Is there anyone left who hasn't heard about Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) yet? Raymond A. Moody Jr., a physician from Georgia, stunned the world in 1975 when he reported in Life After Life that thousands of people had independently described having the same 'afterlife' experience during close brushes with death. Since then, dozens of other published studies have further confirmed and expanded upon Moody's early findings, giving rise to a whole NDE subculture which some have compared to a religious cult, and making the classic NDE journey through a peaceful Dark Tunnel to a love-filled Realm of Light as familiar a part of today's cultural backdrop as Monday Night Football.

Although many scientists have dutifully played the role of skeptic over the last 25 years, suggesting various natural explanations for this phenomena,⁽²⁾ the full experience being reported by NDE subjects has never been replicated in a lab. For example, many subjects who had been technically dead have come back to describe visual and auditory details of events that had gone on in the room when they were supposedly 'gone'. This occurs so regularly it's virtually a cliche among the NDE community. Some of these subjects were even blind, yet during their NDEs they claimed they could see, and accurately reported visual data upon their return.⁽³⁾ In addition, many subjects have returned possessing knowledge they had not possessed prior to the trauma, such as suddenly knowing that this or that old friend or relative had died recently. They say, of course, that these friends met them "on the other side".

Science, of course, fails to account for such experiences.

On the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum, many of today's 'New-Age' thinkers assume that we create our own afterlife experiences, that our own expectations become mental projections in NDEs, and those projections then become our perceived experience. But the research data does not support this theory either; many subjects experience things during their NDEs that run entirely contrary to their expectations. For example, many who experienced trips to hell or confrontations with Satan come back not only terrified, but also surprised - they had believed in neither hell nor a devil before the event. Other subjects have also had experiences vastly out of alignment with their expectations, such as Jews meeting Jesus in the afterlife, or Christians meeting Krishna or the Buddha. Such reports are fairly commonplace in the research literature, and they collectively show that people do not simply meet up with their own expectations. Whatever is going on in NDEs, it is apparently a little more complicated, and a little more objective and reality-based than that.

When Raymond Moody, Kenneth Ring, Michael Sabom, and all the other now-almost-legendary figures of NDE research started publishing their findings, it seemed like the best news in the world. When we first heard scientific researchers report that people all over the world had experienced similar afterlife episodes, we collectively said to ourselves, "Hey, great! Today's scientific age is really paying off! Confirmation is coming in from all quarters that life after death is real!" It seemed that mankind's ancient afterlife traditions were not dead myths after all, but were in fact still very much alive. Even in the present day and age, people were still having and reporting experiences strikingly consistent with afterlife reports written thousands of years ago.

But as time went on, this blessing became a curse. It eventually became clear that these reports were, in many cases, directly contradicting each other. If one set of research pointed in one direction, the next set seemed to point in an entirely different direction. Some NDE reports, for example, declared that hell and the devil are real, while others insisted just as strongly that they are not. Some reports defended reincarnation while others refuted it. Some said that the earthly personality is preserved and maintained after death, while others refuted this as well. Some returned from their NDEs insisting that Jesus Christ is sitting in His heaven, and only those who honor Him will enter, while other NDErs insisted that all enter heaven after death, regardless of any other considerations.

These inconsistencies and contradictions have recently become too much for the fledgling NDE community to bear; in the summer of 2000 a sort of 'religious war' broke out among the NDE leadership, highlighting this interpretational schism.⁽⁴⁾ And so, as has happened so many times before whenever the question of life after death comes up, people are again asking themselves "Which one of these stories is true?" "How can this one be true if that one is true?" And finally, "Why should we believe in any of them?" In the minds of many, the great shining promise of NDE research is in dire jeopardy; these inconsistencies shroud the whole phenomenon under a blanket of doubt. The original strength of NDEs, the whole reason people started paying attention to them in the first place, was because the reports seemed so much alike; but now that the inconsistencies and contradictions within these reports are becoming more apparent, that original strength seems to be eroding. So long as the NDE community itself remains divided over just what these phenomena mean, the general public is sure to continue to harbor insurmountable doubts about the value of these experiences.

The ancient world's Binary Soul Doctrine, however, explains and resolves all these inconsistencies and contradictions, providing a valid scientific foundation for NDEs, a simple, scientifically definable condition which seems to underlie, and substantiate, the vast majority of phenomena being reported. The scenario emerging from NDE reports is completely in line with what the Binary Soul Doctrine would predict; the archetypical NDE occurs in two distinct stages, a Dark Stage followed by a Light Stage, and subjects' experiences during these two stages seem closely related to the two halves of the human psyche, just as if each half was operating independently of the other during these two halves of the experience.

And in addition to this circumstantial evidence, there is also eyewitness testimony of the division. A number of NDE subjects do claim to have split into two parts, two separately functioning mental pieces, during their NDEs, pieces which do seem at least tentatively identifiable as the conscious and unconscious halves of the mind. However, the majority of NDErs don't recall going through such a division, a fact which seems, at first glance, to be at odds with the Binary Soul model. Nonetheless, the mechanics of the division, as illustrated in the last 25 years of split-brain research, seem to predict this very outcome - that in the vast majority of cases, the split would never be noticed by the subjects themselves.

Dark Stage, Light Stage:

Circumstantial Evidence of the Division

"It was really, really dark, daddy, and then it was really, really bright."
- Child NDEr Mark Botts⁽⁵⁾

The two very different stages of experience in NDEs seem to be mirror opposites of one another in many respects. The first stage typically takes place in pitch-black darkness, and often seems rather dull, brief, and hardly worth mentioning, especially when compared to the far more spectacular Realm of Light in the second stage. Virtually all of the NDE research that has been published over the last 25 years has focused on the sensational Light Stage, such as The Tunnel and the Light by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, The Light Beyond by Raymond Moody, Embraced by the Light by Betty Eadie, Saved by the Light by Dannion Brinkley, Living in the Light by Larry Rosenberg, Closer to the Light by Melvin Morse, Beyond the Light by Phyllis Atwater, Children of the Light by Brad Steiger, Lessons from the Light by Kenneth Ring, The Truth in the Light by Peter Fenwick, and Light and Death by Michael Sabom, to name just a few.

After the subject leaves the body, he typically finds himself floating alone inside a featureless and empty black void or tunnel, in which no forms or shapes of any kind are seen. In this unbounded darkness, subjects experience an extraordinary tranquility which usually includes a total loss of emotional investment - subjects always seem to feel completely detached and dispassionate during this stage of their NDEs. Nothing seems particularly important anymore; nothing seems to hold any personal meaning. However, subjects often feel extremely alert, intelligent, and curious during this stage, as if their logic and analytical skills had somehow gone into overdrive. This first phase of NDEs is often quite brief, sometimes coming and going so quickly it is almost overlooked in the subject's swift passage into the second stage's far more emotionally-intense and spectacular Realm of Light.

In the second stage, NDErs describe conditions that seem the exact opposites of the previous stage - instead of being in total darkness with no light anywhere, they find themselves in a realm of brilliant light, in which no shadows at all seem to exist. Instead of floating alone in an empty void, they now seem to be enveloped in a living, breathing universe teeming with other lifeforms. Instead of being entirely unique and distinct, instead of seeming to be the only thing that exists in all the universe, they now find themselves interacting with many others who all seem very much like themselves. Instead of noticing a dry and distant lack of emotion, they now feel intense surges of emotion, usually either the sweetest of joys or the bitterest of miseries. Instead of being objective and detached, they are now feeling profoundly subjective, involved in and affected by everything going on around them. Instead of feeling unconnected to anything, now they feel an intimate connection to the entire universe. Instead of feeling that nothing has any meaning, now they feel their eyes have been opened, and they can suddenly see the meaning and patterns and purpose behind everything. And instead of experiencing sharpened logic and reason, in this phase they often exhibit just the opposite (without realizing it) - displaying a diminished tendency to exercise critical analysis and discriminative reason.

In short, the first stage of NDEs seems to be experienced through the eye of the conscious mind, while the second stage seems to be experienced through the eye of the unconscious mind.

The Two Bardos

The Tibetan Book of the Dead actually paints a rather similar picture of what happens after death, also describing these dark and light stages. However, unlike the emphasis of modern NDE research, the ancient Tibetans viewed the first stage, or 'Bardo', as the more important of the two. In this first stage, which they call 'The Clear Light of the Void' the Tibetans believed the newly deceased would find himself in the ultimate reality, experiencing pure unrestricted Buddha-mind, experiencing himself as the only Being that has ever really existed, the only real God in the true Kingdom of God. For perhaps only the briefest of moments, the person discovers himself to be "The One Besides Whom There Is No Other". But if the subject does not recognize where and Who he is during this brief and precious moment, he would then pass quickly onto the second stage, which the Tibetans held to be a place of pure illusion without any true objective reality at all. Most NDE researchers, on the other hand, tend to assume that this second stage is more real and more important than the first stage.

Stage One: Complete Release in the Dark Void

"There was only blackness, as though I were suspended in outer space,
unbroken by a single glimmering star [...]
The darkness continued in all directions and seemed to have no end,
but it wasn't just blackness, it was an endless void, an absence of light."
- NDEr Angie Fenimore ⁽⁶⁾

In the first part of their NDE, subjects often find that they leave their body to enter an absolutely black nothingness, an empty void or tunnel that contains no visual forms or imagery of any kind. They often find that they can't see anything, including themselves, while they're floating in this unbounded night. They seem completely alone, seeing nothing but the same velvety blackness in all directions. They don't know where they are, where they're going, or what's going on. But this apparently isn't just an inability to perceive spatial forms; all pattern and form recognition seems to be inhibited in the first stage of NDEs. Subjects sometimes report feeling that they can't perceive any pattern or meaning or significance to anything while they are in this dark void :

"I was in a place of emptiness, total emptiness. There was no feeling. There was no purpose for anything. My life was meaningless. My taking care of my house, my decorating, and so forth, all had no purpose."
- NDEr Rochelle ⁽⁷⁾

But despite this seemingly disconcerting situation, a peculiar indifference tends to set in during this stage. They're not upset about dying at all; on the contrary, they feel 'detached', 'dispassionate', and 'divorced from what is happening' during this experience.

"I didn't feel any emotion at all and was completely indifferent to what I saw."
- NDEr Alf Rose ⁽⁸⁾

This detached calm state is reported more than any other element of NDEs, being experienced by 82% of all subjects.⁽⁹⁾ It may also be the most perplexing aspect of the entire phenomenon; our single strongest instinct is to avoid death at all costs, yet NDErs who discover they've failed in this, their number one priority, often seem to have no reaction at all. Despite having just been unexpectedly ripped away from their bodies, their family, their friends, their loved ones, their career, their possessions, their plans for the future, and virtually everything that had ever been precious to them, the majority of NDErs inexplicably feel no distress, anxiety, or reaction of any kind when they discover they have just died. Suddenly, without even giving it a moment's thought, everything that they had put so much of their hearts and souls and selves into throughout all of their lives somehow no longer matters to them at all :

"I realized that I must be dying and ... I didn't mind in the least. I remember being very interested in the experience in a very unemotional academic way and feeling that it was quite an adventure - no regrets at all. [...] My husband and two-year-old son were everything to me, and I was shocked and amazed at myself for not minding the thought of leaving them, yet I was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace.... I knew how devastated they would be at my death but even this did not really move me. I ...felt free of any cares at all. ...it was just peaceful and interesting and detached."
- NDEr Jenny McMillan ⁽¹⁰⁾

Many subjects seem in a state of absolute objectivity during this stage; they can't feel their own feelings, or relate to their own lives, or even see themselves at all - it's quite literally an absence of the subjective. When we become insensitive to our own hearts and souls, when we find ourselves cut off from our own subjective feelings, we become insensitive to everyone else's feelings as well; NDErs' dearest loved ones, the people who only a moment ago had been the closest and dearest and most precious things in all the world to them, now seem unreal, insignificant, and irrelevant to them while they're in this dark void :

"I felt a strange sensation of floating away, floating dreamily down a tunnel. I could see a light at the end of it, and I knew I was dying. I remember thinking about my other two children, and then reassuring myself that my mother would look after them. I was very comfortable, quite unafraid. I wanted to go. The thoughts about my family were the things that seemed unreal, not the tunnel or the sensation of floating."
- NDEr Daphne⁽¹¹⁾

The simplest feelings of the human heart often seem to be entirely absent during this stage. Others' pain just doesn't seem to matter much at all; NDErs often find they can't empathize for anyone during this first stage, feeling no love, concern, compassion, or mercy for the family and friends being left behind. This reminds one of nothing else so much as the infamous unconcerned bliss of the opium addict.

"My children only have one parent ... but I have to admit I hadn't thought of them at all."
- NDEr Avon Pailthorpe⁽¹²⁾

Many have remarked how peculiar this initial reaction seems to be. It just doesn't seem to make sense that the average person who is losing everything most dear would react with a flat emotional nonchalance. In fact, if this occurred in any other context, if anyone other than an NDEr displayed this level of indifference, this utter lack of feelings and emotions, it would be immediately identified as a sign of neurosis.

"Neurosis ... is like a continual shot of morphine."
- Dr. Arthur Janov⁽¹³⁾

The peaceful dispassionate serenity of this first phase, however, seems to have more to do with an absence of negative feelings and emotions than the presence of any positive ones, and so seems to be in sharp contrast to the second phase of NDEs, in which subjects commonly describe the presence of extremely intense and overwhelming emotions. The well-publicized 'peace' of this first stage seems to be the interpretation subjects give to the sudden loss of all subjective emotion and feeling, understandably equating the total absence of anxiety and distress with the presence of deep calm and inner peace.

In life, we are always burdened by two kinds of weight - the weight of gravity, of course, but also the far more exhausting weight of all our psychological baggage. Over the years of our lives, most of us accumulate volume upon volume of painful experiences. Buddha said, "life is pain", and he was right - life does include pain, and much of our success or failure in life has to do with how we deal with that pain.

Many of us, unfortunately, are not very adept at dealing with the failures, disappointments, and frustrations we encounter in life. Instead of dealing with them directly and experiencing them fully and immediately as soon as they occur, many of us try to just ignore them, sweeping them under the rug and denying those feelings are there at all. Like little babies playing peek-a-boo, we seem to think that if we don't look directly at those pesky feelings, then they aren't really there at all. Of course, this doesn't work; all this tactic does is allow these feelings to build up inside us more and more, forming an inner mountain of grief and pain.

We usually try our best to ignore this mountain, but every so often it catches us off-guard, sneaking up on us when we're not looking, and we find ourselves staring in surprised amazement and horror at this looming emotional darkness inside us. At such times, most of us bury it again as quickly as we can, and try to forget we ever saw it.

Our grief, however, doesn't disappear just because we ignore it. It sits tight inside our unconscious minds, continuing to silently accumulate over the course of our lives, like plaque in the arteries of our souls. The unconscious is the perfect preservative - anything deposited into the unconscious is perfectly preserved in its original condition. As the years go by, this grief just builds up steadily. It weighs us down and inhibits us, in many ways too imperceptible for us to realize. The weight of this inner grief leaves footprints in our lives; the more grief we are holding inside, the more grief we are holding back inside, the more grief we are hiding from, inside, the more we become cut off from our own authentic feelings and emotions. The more we become cut off from the immediate feeling of being alive, of feeling human. And the more difficult it is for us to feel and act free, and spontaneous, and wild and crazy, in life, and the more artificial, and robotic, and control-freaks, we end up becoming. All these are but symptoms of that inner grief.

The mystery is, in the first phase of the NDE, this inner grief suddenly vanishes. Poof! It's just gone. This psychological weight, our unpaid emotional debt to ourselves, often seems to mysteriously vanish in the Dark Stage experience, leaving subjects feeling marvelously light, peaceful, and calm. This sudden peace is mystifying to most people who experience it; they can't imagine why they suddenly feel so light and carefree and peaceful, largely because most of what had been weighing them down in life had been hidden inside their unconscious. Even when it was there they didn't realize it consciously, although they'd been used to the feel of it being there. But people sure notice it when that weight is suddenly lifted during the first stage of their NDEs.

There's only one way that weight, which they spent their whole lifetime building up, could be lifted in a single effortless stroke - if their unconscious was itself somehow lifted from them during the Dark Stage experience. Just as the ancient Binary Soul Doctrine once maintained.

The Dark Stage, however, is not only a place of diminishment, but also of increase. In the very first moments of the first stage, just after they have left the body but before they have entered the dark void, NDErs often report an unnatural clarity of perception - every detail seems to be magnified into precise crispness :

"I had never felt more alert and conscious [...] Everything was vividly clear. All the details of the room were extremely sharp and distinct. Every nuance in the linoleum floor, every bump in the paint on the steel bed was magnified. I had never viewed the world with such clarity and exactness. Everything was in such extreme focus that it was overwhelming."
- NDEr Howard Storm⁽¹⁴⁾

This is exactly what the ancient world's Binary Soul Doctrine would have predicted. The conscious mind is geared to notice specific details, while the unconscious mind is geared to notice the bigger picture. With the unconscious out of the picture, the conscious mind's perspective would be greatly magnified, making everything seem unnaturally sharp, detailed, and distinctive. Even one's own distinctiveness seems increased in the Dark Stage; NDErs find themselves conscious and aware but utterly alone in this dark void, not even seeming to have a body, just as if nothing else existed in all the universe except their own consciousness. Such a state would be the epitome of distinctiveness - experiencing one's own consciousness as the only thing existing in all the universe.

Subjects also frequently claim increased clarity and swiftness of thought during this first stage, reporting that they feel far more alert, curious, logical, objective, rational, analytical, and intelligent than normal :

"I ... had great mental awareness. I had been given ....

the magic key to understanding pure logic."
- NDEr Audrey Organ ⁽¹⁵⁾

However, while NDErs are acutely interested in observing what is taking place during this stage, this seems to be more out of a cold and dry academic curiosity rather than any sense of living attachment or meaningful personal connection :

"I realized I must be dying, and the odd thing was I didn't mind in the least. I remember being very interested in the experience in a very unemotional academic way, and feeling it was quite an adventure - no regrets at all."
- NDEr Jenny McMillan ⁽¹⁶⁾

In fact, one's mind often seems like a cold, impersonal, unfeeling computer during this stage:

"It was like all relations were cut. I know - it was like there was no love or anything. Everything was just so - technical."
- NDEr quoted by Raymond Moody⁽¹⁷⁾

Obviously, something happens to the human mind in the first few moments after death. Something changes. According to 25 years of NDE research data, the mind just doesn't seem to work quite the same way after leaving the body. Many mental functions seem to be diminished, such as the ability to perceive spatial forms and images, the ability to feel emotion, distress, and anxiety, the ability to appreciate connectedness and value relationships, and the ability to sense purpose and meaning. But other functions seem to be increased, such as one's objective awareness, logical intellect, level of curiosity, and detail perception.

These are all exactly the sort of experiences one would expect to be reported by a conscious mind that had suddenly become divorced from its unconscious half. Without the unconscious, it would seem that all its feelings and emotions had disappeared. Without the unconscious, the conscious mind would no longer be able to experience or appreciate any subjective sense of belonging, relationships, or personal connections of any kind; it would feel unconnected to anything. Without the emotional perspective of the unconscious, it would experience utterly no distress or anxiety on any level of awareness. And since normal life always contains some degree of anxiety, some underlying awareness of one's vulnerabilities, needs, limitations, failings, and other stressors, the sudden unanticipated dropping away of this angst-ridden underlying mental context would be experienced as a profound state of peacefulness.

At first, as the division began, one would notice that one's detail perception seemed to be getting more pronounced. But as the division increased further, and the conscious mind became more and more alienated from the unconscious, the conscious mind would soon find itself unable to recognize any shapes, patterns, forms, or images at all - it would see only nothingness. On its own, the conscious mind would have no memory of any forms or images, nor any ability for form-, pattern-, or relationship-perception. This would leave the conscious mind completely lacking any orienting sense of context, leaving it just like a newborn baby, unable to see any patterns in anything around it.⁽¹⁸⁾ Without any sense of context, everything it observed around it would seem to be just random meaningless chaos, and this would perfectly explain why subjects often report floating in nothingness during the first stage of NDEs (as also do some Past-Life Regression subjects when regressed to a point in time in-between lives, as we will see in the next chapter).

Yet despite all these losses, the conscious would still remain fully conscious and aware. It would still be oriented towards perceiving the details and differences between things, and would still possess its objective rational intellect and analytical curiosity. And all these abilities would feel as if they had been powerfully enhanced, by virtue of the conscious mind no longer being 'compromised' with the unconscious and its 'illogical' emotions and subjective impressions and 'alien' mental input.

Stage Two: Joy in the Realm of Light

"Everything went very dark for a few seconds. Then suddenly I was ... filled with a thrilling sense of joy. A being was at my side, a being of light. Yet it wasn't like a light that you see, but rather felt and understood. It touched me, and my whole body was filled with its light."
- NDEr Kathy⁽¹⁹⁾

After the Dark Stage, many NDErs move on to a Realm of Light, which in many respects seems to bring the exact opposite experiences. This second stage of NDEs tends to be characterized by increased emotional intensity, increased sense of connections and relationships, increased form, pattern, and meaning recognition, but diminished sense of separateness and distinctness and diminished tendency to employ logic or analytical reasoning. Instead of being in total darkness, subjects are now in brilliant light. Instead of a lack of emotion, they now feel intensely powerful and moving emotion. Instead of being alone in an empty void, subjects now find themselves enveloped in a universe full of all sorts of fabulous forms and patterns. Instead of being dispassionate and objective, they now feel extremely subjective, affected by everything around them. Instead of seeming to be entirely unique within their environment, subjects now find themselves interacting with many others like themselves. They don't feel unconnected at all anymore; subjects now feel connected to the entire universe. Instead of being in a formless, patternless, meaningless limbo, subjects now report seeing meaning, pattern, form, and structure everywhere. Often, they are totally overwhelmed by a sense of seeing big patterns of meaning. They feel they see "the big picture", finally understanding the whole pattern and larger context of all reality. This is the exact opposite of what they had experienced in the black tunnel, in which they couldn't see any patterns or forms or meanings or connections at all.

These are precisely the experiences that science would predict for an unconscious that found itself no longer united to its conscious mind. Feeling and emotion would seem greatly enhanced, seeming absolute and overwhelming. All the natural characteristics of the unconscious - emotion, memory, conscience, receptiveness, responsiveness, aesthetic awareness, and form-, pattern-, and relationship- recognition, would define the nature of the experience.

But subjects in the second stage would also exhibit a pronounced loss of certain abilities, which would correspond with the characteristics of the conscious mind. Without the conscious mind, the unconscious would lose its linear reason, abstract logic, objective perspective, free will, and verbal communication ability. No longer having any critical, analytical, or discriminative faculties whatsoever, it would be condemned to accept as unquestionable truth virtually all thoughts, suspicions, and impressions passing across the mind's eye. And without its verbal communication ability, communication would have to take place without words, using gestures, symbols, metaphors, analogies, and direct intuitive awareness instead. And without the conscious mind's objective perspective, one would have a diminished sense of one's own distinct independence, autonomy, and unique identity - the normal defining boundaries between oneself and others would seem diminished, even nonexistent. And these are, as it turns out, precisely what most subjects report during the second stage of NDEs.

Increased Emotion Perception

"Eventually I emerged from the tunnel as its end widened out and I found myself in a place that is impossible to describe [...] I just cannot describe the place or my feelings and emotions. I experienced absolute happiness, utter bliss, complete love, perfect peace, and total understanding."
- NDEr Allan Pring⁽²⁰⁾

The first thing that seems to be noticed about the second stage is the intense flood of positive feelings and emotions that instantly envelop NDErs as soon as they enter the heavenly Realm of Light, or the overload of negative emotions that similarly envelops them upon entering the hellish Realm of Bewildered Spirits. Most reports describe extremely positive emotions, such as love and joy, but occasionally extremely negative feelings are reported in the second stage instead. There's usually no 'middle of the road' emotional experience during this stage. Besides the obvious contrast between the emotionally-vacant first stage of NDEs and the emotionally-saturated second stage, it also seems significant that these second-stage emotions always seem to be abnormally extreme. No one seems to come back from NDEs reporting that they felt just "a little bit good" or "a little bit bad"; no sliding scale measuring the relative degree of one's emotional experience during these episodes would be needed, for the feelings experienced during the second stage of NDEs always seem to be at extreme, maximum, absolute levels.

This, as it turns out, is precisely what one would expect if the unconscious was operating independently of the conscious mind during these episodes. With the conscious mind out of the picture, the unconscious would no longer possess any discriminative capacity; it would no longer be able to distinguish differences between things, or degrees of difference. The unconscious is designed to perceive the similarities between things, not the differences, and so is constitutionally blind to degrees of difference. So if the unconscious was registering fear, it would experience that fear in its purest, most absolute and undiluted form. Similarly, if the unconscious felt love, that love would be experienced as infinite, unlimited in any way, shape, or form. And that is precisely the character of the experience that NDErs tend to report during the second stage of these episodes.

Diminished Detail Perception

If the unconscious was separated from the conscious mind, it would find that its ability to recognize and appreciate details was diminished; the differences and defining boundaries between things would seem subdued or even nonexistent, while the connections and relationships between things would seem magnified or more evident. As it turns out, just such a nonspecific lack of definition and detail is encountered again and again in second stage NDE reports (standing out in sharp contrast to the crisp detail perception encountered so often in first stage reports) :

"I kept trying to define the entity's shape, in concrete terms, but couldn't."
- NDEr Wesley⁽²¹⁾

"I seemed to float along a corridor towards, then into, all-enveloping brightness and light, with indefinable shades of pastel-like colors. There were what I can only describe as billions of shimmering forms with no outlines..."
- NDEr Mary Lowther⁽²²⁾

"The library was a building sort of like the Acropolis, that style. So I went in ... I went to the section on people. I got to look at my book. I'll never forget it. You opened it up, like in the middle. If you flipped back, you got the past and if you flipped ahead you got the future. But most of it had this grayish film, so you couldn't read it."
- NDEr Tommy⁽²³⁾

"There were light beings. Most of them didn't have clear definition ... they were never vivid enough to see details [...]It was like looking through an opaque glass into a physical setting. It wasn't clearly defined."
- NDEr Charles Nunn⁽²⁴⁾

This peculiar deficiency of specific detail, sharp definition, and clear boundaries also appears in hellish second stage reports. In the first stage of Howard Storm's experience, the reader will recall, he emphasized how all the details of his surroundings seemed to stand out in unnaturally sharp contrast. But as the second stage began, his reports begin to paint the exact opposite picture:

"All the while we were walking, I was trying to pick up some clues as to where we were going by what we were walking on. There were no walls of any kind. The floor or ground had no features. There was no incline or decline, nor any variation in texture. It was like walking on a smooth, slightly damp, cool floor [...] I also couldn't make out how much time was passing. There was a profound sense of timelessness."
- NDEr Howard Storm⁽²⁵⁾

Increased Sense of Connections and Relationships

"I had no sense of being separate. I was in the light and one with it."
- NDEr quoted by Margot Grey⁽²⁶⁾

NDErs commonly report feeling a profound sense of oneness with the whole universe, and this too is exactly what one would expect if the unconscious was operating independently of the conscious mind. The unconscious is geared to recognize the connections, relationships, and patterns between things. Seeing only connections but never any differences, the unconscious would instinctively see the whole universe as a perfectly interconnected, synchronized and harmonized singularity. Having lost all ability to distinguish between things, it would only see the connections and similarities and relationships between things, which would cause it to identify things together that the conscious mind might have otherwise distinguished from one another.

This is the way the unconscious processes information, and the effects of this natural process can easily be observed in dreams, which are well known for blurring and melding the identities of multiple individuals into a single dream character. It would be nothing unusual for one's Uncle Arthur to also seem to be one's high school Spanish teacher in a dream, even though in real life they had been entirely distinct individuals. In normal life the conscious and unconscious operate together, one pointing out the differences between things, the other highlighting their similarities; only together can they provide us with a balanced and realistic perspective. But without the distinguishing, objective perspective of the conscious mind, the unconscious is blind to all distinctions, divisions, and inequities. On its own, the unconscious would be unable to distinguish between oneself and the rest of the universe, and so, it would identify the two together ("I and the universe are one") forced to do this by the same inner programming that causes separate elements to blend together in dreams.

Diminished Appreciation of Objectivity

Just as the unconscious is polarized more towards the subjective than the objective, so too the second stage reports from NDErs seem to emphasize subjective interpersonal values such as personal relationships, family, love, patience, and charity, while de-emphasizing or even outright ignoring more objective values, such as worldly and professional accomplishment. Yet it seems disingenuous to value the one above the other in a world where both are inescapably interconnected. If centuries of scientists had not dedicated their lives to impersonal objective accomplishments in medicine, or if legions of soldiers had not dedicated their lives to the very real, objective, impersonal task of halting the advance of Hitler, the world would be a far more angst-ridden and loveless place today. Yet we repeatedly hear, in the life reviews of NDErs, that their subjective emotion-based relationships with others are accorded far more meaning and significance than their objective worldly accomplishments, which, as one NDEr reported, "meant nothing in this setting".⁽²⁷⁾

Increased Receptivity and Inclusiveness

"The right hemisphere has no equivalent of no."
- Psychologist Robert Ornstein⁽²⁸⁾

Because the unconscious does not have any innate ability for perceiving details or distinguishing the differences between things, it must accept all thoughts equally. If it was operating independently of the conscious mind as the Binary Soul Doctrine suggests would be the case, the right brain unconscious would find itself in a state of complete and total acceptance, rejecting nothing.

This, as it turns out, is precisely the 'mind set' found to be in operation in most second stage reports. All people are loved and appreciated and accepted equally, with none being rejected or turned away. Even during the legendary Life Review, when all one's worst thoughts and deeds are paraded in public, the person him- or herself is still loved and cherished and accepted unconditionally. The unconscious would have no choice but to do this; its own design would force it to accept everyone and everything, not necessarily due to any objective analysis, but due simply to the way the unconscious is designed to function.

Diminished Separateness and Autonomy

"There are other clues which point in the direction of right-hemisphere involvement. One is the ... loss of boundaries, both spatial and personal, which is often described in the NDE."
- Psychiatrist and NDE Researcher Peter Fenwick ⁽²⁹⁾

If the unconscious was divorced from the conscious, one would also expect to see a lessening of one's sense of the distinctions between all things, including the distinctions between one person and another, and this too does seem to be a regular feature of the second stage of NDEs. Subjects consistently report that the normal boundaries between themselves and others have faded, in some cases becoming nearly non-existent. Instead of retaining their own independent autonomy, they find now that their very psyches have become like a glass house, into which anyone and everyone can peer at will. All their thoughts and feelings are exposed to the universe, and nothing is hidden.

"There was no division between the inside and outside of my skin."
- NDEr Loretta⁽³⁰⁾

In short, there no longer seems to be any such thing as separateness, which is precisely what one would expect to experience if the conscious mind, which provides our ability to perceive separateness and distinctness, was no longer functioning.

Increased Aesthetic Sensitivity

The right-brain unconscious, modern neuropsychology informs us, is oriented towards recognizing and appreciating life's more artistic and aesthetic qualities. Because of this orientation, if the unconscious was separated away from the conscious mind, its aesthetic appreciation and artistic sensitivities would seem to have been greatly magnified. And this is, as it turns out, perfectly consistent with the reports of second stage NDEs. Descriptions of the Realm of Light always seem to include comments about how incredibly beautiful everything is. Whether the subject of discussion happens to be the buildings, the natural scenery, or even the inhabitants of the Realm of Light, they are always too beautiful for words, which is precisely what should be expected if one's aesthetic sense was turned up to full volume. In much the same way, observers of the Realm of Bewildered Spirits also betray a similar intensification of their aesthetic sense, but in the opposite direction. Instead of everything seeming impossibly beautiful, everything in that realm seems impossibly ugly or horrific. Either way, the observer's aesthetic sense always seems to be registering at maximum capacity.

Diminished Verbal Capacity

"My brother, who had died a few years earlier, was gesticulating delightedly as I approached [...] Then my mother shook her head and waved her hand (rather like a windscreen wiper) ... and I heard the doctor say, 'She's coming round.'"
- NDEr Elizabeth Rogers⁽³¹⁾

If the unconscious separated from the conscious mind, it would lose all ability for literal linear thought, and thus all ability to communicate verbally, and again, the weight of the reports does suggest that verbal communication ability is often greatly diminished during NDEs. Words are seldom used during the second stage experience, communication more often occurring instead via gestures, images, and direct intuitive comprehension . Even long after the NDE is over, words are still then hopelessly inadequate to describe the experience. The ineffability of the second stage is so commonly repeated it has almost become a cliche; again and again, researchers encounter comments like " no words were spoken" and "words were not necessary", and "the feeling was indescribable". Even the Life Review is "more often in the form of pictures than verbal memories".⁽³²⁾

Increased Sense of Form and Pattern (The Big Picture)

" Everything fitted in, it all made sense ... It almost seemed, too, as if the pieces of a jig-saw all fitted together. You know how it is with a tapestry and all the interwoven parts, then when the tapestry's turned over you see how it all fits in place."

- NDEr quoted by Kenneth Ring⁽³³⁾

The fact that the conscious mind has no capacity for perceiving form, while the unconscious does, seems to explain why the first stage of NDEs includes little or no perception of any forms (even one's own self often seems to be formless) while the second stage is usually filled with forms of all sorts. But the form-perception of the unconscious would also seem to be responsible for another very notable characteristic of the second stage - the feeling that one has 'total understanding', perceiving the full scheme of things.

NDErs often return with amazing stories (but precious little evidence) of having seen the big picture, instantly understanding the grand scheme of reality, understanding how all the pieces to the puzzle of reality all fit together. This would seem to simply be form- and pattern- awareness on the grandest scale. However, upon returning to normal consciousness, the invaluable specific data associated with that pattern is found to be entirely missing from memory. It is almost as if they had seen the whole forest without noticing a single tree. As commonly occurs with dream memories, NDErs tend to be left with very strong and compelling feelings and impressions, but often very little in the way of actual specific detail. The Binary Soul Doctrine would seem to suggest that this was because the half of the mind that perceives details was more-or-less 'off-line' during this stage of the experience.

"This feeling of complete knowledge did not persist after their return."
- Researcher Raymond Moody ⁽³⁴⁾

"I seemed to understand everything, but most of the answers were wiped from me. But I do have tantalizing tidbits of information and vague recollections, just enough to thoroughly frustrate me."
- NDEr Jarod⁽³⁵⁾

This would make sense from the perspective of the Binary Soul Doctrine; second stage NDE memories would behave like dream memories if both experiences had originated from the same source - the unconscious. While the unconscious is the repository of memory, such memories are primarily the records of the data it receives from the conscious mind while the person was awake. The unconscious fares far worse at retaining memory of its own activity than it does at retaining the memory of what the conscious mind experiences; the memory of what one did while awake is far more readily accessible than the memories of what one dreams at night. And while the unconscious is always active, always busy with its own 'behind-the-scenes' tasks, one generally has no memory of this activity of the unconscious, either.

"A couple of days later, I approached my patient with pad and pencil in hand for an interview. At his bedside I asked him to recall what he had actually saw in hell. Were there any flames? Did the devil have a pitchfork? What did hell look like? He said, 'What hell? I don't recall any hell!' I recounted all of the details he had described two days earlier ...he could recall none of it."
- Researcher Maurice Rawlings⁽³⁶⁾

In much the same way that one has trouble remembering the specific activities of the unconscious, NDErs often report similar memory loss of the specific details of their second stage experiences, and are often left with little more than memories of unnaturally powerful right-brain feelings that are attached to frustratingly few left-brain details.

Diminished Use of Reason

"One of the unique characteristics of our form of consciousness is that it is self-reflexive -- meaning that mind can examine its own processes. We can ask, How did I arrive at that conclusion? Do I really know my reasons? Am I being influenced by prejudice? Do I have grounds to believe this is true, or do I merely want it to be true? Am I being logical right now? Do my conclusions really follow from my premises? [...] To live consciously is necessarily to be concerned with such questions, and it is our rational faculty -- our ability to think, and even to think about thinking -- that makes such questions possible. A less evolved consciousness does not and cannot question its operations."
- Nathaniel Branden⁽³⁷⁾

If the unconscious was divorced from the conscious mind, it would no longer possess any logical reasoning ability, and second stage NDE reports often do seem to suggest a lack of normal deductive logic and analytical reason in subjects' thought processes. Without the conscious, the unconscious would have no objectivity whatsoever, and a complete lack of objectivity would mean a complete and utter inability to tell the difference between truth and falsehood. The unconscious, by itself, has no concept of the word 'no'. The objective conscious mind is what throws seeds of doubt in the human psyche; without it, no doubt can be experienced. The objective conscious mind discerns differences and distinguishes between them, accepting one thing while rejecting another. But without the logic and objectivity of the conscious mind, all thoughts running across the screen of the unconscious mind would be accepted equally, and then each and every impression, suggestion, hint, suspicion, and notion that entered one's head would seem to be equally obvious, compelling, and true. And this is precisely the dynamic that seems to take place during the second stage of NDEs.

"A doubtful message would be impossible to receive."
- NDEr quoted by Margot Grey⁽³⁸⁾

NDErs regularly report an experience that seems to be direct, pure, and certain knowing; information received in this way is always felt to be 100% certain, despite having in no way been questioned, measured, analyzed, or independently verified. This attribution of certainty to one's perceptions is exactly the way the unconscious processes information. It does not critique it, or analyze it, or question it, but just accepts it without dispute or hesitation as absolute and obvious truth. The dreamer who dreams that he can fly, or that he is walking naked into his place of business, or that his uncle has asparagus stalks for eyebrows, does not for a moment question the reality of these impressions at the time, but takes them all calmly in his stride, for there is no logic available in his thought processes at the time, no discriminative capacity to raise the red flags of doubt. Similarly, the hypnotized subject who is told she is a rooster does not argue or even consider questioning the fact, but instead just commences to express her 'roosterness' with the sort of conviction that is seldom seen outside a traveling revival tent.

In much the same way, NDErs during the second stage regularly entertain thoughts and impressions which are never questioned at the time. Yet later, when the cold light of objective logic is brought to bear upon these 'divinely inspired and therefore absolutely true' insights, one finds that the impressions of NDErs sometimes directly contradict those of others. For example, some NDErs insist, for example, that they received the 'divine truth' that reincarnation is a false teaching, while others return from these paranormal episodes carrying the exact opposite message. Similar contradictions have occurred over other issues as well, such as the existence or nonexistence of the devil, the necessity or irrelevance of accepting Jesus as one's personal savior, the permanent or temporary nature of the individual self, and the permanent or temporary nature of the hellish experience.

The loss of one's critical and analytical functions would also translate into a loss of curiosity, and this too is consistent with second stage NDE reports. Just as curiosity often seems to be heightened during first stage reports, it often seems to be just as diminished in second stage reports. Having no doubts, subjects in the Realm of Light often feel no need to ask any questions :

"Once I fused with the light, I didn't have any questions."
- NDEr Jarod⁽³⁹⁾

"I was so glad to be there, that there was nothing I needed to ask."
- NDEr Charles Nunn⁽⁴⁰⁾

This loss of one's critical and analytical functions also seems evident in second stage reports of addictive behavior. We have read, time and again over the last 25 years of NDE research, that many souls in these second stage realms still seemed to be enslaved to their earthly addictions, as if they had remained frozen in the behavior patterns they'd held at the moment of their deaths. Sex addicts, drug addicts, tobacco addicts, and food addicts have all been observed still desperately trying to satisfy their physical cravings, even though they now possess no physical bodies. They seem to be unable to intellectually grasp the simple fact that these cravings can no longer be satisfied.

"...the woman snatched at the lighted cigarette... Again she grabbed at it. And again. With a chill of recognition I saw she was unable to grip it. [...] Then I noticed ... a number of men standing at the bar seemed unable to lift their drinks to their lips. Over and over I watched them clutch at their shot glasses, hands passing through the solid tumblers ... they would be cut off for all eternity from the thing they could never stop craving."
- NDEr George Ritchie⁽⁴¹⁾

This loss of analytical reasoning ability is perhaps most obvious in the second stage reports of the hellish Realm of Bewildered Spirits.⁽⁴²⁾ The inhabitants of this grey netherworld have repeatedly been described as being trapped in unfortunate and unpleasant conditions which they could get out of quite easily if only they tried. Yet they don't try, and they don't seem to grasp the fact that they could end their misery in a moment if only they tried. Such behavior points strongly to a loss of objective rational intellect.

Increased Memory

If the unconscious found itself separated from the conscious mind, it would seem likely to automatically experience a full life review much like that reported by NDErs. Without the conscious mind in the way, it would no longer be possible for the emotionally-based mental input of the unconscious to be denied, ignored, rejected, repressed, minimalized, rationalized, or diluted in any way. Unbound at last, all the repressed emotions, denied feelings, forgotten memories, rejected insights, and unacknowledged self-judgments that had built up within the unconscious over the course of the person's life would spring fully forth en mass, finally free of the restrictive and repressive influence of the conscious mind.

This dynamic would seem to explain the sudden, immediate, and total life review and self-judgment that so often occurs during the second stage of NDEs. Just as the Binary Soul Doctrine would predict, these Life Reviews occur suddenly during the second stage of the NDE, simultaneously releasing into full glaring view all the memories of one's life experiences, even one's most private thoughts and feelings.

The judgment that occurs during this review is most typically experienced as being a self-judgment rather than a judgment that comes a second party, just as the Binary Soul Doctrine would anticipate. The dynamics of human psychology suggest that this judgment, although experienced during the NDE, would not actually have its origins in that moment, although it would certainly seem like it at the time. Rather, during the flood of memories, one would suddenly realize that one's own unconscious mind had been reactively judging one's choices and actions all along, during every moment of one's life. During the Life Review, one would finally come face to face with the sum total of all those past judgments about one's own behavior that one's own unconscious had generated over the course of one's life, judgments which were originally refused recognition by the conscious mind. People tend to keep many such self-judgments repressed, never allowing them to fully enter into their conscious awareness during life, causing these self-judgments to build up over the years, producing the psychological equivalent of a logjam (unless, of course, a person exercises extreme self-honesty, recognizing instead of repressing those self-judgments). But after death, when the repressive conscious mind was taken away, all those judgments would be unbound, allowing the entire logjam to finally rise to the surface of one's awareness in a single great convulsion, finally being acknowledged as they had been intended to do from their very inception. This would explain why the Life Review, which finally makes all these unconscious thoughts, feelings, and self-judgments starkly apparent, often makes people feel as if they have finally been revealed to themselves as they truly are for the first time. This sense of having been 'exposed' is a very common theme in the second phase of NDEs; stripped of all one's illusions and denials and self-deceptions, one feels unaccustomedly exposed to oneself, as well as to all others in this realm.

Increased Reactiveness

If those memories, feelings, and judgments were primarily positive, the unconscious, being automatically responsive and emotional, would automatically respond to them by generating positive feelings and emotions. Since the unconscious is also very creative, constantly generating images, dreams, and fantasies, it could then be expected to automatically spin images, dreams, and fantasies to give shape to all those feelings, emotions, and self-judgments. If those memories, feelings, and self-judgments were primarily positive, it would generate positive images, dreams, and fantasies to give them shape and manifestation, and in that unconscious' self-manufactured dreamworld, it would experience itself to be in heaven. But if those memories, feelings, and judgments were negative, the unconscious' self-manufactured dreamworld reality would be hellish.

This process, however, would not necessarily seem to occur slowly or sequentially in a normal cause-and-effect, before-and-after pattern, since the unconscious is not known for operating in a step-by-step linear fashion. Instead, this entire sequential process could easily seem to occur instantaneously, moving directly from the Life Review to the final effect - experiencing the heaven or hellish dreamworlds so familiar to second stage NDEs, without any sense of the psychological processes that led from the one to the other.

The "Realm of Bewildered Spirits" Explained?

The heavenly Realm of Light is not the only face of the second stage. Raymond Moody, Peter Fenwick, Phyllis Atwater, Barbara Rommer, and many others have also described a grey or hellish realm that subjects sometimes visit during the second stage instead, a place that seems to be home to hordes of very bewildered, confused, and distressed souls. However, these two faces of the second stage seem, despite first appearances, to have much in common. In both, emotions and credibility predominate while reason and verbal expression seems diminished. In the Realm of Light, communication often takes place using gestures, symbols, and direct mental comprehension instead of words. In the hellish realm, communication often seems to be absent entirely, but when it does occur, it too relies more on images and gestures than verbal communication. Words just don't seem to work in either place - both experiences are often found to be ineffable - unable to be described in words. And while the souls in the Realm of Light are filled to overflowing with feelings of joy, love, happiness, and bliss, the souls in the Realm of Bewildered Spirits often seem "desperate and wailing", and suffering "intense" and "dreadful" emotions. Interestingly, while the heavenly and hellish realms seem to produce the exact opposite emotions in their respective occupants, the feelings are just as intense in each.

The souls in the hellish realm seem to possess very low intelligence, initiative, volition, and vitality. Even more so than the souls in the Realm of Light, they demonstrate virtually no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. They seem so caught up in their own misery that they are entirely unaware of the presence of others . They are, one might say, in a state of absolute subjectivity, completely unable to see beyond themselves at all.

"These bewildered people ... had sad, depressed looks; they seemed to shuffle, as someone would on a chain gang. [...] they looked washed out, dull, grey. [...] They seemed to be thinking, 'Well it's all over with. What am I doing? What's it all about?' Just this absolute, crushed, hopeless demeanor -- not knowing what to do or where to go or who they were or anything else. They seemed to be forever moving, rather than just sitting, but in no special direction. [...] They didn't seem to be aware of anything -- not the physical world or the spiritual world ... they all seemed to be bent down and looking downward ... they all had the most woebegone expressions; there was no color of life.[...] There seems to have been a great array of them around."
- NDEr interviewed by Raymond Moody⁽⁴³⁾

This Realm of Bewildered Spirits, of course, is not unique to NDE reports. In fact, it may be the single most substantiated of all afterlife reports. This realm has been independently reported by NDErs, OBErs, psychics, seers, and shamans, and can even be found in many netherworld traditions of mankind's early civilizations, including Egypt, Greece, China, India, and Israel. All these sources describe virtually the same place, with souls there in virtually the same distressing condition :

"On entering the lower world I find ... hundreds of other beings shuffling in a circle, all to themselves, all despondent, lost in absolute timelessness. There is no growth or hope, just silent pacing."
- Sandra Ingerman, describing a journey into the netherworld for a shamanic soul-retrieval ⁽⁴⁴⁾

"Men and women of all ages ... were standing or squatting or wandering about on the plane. Some were mumbling to themselves .[ ...] They were completely self-absorbed, every one of them too caught up in his or her own misery to engage in any mental or emotional exchange".
- NDEr Angie Fenimore⁽⁴⁵⁾

Mankind's ancient legends of a hellish netherworld, it seems, are not merely empty myths, but a reality that is still being experienced and reported. Within a span of only two days, according to P.M.H. Atwater, the same hellish NDE vision was independently witnessed by four strangers :

"A landscape of barren, rolling hills filled to overflowing with nude, zombie-like people standing elbow-to-elbow doing nothing but staring straight at [the NDErs]."
- NDEr and Researcher Phyllis Atwater⁽⁴⁶⁾

It seems that this dreary realm has existed for millennia with little or no change. While the Realm of Bewildered Spirits has been described by many NDErs as "hellish" or "hell-like", however, it usually seems quite different from the fiery hell of Christian tradition. The Biblical hell, of course, is supposed to be a "lake of fire and brimstone", but the Realm of Bewildered Spirits is usually described more like the netherworlds of Greece, China, and other ancient cultures - as a cold and barren place filled with semiconscious, naked, and starving automatons. Today, just as in the ancient Greek legends of hades, the most common characteristics of the 'hell' vision seem to be lifeless wraiths suffering anxiety attacks in suffocating expanses. The majority of NDErs still describe the hells they visit as hard and empty, with dulled or dimmed light, just as their counterparts were reporting thousands of years ago.

The souls there, however, do seem to display the characteristics one would expect of separated unconscious minds that no longer have access to their rational conscious halves. These beings seem to possess extremely low intelligence, no objective awareness, no intellectual curiosity, no verbal communication, and seem to be entirely caught up in their own emotions and subjective feelings.

Have the souls in this realm really lost all access to their own conscious minds? At least one NDEr seems to have thought so, feeling as if his own conscious mind was too deeply buried within for him to successfully access it during a hellish experience:

"I wanted to call out but no sound would come. It felt as if my brain or consciousness was buried deep within me and was too deeply embedded for me even to make it work."
- NDEr quoted by Peter Fenwick⁽⁴⁷⁾

NDErs frequently insist that these ghostlike souls can get out of this horrid place any time they wish, if only they tried. But they don't try, and furthermore, they can't seem to figure out that they could get out if only they would try. The inhabitants of this realm seem utterly convinced that there is no way for them to escape .

"There is no way to escape, no way out. You don't even try to look for one."
- NDEr Thomas Welch⁽⁴⁸⁾

This is not normal human behavior. Every prison on earth, no matter how bleak, rat-infested, and torturous, is filled with people who remain alert and vigilant for the slightest hint of a chance to escape. The contrast between this behavior and that of the souls in the Realm of Bewildered Spirits could not be more striking. The fact that these lost souls have somehow lost their will to even try to escape strongly suggests the absence of the human spirit during these second stage experiences. During normal human life, no matter how desperate the situation, no matter how thoroughly imprisoned and inhumanly mistreated a group of inmates might be, the 'Indomitable Will of the Human Spirit' prevents them from giving up entirely. Regardless of the circumstances, there are (on earth, anyway) always a stubborn few who never give up, who never stop scheming for a way out. We humans are extremely proud of our stubborn refusal to give up in the face of insurmountable odds, and much of our art and literature is specifically created to celebrate this majesty of the human spirit. We thrill at movies like Papillon, Cool Hand Luke, Rocky, and the Shawshank Redemption, for they remind us of the infinite potential for self-determination that lives within each of us.

If there's one thing that makes human beings truly godlike, it is our free will. You can do anything to a man, even strip his flesh from his bones and burn his wife and children, but you cannot change his mind - only he can do that. What a man chooses, what a man wills within the solitude of his own mind, is absolutely, utterly, and infinitely his own to control. In our volition, and our volition alone, we are infinite; in the autonomy of his will, each human being is a god.

But the mystery is, this inner infinity, this autonomous free will, seems to be entirely lacking in the Realm of Bewildered Spirits. Although freedom is apparently right at hand, ripe for the taking, that indomitable will is nowhere to be seen - that particular puzzle piece is clearly missing from the picture - it draws attention to itself by its absence. This suggests a scenario much in keeping with the Binary Soul Doctrine - these lost souls are now but partial creatures, human fragments that lack a huge portion of what they had once had, of what they had once been, of what had once made them whole human beings in life - their independent volition and rational intellect.

There is a conflict, however, between what the logic of the Binary Soul Doctrine would tell us about this realm, and what the reports of NDErs tell us. If these souls had divided in two at death, losing their left-brain conscious minds, they would no longer be able to make independent free will decisions, and so would be permanently trapped in that state, unable to choose to get out even if that was all it would take to escape. But NDErs frequently insist that these souls do still possess independent free will choice, and can leave this misery whenever they choose. This is a logical conflict; only one or the other of these positions can be correct.

Many other (non-NDE) paranormal sources have declared that the souls in the other world do not have their conscious minds, but are functioning exclusively in and through their unconscious minds. This was the position of Edgar Cayce, Immanuel Swedenborg, Rudolf Steiner, James Van Praagh, and Sylvia Brown. Yet if this is true, that would decisively rule out any true free will in the other realm. Unable to realize the existence of choices, options, and alternatives, the unconscious on its own could not exercise self-determination, and would essentially be a mindless machine running on automatic, which, as it turns out, is a pretty accurate summary of most NDErs' reports of the behavior observed in this realms.

Yet NDErs themselves often stubbornly insist that, although they personally witnessed no actual evidence of it themselves, the souls in this realm are not really trapped there at all, and can leave whenever they wish. However, in all the descriptions of the Realm of Bewildered Spirits I have ever run across, I have yet to encounter a single description of one of those lost souls actually exercising this so-called free will and choosing to leave that dreadful place. Literally no evidence of that alleged free will seems to exist, except, it seems, in the steadfast conviction of NDErs themselves. Even though all their descriptions of this realm point clearly to the opposite conclusion, NDErs remain deeply and unaccountably convinced that those miserable souls are not truly trapped.

Why is this?

Neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick, President of the British Branch of IANDS, has suggested that this unaccountable certainty is due to the fact that the right-brain unconscious processes all mental experience during NDEs. This would make sense for second stage NDE phenomena - the unconscious has no capacity for doubt (no word for 'no'), and so all thoughts running across the mind's eye at such a time would be bathed in the same air of absolute conviction and certainty.

So, it seems, that even the NDErs' certainty that "these souls are free" tends to point, not to that freedom per se, but to the likelihood that these souls of the dead possess only their unconscious minds, and not their conscious minds. As happens so often in life, the report of the witness seems to tell us more about the mental state of the witness than about what was actually witnessed.

NDErs report two different versions of this hellish realm, giving us what seems to be two very different perspectives of this place - one seen from the inside, and a very different one seen from the outside. Those who observe it from outside tend to describe it as a dark, cold, and dreary place, in which the occupants seem to be wandering aimlessly, each of them caught up in his own her own private thoughts and horrible feelings. But those who describe it from the inside describe a vastly different place. Each NDEr who personally enters this hellish realm seems to describe a horrifying nightmare world of hideous tortures and gruesome visual imagery.

"What I saw was the most hideous, horrible thing! This was no nightmare! These horrible black things came out and were grabbing me. There were people screaming. It was unearthly voices, not earthly. It was horrible! These things were all over me and they were screaming. I think I was naked there, because I remember feeling very ashamed. Everything was dark. I couldn't tell where the screaming was coming from. Them I actually saw these things, like horrible human beings, like anorexics. Their teeth were all ugly and twisted. Their eyes were bulging. They were bald, no hair, and weren't wearing anything. They were naked! There must have been at least fifty, everywhere, all around me. They were grabbing at my arms and my hair, and were screaming, pitiful screams. [...] They were wet, like sweaty, and they smelled so foul, like a rotting thing, like death."
- NDEr Sadira⁽⁴⁹⁾

"I was frightened, exhausted, cold, and lost [...] The hopelessness of my situation overwhelmed me [...] They began to tear off pieces of my flesh. To my horror, I realized that I was being taken apart and eaten alive, methodically, slowly, so that their entertainment would last as long as possible [...] I haven't described everything that happened. There are things that I don't care to remember. In fact, much that occurred was simply too gruesome and disturbing to recall. I've spent years trying to suppress a lot of it. After the experience, whenever I did remember those details, I would become traumatized."
- NDEr Howard Storm⁽⁵⁰⁾

But descriptions of this place as seen from the outside never seem to include this nightmarish imagery. NDErs in the Realm of Light sometimes find that they can peer over into the Realm of Bewildered Souls, looking in on it from the outside. When they do, they tend to describe the hellish realm as simply being grey, dreary, and dull, its inhabitants just wandering around aimlessly, but then paradoxically describe these inhabitants as experiencing acute emotional distress, feelings that seem strikingly out of sync with the bland dullness of their apparent surroundings.

This discrepancy leads one to suspect that these technicolor scenes of vivid torture are in fact the psychological nightmares these souls are enduring in that realm, each of them caught up in his or her own private dream of being in hell. But when outside observers look in on this realm, they do not see those nightmares, but only the sleepwalking figures themselves, and the anguish of their dreams. The feelings and emotions these souls are feeling, it seems, are the common denominator, observable from either perspective. This suggests, just as the Binary Soul Doctrine would predict, that those feelings and emotions are the only true reality of this experience, and that all these visions of torture are just dream images giving shape to those feelings.

"The all-consuming physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional pain.
Their psychological cruelty to me was unbearable."
- NDEr Howard Storm⁽⁵¹⁾

"I will never forget the pain. It wasn't physical at all. That's what was so terrifying.
It was emotional, psychological, and spiritual pain."
- NDEr Jay⁽⁵²⁾

Metaphorical Communication

"...all along my near-death subjects have insisted that
the words they use to describe their experiences are only analogies or metaphors
used to indicate experiences that ultimately lie beyond all human language."
- Researcher Raymond Moody⁽⁵³⁾

If one acknowledges the preponderance of parallels between the descriptions of second-stage NDEs and the characteristics of the right-brain unconscious, one is forced to consider the possibility that the entire second stage of the classic NDE is experienced solely by the unconscious while it is in a state of near or full disassociation from the conscious mind. If so, this would require one to drastically re-evaluate all these second stage descriptions, for the unconscious does not process or relate information the same way the conscious mind does. The unconscious is not literal, logical, linear, or rational. It does not think or communicate the way the conscious mind does, and knowing this, one cannot accept its communications at face value the way one does with communications from the conscious mind, which is literal, logical, and rational. Instead, the unconscious mind thinks and communicates with metaphors, symbols, images, gestures, and so on, and any communication or input coming from the unconscious must be viewed as such.

Dreams are communications from the unconscious, messages generated within the unconscious to be released into our conscious awareness. So, some say, are the world's great myths. And both of these, dreams and myths, follow the same laws, the same rules of operation in effect within the unconscious - they do not come right out and paint a clear literal picture of what they are trying to communicate, but instead take a far more nonlinear route, relating their message using metaphors, analogies, symbols, images, gestures, and so on. If, as the evidence suggests, the second stage of NDEs is experienced more or less exclusively by the unconscious half of the psyche, its descriptions of those experiences should then be viewed in much the same way people view dreams and myths - as messages that should not be taken literally, but messages that still need to be translated and interpreted before they can be fully comprehended.

NDEs as Circumstantial Proof of The Division?

Right on down the list, the two stages of NDEs reflect the two halves of the human psyche, the Dark Stage bringing the enhancement of the characteristics of the conscious mind and the diminishment of those of the unconscious, while the Light Stage does the exact opposite. The Dark Stage brings a decrease in emotion, connectedness, form-perception, and subjectivity, and an increase in autonomy, logic, reason, and objectivity, while the Light Stage brings the exact opposite.

An argument could even be made that the first stage also includes some memory loss - remembering no wants and needs, one experiences oneself as having no wants, needs, or addictions in the first stage. The apparently equal-but-opposite second stage brings an increase in memory (and not just during the life review, either), and as this would of course include the memories of all one's earthly wants, needs, and addictions, one would experience oneself as still having all those wants, needs, and addictions.

An argument could even be made that there is some diminishment of free will in the second stage. Those still obsessed with desires for food, drink, sex, or other addictions find themselves unable to break free of those yearnings even though they find themselves no longer able to satisfy them. Such a diminishment of free will would be consistent with such a division, for the conscious mind holds the free will, and on its own, the unconscious would not. Free will depends on being aware that different alternatives exist. On its own, the unconscious could never choose to change its behavior patterns; it could never even grasp the fact that these behaviors were no longer capable of leading to fulfillment. Instead, the unconscious, on its own, would just continue to try, again and again and again, ceaselessly, just as the reports of second-stage NDEs indicate.

But Most NDErs Do Not Report Such a Division

Detail after detail suggests that the two halves of the psyche are operating independently of one another during these two stages, precisely as if they were, just as the ancients believed, in the process of splitting apart from one another in the moments after physical death. But such a splitting is not what most NDErs report, nor what they believe themselves to be experiencing during these episodes. The whole idea of their minds splitting apart is entirely alien to their interpretation of their experience. Their impression, rather, is that these two stages occur one after the other, in the normal continuous progression of moments in time - first comes the Dark Stage, and then the Light Stage follows it, the way time normally operates. Yet NDErs themselves contradict this interpretation, consistently insisting that time is not experienced normally during NDEs. Again and again reports declare that 'time as we know it' does not exist during NDEs. If so, then the Dark Stage and the Light Stage may not necessarily be arranged in the assumed time sequence of before and after, but both may in fact be occurring at the same time, but independently of one another, just as the Binary Soul Doctrine suggested thousands of years ago.

But if two halves of the psyche do split apart from one another during many NDEs, why is this not noticed and reported? One answer might be simply because if such a division did occur, neither side of the mind would realize it after the fact. The conscious mind would have no memory of it, and the unconscious mind would no longer possess the analytical tools necessary to figure it out. But the explanation may even be more basic. Most of us, as we move through the days and weeks and years of our lives, don't even consciously perceive that our minds have two distinct parts. Even though the differentiation of the self into two parts, conscious and unconscious, or spirit and soul, or right and left hemispheres of the brain, is a well known truth both scientifically and theologically, the average person really doesn't identify with this truth on a personal level. And so, since the average person is not experientially aware that these two parts exist within himself, then it is no surprise that the average person would not notice any change in the relationship between these two parts if such a change in fact occurred.

The Divided-Soul NDE :

Eyewitness Testimony of the Division

"Our death ... is likely to be different from what we might have imagined."
- Researcher Kenneth Ring⁽⁵⁴⁾

But some NDErs do recall this division. In 1978, David King, a teenager from Lubbock Texas, wrecked his car on a country road, propelling him into an NDE in which he believes he experienced a total separation between the conscious and unconscious halves of his psyche. David described it as follows:

"I found myself outside the car crash and eventually the physical body. I was still in a mental frame of mind when my spirit did leave the body. Then I heard the voice of another soul behind me. It was the backside of who and what I was in spiritual form. We were one body in that spiritual form. The two of us were one together. I am still struggling to find the 'wordage' to define the type of body we shared together when I experienced the NDE. Then the separation occurred - we were in one body together prior to entering the light -- and in two separate 'spiritual forms' when we returned. I felt like I was 'cut in two parts' and the 'Spirit of God' passed between the two parts. What overwhelmed my mental process in the out of body part of the NDE was the realization that there was two parts to me, and these two parts had divided apart. I have had other NDEs, but all of them have centered on this same theme. The separation of two parts and the reunion of those two parts while in physical form. Moments after the 'spirit' departed the body, there was a separation of the 'soul.' It was divided into two parts. I am still not sure what to call those two parts. For now -- I stick to the 'spiritual unconscious' and the 'mental conscious.' It is very hard to put it into words that makes logical sense to others. That is one of the dramatic differences I see in my own NDE memories and what I have read of others."

This is a rare example of a subject who actually remembers a soul-division taking place during an NDE. But David King is not the only one who remembers going through something like this. Reports of soul-divisions have been published by a number of NDE researchers; in fact, Dr. Fenwick specifically includes "a splitting of consciousness" as one of the classic phenomena associated with the near-death experience.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Dr. Melvin Morse, another well-known researcher, reported two similar stories in his book Transformed By The Light : one man named Olaf Sunden experienced his own mind "splitting into two parts" during his NDE,⁽⁵⁶⁾ and, in what Morse called a "Fear Death Experience" a high school student who split into two parts while swimming off the coast of California described it "literally like having two sets of eyes connected to the same brain".⁽⁵⁷⁾

Soul- division experiences also apparently occur during hellish NDEs. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ On September 12^th, 1992, three days after having a mechanical heart valve put in her chest, a code blue was called on a Floridian named Maggie D. :

"The experience was a bad experience. I went to hell, a really went to hell! Nobody can change my mind about that. In the beginning of the experience, I felt that something was underneath me, lifting me so I couldn't move, and was pushing or pulling me forward toward a dark brown door. I was sucked through this very huge clear wall of jello-like substance into a dark dungeon type room, where all I could hear was waling and crying and moaning. There were thousands and thousands of people crying at the same time, and everyone was just in agony. It was so terrifying to hear them, like they were being chopped up or killed. Whenever they spoke, it wasn't the actual words, it was as if we had telepathy. I could hear them but their mouths didn't move. When I spoke, I also didn't have my mouth move. But I had the sensation that the words were being pulled out of me. I felt like I was shriveling up almost to nothing. I felt like I was just going to die right there. I didn't know what to do. I felt like I was really in hell, and I screamed that I had to go back, that I could not stay there. The more I screamed, the louder these whines got, these whiney cries, and you could hear like crowds and crowds of people crying and screaming and whining. When I was in this hole, dungeon type place, I didn't feel like I was over my body. I felt like I was standing next to it, directly next to it. [...] This other person ... looked worse than I did. But I knew it was me! - another section of me was right next to me! I felt like I had half a body. I felt that other part had my other half, and it has never come back. Something in my spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it, was taken away from me, and it has never come back. And me - my emotions - listen - whatever that part is - is gone - I miss that part of me. It's never coming back. I know that."⁽⁵⁹⁾

Maggie's soul-division experience is especially interesting, not only because it was also a hellish NDE, but because she specifically identifies the divided-away part with her emotions. And like Peggy Holladay's split-soul episode (quoted at the beginning of this chapter), Maggie also felt that this other part was an integral element of her being that had somehow separated away. While Peggy perceived this as being that part of her being that contained her personal memories, Peggy saw it as the part that had contained her personal emotions. And just as the ancient Egyptians had done thousands of years earlier, both Peggy and Maggie had recognized this other part as another, second 'self'. Just as Peggy had cried out "It's my ego! I had to have it or I wouldn't be alive", so too Maggie insisted "It was me! I knew it was me! - another section of me was right next to me."

Maggie insisted that this state of soul-division continued even after the NDE itself was over. This seems to be the exception rather than the rule; in most NDEs, it seems that the two parts are only temporarily divided, and once the episode is over, they bounce back together, thereafter enjoying an even closer relationship than they'd had before the NDE ever occurred.

Phyllis Atwater, past president of IANDS, came across a rare soul-division NDE which actually included dual vision - the subject witnessed her own soul standing outside her body, and yet was also looking out of the 'eyes' of that disembodied soul at the same time:

"I could see my spirit standing before me. My spirit was so beautifully perfect [...] It was so strange, for I could see my spirit and my spirit could see my pathetic body. I had not an ounce of color and I looked all withered and cold and lifeless."
- NDEr Jazmyne Cidavia-DeRepentigny⁽⁶⁰⁾

As might be expected, having one's consciousness divide into two parts like this was a very confusing and disorienting experience. Atwater tells us that Cidavia-DeRepentigny literally felt torn between two worlds during her NDE; while one self wanted to remain on earth, her other self just wanted to slip off into the light.

In her book Blessings in Disguise, Dr. Rommer presents a very similar case, in which a Native American woman named Sadhana not only experienced soul-division, but then still experienced 'being' both halves at the same time. After getting feverish from contaminated water in India, Sadhana's consciousness split apart into two independent units - she found herself observing reality from the perspective of two entirely different nonphysical selves at the same time. She described it like this:

"I was laying down on the bed .. tossing and turning, hair matting in the water of the sweat.

The first thing was --- I saw myself -- sitting at the bottom of the bed, cross legged as we tend to do in India. And I also saw the body that was tossing and turning there. The one that was watching was totally relaxed and there was a total consciousness. The first body is called the watcher and the second is called the witness, and is not cognitive and does not communicate with the other. The witness has no thought, but had total awareness, but does not cognate, doesn't understand. It's merely a witness."
- NDEr Sadhana ⁽⁶¹⁾

This is quite different than the soul-division episodes of Maggie, David, and Peggy, who were entirely cut off from the mental input of their other halves during their NDEs. While Maggie, David, Sadhana, Jazmyne, and Peggy all recognized these separated parts as being essential elements of their beings, only Sadhana and Jazmyne apparently remained undivided enough to still be able to peer out through the eyes of both halves at the same time.

Sadhana not only seems to have temporarily experienced her mind being divided into two distinct and nonintegrated components, but the way she describes these two parts seems to be fully consistent with the conscious and unconscious. She credits the "watcher" self with consciousness, which sounds like the conscious mind. She also says it was extremely relaxed during the experience, which also seems to fit, since the conscious half of the mind seems to be the self that experiences the Dark Stage of NDEs, which is associated with a deep feeling of calm and peace.

Sadhana's "other" self, the "witness", fits the pattern, too. It does not communicate, has no thought, cognition, or comprehension. This sounds altogether like the unconscious, which is nonverbal and nonrational, unable to communicate verbally or appreciate logic or abstract thought. Even the name she gives this self - the "witness", brings to mind the fact that the unconscious, while having no rational thought of its own, does contain a perfect memory record of one's full life experience. It is, in that respect at least, very much indeed a perfect witness of the events of one's life.

In her book, Dr. Rommer also included the case of an NDEr named Eve who reported being split into three separate pieces during her NDE - one physical body and two other nonphysical components. Like Maggie, Eve also realized that both these nonphysical selves were of equal value and necessity - she found that she had to reconnect both nonphysical selves back together with each other before she could successfully re-enter her body. ⁽⁶²⁾

I have also encountered other NDErs who experienced a soul-division during their NDEs. One individual was thrilled when he first learned of the Binary Soul Doctrine, exclaiming:

"This explains so much. I have wondered these years why I saw these visions from more than one perspective, and why I felt literally torn apart during my nde. This explains so much!"

To Be or Not To Be? Division of the Self

"Identity ceases. The 'you' that you once were becomes only a memory."
- NDEr and Researcher Phyllis Atwater⁽⁶³⁾

What does this division do to the self? The ancient Egyptians and Taoists, the reader will recall, felt that this division would disintegrate the person's very identity and selfhood, and understandably went through a great deal of trouble to try to prevent this dissolution. Today we sometimes hear a very similar message in the reports of NDErs :

"No words were spoken but my predicament was completely understood [...] as individuals we would cease to exist. The concept is so very sad and it is utterly inadequate to say that it does not matter."
- NDEr Allan Pring⁽⁶⁴⁾

But many in the NDE community hesitate to arrive at this disturbing conclusion. Kenneth Ring, for example, justified Peggy Holladay's soul-division experience (quoted at the beginning of this chapter) by arguing that the part of the soul she saw splitting away, the 'ego' that carried Peggy's personal feelings, emotions, memories, and self-evaluations, was not her 'real self', but was really just an invalid, worthless, 'false self'. This is not a new attitude; many traditions have taken this pro-division, partisan approach for millennia, dismissing the unconscious soul and all of its feminine, emotional, subjective characteristics as false, unworthy, and invalid. Indeed, from the perspective of the dispassionate objective conscious mind, the subjective emotional nature of the unconscious does seem to be invalid and false, a fact we see illustrated in Peggy's subsequent conclusions :

" I was completely unemotional [...] I saw some shiny, clear object lift away from my body. It was obvious to me it was my ego [...] in it I saw all the things I had done wrong in my life. I was stunned because I thought all that was part of me and simply couldn't be separated from me. I can't tell you how happy I was when it dawned on me that 'that was never me'. That identity was never the real me."⁽⁶⁵⁾
- NDEr Peggy Holladay

What made Peggy arrive at that conclusion? Once the conscious mind had separated from its equal-but-opposite other half, its very design would automatically cause it to perceive its unconscious partner as an alien 'other', unreal and unrelated. The conscious mind would dispassionately view its own unconscious through the same lens it was seeing everything during that Dark Stage - from an disconnected, unrelated, unemotional, nonattached perspective.

"What is key about neurosis? It is the split self -- a feeling self which is sealed away from an understanding self. It often happens that a person will start to feel but then "splits". He observes the self, rather than reacting. The real self begins to feel but the neurotic self splits away, aborting the feeling process...."
- Dr. Arthur Janov⁽⁶⁶⁾

The question to be asked is - can we accept assessments like Peggy's at face value, knowing what we do in this day and age about how the components of the mind would be likely to function during such a division? Statements about the unreality and unconnectedness and worthlessness of anything during this stage, whether one was referring to one's body, family relationships, career, or this other half of the self, would inevitably reflect the cold, mechanistic, and computer-like (dare I say inhuman?) perspective of the left-brain conscious during such a division. And so, such statements would not necessarily reflect any truly valid judgment at all. After all, the unemotional half of the mind that casually dismisses the value of all family relationships in most Dark Stage NDEs was the same half of the mind that just as glibly dismissed the value of this other self during Peggy's Dark Stage experience. If we are to accept the assessment of Peggy's Dark Stage mind that this other half of her being genuinely is worthless and false, we are forced by the same logic to conclude that all other impressions during this Dark Stage are equally accurate - which would be to say that all personal feelings, emotions, relationships, and attachments in life are utterly without value as well. That is, after all, what most people report feeling during the Dark Stage:

"My mother, husband, and baby boy ... would be sad at my death but I didn't feel despondent. In fact, it didn't seem to make much difference to me at all!"
- NDEr quoted by Maurice Rawlings⁽⁶⁷⁾

Of course, most NDErs usually return from the second stage with a very different perspective than they had during the first stage :

"Every person is sent to earth to ... discover that the most important thing is human relationships and love."
- NDEr Howard Storm⁽⁶⁸⁾

Leo Buscaglia would probably even argue that the subjective feelings and emotions of one's innermost heart and soul are far and away the most precious parts of human life, and without them, no afterlife would be quite worth the bother. Yet the part of the human mind in operation during the first stage of most NDEs would seem to strongly disagree with the above sentiment, and it was this cold unemotional first stage mind that concluded that the other half of Peggy's being was without value.

The Rebound Effect

"The Near-Death phenomenon seems to stimulate
the brain hemisphere that was not previously dominant."
- NDEr and Researcher Phyllis Atwater⁽⁶⁹⁾

As we've seen, both circumstantial and eyewitness evidence suggests that a temporary division or disassociation of consciousness often takes place during NDEs. But then, paradoxically, these paranormal experiences seem to leave subjects in a state of improved or enhanced mental integration after the fact. NDErs often emerge from these episodes with more healthy minds, more balanced, happy, and comfortable outlooks on life. They often feel more creative and effective, and sometimes even seem to have new psychic abilities. Psychological health often seems to have dramatically improved; again and again in the literature, we read that men end up more in touch with their feminine sides, women with their masculine sides. Many who had previously been more right-brained, intuitive, and unconscious-oriented find themselves becoming more left-brained, analytical, and conscious-oriented, and vice-versa. NDErs, it seems, enjoy a far stronger, closer, healthier, more balanced and fruitful relationship between the two sides of their psyches than they had prior to their experiences.

This seems like a paradox. Both the circumstantial and eyewitness evidence seem to indicate that the mind really does start to divide apart at death to at least some degree, but the aftereffects show the parts of the mind to be working in closer unison and integration than they had before. This suggests a "rubber band" hypothesis: if NDEs stretch apart the conscious and unconscious, might those two halves then snap back together into a closer, more integrated relationship afterwards? John 11:14-16 seems to suggest such a metaphysical law, as does the 36^th chapter of the Tao Te Ching :

It does seem like a paradox. By embracing death, NDErs have become more alive. By experiencing division, they become more whole (and that, perhaps, is what life is really all about). But if so, then what happens when it's not just a near-death experience, but actual death itself? If the actual event of 'returning to life' is what snaps these divided halves back together in NDEs, then what happens to humanity's billions who don't return, but just remain dead? Does the division still miraculously rebound all by itself anyway, or, as seems more likely, would the process of division then just continue under its own momentum until it became total and permanent?

Near-death experiences, by definition, cannot answer that question.

1. As quoted by Kenneth Ring in Lessons From The Light, p. 52

2. Such as ketamine or oxygen deprivation.

3. Kenneth Ring, Mind Sight.

4. As slugged out in the summer 2000 issue of the "Journal of Near-Death Studies".

5. As quoted by Kenneth Ring in Lessons From the Light, p. 109.

6. Angie Fenimore, Beyond the Darkness, pp. 91-92

7. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 53.

8. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 178

9. According to a study by Peter Fenwick, p. 89.

10. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 52-53

11. As quoted by Jean Ritchie in Death's Door, pp. 81-82.

12. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 48

13. Arthur Janov, The New Primal Scream, p. 53

14. My Descent Into Death, p. 15

15. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 74.

16. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 110.

17. In Life After Life, p. 54

18. People blind since birth who receive sight find that even though they are now receiving the visual data, it doesn't make any sense to them.

19. Quoted by Melvin Morse in Transformed By The Light, p. 142

20. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 108

21. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 28.

22. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 85

23. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 174

24. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 157-158

25. Storm, p. 18.

26. Margot Grey, Return From Death, p. 58.

27. Lundahl, p. 263.

28. Robert Ornstein, The Right Brain, p. 93.

29. Peter Fenwick, The Truth in the Light, p. 220

30. As quoted by Melvin Morse in Transformed By The Light, p. 149

31. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 60

32. Fenwick, p. 116.

33. In Ring's Life at death: a scientific exploration of the near-death experience, p. 183.

34. In Moody's Reflections on Life After Life, p. 10

35. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 149

36. In Rawlings' Beyond Death's Door, pp. 4-5

37. Branden, The Art of Living Consciously, p. 36

38. In Grey's Return From Death, p. 53

39. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 149

40. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 158

41. As quoted by Melvin Morse in Transformed By The Light, pp. 252-253

42. An apt phrase originally coined by Dr. Moody in Reflections on Life After Life.

43. In Reflections on Life After Life, pp. 18-21

44. Sandra Ingerman, Soul-Retrieval, p. 115

45. In Fenimore's Beyond The Darkness, p. 95

46. Atwater, p. 36-37.

47. In The Truth in the Light, p. 189

48. As quoted by Maurice Rawlings in Beyond Death's Door, p. 87.

49. As quoted by Dr. Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, pp. 78-79

50. In Storm's My Descent Into Death, p. 20-21

51. Ibid., p. 25

52. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 42

53. In Moody's Reflections on Life After Life, p. 38

54. In Ring's Lessons From The Light, p. 281

55. Peter Fenwick, The Truth in the Light, p. 219

56. In Morse' Transformed by the Light, p. 12

57. Ibid., p. 161

58. Actually, since those in the Realm of Bewildered Spirits seem, in some respects at least, to display stronger signs of soul-division than do those in the Realm of Light, one would expect a higher percentage of soul-division cases occurring in hellish NDEs.

59. Case taken from the unpublished case files of Barbara Rommer, with permission.

60. As quoted by P.M.H. Atwater in Beyond the Light, p. 11.

61. As quoted by Barbara Rommer in Blessings in Disguise, p. 136

62. In Rommer's Blessing in Disguise, p. 152-153

63. Atwater, p. 182

64. As quoted by Peter Fenwick in The Truth in the Light, p. 108.

65. As quoted by Kenneth Ring in Lessons From The Light, p. 52

66. Janov, , p. 288

67. Rawlings, pp. 62-63

68. As quoted by Melvin Morse in Transformed By The Light, p. 262

69. Atwater, p. 163.