The Division of Consciousness: The Secret Afterlife of the Human Psyche

PREFACE

Suffering from a crippling psychological disorder, my beautiful young wife took her life in the summer of 1985, just months after having given birth to our daughter, Ayriel Gold. The devastating grief I felt over this tragedy, rather than subsiding over time, grew ever greater as I agonized over what I would tell Ayriel when she was old enough to start asking questions.

Following her suicide, I had three extraordinary dreams which affected me deeply. In the first, I saw my wife laid out on a high, rocky ledge, and was told that she was well, sleeping comfortably, and was in the process of healing. Coming shortly after her death, this dream brought an irrational but nonetheless deeply felt sense of relief. In the second dream a few months later, I again saw this high place, but my wife was no longer there. While looking for her, I was told that, having awakened healed, she had flown away. While renewing my relief, this dream also brought an entirely new sense of loss, as if only then had our ties been truly broken.

The third and most powerful dream came years later, when our daughter had grown to childhood. In this dream, I had taken Ayriel to a school conducted in a sunny, spacious field. While at this field, I was summoned by a high authority to attend a special meeting, with whom I could not even imagine. Crossing a small stream, I was led far away from the field, eventually descending into a clean and well-built subterranean structure, and was left to wait alone in a neutral, empty room. Although no windows were in evidence, I somehow understood that the meeting about to take place was going to be monitored and carefully controlled. Shortly after entering the room, I was shocked and delighted to see my wife hesitantly enter, also alone, from the other side of the room. I will never forget the feeling of that moment—it was glorious, delicious, indescribable. Embracing her, I was overwhelmed with gratitude, sensing that this meeting was a supremely rare privilege granted us by an unseen authority. Without a word spoken, volumes passed between us; I simultaneously felt, saw, and understood that she was well, happy, in good hands, and had begun a new and interesting future, and that no ill feelings existed between us. We were both surprised and delighted we had been given such a precious chance to say our goodbyes, and we parted satisfied and at peace.

Immediately awakening, I marveled at the vivid sense of reality this dream had possessed; entirely unlike any other dream I'd ever known, it had felt bright, clear, fairly pulsating with life. Had the meeting really taken place, I wondered? While realizing I could not intellectually know for sure, I also knew it had felt as real (perhaps, if such a thing is conceivable, even more real) than waking reality itself.

Although I did not make the connection until years later, it was at this point in time that I began to earnestly seek answers to my own questions and uncertainties about death. Through past browsings, I'd learned of some variety of ideas and beliefs about death, but until that moment it had not concerned me that these different beliefs contradicted one another. After the third dream, I became consumed by the need to settle the matter in my own mind once and for all. As I reread the holy books of humanity's religions, the question of death seemed to grow ever larger and more inscrutable. The East believed one thing, the West another, and it seemed the twain indeed would never meet since each side had what appeared to be equally legitimate reasons for following its own ancient traditions.

I persisted in asking, seeking, and knocking, studying the classics of religious and psychological thought in hopes of comprehending how humanity's many different perceptions about death could possibly fit together. I consumed everything that seemed even remotely relevant. One week found me more or less simultaneously reviewing Jungian psychology, Swedenborgian theology, both the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead, a collection of Hindu Upanishads, a handful of previously unknown Christian Gospels unearthed in Egypt in 1945, and the Biblical prophecies of a Universal Resurrection and Judgment Day. Slowly, over the course of that week, in the chaos of all this, the question which unlocks the entire mystery took form in my mind: How might such a Universal Resurrection transpire if reincarnation indeed is a fact?

With the simple asking of that question, something profound changed. A door opened; a new perspective dawned; an alternate possibility presented itself. Maybe I just had an idea, or maybe it was something more. Whatever else it may have been, it seemed (and continues to seem now, after nine years of inspection) to be the genuine article—one of life's ultimate answers, for which I, like untold billions before me, had searched.

For a long time I hesitated; such a discovery would be so monumental that I could scarcely suspend my own disbelief. For nine years I studied this thing, examining it from every angle I could think of, always expecting its premise to fall apart at the next turn. Scared that I had lost touch with reality altogether, I wondered how I could have possibly discovered what so many others had not. How? Simply by being in the right place, asking the right question at the right time? Wouldn't it be the height of egotistic arrogance and ignorance to even suggest one might have discovered such a thing?

As much as these questions scared me, a final thought kept drawing me on—if one assumes that the psyche survives death in a whole state, that assumption doesn't lead anywhere. It most particularly doesn't lead in any logical way to reincarnation, heaven or hell, or the sort of automatic repetitive ghosthood so typical of ghost reports. Nor does it lead in any rational way to the existence of a Devil, a Fall from Grace, a Judgment Day, or a Universal Resurrection. That road, one finds, simply leads nowhere. But if you suppose instead that the psyche survives death in a divided state, you find to your amazement that this premise leads everywhere. That single, deviously simple twist leads logically and directly to the entire tradition of death we find in existence today. From that single assumption, all else—all our tradition, all our religion, even all the findings of our most modern scientific afterlife research—can be deduced.

Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is that it will explain all phenomena.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson 1

Whether this Division Theory is correct may, of course, long remain ultimately unconfirmable, at least on this side of death's door. Even so, the evidence insists at the very least that the majority of the founders and authors of our ancient religions were under the impression that it is.

The implications of that alone are staggering. The full implications of Division Theory being true seem beyond any ability to anticipate.

1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, as quoted by George Seldes in The Great Thoughts (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), 127.

INTRODUCTION

Religion and the Division of Consciousness

True Science and true religion are twin-sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firmness of its bases.

—T.H. Huxley 1

What is death?

Imagine if we knew. Living under the shadowy pall of the mystery of death may be the defining characteristic of the human experience; of all living things, only people suffer an awareness of their own mortality. Indeed, this apprehension has been one of only a very few real constants for the human race down through the millennia, one of only a handful of things that have never changed throughout all the ages of Man. If such a fundamental and primary constant as this ever did change, every other facet of human culture and experience might be expected to be transformed, perhaps beyond recognition.

Death is the ultimate uncertainty, both religious and scientific: to define death is to define human life. Compared to the Secret of Death, all other issues, political agendas, scientific achievements, and historical developments become completely insignificant. The answer to this one question is, in the long run, the answer to all questions; it could make all the difference in the world. What awaits us on the other side of death might bring complete fulfillment of all our cravings for love and justice, or it might simply bring a bitter and futile ending to everything. All wrongs could be righted, or everything we cherish could be lost. Either way, one thing is certain—the discovery of the true nature of death would be the greatest development in human affairs since man first started walking upright.

But we don't know. We aren't able to define Death. Humanity finds itself today in exactly the same position as it was thousands of years ago, deadlocked in an ancient stalemate, frozen in place by a seemingly insurmountable conflict of opinion over the true Secret of Death. An endless parade of different religions have attempted such definitions, yet each doctrine seems hopelessly different. The ancient Egyptians, the Australian aborigines, the Hindus of India, the native tribes of the Americas, and every other culture have had perfectly sincere and honorable holy men who earnestly strived to understand and pass on the Secret of Death. From among all the different ideas and theories that people have entertained about death through the ages, two great traditions have come to reign supreme. Half the world believes in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim heaven-or-hell scenario, an afterlife containing a judgment followed by an eternal reward or punishment, while the other half believes in the Hindu-Buddhist-Taoist reincarnation scenario, in which people are continually reborn into new bodies, forever forgetting their past lives and identities. Instead of one of these traditions ultimately proving more valid than the other, they have remained stubbornly locked in a stagnant debate for at least the last several thousand years; like wrestlers immobilized by a balanced struggle, each has been unable to topple the other. Meanwhile, finding no clear winner, we as a species have consented to honor both traditions equally, bestowing upon each the place of supreme importance in its own culture. Each is recognized as the Ultimate Truth and utterly accepted by millions.

These two, the reincarnation tradition of the East and the heaven-or-hell tradition of the West, constitute practically the entire legacy of mankind's search for the Secret of Death. Unfortunately, according to these traditions, they are utterly irreconcilable.

In addition to formal religions, more scientific sources have also claimed possession of legitimate information about death. The standard scientific position, for example, has long maintained that death completely extinguishes the human personality. In the modern era, however, there have been studies that question this long-held scientific position. Once hypnosis began to be used as a tool for exploring the unconscious, it became almost commonplace to hear of people uncovering vivid memories of previous lives. And, too, numerous studies in recent years have shown that those who live through near-death experiences tend to report remarkably similar accounts of traveling down a long dark tunnel to heavenly or hellish afterlife locations, typically meeting a variety of deceased friends, relatives, angels, and gods.

When the findings from such afterlife research were first made public, it seemed to the world for a hopeful instant that the ancient deadlock between our two great traditions might be broken, that the real truth about the Secret of Death might finally be ascertained. Unfortunately, while some fairly compelling evidence has been obtained, in the end it has not helped. On the one hand, the findings of the regression research suggest the validity of the theory of reincarnation. On the other hand, the findings of the near-death research offer contradictory testimony; most near-death experiences include encounters with long-dead friends and relatives who, since they still possess their familiar pre-death forms, identities, and memories, apparently never reincarnated into new bodies after their own deaths.

Thus, after many millennia without any headway in the great afterlife debate, science seems to have chosen this moment in history to reinforce each side of the argument simultaneously, just pressing the ancient deadlock that much tighter.

So here we are. Our human family has been on this planet for a minimum of 40,000 years, our scientists now agree, and every moment of that time has seen more and more of us fall through those doors of death. Yet, after all this time we still don't understand death or agree about it at all. Our sciences don't agree, our religions don't agree, our ideas don't even agree. After hundreds of centuries and an endless parade of theories, we don't understand death at all. Curiously, few of us anticipate its secret ever being revealed. Perhaps carrying the numbing weight of this unsolved mystery has left the world collectively convinced that there just isn't any hard answer, that this mystery will never really be solved. Such a position could be correct; it is at least conceivable that mankind will never understand death. But somewhere a real answer to this mystery must exist—an answer that addresses and explains each of the legends, reports, and traditions about death that have been passed down to us over the ages.

Any truly satisfactory answer would need to resolve the ancient debate between our two primary traditions, the heaven-hell scenario of the West and the reincarnation scenario of the East. It might also be expected to account for the contradictory findings coming in from today's near-death and hypnotic regression research. It would need to explain the worldwide reports of ghost phenomena, the bizarre death-religion of ancient Egypt, and, in fact, the majority of humanity's beliefs about death around the world and throughout time. Perhaps it would even shed light on that unique event deemed responsible for launching the Christian era, history's only reported occurrence of a man rising from the dead.

Introducing what may prove to be that answer, this work submits an unfamiliar, uncharted—and therefore unorthodox—vision to the world. While this extraordinary approach to the nature of death may seem completely alien to us today, it is doubtful that it could constitute a truly original proposition, since the highly improbable conclusions at which this theory arrives are virtually identical to certain prophecies repeated over and over down through history by some of the world's most legendary religious figures. This simple yet cogent hypothesis, evidence suggests, may actually have been advanced before, perhaps even widely propounded, in our very distant past.

Whether or not this model of human mortality is in fact a fully accurate representation of the processes involved can, perhaps, never be confirmed on this side of death's door, but the findings presented herein do at least establish that this hypothesis possesses all the prerequisites for being that answer. For this answer makes our religions agree. It makes our sciences agree. It even makes our ideas agree. Most of all, it makes sense.

The Secret of Death has to do with the way that people are put together, and, therefore, with the way we come apart. Human beings are composed of three parts. Every culture in every time and place has recognized this three-part composition, but none has ever known any of these parts perfectly and completely. (Neither, of course, do we.) Different cultures focus on different characteristics of these three parts, providing each people with its unique but inevitably limited perspective.

In a certain culture, these three were called body, soul, and spirit. In other places they were known by other names, and while many today refer to them as body, mind, and soul, perhaps a more appropriate terminology for this scientific age would be the body, the conscious mind, and the unconscious. The Secret of Death has to do with this three-part design and how it relates to humanity's most ancient legends, beliefs, and prophecies.

The nature of death has generally been thought, by those who presume any afterlife at all, to be the separation of the person's entire mental self from the body and the subsequent experiences of that entire mental self. This assumption, however, leads to a pivotal question: What happens when death tries to make three parts divide into two?

It's certain that the body doesn't survive, of course, but both the soul and spirit, the unconscious and conscious components of the human psyche, might. And compelling evidence for such a binary afterlife is found in the uncanny coincidence that the natures and qualities of religion's two traditional afterlives—familiar legends that have been around for thousands of years—are fully consistent with the natures and qualities of science's conscious and unconscious minds, which were discovered and defined only in this century.

The unconscious, if it survived the death of the physical body only to then be divided from its conscious half as well, would find itself alone and still, with no external stimuli to experience or elicit responce. Left with nowhere else to direct its attention, it would fall inward, becoming totally preoccupied with redigesting its own memories, doomed to eternally experience its own reactions and responses to those memories. If those responses were approval and appreciation, it would know absolute, unending joy and fulfillment; but if those responses were disapproval and self-condemnation, it would experience absolute, unending misery.

It would, in effect, go through a judgment and then experience either heaven or hell.

Meanwhile, the conscious mind, cut off from both the body and the unconscious, would find itself floating free, but suffering from total amnesia. It would have lost all its memories, including even its memory of its own identity, since, in the human psyche, memory is always stored in the unconscious. Finding itself cut loose in this way, without any identity, knowledge, or bearings of any kind, it could only wander aimlessly, eventually entering into new experiences and building up an entirely new sense of identity.

It would experience, in effect, the essence of reincarnation: repeatedly beginning new cycles of experience while severing all memories of the past.

Surprisingly, the mere introduction of the humblest, most elementary principle in psychology into the hallowed realm of religion is all it takes to reawaken the suspicion, suppressed for 1,500 years, that reincarnation may be neither inconsistent with nor alien to Western theology. Simply by introducing the foundation belief of psychology (that the human psyche is divided into two parts) to the foundation belief of theology (that the human psyche survives physical death), one is forced to acknowledge the underlying implication that there may be two different parts of a human being which survive physical death. If so, this would make it possible for both the East's doctrine of reincarnation and the West's doctrine of heaven and hell to be fully legitimate, though incomplete, descriptions of the very same event.

While humanity seems to take a certain bittersweet pride in its awareness that everything which lives must die, this belief is not, in fact, absolutely true—science has long known of curious exceptions to this rule—single-celled creatures which, instead of dying in our fashion, just divide and multiply. Their example, although modest, is precious beyond estimation, for it shows that nature already contains instances in which death takes the form of division. The question is—could the form that death takes for these most elemental of all earthly creatures secretly reflect a truth about all death—that it is always, at its most fundamental level, a division? Humanity has always instinctively followed the Biblical command to multiply in life; in death, do people find that this command then changes to divide?

Hinting of further correlations to the world's other, lesser-known afterlife traditions in addition to the primary Eastern and Western models, this Division Theory suggests ways in which many of the world's religious traditions could all fit together into the same simple truth. Instead of just one or another of the world's faiths holding a monopoly on religious truth, as almost all of them claim, this theory suggests that a number of different religions may have been originally founded on accurate glimpses into the ultimate nature of life and death; it argues, in fact, that most early religion originally focused on the exact same issue: the Primordial Division of the human psyche.

From the vantage point of a theology based on the division of the human psyche, many of humanity's afterlife beliefs fit together, almost as if each separate tradition were but another piece to a cosmic jigsaw puzzle. And, compelling by its very simplicity, the picture that comes into focus by fitting all these different pieces of the theological puzzle together, instead of resulting in some awkward, incongruous, and artificial construction as might be expected, strikes one as a simple and natural, even elegant and perfect, whole.

This is the reassembled story of the Secret of Death: all three components of a human being—the body, the unconscious soul, and the conscious spirit—can be and usually are divided from one another by death. This alien yet somehow strangely familiar message has resurfaced again and again down through the ages and has left evidence of its passing in nearly every culture on Earth. The re-discoverers of this ancient Secret, some of humanity's most revered teachers, have attempted to show people how to live so as to avoid being split apart in this way at death; such teachings have always focused on wholeness and integrity of the self. If you are different on the inside than on the outside, such teachers warn, you are in danger of losing your very soul at death. Great religions have grown up around such teachings and around the names of such teachers.

Each time this message resurfaced, it gradually became changed and refocused and compromised, until it was quietly lost all over again. During the brief, rare periods of the message's renewal, when its original simple truth was once again fresh and whole and uncorrupted, a precious few people could be taught how to successfully maintain their psyches' integrity at death, instead of dividing into their separate conscious and unconscious components. And when such seekers occasionally succeeded, fabulous tales of radiant, immortal beings arose to note their passage, tales which even today can be found in cultural traditions all around the world.

These rare exceptions notwithstanding, countless generations of souls continued, millennium after millennium, to plunge headlong into the ravenous, ballooning, dark unconscious pit. Prophets continued to come and go throughout these endless bleak ages, as did every other manner of teacher, saint, and holy man, always bringing the same message of salvation; yet the hordes flooding into the pit continued unabated.

Every culture has known its own prophets and holy men, thought to have somehow acquired special understanding of the secrets of life and death, often setting their cherished insights down in writing. An extraordinary phenomenon arises when the material written by such sages is examined from the perspective of Division Theory; a surprising transformation takes place, lifting an entirely new level of latent meaning from millennia-old pages. When placed within the context of Division Theory, such books bloom, almost exploding with newly relevant connotations and fresh nuances of meaning. Vast reservoirs of unexplored textual undercurrents are brought to light, suggesting that humanity now enjoys an unprecedented opportunity to examine those ancient teachers' fuller message and meaning.

As if penetrating to the very heart of religious doctrine, Division Theory's illumination of humanity's sacred writings seems both genuine and fruitful—time and time again, the simple path of its logic uncovers intelligent, credible solutions to many of the most daunting doctrinal paradoxes. As if distilling sense from nonsense, it draws out rational, intellectually honest solutions to some of the most deeply inscrutable riddles of the world's faiths. It seems, in short, to do exactly what one might expect the Secret of Death to be able to do—solve the mysteries of the ages themselves.

After untold ages, a dramatic chapter came to be written into the saga of the Secret of Death. A teacher came, teaching much the same message as his predecessors, that of how to avoid dividing at death and having one's soul trapped in an inescapable unconscious prison. The teacher's message was simple—he taught love and integrity.

When this teacher died, his soul and spirit did not remain united, as at least some of the earlier teachers had succeeded in doing; despite his own perfect integrity, he split apart. The legends report that this teacher chose to voluntarily suffer death's division, somehow taking upon himself the corrupted integrity of all the rest of us, willfully suffering being split apart on account of the failures and shortcomings of