This is a theory about how Rand's and LTT's personalities are related, so that LTT is as real as Rand's one, and they are equally real for the one Rand/LTT soul. For to acchieve that, this theory developes a basic explanation of how souls relate to personalities.

Acknowledgements:

I have to express my special thanks to Isabel, who's "LTT is real" faction gave me the initial impuls and motivation to develop that theory, and to Callandor, who's theories concerning Rand-LTT connection, I used as a base of my own argumentation (in spite of Callandor's theory was actually used for arguing for the concurrent statement of "LTT is Rand's construct").

The first of Calalndor's idea's I use here is, that there are barriers between the memories from the different lives of a soul, so that in normal case an incarnated soul cannot have any access to anything related to it's past lives, and the incarnated personality is situated in something like a jar, dividing it from all the other life experience from other lives, assotiated with the same soul; but the Taint on saidin corrodes this barrier between personalities, and a partian interchange of memories occurs to channelers. The another Callandor's idea, I make usage from is, that the cybernetical term of "black box" can be used to explain how the taint-affected channelers do with the memories from past lives happenning to them. So, a living sentient being has any kind of experience, whatever origin this experience has, as just the same kind of input, and as result of this experience processing a personality developes.

part 1: Normal Personality to Soul connection

I'll begin with a quote from an interview, where Jordan gives the most detailed explanation about the Rand-LTT relations and the conception of "personality" at all:

"Audience: The question is, with Rand and LTT, do they have 1 soul or 2 souls in the body?

Robert Jordan: They have 1 soul with 2 personalities. The reincarnation of souls does not mean reincarnation of personalities. The personality develops with each reincarnation of the soul. This is the cosmology that I came hobbled together."

So:

1. The soul incarnates, a life begins with no pesonality, and as the person grows up and has life experience, the personality develops. The life ends, the soul reincarnates and everything continues from the beginning: new life begins with no personality, that develops new personality, etc.

2. After death, the memories from the past life are not lost. They are accessible by some odd methods and are in some way linked to the soul. The Heroes of the Horn use all of them (i.e. all the personalities already developed) while in TAR. The personality is also not lost with death, because DO can take a death Forsaken and put his/her personality into another body. As seen in the example of Balthamel-Halima the new body begins to influence a development of new aspects of the personality, but the base is exactly the personality that lived the last time and it continues the Balthamel-live. When the soul is reincarnated, the personality comes no more together with the soul, but it is not lost, it is in some way linked to the soul.

3. Memories apparently come together with the personalities. IMO among other function the personality provides the organization of the integrity of the memories, it is the organization and control over them. Without personality memories of the thread's life experience would be disperse events, like dreamed scenes. Soul when reincarnating, gives up all the past memories, so old personality is divided from the soul, and even cen be accessed by other souls if 'finns grant such access.

4. From #3 and #1 is clear that the soul is dividible form the personalities, that manage the complexes of memories, and that souls have to do with multiple independent personalities. From #2 and #2 is clear that no personality is lost, that they are somewhere around the soul and accessible under some conditions. So a problem comes: how the soul keeps it's connection with a personality. A soul can disconnect from a personality, so it must connect to a thread first. When a soul is in flesh, it must assotiate with the current personality and use that personality to manage the integrity of the current life experience.

5. For that reason there must be some mechanism for the soul to authenticate the personality it uses. Maybe it is the reason for the past memories to be designed to be inaccessible from the new life: access to past memories would mean dealing with another personality, and that could damage the normal process of animate thread.

6. So, when a soul is reborn, a barrier is build to divide the soul's processing from any other stuff that this soul worked with earlier. The soul is insulated, and begins to process any input independent from any other processes, the same soul had maintained previously. The soul is directed only to one "interface", that works like a black box. The process in this black box is actually a particular personality.

part 2: Taint's influence on Soul-Personality connection

The Taint damages the barrier between the current Life experience (LE) and the past lives. The Taint corrodes this barrier and a holes in it appear, so that the contents from the one side can drain into the another. But the barrier is not destroyed, it remains to exist, it is only damaged.

Let see what happens to the considerations from part 1 under this condition:

1. The new personality still develops using the current life. The Taint begins to actonly when a channeller begins to channel and that is a fact only when he has a developed new personality. The old memory, i.e. that from the other side of the barrier, is assotiated with another personality. So two independent personalities have some contact between each other.

2. But they have the same soul as their core. The old personality is present from the other side of the barrier when the Taint begins to act.

3. Every personality organizes it's own set of LE (life experience) and every memory item is part of it's own organization. The old memories are yet organized, and (#2) their organization is present in the form of old personality.

4. This old personality was what the soul used in the past life to process it's LE exactly as it uses the new personality for processing the new LE. The soul disconnected from the old personality, but now the disconnected personality comes again around.

5. How the soul will know in that case which life it lives currently? The soul has access to more then one thread-drivers now. The one is already in process (current life), but the other has everything to be processed too. Both connections are connections of the same soul to a life.

6. Because the barrier is still existing, but damaged, the both personalities are still insulated in their base (not merged), but the process from any part of the barrier is no more clear form intervention. Some experience drains between the both sides of the barrier, and from the both sides there is a personality that processes what it finds as LE. Form the both sides the personalities find both their own LE and the LE of the other personality and process both. Channeler's interpretaional ability is designed to work as a black box, but this is the situation for the both personalities. Each personality was a black box originally. Now there are two black boxes with a hole between them. Each black box is like an engine that produces sentient life. One soul is the energy that feeds them. One soul runs two processes (the both black boxes) in the same time feeding them with the same LE.

Summary:

(applied to Rand-LTT case)

So, when the jar lid is damaged, the soul feeds not only it's own black box, but also another black box from outside of the jar, and a duplicate black box processing occurs. The result of that is that the soul maintains two different personalities in the same time.

1. Untainted (sane) process:

LE -> Soul: via | in-jar mind | = current personality

(where "LE" is Life experience of a particular person)

2. Tainted (jar with holes) process:

Rand's LE + LTT's LE -> Soul: via |in-jar mind| = Rand

.................... -> Soul: via |out-jar mind| = LTT

One and the same soul processes it, but via two parallel interfaces, one of them in-jar (Rand's) one of them out-jar (LTT's). Rand's black boxes processes mainly Rand's LE, but also some sparse LTT's memories, that are the memories that Rand remembers and know what they mean. LTT's box processes most of Rand's LE combined with his own memories, and so he can react to almost everything that happens to Rand, but so, that Rand doesn't understand completely what LTT means, but only hears his voice as another person's.

The soul don't know what is it's current life. Both lives have their own personalities, and exactly personalities are what manages LE in the world. So the soul uses both as parallel processes.

So: one soul (one processing unit) and two personalities (two black boxes with damaged discrecy between them).

Implications:

1. That would explain the issues with the activity of LTT's voice in his immediate reaction to what happens with Rand, while Rand don't know the exact experience, LTT is basing on, but only what LTT currently remembers and only in the range LTT currently is thinking about. If LTT was Rand's construct, it would use more memory flashbacks (as it is the case with Mat's foreign memories) and not so much references on not-explained past memories, as LTT uses to do. LTT is seeing what Rand sees, but Rand doesn't see, what LTT have seen in his time, nor LTT knows what Rand have experienced before the beginning of Rand's channelling. When Rand is using something from LTT's experience, Rand never remembers scenes when LTT used something (like Mat uses his memories), but rather LTT sees what's the situation, thinks about what is appropriate (as if it is what happens with himself) without details and Rand uses that thought.

2. As in TAR the Heroes of the Horn have usage of all their memories, but have only one personality, they use, this must be the normal state. So Rand's problems with LTT would be solved, if Rand manages to merge the two parallel processes into only one. That would be supported by Min's viewing about the two person's in Rand - one to live and one to die. It's another question into which exactly: Rand's or LTT's or something else. But it has to be done in the way, in that HotH merge their personalities into one.

3. As the Bubble of Evil that happened to Rand in Tear also has to do with weakening of barrier caused by DO's substance, and with appearance of doubles that want to feed themselves from the same thread (however in the BoE IMO the doubles wanted to be feeded not by the soul but by the thread), the way Rand coped with the problem in Tear could be similar to the way for Rand to solve the problems with LTT. If so, the Duplicate Personality Processing theory would allow that by maximal intensificating the exchange between the both processes of the same soul, so that Rand and LTT couldn't be processed in separate way more.

4. Moiraine knows from Rhuidean, that if Lanfear wins in Cairhien, the Dragon would become LTT only. Maybe Lanfear was able to suppress the process "Rand" so, that only the process "LTT" remains in the Dragon's thread. In Cairhien Lanfear seemed to try to dissimilate Rand from inside him.

5. The ambivalent Forsaken's reaction on Rand's identity seems to mean that in the same time he is both LTT and Rand al'Tor, and that both rejecting that he is LTT and calling him LTT are appropriate.

6. The both sides in Tarmon Gaidon could have more need of such dual personality then from simply a 3Ager. So Tarmon Gaidon would be both: 1. legitimate and immediate continue of LTT's fight against DO and 2. an event that is prepared by the whole history of the 3Age and thus resolves the plotlines, the Wheel had woven during that Age.