Madmoody he/him Posted January 19, 2017 Report Share Posted January 19, 2017 (edited) It's been close to a year since I finished Words of Radiance, and so my memory of the book is a bit fuzzy. My friend picked up the book himself recently, and we are both somewhat confused about how the seas of souls, regret, and lost lights work. Could someone help me gain a better understanding of how they work, and maybe even what they hold? Edited January 19, 2017 by Madmoody Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spoolofwhool Posted January 19, 2017 Report Share Posted January 19, 2017 (edited) Spren are cognitive entities which exist in the Cognitive Realm, as described by Realmatic theory. Otherwise known as Shadesmar, the Cognitive Realm and its entities are the embodiment of people cognitively view things, along with certain attributes pertinent to the world. On Roshar, in Shadesmar, land is replaced by a sea of beads, while bodies of water are solid. These beads are the cognitive representation of physical objects, and represent how an object views itself (because they do). The seas are regions which represent the continent of Roshar, not sure if they mean anything more than that. That's basically the sum of my understanding of it. There are better people who can explain it. Edited January 20, 2017 by Spoolofwhool 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kered he/him Posted January 20, 2017 Report Share Posted January 20, 2017 @Spoolofwhool summed it up pretty well. How I learned more about it was visiting Coppermind(http://coppermind.net/wiki/Coppermind:Welcome). When ever I'm ready a cosmere novel, I make sure I have a tab to Coppermind open just so that I can understand concepts that I don't fully grasp at first. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmoody he/him Posted January 20, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2017 16 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said: Spren are cognitive entities which exist in the Cognitive Realm, as described by Realmatic theory. Otherwise known as Shadesmar, the Cognitive Realm and its entities are the embodiment of people cognitively view things, along with certain attributes pertinent to the world. On Roshar, in Shadesmar, land is replaced by a sea of beads, while bodies of water are solid. These beads are the cognitive representation of physical objects, and represent how an object views itself (because they do). The seas are regions which represent the continent of Roshar, not sure if they mean anything more than that. That's basically the sum of my understanding of it. There are better people who can explain it. That's still more than I had before! Now, this is the same plane where soulbinders do their work right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spoolofwhool Posted January 20, 2017 Report Share Posted January 20, 2017 (edited) 1 hour ago, Madmoody said: That's still more than I had before! Now, this is the same plane where soulbinders do their work right? Yes. The cognitive realm is where Shallan and Jasnah go when they're souldbinding. It's also the place Jasnah was slipping into at the start of WoR and where Shallan went near the end of WoK. 1 hour ago, KereDerek said: @Spoolofwhool summed it up pretty well. How I learned more about it was visiting Coppermind(http://coppermind.net/wiki/Coppermind:Welcome). When ever I'm ready a cosmere novel, I make sure I have a tab to Coppermind open just so that I can understand concepts that I don't fully grasp at first. Yeah, that's a good idea, though I didn't really learn about the Coppermind until after I read all the books. Edited January 20, 2017 by Spoolofwhool 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmoody he/him Posted January 20, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2017 14 hours ago, KereDerek said: @Spoolofwhool summed it up pretty well. How I learned more about it was visiting Coppermind(http://coppermind.net/wiki/Coppermind:Welcome). When ever I'm ready a cosmere novel, I make sure I have a tab to Coppermind open just so that I can understand concepts that I don't fully grasp at first. It never crossed my mind to check Coppermind... I mostly use it to learn more about shards and animals on Roshar. Now these cognitive and spiritual realms would be unique and seperate from the classic D&D plains, like the Ethereal Plain and such, correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rasarr she/her Posted January 20, 2017 Report Share Posted January 20, 2017 48 minutes ago, Madmoody said: It never crossed my mind to check Coppermind... I mostly use it to learn more about shards and animals on Roshar. Now these cognitive and spiritual realms would be unique and seperate from the classic D&D plains, like the Ethereal Plain and such, correct? Not quite - there are absolutely connected. The Physical Realm stores your body, the Cognitive stores your... sprit/mind thing, while Spiritual Realm stores your soul, understood as a web of Connections of you with various things, ideas and people (Soulcasting works on the Cognitive level, though - also, it seems like "soul" is used quite interchangeably for Cognitive and Spiritual aspects). Now, some creatures, like spren, do not have a Physical aspect, so they exist in the Cognitive, but everything has its Cognitive and Spiritual representation - that's what all the spheres in the Shadesmar are, Cognitive aspects of bricks and walls and candles and everything else. It's like that thing with squares and rectangles - not every rectangle is a square, but all squares are rectangles. Not every Cognitive object has a Physical aspect, but every Physical object has a Cognitive aspect - and, of course, everything has the Spiritual aspect (we don't know if there are any Spiritual-only beings out there). Adding to that, the border between the realms - at least, the Physical and the Cognitive - is less of a sharp divide and more of a... spectrum which you can move on to an extent. Lift and the listeners (Parshendi) are closer to the Cognitive than the run-of-the-mill human - that's why Lift can touch spren and the listeners can see them sprint towards them while regular humans only see them pop up once they're already at the site of a spren-summoning event (like rain for the rainspren). Likewise, a "downward" movement is also possible - every spren that bonds with a human transitions to the Physical Realm, but isn't completely in it, it seems. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmoody he/him Posted January 20, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2017 2 hours ago, Rasarr said: Not quite - there are absolutely connected. The Physical Realm stores your body, the Cognitive stores your... sprit/mind thing, while Spiritual Realm stores your soul, understood as a web of Connections of you with various things, ideas and people (Soulcasting works on the Cognitive level, though - also, it seems like "soul" is used quite interchangeably for Cognitive and Spiritual aspects). Now, some creatures, like spren, do not have a Physical aspect, so they exist in the Cognitive, but everything has its Cognitive and Spiritual representation - that's what all the spheres in the Shadesmar are, Cognitive aspects of bricks and walls and candles and everything else. It's like that thing with squares and rectangles - not every rectangle is a square, but all squares are rectangles. Not every Cognitive object has a Physical aspect, but every Physical object has a Cognitive aspect - and, of course, everything has the Spiritual aspect (we don't know if there are any Spiritual-only beings out there). Adding to that, the border between the realms - at least, the Physical and the Cognitive - is less of a sharp divide and more of a... spectrum which you can move on to an extent. Lift and the listeners (Parshendi) are closer to the Cognitive than the run-of-the-mill human - that's why Lift can touch spren and the listeners can see them sprint towards them while regular humans only see them pop up once they're already at the site of a spren-summoning event (like rain for the rainspren). Likewise, a "downward" movement is also possible - every spren that bonds with a human transitions to the Physical Realm, but isn't completely in it, it seems. Wow... I feel like I've just learned more than a week of school XD. So it's like comparing normal light that we see to the UV light that bees see, everything is the same or similair in the same space, but what is visible just depends on your connection to that 'spectrum'? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spoolofwhool Posted January 20, 2017 Report Share Posted January 20, 2017 5 hours ago, Madmoody said: Wow... I feel like I've just learned more than a week of school XD. So it's like comparing normal light that we see to the UV light that bees see, everything is the same or similair in the same space, but what is visible just depends on your connection to that 'spectrum'? That's right. People have different degrees of how much they are in the physical or cognitive realm, up to being entirely within the cognitive realm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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