Subject: (urth) Silk's perception of time

From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 05:05:30 +0000

Crush says:
"Silk is not only "aware" that Time has stopped. He says he was *outside*
Time. The speed in which Time is moving at the "time" of his enlightenment
is irrelevant to him since such differences only matters from the
perspective of persons *in* Time. So the Time stoppage for Silk doesn't tell
us anything either way."

Don smiles broadly and slaps Crush on the back:
Actually your objection only strengthens my theory and makes me certain that
Silk's enlightenment is the point where the Whorl achieves and leaves ftl
speed.  Allow me to explain.  When we say God, or the Outsider (I'm assuming
that the consensus is that the Outsider is God), is outside of time what we
are saying is that God exists in the past, present, and future
simultaneously and without differentiation.  God isn't in the past, seeing
the future, or in the future, seeing the past.  God is always NOW.  So if
Silk is outside of time, with the Outsider (or God) he is seeing the past,
present, and future as the Outsider sees them, while they are happening.  Of
course, he can only describe to Horn (or Nettle, or was it Marble?) what he
saw in terms of past present and future, but in his perception it was all
now.  Outside of time means immersion in reality, without the barriers of
time.  In essence, when Silk saw Patera Pike pray to the Outsider for help
he saw it as it happened (not as a vision of the past), and when he
perceived that time had stopped in his present, time really had stopped.

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From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 14:08:43 +0000

Hello all.

I hate to rain on everyone's parade who seems to think that Silk's 
enlightenment occurred at the point where the Whorl dropped out of FTL 
travel (if in fact the Whorl was capable of FTL travel, which I tend to 
disbelieve), but I'm going to.  

At the time Silk was enlightened, the whorl had been in orbit around the 
"short sun" for about thirty years, and therefore could not have been 
going faster than light at any time during Silk's life which, at the 
beginning of NIGHTSIDE, was 23 years long.

Charles

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 17:59:29 +0000

Don Dogget, agent of SMERSH, emerged from an alley and dropped
the microfilm. When deciphered, it read:

[...]
> what we are saying is that God exists in the past, present, 
> and future simultaneously and without differentiation.  God 
> isn't in the past, seeing the future, or in the future, 
> seeing the past.  God is always NOW.  

Actually, I think this slightly reverses the usual understanding
of the relationship between God-in-Eternity and Time. I would
not say that God "is always NOW"; rather, I would say that God
perceives past, present, and future as always-already 
simultaneously present before God. To say that God is NOW almost 
seems to restrict God, to place God in the NOW, whereas I posit
that we want to say that no moment contains or can contain God.

> In essence, when Silk saw Patera Pike pray 
> to the Outsider for help he saw it as it happened (not as a 
> vision of the past), and when he perceived that time had 
> stopped in his present, time really had stopped.

With this I completely concur -- God/the Outsider makes those
moments "present" to Silk which Silk "needs" to perceive.

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From: Josh Geller <dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 19:18:25 +0000

I greet the Rider of the Mouse!

On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> Don Dogget wrote:

> that we want to say that no moment contains or can contain God.

Here's one (somewhat simplified) way of looking at it:

Human people are creatures which exist in three dimensions. and are
in involuntary motion in a fourth dimension. This motion is what we call
time. The plenum of parallel Worlds can be conceived as a plane
perpendicular to this fourth dimension.

According to this system, the angels (or small-g gods, however you
prefer) exist in four dimensions, are free to move in two others, and are
in involuntary motion in a seventh.  The two dimensions that they are free
to move in correspond to the dimensions of the time-plane mentioned above.

Maybe (probably) there are levels beyond this.

Big-G God is always NOW (as Dan'l puts it) to all of this. The angels
don't really know all that much more about it than human people do. The
angel's angels (assuming there are such) don't know any more about it
either and so on.

All of these conceptions are not-God. God is beyond conception.

This is, of course, all my own opinions based mostly on personal research.

.

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From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 07:13:05 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 9:59 AM
Subject: RE: (urth) Silk's perception of time

"Don Dogget, agent of SMERSH, emerged from an alley and dropped
the microfilm. When deciphered, it read:"

SMERSH?  I'll bite, what is it?  Do I wear a cool suit and glasses?

" Actually, I think this slightly reverses the usual understanding
of the relationship between God-in-Eternity and Time. I would
not say that God "is always NOW"; rather, I would say that God
perceives past, present, and future as always-already
simultaneously present before God. To say that God is NOW almost
seems to restrict God, to place God in the NOW, whereas I posit
that we want to say that no moment contains or can contain God."

Thank you, that's what I meant but I was trying (unsuccessfully) for
economy.

Don

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 17:44:14 +0000

> "Don Dogget, agent of SMERSH, emerged from an alley and 
> dropped the microfilm. When deciphered, it read:"
> 

SMERSH, short for "Smyert shpionam" ["death to all spies"] -- 
the Soviet spy agency which stood in counterpart to the US's
CIA, and against which James Bond fought in the original books
and early movies. Yes, it was a real agency, unlike SPECTRE.

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