How you guys think the Spiritual Realm functions?

[Blightsong]

I've been focusing on this topic a lot for some theories of mine. What are your guy's thoughts on how connection works, what identity is, and the like.

[Landis963]

1 hour ago, Blightsong said:

I've been focusing on this topic a lot for some theories of mine. What are your guy's thoughts on how connection works, what identity is, and the like.

Identity I believe to be a function of the Cognitive Realm, not the Spiritual (Note that things gain a rudimentary self-awareness, e.g. the stick, and rudimentary wants/desires, e.g. the unbought knapsack in Secret History).  However, I believe that whenever a given Identity sees into or enters the Spiritual, all the connections that they have made over the course of their entire life collapse into one point.  That point being where the identity in question is.  

[BlackYeti]

13 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

Identity I believe to be a function of the Cognitive Realm, not the Spiritual (Note that things gain a rudimentary self-awareness, e.g. the stick, and rudimentary wants/desires, e.g. the unbought knapsack in Secret History).  However, I believe that whenever a given Identity sees into or enters the Spiritual, all the connections that they have made over the course of their entire life collapse into one point.  That point being where the identity in question is.  

Yet in feruchemy, Identity is stored in aluminium, which is in the Spiritual quadrant.

This surely requires Identity to be a Spiritual property, not a Cognitive one.

[Thanatos]

I see the spirit realm as the quantum foam that permeates through to the other two realms. 

The place where all power originates and resides. 

The shards and invested people have access to this spirit realm by the shards and their splinters. Hence their use of power. 

[Blightsong]

30 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

Identity I believe to be a function of the Cognitive Realm, not the Spiritual (Note that things gain a rudimentary self-awareness, e.g. the stick, and rudimentary wants/desires, e.g. the unbought knapsack in Secret History).  However, I believe that whenever a given Identity sees into or enters the Spiritual, all the connections that they have made over the course of their entire life collapse into one point.  That point being where the identity in question is.  

I agree with @BlackYeti here. Unless Khriss is lying to us here I'm pretty sure Identity is of the Spiritual realm.

[Spoolofwhool]

I see the spirit realm as just being investiture. However, that investiture is bound by connections which, in essence, gives rise to spiritual aspects of entities. I'll elaborate when I have time.

[Blightsong]

This WoB suggests that Investiture is different from what makes up the spiritual realm.

[Yata]

12 hours ago, Blightsong said:

I've been focusing on this topic a lot for some theories of mine. What are your guy's thoughts on how connection works, what identity is, and the like.

As far as I understood the identity has nothing to do with our identity's meaning...it's not something part OR linked to your psyche/memory/feel/ecc... It's a "simple" Spiritual Attribute to the Investiture that make Investiture works along each other or aganist each other.

It is explained in a WoB who talk about Surgebinder and draining Enemy's Shardplate.

[emailanimal]

When I thinik of the Spiritual Realm I usually concentrate on the idea that time is not a uni-directional axis there. So, my impression of Spiritual Realm that I use as the means of thinking about it is that it is a 5D space, where the standard 3D environment is augmented with  a temporal axis that is completely accessible to the outside observer (hence the 5th dimension).  What this means is that if the observer knows what they are doing, they can gain access to any location in the 4D space defining the physical realm (3D space plus time).   However, given what we know, the actual observations are probably stochastic in one of two senses:

(a) first possibility is that the temporal location of the observer in the Physical (or Cognitive Realm) splits the Spiritual Realm observations into deterministic (those that happened in time preceding the current temporal position of the observer) and stochastic (i.e., possible future scenarios)

(b) second possibility is that regardless of the temporal origin of the observer, all observations stochastic.

Again: this is *my* personal way of explaining to myself how Spiritual Realm works, 

[Yata]

Ok I found the WoB I talked about:

Quote

Investiture acts (roughly) like a saturated solution in these cases. Sticking more power into something like a Feruchemical storage or a hyper-invested object like Plate is increasingly hard. The other part is that Investiture tends to interfere with other Investiture, unless there's a familiar resonance. (This is part of what philosophers call Identity.) Slapping your hand through a sand master's stream of sand will cause interference, and make them start to drop. It's not that the sand is supporting them, it's that the investiture holding them up gets scrambled for a moment because of your own investiture.

 

[Thanatos]

Just thought of this talking to my little bro.

A shard holder within the three realms.

What if:

1. The Spiritual Realm bleeds through to the Physical Realm to create a Shard Pool. To instantly travel between planets. 

2. The Cognitive Realm bleeds through to the physical to create things like the Mist or High Storm.

What do you guys think 

[Yata]

11 minutes ago, Thanatos said:

Just thought of this talking to my little bro.

A shard holder within the three realms.

What if:

1. The Spiritual Realm bleeds through to the Physical Realm to create a Shard Pool. To instantly travel between planets. 

2. The Cognitive Realm bleeds through to the physical to create things like the Mist or High Storm.

What do you guys think 

Well Stormlight is described as lightbulb to the Spiritual Realm, but much more I think there isn't a real source difference between for example Mist and Well's liquid...are simply the same substance in different state and concetration (the same with the Lerasium of course). You may in theory distill Lerasium from the Mist or some other trick like that.

About the "bleeding" part, probably I don't follow you...can you explain me better what you want to say ?

[Thanatos]

Yata

When i say bleed through think condescension of water through materal substances.

God metals would be the intentional bleed though into the physical. 

From what we know you cannot ascend from mist or the high storm. 

But you can ascend by absorbing the power of a shards pool. Aka the spiritual realm bleed through 

Edited December 22, 2016 by Thanatos

[Yata]

@Thanatos I have to ask you, Did you read the first Mistborn's trilogy ? If no, please stop to read this post.

Spoiler

You can Ascend with the Mist (if you may tap them), It's exactly what Vin did. How to put your hand on the Investiture is not really relevant, it's still Investiture. You may (in theory and with enough of it) Ascend burning a tons of Lerasium.

About Ascend with an Highstorm, to me it's possible in theory...But you would be unable to asborb too much of it. Remember the Stormlight's leak scales with the amount you keep. You will reach a threeshold where the leak will be equal to your ability to drawn in.

Same thing probably with Breath, just I have no idea of the amount of Breath needed....probably more than the whole Nalthis's popolation

[Thanatos]

Vin did not ascend with the mist!

In book 3 she already ascended with the pool when taking on the inquisitors. 

Yes given enough absorption of the mists or stormlight (investure) youd ascend. 

But the pools at full capacity would give instant ascension.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Thanatos

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, Thanatos said:

Vin did not ascend with the mist!

In book 3 she already ascended with the pool when taking on the inquisitors. 

Yes given enough absorption of the mists or stormlight (investure) youd ascend. 

But the pools at full capacity would give instant ascension.

Yes she did. She breathed in the mist, and it ascended her, because the mist is the same as the pool, just in a different state of matter, and more directly linked to the greater power that is Preservation. I have no idea what you're trying to say with the second line.

 

 

[Thanatos]

When Vin breathed in the mists shed already ascended from the well of ascension. 

So at that point she was already an ascended being with huge amounts of investure.

When she took on TLR she did not ascend by breathing in the mist. 

Just got really powerful

[The One Who Connects]

22 hours ago, Thanatos said:

When Vin breathed in the mists shed already ascended from the well of ascension. 

So at that point she was already an ascended being with huge amounts of investiture.

When she took on TLR she did not ascend by breathing in the mist. 

Just got really powerful

The way I saw it was that TLR ascended because he used the Well, which was all of Preservation's liquid investiture.

Similarly, in HoA, Vin only ascended after she had breathed in all of the mists, the gaseous form of Preservation's Investiture.

During the TLR fight, she only breathed in a small portion of the Mist, which made her powerful, but not "Ascension powerful"

Edited December 23, 2016 by The One Who Connects
Foolish mistake in the first line

[Thanatos]

Wonder if theres a WoB that would clarify this. 

[Spoolofwhool]

@Thanatos @The One Who Connects Vin did not ascend when she touched the power of the Well of Ascension because she didn't use the power, she just released it. She only became a sliver after she became the vessel of Preservation. 

[The One Who Connects]

20 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

@Thanatos @The One Who Connects Vin did not ascend when she touched the power of the Well of Ascension because she didn't use the power, she just released it. She only became a sliver after she became the vessel of Preservation. 

Fair point, I apologize for the mistake. I shall correct the first line to be about the Lord Ruler.

[Thanatos]

You dont have to use the power of the well to ascend. 

Read the part where she steps into the well. 

She gain monstrous amounts of power and also was gaining huge amounts of knowledge the longer she had it. 

Thats how she knew how to heal Eland. 

She had the power alittle less than TLR. Only he used the power and Vin released the power. 

In any event 'she still had that power'

[Emerald101]

I don't think that what happened to TLR can be described as an "ascension" in the same way as Vin ascending when she breathes in the mists, or Sazed when he takes Ruin and Preservation. The power in tWoA was enormous, but it wasn't enough to keep TLR in an ascended state permanently. Additionally, when TLR "ascended", Leras was still alive, and preservation still had a shardholder. I highly doubt that one shard can have two people ascend to be the shardholder at the same time (or at least that the current shardholder wouldn't allow another to fully ascend). Furthermore, Sazed ascended without ever using the WoA, so clearly it is not a necessity.

[Thanatos]

I agree ascending to become a shard is different as you take all of the shards power. You become the shard.

But TLR has been confirmed to have ascended. 

Coppermind confirms this.

Plus the time descriptions of TLR life within the books also confirms this.

Re: Pre-ascension and Ascention/creation of the final empire

[Spoolofwhool]

3 hours ago, Thanatos said:

You dont have to use the power of the well to ascend. 

Read the part where she steps into the well. 

She gain monstrous amounts of power and also was gaining huge amounts of knowledge the longer she had it. 

Thats how she knew how to heal Eland. 

She had the power alittle less than TLR. Only he used the power and Vin released the power. 

In any event 'she still had that power'

Um. No. She didn't know how to heal Elend. She most definitely did not take the power. She gave up the power fully expecting him to die. She only saved him because the Mist Spirit showed her the bead of lerasium. I would suggest you reread that part. 

3 hours ago, Emerald101 said:

I don't think that what happened to TLR can be described as an "ascension" in the same way as Vin ascending when she breathes in the mists, or Sazed when he takes Ruin and Preservation. The power in tWoA was enormous, but it wasn't enough to keep TLR in an ascended state permanently. Additionally, when TLR "ascended", Leras was still alive, and preservation still had a shardholder. I highly doubt that one shard can have two people ascend to be the shardholder at the same time (or at least that the current shardholder wouldn't allow another to fully ascend). Furthermore, Sazed ascended without ever using the WoA, so clearly it is not a necessity.

Brandon has specifically described it as ascension. Yes, it isn't the same kind of ascension as when someone takes the entire power of a shard, but it is still ascension, which is when someone takes up a significant portion of a shard's power. It doesn't necessitate that they become a shardholder. Also, I don't understand your last line. No one said that using the WoA was required for ascension, considering people have done it with other shards as well.