2. Differentiation of the Two Parts: Distinguishing the Difference

3.Falling into Division : Differentiation Progresses into Disassociation and Dysfunctionality

4. Knowledge of the Division: The Legacy of Man's Quest for Knowledge

5. Offspring of the Division: The Ego as Microcosm of the Totality

6. Healing the Division : Christ's Work Toward Reintegration

7. Living the Division: Encounter with the Alien Other in Daily Life

8. Caught Within the Division: Birds of a Feather in Heaven and Hell

9. Sight of the Division: The Same Teaching in Many Times and Places

10. Purpose of the Division: Self-Aware Consciousness

11. Ideal Reconciliation of the Division : "Reaching Enlightenment", or "Finding The Kingdom of Heaven Within"

12. Forced Reconciliation of the Division: Meeting Our Past Life Selves at Judgment Day

1. Paradox of the Self : The Primordial Nature
The human essence, while a unity, is nonetheless composed of two interacting, interlocking, intertwined equal-but-opposite components. Thus, the ultimate mystery of reality, the paradox of diversity existing within unity, is reflected in man's most intimate inner nature. These two parts are called the Soul and Spirit, Yin and Yang, or, in scientific terms, the unconscious and the conscious. One is masculine, active, willful, discriminative and detail-oriented, and objective; the other is feminine, passive, responsive, systems- and relationship- oriented, and subjective. All the universe has been created by the dance between these two. In the beginning, the Soul and Spirit were as one, so perfectly intertwined it was not possible to tell where one ended and the other be gan; neither was any more conscious or unconscious than the other. Many cultures' creation myths describe the universe at this point as an egg, sometimes as a brother and sister intertwined together within an egg, or as two different kinds of waters swirling around each other within an egg.

2. Differentiation: Distinguishing the Difference
These two parts were originally united, utterly blended together, utterly undifferentiated from one another. At some point, the two parts differentiated themselves, separating themselves from one another enough to allow each to define its own distinct natures. This event was recorded in countless ancient creation myths as a Primordial Division. Before this, objective and subjective were so utterly mixed and undifferentiated that the unity existed, but did not know itself. There was just a unity, knowing nothing else, knowing not even itself. It was a consciousness that was conscious of nothing. The division was initiated to change that. By separating objective and subjective, the unity would have been able, for the first time, to reflect itself back to itself, and see itself for the first time, becoming self-aware. The Primordial Spirit asserted dominance, separating from and subjugating the Primordial Soul into unconsciousness. This act severed the intimate link between them, a connection that had existed from time immemorial ("the eternal covenant"). These efforts to push the Soul down and reject its input created a wall-like barrier between them which operated like a one-way door - data flowed freely from Spirit to Soul, but encountered resistance going from Soul to Spirit. Although this Primordial Division seemed a rebellion at the time, and even now seems to have produced much trouble and disorder for the human race, since its ultimate results are not yet fully apparent, it may represent, or ultimately produce, an evolutionary step forward for human consciousness.

3.Falling into Division : Differentiation Progresses into Disassociation and Dysfunctionality
The two parts were opposite in function. One part could act, the other could remember; the first could choose, the second could feel. They were the perfect team. But their distinction grew into disassociation and alienation. At death, the conscious/spirit and the unconscious/soul began to functionally separate from one another entirely, each experiencing the afterlife completely independently of the other. The conscious lost its memory but otherwise remained free to make new choices and have new experiences; in other words, it reincarnated. Meanwhile, the unconscious, stripped of its objective rational intellect, fell back further and further into its own unconsciousness and its own stored memories, reacting to them automatically. The unconscious soul eventually finds itself entering a heavenly or hellish dreamworld reality, which, it never is able to figure out due to its intellectual impairment, it actually created itself, by its own reactions to its own life memories. The conscious proceeds to reincarnate into fresh new lives again and again, each time discarding another unconscious soul into the collective unconscious at the end of the lifetime. Once deposited into their unconscious prisons, these discarded souls would not be able, on their own, to escape from their imprisonment, being unable to make new choices and decisions, unable to exercise any initiative at all when separated from the conscious mind. When death began separating souls and spirits, humanity's memory of its past and origins suffered, and in time, was lost altogether ( as memory is stored by the unconscious, when the unconscious is discarded, so too are all memories). And when memory was lost, so too was humanity's perception of the workings of karma, destiny, divine justice, and the mysteries of life and death.

4. Knowledge of the Division: The Legacy of Man's Quest for Knowledge
In every land, people have searched for the answers to these mysteries for millennia, and many found it. A common teaching about life after death exists in cultures all over the globe - that man is composed of two souls which divide apart at death, each going off to a different afterlife experience. In this modern age, humanity has once again begun its search for answers, this time calling the search "science". And science has again rediscovered the same ancient tale - that man possesses two souls, the conscious and the unconscious - describing these two parts as having the very same characteristics as the two souls of those ancient were said to have. Science describes the two parts as possessing the exact characteristics necessary for them to experience exactly what the ancient traditions claimed they would in the afterlife - reincarnation and the heaven/hell netherworld realm - but only IF they divided apart at death.

5. Offspring of the Division: The Ego as Microcosm of the Totality
During a human life, when the conscious spirit is once again linked up with a new piece of the collective unconscious (the Primordial Soul), making this piece into a new unconscious soul for itself, a new "personal unconscious" or "subconscious", this union replicates, in miniature, the original unity - a conscious spirit and unconscious soul intertwined together in a balanced dance, but now, unlike the original unity, the two parts are more fully distinguished from one another, yet they are still dancing, still interacting. Thus, this union achieves self-conscious awareness, something the original unity lacked, and for which it divided in the first place. Whenever the Soul receives material from the Spirit, it automatically responds by generating more material to be re leased back into the Spirit. This material, however, finding itself unable to pass through the Wall, becomes stuck in the middle, forming a pocket of soul-material inside the Wall. Usually distin guished from the much larger unconscious (often called the "collective unconscious"), this soul- pocket has been variously designated the subconscious, or the personal unconscious, by modern science. This isolated pocket of soul-material represents an intermediate level of the psyche some what more available to conscious access than the rest of the unconscious Primordial Soul, and its contents are of a more personal nature. Material flowing from Spirit to Soul then enters these pockets on its way through the Wall, and, finding soul material there, is tricked into thinking it has reached its destination, and stops, thus also becoming trapped in these pockets. Within this pock et, then, material from both Spirit and Soul again commingle like they did in the Primordial Unity, but on a dramatically reduced scale. Since the conscious once again has, within the limited con fines of this pocket, access to the unconscious, it therefore also has access to its own memories; this allows it to turn its attention back upon itself, becoming aware of itself and its own con sciousness. Thus, this miniature remarriage of the Soul and Spirit creates its own `offspring', a dynamic, self-aware microcosmic reflection of the original Primordial Unity: the ego. This ego, however, is only aware of a fraction of the whole true SELF, only a fraction of the full Soul and Spirit, only that material which has found its way into the personal-soul.

6. Healing the Division : Christ's Work Toward Reintegration
Seeing that the Primordial Division had progressed into full blown after-death disassociation of the Soul from the Spirit, the system (God, the original Unity) initiated compensating, self- correcting measures (as systems tend to do), creating a way to release the souls trapped in the unconscious prison of the afterlife. When Jesus died, His soul and spirit separated, as men normally do, but then they reconnected again on the other side of death's door, something that had never happened before, and this what allowed Him to rise from the dead. But the physical "rising from the dead" was only a side-effect of the real purpose of this act; the real purpose was what it would do to His soul. When the soul separates from the spirit, it "falls back into itself, shrinking and condensing into its own most essential nature", according to Swedenborg. Besides conforming to the DivisionTheory scenario, this description of the soul after death also offers insight into Christ's resurrection. When His spirit, throbbing with consciousness and strength and life, finally touched His soul, after it was in such a compressed and debilitated state, it would have acted just like a balloon touched by a red-hot poker, or like an atom bomb compressed too far into itself - it would have exploded. The Bible reports just this effect, saying that at his resurrection, Christ "filled the whole universe". If His soul indeed did "fill the whole universe", then it would now also fill the souls of all humanity, including the souls of the dead, and indeed that it also the claim of the ancient church - that Christ lives within each of us. But this, on its own, would not produce any significant change - the souls of the dead would still remain trapped in their unconscious prison. But Christ was predicted to return to physical life again one day, and if this was by reincarnation, then when he grew to adult consciousness, and started exploring the contents of His unconsciousness, this would reawaken the souls of the dead, who now live within Him, just as he lives within them. Thus, if and when Christ reincarnated, the souls of the dead would return to consciousness. And these two events are in fact both predicted in the Bible to occur at the same time - at Judgment Day.

7. Living the Division: Encounter with the Alien Other in Daily Life
Since the division, every particular thing in life is perceived as being one half of an opposing pair: man/woman, day/night, objective/subjective, faith/reason, intellect/emotions, opportunity/security, sun/moon, black/white, rock/country, urban/rural, East/West, Republican/Democrat, career/family, self/spouse, individual/corporation, law & order/right & wrong, and on and on and on. Everywhere and in every way, we constantly encounter in life what seems to be the "alien other", and are challenged whether to oppose it with all our might, or to try to achieve some sort of integration and reconciliation with it. In these confrontations, our sense of our own identity is shaped by what we choose to accept or reject.

8. Caught Within the Division: Birds of a Feather in Heaven and Hell
After death, the discarded unconscious souls would still follow the same laws that the unconscious follows during life, since these laws are of its very nature. As "like" is always attracted to "like" in the unconscious, and so, in the collective unconscious, souls would group together with others of similar qualities. And since another law the unconscious follows is that similar things tend to merge together in the unconscious (Freud called this process "condensation"), these souls would tend to merge together with other souls of similar natures. Thus, those souls with favorable self-images would converge together in one camp, while those souls holding unfavorable self-images would also converge together into another camp. Thus, in the netherworld, IF souls follow the same laws that the unconscious does in life, then there would be two great camps, and two alone, one filled with self-love, the other with self-hate. Within each camp, infinite additional distinctions might exist, but the two camps would stand firmly apart. Each camp would coalesce into a single entity, many souls functioning as one. One camp/entity would greatly resemble the figure known as Christ; the other, Satan.

9. Sight of the Division: The Same Teaching in Many Times and Places
There are many reported descriptions of death and the afterlife in the world. Peoples have been recording such descriptions since prehistory. Until now, these many reports all seemed to contradict one another, but DivisionTheory shows, for the first time, how all the different reports can all be perceived to be the various effects of a single, simple and logical event - the afterdeath division of conscious and unconscious. This single, simple explanation simultaneously accounts for the peculiar details being reported today within NDEs, Past-Life Regressions, ghost reports, and innumerable modern and ancient religious descriptions of the afterlife. The reports of both NDEs and ghosts typically conform to the predictable experience of a separated unconscious mind, while the reports of Past-Life Regressions, especially reports of the time in-between lives, typically conform to the predictable experience of a separated conscious mind. By being able to perceive the full event, rather than just partial views of its effects, one can see and appreciate what is actually occurring, and recognize the many reports as all pointing to the same cause.

10. Purpose: Self-Aware Consciousness
The purpose of the division would seem to be growth. Philosophers have used the idea of a foundational division as a framework to assist them in their efforts to define the essential nature of reality. Immanuel Kant, for instance, focused intently on the division between phenomena and noumena in developing his thought, while William Blake addressed the distinction between imagination and reason. Similarly, it was the subject-substance dichotomy that got Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's intellectual juices flowing, just as did the will-idea polarity for Arthur Schopena uer. Being-in-itself contrasted with being-for-itself in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, while, to Paul Tillich's way of thinking, existence wrestled with essence. And, of course, the famous I-Thou rela tionship was the key to understanding the universe for Martin Buber.

What's more, Blake, Hegel, Sartre, and Tillich all specifically endorsed the theory that an original Primordial Unity suffered an ancient, catastrophic rupture, in an event powerfully reminiscent of the Bible's creation-legend of the `Fall' of Man. Blake, in fact, went so far as to claim that all subsequent divisions and dichotomies, whether in objective existence in the physical world, or merely subjectively apparent to the human mind alone, were the direct consequences of that primordial fall and rupture.

Hegel named this Original Unity `Spirit', and its divided halves he identified as `subject' and `substance'. He viewed their division as part of a profound metaphysical circle, a great recurring cycle that spirals ever upward. Upon dividing apart, Hegel maintained, the two halves then begin struggling to reunite anew, eventually doing so at a more mature, more advanced level of being. This newly reformed Unity then divides apart once more, repeating the cycle endlessly (reminding one eerily of double helix diagrams of DNA molecules). While the Unity's two halves are divided from one another, Hegel believed, they are tormented by the need to end the division. Hegel thought that the ultimate reunion of the two halves was inevitable, that they could not help but eventually merge back into a singularity again at the far end of the cycle. Such an image is not without its Biblical parallels:

11. Ideal Reconciliation of the Division : "Reaching Enlightenment", or "Finding The Kingdom of Heaven Within
Mystical traditions all over the globe describe the ultimate religious goal as achieving perfect "integrity", of overcoming the divisions within to become "one" and undivided (to realize and rediscover one's true undivided nature). Saint John of the Cross, along with innumerable other mystics, declared that all dichotomies and dualities, such as subject-object, male-female, or even conscious-unconscious, will no longer real or meaningful for a soul who has achieved divine union. For such a one, St. John insisted, all contraries are resolved and all divisions dismissed, leaving the soul knowing only absolute oneness. Such a reunion would require full reconciliation of the conscious and unconscious, or, as the early gnostic Christians described it, a "marriage of one's soul and spirit".

12. Forced Reconciliation of the Division: Meeting Our Past Life Selves at Judgment Day
Since the true and original nature is one of unity, the division of the soul and spirit can only be temporary and illusory, and must one day come to an end, at which time the original unity will again become apparent and the illusion of division will vanish. This will mean that all the souls and spirits that have separated by death will one day spontaneously reconnect together, bringing back all the lost souls of the dead to full living consciousness. In that each living conscious spirit has reincarnated many times and has thus produced many unconscious souls, at such a time each conscious spirit would suddenly be ambushed by a number of alien and unfamiliar other "selves" within its own mind, as if one was suddenly possessed from within. Since these long-dead souls would have no idea what was going on either, each would feel it had simply awoken from a strange (and often quite unpleasant) dream, and would ALSO feel it had become overun by invading alien beings within its own mind. Thus a great war would break out within the minds of all people everywhere, as each soul tried to reassert dominance and control over the body and conscious mind it found itself in. This, I believe, is that event described in Biblical scriptures, Zoroastrian scriptures, and Islamic scriptures, as Judgment Day.