John: You know what the blob is, don’t you?
(The dream being delved into here is laid out in detail in yesterday’s post, Part I: The Blob)
The theory, according to Don Juan’s teaching of Carlos Castaneda, is that there is a force that is very lazy and not too intelligent, and it feeds off the disjointed or discordant essence called a human being. The theory puts forth the idea that this force has pretty much devoured all of the life essence of the human, and there just isn’t a whole lot left. So if a person were to scan another person’s body they would see – all the way down almost to the ankles – that something has infiltrated the person, and it keeps one in a fog. Whenever one starts to try to come out of the fog, or shows any vitality, the force of the blob devours, or eats up, that new vitality, because for the blob it is a type of food. It makes for an interesting analogy.
Jeane: Are you sure? My blob seemed like so much fun!
John: Well the thing of it is that one stays kind of numb to it, because it is such a pervasive force overall; it is something that affects everyone’s life. It takes a lot of effort to move away from it. In your dream you were worried about the physics test – physics is a pretty serious thing. It takes an attentiveness and study to grasp physics, so it seems that there is no fun in that. Your feeling is that it’s pure misery. Mathematics, the second subject of the upcoming tests, is something that you have a more natural understanding of, so in the dream it is not a worry for you.
So you find yourself facing three tests, one on the blob vehicle and that is fun to practice and prepare for, then there’s math, which is a bit more serious but is not a worry to you personally, and then physics, the most serious and the one you are putting the least attention on. So when you find yourself in a scenario where you have to take on all those levels, it makes sense that you need a teacher.
Of course at the beginning of the dream you are being treated by the teacher with kid gloves; you are able to be outside and feel a bit lackadaisical, then all of a sudden the teacher comes out with the serious announcement of the tests. It comes out a little abruptly but we get a sense of how the people are reacting. Then you coast back, you relax into it so that you can handle it all at your own pace, and then the blob aspect arises and keeps you in a sort of trance. Everyone thinks they are enjoying themselves when they live in the blob realm. They don’t even realize that they are subject to it, or that they are actually in a form of slavery to it. The blob force doesn’t really have a lot of power, but somehow, because it has infiltrated so slowly, it doesn’t take much to keep the human being under its spell.
At the first sign of any new vitality or energetics in the person, the blob feeds on that. This is the analogy of Don Juan and his way of explaining to Carlos Castaneda how a person has to overcome this particular state of delirium. Everyone is subject to it, but it is not all-powerful. But when you throw it off, you are then able to deal with other things that require more nimbleness and are a bigger challenge to your being, like the example of physics in your dream. The blob was the first step. You had to be able to get rid of the blob, or get control of it. You described how it was.
Jeane: Then we had to show the teacher our skills at maneuvering it, to put it through its paces up in the trees, I guess.
John: You have to have some freedom in that. You have to be able to break the hold of the quality, or experience, of time and space that the blob has; it is the only useful aspect in it for you. The blob is not really that big a threat. It may not actually harm, but the human being in relationship to the blob is like a farm animal, something it tends to. But once you throw the blob off, then you open up a wide new world. That is the oddity of the dream. That is why it struck me right away as you started describing it. It sounded like the blob, and then there was math, and then the physics that most people don’t want to deal with.
Jeane: Yes, it required sitting there in front of the book doing the problems in each chapter.
John: It is easier to submit to the blob.
Jeane: But you could take it out and make it go through its paces. That was entertaining.
John: The blob is entertaining. You are in a delirium. You pay the price, though, it’s called Stuporville. It is interesting. But one has to ask to what degree does one keep oneself in Stuporville? I guess one should ponder that. It is a common problem. It is much easier to submit to the overall malaise, rather than generate enough awareness of it, and enough energy, to break free from it.
