Down In the Basement With Bob's Unconscious

Bob's feeling a little under the weather today. Either that, or the weather is pressing down on him. One of those nasty baby colds, which always turn into a life-threatening case of Man Flu. So to save him time and effort, this is his unconscious speaking to you today. Well, not really "you," since in the unconscious mind, you don't really exist as a distinct entity -- more of a shadowy presence. Which is fine, since Bob said he was going to carry on a private coonversation with himself anyway.

Regarding Keys of Gnosis, in my opinion it takes Bolton several chapters to warm up to his subject, at least to the point that the book really started speaking to me.

For example, I see that Bob has relatively few highlights in the first 40-50 pages, while the last 100 are pretty much solid highlighting. When Bob highlights a passage, it usually means that something has caught my attention in a non-linear way that will need to be "unpacked" and explicated later. This is because "down" here (I hate that; it implies some kind of inferiority, a legacy of the positivistic 19th century over-emphasis on reason. I got your reason right here, buddy. I am so in control of your puny reason. I mean, I can make a guy like Hitchens worship spirits instead of Spirit, and then imagine he's rational! Ha!)

I do get sidetracked, however, which, after all, is part of the job description. I mean, trust me, you wouldn't want to live as if your mind were simply a predictable machine that runs in the same stupid groove for the rest of your life, like one of those substitious atheists or something. Obviously a lot of folks are like that, which is what makes them so freaking boring. Then you've got the other kind, who live only in the unconscious and call it some kind of "enlightenment" or "free-spiritedness."

Please. Much as I hate to admit it, I need Bob's conscious mind, just as it needs me. We don't always see I to I, but it's gotten better over the years. Hey, I've had my fun. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was pulling all the strings until he was in his late 20s! Ha! I should tell you about the day Miller Light came out in 1979, and he thought it meant he could drink 20 of them without getting too intoxicated.... Wait, maybe I have told that story.... Hard to remember sometimes, since, as you know, there's no time in the unconscious.... It's like it was yesterday....

Bob just got a surprise email yesterday from a guy he knew back then, Gary. C'mon Gary, if you're out there, testify to my awesome power over Bob! Are you as surprised as I am that he's still alive?

It's hard for me to stay on task, since I operate holographically, not linearly. In your world, A causes B, which causes C, yada yada, blah blah blah, in a sort of straight line. But in my world, A is more like a point at the center, which then radiates outward, causing A, B, C, D, etc., all extending out like rays from the sun. This is why some people think I'm "mercurial," or something like that. No, it's just that I contain multitudes, like that gay poet. Do I contradict myself? Only from your blinkered standpoint, Logic Slave!

Now, in the early chapters, Bolton spends a fair amount of time proving the existence of the soul with logic, which, as you might expect, is a little borr-rring to me, since I don't require "logic" to prove what is self-evident to me. Hey, I'm not anti-logic, anti-science, or anti-nerd. I'm not knockin' it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for the unconscious than for you maybe. I'm not saying that I'm better or greater, or comparing myself with Tony Robbins as a person or God as a thing or whatever he thinks he is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or right. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this.

So I don't know if I'm the right entity to do justice to Bolton's argument, but I'll try. He points out the genuine paradox that human beings are obviously a unity, and yet, they can only be comprehended dualistically, i.e., "body and soul." If you try to reduce the one to the other, you just end in absurdity or stupidity (my word). Furthermore, this unity cannot be understood, much less observed, in any exterior, scientific way. Rather, it can only be experienced on a first hand basis, or known "by acquaintance." No one else can have direct knowledge of your soul but you, right doofus?

Why the name calling? I don't know. Somehow that just slipped out. I'm innocent! That's just how the unconscious works. You might say that we all have Tourette's syndrome, but that some of us pretend we don't, i.e., we repress it. That's what cursing is all about, don't you know. Curse words are like magical linguistic amulets that partake of a kind of numinous potency because they have their roots down here.

This is why I can assure you that the so-called "reality" based community is so out of touch with same. I'm sure you've seen those empirical studies -- as if we need them! -- documenting how much more cursing and degraded speech goes on in the left wing blogosphere than the right. It's because they're so unconscious. They are motivated by overwhelming feelings that they are unable to articulate logically, which is what causes all the left-wing Tourette's. Did you see that freak Larry O'Donnell wig out over Romney's Mormonism on TV the other day? That was one of my associates pulling the strings. Watch his countenance darken as he becomes demon possessed. We love that stuff down here! Score one for "the beast," as my friend calls himself. It's like that Who song, only

Can't explain
I think it's hate
Gotta curse at you
'Cause my state is blue

That could pretty much be the Democrats' campaign theme, couldn't it?

I have to tell you, this is really hard. I mean, staying on track. Frankly, I think it's why Bob did so poorly in school, at least until grad school. Oh, I had his mind zigging and zagging all over the place. I guess I feel a little guilty about that. Wait, no I don't. I feel the opposite, even a little proud. Look, the Conspiracy was trying to mold his mind to fit their narrow agenda, and I wasn't having any of it. It wasn't that he was stupid, or that he lacked the native capacity. It's just that I flat out refused to cooperate, and I'm glad I did.

Call it self-preservation if you like, because it was either them or me. If the Conspiracy had been successful in stealing Bob's mind, it would have meant that I would have zero influence, except maybe in terms of causing symptoms, which I can do any time I want. Oh yes, I can cause all sorts of mischief when ego and soul are not in alignment -- affairs, divorce, drinking, drugs, illness, addictions of all kinds, you name it. Call it infantile if you like, but I don't look at it that way. Psychic unity, that's what I'm all about, brother. I might have to go Muslim on your ass to achieve it every now and then, but there's really no other way. Plus, the stakes are too high. We're talking about your soul, dude!

In fact, Bolton does a good job of explaining how the soul cannot be "in" the world. Rather -- and he's right about this -- the world is obviously in the soul (as are many other intelligible planes of reality). Likewise, your ego should be "contained" by your soul, since the ego is just its instrument. You can try to turn around that relationship and make the soul subordinate to the ego. I mean, many, if not most, people do. But that's like putting Dennis Rodman in charge of the NBA, or Ron Paul in charge of anything.

When you throw the soul overboard, ipso facto (I think I know what that means), you're left with nothing but the material ego, which in turn is considered nothing more than a biochimerical side effect of purely material processes. Now, in a subtle way, this is where the spiritual disease of leftism gets a foothold. Because if you don't have a soul, you don't have an essence. Therefore, it doesn't matter who you think you are, since you're ultimately just a product of the environment and Hillary can do whatever she wants with you and your money and testicles, knave! This is why the environment has so much power over the left. Obviously, it is the whole basis of their ubiquitous victimology, as in It's not my fault! Wahhhh! The environment made me do it! So the left will ultimately manipulate the environment in order to perfect mankind and cure it of the Disease That Has No Name, but kill the patient in the process, AKA Man as Such.

What? Yes, that's right. I forgot. It does have a name, "the Fall." I guess that's an okay name for the problem, but the word is a bit "saturated," don't you think? Probably just gives people the Jesus-willies when you use it. There are better ways to understand that phenomenon, which perhaps we'll get to later.

So the soul is the container both of the world and of our world-representation. It is why we recognize and understand the world so deeply. We are able to form representations of the world, whereas other animals simply mirror their environments. To the extent that they have a soul, it is generally more of a collective one.

See, as Bolton writes, "the objective world is known to have a form which results as much from its adaptation to our own powers of cognition, as from its objective nature." I know that's probably difficult for some of you to wrap your minds around, but it is critical that you don't do that, because your soul needs to wrap around your mind. The world really is a form of the soul's sensibility, which is why it corresponds so nicely with it. The world is an emanation from above; the reverse could never be true, i.e., the soul somehow being an emanation of matter. I mean, c'mon.

Is that enough? I'm getting bored. This is Bob's unconscious, signing off.