Silk Out of Time?

At 04:19 PM 12/16/2002, Blattid wrote: Don Doggett wrote:

So again I ask, why did time stop on the Whorl?

Ummm ... I don't think it did. Silk had an experience which took place outside of Time, i.e., in Eternity, the perspective from which the Outsider (==the Christian God) views spacetime. Thus, while he experienced the passage of time in his personal consciousness, the "time" that passed for him had no meaning on the Whorl or, presumably, the rest of spacetime. Think of it like this. Silk (like the rest of us) watches spacetime occurring in an orderly fashion, rather like someone particpating in an interactive computer game, one where the player participates as a character. Then the phone rings -- the Outsider "calls," and the game goes into "pause" mode, while the Outsider tells Silk a number of things -- including, as it happens, some "spoiler" information about the game itself. When the call ends, the game comes out of "pause" mode, and continues exactly as it had been. No time has passed in the game, but no time has been skipped or lost in the game either; the time the player has spent on the call has nothing to do with the internal time of the game. Similarly, the seeming duration of Silk's enlightenment has nothing to do with the "passage" of "time" in the spacetime universe.

Nutria wrote: I'm not sure we're supposed to think time "passed" for Silk either. He had an instantaneous and transcendent "moment" that sorted itself out in his mind afterwards into its various components, some of which he could not remember. This may not be correct, but I don't see any reason what it is not.

At 11:53 AM 12/17/2002, you wrote: Nutria wrote:

I'm not sure we're supposed to think time "passed" for Silk either. He had an instantaneous and transcendent "moment" that sorted itself out in his mind afterwards into its various components, some of which he could not remember. This may not be correct, but I don't see any reason what it is not.

"You may be right about this, and certainly I would not go so far as to say that you were wrong, but still ...!" (Place that quote for double credit.) What makes me think that Silk's experience has some kind of internal sequentiality: he has the sense of someone (the Outsider) speaking into both his ears. Now, I may simply put too much emphasis on that detail, but it seems to me that speech has a kind of inherent sequentiality to it. Of course, this may simply mean that he remembers it that way.

Nutria wrote:

I'm not sure we're supposed to think time "passed" for Silk either. He had an instantaneous and transcendent "moment" that sorted itself out in his mind afterwards into its various components, some of which he could not remember. This may not be correct, but I don't see any reason what it is not.

"You may be right about this, and certainly I would not go so far as to say that you were wrong, but still ...!" (Place that quote for double credit.) What makes me think that Silk's experience has some kind of internal sequentiality: he has the sense of someone (the Outsider) speaking into both his ears. Now, I may simply put too much emphasis on that detail, but it seems to me that speech has a kind of inherent sequentiality to it. Of course, this may simply mean that he remembers it that way. Wafflingly, --Blattid --

Both seem reasonably compatible, if one looks at it from the perspective that "sequentiality" is a function of our perception of time - a limitation the Outsider does not share. Silk perceives it as sequential because his mind sorted things out that way, true, but then again Silk (and we) perceive normal events in the universe as sequential for the same reason.

In that sense, as far as Silk's impressions, the sequentiality of his enlightenment is just as "real" as the sequentiality of the real world.

Is that quote Silk speaking to Dr. Crane in response to his theory about Silk's enlightenment?