Why is Lews Therin Telamon still around?

[Joshua Hendrickson]

At the very beginning of WOT we have the final confrontation between Ishamael and Lews Therin Telamon. When LTT kills himself and thus creates Dragonmount, the description suggests that he used Balefire on himself--and a great whopping huge amount of it as well. Enough, it would seem, not just to eliminate his immediate past but his whole being. If so, why is he still in the Pattern? Was it not Balefire he used? If it was Balefire, but not enough to eradicate him from the Pattern, it should still have wiped out the death of Ilyena. Am I wrong? Did Jordan just not think this through, or am I off base?

[Suttree]

Tom McCormick: Please find out if Lews Therin balefired himself in the prologue in The Eye of the World, or if he just drew too much of the One Power. If it isn't critical to the continuing plot, I'm sure he'll say.

 

RJ: Lews Therin did not use balefire on himself; he simply drew as much of the One Power as he could, then kept on pulling it in.

 

Edit: As a side note even if you are killed with balefire you can still be reborn.

[Elend]

1. It wasn't balefire.

 

2. Balefire doesn't erase from the pattern. It's just that the Dark One has a very small window of time to grab a soul at the time of death. Balefire gets rid of that window, putting the soul back into the normal cycle.

[Southpaw89]

yeah like Suttree said and RJ confirmed, Lews Therin just grabbed and held as much of the power as he could hold and it destroyed him and broke the world

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

and as his work was unfinished, he needed a second coming. or thousandth. i never follow that part well.

[Finnssss22]

When a channeler over draws on the OP enough to actually explode (or implode, depending on hos you want to look at it), its effects are many times more destructive than what they would normally be capable of.

 

The last Queen of Manetheren, Eldrene, did the same after Aemon's death.

[jsbrads]

he did channel lightning into himself, enough to pierce the bedrock (making a big hole) so the outflow of magma created the volcano.

Queen of mantheren was much less powerful, only destroyed the city.

 

Balefire permanently removes someone from the pattern, can't be reborn, they don't exist anymore

[Joshua Hendrickson]

Alright, I can see that I misread the prologue--it's clear that LTT died from an overdose of the One Power, not self-inflicted balefire. Thanks all for clearing that up.

[Finnssss22]

Balefire permanently removes someone from the pattern, can't be reborn, they don't exist anymore

 

No it does not.

It was already mentioned in this very thread by both Elend and Suttree what being Balefired means.

[Suttree]

Balefire permanently removes someone from the pattern, can't be reborn, they don't exist anymore

 

 

The Path of Daggers book tour 21 November 1998, VA - John Novak reporting

 

 

Balefire: If someone is balefired, the Dark One can't reincarnate them. But they CAN be spun back out into the Pattern as normal. Balefire is NOT the eternal death of the soul. He also made a comment to the effect that even in the absence of balefire, there may be circumstances where the Dark One cannot bring someone back. There was a long line, so I didn't press.