Questions about SEELE’s/Gendo’s/Angel’s goals.

[Ghdust]

First, let’s lay out some terminology that confuses me:


Impacts: From my understanding, Impacts occur when an Angel’s DNA/AT-Field/S2-Engine comes into physical contact with a Lilin’s DNA/AT-Field/S2-Engine, which creates an “Anti-AT-Field”? First impact happened because the White Egg and the Black Egg both landed on Earth, Second Impact happened because the DNA of a “donor” “dived” into Adam during the Katsuragi Expedition, and Third Impact happened because Gendo put his Adam embryo-fused hand into Rei’s (a Lilin) breast, who then fused with Lilith.


Angels From my understanding, the Angels are the progeny of Adam who seek to terraform Earth into a planet that is suitable for their species (and unsuitable for humans) by fusing with Adam, who they believe is being kept in Terminal Dogma underneath Japan. What they don’t realize is that Lilith is in the Geofront, not Adam.

Evangelions From my understanding, The Evas are creatures cloned from Adam. (or in Unit-01’s case, Lilith) Their only use is to destroy the Angels, however they can be used as Adam/Lilith substitutes in an Impact event. (More on this later)

The Spears From my understanding, the Spear(s)
of Longinus are just devices that where created by the First Ancestral Race to stop Impacts from happening. For some reason, SEELE gets really angry when Gendo ends up launching one out of Earth’s atmosphere. (More on this in a bit)

SEELE From my understanding, the goal of SEELE is to funnel the souls of mankind into the Adam-Lilith super-being that they intend to create and succeed in creating through the fusing of Angel DNA with Lilin DNA in EOE. They call this process Instrumentality. In order to accomplish this, they need to kill the Angels. (For some reason) Gendo Ikari used to be on board with Instrumentality, until his wife, Yui Ikari, died, and now he just wants to be with her again inside Unit-01.


Gendo Ikari From my understanding, Gendo wants to cause Third Impact using Unit-01 and not Adam and/or Lilith by having Unit-01 consume an S2-Engine from an Angel. Unlike SEELE’s version of Third Impact, Gendo just wants to be with his wife again and does not care about the rest of humanity.


Now this is where I get really confused.


Kaworu/Tabris From my understanding, Kaworu is an Angel, who like the other Angels, believes Adam is buried underneath Japan. The difference between Tabris and the other Angels is that, he has taken the form of a human, and he was sent directly to NERV by SEELE. The reasons for why SEELE sent Kaworu aren’t clear to me, it is apparent that he is there to “punish” Gendo for giving Unit-01 an S2-Engine and putting the Spear on the moon in some way, and that SEELE seemingly wants him to fuse with Lilith. (Who he thinks is Adam)


So here are my questions.

Why doesn’t SEELE just let the Angels fuse with Lilith? Since the Seed Of Life in Terminal Dogma is Lilith instead of Adam, shouldn’t their version of Third Impact also result in Instrumentality and not an Angel-dominated world?

If an Angel fusing with Lilith also results in an Angel dominated world, then why did SEELE send Kaworu? Did they send him just so that he could get killed because all the Angels need to die? But if that’s the case...

Why did SEELE go through all the trouble of putting Tabris into a human body? If Tabris just needed to be killed like all the other Angels, then why didn’t SEELE just kill him when he was created in 2000? Why go through all the trouble of sending him to NERV fifteen years later?

Why didn’t Instrumentality start in Second Impact? All the necessary (I think) pieces were there, Angel DNA and Lilin DNA. Did Adam’s Spear stop the Impact midway through or something?

Why are the Spears important to SEELE at all? If the function of the Spears is to stop Impacts, shouldn’t SEELE want them as far away from the process of Instrumentality as possible? Why do they get mad when Gendo accidentally puts one on the Moon? Why are they happy when it comes back in EOE? Do the Spears have another purpose also related to Impacts?

Would Gendo’s planned version of Third Impact also result in humanity’s physical forms being reduced to LCL? Or would it be like Yui’s contact experiment where only his soul gets absorbed into Unit-01?


What is the purpose of the Mass-Production Evas? In EOE, their S2-Engines start “harmonizing/resonating” with each other, with causes an “Anti-AT Field” to be generated, which seemingly also causes Third Impact in addition to Rei-Adam fusing with Lilith down in Terminal Dogma. I thought Impacts/Anti-AT-Fields were caused when an Angel’s DNA/AT-Field/S2-Engine comes into physical contact with a Lilin’s DNA/AT-Field/S2-Engine.

What actually caused Third Impact in EOE? Was it the MP Evas or Gendo/Adam, Rei, and Lilith?


Thanks in advance.

[Derantor]

You should read this thread, which deals with similar topics.

To the extent of my knowledge, so, take it with a grain of salt:

Impacts: You got that right, except for the Anti-AT-Field part; that's only known to happen at Third Impact, maybe Second, and no information is available for the First.

Evas: Defeating angels is not their only use, and not even their only intended use, afaik.

Spears: Their original purpose and their full abilities are not clear.

SEELE: Intend to create a singular combined being, eliminating the inherent flaws and shortcomings of seperate souls by merging them all together. What exactly that being will become is unclear. Instrumentality was proposed by Gendo AFTER Yui died - SEELE did not come up with it.

Gendo: His plan is equally unclear. Going by the most basic information shown on screen, he intends to use Rei, and given the proximity to Lilith, her as well.

Kaworu: See thread linked above.

Why doesn’t SEELE just let the Angels fuse with Lilith?
Because they then have no means to control the outcome at all. For the other two questions, see the thread linked above.

Why didn’t Instrumentality start in Second Impact?
Because Instrumentality is not a consequence of an Impact. It has to be initiated, otherwise there would be no need to go through all the trouble Gendo/SEELE went through.

Why are the Spears important to SEELE at all?
Because they allow control over a Seed (Adam/Lilith) and have many uses, not only stopping an Impact.

What is the purpose of the Mass-Production Evas?
As far as I can tell, control over the vessel for Third Impact (whether that is Adam, Lilith or Unit 01).

What actually caused Third Impact in EOE? Was it the MP Evas or Gendo/Adam, Rei, and Lilith?
Difficult question, my guess is Rei/Lilith. As soon as she emerges, SEELE seems to lose control over anything. Rei triggers Third Impact as soon as Shinji says "Everybody should die" - in this case, the Impact takes the form of Instrumentality. Everything else was just preparation (breaking Shinji's Ego, awakening Unit 01, merging the fruits, etc.).

[Reichu]

Third Impact actually begins around the moment Eva-01 and the MP Evas start generating the Sephirotic Tree of Life and we're told that the data matches Second Impact. What Lilith initiates later when Shinji gives her "permission" to kill everybody is Human Instrumentality -- something made possible by the Impact conditions.

[Archer]

I was under the impression that Third Impact was initiated when Rei chomped Gendou’s hand and then fused with the Lilith body, thereby uniting Adam and Lilith and birthing a god. Two other “kinds” of Third Impact could possibly have happened: an angel reaching Adam would have wiped out all Lilith-based life and turned Earth into an Angel planet, while an angel reaching Lilith would have caused... we don’t know, but based on what Kaworu says it would have resulted in humanity’s demise.

Instrumentality, on the other hand, merely uses Third Impact (or rather, the existence of an Adam/Lilith fusion) as a prerequisite, and still needs a ritual to be performed by the MP evas using the replica Spears in order to create the Tree of Life. I don’t think it’s ever clarified what the Tree of Life actually does, but my theory is that it’s what enables GNR to actually combine all the human souls into the Black Moon by “opening the Doors of Guf”. It may also be what “powers up” GNR’s anti-AT field to cover the entire world. Had the conditions for Instrumentality not been met, we probably would have just gotten a repeat of Second Impact, where the resultant anti-AT field simply wiped out all life within its radius without the whole “collecting and merging souls” business.

While we know that Gendou wanted to reunite with Yui, what his actual plan entailed (and what “reuniting with Yui” specifically means) was not clear. My best guess is he wanted to merge his own soul into Unit-01 using GNR, because this would put him in direct conflict of Seele’s plan of using Unit-01 as a component in their instrumentality ritual.

[StrokeMeGoat]

The forbidden fusion of Adam and Lilith is capable of causing an impact, but doesn't appear to guarantee it (it seems like it's up to Rei?, who in this case leaves the choice up to Shinji). The MP Evas marking Unit-01 with the Holy Stigmata (creating makeshift Doors of Guf) and collectively forming the Sephirotic Tree of Life while having their AT fields resonate to generate an Anti-AT Field is enough to cause an impact in itself. I'm not sure about this by any means, but I think without the true Spear of Longinus, all that could happen is the Anti-AT Field would encompass the entire planet, dissolving Lilin life into LCL and freeing their souls, which would be absorbed Unit-01's Chamber of Guf through the Doors of Guf/Holy Stigmata on its hands.

That, or at the very least all forms of Lilin life would be "peacefully purified" through "indiscriminate death". If the Lilin wound up in Unit-01, they would all become a single super being.... not quite a giant sea of LCL like it appears they actually want, but it's a similar result. SEELE say that they don't wish to use Unit-01 as an Ark to escape the effects of Third Impact, but whether that means they don't want to use it as a temporary Ark or they don't want to be assimilated into Unit-01 period I can't tell. They do say they don't wish to create a new God, they're trying to kill God. That was likely in direct reference of Unit-01 coming to possess the FoL and FoK though, so I don't know if that includes creating a God out of Unit-01 that all of humanity becomes a part of or what.

The return of the Spear of Longinus results in the literal Tree of Life, which in Judaic lore is the source of all souls that ever or will ever exist. Fyut states that by possessing the FoK, the FoL, and by fusing with the Spear, Unit-01 becomes the Tree of Life and is therefore God. He might just mean that metaphorically, but considering SEELE have already remarked that it was not their desire to create a new God when Unit-01 absorbs an S2 engine, meaning Unit-01 is already considered a God. So, to make it a point of saying Unit-01 becomes God (and not a God like SEELE calls Unit-01 after taking in the S2 Engine, but God), I take it to mean that Unit-01 as the Tree of Life is now more or less on equal footing in God-hood as GNR through the fusion of Adam and Lilith is.

So, the reason that SEELE is so pleased when the Spear suddenly returns and they exclaim that their plans will now be realized, it seems that now they aren't having to settle with all of the Lilin being destroyed in a mass extinction event or being assimilated into Unit-01 as an individual super being (again, don't know which they intended for before the Spear returns). Instead, Unit-01 can, on its own without the aid of GNR (since GNR doesn't exist yet, at least to their knowledge) carry out Human Instrumentality as was originally intended. Rather than just all die or become a new super being, they complement each others flaws and experience a return to primordial nothingness where individual personalities, or even any personalities/individuality exist (if they were all absorbed into Unit-01, Unit-01 would still have a form of individuality/person(god)hood. The only reason Shinji and Rei retain their individuality in the sea of LCL is because Rei desires to carry out Shinji's desires, and he isn't satisfied with his original decision.

Even though Unit-01 as the Tree of Life could likely carry out HIP on its own, GNR takes care of that herself. On second thought, Unit-01 Tree of Life probably isn't on the same level of Godhood as Adam and Lilith (I guess just because they're both seeds, because otherwise it's just a combination of both fruits which Unit-01 already has plus the Spear), which would explain why GNR chooses to carry out HIP herself, so that an undo would be possible. That, or she is aware of the fact that to undo something like HIP requires the death of the God that carried HIP out, and so performs HIP herself so that if Shinji wants to undo Instrumentality, he and the rest of humanity that would be within the Tree of Life wouldn't all be shit out of luck (because the only alternative to the end result of HIP is actual death).