Now, we all get that CHIM is wierd. It involves coming to the idea that the universe is not a material thing but infact a giant God-Meta's fractured consiousness, you have no individuality but you hold onto it anyway, blah blah blah. well, I have two questions about that, and I wonder if they've come up or anything, and if they haven't, what do you think could happen?

Question one: what happens if you come to said realization yet do not hold onto your individuality? Do you just go nuts, or die, or become a vegetable, or what? My own personal opinion is vegetable.

Question two: What would happen if someone were granted the realization but rejected the idea completely as foolishness? Not impossible, since it seems primarily elven people or groups tend to focus on it, so say a really Nordic Nord came to the realization and just tossed it as elven kookyness? I would assume not all that much happens, but these are crazy magical principles we're working with here.

1. I think you just zero-sum. (like getting vaporized.
2. I'd imagine not much. Entertaining the thought probably doesn't do anything.

Kind of leads to another question, has anyone ever been seen to Zero-Sum? In my admittedly small sphere of awareness it's one of those things that everybody knows about but never hets to see. If it hasn't, is it just mental vaporization or is it a total seccation of all forms of spatial and temporal existance?

From what I've read over the years (though I'm far from a loremaster), realizing CHIM is an experience so powerful that it can't be denied; all-consuming. It reminds me of the concept of the Beatific Vision (though I don't believe in it). Someone once wrote that the sight of God is so ineffably powerful that "the saints spend eternity looking at Him".

At the same time, I think it was MK who said CHIM is not the same as Nirvana. You don't lose yourself, AFAIK.

When your zero-summed, your gone. there is a literary work rolling around somehwere on TIL that was "[Transcribed from a spore-dream of an unidentified, evaporating Moth Priest that reached zero sum.] "

http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/sporedream.shtml

I'd say you are confusing the realization (which, I suppose, isn't to hard to make) and the actual state of mind. CHIM is the latter: the strong-mindedness to preserve individuality in the face of its illusionary nature or, if you will, the metaphorical balls to do so. Coming to see cosmic truth and then denying it would rather ironically seem like a prime example of it.

At any rate, though, these questions are of the type that a few philosophers in Tamriel might consider, but as far as we are concerned, they are mostly up to the creator of the character in question. CHIM is a metaphysical ideal, which (as is probably the case with metaphysical goals in our own world) necessarily involves a path of ascendency that cannot be fully put into words. Otherwise, it would be firmly in the realm of the physical, and no longer the prerogative of a few great souls who managed to transcend that realm. In terms of describing it in game, that means we cannot find any clear-cut theoretical guidelines that can answer questions such as yours, because those who have attained CHIM are very few and probably all did it in a way that only works for themselves.

There's a difference between hearing, speculating, and actually KNOWING by experience. You can have a mountain pointed to you on a map. You can perhaps even see the mountain in the distance. But these are very different things from actually going there, and to go their is a conscious decision. I doubt anyone could reach CHIM by accident.

Emphasis mine.

Precisely. To understand CHIM and to deny it just is an affirmation of CHIM. It would be like realizing you were dreaming and saying, no, this is real. Because I say it is.

Ahh! brain-slag!

Well, this next one is for Dumbkid (I really think your name is undeserved, BTW) and Adan, when Vivec CHIMmed, he apparently attained incredible power, because while he seemingly maintained his individuality, he acknowledges that he has none. Dumbkid's post suggests that pretty much anyone who truly figured CHIM out on it's "real" level and denied entirely, thus affirming thier own individual self, has it more than Vivec does. Or something. Blah, not enough coffee to go with my work today.

CHIM isn't a matter of degree. Once understood (and this is a praxis understanding), then both the affirmation and the denial of CHIM constitute affirmations of CHIM. To use the dream anology, if you realized you were dreaming and said "oh, it's just a dream," it would be effectually (insofar as it effects your being-in-the-dream) the same thing as saying "but this is real, because I say it is."