After readling the love letters and monomyth, plus everything posted on this bored if you dont know what CHIM is you're not going to get it... its as simple as that because its not really that hard a concept when thought about.

i'd inquire as to what the point of retaining ones ego at such a level of enlightenment would be other than gaining uber-hax powers. And it's more like those religions than you seem to think.

Its not the same thing because its called CHIM and not Nirvana, Zen, etc. The mere difference in naming shows that; I've heard MK himself say that more than once.

And CHIM is a path to the greatest hack of all, [Z].

Ofc from many perspectives (a name is a real thing) it's not the same - agreed - but it sure as Oblivion borrows .. and why not? That provides a reasonable basis to claim some correspondence. Therefore in other ways it is the same.

Your last bit is a real tease

One question about the loveletter, vivec claims he is one and all, at the same time he says that inside the highest kind of being(CHIM?) there is love for everything and, and it's a means to achieve it.
So when vivec says that one should become a "lover" to avoid the landfall, does that mean one should love vivec to prevent it? Does it work the other way around?

To love Vivec is to love everything. And to love everything is to love Vivec.

All of that is SAVEARLY over complicating it

Vivec is everything and himself. He achieved (or supposedly achieved) CHIM, and because of that, he came to the realization he is everything, but also declared he is also himself at the same time. And so, he became everything, but still maintains that he is also Vivec (yes it's a paradox of sorts, and that's the entire point). So, if Vivec = Vivec = Everything, then by logical deduction, to love Vivec is to love everything, and to love everything is to love Vivec.

Could you elaborate on what MK has said regarding this? Does he give any explanation of how the naming alone affects the meaning of CHIM?
Obviously CHIM is not the same, and a it would seem a bit silly if MK stole the name for his fictional form of enlightenment (although I do have to point out that we have no way of verifying that
CHIM does not exist in rl ) from an established rl religion when there is quite a bit of practical and philosophical difference between his form of enlightenment and those of other religions.
It's not the same thing because it's simply not the same thing.

On another note, to me the notion of achieving CHIM seems quite a bit less enlightened than achieving Zero-sum. I mean, to attain CHIM is not to be the godhead, or everything. Hence why an attainee is still a part of this world. They still allow themselves to be a part of the dream, rather than becoming the dreamer. While this yields practical benfits in the form of continued existence and super powers, it is not true enlightenment, at least in practical terms, and it certainly does not make the attainee one with the godhead, or with the dream. If thought is powerful enought to be the path to acheiving enlightenment, then the continued belief in the self, and thoughts of the self would be powerful enough to prevent somebody from reaching ultimate enlightenment.

Other-way around really. "It the essence needed to hold that 'dawning' together without disaster."

Not that this hasn't been said before, but now it reminds me very much of christianity as with Jesus instead of vivec, it's very similar.

Yes, because to cease to exist is to be enlightened, even the dirty penguins know better than that.


Thoughts of self might be powerful enough to prevent somebody from reaching enlightenment, but its not necessarily so. Besides, you seem to playing off your own definition of enlightenment. If your view of enlightenment is to cease to be part of the world entirely or to simply cease to exist, then yes, CHIM is not enlightenment. That form of 'enlightenment' is boring (and frankly, self-defeating); the good news is that that's not the definition we're using... :hugs:

:turtle:

That's not very surprising. If you look at the historic context of religion, Christianity and Gnosticism have mutually influenced each other. Then again, Gnosticism really got around.

That's what everybody always says. "We of all the Aurbis live on through its fragments, ensnared in the temporal writings and erasures of the acausal whim that he begat by saying "I AM"."
Anybody who can say "I am", though, seems to be to still be very much trapped, and hence un-enlightened, as illustrated in "Eat the Dreamer"
What meaning do those super-powers have in what amounts to a fragment of the shattered mind of a mad god, not even that of the supreme consciousness. "That all the Interplay is one flea of assertion on a wolf of naught".
"drooling (the water from which we dragged ourselves out of to say, mirror-like, autochthonic, automatic, "WE ARE, TOO") on his countless knees, dementia given dimension, dimension dementia... "
While it is the constant maintenance of concentration that maintains CHIM, the concentration only serves to bind the subject to the Tower, and madness.
I know I'm taking this quote out of context, but: "Then will mighty Akatosh reply, wherein the petitioner must be demand full freedom! To speak in the fires of time is to render the speaker a subject of the matron Jills, those servants of the Dragon that mend minutes without volunteer. Only through freedom can true words remain untouched."
CHIM is overrated. "Those spirits that remained, lesser and greater, involuntary or eventual earthbone, surrendered all definite hold on divinity".
"Imagine being able to feel with all of your senses the relentless alien terror that is God and your place in it, which is everywhere and therefore nowhere, and realizing that it means the total dissolution of your individuality into boundless being. Imagine that and then still being able to say "I". The "I" is the Tower."
To me, that sounds like somebody who can't walk beyond existence into freedom.

Edit: maybe a better word for me to use instead of enlightenment would be "transcendence"
I wasn't thinking of it as ceasing to exist in the sense of ceasing to exist as you put it, more actually attaining a real existence, rather than simply being a reflection of the "dementia". Existence without the "I", before the physical Tower as well, infinate potential, everything is everything. How in the hell is that self-defeating! clearly, it is the "I" which is self-defeating. It may be "boring" to you now, but knowledge too is a lie, as is the very notion of "you".
:)

This godhead stuff is weird, why wouldn't it just be an idea? I mean, it's all pointless, it could be anything/anywhere else. Or is it a metaphor?

Yes it is weird, and it is a fun idea to toss around, but for some reason a pathological liar and false god claiming it's true means that... it's all true? I don't get why that makes sense to folks, but other people believing that the entire world is the product of a dreaming schitzo-god doesn't effect my enjoyment of it, so whatever. To each his own personal Rule of Cool.

I'm not sure where to start and I dislike a point by point argument.

Just being able to say I AM is indeed no enlightenment. I AM, is what started everything and by saying I AM, came that which I AM NOT. But this is a lie, there is only I. Realizing this might be enlightenment, once you know it you know the true nature of the world.

But this is dangerous knowledge. When you realize that that there is nothing but boundless being in which that which I AM and that which I AM NOT are the same, that there is nothing outside of I, then being able to say I AM is crucial. It keeps you from dissolving into zero-sum, losing your individuality.

Now I'm not sure what you mean by freedom, but there is nothing outside the Godhead. So you might consider dissolution to be a form of freedom, freedom from existence. Realizing CHIM allows you the freedom of continued existence.

I don't like the term super powers either. It implies you can do something other people can't, but you are those other people, you are everybody, everything. It's all become irrelevant. The only thing left is to finish the story you were creating. Which is the ultimate purpose of our kind of magic.

---

It's not transcendence either. You transcend your mortal bounds and those of the Aurbis but become the Eternal I. There is no way out, there is no out. Scary? Ever tried to get out of your own skull?



Read about Gnosticism or any religion for that matter. It's always about one fundamental question. Why do we exist?

I'll step out on a limb and say that: It would seem to me that the very existence and nature of the dreamsleeve shows the truth of the Godhead.

You have one giant clump of soul-material.
Parts of this soul-material are broken off from the whole, thus creating the "souls" of the creatures of the Aurbis.
When the creatures die (at least, in the case of creatures and persons of Mundus), the soul-parts return and to the originating giant soul-clump.
They are then distilled and purged, melding back seamlessly with the original soul-clump.
And, as new beings enter Mundus, the process repeats.

Now, taken in the context of the Godhead:
The giant soul-clump is a soul itself. In fact, it's the soul. All souls (IIRC) originate from it. Therefore, that soul-clump is God.
The soul-clump, however, is not cognizant or aware. Therefore, God is not aware (affirming that God is a dreamer).
The soul-parts broken off from the whole may appear to be their own. But, just like breaking a piece off of a ball of silly putty, despite the ascetic differences, the piece is still silly putty at the root of things and is still rooted in that whole from whence it came. So too with the soul-pieces; they are still God at the root. The concept of those soul-parts being different souls doesn't apply (affirming that God is schizophrenic, for lack of a better descriptor).

From what I see, that perfectly coincides with the Godhead.

Here's the problem, though. While there are more and more reliable sources for the existence of a Dreamsleeve than for CHIM, there are also reliable sources for other afterlives (I know, "Other afterlives are just ignorant people experiencing the Dreamsleeve as they expect the afterlife to be, etc, etc, but if we don't make that assumption) alongside it. Therefore the neccessarily non-omnicient means of narration for TES would mean that while there is evidence for a Dreamsleeve, it is not a proven fact of the afterlife.

Actually, a couple things to ask there. What source, in-game, obscure text, whatever, says that about the Dreamsleeve, that people who die will experience it however they believe they will? Where did that idea even come from in the first place? Alongside that, how reliable are said sources. what group of characters beleive it, etc., the usual questions these kinds of discussions for whatever baffling reason tend to ignore.

EDIT PS: Just so we're all on the same page, the chances of convincing me that CHIM, the Godhead and the dreamsleeve are true is as low as me convincing the entire forum that they are not. I am in this discussion soleley because, like i said, "it's a fun idea to throw around."

You win prowler. lol. I just don't see how the "godhead" is any more of an individual than anyone else. Sure, our individuality is really part of the godhead, but any existence within the dream is still bound by the dreamer, and the dreamer is still bound to the dream, and the illusion of the dreamers "I".

ok, I know this is totally not supported by anything at all, but suppose that the "seperate" soul clumps are not being recycled into new souls. Rather, the godhead is infinately divided. If the godhead is infinately divided, then for all intents and purposes, no "clump" is used twice to support a form.

On another note, if a being maintains a belief in its individuality, and nothing in the dream ever leaves the dream, then why should that "I" go away? Maybe that little "I" maintains itself, is it is in essence the dreamer itself, and as such experiences an afterlife, because is does not realise that its own seperatedness is an illusion, even after "death".

well, i'll be... shutting up that is since i am wrong, lol. and, no i have not read the Sermons. i tried once... my English must really svck because i failed to understand much of anything there so i gave up.
since Vivec has CHIM, is it not possible that he went back in time and left us the Loveletter in which he told us that the moon will crash into the city as a sign of things to come, almost as if he announced that it was the intention of the universe to crash the moon into the city? seeing how he is a part of the Godhead now, its sound to a plausible notion that he is also responsible for the moon crashing; i mean, since CHIM-ified person IS the universe now(as it was mentioned before), sound like the universe(and Vivec because he is the universe now) is responcible for the moon crashing. the universe did it, and since Vivec is the universe, he did it. so did Talos.

Yes, you are correct there. Hence, "The nature of the soul is not knowable. Every wizard that has attempted it vanishes without a trace."
http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/souls_black_white.shtml. Sound like anything familiar?

The other afterlives are not necessarily different experiences of the dreamsleeve. The Loveletter mentions "reappropriation of spirit towards its aligned AE" - this presumably not the dreamsleeve but rather the soul being redirected upon death towards either Oblivion or Aetherius, an alternative to be recycled. Granted, its been a while since I've thought about it.

[On a random note, it just struck me that "aligned AI" sounds like it refers to the soul being Anuic or Padomaic in nature rather than referring simply to whether the individual happened to worship the Aedra or the Daedra (as seems to be assumed). The etada have Anuic/Padomaic alignements, its only natural that common souls (which are essentially echoes of the etada) would have alignments of the same sort.]

If I remember correctly it came out of discussions concerning that Nord going to Sovngarde in Bloodmoon.

Everything still resides within the godhead, everything is still a subdivision of it. Regardless of whether or not the soul gets recycled its still just another part of the oversoul (and is still inside it).

Read the Altmeri section in http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/monomyth.shtml and notice how everything is just being subdivided, nothing is ever leaving or being formed outside of Anu.

Everybody mantains a belief in their own individuality, its only when their confronted with the fact that their individuality is a lie and still manage to maintain it that they make progress. If they never were faced with that and don't ever realize that illusion then they have no power in the matter.

rather like the process of cell sub-division following conception ...

On another nore I will fess up and admit there is an english word 'chim' - see Mary Poppins

CHIM, CHIMiney, CHIM, CHIMiney, CHIM, CHIM, CHeroo... (technically CHIM rhymes with time)

Now that thats out of the way: CHIM is like an insider joke which can never ever ever be fully explained to the uninformed due to the forums restricting of conversation regarding real world religions...also these topics have been done like 50 kabillion times, but I digress...

To add to the conversation though: I always associate CHIM to the Joker (not Jack Nicholson, or Heath Ledger...epic as they may be) from the DC universe...one day he's just your common "thugging-it-up" criminal in Gotham...til one fateful day, while trying to rob the old Acme chemical plant, a man dressed as a giant bat throws/attempts to save him from a nice chemical bath...bish bam boom we have the Joker...

According to the universe, as they live it, the people percieve the Joker as a sadist madman hellbent on causing strife and destruction...but to the Joker, he's realized something more during that bath: he's trapped in a universe that no matter how many times he's maimed, mangled or outright killed he will ALWAYS come back, in one form or another...having realized the futility of playing "by the rules" he decides to bring about ruin and genocide, just to liven up a boring day...since he now understands there is no real consequences to his actions...none, zip, zero...and the carnage begins...

Now does this realization make him more dangerous? Definitely, even to other villians

Would the people ever believe his tall tale of being trapped in a box? Nope, for that would be madness

So even though no other soul in his entire universe would ever listen to such nonsense the Joker KNOWS he's right and KNOWS that the box is the real deal...but he'll be the only one, forever...even when he directly forth-wall breaks

Now has the Joker achieved CHIM? For his universe, yes...he's woken up from his dreamsleeve and percieves the "world" for what it truly is, and despite his pleas of "Dude, we're in a freaking comic book, look their watching us RIGHT NOW!" everyone just laughs and says "That guys a nut, lol"

If you attempted to tell that to any character in game "OMG we're trapped in a vidya game!" they'd percieve you as the Joker, and probably avoid you at all costs...thats my take on it anyways...



The End