A Model of the Godhead and its Contents - Addendum I: The Dreamsleeve, Oceans, and Hermaeus Mora
This minor addendum (and any future addenda) to the previous parts is only written to connect the dots between a few ideas and shore up my cosmological model with new information. If you haven't read the previous parts, this might not make any sense to you whatsoever!
In Part III, I described the Dreamsleeve in the following way:
> The Dreamsleeve, all the parts of the Godhead that aren't Amaranths, is the infinite river of data. It contains and transmits all information, all possible things, all possible ideas. But it's incoherent. It's jumbled, almost impossible to parse, indistinguishable from random noise, and so, despite being utterly full of stimuli, it provides the sensory deprivation necessary for an Amaranth to start up a Dream. It's like a white noise machine.
And regarding the controversial "soul recycling" aspect of the Dreamsleeve, I said this:
> I think it's as simple as the Dreamsleeve being the place where all information comes from, including the information that makes up an identity. It doesn't recycle a soul as a whole so much as take in the information of an identity, which gets lost, absorbed, in the random noise. Its elements may get used again, shuffled in with others, when another identity is pulled from the noise by Anu, or another Amaranth.
> ---
> The following from Part III's comments, in response to /u/Mdnthrvst's skeptical comment: An identity being constructed from the noise of the Dreamsleeve fits with its description as a map of all mortal minds (in that said map is contained within the noise), though I can't for the life of me recall where that description came from either. So the question can also just be phrased as what Anu pulls from the Dreamsleeve. Even if the identity doesn't return to the noise, the noise is infinite and random, so recycling isn't necessary at all.
So, whether the Dreamsleeve recycles or does not, I think the AE comes from and returns to it in some fashion.
Next up, a running theme from this series is the symbolism of parts of the Aurbis matched up with greater metaphysical principles of the Godhead:
> What's across the Godhead from Anu? Other Amaranths. What's across Oblivion from Mundus? Other realms, the Princes. What's across the oceans from Tamriel? Other continents.
Finally, in a recent thread, there has been a lot of discussion about Hermaeus Mora, the oceans, and mortal memories. If, as the Mora worshiper in that screencap says, all mortal memories go into the water, then that implies a connection with the Dreamsleeve.
I'll posit the following to thread these all together: The oceans of Nirn, as discussed before, are symbols of the Dreamsleeve. In the same way that Amaranths might provide access to each other through the symbolism of continents, oceans and other bodies of water might provide access to the Dreamsleeve through their own symbolism. Mortal AE might pass through the oceans to join up with the infofoam of the Dreamsleeve; perhaps they even leave imprints of themselves in this process, memories, which might be called up again from the depths. (I'm reminded here of the holographic theory of black holes and the information they consume.)
And it's especially fitting that Hermaeus Mora be a sea-god, in light of this. The Dreamsleeve contains all possible information, roiling about in an incoherent mess (according to me, anyway). The oceans contain all mortal memories, perhaps churning about in the depths. Mora contains an infinite library, impossible to navigate, with unlabeled books and snippets of sense lost without the context required to decode them.
So, once again I fall on the side of symbolism rather than literal interpretation with this new information. The oceans are still the oceans, but, through their symbolic nature, they can serve as gateways to higher-order concepts, such as the Dreamsleeve, Oblivion in general, or Mora in particular. It all depends on how you interpret them, and whether you have the mastery or inherent nature required to feel the connections.
(I would tentatively venture that this also implies that Oblivion is indeed infinite in variation, with realms and spirits, both lesser and greater, that no finite mortal has ever encountered or heard of. They'd be off doing their own things, without a care in the Aurbis for Nirn and its affairs. Oblivion politics indeed, Haskill.)