Phendorana

[danex]

1 minute ago, Aspiring Writer said:

The reason perpendicularities give so much investiture is that their combining the three realms. We have been to the physical and cognitive realm, so it's not those, so it's the spiritual realm providing all the investiture 

Oh. That is indeed true, but the Beyond isn’t the Spiritual Realm. Very very different. 

[Aspiring Writer]

Just now, Dannex said:

Oh. That is indeed true, but the Beyond isn’t the Spiritual Realm. Very very different. 

Ah, I forgot that. They are indeed separate places. Damn.

[Kyn]

35 minutes ago, Aspiring Writer said:

I would like to mention we know character who do not go to the beyond after being killed

We actually don’t know that, though. Until we find out explicitly that Nightblood consumes the soul, it’s entirely likely (and presumed in-world) that he feeds off of Investiture only. In which case, Nightblood would have just severed the Connection to the soul by consuming Investiture, thus sending souls on to The Beyond.

 

Spoiler

 

For a Cognitive Shadow like Vasher, part of his Connection keeps him in his body despite having died already. For a Fused, part of their Connection makes their souls remain on this side of the Beyond and go through Odium (and Braize) to get a new body. So, of course the Fused Nightblood killed wouldn’t come back, even if they just lost their Connection and thus went to the Beyond, finally, like most souls do when they die.

Obviously, we don’t know that’s what happened, either. But we definitely haven’t been given in-text evidence that something like Nightblood or a spren-killing dagger destroying the Investiture holding a person or Cognitive Shadow to the physical realm does more. There’s no suggestion this permakills by destroying the soul rather than by releasing said soul from Connections, thus sending it to the afterlife from which nothing returns. And the characters who’ve talked about similar deaths of Cognitive Shadows believe this sends them to The Beyond.

Likewise, while we don’t know that spren have souls that go to The Beyond, there are in-text and WoB reasons to assume it.

Spoiler

 

WoB says sentient creatures like Rhyshadium have souls and go to The Beyond. WoB also says a sufficiently-Invested AI would have a soul.

In-world, Radiants – which, as fellow Cognitive Shadows, Vasher believes to be no different from spren stapled to bodies – talk about each other’s souls going to The Beyond. In Arcanum Unbounded,

Spoiler

Kelsier believes he feels the pull of The Beyond when he is nothing more than Investiture as a Cognitive Shadow (plus a putative soul), himself.

Tons of evidence I’ve listed says spren should have souls like other sentient creatures.

If we’re arguing that spren don’t have souls because they lack physical bodies, then we’re arguing that souls stem from the Physical rather than the Cognitive Aspect…which means we’re using the possession of a material form rather than, or in concert with, sentience as the determinant of having a soul.

If we’re arguing that their souls are different and are simply barred from The Beyond, that seems to contradict the presumed nature of souls as somehow Of The Beyond.

 

I just…don’t see the rationale for spren like Phendorana to be considered uniquely soulless or unable to enter an afterlife just because their bodies are Investiture. And if souls exist independent of Investiture, and thereby could have an afterlife, there is no textual or logical support for anti-Investiture destroying those souls.

[Honorless]

Brandon's never going to give answers about the afterlife/the Beyond but people within the Cosmere do wonder that since Nightblood consumes all the Investiture of a person, that person might not move into the Beyond. RoW shows that a large portion of the spren society believe that if a spren dies, since their very being is made up of Investiture, they don't go into the afterlife but are well and truly destroyed, unlike people whose Spiritual imprint lingers on in the Spiritual/Cognitive self is pulled on into the Beyond. People in-world conflate the Spiritual realm with their beliefs of the afterlife.

I suggest going to Arcanum and looking up entries on Spiritweb, Soul, Beyond, Afterlife: Brandon explains it best.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Honorless

[Ixthos]

@TheOnlyEdgedancersss, On the original question, think of investiture and anti-investiture like matter and antimatter. When a particle and its antiparticle (so it has to be the type corresponding to the particle, like an electron and a positron, rather than for example a proton and a positron) come into contact they annahilate one another, releasing their collective energy. When investiture comes into contact with its corresponding anti-investiture (stormlight with anti-stormlight) they annihilate. Thus she was killed, the material composing her gone.

 

On the idea of souls, I will have to mention my own real world beliefs here, and to do so I will need to define a few terms. I believe we have three bodies in two worlds, with a physical body occupying the physical world, a spiritual body occupying the spiritual world, and soul which occupies both the physical and spiritual world, the soul being the union of the physical and the spiritual. The soul is fundamentally a pattern, and should not be confused with the spirit of a person. In cosmere terms the soul - the body I believe lives in both the physical and spirit world - would be the part living in the cognitive realm. In both cases I believe they would correspond to patterns. When someone is prevented from going Beyond that means their pattern remains, the medium on which it is stored changes but the pattern remains, just as Kelsier remained by being bound to the well, the pattern he was made of starting to disappear in the cosmere and enter the Beyond - which may have simply been ceasing to exist - but when the power suffused it it remained. And that power's compositon later changed when he touched the walls of the Iree fortress, absorbing investiture from there, the pattern changing slightly and new connections to his spiritual component forming due to the power that now made him up also including Selish investiture with its own connections, yet nevertheless despire the COMPOSITION of his cognitive shadow changing, the PATTERN remained fundamentally the same.

Thus higher spren are like people, a unique and precious iteration of an idea in the form of a pattern, and when the body that houses that pattern is destroyed, the pattern is "gone", with gone in the cosmere meaning travelling to the Beyond. Thus any pattern fully removed from the cosmere is one that has entered the Beyond, and spren can then likewise do so.

[trav]

the Investiture she was made up from was reverted back to its original form. pure, unaltered Investiture. no inprint, no consciousness, nothing. just energy.

[Shob the Voidbringer]

i believe in the cosmere, the "soul" has a slight connection to all three aspects of someone (or two or one, for a spren and other beings) and that when the soul senses these dying, it severs connection and leaves for the beyond, and any investiture reconnects it to the being, and it stops disconnecting when it sees the being is stable (alive and not dying), so when anti-investiture starts destroying it, it disconnects to escape the anti investiture and goes to the beyond. this theory is also supported by the knowledge that the more invested you are, the longer it takes for your soul to pass on to the beyond. the soul would be able to disconnect faster than nightblood could consume it, so the fused would also have passed on to the beyond. there is no reason to believe that spren don't have souls with the wob's we've gotten.

[TheSprengineer]

Since spren being vulnerable is new, and they’re destroyed, I wonder if they won’t end up following the same rules as atium on Scadrial from Era 1: It eventually collects and coalesces again.

May not be Phendorana anymore at the end, but I wonder if her stuff won’t eventually recollect and be able to be made into a new spren.

Edited February 9, 2021 by TheSprengineer

[danex]

11 hours ago, Shob the Voidbringer said:

this theory is also supported by the knowledge that the more invested you are, the longer it takes for your soul to pass on to the beyond.

Not really. Because the Beyond is literally ‘beyond’ all forms of investiture, ‘real’ Souls and Investiture don’t have anything to do with each other. But we do in fact see people staying longer when they’re more invested, how is that possible if the Soul and Investiture are separate? Well I think that cognitive shadows aren’t actually the people who died. They are a remnant. A shadow. A cognitive shadow. All of the cognitive shadows we’ve seen aren’t really the original person, that person has passed into the Beyond along with their Soul. This way it makes sense for why it takes invested people’s cognitive aspects longer to dissipate. Cognitive and Spiritual Aspects are known to be connected to investiture. People’s Souls (Souls != Spiritual Aspect.) on the other hand, are a purely philosophical concept, they are beyond realmatics (beyond the entire canon of the Cosmere even) and wouldn’t have any connection to investiture. 
Storywise, it really makes no difference. The cognitive shadows have all the same memories as the actual character, but large-scale-realmatic-and-theological-theory-wise, I think that’s an important distinction. 

[Kingsdaughter613]

6 hours ago, Dannex said:

Not really. Because the Beyond is literally ‘beyond’ all forms of investiture, ‘real’ Souls and Investiture don’t have anything to do with each other. But we do in fact see people staying longer when they’re more invested, how is that possible if the Soul and Investiture are separate? Well I think that cognitive shadows aren’t actually the people who died. They are a remnant. A shadow. A cognitive shadow. All of the cognitive shadows we’ve seen aren’t really the original person, that person has passed into the Beyond along with their Soul. This way it makes sense for why it takes invested people’s cognitive aspects longer to dissipate. Cognitive and Spiritual Aspects are known to be connected to investiture. People’s Souls (Souls != Spiritual Aspect.) on the other hand, are a purely philosophical concept, they are beyond realmatics (beyond the entire canon of the Cosmere even) and wouldn’t have any connection to investiture. 
Storywise, it really makes no difference. The cognitive shadows have all the same memories as the actual character, but large-scale-realmatic-and-theological-theory-wise, I think that’s an important distinction. 

Shadows can have children though. And the Godking grows from infancy to adulthood, which I find difficult to see a soulless being doing. It also means Siri isn’t married to a person, which I take issue with. When she dies, are you telling me she’ll be alone in the Beyond? Or stuck with an infant who never even had the chance to be born?

I think the Soul remains as long as life persists in some form. Cognitive beings aren’t dead and a Shadow is a physical being that has found a way to persist as a Cognitive one. So as long as they continue to ‘live’ in some way the Soul persists.

[Eri]

On 7.02.2021 at 11:59 PM, AquaRegia said:

I don't think we have ANY evidence of the existence (or lack thereof) of eternal souls for ANYONE, human, animal, spren, or otherwise.  Nor do I expect any.

I'm pretty sure we have a confirmation in more than one WoB that canon answers to this kind of questions (Beyond, life after death and CS being an actual soul not just a simulacrum-like imprint, general eschatology) won't be ever given. Which, in my opinion, is a good decision. Nearly all books I read that tried to tackle this area ended up… not that great and often a little cringy. 

[Kingsdaughter613]

6 hours ago, Eri said:

I'm pretty sure we have a confirmation in more than one WoB that canon answers to this kind of questions (Beyond, life after death and CS being an actual soul not just a simulacrum-like imprint, general eschatology) won't be ever given. Which, in my opinion, is a good decision. Nearly all books I read that tried to tackle this area ended up… not that great and often a little cringy. 

Exactly. There is no answer. This discussion is purely philosophical and has more to do with our personal beliefs than anything Realmatic related.

[Bejarden]

Isn’t everything 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Bejardin1250