From: "Don Doggett" 
Subject: (urth) Silk's perception of time
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 21:05:30 -0800

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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