Balefire, Saa, and a Body Swap

[Occams whiskey bottle]

If memory serves me correctly...there is a crossing of balefire streams resulting in the Saa (?) floating around eyes, and a body swap in the epilogue. So how are all three connected. I also assume that the lighting of the pipe is connected with all of this to. Any theories or corrections?

[Sabio]

Saa is a side effect of using the TP, The forsaken had commented that Moridin must of been exclusively  using the TP because of the Saa in his eyes.  People speculate the lighting of the pipe has to do with Rand's connection to the pattern. 

[Goaswerfraiejen]

The balefire crossing allowed the body swap somehow, that's widely agreed upon. It created some kind of close connection between the bodies--perhaps a "thinning" of the Pattern around them, given how they seem to bleed into each other thereafter.

 

The Saa, as Sabio said, as a side-effect of using the True Power. Ishamael's green-flame eyes (and effed up body) might be what happens after thousands of years of using the TP exclusively.

 

Rand has used the TP once before TG, and uses it in enormous quantities (through Moridin) at TG. So his soul gets a fleck, I guess. And since the eyes are the windows to the soul, Moridin's new-souled body gets fresh eyes with the one Saa in them.

 

The pipe lighting is, as Sabio says, a totally separate mystery. Remember, the DO is sealed again: there's no more access to the TP.

[mb]

Like others told, saa comes from use of the True Power.  A later stage of saa is flames in eyes and/or mouth.

 

The event that seems to enable the body swap seems to be Rand's & Moridin's balefires hitting each other.

 

The pipe lighting seems to me that Rand was still taveren.  Rand's taverenness I guess lit the pipe.

 

Rand not able to access the True Power to me seems to be due to Rand not able to channel; not due to the Dark One being sealed.

[damandred]

I would say the pipe was lit, by Rand, by his weaving of the future shadow world. That he wove that future gives him some power to manipulate the pattern, as that possibility became reality.