No other Christian theology has ever explained this.

DivisionTheory does.

All the ancient cultures that believed in one form or another of the Binary Soul Doctrine also believed that they possessed the knowledge that would allow a person to avoid the afterdeath division of soul and spirit. Each culture taught their masses to try to achieve perfect integrity, although their approaches to this goal were often quite different. But together, they believed essentially the same thing -- that if one did not achieve integrity before dying, it was too late; once the afterdeath division of soul and spirit had occurred, nothing more could be done.

Unfortunately, this old path of integrity was just not good enough to actually solve humanity's problem. While it was effective on the level of the individual, the old path was a miserable failure on the level of the collective. It worked wonderfully when people actually tried it, but it was a path few ever started down, and fewer still completed. And even though generation after generation also produced healers who valiantly struggled to beat back humanity's ever- increasing division with various types of soul-retrieval or soul-rescue techniques (whether shamanic, OBE, psychological, or ghostly), there have ultimately just been too few of these spiritual warriors to make any meaningful impact on the pathology affecting our species. OBE pioneer Robert Monroe recognized this dilemma, as also does ghost rescuer Robert H. Coddington, who admitted :"We consider rescue of unaware souls a beneficent objective unto itself, even though aiding them, one individual at a time, may be like draining a lake one drop at a time."

Alas, we may win a few minor battles now and then, but the real war seems all but completely lost. For every individual these soul-retrieval specialists do help, millions more slip by untouched, lost and trapped in a merciless downward spiral of unconscious self-destruction. So, instead of getting closer to finally conquering the pathology that has gripped our species, humanity has just kept inching inexorably closer to seeing it finally conquer us. Day after day, lifetime after lifetime, we slice off more and more fragments of ourselves, endlessly indulging in insane acts of self-betrayal that violate our integrity and endanger our health and safety, ignorantly dropkicking shards of our beings into the garbage dump we call the unconscious.

Everything has a price, so we probably should not be surprised that we now find ourselves standing together at the ultimate precipice, wondering if our divisions will now finally be the end of us. There seems every reason to assume they might. When cells don't integrate with the rest of the system in a biological organism, it is called cancer. And left to their own devices, such pathologies inevitably destroy the whole organism. As Luke (11:17) warns, "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall."

At one time, the old path was believed to hold great promise. All the world once embraced it, believing it to be the ultimate answer to humanity�s problems. People everywhere built huge monuments to it, but in the end it failed us. Despite the entire old path, despite all the Binary Soul religions, shamans, soul-retrieval specialists, psychologists, and ghost-hunters, humanity is still imprisoned inside this pathology. Yes, from time to time a scattered few of us have been able to escape via the old path; but the vast majority of the Earth's tired, insecure, misinformed, and perpetually distracted population have never even tried to climb out of the trap on their own.

And that could very easily have been the end of the story.

Humanity needed help. Like an infant that had wandered into dangers it didn�t understand and had no chance of coping with, humanity needed to be rescued. Once it became clear that the old path wasn't a panacea, rescue became our only hope. We had attacked the problem the best way we knew how, and had come up embarrassingly short. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but despite a unified world-wide commitment to the old path, we failed in the end. Humanity came away from that sociological experiment just as pathologically divided as ever, leaving nothing left to be done but humbly admit our inadequacy and hope for a miracle. We needed a savior.

We got one.

With the advent of Christ, a whole new hope was born, that even if one's soul and spirit did divide apart at death, that still was not necessarily the end of the story. Even after that defeat, a person could still hope to have his divided parts united again one day. Like a car whose parts had been disassembled and scattered across the country, a person could hope to be reassembled. A person could hope to live again.

Jesus taught TWO hopes. There were now, He said, not one, but two paths to eternal life.

Today, conventional Christian teachings do not distinguish between these two claims any more than they distinguish between the soul and spirit. But they seem to have originally been two quite separate and distinct promises, one about resurrection, about rising up from the dead after one has died, and another quite different and far older promise about finding a permanent source of life, about never dying at all. Both those who "believed" in Christ and those who "lived" in Christ would enjoy eternal life, Jesus promised, but just how they would each come to receive that prize was very different.

Those who "lived" in Christ would never die : their soul and spirit would never split apart. They would never lose their memories or sense of personal identity after departing their earthly bodies. But one who merely "believed" in Christ, on the other hand, and didn't fully "live" in Him -- that person would still die. That self , that identity, would still suffer the "second death" and cease to exist, at least for a while. But thanks to Christ, the second death would have no permanent victory, and they would be resurrected again one day, reassembled, made whole again. Their soul and spirit would split apart, but were guaranteed to be reunited again eventually.

Christian Theology's Missing Cornerstone

In recent years many elements of the Church have glossed over the concept of a coming universal resurrection, as if embarrassed over such a seemingly absurd notion. This is but one casualty in the war going on inside Christianity over what to make of all the different confusing ways death is portrayed in the scriptures. What happens when we die is a crucially important question for Christianity; after all, the conquering of death was the genesis of the whole movement. Yet, despite the centrality of this issue, conventional Christian theology fails to account for many Biblical mysteries about death and the afterlife. For the greater part of 2,000 years, Christians have wondered why the next world is presented in so many different ways in the Bible. What, they ask, is the "Second Death"? What was "Baptism for the Dead"? Why is there an apparent reincarnational relationship between Elijah and John the Baptist? What does the Bible mean when it states that the soul and spirit can divide apart from one another? And why does the Bible report that Jesus' actual mission was not merely to conquer death, but to "make the two one", eerily echoing the universal anthem of the Binary Soul Doctrine?

The Bible, as it has come down to us today, seems to raise more of these questions than it answers, but the authors of the New Testament give the impression that it all made perfect sense to them. It seems as if there is a fundamental piece to the picture that modern Christian theology isn't seeing, some key detail that was originally understood in the early church, but has since been forgotten.

Like the rest of us, the Church exhibits the characteristics of being caught in a pathology, a sickness that is tearing it apart. On the surface, the Church held together for nearly 1500 years, but with the Reformation, the apparent unity of Christianity began to fracture, a process that has accelerated ever since. There are now dozens of different Christian factions around the world, each with its own divergent idea of what Christianity is about. And the more fractured Christianity gets, the weaker it gets. In fact, Christianity has fractured so thoroughly and deeply today that many around the world consider it an irrelevant, archaic, and dying perspective.

Why is Christianity fracturing so? This is the inevitable consequence of trying to base a system of thought on a fractured and incomplete model of life and death. Even many steadfast believers will admit that there seems to be a key point in Christian theology that the world just isn�t grasping - a crucial missing piece to the puzzle which, it is hoped, would finally make sense out of all the Bible�s textual mysteries, showing all its statements about the afterlife to be logical, predictable, mutually consistent, and interrelated. The Binary Soul Doctrine, as it turns out, does just that.

In the Old Testament, the fate of the dead is described in many seemingly contradictory ways. Thirty-two times, the soul is referred to as being able to die, but the spirit is presented as never dying, instead always returning to God after the person's death. Some passages seem to suggest that the dead cease to exist altogether after physical death, but others seem to present the dead as weakened, but still-existing and partially-functioning ghostly spirits.

The New Testament does not clear this up very much. There the dead are often said to be "sleeping", which is often taken to mean they are in some sort of stasis. But other passages suggest one�s soul goes immediately to Heaven or Hell after death, where it continues to be active and aware. And a few passages suggest that the spirits of the dead sometimes return to life on earth by reincarnating. One theme, however, weaves in and around all these others - all the world's dead will be reawakened back to physical life again one day, at the universal resurrection.

These different ways of portraying the fate of the dead have caused great division within Christianity. Today some believe that after death the soul ceases to exist altogether until it is re-created by God during the universal resurrection. Others believe the soul continues to exist, but in a sleep-like dormancy, until it is re-awakened for the resurrection; still others believe the dead remain active and aware at all times between their deaths and the resurrection. Curiously, this last group tends to believe that the dead experience not one, but two Judgments. People, they insist, are judged once immediately after dying, and sent either to Heaven or Hell as appropriate. But then at the resurrection they are plucked out of their Heaven or Hell, re-judged, then sent back in again. Many subscribe to this last perspective, even though it seems to reduce what was once thought of as the supreme biblical hope - the universal resurrection of Judgment Day - to a pointless and redundant event.

The Binary Soul Doctrine clears most of this up. If the unconscious was cut off from the conscious mind after death, it would find itself falling ever deeper into unconsciousness, where it would be expected to behave automatically and subjectively, unaware of anything external. It would have nothing to focus its attention on except whatever feelings and memories it contained within itself. Being automatic in nature, it would review those memories and feelings again and again. Just such a state seems to be described in the scriptures, in such phrases as "division of soul from spirit", "being cut off", "falling into the pit", "sleeping", and "treading the winepress". "Being cut off" suggests the separation of the unconscious from the conscious, while "falling into the pit" reflects the increasing depths of the unconscious experienced after this separation, and "sleeping" reflects a deeply unconscious state. "Treading the winepress" suggests what it might feel like to perpetually reprocess one�s memories, squeezing out every drop of feeling and meaning from the life just lived, churning through them again and again. And if one's conscious and unconscious split apart, rupturing the fabric of the person's very being, then in a very real sense that person would not exist anymore. A person indeed would, just as some passages in the Bible declare, "return to dust" and be no more.

Christianity's Unique Attitude Towards The Second Death

Many Binary Soul cultures, including Israel's close neighbor Egypt, believed that the second death was the absolute worst thing that could happen to a person. Its victims were thought doomed beyond all hope; they would cease to exist, and would never exist again. This very same phrase -- "the second death" -- also appears in the Bible, but there, we see something new, something found nowhere else in the ancient world : the suggestion that even the dreaded second death might not be an insurmountable defeat. The Binary Soul Doctrine suggests why Christianity alone seems to have had no fear of it; thanks to Jesus, even those who did suffer the second death could eventually be returned to life again, in the great universal resurrection.

Reincarnation Versus Resurrection

The Binary Soul Doctrine also explains how reincarnation fits into Christianity. The one place reincarnation does seem to make an appearance in the Bible, the John and Elijah connection, precisely fits the BSD pattern. John the Baptist is specifically identified as being Elijah, and is even declared to possess the very same spirit that had lived earlier as Elijah. Yet when he was asked, John denied being Elijah. This is precisely what would be expected if Elijah�s unconscious soul, which stored all his memories, had been cut away from his conscious spirit before it reincarnated.

This troublesome, inconvenient relationship between Elijah and John has long been a thorn in the side of the Church. These passages sound like they are talking about reincarnation, and it is challenging to argue that they are not. Yet Christian theologians have been struggling to do just that for nearly 2,000 years. Why? Because, without the BSD, it is even more challenging to integrate reincarnation into the rest of the Christian message. As things stand today, the Church is firmly convinced that if reincarnation is correct, then everything Christianity believes must be completely wrong. A fantasy. A mistake. If people naturally rise back up from death all by themselves through reincarnation, then what need have they for any concept of a universal resurrection, or for that matter, any savior who guarantees that resurrection? If we routinely come back to life again and again, all the air goes out of the sails of the Christian promise of Eternal Life. If we are already enjoying eternal life, one must ask "What did Jesus save us from?" Jesus' resurrection is the entire foundation and promise of the Church, but if reincarnation is real, then we already survive death, so there seems no need for Jesus' noble sacrifice.

Many calculate that the public acceptance of reincarnation would kill Christianity as it currently stands. The Church believes that if reincarnation is proven correct, then Jesus' whole life is transformed into a sad joke, saving those who had no need of being saved. Unfortunately, with scientific evidence supportive of reincarnation piling up, the Church's stance is getting ever more tenuous. Many clerics holding high positions already doubt some of its most basic tenets, but, seeing themselves as stewards devoted to their vessels, they intend to go down with their ship.

Christianity is in a dire predicament, and is losing courage fast. Reincarnation research is ongoing in universities around the world, and thousands of people are experimenting with past-life regression. In recent years a number of researchers have published extensive reports of young children claiming to recall data from previous lives, and in a number of cases, this data has been substantiated. The Church has painted itself into a corner; with reincarnation breathing down its neck, there's little room left to hide in. Within a generation, the battle of reincarnation vs. the Church will be fought and over, and virtually everyone expects Christianity to lose.

It doesn't have to.

Today we stand at a critical threshold, at which the destiny of the Church will be decided forever. Either Christianity finds a way to embrace these new discoveries about reincarnation, or it will perish. Fortunately, the Binary Soul Doctrine shows how reincarnation and resurrection can both be true at the same time, one half of us, the conscious spirit, reincarnates again and again, while the other half, the unconscious soul, does not arise again until it is resurrected. Christianity's entire dilemma, it turns out, is based on a single, reversible mistake: the assumption that the soul and spirit were one and the same thing.

Of course, this still leaves us asking: "What did Jesus save us from?" Amazingly, the answer seems to be the same as always. He saved our souls from death. Our souls, not our spirits. The spirit apparently never dies, but Jesus may indeed have found a way to save our souls from death, the soul which lives but one life and then is discarded into Heaven or Hell. Unable to prevent the second death from occurring in most people, Jesus� rescue efforts seem to have revolved primarily around finding a way to reverse it, getting all those discarded souls to come back to life one day.

The marriage of reincarnation and resurrection would change things on both sides of the fence. In the religions of the East where reincarnation is accepted, little spiritual urgency is felt. Unlike the anxiety that characterizes Western religions, people of the East often take comfort in their belief that if they don�t address spiritual issues in the current life, there will always be more opportunities to do so on down the road. What's the hurry to awaken, if a number of lifetimes are available?

But there is a huge difference between the teachings of the West and East. While the East knew about reincarnation, the West knew about Judgment Day, and realized that time was limited, that there is such a thing as "too late". Traces of reincarnation still exist within the earliest teachings of Christianity, but this doctrine was not emphasized, eventually being jettisoned from the tradition altogether. Why? Perhaps because the West realized that the opportunities for future incarnations are not unlimited. There will be, according to Judeo-Christian tradition, a great finale to history during which all our past dead will rise again. Unlike the East, which teaches that fresh opportunities never end, the West was convinced that we get only so many chances to "get it right". If one is still procrastinating and one's work is still unfinished when Judgment Day comes around, then it would be too late.

Day of the Dead

The Binary Soul Doctrine suggests that we all have died, split apart, and reincarnated many times in the past. Lifetime after lifetime, it declares, people keep discarding their souls into the blackness of the unconscious before reincarnating again. If so, the numbers of souls trapped in the unconscious would have just kept increasing down through history, with nothing to be done about it. And that, the Binary Soul Doctrine suggests, was Christ's mission : to free those captives and prisoners trapped in the pit of the unconscious. To save the dead.

to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners."
- Isaiah 61:1

"The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."
- Luke 19:10

Of course, if we all have many past-life selves, this would change the whole meaning of the universal resurrection. If reincarnation is real, then the only way our lost dead could possibly return to life is by having the memories of our past selves reawaken themselves in our minds. Admittedly, this is a very strange concept, but even more strange is the fact that it actually seems to be reflected in the scriptures, which describe a great invasion taking place during Judgment Day, an invasion which causes much of the world to go mad. An "ancient and enduring army", the "most ruthless of all nations", will invade the world, the Bible says. What army would be more ancient, enduring, or ruthless than an army of the reawakened dead invading the minds of the living?

If the Division is an illusion, then the underlying unity of the soul and spirit has always secretly continued to exist. If so, then the apparent division between them was only temporary, and eventually they would have reunited on their own without any outside interference or assistance. Since the psyche is a natural system, it will automatically try to compensate and adjust for any imbalances. Like a gyroscope, it can be counted on to eventually find its own center again without any outside help. And when that balance is restored, what had been separated will be reconnected.

Eventually the wall between the two separated parts would have collapsed on its own, allowing all the repressed contents of the primordial unconscious to flood into the conscious. In this scenario, then the most Jesus could have done would have been to make it possible for us to survive this traumatic reunion, helping us integrate all our past-life memories, feelings, and selves into some kind of structured and cohesive order. In other words, perhaps all He ultimately did was insure this coming reunion would be an integration instead of just a melting pot.

It wouldn't have to be. Even if it was inevitable that our divided parts had to reunite again one day, that doesn't mean they would necessarily have to integrate. Instead, they could melt together, regressing back to their pre-differentiated state, in the process causing all the differentiated parts to lose their separate qualities. Instead of ending up integrated and functional (like the highly organized "ones" and "zeros" of a complex computer program), all the memories, thoughts, identities, and experiences of humanity could just be meaninglessly shuffled together like a deck of cards, losing all the meaning in the data. The coming psychological reunion, in other words, posed the ultimate danger for humanity; it could result in absolute chaos, melting and dissolving all memory and identity, the foundational elements of the human ego itself. And indeed, repeated references to melting, the melting of people and the melting of the foundational elements of the world, are scattered among the Bible's prophecies of Judgment Day:

As they gather silver, brass, iron, lead, and tin into the midst of the furnace to blow fire upon it and melt it, so will I gather you in my anger and fury, and I will leave you there and melt you.
------ Ezekiel 22:20

The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in [...] the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth and the works in it shall be burned up. [...] all these things shall be dissolved.
- 2 Peter 3:11

The idea that all the psychological material humanity has stored up since the beginning of time, all our lost memories, feelings, thoughts, insights, experiences, and identities, could one day all come flooding back into our conscious awareness at once, is unspeakably horrendous, and begins to explain why the coming of this �Judgment Day� was portrayed so dreadfully in the Bible. Caught in the middle of such a chaotic inner flood of images, memories, and past-life selves, the average frail human psyche wouldn�t stand a chance, being completely disintegrated under the torrent. Everyone whose sense of self depended upon maintaining their own inner lies would perish when the dividing wall in the psyche finally came crashing down. Interestingly, from the perspective of the BSD the Old Testament is also replete with warnings of such an event during Judgment Day :

"This is what the Sovereign LORD says: In my wrath I will unleash a violent wind, and in my anger hailstones and torrents of rain will fall with destructive fury. I will tear down the wall you have covered with whitewash and will level it to the ground so that its foundation will be laid bare. When it falls, you will be destroyed in it; and you will know that I am the LORD."
----- Ezekiel 13:13-14

On the other hand, if the Division is real, then there might not ever be a universal resurrection at all. If our parts have genuinely been completely divided, then there would be no particular reason to expect them to reunite on their own at all. Thus, creating such a reason might have been Jesus� primary motivation. By using His death as a tool to absorb all our past memories into Himself, He might have primed the pump for the eventual coming of Judgment Day, for the eventual release of humanity's past-life memories and repressed soul-pain into our full conscious awareness. In this scenario, Christ�s return brings a baptism of psychological fire :

On the other hand, if the Division is real, there is no solid evidence (besides the scriptures) that the divided parts will ever reunite. And considering how awful such a reunification would be to experience firsthand, many might hope the divided parts never reunite ... if not for the fact that this would also guarantee that the human race would never know true immortality.

I don�t know which of these two dreadful options we should prefer, but that decision may be out of our hands anyway. Jesus may have already chosen for us, choosing life. Even with all its pain and horror, He has reportedly chosen life, both for Himself and for us.

At any rate, one thing is certain : the ultimate success of any coming resurrection would depend on Jesus having first completed His job of processing and integrating all of humanity�s memories into His own personal consciousness.

And a job that size would probably take some time, even for someone like Him.