Cthulhu Mythos: Removing Nonduality/Transduality

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

This thread is part of our ongoing project to revise nonduality, which was recently revamped from transduality.

I took a look at our justifications for the Ultimate Gods from this verse, and nothing about them screams "nonduality" in any way whatsoever.

Transduality (Type 3. exists in the Ultimate Void[4][1], a truly infinite realm beyond everything else below it, with the ultimate gods being qualitatively superior to and unaffected by the happenings within reality[5])

Merely transcending reality, even to a High 1-A or Tier 0 extent, isn't remotely enough justification for such an exotic ability as nonduality, which requires at least some mention of binary systems, opposites, or some such. As such, nonduality/transduality should be entirely removed from all Cthulhu Mythos profiles.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

@Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @Planck69 @Emirp sumitpo

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

This thread is part of our ongoing project to revise nonduality, which was recently revamped from transduality.

I took a look at our justifications for the Ultimate Gods from this verse, and nothing about them screams "nonduality" in any way whatsoever.

Merely transcending reality, even to a High 1-A or Tier 0 extent, isn't remotely enough justification for such an exotic ability as nonduality, which requires at least some mention of binary systems, opposites, or some such. As such, nonduality/transduality should be entirely removed from all Cthulhu Mythos profiles.

agree with this. While transcending everything in reality CAN mean superiority with further context, there usually should be an explicit statement

 

[Aseka]

This thread is part of our ongoing project to revise nonduality, which was recently revamped from transduality.

I took a look at our justifications for the Ultimate Gods from this verse, and nothing about them screams "nonduality" in any way whatsoever.

Merely transcending reality, even to a High 1-A or Tier 0 extent, isn't remotely enough justification for such an exotic ability as nonduality, which requires at least some mention of binary systems, opposites, or some such. As such, nonduality/transduality should be entirely removed from all Cthulhu Mythos profiles.

Yeah, they should mention the specific logical states they need to transcend.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Oh Jesus that's awful.

Anyway: Cthulhu Mythos should still have Transduality, but indeed not because of the reasons given in the profiles, which are quite terrible. So:

“The man of Truth is beyond good and evil,” intoned a voice that was not a voice. “The man of Truth has ridden to All-Is-One. The man of Truth has learnt that Illusion is the only reality, and that substance is an impostor.”

And then, suddenly, he felt a greater terror than that which any of the Forms could give—a terror from which he could not flee because it was connected with himself. Even the First Gateway had taken something of stability from him, leaving him uncertain about his bodily form and about his relationship to the mistily defined objects around him, but it had not disturbed his sense of unity. He had still been Randolph Carter, a fixed point in the dimensional seething. Now, beyond the Ultimate Gateway, he realised in a moment of consuming fright that he was not one person, but many persons.
He was in many places at the same time. On earth, on October 7, 1883, a little boy named Randolph Carter was leaving the Snake-Den in the hushed evening light and running down the rocky slope and through the twisted-boughed orchard toward his Uncle Christopher’s house in the hills beyond Arkham—yet at that same moment, which was also somehow in the earthly year of 1928, a vague shadow not less Randolph Carter was sitting on a pedestal among the Ancient Ones in earth’s trans-dimensional extension. Here, too, was a third Randolph Carter in the unknown and formless cosmic abyss beyond the Ultimate Gate. And elsewhere, in a chaos of scenes whose infinite multiplicity and monstrous diversity brought him close to the brink of madness, were a limitless confusion of beings which he knew were as much himself as the local manifestation now beyond the Ultimate Gate.
There were “Carters” in settings belonging to every known and suspected age of earth’s history, and to remoter ages of earthly entity transcending knowledge, suspicion, and credibility. “Carters” of forms both human and non-human, vertebrate and invertebrate, conscious and mindless, animal and vegetable. And more, there were “Carters” having nothing in common with earthly life, but moving outrageously amidst backgrounds of other planets and systems and galaxies and cosmic continua. Spores of eternal life drifting from world to world, universe to universe, yet all equally himself. Some of the glimpses recalled dreams—both faint and vivid, single and persistent—which he had had through the long years since he first began to dream, and a few possessed a haunting, fascinating, and almost horrible familiarity which no earthly logic could explain.
Faced with this realisation, Randolph Carter reeled in the clutch of supreme horror—horror such as had not been hinted even at the climax of that hideous night when two had ventured into an ancient and abhorred necropolis under a waning moon and only one had emerged. No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity. Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion; but to be aware of existence and yet to know that one is no longer a definite being distinguished from other beings—that one no longer has a self—that is the nameless summit of agony and dread.

In the face of that awful wonder, the quasi-Carter forgot the horror of destroyed individuality. It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional all these conceptions are.

Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously.
These revelations came with a godlike solemnity which left Carter unable to doubt. Even though they lay almost beyond his comprehension, he felt that they must be true in the light of that final cosmic reality which belies all local perspectives and narrow partial views; and he was familiar enough with profound speculations to be free from the bondage of local and partial conceptions. Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith in the unreality of the local and partial?
After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But the entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance with their will.

In summary, the highest level of reality is one single totality that "belies all local perspectives and partial views" and exists as an "All-in-One and One-in-All." This is to say that all the seeming multiplicity of the cosmos is illusory ("Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith in the unreality of the local and partial?") and everything is in truth the manifestation of a single wholeness where everything pre-exists in unified fashion.

Mind you, this "All-is-One" isn't just a state of which everything is a part, or a literal fraction (In the same way your arm or your leg is a part of your body), since it is is non-spatial in nature and thus isn't a physical thing that can be divided into smaller parts (As division of a body implies measure and therefore dimension, which contradicts the text). It's abstract, instead, and so the "All-in-One"ness is to be interpreted as similarly abstract. So, if all differentiation is abolished at this level, and everything is made identical, then obviously, doubles and triples and etc. can't exist in it. So it is very much nondualistic.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Oh Jesus that's awful.

Anyway: Cthulhu Mythos should still have Transduality, but indeed not because of the reasons given in the profiles, which are quite terrible. So:









In summary, the highest level of reality is one single totality that "belies all local perspectives and partial views" and exists as an "All-in-One and One-in-All." This is to say that all the seeming multiplicity of the cosmos is illusory ("Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith in the unreality of the local and partial?") and everything is in truth the manifestation of a single wholeness where everything pre-exists in unified fashion.

Mind you, this "All-is-One" isn't just a state of which everything is a part, or a literal fraction (In the same way your arm or your leg is a part of your body), since it is is non-spatial in nature and thus isn't a physical thing that can be divided into smaller parts (As division of a body implies measure and therefore dimension, which contradicts the text). It's abstract, instead, and so the "All-in-One"ness is to be interpreted as similarly abstract. So, if all differentiation is abolished at this level, and everything is made identical, then obviously, doubles and triples and etc. can't exist in it. So it is very much nondualistic.

Okay, fine. Which nature and which aspect?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Okay, fine. Which nature and which aspect?

2, for both.

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

2, for both.

l + ratio + that seems fine

 

[Planck69]

Ultima makes sense.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Given how Ultima's explained away the problem as the justifications being improper, this doesn't need to abide by the 48-hour rule and can be closed; I'll apply the changes.

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

Given how Ultima's explained away the problem as the justifications being improper, this doesn't need to abide by the 48-hour rule and can be closed; I'll apply the changes.

also change td type 3 to td type 2

 

[Hjxdvd]

2, for both.

Wouldn't it be Type 2, Aspect 3???

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Wouldn't it be Type 2, Aspect 3???

Actually, let's ask him about that.
@Ultima_Reality Given how the Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth transcend the other Ultimate Gods, should they have different Nonduality?

 

[AlexZiggy]

Now there was neither cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear consciousness of the way in which he received them.

This is from TtGotSK aswell, and it's when Carter crosses into the area beyond the First Gate. Would this give the Ancient Ones some flavor of nonduality aswell?

 

[Elizhaa]

Actually, let's ask him about that.
@Ultima_Reality Given how the Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth transcend the other Ultimate Gods, should they have different Nonduality?

It should be.
Their Type 3 was also outdated; it was a time where type 3 was basically type 2 transduality, but for 1-A or higher. Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth had type 4, which was basically the past type 3 transduality but for 1-A or higher.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

It should be.
Their Type 3 was also outdated; it was a time where type 3 was basically type 2 transduality, but for 1-A or higher. Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth had type 4, which was basically the past type 3 transduality but for 1-A or higher.

The Ultimate Gods will have Nature 2, Aspect 2 nonduality. Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth are part of the Supreme Archetype, which transcends even the other Ultimate Gods, so I'm asking if they should have Aspect 3 instead for that. Also, should Yog-Sothoth's Ancient Ones key have some flavor of nonduality too?

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

The Ultimate Gods will have Nature 2, Aspect 2 nonduality. Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth are part of the Supreme Archetype, which transcends even the other Ultimate Gods, so I'm asking if they should have Aspect 3 instead for that. Also, should Yog-Sothoth's Ancient Ones key have some flavor of nonduality too?

@Ultima_Reality

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

@Ultima_Reality

not that experienced with the mythos, but does being part of the supreme archetype grant an additional true/false state?

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

not familiar with the mythos, but does being part of the supreme archetype grant an additional true/false state?

Not explicitly, but I'm asking because the Supreme Archetype transcends the Ultimate Void by at least as much relative to the planes in question as the latter does to the regular worlds.

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

Not explicitly, but I'm asking because the Supreme Archetype transcends the Ultimate Void by at least as much relative to the planes in question as the latter does to the regular worlds.

well qualitative superiority on its own cannot grant type 3

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

well qualitative superiority on its own cannot grant type 3

Except that's literally what it's been shown to do with a bunch of other verses. For example, Eternity from Marvel Comics has Type 3 for transcending the In-Betweener, who has Type 2. SCP-001 (S Andrew Swann's Proposal) has Type 3 for transcending the Type 2 Noosphere.

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

Except that's literally what it's been shown to do with a bunch of other verses. For example, Eternity from Marvel Comics has Type 3 for transcending the In-Betweener, who has Type 2. SCP-001 (S Andrew Swann's Proposal) has Type 3 for transcending the Type 2 Noosphere.

i believe there used to be a standard where td type 3 could just be td type 2 at the 1-a level. the current td standard does not have this. Those pages p&a sections could just be relatively unchanged from that time

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

i believe there used to be a standard where td type 3 could just be td type 2 at the 1-a level. the current td standard does not have this. Those pages could just be relatively unchanged from that time

Eternity literally got Type 3 in Ultima's still-ongoing Marvel revisions that started in May, while the 1-A ND category got removed long ago.

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

Eternity literally got Type 3 in Ultima's still-ongoing Marvel revisions that started in May, while the 1-A ND category got removed long ago.

there's probably context im missing here, which is likely, since i do not interact with either marvel or scp scaling, but run of the mill qs does not grant type 3, unless there's a many-valued logic system ( 5 or more t/f states).

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

there's probably context im missing here, which is likely, since i do not interact with either marvel or scp scaling, but run of the mill qs does not grant type 3, unless there's a many-valued logic system ( 5 or more t/f states).

You don't need to explicitly mention many-valued logic for Type 3. This is Eternity's justification:

Nonduality (Nature 2, Aspect 3; Transcends the In-Betweener, an inner function of himself that personifies the barrier and division between dichotomies,[22][23] being "a concept of concepts"[24] and "walking the path between all worlds, all concepts,"[25] simultaneously the union of all polarities and something that stands exempt from them)

 

[BasedNecoScaler69]

You don't need to explicitly mention many-valued logic for Type 3. This is Eternity's justification:

if thats the case, type 3 seems fine then, after looking through the scans

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

if thats the case, type 3 seems fine then

I'm not sure, so I need Ultima to clarify.

 

[Hjxdvd]

This is from TtGotSK aswell, and it's when Carter crosses into the area beyond the First Gate. Would this give the Ancient Ones some flavor of nonduality aswell?

^

Outer Gods should have aspect Type 3 solely because of this.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

^

Outer Gods should have aspect Type 3 solely because of this.

Not helpful.
@Ultima_Reality

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Actually, let's ask him about that.
@Ultima_Reality Given how the Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth transcend the other Ultimate Gods, should they have different Nonduality?

They don't really transcend the nondual state of the Ultimate Gods, so I wouldn't say so. They all participate in the oneness, I would say, even if the Supreme Archetype is greater than the Archetypes.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

They don't really transcend the nondual state of the Ultimate Gods, so I wouldn't say so. They all participate in the oneness, I would say, even if the Supreme Archetype is greater than the Archetypes.

1. In your Marvel revisions, why did you give the Omniversal Abstracts Type 3 nonduality for transcending the In-Betweener?
2. Given this quote from TTGOTSK about the Outer Extension, would Yog-Sothoth's Ancient Ones key have nonduality as well, and if so, how would that affect the Ultimate Gods?

Now there was neither cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear consciousness of the way in which he received them.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

In your Marvel revisions, why did you give the Omniversal Abstracts Type 3 nonduality for transcending the In-Betweener?

Because the In-Betweener isn't really something that simply participates in a dualistic state of existence. Instead, he is that very state. And thus transcending him is transcending the state. Further: Though he is the meeting point of all dichotomies, he is simultaneously none of them (Hence his name), and so this is why transcending him is Type 3, which is the type for things that transcend both dual and nondual states.

Given this quote from TTGOTSK about the Outer Extension, would Yog-Sothoth's Ancient Ones key have nonduality as well, and if so, how would that affect the Ultimate Gods?

I consider this too vague to rate as anything, personally. At best I'd take it to referring to the strange state of perception that one attains when in these realms, hence the narration immediately beginning to talk about how perception works there.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Because the In-Betweener isn't really something that simply participates in a dualistic state of existence. Instead, he is that very state. And thus transcending him is transcending the state. Further: Though he is the meeting point of all dichotomies, he is simultaneously none of them (Hence his name), and so this is why transcending him is Type 3, which is the type for things that transcend both dual and nondual states.


I consider this too vague to rate as anything, personally. At best I'd take it to referring to the strange state of perception that one attains when in these realms, hence the narration immediately beginning to talk about how perception works there.

Okay. You've answered all my questions, so I'll just apply this now, and you can close this thread.