The modern world is doubly blessed, for NDErs are not the only crowd of people who claim to have personal memories of traveling beyond death's door. There is also another group of first-hand experiencers, whose reports (fortunately for the rest of us) substantiate NDErs' descriptions in many respects. All this data is a very new thing on the planet. Until the modern age, the only source of information we had about what happens at death was the pronouncements of a few eccentric self-appointed seers, mystics, and prophets (who, if truth be told, did not always paint the most consistent picture about what we ought to expect). But now, for the first time in history, we have two huge groups of first-hand experiencers -- NDErs and Past-Life Regression subjects -- who together comprise an enormous army of witnesses all reporting essentially the same story. Recent studies suggest that at least thirty million people around the world have had NDEs, and a million or so more have successfully accessed memories of previous incarnations via Past-Life Regression. Together, that makes more people living today who have personal memories of what happens after death than the entire populations of Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo combined.

Past-Life Regression, or PLR, started taking off as a widespread practice at just about the same time NDE research began; the two fields are like brother and sister, like two eyes looking at the same phenomenon from slightly different perspectives. PLR, of course, is based on the concept of reincarnation; subjects are regressed in their memories, through hypnosis or other means, to what seem to be quite convincing recollections of previous lives and deaths. PLR research, however, has one disadvantage compared to NDE research -- it depends on a belief in reincarnation, and outside of that context, these apparent memories have no objective meaning (they do have tremendous subjective value, however, often being quite the therapeutic miracle cure). But PLR research also has at least one striking advantage over NDE research; if their memories are to be believed, PLR subjects were not just 'nearly' dead at all. While NDErs apparently return from the threshold of death without actually crossing it, PLR subjects seem to discover memories of having once truly and fully crossed over into "the land of no return".

Past-life regression is amazing. It seems to quite literally raise the dead. The ego, the self, the person as he knew himself in a past life, seems to be reassembled, made to exist again, simply by re-connecting the conscious mind of today with the unconscious mind of yesteryear. When people are hypnotically regressed in their memories to previous lifetimes, they literally become their previous selves again. Those long-silent egos exist anew, able once more to speak with their old voices and think with their old minds, able to react and perceive as they had in the past, able to experience anew. Alive again.

In one experiment, a regressed subject was instructed to open his eyes and look around at the the 20th century room his body was now sitting in. He did, and marveled at what he saw. Though simple, this act was stunning in its significance, for it went far beyond merely tapping past memories -- it added new experience to the mmemory banks of someone long dead. It temporarily restored them to life. And so, it seemed to 'put the lie' to the Buddhist doctrine that no ego survives the trip from rebirth to rebirth. It seems rather an ego does survive, but it is a temporarily disassembled ego.

The New Face of Reincarnation

"...we want to integrate Freud and Buddha... the profound discoveries of the modern West - the whole notion of a psychodynamic unconsscious, which is really found nowhere else...can be integrated with the mystical or contemplative traditions, both East and West, for a more full spectrum approach."
- Ken Wilber⁽²⁾

Reincarnation cannot be what most people think it is. The concept of reincarnation most familiar to people today -- the idea that we travel unchanged and undamaged back and forth from life to afterlife to life to afterlife -- is an obsolete model of the processes involved, failing to take into account modern science's discovery of the psychoactive unconscious. The old world's outdated model of reincarnation would have us believe that between one lifetime and the next, we lose our memories, but are otherwise unchanged and unaffected by the transition. For ages, the reincarnational traditions assumed that these abandoned memories (which included the person's entire personality and sense of identity from the past life, with all his likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, worries, fears, suspicions, passions, discoveries, realizations, and hard-won skills) just go into some kind of 'cold storage' deep in the back of the mind, becoming completely dormant and nonfunctional. However, this is impossible. Modern psychology has discovered that material deposited in the unconscious never becomes truly dormant, but always remains active, perpetually running its own programs and privately registering its own subjective experiences, for however long it remains in the unconscious.

"... complexes in the subconscious do not change in the same way that they do in consciousness ... they are not corrected, but are conserved in their original form ... they take on the uninfluencable and compulsive characteristics of an automatism, of which they can be divested only if they are made conscious."
- C.G. Jung⁽³⁾

Modern science's discovery of the psychodynamic unconscious points directly to the Binary Soul Doctrine. If the conscious mind reincarnated, the contents of the past-life unconscious would neither disappear nor become dormant, but would also continue to actively function on its own, thinking, feeling, and experiencing its own private dream-world reality. Cutting off the memories of a past life between one lifetime and the next would simply result in two separate parts of the mind continuing on independently of one another after that. Like a worm cut in half, each half of the psyche would continue to live and function, neither part realizing that the other still existed.

Emphasis On The Void

"What manner of land is this into which I have come? It hath not water, it hath not air; it is deep unfathomable, it is black as the blackest night, and men wander helplessly therein.."
- Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter CLXXV

The data coming in from PLR research seems to have much in common with that of NDE research. Past-Life Regression reports have also been known to describe both the Dark and Light Stages, and some PLR subjects also claim to have personally divided apart into two soul pieces in-between one life and the next. However, there are some formidable differences between these two sets of reports. NDE reports tend to focus more on the heavenly Realm of Light of the second stage, while PLR subjects tend far more frequently to speak only of the empty void of the Dark Stage. Most of the time, PLR subjects just find themselves floating quietly alone in-between lives, experiencing 'nothing' in a peaceful, emotionless black void, which seems to be essentially the same void that NDErs briefly experience during the first moments of their experiences. This void doesn't fit any traditional notion of 'heaven' or 'hell', but it does seem a lot like Western theology's idea of 'limbo'. While the Dark Stage is usually very brief in NDEs, often overlooked altogether in the transition to the spectacular Light Stage, the Dark Stage seems to receive far more emphasis in PLR reports.

Now, both the Dark and Light Stages do occasionally appear in PLR reports. Like NDE reports, PLR reports also occasionally describe both these afterlife scenarios, and this agreement is of tremendous significance to all afterlife researchers -- two very different sets of witnesses are substantiating each other's reports. But there are some huge differences between the ways these two groups describe these two afterlife experiences, and these differences may be clues pointing towards some very important new realizations about the nature of death and the afterlife. There are two major differences; one has to do with the frequency of these dark void reports, and the other has to do with the duration of these experiences. In PLR reports, the dark void is more frequently described as the primary afterlife experience, and it also seems to last for a far longer duration than in NDE reports.

In most NDE reports, the predominant focus is the Light Stage, not the Dark Stage. The Dark Stage, or Tunnel experience, is often glossed over, often barely mentioned at all. But in PLR reports, this pattern often seems reversed. In the many different books on PLR research that have been published over the last 25 years, the Dark Stage is by far the most frequently-mentioned afterlife experience. In fact, the vast majority of these published PLR reports only mention the empty void, and never say anything about a Realm of Light at all.

"Most past life regressionists thought our life between lives was just

a hazy limbo that only served as a bridge from one past life to the next."
- PLR Researcher Michael Newton⁽⁴⁾

In the typical NDE, the void seems to be very brief, coming and going very quickly. But PLR reports often say that people float quietly alone in that empty darkness for years, even decades, before returning to life again in a new body. Many PLR subjects never catch so much as a glimpse of the second stage at any point during their between-lives experience; they never see the heavenly Realm of Light or the hellish Realm of Bewildered Spirits. For them, the whole between-life experience is just a bland, neutral, quiet, emotionless void.

Some PLR researchers maintain that the afterlife experience described in PLR reports are identical to those of NDE reports. But none of these researchers offer any explanation for why so many more PLR subjects seem to only experience the void in-between lives, or why this Dark Stage, which comes and goes so quickly in NDE reports, seems to last so long in so many PLR reports.

There currently is something of a disagreement within the ranks of regression researchers themselves about what occurs in-between lives. Some regression therapists find that the majority of their subjects usually only describe floating alone in the empty void in-between lives, while other regression therapists find that the majority of their subjects describe afterlife experiences inside the Realm of Light. Dr. Janet Cunningham, president of the International Association for Regression Research and Therapy (IARRT), estimates that :

"The majority of past life therapists find the client going to a place of "Light" after they

leave the body at death."⁽⁵⁾

But many other PLR therapists would disagree. Many say that the majority of their clients never experience the Light, but only the empty void in-between lives. For instance, Thomas Brown, a IARRT member and past-life therapist from Detroit, finds that the majority of his clients only experience the dark void in-between lives. And a number of other researchers also point towards the void as the afterlife scenario most frequently described by their subjects. In at least six different books on Past-Life Regression, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls by Dr. Michael Newton, Life Between Life by Dr. Joel L. Whitton and Joe Fisher, Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss, Other Lives, Other Selves by Dr. Roger Woolger, You Will Live Again by Brad Steiger, and You Have Been Here Before by Dr. Edith Fiore, the void experience seems to be emphasized again and again.

The details of these reports are very similar to the Dark Stage of NDE reports. Subjects hypnotically regressed to memories of being in-between-lives often describe themselves floating in blackness, not knowing where they are, not seeing anything, not feeling anything or doing anything or experiencing anything. They usually feel totally unemotional and detached and peaceful, and totally alone. They see no forms or patterns or meanings of any kind. They experience no emotions and do no concern themselves with any memories. Unlike the vibrant and thrilling "Realm of Light" experience, this afterlife experience brings a lessening or muting of one's feelings and emotions, and sometimes even of one's memory and sense of identity.

PLR Researchers: Whitton and Fisher

The Dark Stage experience is quite the opposite of the thrilling and intensely stimulating experiences most NDErs describe having in the Realm of Light. In Life Before Life, Dr. Joel Whitton and Joe Fisher describe the afterlife as a "timeless, spaceless glide"⁽⁶⁾ through pure nothingness, a "mysterious void between incarnations"⁽⁷⁾ in which identity, memory, and emotion all seem diminished. One PLR subject reported: "I felt no emotions. I felt no fear and no loneliness, although I seemed to be alone"⁽⁸⁾ and another reported "All cares and fears were left behind. Time and space were no more than a memory".⁽⁹⁾ Other subjects reported: "I'm walking in endless nothingness - no floor, no ceiling; no ground, no sky."⁽¹⁰⁾ and "I'm not aware of being anywhere"⁽¹¹⁾ and "It's black".⁽¹²⁾

Whitton and Fisher maintain that during the between-life state, people often lose their sense of self-identity: They write "The percipient loses all sense of personal identity"⁽¹³⁾ and "[One] surrenders one's sense of identity".⁽¹⁴⁾ This identity-loss apparently even includes losing memory of one's own name. Dr. Whitton asked one regressed subject: "What is your name?" only to receive the answer "I have no name."⁽¹⁵⁾ A number of PLR subjects have been unable to recall their names or identities while in this empty void. One of his subjects told Dr. Whitton:

"In experiencing a past life, one sees oneself as a distinct personality which engenders an emotional reaction. [But] in the interlife there's no part of me that I can see."⁽¹⁶⁾

PLR Researcher : Brian Weiss

Another Past-Life Researcher, Dr. Brian Weiss, has also frequently encountered this empty void between lives. When regressed to a point in time in-between lives, his subjects often find themselves floating peacefully and emotionlessly in an empty black nothingness, seeing nothing, doing nothing, experiencing nothing, just waiting patiently, resting there until the next incarnation. Like NDE subjects in the dark void, these PLR subjects can't even see themselves in this realm. Again and again, when asked what they see, they reply, "nothing".

"I don't see me anymore." "Where are you? What do you see?" "Nothing ... just darkness."⁽¹⁷⁾

"Her death was peaceful this time. She was floating. [...] I wondered if Catherine could remember anything more after her death, but she could only say 'I'm floating'".⁽¹⁸⁾

PLR Researcher: Edith Fiore

In her book You Have Been Here Before, Dr. Edith Fiore also repeatedly portrays the afterlife as one of no feeling, emotion, sensation, or sense of location. She asks a patient regressed to the afterlife "And now what are you feeling?" and receives the answer "Nothing". She asks "Are you aware of any sensations, any feelings, any emotions?" and is answered "No." She asks "Do you feel any concern, any worry, any pain?" and is answered "No".⁽¹⁹⁾ She asks another afterlife patient "What are you experiencing now?" and receives the answer "Nothing. I feel like I'm floating".⁽²⁰⁾ She asks "How do you feel?" and is answered "I don't feel anything".⁽²¹⁾ She asks another "Where do you feel you are?" and is answered "I don't know where I am. I'm just ... I'm just floating around."She then asks "What are you experiencing?" and is answered "Nothing". She then asks "Does anything come to mind?" and is answered "No".⁽²²⁾

PLR Researcher: Brad Steiger

In his book You Will Live Again, Brad Steiger also portrays the afterlife realm as one of waiting in an empty, black, emotionless, locationless void. He quotes one PLR subject as reporting

"In the spirit world, one did not sleep, never ate, never became tired. ...the afterlife was painless, nothing to be afraid of [...] There was neither love nor hate. [...] The spirit world was simply a place where the soul waited to pass on to 'another form of existence'."⁽²³⁾

Steiger also reports that subjects don't see or feel anything in-between lives. He asked one subject, "Now what do you see?" to which he replied "Nothing". "What are you doing?" Floating."⁽²⁴⁾ When asked "Now what do you feel?" another subject answered "Nothing. I can't see anything. I can't feel anything." When then asked "Do you enjoy that?", this subject responded "Well, I don't know. I can't feel nothing, how can I enjoy it?" When then asked "Does it bother you?" he replied "No. Why would it bother me? I don't feel anything."⁽²⁵⁾

Another of Steiger's PLR subjects seemed to show more evidence of loss of memory and sense of self-identity while in this in-between-lives state. When asked "What's your name?" he replied "I don't know. I don't have a name."⁽²⁶⁾

Steiger's subjects reports spending a long period of time in this Dark Void. When asked "what do you see?" one subject responded "Black". When then asked, "What are you doing?", he replied "Nothing." When then asked "Where are you?" he replied "I don't know, I'm just floating." When asked "How long have you been just floating?" he answered "Oh, I don't know. Been quite a while, I guess."⁽²⁷⁾ One subject insisted he had been floating alone in this empty void for more than ten years!

Some PLR researchers never encounter any reports of the Light Stage; all their subjects ever mention is floating in the void in-between lives. Steiger quotes one such regression therapist :

"The soul first rises to a level of consciousness that is very closely related to our physical world. When the soul is there, it can still see what's going on in the physical world . [...] The next step in soul progression would sem to be what the entities described merely as 'floating', being unable to see what's going on in the lower levels. Subjects always seem very calm at this level. A higher step, I would assume, is when the soul describes itself as doing nothing. This may be the final stage before rebirth."
- Loring G. Williams⁽²⁸⁾

PLR Researcher: Roger Woolger

In Other Lives, Other Selves, Dr. Roger Woolger asked a regression subject after his death "So what happens next?" and the subject responds "It's blank ... dark ... nothing." Woolger then comments "Many years of guiding regressions have taught me about the phenomenon of 'overshoot' when moving forward in time in a past life. Darkness or lack of images is nearly always a sign that death has occurred." ⁽²⁹⁾

One of Woolger's subjects also reported spending a long stretch of time in the dark void :

"I don't understand where I am", he said, " it seems to be a dark mist ... I am totally alone

...I remain here for a long long time. It seems like an eternity".⁽³⁰⁾

Yet another reports "I find myself in a great aloneless. Nothing there, not even a sense of time"⁽³¹⁾. Woolger writes that 95% of his subjects' reports of the between-lives realm described this same peaceful void.⁽³²⁾

PLR Researcher: Janet Cunningham

Even Dr. Cunningham has found herself in this void in-between lives. And her description of this experience is exactly how the Binary Soul Doctrine would have predicted. She seemed to possess little or no right-brain functions at all - all ability to think or communicate in metaphor and symbolism seemed to be unavailable to her thought processes. She found herself floating alone in this empty void, experiencing nothing but the vague sense of the presence of undefined 'energy' that totally lacked any definition, form, or quality. During one such experience, when the regression therapist instructed her to use metaphoric language to describe what she was experiencing in this void, she couldn't. She reported, "my mind simply wouldn't go there - that was a little too right-brained for me to do at that time."⁽³³⁾ This inability to speak in metaphor stands in stark contrast to the tendency of NDErs to use abundant metaphor while describing their Light Stage experiences.

"You have to describe it in metaphors."
- Kenneth Ring⁽³⁴⁾

"My near-death subjects have told me that the words they use

to describe their experiences are only analogies or metaphors...."
- Raymond Moody⁽³⁵⁾

Both Moody and Ring felt it important to point out that virtually all NDE reports of the Light Stage are metaphorical descriptions, and yet here we find that when a subject tries to describe the Dark Stage, she suffers from a strange inability to utilize any metaphors at all.

The same dark void seems to be experienced both in NDEs and PLRs. It seems to be a experience of "subject without object". The subject experiencing this does not seem to sense the separate presence of anything else at all, no visible light, no visible forms, no body, no emotion, no issues, no relationships, no past, no future, no pressing needs or obligations or goals. No "other" of any kind. In this realm there doesn't seem to be anything else in existence at all except the person's own consciousness, shining alone, like a candle in the darkness. But that candle is the only thing there is in that realm, almost as if the candle was located in the darkest, emptiest reaches of outer space. And so, since that candle's light finds nothing else there on which it might shine its light, the one holding the light (or better yet, the one who is the light, the consciousness itself) still sees only darkness. It is the function of the unconscious to reflect - like a mirror, it reflects consciousness back to itself, like the moon shining back the light of the sun. Only thus, via such a mirror, can the conscious mind, which possesses consciousness, actually experience "self-consciousness". Without such a mirror to reflect an image of itself back to itself, it remains consciousness without self-consciousness. Many of the descriptions of the dark void do seem to have this quality - the subject often experiences no sense of self at all. In their book Life Between Life, Whitton and Fisher quoted one of their subjects as saying "in the interlife there's no part of me I can see".⁽³⁶⁾ In the dark void, this mental reflection seems absent, suggesting that the subject having these experiences is a divided being - a conscious mind that has become 'cut off', separated or alienated from its unconscious.

A Mental Shift?

"...the after-death state is very much like a dream-state,

and its dreams are the children of the mentality of the dreamer."
- "Tibetan Book of The Dead"⁽³⁷⁾

Some past-life reports do mention the Light Stage; a number of PLR researchers, including Fiore, Whitton and Fisher, and Newton have all published PLR visits to the Realm of Light. In most respects, these descriptions are completely in agreement with the descriptions emerging from NDE research, but there is at least one important difference - the nature of the relationship between the Dark and Light Stages seems very different between NDE reports and PLR reports. I think we need to look at these differences very carefully. Nature reveals herself by her exceptions. In NDE reports, the Light Stage usually seems to follow the Dark Stage, sequentially, the one occurring after the other. But the relationship between these two phases seems to be different in PLR reports. In PLR reports, the relationship is not always a sequential relationship. These two experiences don't always seem to be occurring one after the other. Instead, they sometimes seem to be both occurring simultaneously, independently of one another.

In PLR reports, these visits to the heavenly Realm of Light sometimes are described sequentially, occurring after passing through a dark void, just like we hear in NDE reports. But also just like NDE reports, PLR subjects repeatedly insist that in the space between lives, there is no time, no space. Dr. Whitton, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of Toronto, has performed hundreds of between-lives regressions. He is adament on one point - there is an "utter lack of temporal sequence" in the realm in-between lives.⁽³⁸⁾

It seems, in fact, that the only point that virtually all our afterlife witnesses agree on is that is that time does not exist in the afterlife. The absence of time in the afterlife has been consistently reported by NDE subjects, PLR subjects, and psychics and mystics such as Edgar Cayce, Emanuel Swedenborg, Rudolf Steiner, James Van Praagh, Sylvia Brown, and many others. Can these witnesses all be wrong? If they are right, and time does not exist in the afterlife, then neither does sequence. And if sequence does not exist, then these two experiences - the Dark Phase and the Light Phase - cannot occur one after the other. Instead, they must really be occurring simultaneously and independently. If so, then they represent, it seems, two separate pieces of the human soul that have split apart and are having two distinct afterlife experiences. But if, on the other hand, one insists that these two experiences DO occur in sequence, one after the other, then one must be willing to accept that all these witnesses were wrong about what they reported. And if we conclude that the ONE point that all our afterlife witnesses agreed on was wrong, then what faith can we have in anything else they tell us?

Some evidence suggests that both Stages are actually being experienced by all Past-Life subjects. The only reason we ever hear of one of these Stages being reported more frequently than the other may have more to do with the hypnotic commands of the therapist than with the actual experiences of the subjects themselves. In those reports where the Light Stage is reported in PLR reports, the hypnotist usually uses a certain command. Dr. Cunningham tells us:

"After a PL regression, the therapist guides the client beyond the death experience into the Interlife realm. .....even if the therapist is very careful not to give suggestions during a regression, it is not uncommon for the therapist to give the suggestion to move into the Light - or to move to the Higher Self beyond the death - or to move into spirit for the purpose of continuing the therapy."⁽³⁹⁾

PLR Researcher: Michael Newton

Dr. Michael Newton is one of the few PLR researchers whose published reports focus on Light Stage experiences in-between lives. And his regression sessions depend on giving these sort of instructions to his hypnotized subjects. At first, when they are regressed to a point in time in-between lives, his subjects usually only report finding themselves alone in the familiar dark void. But then Newton basically commands the subject to 'shift gears in his mind'- to transfer his awareness to a different part of his mind - what Newton calls the superconscious mind. And when the subject does, lo and behold, then he is able to recall his Light Stage experiences.

This whole process of shifting gears in the mind seems to support the Binary Soul Doctrine. At the beginning of the between-lives regression, one part of the mind seemed to be experiencing the dark void. It was calmly alone in an empty blackness. Floating in the dark void was all it knew. It was totally unaware that anything else was occurring, and certainly didn't seem to know that there might be a whole different part of itself that was busy having all kinds of fun in a Realm of Light. But then, the hypnotized subject's attention is made to shift to another part of the mind, a part that is having a very different experience - in the Light Realm. And after this mental shift is made, that new part of the mind seems to be just as myopic as the first part was - it also seems to be totally unaware of the other part - the part that is still, simultaneously, independently, experiencing itself floating alone in empty blackness.

These hypnotic methods seem to allow subjects to recall the afterdeath experience of both sides of the mind. I think it is very important for us to recognize that these hypnotic techniques allow people to do today what they couldn't do when these experiences were actually occurring - monitor the experiences of both parts of the mind at the same time.

What would PLR subjects report in the absence of such coaching? What if the therapist never tells them to imagine entering the Light? Would they then only report floating alone in the empty imageless void during all the time in-between one life and the next? Maybe so. Dr. Cunningham says

"In experiences when the therapist can simply let the person 'go', it would not surprise me to have the client just continue to "float in a void" in-between lives."⁽⁴⁰⁾

This, in fact, seems to be just what is occurring in the PLR cases that only mention experiencing the dark void in-between lives. In the cases reported by Weiss, Woolger, and Steiger, the subjects are never instructed to shift gears in their minds, and so all they report experiencing in-between lives is just floating alone in the empty void. This mental shift suggests that, just like the Binary Soul Doctrine maintained thousands of years ago, there are two separate pieces to the mind that are experiencing separate afterlife experiences at the same time..

More Eyewitness Testimony of the Division

But in addition to this circumstantial evidence, a number of well-known PLR researchers, including Goldberg, Newton, and Cunningham, also provide us with eyewitness evidence of an afterdeath soul-division. Like NDE research, some PLR subjects also specifically report that an afterdeath division of the soul sometimes occurs between one life and the next. In his recent book on Past-Life Regression, Peaceful Transition, Dr. Goldberg writes:

"The mind is divided into two main components. One part is termed the conscious mind and consists of our analytical, critical, and basic left-brain activities. This part of our mind literally dies when the physical body crosses into spirit .... The other component of our consciousness is our subconscious mind...which is our creative, emotional, and right-brain function. The subconscious is ... indestructible. It is what reincarnates into a new body when the physical body dies; it is our soul."⁽⁴¹⁾

Obviously, Dr. Goldberg is quite convinced that some sort of a mental division does occur at death. And just like the Binary Soul Doctrine, he identifies these two parts as the conscious and the unconscious. But Goldberg seems to believe that after this division, the conscious mind then dies off entirely. Of course, if such a division did occur, then from the perspective of the unconscious soul, the rational conscious mind would indeed seem to disappear or die off. But if so, if the conscious mind really did die off and thereafter cease to exist, then where does the new conscious mind come from at the start of a new incarnation?

The chief virtue of any theory is its simplicity. Goldberg's hypothesis -- that the conscious mind dies off at the end of one lifetime, and then at the start of the next lifetime, a new one is recreated out of pure nothingness -- is less simple, and therefore less compelling, than the Binary Soul Doctrine, which simply suggests that these two parts temporarily divide apart for a time, and then link back up again on down the road.

In his two books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, Dr. Newton also maintains that people's souls split into two parts between one life and the next. Half of a person's soul often remains behind in the netherworld, his subjects report, in a sort of dormancy or dreaming sleep, while the other half of the person's soul travels back on down to earth to get reincarnated back into another body .

Sometimes, they say, one part of the soul goes on to reincarnate, while another part stays on earth and becomes a ghost; but more often, this 'left-behind' part does not become a ghost, but just remains in the netherworld realm in a noncommunicative, dormant, sleeping state.

Short-Circuited Schooling?

According to Newton's research, the interlife realm is a place where instruction and learning takes place, and the unstated assumption that goes with this is that the souls in this realm are not divided, at least not in the crippling way the Binary Soul Doctrine presumes; otherwise the instruction would likely go unheeded. Yet much evidence emerging from PLR research over the last 25 years strongly suggests that this is precisely what is occurring - the instruction is going unheeded! PLR case records are brimming with reports of individuals who have repeatedly made the very same mistakes lifetime after lifetime, for hundreds or even thousands of years :

"One subject, a doctoral candidate in nutritional sciences, learned from past-life investigation that she had a 2,000-year history of being unable to contend with being abandoned."⁽⁴²⁾

"Through past-life regression, Ben Gronzi re-experienced a succession of male and female lives in which he participated in vicious exchange by killing those who treated him badly. In this life, he has been plunged once more into a repugnant situation in which he has been tempted to opt for a violent solution."⁽⁴³⁾

Such reports, which seem to be all too common in PLR literature, are certainly not indicative of successful learning taking place in-between lives. The schooling may be taking place, but it is not bearing fruit. Somehow, the learning process is being thrown off-track. The proof is in the pudding, and one is left asking, "what happened to the lessons learned?" Subjects seem to start the next life as ignorant as they were at the end of the last one, if not even more so, for they just proceed to make the same mistakes all over again. The Binary Soul Doctrine seems to explain this phenomenon. Once the division occurs, the memories of the previous lifetime, and also of any interlife schooling, seem to be lost.

Saving the Dead?
Retrieving Soul-Fragments Via Past-Life Regression

Dr. Cunningham has also published cases of soul-division emerging from PLR research. In the December 1994 issue of IARRT's Journal of Regression Therapy, she reported four case histories of regressions that seemed to recover fractured-off pieces of the subjects' soul. She believes these regressions discovered actual pieces of the subject's living consciousness that somehow split off at the end of past lifetimes, becoming "locked away" in netherworld experiences. When subjects had these lost parts returned to them, they reported feeling strangely different, as if some sort of indefinable inner shift had occurred.⁽⁴⁴⁾ And in an article for the 1999 issue of the Journal, Dr. Woolger seems to describe something very similar :

"When consciousness leaves the physical body at death, it takes with it another kind of body, often called the subtle or energy body, and imprinted on that energy body are all the memories from that lifetime, but particularly the impressions of trauma. In fact, all psychological and emotional states as well as physical memories are somehow imprinted in this energy sheath and this is what is carried over after death."⁽⁴⁵⁾

Woolger's report that the soul has two parts to it, one part that contains the conscious awareness, and another part that contains the emotions and memory, is in complete accord with modern science's description of the conscious and unconscious, as well as with the ancient world's many different cultural versions of the Binary Soul Doctrine. Woolger then goes on in the same paper to report, just as the Binary Soul Doctrine maintained thousands of years ago, that the soul can indeed divide into two alienated fragments of consciousness which then have simultaneous and independent experiences after death: one part can reincarnate anew, while another might find itself trapped in a hellish, nightmare dreamworld experience:

"The spirit may hover around the area of the death for centuries and that part of the soul, a fragment of the greater soul, will be stuck or lost in time. [...] With the help of the therapist or guide, the confused spirit can be reminded that the life is over. [...] By bringing the outside consciousness of the therapist into the story, we can usually help release the soul fragment. [...] When we do this work in the afterdeath realm, we are actually performing a kind of healing ritual, integrating a part of the soul which has been stuck in an unfinished death process, bringing back a lost part of the soul...."⁽⁴⁶⁾

Just as the Binary Soul Doctrine reported thousands of years ago, these "fragments" that become trapped in the past seem to be the cut-off and discarded unconscious minds of the dead - they seem to possess full memory and emotion (which the unconscious does possess), but no objective rational intellect or independent initiative (which the unconscious does not possess). Like ghostly sleepwalkers, they seem to be stuck in their own emotional replays of their memories of the past, but apparently cannot perform the simple logical deduction necessary to figure out that they are dead, nor do they ever seem to demonstrate any ability to willfully choose to escape this unfortunate stasis on their own.

Meanwhile, the other half of the mind of the deceased, the half these "fragments" lack and so dearly need, the objective rational conscious mind, seems to spend its time in-between lives just floating blissfully alone in an empty black nothingness, unperturbed by memory or emotion, entirely oblivious to the ongoing distress of its other half.

1. Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls : New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, p. 2

2. Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, p. 155.

3. Carl Jung, "The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche", para. 383, p. 186.

4. Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls, p. xi.

5. Janet Cunningham, personal communication.

6. Whitton and Fisher, Life Between Life, p. 189.

7. Ibid., p. 97.

8. Ibid., p. 122.

9. Ibid., p. 142

10. Ibid., p. 35

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 98.

13. Ibid., p. 8.

14. Ibid., p. 26.

15. Ibid., p. 21.

16. Ibid., p. 28.

17. Brian Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, p. 111.

18. Ibid., p. 39-40.

19. Edith Fiore, You Have Been Here Before, p. 33.

20. Ibid., p. 119.

21. Ibid., p. 136.

22. Ibid., p. 236.

23. Steiger, You Will Live Again, p. 15.

24. Ibid., p. 50.

25. Ibid., p. 55.

26. Ibid., p. 59.

27. Ibid., p. 54.

28. As quoted by Brad Steiger in Returning from the Light, p. 98.

29. Roger Woolger, Other Lives, Other Selves, p. 38.

30. Ibid., pp. 298-299.

31. Ibid., p. 302.

32. Ibid., p. 294.

33. Janet Cunningham, personal communication.

34. Kenneth Ring, Lessons From The Light, p. 152.

35. Raymond Moody, Reflections on Life After Life, p. 38.

36. Whitton and Fisher, p. 28.

37. Evans-Wentz, p. 34

38. Whitton and Fisher, p. 29.

39. Janet Cunningham, personal communication.

40. Janet Cunningham, personal communication.

41. Bruce Goldberg, Peaceful Transition, p. 7.

42. Whitton and Fisher, p. 47.

43. Ibid., p. 75.

44. Janet Cunningham, Journal of Regression Therapy, December 1994.

45. Roger Woolger, Journal of Regression Therapy, 1999.

46. Ibid.