Healing and the Spiritual Realm

[Kurkistan]

So in the last few years we've learned quite a lot about how healing works in the cosmere. Whether or not you whippersnappers can fathom it, we used to be quite confused on the whole issue. But post-TES we've essentially nailed down healing as based on the Cognitive aspect of the healed (with some very well-delineated exceptions).

This Cognitive model has been explicitly applied to permanent Resealing in Forging, as well as almost certainly applying to how Stormlight healing works, and being described as applying to "most" healing in the cosmere and so very likely including Feruchemical Gold.

Myself, I've tried a bit to explore the fringes of the system by examining what exactly is limiting people from going crazy and using warped self-perception to grow an extra limb, or become immortal. I've settled on my old standby ("old" only at this point: once again: whippersnappers, all of you!!! ) of Forms as the main answer, historically. So TLR aged because some Human Form kept him grounded, and we needn't fear Doc Oc growing actual tentacles for the same reason.

----

But then we got a new WoB from the SLCC signing:

Source:

QUESTION
Stormlight, I know it heals wounds and stuff like that but can it heal illnesses like colds?

BRANDON
Yes it can.

QUESTION
So if Kaladin suddenly contracted brain cancer...

QUESTION
It's plausible-- it depends, see what it does is it takes your body and makes it align with your spirit, and partially through the filter of how you view yourself. So if you view yourself as sickly, then you won't.

My first comment when I saw this was "We've gotten pretty definitive 'it's Cognitive' stuff before, so perhaps here Brandon is emphasizing the Spiritual as a limiting factor?"

--

But really, the phrasing here is a bit odd given all we've had in the past to suggest a primarily-Cognitive mechanism. I think the answer, then, might be a mildly radical re-shaping of how we understand the mechanism of magical healing.

Since TES, we've essentially been saying that healing is just the body's "state of health" being brought into compliance with its Cognitive aspect. To the extent that the Spiritual was involved at all, it was only tangentially as I insisted that Spiritually-based Forms acted as a limiting factor on what healing could accomplish.

Given this new WoB, though, I might suggest a shift in this model. Instead of healing being both driven and expressed by the Cognitive aspect, I would argue that its motive force is instead based in the Spiritual aspect of the healed.

Now we have much less knowledge about Spiritual interactions than I'd like, but we do have this:

Source:

Nepene:
1) You've mentioned several philosophical concepts used in the writing of your books, like Jung's collective unconsciousness, Plato's cave. Could you expand a bit on your use of those in your books, and whether you think it is necessary to use philosophy to make a good fantasy world?

Brandon:
1) I don't think it's necessary at all. The writer's own fascinations--whatever they are--can add to the writing experience. But yes, some philosophical ideas worked into my fiction. Plato's theory of the forms has always fascinated, and so the idea of a physical/cognitive/spiritual realm is certainly a product of this. Human perception of ideals has a lot to do with the cognitive realm, and a true ideal has a lot to do with the spiritual realm.

As for more examples, they're spread through my fiction. Spinoza is in there a lot, and Jung has a lot to do with the idea of spiritual connectivity (and how the Parshendi can all sing the same songs.)

So we can start at a crude level by just thinking of the spirit as your "ideal self" (whatever that means and however that's formed/maintained...).

So far as healing goes, then, perhaps we should model it as the Spiritual aspect attempting to impose its idealized form onto the body, but having to work through the "reality" (or at least closer-to-reality) of the Cognitive aspect.
-I really really promise that that one theory of mine wasn't even in my mind when I started writing up this thread. That said...

So the Spiritual saying "make the body like X" and then the Cognitive interpreting and applying directive X within the framework/restrictions of the Cognitive aspect.

---

This new "workflow" also provides a convenient inlet for Forms to do there thing, as before they were just kind of butting into an otherwise purely Cognitive process. Here, then, it seems we might be able to conclude that Forms plug into the Spiritual aspect of each individual (as makes most sense in terms of interaction) and so guide the healing process from the top down. If the Spiritual never asks the Cognitive to heal the effects of aging, then it never will.

Of course an alternative might be to discard Forms from healing altogether and posit something intrinsic to the spirit such that it never "distorts" enough to allow bizarre "healings" or the like. This has some plausibility if we're to see the spirit as somehow ideal. Myself, though, I like the idea of having a very firmly external authority to go to with these matters, to cut down on shenanigans.

I'll end about here, I think. This merits some further exploration, but better to let some discussion commence than just keep rambling into more and more speculative territory by myself.

 

EDIT:

 

For sake of reference, here's Shai's definition of the Realms:

All things exist in three Realms, Gaotona. Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual. The Physical is what we feel, what is before us. The Cognitive is how an object is viewed and how it views itself. The Spiritual Realm contains an object’s soul— its essence— as well as the ways it is connected to the things and people around it.

 

Essence, ideal; potato potato?

Edited January 4, 2015 by Kurkistan

[Dellexe]

Nice! Whenever I'm trying to explain how healing works in the Cosmere in the future I'll have to link them to here. This was very well written and easily understandable. 
-
Though I did run into the old "whenever I read TES I think of The Elder Scrolls rather than The Emperor's Soul" issue.

[Kurkistan]

Thank you very much for your regard. I myself might hesitate to link to this as a "here's the basics of how it works explained in clear terms with relevant examples!"-type thread, but I guess some of the citations provide the nitty-gritty.
 
My apologies for your suffering re: acronyms.
 

---

 

Ooh, just had a thought: the Spiritual as dictating what's even considered for healing also goes to rather easily explain why hemalurgic spikes don't get spit out. We needn't rely on Inquisitors just very quickly seeing them as normal, and can instead perhaps argue that the spike, in altering the spirit in the first place, makes it so that the spirit itself immediately sees the spike as part of it and so is flat-out incapable of sending any "get this spike out of me" directive when healing magics come into play.

Edited December 25, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Blaze1616]

I'm not totally certain I buy into this. What is used to define the Spiritual Identity of an individual? 

 

This new "workflow" also provides a convenient inlet for Forms to do there thing, as before they were just kind of butting into an otherwise purely Cognitive process. Here, then, it seems we might be able to conclude that Forms plug into the Spiritual aspect of each individual (as makes most sense in terms of interaction) and so guide the healing process from the top down. If the Spiritual never asks the Cognitive to heal the effects of aging, then it never will.

Emphasis Added.

 

If I am not mistaken, what you're saying is that Forms, in particular the one pertaining to an individual's Ideal Self, is what drives the healing process? This Ideal Self, therefore, is a "true ideal" as Brandon described it in the Nepene response. You then posit that, given the investiture fuel, this Ideal Self Form will attempt to assert itself into the Physical Realm, but the Cognitive filter of how the individual views them-self (a "Human perception of an ideal") restrains the extent of the healing?

 

Why, then, does Kaladin's eye color change? Kaladin was born a dark eyes, and as such I would think it reasonable to say his Ideal Self is a darkeyes. In addition, Kaladin's intense hatred of how lighteyes treat darkeyes, and his association with the darkeyes, would mean his Cognitive Identity is a darkeyes. Upon speaking the third oath and using Syl as a Sprenblade, his eyes change to a lighteyes color. Given the amount of Stormlight he held at the time, his Ideal Self Form should have attempted to assert itself into the Physical Realm, attempting to revert his eye color. Upon "hitting" the Cognitive filter of his Cognitive Identity, the darkeyes "factor" should have passed just fine. Yet his eyes do not revert back to being a darkeyes, even after Syl stops acting as a Sprenblade.

 

Perhaps my scenario above has many other factors playing a part, but it is the only scenario I can think of at the moment that disproves your theory. If I think of others I shall add them.

 

Back to the question I posed before the quote though, what defines the Ideal Self Form? It must be independent of how an individual views them-self, otherwise it would be Cognitive, not Spiritual. Is the Ideal Self a specific age, particularly one after puberty when the body hits it's "prime?" As a somewhat side note, is this how someone never ages, once they shape their Cognitive identity to match their Spiritual one? Back on point, if a Scadrian were to Snap at the age of 45, would their  Ideal Self include the Allomantic powers suddenly, or would the Ideal Self not include Allomancy?

 

I may possibly be misunderstanding you, as I am prone to do. If so, I apologize.

[Kurkistan]

I think I may have communicated myself poorly.

First of all, "Forms" (as I call them for legacy reasons, though Brandon (and I, when talking to Brandon) refers to them as "Ideals") are, by my understanding/theorizing, generalized. They don't correspond to individual things. So there might be a form for "Human"—describing all humans—but none for "Bob". Bob has his own Spiritual aspect, which (I would argue) is in turn connected in some way to a far more generalized "Human" Form, along with quite a few others (like Male, Rosharan, etc.).

I may also have miscommunicated the nature of the mechanism—though it's in part a brand-new model on my part, so I may well be wrong. I'm positing a somewhat more indirect approach where the Spiritual tells the Cognitive what to do in general terms and then the Cognitive gets it done on the nitty-gritty level. So it's not like the Spiritual knows exactly what it's about and is trying to do it through Cognitive interference, but instead the Spiritual saying "Do X" and then the Cognitive executing the 30 steps needed to actually accomplish X, with its own spin on what exactly "X" means. More on this on my very first mondo-thread.

-

I'll honestly just wave off the Kaladin question for now. If I had to guess I might say that cosmetic changes to already perfectly-fine physiology aren't the kind of thing that "healing" does, normally. I doubt that a Kaladin who sees himself as a certain shade of tan will always be "healing" himself back to that shade no matter how much time he spends in/out of the sun. If I didn't have to guess, I'd just shrug and say "perhaps magic system particulars trump cosmere-wide generalities?" and leave it for another day.

Perhaps the question deserves to be explored, but I don't think it any particular issue for general discussions of healing. Also, the "problem" (if it is one) is non-unique to this new model of mine, as I don't see, using your argument, why healing-as-Cognitive would have any better luck answering your challenge. In fact, it might even be worse off, as an alternative off-the-cuff explanation could be that the new eye color is immediately written into his Spiritual aspect by wielding his (Spiritually-bonded, recall) Blade; where the Cognitive aspect alone doesn't necessarily have this immediate access.

I'd also like to note that this theory of mine isn't trying to "reduce" healing down to just being the spiritual self asserting itself onto the body. I myself would hazard that the idea of "healing" is very much baked into the mechanism, so it's not like you can just step in and re-work the body like Playdough if you manage to hack the spirit enough.

-

As to what defines an "ideal self": No idea. I haven't delved very far into it and I honestly don't know if we have much on it. I might be able to dig up one or two more quotes if I devote a few more hours to it, but I'm fairly sure we don't have much that's more concrete than Nepene's.

So I can't really answer any of your questions (though they may just be rhetorical on your part). One thing I will say, though, is that I doubt that the Spiritual is totally independent of the Cognitive. It needs to form somehow afterall, and we know that Forms form (har har) in the first place based upon perceptions, so we have precedent for the Cognitive affecting the Spiritual. Myself I'd guess that it's just a more gradual/safety-railed process than the formation of Cognitive aspect. I speculate about this a bit in my first Formic thread (warning: unnecessarily long and full of needless made-up jargon).

Edited December 28, 2014 by Kurkistan

[dvoraen]

*snip*

As to what defines an "ideal self": No idea. I haven't delved very far into it and I honestly don't know if we have much on it. I might be able to dig up one or two more quotes if I devote a few more hours to it, but I'm fairly sure we don't have much that's more concrete than Nepene's.

So I can't really answer any of your questions (though they may just be rhetorical on your part). One thing I will say, though, is that I doubt that the Spiritual is totally independent of the Cognitive. It needs to form somehow afterall, and we know that Forms form (har har) in the first place based upon perceptions, so we have precedent for the Cognitive affecting the Spiritual. Myself I'd guess that it's just a more gradual/safety-railed process than the formation of Cognitive aspect. I speculate about this a bit in my first Formic thread (warning: unnecessarily long and full of needless made-up jargon).

Why complicate it?  An Ideal of Self (or Individuality) seems right up the Spiritual Realm's alley to me.  It would represent the truth of one's being, like a state of nirvana (or is it enlightenment?), but the implementation of that particular Ideal is Cognitive and Physical.  Each relies on the other, in the case of humans, and so I'd imagine it's why Invested sapient beings are so... unique?  Because I'm guessing they function on all three levels, just not necessarily consciously in each case.

 

It would also be my guesstimated method by which Lightweavers enhance their Nahel bond.  Their Connection (capital intentional) to the Self increases.

Edited December 28, 2014 by dvoraen

[Kurkistan]

@dvorean

 

Perhaps. What you say sounds plausible enough, but we really just don't have much evidence (that I know of) pointing us any particular direction.

[skaa]

Human perception of ideals has a lot to do with the cognitive realm, and a true ideal has a lot to do with the spiritual realm.

Ooh, this fits perfectly with my personal model of Realmatics. Under my model, the conception (origin) of Ideals happens in the Spiritual realm, while perception happens in the Cognitive. I believe we discussed this back in my old thread, Kurk.

 

So the Spiritual saying "make the body like X" and then the Cognitive interpreting and applying directive X within the framework/restrictions of the Cognitive aspect.

---

This new "workflow" also provides a convenient inlet for Forms to do there thing, as before they were just kind of butting into an otherwise purely Cognitive process. Here, then, it seems we might be able to conclude that Forms plug into the Spiritual aspect of each individual (as makes most sense in terms of interaction) and so guide the healing process from the top down. If the Spiritual never asks the Cognitive to heal the effects of aging, then it never will.

If I remember correctly, one of the ideas of your MEC theory is that the Spiritual Realm is the source of all Motivation in Realmatics, right? Under your own model (and also mine), the motivation of Gold Feruchemy would start from the Feruchemist's Spiritual aspect. Even though Feruchemical gold clearly depends on the Cognitive, it still needs to be initiated by the Spiritual.

You had the answer all along, Kurk!

 

Why, then, does Kaladin's eye color change? Kaladin was born a dark eyes, and as such I would think it reasonable to say his Ideal Self is a darkeyes. In addition, Kaladin's intense hatred of how lighteyes treat darkeyes, and his association with the darkeyes, would mean his Cognitive Identity is a darkeyes. Upon speaking the third oath and using Syl as a Sprenblade, his eyes change to a lighteyes color. Given the amount of Stormlight he held at the time, his Ideal Self Form should have attempted to assert itself into the Physical Realm, attempting to revert his eye color. Upon "hitting" the Cognitive filter of his Cognitive Identity, the darkeyes "factor" should have passed just fine. Yet his eyes do not revert back to being a darkeyes, even after Syl stops acting as a Sprenblade.

Speaking the third Oath changed Kaladin's Spiritual aspect and therefore changed his Ideal Self. That might sound bizarre, but not if you see Investiture as a kind of Cosmere metaprogramming, as I do. Of course, his Spiritual aspect was already being changed ever since he bonded with Syl, but it was only after the third Oath that these changes manifested in a Physical transformation.

Stormlight 3 spoilers:

Doesn't he revert to being darkeyes in the Stormlight 3 reading? I think he'll have to modify how he views himself (i.e. his Cognitive aspect) in order to make the color-change permanent.

Edited December 29, 2014 by WeiryWriter
please put such comments in spoiler tags, there are some users who have not and do not wish to read pre-release material like that

[Pestis the Spider]

Doesn't he revert to being darkeyes in the Stormlight 3 reading? I think he'll have to modify how he views himself (i.e. his Cognitive aspect) in order to make the color-change permanent.

 

I'm really sorry for off topic, but where can I find/read it?

Edited December 29, 2014 by WeiryWriter

[skaa]

I'm really sorry for off topic, but where can I find/read it? 

 

Here you go.  It's from Brandon's newsletter, but I believe he also read a version of it in an event once.

 

Edit: He read it at Fantasycon.

Edited December 29, 2014 by skaa

[Pestis the Spider]

Thanks so much!

 

Actually I found the version read in an event but it was way shorter than this one, so really thanks! 

[Kurkistan]

Ooh, this fits perfectly with my personal model of Realmatics. Under my model, the conception (origin) of Ideals happens in the Spiritual realm, while perception happens in the Cognitive. I believe we discussed this back in my old thread, Kurk.

...

 

If I remember correctly, one of the ideas of your MEC theory is that the Spiritual Realm is the source of all Motivation in Realmatics, right? Under your own model (and also mine), the motivation of Gold Feruchemy would start from the Feruchemist's Spiritual aspect. Even though Feruchemical gold clearly depends on the Cognitive, it still needs to be initiated by the Spiritual.

You had the answer all along, Kurk!

Yeah, I likely could have benefited from tying things together like this from the beginning of the healing discussion, but I was trying to be all enlightened and not try and shoehorn everything into fitting one old theory of mine. Turns out blind dogmatism would have been the better route, though.

 

Speaking the third Oath changed Kaladin's Spiritual aspect and therefore changed his Ideal Self. That might sound bizarre, but not if you see Investiture as a kind of Cosmere metaprogramming, as I do. Of course, his Spiritual aspect was already being changed ever since he bonded with Syl, but it was only after the third Oath that these changes manifested in a Physical transformation.

Stormlight 3 spoilers:

Doesn't he revert to being darkeyes in the Stormlight 3 reading? I think he'll have to modify how he views himself (i.e. his Cognitive aspect) in order to make the color-change permanent.

Stormlight 3 spoilers:

I'm not so sure on the SA3-related stuff, since there's a question of what exactly is causing the reversion to dark eyes. It's almost certainly not any magical healing mechanism, since his eyes only revert to dark if Kaladin stops using Stormlight for extended times.

---

On an unrelated note, there is some slight problem now for us if we're to look at the Spiritual demanding certain changes before the Cognitive can enact them: Shardwounds. In the previous pure-Cognitive model, Shardblades causing Spiritual damage but still being magic-healable wasn't an issue because everything was based on the undamaged Cognitive.

But now, how are we to say that the arm (or any other kind of Spiritual damage, for that matter) is ever healed if that part of the soul has been ripped off already? Especially in light of my theory that Hemalurgic spikes aren't rejected because they cause immediate Spiritual change.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Calderis]

The spiritual being based on a "true ideal" would mean that damage to the individual spirit Web would harm that particular person. The ideal would remain unchanged though. It may require a much larger amount of proportional power to heal the spiritual as compared to the physical, but a true ideal would maintain itself beyond individual damage.

Healing done to a hemalurgically altered spirit Web would not run into the problem of the original Ideal due to the spikes acting as an anchor for the alterations.

[skaa]

@Weiry: Woops! Sorry, I tend to let my guard down when I'm in the Cosmere Theories section of the forums. I'll be more careful next time.

On an unrelated note, there is some slight problem now for us if we're to look at the Spiritual demanding certain changes before the Cognitive can enact them: Shardwounds. In the previous pure-Cognitive model, Shardblades causing Spiritual damage but still being magic-healable wasn't an issue because everything was based on the undamaged Cognitive.

But now, how are we to say that the arm (or any other kind of Spiritual damage, for that matter) is ever healed if that part of the soul has been ripped off already? Especially in light of my theory that Hemalurgic spikes aren't rejected because they cause immediate Spiritual change.

I think Shardblades simply severe the connection between the Spiritual and the Physical aspects, so it won't necessarily change a person's Ideal Self. The problem with Hemalurgy is that it makes drastic modifications in addition to wounding your Spiritual aspect. There's also the problem of an Invested object being stuck into you instead of just slicing through you. I'm pretty sure Kaladin won't be able to heal from a Shardblade wound while the Shardblade is still inside of him.

As for his eye color reverting without Stormlight, I think that just means the changes on his Spiritual aspect are still not enough to create lasting consequences on his Physical aspect because his Cognitive aspect refuses to obey the Spiritual. The only thing that forces the Cognitive to allow the Physical transformation is Honor's Investiture. I believe he'll need to strengthen his Nahel bond and use Stormlight for longer periods of time before his Cognitive aspect could change.

[Kurkistan]

@Calderis

 

An interesting insight. So you're suggesting that healing Spiritual damage necessitates that  we go out to Forms to repair the individual's soul? You're right that that kind of things seems like it would require the "surge" of power Kaladin seemed to need to repair his Sharded limbs...

 

There's still a bit of an issue with regards to how this is all cached out, though. So you have a Form saying "hey this arm should work", a soul saying "no it shouldn't", and then the Cognitive saying "yes it should": but how does the message get from the generalized Spiritual Form to the Cognitive aspect if the individual's Spiritual aspect disagrees? Maybe this surge of power needed to heal Spiritual injury is the magic system short-circuiting the system and bypassing the individual's Spiritual aspect?

 

@skaa

 

I thought so too about Shardblades simply severing rather than destroying, but then we got that WoB about Hemalurgy that I linked to. It looks to me like Brandon isn't making much of a distinction between Shardblade wounds and the "stuff just got ripped out and stapled to another person" of Hemalurgy.

 

Perhaps it is in fact the case (as many of us have long theorized) that the soul is still perfectly intact—minus a few connections—after being Bladed, but this new WoB suggests it may be otherwise.

 

I'd like to caution about this distinction between the Spiritual aspect and the "ideal self", though. Myself I don't see any real reason to believe that everyone's walking around with two distinct "Spiritual parts", one of which is wounded by Shardblades and Hemalurgy and the other of which isn't. Sounds quite odd. I think the only reasonable way to model it is that everyone gets one of each aspect. So this leaves us without the idea of an "ideal self" sitting off to the side as some other "spiritual self" that isn't ideal is wounded by various magics. I'd think that it's the single spiritual self that's regarded as ideal and which ideal can be tarnished/damaged.

 

-

 

I agree that a distinction may well be made on the stuck-in vs. slicing-through front.

 

I'm still not so sure. I suppose it depends a bit on whether the eye color difference is truly a physiological change or more a consequence of the presence of some amount of Investiture.

 

Because if it's just a physiological change I don't really buy a Cognitive aspect with no juice to draw upon just unilaterally causing changes to the body.

 

There's also the fairly large possibility that Shallan is undergoing the same "change, then revert" cycle, since her eyes are the wrong color for her order, and we've less reason to believe that her general "my eyes are blue" self-perception would be strong enough to cause her to revert, since it's likely not nearly as strongly-held as Kaladin's.

[Calderis]

My opinion on this is based primarily on Brandon's distinction between the spiritual being a true ideal, and the cognitive being a perception.

A true ideal is something that is beyond alteration. The individuals link to that ideal may be able to be damaged, but the ideal itself can not be changed. I don't see that as two separate things. A shardblade may destroy the link between the spiritual aspect and the physical portion of the body, but without complete destruction the spiritual can not be altered.

Even hemalurgy works within that constraint, as anything ripped away from one person's web is a damage to that link between physical and spiritual, and could theoretically be healed back to the "ideal." where on the recipients end the spike is needed to anchor the alterations. Without that anchor the alterations cease to exist because the spiritual aspect itself cannot truly be changed.

Does that make sense? I don't really expect anyone to agree, but I'd love your input.

Edit: the biggest issue I see with this interpretation personally is this: If the spiritual is a true ideal, surge binding exists due to the nahel bond, but what causes allomancy/feruchemy to be non-universal on Scadrial

Edited December 29, 2014 by Calderis

[Kurkistan]

I get what you're saying with regard to the their being some generally-undamageable Spiritual ideals: heck, I've written several threads based on that premise.

 

Where we disagree (if I'm reading you right) is that I also think we have quite a bit of reason to believe that, in addition to somehow being associated with these "higher ideals", every person/thing has its own personal Spiritual aspect. Where you seem to be saying that they don't?

 

I don't really buy this idea of individuals' Spiritual aspects being fundamentally unalterable, is the thing. Definitely less malleable than their Cognitive, no doubt, but not just these static entities. Magical interactions (Snapping, Nahel bonds, "soul breaking", life sense, Feruchemical Connection, etc.) aside, people change over the course of their lives, and so their "ideal selves" should rightly change to.

 

I don't think I'm with you on how you model Hemalurgy, either. So far as we've seen it looks like it's really more of a "rip off that patch of soul and put it somewhere else" type of thing than just re-positioning some connections. So for the "donor" it's not just that a bit of his soul is no longer in-sync with the rest of him, but rather that that bit is gone.

 

-

 

So far as sensibility goes, you're doing fine. Impressive for post #3 at, the very least. I think you're wrong, but then again I'm not always right and even if you are wrong you still brought an interesting perspective to the table—it spurred me to consider Forms hijacking the system directly again as a solution to the Shardblade problem, at the very least.

 

EDIT: I'm not sure what you're getting at with your Edit.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Calderis]

What I was meaning is, assuming that I have the correct interpretation (which all things considered I think unlikely), then powers such as surgebinding are granted through an external source such as the nahel bond or an honorblade. If the bond is broken the powers are removed as we've seen. So there isn't really a spiritual alteration as much as access to something beyond the self.

This doesn't fit with other areas such as allomancy where some people are born with an ability where others are not.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Calderis

[Kurkistan]

Ah, I see. I would agree (kind of) on that being how Surgebinding works. There's the whole "fill in cracks in the soul" thing that we get from the WoR back cover, which suggests that the bond just kind of slots in there/integrates and so grants the powers.

 

So far as the other powers go, we have from the AoL Ars Arcanum that stuff like that it "hardwritten into the spiritweb", which suggests that it is all properly internal to the individual.

[dvoraen]

Kind of taking it further, but I would liken a Nahel bond to a Hemalurgic spike, but the differences lie here:

 

- Your Cognitive and Spiritual states are what attract the given spren.  This would also account for the variance in which orders get a Shardblade (and/or Plate) when; their cracks are filled differently.  Some require the equivalent of a root canal for a Blade, others are "shallower" in that respect.

- The Nahel bond functions as the Surge "spike", and it goes both ways (affects spren too, remember), where the Immortal Words function as the anchor point for each.  When they're broken*, so is the bond.  Humans lose their powers; spren lose their enhanced Cognition, and to them that's extremely painful (since they're Cognitive entities).

- The Words increase your Spiritual compatibility, thus strengthens the anchor and bond by extension.

Edited December 29, 2014 by dvoraen

[skaa]

What I was meaning is, assuming that I have the correct interpretation (which all things considered I think unlikely), then powers such as surgebinding are granted through an external source such as the nahel bond or an honorblade. If the bond is broken the powers are removed as we've seen. So there isn't really a spiritual alteration as much as access to something beyond the self.

This doesn't fit with other areas such as allomancy where some people are born with an ability where others are not.

Someone born with an ability already has that ability as part of his Innate Investiture. External Investiture granting the same ability may or may not modify Innate Investiture to retain the ability in case the external Investiture is removed.

We only have few WoBs regarding this term, but it seems obvious to me that it is Investiture that has melded with a person's Spiritual aspect. It is this Innate Investiture that is modified/boosted by things like burning lerasium or Snapping, and is something at least partially inheritable (being part of the so-called "Spiritual DNA").

The Nahel bond's ultimate goal, I think, is to eventually perform the same sort of changes that lerasium does, enhancing the person's Innate Investiture with Surgebinding. But for the Nahel bond this process is quite a bit more time-consuming (perhaps due to Honor's more restrictive Intent demanding extensive Cognitive changes as well), making Kaladin etc. rely on external Investiture (i.e. Stormlight) to retain things like the change in eye color.

Note that the change in eye color is not the end goal. Shardbearers also become lighteyes eventually, but that doesn't make them Knights. Permanent eye color change simply signifies that something has already broken through the Cognitive aspect's defenses, something that's now heritable.

Edit: Ninja'd again! Why am I so slow?! *sobs*

Edited December 29, 2014 by skaa

[Kurkistan]

UPDATE:

 

I'll just swoop in and necro this for posterity's sake.

 

I asked Brandon about this at a signing and then someone else also asked more about it, so we got some good amount of info:

 

Source:

Kurkistan: So, could you give us some examples of how the ideals that spren represent work in other magic systems, like we have Forging where you get plausibility, or Returned how they're beautiful or any other systems?

Brandon: Okay, one more time on that.

Kurkistan: Okay, so you know the ideals the spren are manifestations-

Brandon: Yes.

Kurkistan: How- do those have impacts on other magic systems?

Brandon: Yes, yes, in the same way the Returned- that's the exact same system at work there.

Kurkistan: Is it the same reason why the Lord Ruler _has_ to die of old age, and why you can't heal yourself into being an octopus or something?

Brandon: Um... _yes_, that is all connected in the exact same way.

Kurkistan: Okay, so it's all like these high falutin' spiritual ideals?

Brandon: Yes.

Kurkistan: And are there like, median Cognitive ideals that gradually kind of influence these, or-

Brandon: Yeah, they transcend between the three. I mean the original concept for the three realms is Platonic philosophy.

Kurkistan: So it goes up <makes absurd reverse-waterfall hand gesture>

Brandon: Yeah, it goes up and it comes back down.

 

<I swear with Marsh as my witness that Brandon basically spontaneously started talking about healing at this point. I'm not gonna' look a gift horse in the mouth>

 

Brandon: A lot of the Cognitive is- so like, the Cognitive has a bigger effect on how you can heal and things like that—does that make sense?

Kurkistan: Yeah.

Brandon: But the power to heal is a actually a spiritual thing.

Kurkistan: So it's like the spiritual says "I want to be like this" and the Cognitive is like "okay I'll try really hard to be like that, but I have a limit."

Brandon: Right. Right. Filtered through how you see yourself, yeah.

 

And then later:

Kurkistan: So you've said that healing is like the spiritual wants to heal and then it filters through the Cognitive, but how's that work with healing wounds to the soul like Hemalurgy or Shardblades? What do you refer to to heal the soul at that point?

Brandon: You need to make a patch on the soul with investiture.

Kurkistan: So how's the investiture know where to go, what to look like?

Brandon: Well your soul _is_ an ideal. So if you can get it up there, there are ways to do- to recreate that with um- see I'm getting into stuff with later books.

Kurkistan: So when Hemalurgy rips something off the soul, is that the ideal soul or some sub-soul?

Brandon: That is off of your soul, and it can be healed; but what it's going to be doing is creating a patch of new soul. So it will not be your original soul. Does that make sense?

Kurkistan: Okay, that- well, not completely, but I think that's your intention.

Brandon: Yes.

Store Employee (Kevin, I think?): If you do that, is that like Frankenstein's monster, or is it like a graft that's absorb-

Brandon: Less horrifying- Less horrifying than Frankenstein's monster, but it is a graft that is like- it is not your original soul.

Kevin: Yeah, but in modern medicine stuff like that is absorbed-

Brandon: Yeah; in this you will always have a scar on your soul that something else has patched over.

Kurkistan: So Kaladin shouldn't just keep getting his arm chopped?

Brandon: <ignoring/not-hearing Kurkistan just now> But that is what happens with most forms of investiture in the first place.

 

----

 

So for the first it's basically a restating of the SLCC quote that started all of this (though now directly confirming that the impetus to heal is indeed Spiritual), plus me kind of twisting Brandon's arm a bit on exactly how the Cognitive portion of the mechanism is described: for what it's worth he didn't say no, but an uncharitable reading of the WoB doesn't leave us that much new info.

-

The second is far more interesting. Once again Evil Kurkistan was trying a bit to get Brandon to comment directly on my own theory of how healing works. A bit more successfully this time, I think.

 

In regards to the theory of how Forms interact with soul-healing, I got definite (though perhaps biased) impressions that Brandon was dodging the point quite intentionally (this impression buttressed by the fact that Brandon says that's what he's doing). Despite this, the astute reader will grow suspicious of Formic shenanigans when Brandon starts talking about "So if you can get it up there" (suggesting "elevating" the soul to be on par with some higher-order ideals, at least in my mind) and "ways to do- to recreate..." because the soul is an ideal; Brandon also confirms that there's only the one soul for us to worry about for people who get soul-injured.

 

-

 

On a broader and more unexpected scale, Kevin was kind enough to expand for us this new notion of "patches" on the soul, which apparently work the same way as investiture filling in the cracks left over by snapping-like events. So maybe infinite spikes for everyone might have some adverse side effects on the donors after all, though I have to say Kaladin's arm seemed perfectly fine...

Edited May 15, 2015 by Kurkistan

[ARARITA]

sounds like Qabalah - different "worlds"

(Jewish / Arabic mystism)

 

Atziluth - the world of emanation or nearness
Briah - the world of creation
Yetzirah - the world of formation
Assiah - the world of making

 

yes i know there are 4 worlds in the QBL but it does fit ...

 

Atziluth is the life / light coming from creator / the emanation

 

then Briah the archetype world - Brandon's cognitive - idea / ideal form - how the emanation begins transformation
Yetzirah - archetypes form into ideas - what they would become in our world / imagined to be - Brandon's spiritual

and finally Assiah - the world of action / manifestation - what has become in our world - Brandon's physical

 

the Lightning strike / sword is the path from Archetype to manifestation

the snake in the tree climbs back up to the Archetype from the physical

 

this allows for influence in both directions - through Yetzirah - Brandon's spiritual

sometimes what a person believes rules / sometimes the Archetype rules

 

the slave brand / depression are Kal's thoughts / his spiritual view

the lighteyes shardbearer thing seems to be more what the area/planet/era thinks as ideal/truth - at this time/era anyhow

Edited May 15, 2015 by ARARITA

[Kurkistan]

An interesting thought, though I have no knowledge of the subject myself, so can't really comment. Who knows, it may be time to inquire to Brandon about philosophical underpinnings, if you find the parallel so compelling.

[ARARITA]

i can't remeber what thread i read that Brandon was reading QBL / mysticism ...sorry

 

(10 is a number in the Qabalah / 10 sephiroth etc ...)

 

and quite frankly i am not great at the searching this site thing - seems hit or miss searching sometimes

 

asked for advice on searching in Intro Yourself section when i said hi .....

Edited May 15, 2015 by ARARITA