existence of greater infinite cardinals as actual, real things is basically inseparable from that of the Field itself and its relation to material reality.
As it is described above, Matter reflects the Mind, and thus special sets corresponding to greater orders of infinity are necessary to analyze deeper and deeper levels of physical reality, such as the set of all real numbers, or that of imaginary numbers, function spaces and limits / products thereof and so on and so forth.
Hence, in my view, scaling Twin Peaks to the notion of the Unified Field is as much cross-scaling as rating a verse at 1-B because it mentions Bosonic String Theory as part of reality.
And yes, I am fully aware that String Theory or it's variants that adopt compactified dimensions aren't any tier anymore, I am simply making a comparision, before anyone nitpicks that.
There is also the question of people having different interpretations and portrayals of certain concepts which almost away heavily vary in scale. For instance, not every verse portrays the Lovecraftian Deities in a way that is 100% faithful to the original material, after all, much less in a way that would qualify those portrayals for 1-A, which is almost certainly not the case here, since the author in this case has pretty intimate knowledge of the concepts utilized.
TL;DR┬▓
So, to sum it all up, if those upgrades actually go through, the ratings I propose are something along the lines of:
The Firema = 0
Senorita Dido = 0
Mother = 0
The Experiment = Varies. 1-A to 0 (As it can actually enter the frequencies of reality and adjust its own level of existence)
And that's really about it.
While Twin Peaks is not exactly the most controversial verse, the subject matter of this thread may sound a tad suspicious and will most likely set off some alarms to some people, but I suggest that whoever is reading this right now to at least process all the arguments in this thread with an open mind and not just answer with an immediate "no" or some shit like that.
So, TL;DR whoever replies saying "bUt yOu aRe sCalIng From rEal lAiFe cAwNcePtS tHat'S iLlEgAl" without addressing or at least having read the arguments presented here gets thrown out of a window and into the sharks.
So, let's go.
The Proposal
I will first start by articulating the basic proposal of this thread and then elaborate on why I personally think it is valid in the later sections of it.
Basically, I believe the God-Tiers of the verse (Most specifically JUDY, The Firema and Senorita Dido) can qualify for being Tier 0, especially with the mechanics and underlying measuring stick behind how the current Tiering System works.
This is mainly because the plane of (non)existence in which they inhabit, the Mauve Sea, is intimately associated with the concept of the Unified Field of Consciousness, mainly the one notion described and adopted by John Hageli, a quantum physicist who made great contributions to the field of superstring theory, and actually associates the Unified Field of theoretical physics to the field of consciousness, which is a concept pretty intrinsically related to the technique of Transcendental Meditatio.
To sum up the concept of it, Transcendental Meditation involves an individual creating a space between themselves and their own thoughts through a personal mantra, and essentially "diving in" unto deeper and more subtle levels of consciousness, until one reaches the fount and wellspring of all thought, which stands at the basis of consciousness, and "transcends" into a state of pure bliss.
Now, one of John Hagelin's primary arguments associating the unified field of physics with the unified field of consciousness is the association of it with the Universe of Sets as defined in Set Theory.
Basically, he associates each of the deeper levels of consciousness that are traversed through transcendental meditation with the infinities of set theory, and argues that these subtler levels of mind are reflected upon the physical world in the sense that we need deeper levels of mathematical abstraction and "strength" in order to properly codify our physical world. As shown in the following graph:
As well as in the following statements:
This inward exploration of deeper, progressively more unified levels of nature culminated in the recent discovery of completely unified field theories based on the superstring. These theories locate a single, universal, unified field of intelligence at the basis of all forms and phenomena in the Universe. These deeper levels of physical reality are not only smaller—they are qualitatively, profoundly different. Each deeper level is governed by a unique set of physical laws; each possesses its own logic, its own natural language, its own mathematics. Entirely new physical theories and new mathematical frameworks had to be formulated to describe each new and deeper level of physical reality: theories that are known as quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and unified field theory. In a precisely parallel way, the human mind has been found to have a hierarchical structure. There is what is commonly referred to as the "surface level" of mind—the active thinking mind in which the awareness is directed outward through the macroscopic senses. But there are also deeper, quieter levels of mind, in which the awareness is more inwardly directed—the levels of "abstract thinking" and "fine feeling." Mathematicians have more finely subdivided and codified these deeper, more expanded levels of awareness—with each deeper level governed by its own unique mathematical logic. These deeper levels are progressively more complete, more expanded, logically more powerful, and increasingly abstract. This expanding hierarchy of human comprehension culminates in what is called the Universe of Sets—a completely transcendental level that includes, but lies beyond, all mathematically definable concepts of infinity. |
The natural numbers (or "counting numbers") are the most familiar, concrete, and intuitively accessible numerical system, well suited to day-to-day human interactions. The addition of the number "0" (the additive identity) by early Indian mathematicians elevates the natural numbers to the whole numbers—a slightly more complete and logically more powerful framework, if somewhat more abstract. The addition of negative numbers to form the integers results in a system that is closed under subtraction—i.e., in which the operation of subtraction can, for the first time, be properly defined. The addition of fractions results in the rational numbers, in which the operation of division can be properly defined. The resulting, more complete and powerful mathematical framework is suitable for accounting and most other practical purposes and endeavors. All the above four numerical systems constitute infinite sets of the same size. Between any two fractions there are an infinite number of "irrational" numbers that cannot be expressed as fractions. The addition of these irrational numbers fills out the gaps in the number line, and constitutes what are called the real numbers, or the continuum. The real numbers constitute a higher order of infinity than the rational numbers, and are key to the formulation of calculus and for comprehending and pursuing the physical sciences, such as classical mechanics. Still more abstract than the inexpressible irrational numbers are the imaginary numbers, which, when added to the reals, give rise to the complex numbers. The complex numbers are essential for formulating quantum mechanics and for understanding the world at the molecular and atomic levels. After the complex numbers come what are called function spaces, limits of function spaces, and products of function spaces, all representing progressively higher orders of infinity. These are necessary for the proper formulation and understanding of physics at the quantum-field-theoretic and deeper levels. Beyond the largest possible infinity that can be conceived by the human intellect lies the Universe of Sets, an infinity which transcends all mathematically definable infinities, and includes them all. |
How Would It Scale?
It is a fairly well-known fact that David Lynch, one of the co-creators of Twin Peaks and primary writer of The Return (alongside Mark Frost) actively practices and promotes the aforementioned technique of Transcendental Meditation, and in fact is the founder of an entire foundation dedicated to it, of which he is one of the main presidents, alongside John Hagelin himself.
For reference, here is a video with Lynch's own explanation of what the Unified Field is and its relationship to Transcendental Meditatio.
As a result, it should come off as no surprise that his work is at least subconsciously influenced by those beliefs, and indeed, most of his movies have fairly direct allusions to them, and Twin Peaks is no exception for this, and is arguably the one in which they are most tightly knitted and solidified into a coherent narrative.
Indeed, Lynch tends to use the metaphor of a Market Place and a Palace when describing the relation beyond our world of matter and the boundlessness of the Unified Field. Whereas the Market Place is biform and divided into many different aspects and levels, the Palace is the representation of infinite unity devoid of any relativity or differentiation, being an unrepresentable expanse of nothingness that precedes form altogether, and thus remains unrepresentable in its truest nature.
| What is kind of incredible is that there are, like quantum physics now says, ten dimensions of space and one dimension of time ― that's what they've come up with. Ten dimensions of space ― what does that mean? There's a field of relativity, it has a surface, and it has depths. There are, like they say, worlds within worlds within worlds, just unbelievable stuff going on in the field of relativity. And that's all real interesting, but as Maharishi says, that's only the 'market-place'. You go through the market-place, and it's real interesting, but there are lots and lots of chances to get waylaid and even go backwards and get lost, get in trouble. Maharishi always says, capture the fort, and then all the territories are yours ― so get to the palace, get to the palace ― and then you own all that you survey. 'Get to the palace' means transcend, get to the deepest leve |
As you can see in the video above, Lynch explains that the Unified Field is a boundless expanse of nothingness from which everything in our Universe is sprung from, be it on a Mental or Material level. In the material side of things, he describes that as one delves into increasingly deeper and smaller chains of matter, physical reality can be perceived as slowly disappearing and being reduced into more minute things, until they disappear into the unmanifest.
This description (alongside an explanation on an admitedly
In it, we can see that the camera eventually enters the nuclear explosion and starts to descend into the root of it, while dozens of smaller explosions are shown ravaging a fractal, cloudy landscape. This goes on for a while, until the camera zooms even further and in an even faster motion, showing a bunch of particles floating around in space, until they all gradually vanish and we are taken into an endless, purple sea, and then unto a Palace pertaining to The Firema and Senorita Dido.
Given Lynch's explanation of how the Unified Field stands at the basis of both Matter and Mind, and how the former starts to gradually become more and more unified until all vanishes into nonexistence as we go into smaller levels, I believe that whole scene is a pretty clear allusion to this, and the appearance of The Fireman's Palace at the end of the scene makes that even more blatant.
Furthermore, the Mauve Sea is actually associated with nonexistence in a very explicit way in the show itself, specifically in this scene, where The Arm's Doppelgänger tears the Black Lodge's floor in two and throws Cooper into a starry space while screaming "NON-EXIST-ENT". This results in Cooper falling down for a while, until he reaches the Mauve Sea itself and falls into a balcony of Mother's Mansion.
This, by the way, also relates to the idea of the descending unto deeper and deeper levels of consciousness until reaching the Unified Field at the basis of it all, as the Lodges themselves are described as being embodiments of the deepest levels of the unconscious in the Secret History of Twin Peaks, with the phenomenon of "reverse speech" (An obvious reference to the fact that the Spirits of the Lodges speak backwards) representing them being said to be heralded by owls:
| Okay, I have found literally dozens of volumes containing theories and speculations about owls as metaphors and symbols—including one of the aforementioned Illuminati—"screen memories" for aliens in abduction cases, guardians of the underworld, messagers of the subconscious and even more outlandish hooey. There's one whacked conjecture that they show up as harbingers of some weird phenomenon I can't even figure out valled "reverse speech", which is suppose to offer some sort of windows into the deepest parts of the unconscious. |
When working in conjuction, those two sides are superimposed over each other and create our perception of reality, which is described as having a "purple" tint.
| The red spectrum slightly suppresses activity in the left or logical hemisphere, while the blue spectrum does the same in the spatial/intuitive side of the brain and that when worn together — although it does tend to give 'reality' a slightly purple tint — the patient tends to experience increased integration between the two spheres by … encouraging the two sides to work together. |
Why Would It Scale?
Now, I believe I have to address the potential issues people have with these upgrades. Mainly the (understandable) notion that this is cross-scaling, and that you could use similar things to wank other verses and yada yada.
For instance, one might say that this is similar to saying Shin Megami Tensei is 1-A because of Kabbalah, or that any verse which makes reference to the more abstract concepts from Hinduism is also 1-A, or that any verse which mentions Plato is also 1-A, and the list goes on and on.
However, I believe that this is a completely different case here, as I believe actual religious and/or philosophical concepts have no defined, fixed tier, and are instead to be tiered independently of philosophical points of view. To quote myself from another thread:
I personally think we (As in, the wiki itself) shouldn't consider actual religious concepts as being anything, tiering-wise. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think religion is outside of scrutiny or anything of the sort, but it is still in a grey area that is extremely subjective and ostensibly separable from fiction, and thus we can't just put it into a framework where we can analyze and nitpick it as we do to any other fictional verse, at least not without displays of some severe cultural insensitivity. That's because faith and belief is something that people impose upon their worldview and experiences, and incorporate into their own world. If you went solely by purely religious context and narrative, then something like the Taiji or the Tao would definitely be at least 1-A, but that'd be because we can't apply fallacies like hasty generalizations to something as subjective and generalized as it, and because it'd be ridiculous to suggest something like it is limited in any way in the context I am talking about here. Meanwhile, if we analyzed it through the cold lens that we use in a VS Debating / Indexing context, then you could interpret the Taiji to be as low as Low 1-C, because of our common practice of nitpicking stuff to death through the use of fallacies and being overall very strict when it comes to giving stupidly high tiers to... anything, really. As you can infer, that obviously clashes with the interpretation that the Taiji can't be anything but 1-A or even higher (maybe even untierable), which looks at it through purely religious and metaphysical lenses. That's all I really have to say on the matter. |
It would be ridiculous to suggest that something like the Taiji or the Wuji would be limited in any way if we went solely by religious / philosophical context and implications, for example, but it isn't this absurd under the cold lenses we have for Indexing here, so for our purposes those things may as well be tierless, and that's honestly the way it should be.
Meanwhile, even from a cold indexing perspective, the Unified Field as Hagelin describes it is effectively Tier 0, especially when you remember what the measuring stick for 1-A and above is at this point, so there's borderline no subjectivity to debate here, the thing is that high no matter from what angle you look at it.
Now, some may say that, even if the Unified Field is Tier 0, there is no real reason to assume that its representation in Twin Peaks (the Mauve Sea) includes all of the characteristics that would make it Tier 0 in the first place.
However, I think that looking at it from this point of view is simply being overly pedantic and disregarding Hagelin's (and by extension Lynch's) whole notion of the Unified Field of Consciousness and its relation to that of theoretical physics. Primarily because the existence of greater infinite cardinals as actual, real things is basically inseparable from that of the Field itself and its relation to material reality.
As it is described above, Matter reflects the Mind, and thus special sets corresponding to greater orders of infinity are necessary to analyze deeper and deeper levels of physical reality, such as the set of all real numbers, or that of imaginary numbers, function spaces and limits / products thereof and so on and so forth.
Hence, in my view, scaling Twin Peaks to the notion of the Unified Field is as much cross-scaling as rating a verse at 1-B because it mentions Bosonic String Theory as part of reality.
And yes, I am fully aware that String Theory or it's variants that adopt compactified dimensions aren't any tier anymore, I am simply making a comparision, before anyone nitpicks that.
There is also the question of people having different interpretations and portrayals of certain concepts which almost away heavily vary in scale. For instance, not every verse portrays the Lovecraftian Deities in a way that is 100% faithful to the original material, after all, much less in a way that would qualify those portrayals for 1-A, which is almost certainly not the case here, since the author in this case has pretty intimate knowledge of the concepts utilized.
TL;DR┬▓
So, to sum it all up, if those upgrades actually go through, the ratings I propose are something along the lines of:
The Firema = 0
Senorita Dido = 0
Mother = 0
The Experiment = Varies. 1-A to 0 (As it can actually enter the frequencies of reality and adjust its own level of existence)
And that's really about it.
