Does Trell (trellism) have anything to do with the beyond?

[Retrac]

Does Trell(trellism) have anything to do with the beyond?

[Weltall]

Welcome to the Shard!

As mentioned, Brandon is very clear that he's never going to provide a canonical explanation for what the Beyond is (or even that it exists) and at most we're going to get what in-universe characters believe about it.

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Questioner

After people die, in this universe, where exactly do they go? Because, at first they appear in this one world, and then they go somewhere else.

Brandon Sanderson

So where do people go when they die. *laughter* In the cosmere. One of the things that's very important to me as a writer, when I am writing stories, is when we get to these kind of fundamental questions about faith and religion and things like this, that the narrative is allowing multiple characters' viewpoints to be plausibly true, if this makes sense. For instance, I am not gonna come out and say, "Is there a capital-G God of the cosmere, is there an afterlife?" These are not questions I'm gonna answer, because in-world, they can't answer them. What they can say is, your Investiture will leave what we call a Cognitive Shadow, which is an imprint of your personality that can do certain things. And that most of those fade away, and you can see them, glimpse them, and then watch them go. But, are they going somewhere? Or are they not? Is that simply the Investiture being reclaimed, Is it more of a Buddhist thought, where your soul is getting recycled and used again? Is it nothing, you return to, you know, being-- yeah, is it a different type of matter? Or is there a Beyond, is there a capital-G God? Things like this. These questions are not answered. I'm never gonna answer those.

Now, the characters will try to answer them. But it's important to me that both Dalinar and Jasnah can exist in the same universe, and that the story is not saying "This one is right, and this one is wrong." The story is saying "This is how this one sees the world; this is how this one sees the world." It's very important to me from the beginning to do that, just because-- Like, I hate reading a book where someone espouses my viewpoint only to get proven wrong by the entire structure of the narrative, and in that universe, that person is wrong. But I'm like, "In our universe, I don't think that I am. Just the way you constructed everything makes it so that I have to be wrong, if I were living in your universe, even if it's a universe that's not a sci-fi/fantasy one." If that makes sense.

This is just kind of for respecting my characters and for the people who hold the viewpoints of my characters, in particular if they happen to be different from my own viewpoints. I feel there are certain lines I'm not gonna cross.

So, the answer is: who do you believe? Which of the philosophies in the books do you look at and say "Yeah!" Or, even better: listen to lots of different ones, and maybe these different viewpoints are all gonna have interesting points that'll give you things to think upon.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

Which means that nothing that happens in the books is ever going to be so directly involved with the Beyond as to give the reader a definitive answer. The comment at the end of Bands of Mourning about serving Trell in another realm (which I assume inspired the question) could be a reference to Cognitive Shadows which don't directly involve the question of the Beyond, or it could be something more along the lines of what Moelach does in Stormlight Archive where the transition between Realms serves as an opportunity to gain some insight into the future.

[RShara]

Probably not. Trell appears to be Shard or an Avatar (of Autonomy). That wouldn't have anything to do with the Beyond, which is Beyond the Realms, something the Shards can't touch, and not something Brandon's ever going to confirm or deny.

[Retrac]

Ok thanks.