Silk's perception of time

Charles Reed · 18 Nov 2002, 14:08 · from urth-v0211.mbox · original

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From: "Charles Reed" <cmreed at link.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Silk's perception of time
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 08:08:43 -0600
Message-ID: <urth-v0211-2144 at digest.urth.net>
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Hello all.

I hate to rain on everyone's parade who seems to think that Silk's=20
enlightenment occurred at the point where the Whorl dropped out of FTL=20
travel (if in fact the Whorl was capable of FTL travel, which I tend to=20
disbelieve), but I'm going to. =20

At the time Silk was enlightened, the whorl had been in orbit around the=20
"short sun" for about thirty years, and therefore could not have been=20
going faster than light at any time during Silk's life which, at the=20
beginning of NIGHTSIDE, was 23 years long.

Charles



Don Doggett wrote:

>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 te=
ll
>us anything either way."
>
>Don smiles broadly and slaps Crush on the back:
>Actually your objection only strengthens my theory and makes me certain th=
at
>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 assumi=
ng
>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.
>
>
>
>
>
>



--=20

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