(urth) On dream travelers

[James Wynn]

>> No. They are not merely corporeal bodies. They are a lighter. They don't
>> need food. But the DO have blood! The Rajan bleeds. The inhumi attack
>> him for his blood. They die from physical harm.
> Yes, the spirit body dies -- it happened to Rigoglio and some mercenaries.
> But back in the real world, on Blue, only their spirits had died. As I
> cited, Silkhorn said during dream travel, "We are spirits here." The bodies
> of spirit travelers are spiritual.
>
> Severian could tell that Silkhorn wasn't afraid to be locked in a cell in
> the Tower, and wondered why. Silkhorn responded: "Because I'm not really
> here." (RTTW, 263)

A. Yes, but his meaning is not as simple as that, as is obvious in the 
fact that an astral body can bleed to death. When the Rajan said he 
wasn't afraid because "I'm not really here", the following conversation 
takes place:

    [Severian]: "That judge is afraid."

    [Rajan]: "He doesn't know, you see. [...] Or if he does by this
    time, he may be afraid that my daughter and I will leave him here.
    As we might."

In the same paragraph that the Rajan says they "aren't really here" he 
speaks of "leaving" Judge Hamer "here".

Pure spirit cannot die.

On the other hand, let me posit something that I believe is close to 
accurate. Dream-travel involves the formation of an astral body for the 
soul of the traveler. This body is created along the same principles as 
the creations of the weapons and astral-Hide.
During astral travel, the link between the traveler's soul and his 
corporeal body is the astral body. If the astral body dies, the soul 
cannot return to the corporeal body.
The link between the Rajan's astral body  (or other Neighbor's since I 
suppose it is his Neighbor part that gives the Rajan his special 
abilities)  and his corporeal body is an inhumi.
The link between normal human dream-travelers and the inhumi is the Rajan.



> You mean the sleeping body of the dreamer? That's a different situation from
> what I said. I am saying that the astral body could not live for long
> without being powered by something. The mercenaries Silkhorn took to Green
> to exterminate the inhumi in the City of the Inhumi ate rations they had
> carried with them, yet we are told that dream travelers have no digestive
> tracts. Obviously eating those rations could not have provided any
> sustenance. Maybe it constituted comfort food.

B. But I don't see any evidence that the dream-travelers /need/ 
sustenance from _any_ apparent source. As you say they don't eat. 
Perhaps they received sustenance from some other involuntary method. 
Since the astral bodies can receive harm, even bleed to death, I suppose 
they probably age as well. Do we have any evidence that they can 
successfully heal? The only limitation on their time in dream travel 
seems to be the ability of the *corporeal body* to survive without care. 
This is a problem for humans.

But what if the bodies of the Neighbors are not so limited. If Green Man 
were in dream-travel, and you put him on an IV for fluids, would there 
be any limit to how long he could remain there? What if Lemur were in 
soul travel?

In fact, I suspect that is the case for the Neighbors. I believe that 
the corporeal bodies of the Neighbors are tree-like. Not that every tree 
on Blue needs to be a Neighbor (although they might be in some sense). 
So they can sleep and remain in dream-travel as long as their astral 
bodies lived (assuming their astral life-span is shorter than their 
corporeal life span). If a Neighbor's astral body dies, his corporeal 
body can continue to live...even reproduce. But he has lost his 
Sentience, because the link to his soul has been lost.

Seeing the Neighbors as a kind of Dryad further develops their nominal 
connection to fairies.


> You must be thinking of Fava, since she is the only example in this
> category. She seems to have gone on living in or on some sort of spiritual
> plain, because she was able to maintain contact with Mora through Mora's
> dreams and seemed to be able to possess and speak through Vadsig.

C. It's encouraging that we agree on this point.

> I don't know what that last sentence is supposed to mean, but solid bodies
> cannot walk through the Curtain wall as Silkhorn and Hoof did. Ghosts and
> spirits are reputed to be able to do that sort of thing.

D. Yes, certain solid bodies most evidently can. The astral bodies are 
solid. They have mass. They can be damaged by physical objects and when 
they are, they bleed. So they have blood. Presumably they have blood 
vessels. If you doubt they are solid, then I would really like to know 
how you rectify these facts?

Since any physical object is mostly empty space. It is not beyond 
conception that solid entities _could_ do what astral entities can under 
specific configurations.


> I guess so. Hoof wrote of Juganu, after they returned from a brief astral
> warp to Urth: "He said it was what he was in his heart, that the blond man
> on the deck of the big boat was the real Juganu, the man he was in dreams."
> (RTTW, 349)

E. I'm not sure this is the same as saying "The stated reason that the 
inhumi are just as real as humans during spirit travel is that their 
spirit bodies are manifestations of how they perceive themselves to be 
in their hearts or souls". This describes how Tartaros _claims_ the 
images of the Whorl gods are formed. But the quote you are offering does 
not describe this process. It _could_ be compatible with it, I guess. 
But it is not, in itself, the same thing.

> I still maintain that natural laws cannot be ignored, at least not by
> humans. Anyway, after Silkhorn and Fava warped to Green, then from Green to
> the Duko's palace in  Soldo and back to Green, Silkhorn wondered
> parenthetically: "(Why did not the Duko accompany us? And was he shot, and
> what was the result of that shot, a visionary slug fired by an unreal
> trooper from an equally chimerical slug gun.)" (IGJ, 221) Mind the
> adjectives.
>
> When Captain Sfido remained loyal to the Duko during that warp to Green, his
> needler was taken from him and used in the fight against the inhumi, yet
> when the group finally returned to Blue the needler was back with him (IGJ,
> 230). What happened to the needler taken from him on Green? When the mercs
> got back to Blue after fighting all those inhumi in the City on Green, were
> they missing any of the slugs they had fired on Green? I don't think so.

F. See my explanation at point (A). The bodies in astral travel are not 
merely "visionary" in the sense you seem to be using it. Nor are their 
slug guns, as evident by their ability to kill corporeal people and by 
the astral traveler's ability to be killed by corporeal weapons. The 
Rajan's speculation makes that clear.

>> I disagree. It is not possible that physical weapons would harm a pure
>> spirit. The spirits in astral travel assume NEW bodies during that
>> period that operate according alternate unexplained physical laws.
> Rigoglio's spirit was sure as hell harmed. The spirit body is linked to the
> natural body; why else were Rigoglio's hands still tied when he got to Urth?
> Some of the mercenaries from Soldo died and were buried on Green but were
> alive and mindless on Blue.
> When Jahlee's astral self got stranded on Green, Silkhorn was able to go
> back and get her because her body still lived on Blue. After Fava's body
> died on Blue, he was apparently unable to go back to Green to see her astral
> self, but he was able to speak to her through Vadsig and Mora's dreams on
> Blue.

G. So what are you arguing here?

u+16b9
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