WHY ARE THERE CONFLICTING REPORTS OF THE AFTERLIFE ?
This is the first step in recognizing the startling beauty of DivisionTheory - the idea that the conscious and unconscious both survive death, but split apart in the process, perfectly explains this paradox. Such an unconscious would experience the very sort of afterlife scenarios commonly reported in NDEs, and such a conscious would experience the very sort of afterlife experiences reported in Past-Life Regressions.
The conscious spirit would report only that part of its experience that it actually was capable of knowing about - reincarnating from life to life, and floating in nothingness in-between lives. The unconscious soul, in the same way, would only report ITS experience (those parts it knew of) - a memory-review followed by emotionally-charged reactions to those memories. Its subsequent experience would be supremely emotionally-based, and would reflect its own evaluation of one's past acts and choices in life.
The unconscious soul, of course, would NOT report losing its conscious spirit (or the intellect that goes with it), because without that intellect, it could not be able to figure out that such a thing had occurred. And the conscious spirit would not report having lost its unconscious soul (and its previous identity and memories that go with it), because, without those memories, it would have no idea it had ever had any previous identity or life, and would of course not have any memory of the unconscious dividing away from it, either.
In fact, NEITHER part would report the division, because neither part would know anything about it. The very occurrence of the division would mask the fact that the division had occurred. The only way for the division to be discovered AFTER THE FACT would be for someone to DEDUCE it from all the available data at hand. And until the science of psychology was invented, such a deduction would have been clearly impossible, for the characteristics and functions of the two parts, the unconscious soul & the conscious spirit, would not have been known, so the deduction could not have been made. Only in THIS century, by someone with a working knowledge of psychology, could the connection be made.
Or by actual divine revelation, as has been claimed in the past.
Or by some previous scientifically advanced civilization (which is where I believe all the bits and pieces of DivisionTheory I find in different ancient texts originate from - some ancient, world-spanning master, "Mother" religion).
And does the world not already have legends of just such an ancient, world-spanning culture -
Atlantis?
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WHAT DO THE TERMS "SOUL" AND "SPIRIT" REALLY MEAN?
Can one define the infinite? Many before myself have come to the conclusion that this simply cannot be done. The Tao Te Ching speaks of the Yin and Yang, which together make up the Tao, but qualifies its descriptions of that Yin and that Yang with the reservation: "The Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao."
The two parts are the two parts which together make up that within us which is infinite, that which is divine. These two parts have been discovered again and again in cultures all over the globe, and each time they are rediscovered, the local peoples notice some features of each of the two parts, but fail to recognize other features of each of the two parts. In different cultures, different features are recognized, so that one culture may be aware of features that the next was ignorant of, and vice versa.
I would say that modern science has again discovered these two parts, calling them, THIS time, the conscious and the unconscious. But again, science has failed, thus far, to recognize some of the most important features of each of these parts, most notably, the facts that (A) each is infinite and (B) that each is eternal (or, to put it in other words: neither of these two parts ceases to exist after the body does, and no matter how deeply you peer into the depths of either, you will never reach its ends).
Do you want to understand these two parts? I suggest that you read what other cultures have given as witness about them - study the soul & spirit of Hebrew scripture, the Yin and Yang of the Tao, the ba and ka of the Egyptians, the conscious and unconscious of the psychologist, the right and left brain of the physician. Study also the "inner" and "outer" man of Swedenborgianism, the Sun and Moon of astrology, the "head" and "heart" of folklore. And most of all, study that which is divided within yourself, and that which is divided within your brothers, and that which is divided within your society.
Do you want to understand the two parts? Study the conflict between art and science, between male and female, between "Rock & Roll" and "Country & Western". Between the cultures of East & West. Between objective and subjective. Between "now" and "eternity". Between God and man.
SO WHAT ARE WE REALLY - A SOUL THAT OWNS A SPIRIT, OR A SPIRIT THAT OWNS A SOUL ?
It seems so difficult sometimes to make this clear to others. I've lived and breathed this for so long, considering all the different implications and ramifications of DivisionTheory, and have been so powerfully transfixed by the beauty and elegance of it, and with the ease that it seems to resolve paradoxes and mysteries, that I am having a hard time trying to explain it to others with no context.
The soul, alone, is not "who we are". The spirit, alone, is not "who we are" either.
The spirit does not "own" a soul, nor does the soul "own" a spirit. Does your right eye own your left? And as for ghosts (well, MOST ghosts that are reported, anyway), they seem to demonstrate behavior easily associated with the unconscious soul, but not the conscious spirit. I suspect that what we see in such reports is typical of the afterlife of the soul - automatic, mindless, repetitive behavior, repeatedly churning through old emotional issues again and again, oblivious to everything except their own memories.
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CAN AN ANALOGY HELP US UNDERSTAND "SOUL" AND "SPIRIT" BETTER?
Can the analogy of a pie made of fruit and nuts help us understand the relationship between the soul and spirit ? For a well mixed pie it would be very difficult to cut it in half and call one half fruit and the other half nuts. But the pie IS still made up of those nuts and fruits. Just like this pie's fruit and nuts, the conscious & unconscious, or soul and spirit, are not separated in a healthy mind. Rather, they are at all times quite intimately mixed together.
The classic psychological terms "the conscious" and "the unconscious" do not reflect two *states* of the mind, but rather two constituent parts of it. A person's mental *state*at any given moment is produced by an ever-changing blend of these parts. Sometimes the blend may be 50%/50%, other times it is 99%/01%, other times 01%/99%. The blend is always changing, fluxing, dancing, if you will, much as Taoism describes the "eternal dance" of Yin and Yang, always interacting with one another, flowing into and out of and through one another. There are as many different mental *states* as there are different possible ratios of the mixture of the two constituent parts.
Our recognition that something "means something important to me", while it is a realization, i.e., it is something that we are "conscious" of, does not in fact originate in "the conscious", but is actually only deposited there from out of "the unconscious". In healthy minds, material that is first generated in "the unconscious" is continually being shipped over to be implanted in "the conscious", at which time we finally become aware of these subjective impressions and personal valuations. THIS is how the mind works. At the same time, material from "the conscious" is also being shipped over to "the unconscious", where it is stored, as memories. There always is, or should always be, this two-way interaction, the "eternal dance".
Only at death does DivisionTheory suggest that the soul and spirit, or the nuts and fruits of our pie, disentangle from their lifelong entwined embrace and divide into two separate camps. And this separation only occurs at death if the two have never really been thoroughly mixed, or integrated, together during the person's life. If, like a well-mad pie, the conscious spirit and the unconscious soul have really been mixed well together, the afterdeath division would not take place at all. But if the person's "pie" was not mixed well together, but instead that person kept his fruit and nuts, or conscious and unconscious, always separated and apart from one another, then we might reasonably expect that at death, they could be cut easily in two.
Is the eternal soul everyone makes such a big deal about an automaton?
The short answer is yes, under certain conditions, it does seem as if the eternal soul may be reduced to the functional level of an automaton. This seems to conflict with current popular opinion because:
(A) almost no one distinguishes between the soul and spirit anymore, although they are radically different elements of the human economy, and (B) almost no one nowadays explores the ancient tradition that the soul and spirit divide apart at death. In truth, the spirit deserves to be granted the title ‘eternal' far more than does the soul. The spirit IS eternal, guaranteed to exist and remain conscious throughout all time; but the soul cannot say the same thing. The soul is all too capable of "dying".
The spirit, or the conscious mind, is never an automaton. It possesses the capacity of free will, and the rational intellect. Thus it always thinks for itself and makes its own decisions. The soul, or unconscious, possesses neither of these capacities, and apart from the spirit is reduced to the status of a nonreasoning automaton. So long as the soul and spirit remain together, the soul is in no danger of being reduced to this state.
But this state, this condition of the soul as an automaton, although not popular nor discussed in present-day culture, has a long history be being repeatedly pointed out by a variety of sources and teachings: it is described in Biblical, Swedenborgian, Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese traditions, to name a few. It is also evident in both ancient and modern-day ghost reports.
SUMER/BABYLON: The abode of the dead was believed to be underground by the people of ancient Sumer, and once there, the souls of the dead were thought to become severely weakened, both physically and mentally.
GREECE : The Greeks believed that the dead descended to Hades, an enormous cavern deep below the ocean, a morose netherworld utterly lacking in self-consciousness. The souls of the dead, they believed, were condemned to a wretched subterranean world forever shrouded in mist and shadow. These souls were consistently described in ancient Greek texts as weak, cold, joyless, unconscious, and incommunicative.
CHINA: Even in far away China, the dead were believed to descend to a murky subterranean land, known there as Huang Ch'uan, in which the Chinese expected to suffer through eternity in a semiconscious state.
ISRAEL: The ancient Hebrews, of course, also believed that the dead descended deep below ground, to a netherworld known as She'ol. Like the netherworlds of the Greeks and Egyptians, She'ol was also thought to be a place pervaded by deep silence, thick darkness, and endless chaos:
...I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and deep shadow,
to the land of deepest night, of deep shadow and disorder...
- Job 10:21-22
The ancient Israelites believed that the dead were stripped of both their physical strength and conscious reason in the netherworld, and then were left to stagger blindly through the barren and chaotic wasteland of She'ol:
He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason; he sends them wandering through a trackless waste. They grope in darkness with no light; he makes them stagger like drunkards.
- Job 12:24-25
SWEDENBORG: Surprisingly, certain forms of Christian doctrine do seem to support DivisionTheory, perhaps most obviously in Swedenborgian theology. Emmanuel Swedenborg founded one of the newest and most controversial branches of Christian thought. His mystic visions into the worlds of the afterlife, however, were given a cool public reception in the 18th century; yet today his vision seems to fall right in line, offering yet another parallel to Division Theory. The idea of a afterdeath split of human consciousness was fundamental to Swedenborg's teachings; and, while odd to the people of his age, this vision can now be recognized as fully consistent with those of many others who came before him. According to Swedenborg, the human psyche does indeed split apart after death, and the two parts go in two different paths; but from his point of view, when the parts of the `self' split following death, the soul enters a unconscious existence, while the other part, the conscious spirit, becomes lost, and is thereafter unaccounted for.
* On the division of consciousness, Swedenborg wrote:
"Man has both discernment [unconscious value-judgment] and intention [conscious free-will decisionmaking] ... discernment alone does not constitute a person, nor does intention alone; rather it is discernment and intention together."
"[People have] two `thoughts', one more outward [conscious] and one more inward [uncons cious] ... these two thoughts are separate ... people take precautions to prevent the more inward from flowing into the more outward and somehow becoming visible."
* On the separation of the conscious spirit from the unconscious soul after death:
"A person's ... state after death is called `the state of his more inward [unconscious] elements ... the more outward things he was involved in [conscious of] ... go to sleep. The outer or natural [consciousness] becomes dormant ... his more outward [conscious] ele ments ... are parted after death ... and go to sleep."
"Man has something that angels [the dead] do not: ...his more outward elements ... all the elements of his natural or outer [consciousness], and ... insights and data."
* On the unconscious soul's inability to think rationally or make new decisions once the conscious spirit has been taken away after death:
"...in the other life they lose their faculty of logical thought."
"...bringing [certain] things ... out to ... consciousness was not allowed."
"...after death a person can no longer be re-formed by teaching the way he could in the world, because his [conscious mind] is then stilled and is incapable of being opened."
"No one in the spirit world is allowed to think [for themselves]."
From these brief excerpts from Swedenborg's own works, it's clear that he was simply describing the same vision of an after- death division of human consciousness that had also been recognized by so many others before him. These quotes also serve to make it increasingly obvious that Hinduism and Christianity are but two sides to the same story; Hinduism reports on reincarnation, the fate of the spirit after death, while Christianity reports on heaven and hell, the fate of the
soul. <
WHERE DOES JESUS FIT INTO THIS?
Jesus is the central figure of DivisionTheory. Everything, all the promises and hopes for the future, revolve around Him. Prior to Christ, those religions that contained DivisionTheory, those that knew of the division in the human psyche, tried to offer their people ways to prevent one's soul & spirit from dividing apart at death (read the Egyptian book of the Dead for examples of this). But if they failed in this, and the soul & spirit divided anyway, well that was all she wrote. That was it. There was no hope, and that person would never exist again, never be whole again.
Jesus came and changed all that. By overcoming death, integrating his soul and spirit and THEN exploding his soul across the galaxy, He effected a salvation for us all. He guaranteed that the Judgment Day scenario would occur eventually, in which all the separated souls and spirits across time would eventually be rejoined. He also changed the immediate death experience for people. All who forged a connection with Him in their hearts, in the unconsciousnesses during life, would have their afterlife netherworld experience vastly changed from one of self-imposed misery, to one of dreamlike bliss. They did not need to achieve the nearly-impossible task of fully reintegrating their own souls and spirits any more - all they needed from that point on was to enlist Jesus' help, and He would assist in the process from there on in.
HOW CAN WE SURVIVE THE AFTERDEATH JUDGMENT?
This is one of the places where the knowledge that we have acquired through the science of psychology really pays off. We are speaking here of souls, of unconsciousnesses. And one thing we have found is that, in the unconscious, the way it works is that "Like" always merges with "Like".
Related issues become connected, merging together, into what psychologists term "complexes". I believe that this characteristic functioning of the unconscious would not be affected by the division after death, that it is, as our psychologists teach, a function specifically unique to the unconscious. If so, then a very interesting possibility develops - if (A) we try to become "like Christ" when we are alive, if our unconscious is very aligned with the way Christ thought and taught, and (B) Christ indeed does maintain a presence within our unconscious, then within us, our own soul would merge with His own. The two would merge and become one.
This is how the unconscious works. It recognizes similarities between two things, relationships. While the conscious distinguishes between things, the unconscious identifies with things. I believe that this function is the key to the entire Christian teaching of salvation - if our soul indeed has merged with that of Christ's within us, then when we die, His righteousness would be able to be credited as our own. And in the same way, our "sins" would have been able to be credited as His own when He died, just as the Christian teachings have always held.
Such a merging of two souls is not unknown. Accounts of possession refer to just such a sense of "merging souls" as I have described above.
This teaching has always been taught, but until DivisionTheory came around, no explanation has arisen to show HOW such a transfer could occur. But the simple functioning of the human
unconscious holds the key to just such a transfer.
WHY IS THERE HELL?
WAS IT DESIGNED ON PURPOSE AS A PLACE OF
PUNISHMENT?
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WAS HELL DESIGNED FOR REHABILITATION ?
So the hell experience would not function in any genuinely efficient or effective way as a deterrent. The "Last Chance" opportunity during the Judgment Day scenario is a loving gesture on the part of a loving God, but it still wouldn't take precedence over our own Free Will. God would give us another, final chance, allowing us an opportunity to get ourselves out of the hole we had dug for ourselves, but mostly we would still be too reckless, arrogant, and foolish to even reach our hands out and accept it.