Questions on Lodges and Bob possession vs. Doppelgangers

[vicksvapor77]

Hey guys! These may be "dumb" questions for someone who has seen the show as many times but here we go:

First of all, is the Red Room the same thing as the Black Lodge? I've always assumed so because if it was a "waiting room," why don't we ever see the "good" versions of characters? Or are "Good Laura" and "Good Dale" the ones in episode 3? We see "Bad Laura" and "Bad Maddy" in the Black Lodge/Red Room in the series finale, so do we assume "Good Laura" went to the White Lodge, presumably at the end of FWWM with the angel? But she is still seen in the Red Room in episode 3 so this is confusing.

Does the "I'll see you in 25 years" comment refer to the scene we see in episode 3, where Cooper looks old? Because the Red Room has no real linear space in time (as shown with Annie in FWWM)? So many of us seem to assume it refers in some way to something we'll see in the new season but I am confused why Cooper looked older in episode 3.

How do we interpret "Bad Leland" saying "I did not kill anybody"?

Moving forward from all of that, how would you distinguish Bob taking control of a person vs. the Black Lodge doppelgangers? Does Bob have the ability to "take the place" of or embody the dark side (doppelganger) of the host's soul in the host's body? Is the "Bad Cooper" doppelganger from the Black Lodge an entirely different concept than Bob possessing him? So is Bob-possessed-Leland an entirely different concept than what happened to Cooper in the series finale? It seems as though the doppelgangers have grayed out eyes but Cooper has normal eyes when in the bathroom and we see Bob in the mirror. I'm sure it all ties into the "Dweller on the Threshold" concept but I can't say I've ever gotten a strong grasp on this particular piece of the mythology.

So many questions!

[MasterMastermind]

1. I think so! To me there really isn't a Black Lodge or White Lodge, that's just how characters' who have never been there articulate it. To me there's only the Lodge, a sort of metaphysical netherworld, and whether it's good or bad is all in how you look at it.

2. This is a good question taking it strictly in the context of the show. In reality Cooper looks older because the Dream Sequence was literally shot as the last scene of the Pilot as a dream Cooper has 25 years after solving Laura's murder. To me the "25 years later" line is Laura foreshadowing Cooper being doomed to exist in the Lodge.

3. I interpreted it as muddying the waters of Leland's possession. His doppelganger wasn't needed to do bad things, Leland did it on his own.

4. To me Bob has multiple ways of getting inside people, going by Leland's story, Bob "testing" new vessels from the opening of the Lodge, and what happened with Cooper in the finale. I think the end result is the same, but I guess time will tell!

[LostInTheMovies]

The dweller on the threshold is described by Hawk (the only time the concept is ever mentioned on the show) as the shadow self of the person who encounters it. What's weird is that only Lynch's changes to the script really follow through on this with the evil doppelganger racing/chasing Cooper (or "the good Cooper" if he has already split).

In the film, I would say Laura's "dweller" moment is epitomized when Leland places a mirror underneath it and she looks into it and sees Bob replace her own reflection. Interestingly, Alice Bailey mentions the dweller on the threshold in conjunction with an "angel of the presence" which the initiate can only merge with AFTER recognizing himself/herself as being the shadow.

This is literally what happens in Fire Walk With Me and on a more metaphorical level it is entirely consistent with Lynch's cinematic worldview (expressed in the Log Lady intros and Between Two Worlds) of the ground of all being/Brahman/"the all"/the unified field which can only be attained by moving past the comforting illusions of surface reality, into the darkness, and recognizing the shadow side of reality.

[Jasper]

I think the “waiting room” is literally the room they’re sitting in before the burst of flames and activation of the strobes. After that, Coop is in a battle with Windom and BOB (though BOB could have been in control the whole time, merely using Windom).

The Red Room was just the Red Room when Lynch first filmed it, and it was a dream. The lodge mythos was developed later, probably mostly by Frost. The Black Lodge wasn’t going to look like the Red Room, but that’s how Lynch filmed it. The question should really be whether the White and Black lodges are in the same place, or two different places.

As for doppelgängers, perhaps we don’t see “good” ones because we never visit the White Lodge, or see the White aspect of a Dual Lodge. It may also be that most people are usually mostly good (not murdering people, making predatory loans, etc.) so the "good" part of people is usually somewhat close to the surface, not necessarily hidden away somewhere. So a "good" doppelgänger might not even need to exist unless an evil one is in control of the physical body. I think the good Dale in the lodge is probably just what's left when the evil shadow self departs, or he's simply regular Dale, but it's hard to say with any certainty. In any case, Hawk says we meet our shadow selves. He doesn't say anything about us meeting our light selves.

I don’t know if Laura went to the White Lodge. Something is revealed to her at the end of FWWM that brings her tears of joy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was freed from there.

The “25 years” comment was definitely a sly reference to Dale’s initial Red Room dream where he’s 25 years older, but now it makes an especially poetic point of return. We don’t know how time works in the lodge. It doesn’t seem completely linear, but we don’t know the extent to which time is malleable within that space (and in one sense we could look at it as a psychological space).

I’m not sure why bad Leland says he didn’t kill anybody, but it could have to do with Leland’s denial of his own part in his actions, or it could means something like “good” Leland did those things and didn’t even need the input of his bad doppelgänger, but that becomes something of a logical pretzel.

I don’t think what constitutes BOB vs. an evil doppelgänger has necessarily been worked out. Lynch said it was bad Coop that got out, but that BOB was with him. I don’t know if it’s the same type of possession experienced by Leland.

I don’t think that the foggy eyes are something that manifest outside the lodge. I think it’s the same body, but with a different driver behind the scenes. I don’t think there are individual physical bodies for doppelgängers.

As for the shadow self (doppelgänger), I believe it's simply the suppressed dark side of all people. Pretty Jungian stuff.

In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" may refer to (1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself. Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative, or (2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_%28psychology%29

Then there's this...

The Dweller on the Threshold refers to a purported invisible and possibly malevolent entity that attaches to a human being. The term was first used by Bulwer-Lytton in his novel Zanoni.

In theosophical literature, Helena P. Blavatsky describes it as the discarded astral double of an individual in a previous life that may not have fully disintegrated yet when that individual is reborn. Thus the dweller will be drawn to the new incarnated personality due to their affinity. Sometimes this entity is also called Guardian of the Threshold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dweller_on_the_threshold

P.S. When I wrote the below, I should have added that we'll no doubt have a bigger picture of this with the third season. Laura certainly didn't come across as especially happy and whole in the Between Two Worlds segment.

I don’t know if Laura went to the White Lodge. Something is revealed to her at the end of FWWM that brings her tears of joy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was freed from there.

[vicksvapor77]

Fascinating responses, thank you so much for taking the time! I'd love to see even more. I didn't realize these were still so "ill-defined." I feel less stupid now! LOL.

[LostInTheMovies]

P.S. When I wrote the below, I should have added that we'll no doubt have a bigger picture of this with the third season. Laura certainly didn't come across as especially happy and whole in the Between Two Worlds segment.

I don’t know if Laura went to the White Lodge. Something is revealed to her at the end of FWWM that brings her tears of joy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was freed from there.

She definitely gave the impression that her story hadn't finished being told but I thought "And then I cried because I saw what it was, and it was beautiful. I was awake," was a pretty ringing confirmation that as FWWM suggests she had ascended to a higher spiritual state. Probably not Brahman yet, to use the Hindu terminology, but certainly seemed to have advanced further than her parents, noth stuck in a sort of limbo (Sarah's worldly, Leland's otherworldly). I think this was also evident in the language she used, vague and poetic, quite different from how she spoke as a living character in FWWM and also from the more mundane language her parents used.

[the haystack]

My kerfluffle: It sounds like people don't know how to interpret the White lodge. Or, we don't distinguish the White and Black lodges distinctly, but view them more as varied functions or interpretations of one place. Or, some doubt if it exists at all, metaphysically or otherwise. Why, then, does Earle who is arguably the astute researcher of all this provide a lucid description of the White lodge, it's attributes and inhabitants, and habitat? Further, by his construction you can infer that the White and Black lodges are separate locations.

Yeah, I've watched this more than 40 times starting with the old TV broadcast. Confusions still exist for me too but, I chalk it up to the "book" not being written in advance of filming which, I'm glad that is how things were done. (And unlike all book adaptations, I don't miss all the arguing about whether the book or the movie was better.) I think it's one of the chasmic distinctions between Twin Peaks and most other films. It really did evolve from pure air, to borrow an expression.

Another one: is there one waiting room for both lodges? Seems to be kind of a labyrinth off the waiting room.

[LostInTheMovies]

Personally, I take Windom Earle's descriptions with a grain of salt. Obviously his knowledge of the Lodge lore is voluminous but it is all filtered through a consciousness obsessed with how he can use this spiritual realm to his own advantage. I think that's why he is so easily slayed inside the Black Lodge - he sees himself as a puppeteer, but in the end he is a puppet.

Actually I think all of the descriptions of the Lodges are basically human concepts imposed on something beyond verbalization, and this includes the idea of extreme duality which is something the people entering the Lodge probably bring into it, thus impacting how they see it (think Heisenberg, who gets explicitly name-dropped in ep. 27). I seem to recall reading that Lynch doesn't like use the words "Lodge" or "Black Lodge" to discuss Twin Peaks' "another place," preferring the more straightforward yet enigmatic "Red Room." Maybe from Martha Nochimson's book? But I may be misremembering.

Anyway I guess Lynch:Frost/Peyton::experience of Lodge:descriptions of Lodge both in a general sense and a completely literal one (since Lynch ended up writing or rewriting everything that actually takes place in this arena).

[the haystack]

Right, "see the other side."

Earle is surely obsessing as evidenced by his hyperbolic description of the WL that is practically dripping with revulsion. His purpose is venal and he pays the price for that. But I infer that his knowledge base goes deep given his grasp of the Dugpas, especially as contrasted with the lagging and uniformed (Cooper, Truman, et al).

"misremembered", I like that, George. Or was that Donald? misremembering myself.

[LostInTheMovies]

Right, "see the other side."

Earle is surely obsessing as evidenced by his hyperbolic description of the WL that is practically dripping with revulsion. His purpose is venal and he pays the price for that. But I infer that his knowledge base goes deep given his grasp of the Dugpas, especially as contrasted with the lagging and uniformed (Cooper, Truman, et al).

"misremembered", I like that, George. Or was that Donald? misremembering myself.

Webster, actually: http://www.webster-dictionary.org/defin ... isremember. It's been in use for centuries. Those who think that the word is a malapropism coined by Bush are themselves misremembering.

As for Windom, I certainly believe he's up on whatever literature and anecdotal lore exists. But he doesn't seem to have any real spiritual understanding of what the words mean - hence his easy defeat. And his descriptions are hyperbolic and cartoonish (appropriate for his audience of near-braindead Leo and, erhm, Heavy Metal Dude). Do I believe that the White Lodge is actually inhabited by prancing Eloi sipping nectar from the skies? No. But the metaphorical resonance is clear, and said nectar makes a nice inversion of garmonbozia (and an interesting parallel with the Maharishi's idea of "nectar of the gods").

I think he wants to be a dugpa but he has too much hubris to succeed: a good dugpa would probably be humble in the face of overwhelming spiritual forces and recognize they can't be "harnessed" so much as collaborated with. In a way, one could make a case that Leland is actually as much a dugpa as Windom and maybe a better one, since he gets most of what he wants for 40 years through judicious and mutually beneficial use of Bob - contrary to the case he makes for himself in ep. 16, but quite consistent with what we learn in FWWM (and can observe more subtly throughout). Although I think this occurred on a subconscious level, and that Leland was never really cognizant of Bob's presence.

[the haystack]

Hey! What if I was only giving George credit for reestablishing a lost article of the lexicon...poor guy gets legitimately beat up enough. 1 point.

Consider that I've only just joined the forum, and lurking though I have, I'm surely late and redundant on established discussions. Ah, Dugpas. If I had one wish it would be that DL's muse has focused much Dugpa energy his way, and we might benefit as his heirs in S3. The grainy, truncated video of Earle (the video within the film) lecturing on the Dugpas is one of my favorite devices used anywhere in the series. Even the cameraman was on crack. For that instant, it was briefly possible that the series could have turned what was a tangent into a comprehensive and legitimate exploration of the foundation for all of the mythology to that point. I doubt, however, that that would have then been marketable to ABC and instead would have become the final straw from their viewpoint, if that straw wasn't already laid. Nevertheless, it could still happen. Do we infer that Dugpas exist both temporally and in another place? Exactly where are these old woods? And how far back do the Bookhouse Boys go?

(And, was that Lynch's writing, or Peyton or one of the others. Uncertainty within confusion.)

[LostInTheMovies]

Yeah I love that video! Maybe my favorite Windom Earle moment, tbh. I believe it's in the episode written by Harley Peyton & Bob Engels though I have to believe Frost was involved somehow and may have brough the "dugpa" concept to their attention (given his interest on Theosophy and esoteric lore).

Interestingly, several passages are almost straight lifts from the book The Devil's Guard by Talbot Mundy. Though I think Wrapped in Plastic asked the writers about it and they couldn't remember the book at all. I imagine the writer's room looking lot like he sheriff a conference room at that point with a bunch of library books scattered around the table, grabbing random concepts and references and throwing them at the wall to see what stuck. For me, dugpas - like the dweller on the threshold stuck (and if nothing else, they leant their name to this distinguished forum!). I've heard people call Bob or the Little Man dugpas but to me it's all about he human, worldly figures - like Windom - who want to evoke this dark magic for dastardly means.

Agreed with your earlier point about the mythology being so interesting because it materialized from thin air. It's such a fascinating chain of events, possibly even more fascinating than how the mythology is actually presented onscreen.

[Jasper]

I look at the lodges as two different things at the same time. For me they are simultaneously:

1. A psychological/spiritual space within each human
2. A real supernatural place (or state/reality) between worlds/dimensions

I do not choose one or the other, but both. As far as the latter goes, I don’t think there is actually a physical Black Lodge with rooms and corridors, but a space that exists between worlds and doesn’t have physical dimensions per se, but exists as a state or as states. In other words, you can go there, but it doesn’t take up physical space in our world, and it may not take up physical space anywhere. It’s a sort of psychic/dream liminal space between two worlds, less of a place and more of a situation. Naturally one could not take a backhoe and dig under the sycamores and discover the Black Lodge. It's instead a direct portal to somewhere else, that exists on some other frequency, or between frequencies.

So, when talking about the Black Lodge and White Lodge being in the same space, I am certainly not saying that scenes in the Black Lodge are what the White Lodge looks like (or more precisely acts like and feels like). What I’m saying is that the two states could exist at once, but on different wavelengths, just as different dimensions could exist at once in reality, overlapping, but likewise on different wavelengths. This is also the way that psychological/spiritual states can exist in the same mind/spirit. I take the White Lodge to be a place (or notion, or state) of shining light and goodness, much like Breidablik, the hall of Baldr, a shining god of light/goodness in Norse mythology (which fits nicely with all of the other Indo-European aspects of lodge lore, though I’m not suggesting any intentional connection to Baldr). In any case, this is essentially the same as the place Major Briggs describes to Bobby when recounting his vision.

Hawk tells Coop that the Black Lodge is the shadow self of the White Lodge, which suggests a close, perhaps integral connection. I’d say that our shadow selves are really within us, and the confrontation with them in the Black Lodge is merely a sort of visceral visual representation of something that lies in our subconscious (or at least it lies there if we’re not actively evil people). Something about the psychic state of the Black Lodge brings our shadow selves into sharp focus and demands that we face them. The shadow self cannot be submerged whilst we are in the Black Lodge, as while we are in the Black Lodge our unconscious is laid bare. So the shadow self must be faced with fearlessness, which perhaps defuses the situation through the defeat of the shadow self, or through its enlightened integration with the whole self. (I know Joel likes this notion of integration.)

All of that said, I’d say that the lodge spirits (not the doppelgängers) are perhaps parasites who’ve invaded and used the preexisting Black Lodge for their own ends. It’s possible that the lodge spirits could be defeated and banished, but I believe that the lodge and doppelgängers would remain.

[N. Needleman]

All of that said, I’d say that the lodge spirits (not the doppelgängers) are perhaps parasites who’ve invaded and used the preexisting Black Lodge for their own ends. It’s possible they could be defeated and banished, but I believe that the lodge and doppelgängers would remain.

That's a very good theory, which could easily be tied into what was supposedly originally planned for FWWM/Season 3/future films/etc. - the idea of these beings from "another place" (dimension/planet of corn) that came out from under the tabletop years ago, or so that idea from Bob Engels went - he seemed to be suggesting there was a connection between this framing sequence set in the 1950s, with insects under the formica tabletop, and these spirits or beings who had left their home dimension and come to our world. I think it was either Engels or Al Strobel who said the idea was that MIKE was chasing BOB who had stolen the garmonbozia. They could easily be seen as parasites - in fact, that's exactly what MIKE calls BOB in Episode 13.

[Jasper]

The parasitical thing also goes along with the stuff I pasted earlier in the thread about The Dweller on the Threshold and the shadow.

In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" may refer to (1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself. Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative (…)

The Dweller on the Threshold refers to a purported invisible and possibly malevolent entity that attaches to a human being. The term was first used by Bulwer-Lytton in his novel Zanoni.

It’s hard to look at “the shadow self” and “the dweller on the threshold” in Twin Peaks as being identical, even though Hawk seems to more or less imply this in his speech to Cooper. When we examine the descriptions of the Jungian shadow and the original notion of The Dweller on the Threshold, I think it’s a satisfying solution to look at things in this way:

• The Shadow Self = Doppelgänger
• The Dweller on the Threshold = Any given lodge spirit who attaches to a human (MIKE, BOB, etc.)

When viewing things from this perspective, the following comments by Lynch (from two separate interviews) more or less make sense:

INTERVIEWER: So, was Cooper occupied by BOB in the script before you changed it?

LYNCH: No, but Coop wasn’t occupied by BOB. Part of him was. There are two Coops in there, and the one that came out was, you know, with BOB.

INTERVIEWER: Why was Cooper possessed by Bob at the end? It seems like he’s lost it.

LYNCH: Well the thing is he hasn’t been possessed. It’s the doppelgänger thing, the idea of two sides to everyone, he’s really up against himself.

So, the two Coops are the two sides of himself, not two physical Coops (and I think a lot of us, if not most of us, agree on this reading). BOB has not taken over Coop, rather Coop is in a battle with himself, and the last time we saw him, the “shadow self” had taken complete control. BOB has enabled this state of affairs, and has hitched along in a parasitic manner, perhaps enabling BOB's harvesting of Garmonbozia.

So we have the shadow self of Coop on the loose, and the light part of Coop trapped in the lodge (or unconscious, if one prefers). We then have BOB, as The Dweller on the Threshold, attached to Coop’s body, along for the ride and possibly assuming some level of influence.