I've been tinking on this and some comments from Westeros spurred these thoughts. A lot of readers more knowledgeable than I, liken Koringhus's leap as one of faith into the arms of a loving God. And, how Koringhus is deceived because there is no loving God on Earwa.
Others, say he joined the Absolute. In fact, this is exactly what Mimara tells Akka, "He joined the Absolute". Well, from RSB we know that neither are true, he joined Zero, whatever that might be. I feel it to be nature, or maybe, as H has postulated, Oblivion.
I think it is a bit of a mistake to equate too closely Koringhus' leap with Kierkegaard's Leap of Faith, in the sense that God for Koringhus and God for Kierkegaard are not the same. However, there are some possible parallels that might show us some thoughts about The Absolute and Zero-God:
"Like Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, who plays an important role in the spiritual struggle for meaning on the part of the modern writer, cast off the bondage of logic and the tyranny of science. By means of the dialectic of "the leap," he attempted to transcend both the aesthetic and the ethical stages. Completely alone, cut off from his fellow-men, the individual realizes his own nothingness as the preliminary condition for embracing the truth of God. Only when man becomes aware of his own non-entity — an experience that is purely subjective and incommunicable — does he recover his real self and stand in the presence of God."
This is interesting in the context of Koringhus, because he realizes that the Logos is a lie. Or at least that it isn't the whole truth, that there is something beyond Logic.
"Kierkegaard describes "the leap" using the famous story of Adam and Eve, particularly Adam's qualitative leap into sin. Adam's leap signifies a change from one quality to another, mainly the quality of possessing no sin to the quality of possessing sin. Kierkegaard maintains that the transition from one quality to another can take place only by a "leap."
This is another interesting parallel because Koringhus is certainly not Adam. In fact, it is very nearly the reverse, the
last of the Dûnyain rather than the first. In the same way, Adam was born with no sin, where Koringhus has the original sin of the whole Dûnyain society behind him. In this way, his leap is something of a reversal, ending with him in a state of no sin, rather than a state of sin.
I posit that Koringhus joined Oblivion though, because I do not think that there was a god waiting for Koringhus and he himself adds "into the arms of nothing" as the final word on his leap. The question of the relation between The Absolute, Oblivion and Zero is pretty open though.
What we are offered as explaination of the Absolute is:
"“Precisely. And what is the solution to the Quandary of Man?”
“To be utterly free of bestial appetite. To utterly command the unfolding of circumstance. To be the perfect instrument of Logos and so attain the Absolute.”"
"In the effort to transform themselves into the perfect expression of the Logos, the Dûnyain have bent their entire existence to mastering the irrationalities that determine human thought: history, custom, and passion. In this way, they believe, they will eventually grasp what they call the Absolute, and so become true self-moving souls."
"The Logos remained true, but its ways were far more devious, and far more spectacular, than the Dûnyain had ever conceived. And the Absolute … the End of Ends was more distant than they’d ever imagined. So many obstacles. So many forks in the path …"
"How does one learn innocence? How does one teach ignorance? For to be them is to know them not. And yet they are the immovable point from which the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion, the rule of all wisdom and folly. They are the Absolute."
"For a time, it seemed they alone survived, that all mankind and not just the Holy War had perished. They alone spoke. They alone gazed and understood that they gazed. They alone loved, across all lands and all waters, to the world’s very pale. It seemed all passion, all knowing, was here, ringing in one penultimate note. There was no way to explain or to fathom the sensation. It wasn’t like a flower. It wasn’t like a child’s careless laugh.
They had become the measure … Absolute. Unconditioned."
“The God
sleeps … It has ever been thus. Only by striving for the Absolute may we awaken Him. Meaning. Purpose. These words name not something given … no, they name our task.”
"Absolute, the—Among the Dûnyain, the state of becoming “unconditioned,” a perfect self-moving soul independent of “what comes before.”
"The whole point of the Dûnyain ethos is to overcome these limitations and so become a self-moving soul—to attain what they call the Absolute, or the Unconditioned Soul."
"The assumption that the Absolute could be grasped through mere thinking, that Men were born with the native ability to grasp the Infinite, was little more than vain conceit. The flesh, they realized. Their souls turned on their flesh, and their flesh was not capable of bearing the Absolute."
"God.
The great error of the Dûnyain, he could see now, was to conceive the Absolute as something passive, to think it a vacancy, dumb and insensate, awaiting their generational arrival. The great error of the worldborn, he could see, was to conceive it as something active, to think it just another soul, a flattering caricature of their own souls."
"This, Sister … This is why I bare my throat to the blade of your judgment. This is why I would make myself your slave. For short of death, you, Anasûrimbor Mimara, wife-daughter of Anasûrimbor Kellhus, who is also my father … you, Sister, are the Shortest Path.
The Absolute dwells within your Gaze. You … a frail, worldborn slip, heavy with child, chased across the throw of kings and nations, you are the Nail of the World, the hook from which all things hang."
"And so it was with the Absolute. Surrender. Forfeiture. Loss … At last he understood what made these things holy. Loss was advantage. Blindness was insight, revelation. At last he could see it—the sideways step that gave lie to Logos.
Zero. Zero made One."
It is difficult for me to parse all of this. The Absolute is what the Dûnyain call the state of being Self-Moving. It is not a place, so when Mimara says Koringhus has "joined" the Absolute, it is not a place, but rather he took an invitation to take the shortest path to being Self-Moving. Keep in mind, this is his soul we are talking about, not just his flesh, so while he is dead, mortally, his soul, presumably, is still self-moving.
How does this divide from Zero? Zero is the marker, the placeholder of all meaning:
"Thus the utility of Zero, something that was not, something that pinched all existence, every origin and destination, into a singular point, into One. Something that commanded all measure, not through arbitrary dispensations of force, but by virtue of structure … system …"
So, it the condensation of Everything. Literally. That is, it is font of every cause, the sum of every effect, the system and the reason for the system. It is the whole universe, in one place, or rather, the whole universe
as one place. This is why it is the vantage point for everything, why it is the Cubit, because it is the
source of everything but not just the source, it is the destination as well, because it is everything.
What then is Oblivion, if it is not Zero? Well, Oblivion is nonexistance. Zero is a condensation. Zero is a singularity, everything in One place and so in no place. Oblivion is different, since it is literal destruction.
I wonder if then he did attain Oblivion, or simply a joining with Zero?
But, this raises a question for me. Can we take the Judging Eye as reliable? Banker has said that the Absolute and Zero are not the same. So, the Eye tells Mimara that Koringhus was invited and joined the Absolute, but this is wrong. So, where am I going with this? Mimara sees Kellhus in a vision in the whale mothers room. He is blasted like nothing she has ever seen. I feel he isn't, and the JE to be unreliable. Not wholly unreliable, but it is fallible just as anyone or anything on Earwa, and yes, that includes Kellhus.
I think the Judging Eye is reliable. As reliable as anything can realistically be. That doesn't mean that the vision has to be set in stone though. Indeed, Kellhus is damned by the original sin of the whale mothers, so the vision then is true. That doesn't mean things couldn't change. Indeed, that seems to be what happens to Koringhus though, damned, but then forgiven?