If you can borrow temporarily from the supply of souls awaiting rebirth using the One Power to create Nym (and Chora trees), that means the One Power can interact with and affect souls. There's no two ways about this.
No. It is the ur-state of existence. As Verin explained to Egwene, it is the third constant, along with the Creator and the Dark One. To me, TAR is like the base substrate of creation. If your soul is able to project yourself there, you have Creator like powers (limited by your strength in the Dream). "Reality" is, basically, the Creators dream, melded to TAR (or dreamshard, as Brandon Sanderson called it. Stupid as that name is, I'll stick with it for convenience). Rand, in Shayol Ghul, was creating fresh Dreamshards in his contest with the Dark One, both of them re-writing the rules of reality as distinct from what the Creator has set.
Nope. RJ has said explicitly that it is their souls that go to TAR, awaiting rebirth.
They go there in their non-corporeal bodies, or live in T'A'R bodies, whatever. You can't see a soul. If you can, it isn't and RJ is misusing the word to describe something else.
It explicitly is not. Trying to change what the books to fit your worldview is a little bizarre, Cannoli. So what is in T'A'R is not real? How so?
We do. You're just ignoring it to make it fit your view of what souls must be. Which is deeply puzzling, since according to your beliefs, rebirth shouldn't be happening at all, yet that fundamental aspect of WoT you seem to have no problem acknowledging.
How do you figure that? The soul enters the world. It is affected by it. From how it deals with its experience, and depending on whether it achieves the self-knowledge to know it is in a dream, it is released from the cycle of rebirth, achieves salvation.
Because that's all SELF-directed changes, not externally imposed.
Because the point is that you grow and change into what you will. If someone else can alter that, your own efforts are rendered meaningless.
RJ's answer above contradicts this. If a soul can be corrupted so it can only be reborn as a Trolloc, then, clearly, the Dark One, at the least, can change your will.
I see it the same way. I just don't see why any of this means the One Power cannot affect the soul.
I don't think the One Power is the essence of creation, or there'd be more of a will power component to it. I like your explanation of T'A'R better for that. If the Power had something to do with how Creation was made, it would be used more like people do things in T'A'R. I think the Power is a primal force made to MOVE creation, like fuel or lubricant or blood, but it's not the mechanism of Creation, or the creative force of reality. If for no other reason than you can't really create stuff with it, only shape what's already created. That makes it just another normal thing. Given how the One Power compares and relates to the Shadow, it is not the Creator's equivalent of the True Power, or if it is, then the Dark One is missing a balancing force and he is NOT the antithesis of the Creator. The Creator made the world and moved on and did not leave his own personal toys for the inhabitants to use. The One Power is of the world, not the Creator (except in the sense that everything he made is of the him, including the world & One Power).
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*