Sleeping in the Dream World

[TristanWebb]

You can only intersect a skimming gateway by creating a skimming gateway in the exact same spot in the exact same way, otherwise they are alternate "worlds". (And the gholam is dead).

Are you sure? The only quote I can remember is that if you don't make it exactly the same you wouldn't see the other person. If the blackness is as infinite as they think (where you can fall forever) it makes sense that a slight variation would send you to coordinates infininatly far apart from each other. If Mat fell off he would probably fall onto someone else's platform (that just happened to be a giant pillow) pretty quickly.

[Apples First]

 

You can only intersect a skimming gateway by creating a skimming gateway in the exact same spot in the exact same way, otherwise they are alternate "worlds". (And the gholam is dead).

 

Rand did not Skim to Rhuidean from the same point as Asmodean and yet, they had a fight whilst on their respective platforms. Skimming is just leaving the Pattern and travelling across the void to another point, Travelling is the same minus this journey (see Rand's explanation to Egwene. Note, this is only for men; women do it differently and the Gholam fell through a woman's gateway).

 

And why is the Gholam dead? As far as we know, he is immortal and does not need any of the nutrients we need (anyway, if time does not flow outside the Pattern, does he even need food to survive...). So, given his immortality, the endless void, the infiniteness of the Pattern, he certainly has a chance of falling back through.

[Naggash]

You don't need to be in the same location to see another person Skirming, but you do need to make the weaves completely IDENTICAL. If not, the Skirming space is different.

And as far as I know,the gholam needs blood to survive. He survived in the 'Static Room' (again translation from the spanish name, don't know if it's the same in english) because that place is out of the Pattern and nothing affects its inside. At least that's my opinion. So yeah, the possibility of the gholam falling enternaly is there, but I don't think he can get out.

As I said, the waves must be IDENTICAL in many ways. I don't think an AS weaves the same things always EXACTLY the same way, the same curvature, thickness, etc...

[baalsmistress]

So what? Possible?

What do our little Heroes of the Horn do to kill time? They can't sleep? Kind of excruciating don't you think? Around 100 years awake?

 

Nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I wanted to mention that killing time sounds like a really really bad thing for them to be doing, given the context of the eternal struggle between dark and light, and the resolutions desired by each side.

[Naggash]

So what? Possible?

What do our little Heroes of the Horn do to kill time? They can't sleep? Kind of excruciating don't you think? Around 100 years awake?

 

Nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I wanted to mention that killing time sounds like a really really bad thing for them to be doing, given the context of the eternal struggle between dark and light, and the resolutions desired by each side.

Ahahaha, point taken.

[Barid Bel Medar]

Just a little on the Gholam, if still interested.

 

INTERVIEW: Apr, 2003

Budapest Q&A (Verbatim)

 

QUESTION

Are gholam immortal?

 

ROBERT JORDAN

 

No.

QUESTION

Because they were in...a box?

ROBERT JORDAN

Stasis box. A stasis box is an artifact of the Age of Legends, and is in effect an artificial vacuole. Time does not move inside a stasis box. It is a thing devised for storing things that are fragile or that might decay in some way.

QUESTION

So the gholam can die by a natural death?

ROBERT JORDAN

I don’t know if you’d call it a natural death, but yeah, they can decay. You saw what happened with Mat’s medallion—it just fell on the gholam’s cheek and branded it.

QUESTION

But do they die of old age?

 

ROBERT JORDAN

Yeah, they do, but they live a little longer than you’d like them to, let me tell you (laughter)—not as long as an Aes Sedai, but...not as long as an Aes Sedai that hasn’t sworn the Three Oaths, anyway...not as long as a strong Aes Sedai that hasn’t sworn the Three Oaths.

 

INTERVIEW: Nov 16th, 2010

Paris Signing Report - Jonathan B (Paraphrased)

 

JONATHAN B

We discussed the gholam; if someone had pushed it through a gateway, would it have just died?

 

BRANDON SANDERSON

Brandon said that gholam CAN go THROUGH gateways (from one place to another). Gholam are Shadowspawn of a more perfected kind. It would have been way too easy to kill if you just needed to shove it through a gateway (to another place). However, falling through the skimming gateway for a few minutes did kill the gholam and it is really dead and it's not going to show up again. This makes me wonder now if one of Rand/Logain's Deathgates would have killed it but I didn't think to ask at the time

.

[Naggash]

Just a little on the Gholam, if still interested.

 

INTERVIEW: Apr, 2003

Budapest Q&A (Verbatim)

 

QUESTION

Are gholam immortal?

 

ROBERT JORDAN

 

No.

QUESTION

Because they were in...a box?

ROBERT JORDAN

Stasis box. A stasis box is an artifact of the Age of Legends, and is in effect an artificial vacuole. Time does not move inside a stasis box. It is a thing devised for storing things that are fragile or that might decay in some way.

QUESTION

So the gholam can die by a natural death?

ROBERT JORDAN

I don’t know if you’d call it a natural death, but yeah, they can decay. You saw what happened with Mat’s medallion—it just fell on the gholam’s cheek and branded it.

QUESTION

But do they die of old age?

 

ROBERT JORDAN

Yeah, they do, but they live a little longer than you’d like them to, let me tell you (laughter)—not as long as an Aes Sedai, but...not as long as an Aes Sedai that hasn’t sworn the Three Oaths, anyway...not as long as a strong Aes Sedai that hasn’t sworn the Three Oaths.

 

INTERVIEW: Nov 16th, 2010

Paris Signing Report - Jonathan B (Paraphrased)

 

JONATHAN B

We discussed the gholam; if someone had pushed it through a gateway, would it have just died?

 

BRANDON SANDERSON

Brandon said that gholam CAN go THROUGH gateways (from one place to another). Gholam are Shadowspawn of a more perfected kind. It would have been way too easy to kill if you just needed to shove it through a gateway (to another place). However, falling through the skimming gateway for a few minutes did kill the gholam and it is really dead and it's not going to show up again. This makes me wonder now if one of Rand/Logain's Deathgates would have killed it but I didn't think to ask at the time

.

That's exactly what I thought, as I said in my earlier post. Thanks for the prove.

[Apples First]

Ah, well, that clears things up. Thanks.

[Milind Ravindranath]

Please don't kill me for reviving an old thread.

 

I got these same questions about the possibilities of TAR in the flesh too.

 

I would try to approach it this way. Dreams are a time when one can disconnect oneself from the physical real world, and can have (normal) dreams.

 

TAR is the superposition of all worlds that can be/could be/would be/will be/could have been/would have been/might have been/will have been (sorry). It actually makes more sense for going In The Flesh to be the normal way of accessing it. Where did the sleep route come in?

 

It's mostly that while in TAR physical things are at the mercy of dreamwalkers' will, beings are still beings. Not possible to simply will something about a living thing. So beings (in the real world) all are by definition also a part of TAR.

 

When accessing it through sleep, only the mind+soul enters it. The body is left behind. The soul presumably creates a copy of the real body in TAR and keeps it in sync with the real body in the physical world. Thus, effects to the body in TAR (while sleeping) are directly transferred to the real body in the physical world. With this assumption, I'll try to answer some of these questions.

 

• Normal biological functions continue as normal while entering TAR in the flesh. Sleeping normally is fine.
• The dreamspace seems just like TAR in the sense of a dimension where all dreams must take place (except those inside a stedding). Should be possible to dream normally.
• Normal dreams would appear as usual in the dreamspace
• If one enters TAR in the flesh and then sleeps and tries to dreamwalk, one of three things would happen :
•  -- the soul recognizes that the body is already in this realm, and refuses to create a new copy, thus he/she wakes up.
•  -- Usual thing, body remains unresponsive, as there is no mind or soul in it. Possible to see one's own sleeping body in TAR.
•  --  it might be (shadily) possible to "reality walk" in the real world, exactly the opposite of dreamwalking through sleeping.
• If one made a gateway to exit TAR while dreamwalking, either
•  -- soul and mind would exit, and bodiless, will die, causing the body to die too.
• -- the real world will reject a bodiless soul+mind and the dreamwalker simply wakes up

 What do you guys think? reasomable?