[MSJ]

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.

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.

[H]

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?

[Monkhound]

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 like the comparison worth an inverted Adam and Eve story. Defining Korringhus as the last of the Dunyain raises two remarks:
- The Boy is stated as being defective, which could make him a non-Dunyain, like Maithanet, Thelliopa, Kayutas, Serwa and Kelmomas.
- If Korringhus is the last of the Dunyain, he is the one to break the cycle of Before and After for all the Dunyain (The Legion, etc), since there is no more After to come after the Before (= there is only Zero, or Oblivion).

"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."

ie. The God simply is. The way Thelliopa defines Kellhus (as relayed by Kayútas).
Although the idea that Kellhus embodies the Dunyain (the Legion, the mended 100 shards/ stones) as a whole (as opposed to only Kellhus himself), becomes stronger. Why can't the gods see beyond him? Because it's possible there is no After, beyond Kellhus, if Korringhus (the last one to join the Legion) broke the cycle of Before and After.

[H]

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 like the comparison worth an inverted Adam and Eve story. Defining Korringhus as the last of the Dunyain raises two remarks:
- The Boy is stated as being defective, which could make him a non-Dunyain, like Maithanet, Thelliopa, Kayutas, Serwa and Kelmomas.
- If Korringhus is the last of the Dunyain, he is the one to break the cycle of Before and After for all the Dunyain (The Legion, etc), since there is no more After to come after the Before (= there is only Zero, or Oblivion).

I think the Adam and Eve thing falls apart the deeper you take it, but it does, as you say, point to some interesting points about the boy's future role.

"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."

ie. The God simply is. The way Thelliopa defines Kellhus (as relayed by Kayútas).
Although the idea that Kellhus embodies the Dunyain (the Legion, the mended 100 shards/ stones) as a whole (as opposed to only Kellhus himself), becomes stronger. Why can't the gods see beyond him? Because it's possible there is no After, beyond Kellhus, if Korringhus (the last one to join the Legion) broke the cycle of Before and After.

Indeed, here is a discussion of Place, which is interesting:

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.

I think this is confusing because you're talking simultaneously about what the Dunyain define the Absolute to be and are also talking about what the Absolute actually is - and the two are really different (IMO).

The Dunyanic view of the Absolute is what Moe explains and Kellhus kind of thinks about - a way to reach personal enlightenment and to become God. God doesn't exist - yet - for Moe and Kell, but they could become it. As Kor says here:

"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."

 It is neither passive or active - it is a place. It is the place that encompasses all places. And in order to arrive at that place, you must strip yourself of everything gained from the world. For a soul, that means stripping it of all sin. All sin - and that includes things like believing yourself better, believing yourself different, believing yourself unique.

I think that Mimara saying that 'he joined the Absolute' is kind of a shorthand, the same way that she declared 'she guards the gates' when it wasn't true precisely either.

But we can determine at least what Kor's thought process is without determining the actual validity of it, which could be separate. (I happen to believe that Kor is the most right person and Mimara is the most genuinely metaphysically right person, but that is debatable). Kor's thought process is based pretty well in logic:

    1.) Everything has already happened and human's perception of time is wrong. (this explains how Mimara can see anything anyone has ever done, even if it would be impossible.
    2.) There exists a way for everyone to see anything anyone has ever done, regardless of who else witnessed them, and recall it perfectly.
    3.) Therefore, at least one person (Mimara) has a connection to every single other person.
    4.) Because others have had this ability before her, this means potentially anyone can have this connection, and more importantly it means everyone is connected in this way even if they cannot access it.
    5.) It also implies whatever is seeing these things is separate from the seen.
    6.) This thing that sees is what Kor calls the Zero-God.
    7.) He believes that everyone is part of the Zero-God and the only way to truly enter it as a place is not to become self-moving or to become worshipful - the only way is to relinquish all intellect, knowledge, and sin and any grasp of self.
    8.) Kor believes he can accomplish this by two ways: having his sin forgiven (which he believes Mimara can do) and then taking qirri and losing his personal sense of self by partially becoming someone else.

So in a very real way the Zero-God is oblivion, because there is no self when joining with the source. Koringhus ceases to exist as an entity at that moment, and instead becomes one with everyone. The damned are the ones who cannot relinquish their selves and are maximally subjective; to be maximally objective in Earwa is to become everyone.

In this way I both agree with @Happy Ent in that I don't think that there is a loving God as envisioned by Kierkegaard in the leap of faith, and disagree in that Koringhus never believed that there would be. He is putting his faith - literally, at that moment, the only thing he is - in the notion that there exists only everyone, and the Universe has simply unalterable rules, and souls happen to be a bizarre accident of universal law that deceives everyone into thinking they are singular.

"Because the God demanded it". But we know this isn't true through Koringhus's POV. It was his leap, his choice to join Zero. So, either the Absolute and the Zero are the same, which is highly unlikely  (Bakker even confirmed as much), or the Eye other Mimara's conclusions are wrong. Now, I don't believe the Eye to be wrong on all accounts, but there is conflict in this. From what Koringhus says, to Mimara's interpretation.

I think she is lying to herself and to Akka here.  She seems, to me, to be offering Akka the "simple explanation" rather than the complex reasoning why Koringhus did it.  You can see that Akka doesn't buy it, buy him pressing her for "his reasons" and she dodges the question.  She knows the real answers, but chooses to not say them because they are far more complicated and would only serve to intrigue Akka more.

[H]

Good points, laid out better than I could (my mind is not that ordered, nor do I understand it well enough).  However, I do still disagree that The Absolute is a place, but rather is a state-of-being.  I think maybe that my point of disagreement is just semantics, rather than a real difference, because when it comes to souls, what is a place and what is a state and how would they be different?  In a singularity, is there really anything called a place or a state?  So, maybe what I want to define here isn't even a real thing.

I do agree with you numbered points, time is a "mortal" perceptual illusion.  The only thing I would quibble with is number eight, where I do believe that The Absolute (that is, being truly self-moving) is some kind of part in how Koringhus will join Zero.  I think that is the third part of a trinity to have his soul be in the correct state to be ready for Zero: forgiven, dilute (that is, as you say, self aside personal self, perhaps expanded is the right word) and self-moving (partly because souls do not approach Zero on their own).

 The way I think of it as a place is similar to a view of Platonist objectivism as well as multidimensional physics and how they project to fewer-dimensional objects.

Simply, everyone's soul is a projection of the place that everyone comes from. In the projection to the world of Earwa and the Outside, it is just a facet of the objective soul, warped and translated into a 4-dimensional picture on the wall.

The place is that objective soul, unprojected onto anything. The lens is the metaphysical system that translates souls to the World and to the Outside. The image is the self.

And why would anyone - who sees that individual facet, that image - think that they are the same or come from the same place as another person?

And that's why it is a place. It is an origin, a start. It isn't just a matter of state of being, because souls are basically illusions.

I do agree with you numbered points, time is a "mortal" perceptual illusion.  The only thing I would quibble with is number eight, where I do believe that The Absolute (that is, being truly self-moving) is some kind of part in how Koringhus will join Zero.  I think that is the third part of a trinity to have his soul be in the correct state to be ready for Zero: forgiven, dilute (that is, as you say, self aside personal self, perhaps expanded is the right word) and self-moving (partly because souls do not approach Zero on their own).

Again, I think Koringhus puts to rest the notion that self-moving matters in the least. The Dunyain are, by his view, totally wrong. Not only are they wrong, they're wrong in precisely the most wrong way. The Dunyain attempt to be self-moving and completely disconnected from everything. The Ur-Soul is exactly the opposite - it is everyone, connected to everything, and is all. The end result of a self-moving soul and the philosophy behind it isn't becoming one with the divine place of God - it is becoming the No-God.

Next theory: Serwe was more pure than Koringhus and joined the zero-God without his required realization. She is the only one in the series that harmed no one, ever, that never resisted, that never was anything other than what was given. She had no sense of self in any real way, and as a result gained everything.

In this way we know that Kellhus is almost certainly not  saved; the idea that he can be beyond himself when his personal narrative is entirely self-focused. He is not selfish, but he cannot personally think of himself as anything other than himself. While he claims this to others, this is clearly a lie that he does not believe.

if to become self moving is to become the no god, and koringhus joined zero and moenghus joined the god of gods we have some nice Hegelian maps:

thesis->anti-thesis->synthesis

Moenghus -> kellhus -> koringhus

god of gods -> no god -> zero

[H]

" The Logos. The Logos. The Logos . . . He was a hollow filled by echoes bereft of any authoring voice, each phrase a flawless reiteration of the preceding. He was a wayfarer through the abyssal gallery of mirror set against mirror, his every step as illusory as the last. Only sun and night marked his passage, and only then by narrowing the gap between mirrors to the impossible place where vanishing point threatened to kiss vanishing point—to the place where the soul fell utterly still. When the sun reared yet again, his thoughts receded to a single word: The. The. The. The . . . And it seemed at once an absurd stutter and the most profound of thoughts, as though only in the absence of “Logos” could it settle into the rhythm of his heart muscling through moment after moment. Thought thinned and daylight swept through, over, and behind the shrine, until night pierced the shroud of the sky, until the heavens revolved like an infinite chariot wheel. The. The . . . A moving soul chained to the brink, to the exquisite moment before something, anything. The tree, the heart, the everything transformed into nothing by repetition, by the endless accumulation of the same refusal to name. A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier. . . . and then nothing. No thought.

No thought. The boy extinguished. Only a place. This place. Motionless, the Pragma sat facing him, the bare soles of his feet flat against each other, his dark frock scored by the shadows of deep folds, his eyes as empty as the child they watched. A place without breath or sound. A place of sight alone. A place without before or after . . . almost. For the first lances of sunlight careered over the glacier, as ponderous as great tree limbs in the wind. Shadows hardened and light gleamed across the Pragma’s ancient skull. The old man’s left hand forsook his right sleeve, bearing a watery knife. And like a rope in water, his arm pitched outward, fingertips trailing across the blade as the knife swung languidly into the air, the sun skating and the dark shrine plunging across its mirror back . . . And the place where Kellhus had once existed extended an open hand—the blond hairs like luminous filaments against tanned skin—and grasped the knife from stunned space. The slap of pommel against palm triggered the collapse of place into little boy. The pale stench of his body. Breath, sound, and lurching thoughts. I have been legion . . . In his periphery, he could see the spike of the sun ease from the mountain. He felt drunk with exhaustion. In the recoil of his trance, it seemed all he could hear were the twigs arching and bobbing in the wind, pulled by leaves like a million sails no bigger than his hand. Cause everywhere, but amid countless minute happenings—diffuse, useless. Now I understand." -The Darkness The Comes Before, Chapter 17

Another thought, based on the pragma idea above:

The probability trance that Kellhus goes into for the first time makes him lose his sense of self and become nothing and everything. For the Dunyain they believe this allows them to catalog all causes and see likely effects. They can see everything that comes before and see how to manipulate that.

But let's turn that on its head. Start with the assumption that everything has already happened. If everything has happened, there is no cause or effect any more than what happened on page 110 changes what happens on page 341. In that case, Kellhus and the other Dunyain aren't tapping into probability - they're tapping into the same thing that guides the White-Luck Warrior. They can see what is going to happen and already has happened, and they can see it from the same point of view that the Judging Eye does - the Place, the Zero-God. When they become disassociated and blind (they use the phrase " A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier. . . . and then nothing. No thought. " they are able to see everything clearly.

They just have an incredibly wrong idea of why.

Excellent point.  That would somewhat explain why I had the feeling that the Voice was telling Kellhus things from the future and why I thought that The Thousandfold Thought itself was cast backward in time, the explanation of why was in the future, not in the past.  In reality it doesn't have to be Kellhus from the future, but rather, Kellhus dissociated from time, atemporal, or some such, in the Outside.  In other words, perhaps Kellhus himself already at the Zero-point?  Or Koringhus?  Or Kellhus as the Solitary God?

It can also answer how and why odd things like Kellhus being saved by Leweth, arriving at the mound of Cnaiur's father, and other seemingly improbable things that seem to keep happening to him.  White-Luck beyond even the White-Luck.

[profgrape]

I like this a lot.  There are a couple of places in TGO that suggest time doesn't exist in the Outside the way it does in the World. 

In the World, at any given moment (an infinitely small slice of continuous time), one's viewpoint is limited to a single snapshot of three-dimensional space.

As an analogy, imagine a single frame of a video clip -- it's a 2D snapshot of a series of snapshots in time.  Similarly, the World consists of 3D snapshots in time.  These snapshots are "played back" at a continuous rate, and hence, we perceive time.

In the Outside, by contrast, there's no concept of "playback".  All moments/snapshots are perceivable simultaneously.  Thus, time isn't really a thing.

The questions I have are:

1. Does this mean that viewing the World from the Outside would allow one to glimpse any given moment? 

2. Does this mean that from the Outside, one can affect the World at any given moment?

[MSJ]

The questions I have are:

1. Does this mean that viewing the World from the Outside would allow one to glimpse any given moment? 

2. Does this mean that from the Outside, one can affect the World at any given moment?

1. IMHO, yes. But, that doesn't mean that things can't change. The WLW is your prime example.

2. Yes, and no. The WLW was a shot at doing just that. But, let's look at Kellhus and his visions. It's an attempt to change the world through guidance.

When Bakker made it clear that neither Yatwer or Ajokli were responsible for the earthquakes, it made since to me. Momas,,is responsible for earthquakes. Yet, Yatwer was trying to use them to her advantage to kill Kellhus. The God's are just soul munchers, that's it. They see Kellhus as the end of soul munching. 

This is why I feel that Onkhis is humans representation of TDTCB. They  (humans of Earwa) just give names as idols to the passions and other things that are part of their life. Thus the 100. They have really no control at all at what happens. They may see the future and try to alter it, but it's a crapshoot.

[H]

I like this a lot.  There are a couple of places in TGO that suggest time doesn't exist in the Outside the way it does in the World. 

In the World, at any given moment (an infinitely small slice of continuous time), one's viewpoint is limited to a single snapshot of three-dimensional space.

As an analogy, imagine a single frame of a video clip -- it's a 2D snapshot of a series of snapshots in time.  Similarly, the World consists of 3D snapshots in time.  These snapshots are "played back" at a continuous rate, and hence, we perceive time.

In the Outside, by contrast, there's no concept of "playback".  All moments/snapshots are perceivable simultaneously.  Thus, time isn't really a thing.

The questions I have are:

1. Does this mean that viewing the World from the Outside would allow one to glimpse any given moment? 

2. Does this mean that from the Outside, one can affect the World at any given moment?

Let me see if I can think this through in a way that makes sense.

On point one, yes, I do believe you would see the world at any moment, but the key is that none of it is set in stone.  Rather, I would think it is like a web of chains.  Links of cause are bound to links of effects, which are the links of cause for links of effect and so on.  In this way, the gods are off the chains and so they can follow the lines and thereby "see" the future.  I would posit that that what they are actually doing is just following/expounding upon the chain of cause and effect.  In this way, they are seeing the future, but not one that is deterministic, rather they see what should happen.  This why why I believe that Kellhus can confound them.  He is off the chain, being self-moving, so apart from what they can really see.

I'm not sure about point 2.  I think the answer is no, they are not intercessional at any moment.  In the same way as why the Cant of Calling can only be received while they are sleeping (the books point out this is because while dreaming they are most open to the Outside).  In the same way, I think there must only be certain "windows" open at times where the Outside can really influcence the Inside in a physical manner (ideas are much easier to pass through).

[profgrape]

I like this a lot.  There are a couple of places in TGO that suggest time doesn't exist in the Outside the way it does in the World. 

In the World, at any given moment (an infinitely small slice of continuous time), one's viewpoint is limited to a single snapshot of three-dimensional space.

As an analogy, imagine a single frame of a video clip -- it's a 2D snapshot of a series of snapshots in time.  Similarly, the World consists of 3D snapshots in time.  These snapshots are "played back" at a continuous rate, and hence, we perceive time.

In the Outside, by contrast, there's no concept of "playback".  All moments/snapshots are perceivable simultaneously.  Thus, time isn't really a thing.

The questions I have are:

1. Does this mean that viewing the World from the Outside would allow one to glimpse any given moment? 

2. Does this mean that from the Outside, one can affect the World at any given moment?

Let me see if I can think this through in a way that makes sense.

On point one, yes, I do believe you would see the world at any moment, but the key is that none of it is set in stone.  Rather, I would think it is like a web of chains.  Links of cause are bound to links of effects, which are the links of cause for links of effect and so on.  In this way, the gods are off the chains and so they can follow the lines and thereby "see" the future.  I would posit that that what they are actually doing is just following/expounding upon the chain of cause and effect.  In this way, they are seeing the future, but not one that is deterministic, rather they see what should happen.  This why why I believe that Kellhus can confound them.  He is off the chain, being self-moving, so apart from what they can really see.

I'm not sure about point 2.  I think the answer is no, they are not intercessional at any moment.  In the same way as why the Cant of Calling can only be received while they are sleeping (the books point out this is because while dreaming they are most open to the Outside).  In the same way, I think there must only be certain "windows" open at times where the Outside can really influcence the Inside in a physical manner (ideas are much easier to pass through).

That makes a lot of sense, H.  In addition to time, there's an additional axis for what you might call "potential", where different spacetime threads branch.  5-dimensional data 4tw!

With this model, a self-moving soul is essentially something that creates it's own potential.  Meaning that it's inherently missing from the viewable dataset.

[geoffrobro]

" The Logos. The Logos. The Logos . . . He was a hollow filled by echoes bereft of any authoring voice, each phrase a flawless reiteration of the preceding. He was a wayfarer through the abyssal gallery of mirror set against mirror, his every step as illusory as the last. Only sun and night marked his passage, and only then by narrowing the gap between mirrors to the impossible place where vanishing point threatened to kiss vanishing point—to the place where the soul fell utterly still. When the sun reared yet again, his thoughts receded to a single word: The. The. The. The . . . And it seemed at once an absurd stutter and the most profound of thoughts, as though only in the absence of “Logos” could it settle into the rhythm of his heart muscling through moment after moment. Thought thinned and daylight swept through, over, and behind the shrine, until night pierced the shroud of the sky, until the heavens revolved like an infinite chariot wheel. The. The . . . A moving soul chained to the brink, to the exquisite moment before something, anything. The tree, the heart, the everything transformed into nothing by repetition, by the endless accumulation of the same refusal to name. A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier. . . . and then nothing. No thought.

No thought. The boy extinguished. Only a place. This place. Motionless, the Pragma sat facing him, the bare soles of his feet flat against each other, his dark frock scored by the shadows of deep folds, his eyes as empty as the child they watched. A place without breath or sound. A place of sight alone. A place without before or after . . . almost. For the first lances of sunlight careered over the glacier, as ponderous as great tree limbs in the wind. Shadows hardened and light gleamed across the Pragma’s ancient skull. The old man’s left hand forsook his right sleeve, bearing a watery knife. And like a rope in water, his arm pitched outward, fingertips trailing across the blade as the knife swung languidly into the air, the sun skating and the dark shrine plunging across its mirror back . . . And the place where Kellhus had once existed extended an open hand—the blond hairs like luminous filaments against tanned skin—and grasped the knife from stunned space. The slap of pommel against palm triggered the collapse of place into little boy. The pale stench of his body. Breath, sound, and lurching thoughts. I have been legion . . . In his periphery, he could see the spike of the sun ease from the mountain. He felt drunk with exhaustion. In the recoil of his trance, it seemed all he could hear were the twigs arching and bobbing in the wind, pulled by leaves like a million sails no bigger than his hand. Cause everywhere, but amid countless minute happenings—diffuse, useless. Now I understand." -The Darkness The Comes Before, Chapter 17

Another thought, based on the pragma idea above:

The probability trance that Kellhus goes into for the first time makes him lose his sense of self and become nothing and everything. For the Dunyain they believe this allows them to catalog all causes and see likely effects. They can see everything that comes before and see how to manipulate that.

But let's turn that on its head. Start with the assumption that everything has already happened. If everything has happened, there is no cause or effect any more than what happened on page 110 changes what happens on page 341. In that case, Kellhus and the other Dunyain aren't tapping into probability - they're tapping into the same thing that guides the White-Luck Warrior. They can see what is going to happen and already has happened, and they can see it from the same point of view that the Judging Eye does - the Place, the Zero-God. When they become disassociated and blind (they use the phrase " A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier. . . . and then nothing. No thought. " they are able to see everything clearly.

They just have an incredibly wrong idea of why.

Excellent point.  That would somewhat explain why I had the feeling that the Voice was telling Kellhus things from the future and why I thought that The Thousandfold Thought itself was cast backward in time, the explanation of why was in the future, not in the past.  In reality it doesn't have to be Kellhus from the future, but rather, Kellhus dissociated from time, atemporal, or some such, in the Outside.  In other words, perhaps Kellhus himself already at the Zero-point?  Or Koringhus?  Or Kellhus as the Solitary God?

It can also answer how and why odd things like Kellhus being saved by Leweth, arriving at the mound of Cnaiur's father, and other seemingly improbable things that seem to keep happening to him.  White-Luck beyond even the White-Luck.

I like this a lot.  There are a couple of places in TGO that suggest time doesn't exist in the Outside the way it does in the World. 

In the World, at any given moment (an infinitely small slice of continuous time), one's viewpoint is limited to a single snapshot of three-dimensional space.

As an analogy, imagine a single frame of a video clip -- it's a 2D snapshot of a series of snapshots in time.  Similarly, the World consists of 3D snapshots in time.  These snapshots are "played back" at a continuous rate, and hence, we perceive time.

In the Outside, by contrast, there's no concept of "playback".  All moments/snapshots are perceivable simultaneously.  Thus, time isn't really a thing.

The questions I have are:

1. Does this mean that viewing the World from the Outside would allow one to glimpse any given moment? 

2. Does this mean that from the Outside, one can affect the World at any given moment?

What if it's all a probability trance? This "Earwa" we are seeing is the kellhus under the trees probability trance. He is dictating (thinking)to his legion. AE kellhus has realized that this reality is nothing but a thought that he is forcing into being reality. 
The TTT is a thought experiment to help to realize that existence is a thought itself that could be controlled into a reality.

[Monkhound]

Thank you for providing all the posts above, H. It's great to see so much musing and thinking.

I just re-read Chapter 14:
I am still amazed by how mind-bogglingly complex the philosophy of the world is, how packed with explanation the chapter is, and while still keeping us in the dark.

I'm more and more getting the feeling that the numbers 99 and 100 are tied to emotions, the Hundred (or the gods, or the Legion) and even animals being representations or personifications of those:

Run was a rule.
Hide was a rule.
Know was a rule.
Desire was following.
Existence was a heap.

What follows is the passage about the "too round" 100 stones and the 99 birds.

And of course, the strongest emotion is described soon after: Love, even if it was described as a "Human Deception" a mere few pages earlier.

Dûnyain do not panic. Dûnyain do not reel, broken and bewildered. And he yet had found himself in the nursery without thought, scooping up this very babe without thought, the one that smelled of him, of Anasûrimbor, the most promising of the Twelve Germs. He clutched this wailing burden to his breast, this impediment, without thought, as if it were no less a fraction of his own soul, a part that had wandered...
Zero. The difference that is not a difference. Zero made One.
He had survived. He, the one burdened, the one tasked, the one who refused to illuminate the interval between him and his son. The fractions of the Dûnyain had been sorted, and he, the least able, the most encumbered, had been the one Selected... the Survivor.
He who had refused to know... Who had embraced the darkness that comes before.

Love is also the "hundredth stone" Korringhus gives to the boy right before he jumps.

He draws the hundredth stone from the waist of his tunic.
"This is yours now."
The boy, the most blessed fraction, looks to him in alarm. He would deny the interval between them, if he could.

Emotions are triggers that force us into action: Either in physical action, in doing just nothing, or triggering thoughts. Emotions govern us. They lead us.

Which leads me to a possible explanation to the song about Anarlû:

They did hoist Anarlû’s head high,
And poured down its blood as fire.
And the ground gave forth many sons,
Ninety nine who were as Gods,
And so bid their fathers
Be as sons…

Birth.
The moment a baby come out of the mother's womb, emotions immediately start dictating action.
They are demanding obedience of the baby, like sons should obey their fathers.
But since the baby is the one who "created" or fathered these emotions, it becomes the father who then must obey his sons.
On the other hand, the emotions are poured into the baby by the parents (mainly by the mother, I suppose) through the womb.
Funny: Looking at it this way, I'd almost see a parallel between emotions and Judeo-Christian Original Sin, which all children earn from their parents.

Confirmation can as well be read in the words/thoughts of Korringhus:

Proof of this lay in the very meat of the Dûnyain, for they had been bred in pursuit of deception. No intellect is orphaned, despite all the foundling hearts. All sons are born stranded because all fathers are sons. Every child is told, even those suckled on the teats of wolves. Even Dûnyain children. To be born is to be born upon a path. To be born upon a path is to follow that path - for what man could step over mountains? And to follow a path is to follow a rule...
To find all other paths wanting.

[Francis Buck]

Awesome post. Much to think over.

[profgrape]

FANTASTIC post, Monkhound!

[H]

What if it's all a probability trance? This "Earwa" we are seeing is the kellhus under the trees probability trance. He is dictating (thinking)to his legion. AE kellhus has realized that this reality is nothing but a thought that he is forcing into being reality. 
The TTT is a thought experiment to help to realize that existence is a thought itself that could be controlled into a reality.

I really hope not.  I mean, it is possible.  But I think the basic formula of "it was all just a dream" really cheapens things to a great degree.

Funny: Looking at it this way, I'd almost see a parallel between emotions and Judeo-Christian Original Sin, which all children earn from their parents.

I think something like Original Sin is a pretty key idea in the series really.  Consider, Koringhus is partly damned based on the whale mothers alone.  I have at times ventured to speculate that the Inchoroi are basically in the same boat (this was pre-TGO, but the point still stands, if not more so) that they modified themselves and in doing so made themselves immoral in creation, let alone in action.