The Netherworld of Ancient Myth Explained?
If the conscious and unconscious both survived physical death, but separated from each other in
the process, the unconscious would encounter some very predictable conditions. For instance, it
would feel cold, hungry, and empty, lacking the vibrant and fulfilling presence of its conscious
mind. It would become dim-witted, having lost its intellectual capacities. And losing the
animating vigor of that conscious spirit as well, the source of all its strength and vitality while
alive, would severely enfeeble it. Being intellectually incapacitated, it might well imagine that it
had fallen into some murky netherworld far beneath the world of the living, when in fact it had
actually descended into the murky recesses in the deepest levels of the unconscious (which really
is far beneath the abode of the living). And, since the unconscious is virtually without limit, this
would indeed seem like falling into a bottomless pit. Submerging deeper and deeper into the foul
dregs of that unconscious wasteland would probably seem like sinking into the miry waters of the
great deep itself.
This is not a new picture. The idea of the land of the dead being an 'underworld' is probably the
most widespread of all traditional concepts of the afterlife, being found in cultures all around the
globe (Van Baaren). From the ancient civilizations of the East to the Maori of New Zealand,
from the tribes of the Algonquin and the Ojibwa in North America to those of the Zulu, Ashanti,
and Dogon in Africa, people everywhere seem to have arrived at the same conclusion - that the
souls of the dead descend to some dark netherworld located far below the land of the living (
Long). The Vedic legends of early India, for example, describe the souls of their dead entering a
dark and silent bottomless pit populated by pale, starving, emaciated specters (Rgveda).
Mesopotamian souls also descended to a dreary netherworld of total darkness, silence,
immobility, and hunger (Davies), as were Greece's dead, who were believed to be condemned to
a wretched subterranean existence eternally shrouded in mist and shadow. Greek texts describe
the souls of the dead as weak, cold, joyless, unconscious, and incommunicative (Brandon).
Similarly, ancient Egypt's underworld was a boundless watery black abyss whose inhabitants were
naked, starving, deaf, and blind (Zandee) Even in far away China, the dead were said to spend
eternity in a murky subterranean land in a semiconscious state (Seidel).
Ancient legends are often said to contain some precious nucleus of truth, and humanity's ancient
concept of the netherworld does seem to be in close accord with the scenario predicted by the
Binary Soul Doctrine. More importantly, this classic vision, as it turns out, is not ancient history -
the same sort of vision is being reported even today. 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]." (Atwater, p. 36-37)
Today, just as thousands of years ago, the most common characteristics of the `hell' vision seem
to be lifeless wraiths suffering anxiety attacks in suffocating, dark, barren, expanses. The majority
of NDErs still describe the hells they visit as cold, hard, and empty, with dulled or dimmed light,
just as their counterparts were reporting thousands of years ago (Atwater). Such descriptions are
exactly what one would expect, according to the Binary Soul Doctrine - the souls of the dead
would indeed descend to a lower level - but lower in terms of consciousness, not geology.
Surprisingly, the hypothesis that the conscious and unconscious divide apart after death does not
lead to an alien or unfamiliar description of the afterlife, but instead describes a very familiar
picture - the primordial, seemingly universal image of the netherworld. This suggests that these
descriptions of the netherworld are not a true or literal picture of the afterlife at all, but a
metaphor. The Binary Soul Doctrine thus suggests that mankind's ancient traditions of various
underworld realms are genuine and valid, but as metaphorical reports rather than literal reports,
as descriptions of an experience of the unconscious that may otherwise be entirely untranslatable
and incomprehensible to the conscious mind.
"...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." (Moody, p. 38)
Metaphorical Descriptions?
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 "Realm of Light" 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 (Freud), as are the world's great myths (Campbell). 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
the second stage of NDEs is experienced exclusively by the unconscious half of the psyche, its
descriptions of those experiences (the mental image of the experience that the conscious mind is
left holding after the experience itself is over and done with) 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 Evidence of Division of Conscious From Unconscious?
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 dark stage also includes some memory loss -
remembering no wants and needs, one experiences oneself as having no wants, needs, or
addictions in the dark stage (Fenwick). The apparently equal-but-opposite light stage brings an
increase in memory, 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.
There also seems to be some noticeable diminishment of free will in the light 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 (Lundahl).
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. 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.
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. Their impression, rather, is that these two stages, the dark and the light,
occur one after the other, in the normal continuous progression of moments in time - first comes
the black stage, and then the light stage follows it, as time normally operates (Fenwick). Yet
NDErs themselves contradict this interpretation, consistently insisting that time is not experienced
normally during NDEs. In fact, again and again reports declare that "time as we know it" does not
exist during NDEs (Fenwick). If so, then the black 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 suggests.
If the conscious and unconscious do split apart from one another during NDEs, why is this not
reported? Perhaps because if such a division did occur, neither side would realize it. Most people
don't even realize that they have two parts; the differentiation of the self into two parts, conscious
and unconscious, or spirit and soul, already has a well-known history of not attracting attention to
itself. But more importantly, the nature of the two halves would completely mask any such
division that occurred. The conscious mind, stripped of its memory, would not remember that
anything had ever been any different, and so, possessing the reason but lacking the necessary data
from which it could draw conclusions, it would never become conscious of the change.
Meanwhile, the unconscious mind would see the signs, but couldn't read them; still holding the
memory data but now stripped of its reasoning abilities, the unconscious would be unable to
analyze the data and figure out that anything had changed.
It seems clear, then, that much of the data emerging from NDE research is consistent with the
ancient world's conviction that the conscious and unconscious can and often do divide apart from
one another at death. But NDEs are not the only afterlife phenomena that seems to reflect such an
afterdeath division; many other categories of afterlife phenomena also seem to carry similarly
compelling indications of such a mental rupture.
Reincarnation Explained?
The division of conscious from unconscious seems to have much in common with one of
mankind's oldest conceptions of the afterlife - the doctrine of rebirth. Although the conscious
would lose its entire memory if separated from the unconscious, it would nonetheless still
maintain full control over its own independent volition, remaining free to make new choices, and
so, remaining able to move on to fresh new cycles of experience; and this, in a nutshell, is the
recipe for reincarnation.
Such a division would also explain certain strange phenomena that Past-Life Regression subjects
have often reported during the time spent in-between lives. Individuals who have undergone
Past-Life Regression, being hypnotically regressed to a point in time in-between their past lives,
have often reported spending time in an emotionless black void very similar to the dark void of
the first stage of NDEs. Regression researchers such as Raymond Moody, Brad Steiger, Joel
Whitton, Joe Fisher, Loring G. Williams, and many others have all reported regression subjects
floating aimlessly in-between lives, peacefully, totally alone in a calm empty void. Like the dark
void in the first stage of NDEs, these subjects also often report a complete absence of feeling and
emotion while in this void (Steiger). They seem to be in emotional absolute zero, feeling nothing,
very calm and unperturbed, not feeling connected to anything or interested in anything or desirous
of anything, as emotionally vacant as a computer on a desk.
The Void Between Lives:
The Lights Are On, But No One's Home
Memory loss often seems to be a part of this experience - many subjects don't remember their
own names or anything else about their previous life while they are floating in this void. All they
can seem to remember ever doing is just floating quietly and calmly alone in this empty void.
Some regression researchers have reported subjects who seemed to remain in such a emotionless,
memory-less state for years, even decades while in-between lives, never entering into any realm
that even remotely resembles an NDE-like heaven or hell (Steiger). After this NDE-like void, the
next thing many regressed subjects recall is reincarnating again into a new body, without ever
experiencing anything like the classic "Realm of Light" of the second stage of NDEs (Steiger).
In the book "Life Between Life", Toronto physician Joel Whitton reported that regression subjects
often forget who they are while in between lives, losing all sense of personal identity to become
dispassionate observers floating in an empty limbo without any subjective sense of self. Whitton
also reports that many subjects experience a dissociative consciousness after death, in which their
minds literally divide apart into two distinct streams of awareness. The individual, however, is
usually only aware of only one stream at any given time (Whitton). One can find this theme
repeated again and again in modern life after death research (as well as in humanity's ancient
Binary Soul Doctrines); Olaf Sunden also reported experiencing, during a modern day NDE, his
own mind "splitting into two parts" (Morse, p. 12).
Haunting Ghosts Explained?
If the unconscious was cut off from the conscious mind after death, it would find itself running on
automatic, reviewing and re-experiencing its memories, feelings, and self-judgments over and
over, which would seem to explain the automatic sleepwalking behavior of haunting ghosts. The
unconscious would just keep re-experiencing the same traumas from its past again and again,
reliving its past in an endless nightmare of living emotions and memories. Haunting ghosts, which
are by far the most commonly reported type of ghost, seem to display this very behavior, acting
like mindless recordings stuck on automatic replay, repeatedly reliving their memories, often of
some emotionally traumatic event. They seem to possess no objective awareness or rational
intellect at all, almost never noticing the presence of others, or for that matter even the presence
of new walls and new floor-plans that have been erected in the building since they died (Guiley).
In the reports of the ancients just as the most modern reports of today, the ghosts of the dead are
seen wearing the same clothing and hair styles they wore while alive, an exact visual double of
what they looked like when alive. Seeming to have lost all verbal communication ability, these
sleepwalking ghosts usually can't be communicated with at all, and in the rare instances when they
do communicate, it almost always takes the form of pictures, images, and symbolism. It is almost
always a "Right Brain" kind of communication, almost never using either spoken words or written
language (Guiley). There is a very long history of the non-verbal nature of these entities; even the
souls of the dead in Homer's Iliad are portrayed as being unable to speak properly (Bremmer).
These characteristics, of course, would all be completely consistent with an unconscious mind that
was no longer in contact with its conscious half.
Apparitions of the Dead Explained?
One more type of ghost, often called "Apparitions of the Dead", are also occasionally seen, but
usually only by their friends and loved ones. The vast majority of these visits occur in the first year
or two after the person has died. These apparitions are very unlike the other two types of ghosts,
in that they usually show no signs of having suffered any mental impairment at all. They seem to
still have full use of all their mental faculties. They still possess their memories and sense of
self-identity, and they can still think rationally and communicate efficiently and effectively. But
there is one very curious element about these apparitions that may hold a clue to their nature - the
vast majority of these appearances occur very soon after the person's death. Very few occur more
than a few years after the death, and practically none occur after 15 or 20 years (Guggenheim).
There are, of course, notable exceptions to this - apparitions of a very small number of religious
holy figures have been reported to have been seen century after century. And of all the different
types of afterlife phenomena, these religious apparitions are the only ones that seem to hold any
promise of true "eternal life", in which a person survives death without suffering any deterioration
of his or her mental faculties.
Reports of Psychics and Mediums Explained?
Do modern-day psychics provide the world with yet another source of information about the
afterlife? Many of these paranormal specialists claim to perceive and sometimes even interact with
the souls of the dead on the other side, and, as it turns out, much of what they have to tell us
about these experiences is strikingly consistent with the Binary Soul Doctrine. For example,
Psychic Sylvia Brown, medium James Van Praagh, and Out-of-Body-Experience pioneer Robert
Monroe all describe souls of the dead who seem to be suffering from extreme confusion, often
unable to perform the elementary deductive logic necessary to figure out that they have passed on
(Brown, Van Praagh, Monroe). Van Praagh and Brown also both maintain that entities in the
other world tend to be nonverbal; in lieu of verbal communication, Brown insists, spirits as well
as ghosts often communicate by pantomime (Van Praagh, Brown). This of course would be
consistent with the Binary Soul Doctrine; without the conscious mind, the unconscious would
lack all linear thought processes, rendering it incapable of both logical reason and verbal
communication. Going one step further, Brown, like Cayce and Steiner before her, specifically
identifies the unconscious as the "spirit mind", the mind used in the realm of the dead (Brown).
In many respects, Van Praagh's descriptions of the afterlife is a textbook example of the Binary
Soul Doctrine. Two personal elements survive physical death, he maintains : an "emotional body"
which contains all one's thoughts, emotions, feelings, yearnings, and desires (like the unconscious
mind), and a mental body, which he associates with a person's data, logic, intelligence, and
reasoning abilities (like the conscious mind). But right after declaring that the intimate union of
these two elements makes one whole, "these bodies intermingle and are dependent on one
another, and make us whole beings", (Van Praagh, p. 33) he then describes that wholeness being
irreversibly shattered after death - these two elements permanently divide apart, an event he
identifies as the legendary "second death". The mental body continues on alone after this division,
he reports, leaving behind the emotional body which then begins to deteriorate (Van Praagh).
Similarly, Monroe also taught that one part of a person would be left behind in the realm of the
dead while another part went on to reincarnate, and placed tremendous emphasis on the
importance of collecting up all these lost parts of the self, reintegrating them back into one's
present psyche (Monroe). According to Brown, then, the souls of the dead are dim-witted,
nonverbal, and unconscious-dominant, while Van Praagh agrees that the souls of the dead are
dim-witted and nonverbal, but adds that during life, people are composed of two elements - one
rational and one emotional - which split apart at death. And Monroe agrees that the souls of the
dead are dim-witted and divide apart at death, but adds that these divided parts can be reunited
and reintegrated at a later point in time. All these findings, of course, are fully consistent with the
Binary Soul Doctrine.
This Answer From the Ancient World Really Works?
The simple cause-and-effect connections between mankind's afterlife reports and the Binary Soul
Doctrine are stunning in their implications - all these different afterlife phenomena which mankind
has been reporting down through the ages were, as it turns out, predictable all along, through
nothing more esoteric than basic psychological dynamics. An afterdeath division of the conscious
and unconscious would provide a cogent scientific explanation for all of the most commonly
reported afterlife phenomena, experiences which actually seem to be built right into the
hard-wiring of the human psyche. The ancient Binary Soul Doctrine even seems to finally solve
the riddle of mankind's two afterlife scenarios (reincarnation vs. heaven/hell), explaining at long
last why the world has so stubbornly held onto these two seemingly opposite and incompatible
doctrines - because two very fundamentally different afterlife experiences really were being
experienced. The soul, or the unconscious, was having one type of experience, and the spirit, or
conscious, was having a radically different one. Together, this scientific discovery and the
once-widespread Binary Soul Doctrine from which it sprang suggest that human religion
originally began as a science, a hard knowledge, a discipline which once explored the
psychological mechanics of an eternal mind - a mind which, while it could not truly die, could
nonetheless become profoundly fractured.
More Questions
As is often the case with discoveries, this one seems to raise as many questions as it answers. For
instance, if our psyches do divide apart at death, if the very lens of our perception splits in two,
does this mean that our entire perception of reality is therefore fractured and invalid from that
point on? If those who have reported NDEs have all been in profoundly disassociated states of
consciousness during their experiences, can their reports be trusted? Can either half of the psyche
be trusted to provide a valid picture of reality when they are divorced from one another?
One good reason to consider trusting their input might be the obvious parallel between the two
halves of the psyche and the two eyes of the face - one integrates together the input from both
sides of the psyche in much the same way that one integrates together the input from both eyes.
When a person closes one eye and peer through the other, is that single eye's vision wrong or
invalid? Of course not. Each eye, on its own, does still provide valuable and accurate data. Yet
each eye alone cannot provide a person with as full and rich and living a picture of reality as they
can when together. Each eye alone can only offer a two-dimensional image. Only together does
the real magic happen, marrying the flat two-dimensional input of each eye to produce something
more, something new - true three-dimensional depth perception. In the same way, I suspect, the
experience of each side of the psyche on its own does provide us with accurate data - each on its
own has an equally valid perception of reality. But just like eyes, which dimension (or dimensions)
one perceives and experiences depends on whether one is only looking out of one side, or only
out of the other, or out of both at the same time.
Is the division permanent? That is - when the conscious mind goes on to reincarnate, does the
unconscious even then still stay behind in its heaven or hell ? If so, then where does the new
unconscious for the next lifetime come from? And since the discarded unconscious from one's
previous life seems to still be functioning, still actively registering and processing experience, does
this have anything to do with the already-psychoactive unconscious of infants? Do people have
untold numbers of long-forgotten past-life unconscious souls still actively involved in their own
heavenly or hellish experiences deep within their psyches? The early Christian Gnostics not only
seem to have thought so, they even seem to have made it a prerequisite for salvation to reawaken
these past life selves from their slumbers (Novak).
What does this division do to the self? During life human beings are not simple, but complex
creatures, formed equally out of two parts. A person is not quite a soul that possesses a spirit, nor
a conscious that happens to have an unconscious; instead, one is a composite creature formed out
of the pair. Or is it more correct to say that one's self is not the marriage of these two parts, but
rather the fruit of that marriage? A person cannot honestly identify with just one of these parts
and deny the other, for ; just as the two hemispheres of the brain are equal in size, so too the
sense and experience of self is equally dependent on both halves of the psyche. The experience of
self, one's sense of identity, is born out of the deep integrated marriage of the two halves of the
psyche. When that integration dis-integrates, does that destroy the self that one experiences
oneself to be?
"Identity ceases. The 'you' that you once were becomes only a memory."
- Atwater, p. 182
"No words were spoken but my predicament was completely understood. I loved my wife more dearly than life itself and I could not leave here like this. I knew that we would never meet again because 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."
- Allan Pring (quoted by Fenwick, p. 108)
Does the division get worse over time? Does the partial deterioration of personal boundaries
experienced during Near-Death increase to a fuller dissolution of those boundaries once death is
complete and irreversible? (Both the ancient Greeks and Hebrews seem to have thought so). Do
the souls of the dead deteriorate over time as so many ancient cultures believed? The fact that the
vast majority of undivided-psyche apparitions of the dead occur within the first year or two after
the individual's death does suggest this (Guggenheim).
Although both groups show some signs of psychological disintegration, the souls in the "Realm of
Bewildered Spirits" seem to be far less psychologically functional, integrated, and whole than
those in the Realm of Light. Are there then varying degrees of division? If so, do some people die
without dividing at all ? (certain reports of NDEs, Past-Life Regressions, Afterdeath
Communications, and Apparitions of the Dead do seem to suggest that some individuals
successfully survive the separation from the body without any loss of psychological integration.)
If it is possible to die without dividing apart, how might this be accomplished? Is some sort of
integration of the conscious and unconscious prior to death the key to preventing this division?
Many ancient traditions do suggest this, such as ancient Egypt's funerary rituals uniting the ba and
ka, Taoism's emphasis on balancing the yin and yang, and the traditions of Jesus having "made the
two one" in various early Christian works. Such integral approaches are growing more common
in today's culture, as can be seen in recent books such as "The Marriage of Sense and Soul"
(Wilber) , "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" (Grey), and "Emotional Intelligence:
Why It Is More Important Than IQ" (Goleman).
NDEs, it seems, may also help achieve this integration; subjects often return with enhanced
psychologies, more balanced, healthy, and creative outlooks on life, and sometimes even with new
psychic abilities (Morse). Men end up more in touch with their feminine sides, women with their
masculine sides. After their NDEs, 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 (Atwater).
"The Near-Death phenomenon seems to stimulate
the brain hemisphere that was not previously dominant."
- Atwater, p. 163
Both ancient tradition and modern phenomena seem to reflect the same afterdeath division. Is it
mere coincidence then that so many NDErs seem to enjoy a stronger, closer, healthier, more
balanced and fruitful relationship between the two sides of their psyches than they had prior to
their experiences? 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 Tao
Te Ching 36:
"What is to be shrunken is first stretched out;
What is to be weakened is first made strong;
What will be thrown over is first raised up;
What will be withdrawn is first bestowed."
The vast majority of mankind's ancient descriptions of the realm of the dead seem to refer to the
hellish Realm of Bewildered Souls, yet today the vast majority of NDE reports describe a
heavenly realm, with only relatively few describing the hellish scenario. Why this discrepancy?
Are relatively fewer hellish experiences really being experienced today than in humanity's past, or
is it simply that fewer are being reported than are really being experienced? If fewer are being
experienced than earlier in humanity's history, what caused the change? Is it significant that the
vast majority of the hellish reports date from before Christ, while most of the heavenly reports
appear after?
Objectivity vs. Subjectivity
Who is correct? Is the Buddhist view correct, which dismisses the second-stage Realm of Light as
illusory, believing instead that the dark void encountered during the first stage of the NDE is the
true face of ultimate reality, and therefore the most valuable part of the experience? Or is the
consensus of modern-day NDErs correct, which tends to discount the dark void as a mere
passageway, seeing instead the glorious Realm of Light as the ultimate reality and therefore the
most meaningful part of the NDE? Or were the ancient Christian Gnostics correct, who insisted
that genuine truth to not be discovered by valuing one polarity above the other, but instead by
"making the two one", integrating the two perspectives together?
The characteristics of the second phase of the NDE seem to have much in common with the
unconscious mind. Should one then conclude that the unconscious mind is the only part of the
self that visits and experiences the classic heavenly and hellish realms? Edgar Cayce thought so
(Bro); so, it seems, did Rudolf Steiner (Steiner) and perhaps even Swedenborg (Swedenborg).
If so, then this second phase of the NDE is an entirely subjective experience, for the unconscious
is entirely subjective. The significance of this conclusion cannot be overstated. In a totally
subjective experience, the entire way the rest of the world looks, feels, and is experienced would
be completely and utterly dependent on one feels inside oneself, on how one sees oneself. In the
world of the purely subjective, the whole universe is but a mirror reflecting one's own thoughts
about oneself back at oneself. In a world of pure subjectivity, there would be only subject, only
self. There would be no object, no "other", no "thing in itself", no independently-existing
anything that was truly apart and separate and distinct from the observer.
When one is in the dark void of the first stage of NDEs, on the other hand, one seems to be
operating in a purely objective mode. It would only be then, while in that objective mode, that one
would actually be capable of recognizing and discerning the existence of any other thing, if in fact
any other object besides oneself really existed and was there to see. But instead one sees only
nothingness at this unique moment when one is, for the first time in his entire life's experience,
peering out onto the universe exclusively through this objective eye. It is only in the second phase
of NDEs, while one is in the subjective mode (and thus really only looking back at oneself the
whole time) that anything else seems to exist. This realization compels one to wonder if there
really IS any other "thing in itself" apart from the observer, or if, as Hinduism and Buddhism have
declared all along, one's own consciousness is the only thing that really objectively exists in all of
reality. Are the two phases of the NDE really just two different ways of looking at the exact same
reality? Do the darkness and the light show us two different realities, two distinct realms, or do
they BOTH show us the very same "thing in itself", which just happens to seem different because
it is being viewed through two very different kinds of observing eyes - the conscious and the
unconscious?
"What is within us is also without. What is without is also within.
He who sees difference between what is within and what is without
goes evermore from death to death."
- Katha Upanishad
"When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside,
and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below...
then you will enter the Kingdom."
- The Gospel of Thomas 22 (Robinson, p. 121)
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