From: "Don Doggett" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Marc's smoking gun?
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 17:32:44 -0800


----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 3:29 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Marc's smoking gun?


> What any of this has to do with the Blushas theory is tenuous at best.
Even
> if you assume the Whorl travelled at the speed of light, this does nothing
> to help establish the identity of the Whorl's destination or even what
> direction it was going. But I'll respond, since I don't see the question
as
> valid.

It has everything to do with the Blushas theory because it means the Whorl
could have ended up anywhere at any time.

> Time stopped for Silk, or so he felt.

This is simply not so.  One cannot be both outside of time and frozen in
time.  They are qualitatively different.  I'll illustrate.  If time stopped
for you in your house and I was somehow unaffected by this change and
rearranged all of the furniture in your house you would experience it as a
disconnect when time resumed.  One instant your furniture would be the way
you left it and the next it would be someway else.  If I didn't rearrange
your furniture you would never know time had stopped.  No one rearranged any
furniture on the Whorl.  If you are outside of time as Silk claims to have
been, you would be omniscient and would be able to witness the stoppage of
time.

> Silk describes his own perceptions of being outside time - this narrative
is
> being delivered by Horn and Nettle, based on what Silk told them. This in
> itself is not staggering, because mystics have been describing this
> phenomena from time immemorial, in much the same terms. Whether you
believe
> Silk's enlightenment was mystical in nature or not, in order to describe
it
> he pretty much has to fall back on the vocabulary of mysticism - and given
> his background, he naturally would.

No mystic to my recollection has ever described being outside of time as a
stoppage of all motion.  It has been described as being indistinguishable
from an instant or an aeon but that is a far different perception.  Again, I
say that Wolfe is not so careless as to describe something as theologically
fundamental as being outside of time as a stoppage of motion.  It amazes me
that everyone will split hairs over the correct distance in leagues from
Blue to Green in relation to Urth to Lune, or whether inhumi can breed on
the Whorl (which they certainly could if there are jungles) and various
other scientific and pseudo scientific minutae, but when it comes to
something as theologically specific as the concept of being outside of time
(which Silk, as a trained theologian, would not be careless about either) in
a work which is at it's heart theologically motivated the same rigors are
set aside.  So, to my mind, I remain unanswered.

Don





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