According to the DivisionTheory hypothesis, each living person would have untold numbers of past-life souls languishing in the deepest realms of the unconscious. The scientific nature of the unconscious would predict what would happen to them in that dark realm - they would coalesce together, in the hell realm, into a great collective, a single- minded, artifically-generated creature existing only in the unconscious half of reality - a creature known since the dawn of time as the devil.
M. Scott Peck, in his book "People of the Lie", reasoned like this - he was certain (1) that "good" and 'evil" both existed, as he had experienced both through other human beings. He was also certain that (2) a "supremely good spirit" existed - God. These two facts alone suggested to him that a "supremely evil spirit" might also exist. But Peck, a scientist and licensed psychiatrist, was not content to leave it at that, but resolved to explore this question further, and ended up witnessing a number of exorcisms which he described in his book, and which convinced him beyond any reservations - yes, there was a Devil. But WHAT was this "Devil", and where did it live?
The famous pioneer in psychoanalytic research, Carl Jung, believed that the entire realm described variously as "the spiritual dimension', "Heaven", and/or hell" exist WITHIN the human psyche, in a location called "the Collective Unconscious".
If so, we should not worry that gods, demons, and devils exist outside of our imaginations. We should worry rather that they do exist, possessing autonomous existences, WITHIN our own psyches.
This is what Jung believed, and DivisionTheory now arises as remarkable supporting evidence for this premise, explaining how the mechanics of the psyche, if the two halves divided after death, would be continuously building a psychic structure (a "complex") within the depths of the unconscious that would function virtually identically to that thing known for millennia as the "Devil". It would exist within the collective unconscious. In other words, it would simultaneously exist within the depths of each person's psyche, sitting like a monster in the back of everyone's mind.
This "structure" would be always growing, being made up of, and added, to by each new "evil" soul (unconscious mind) that was discarded by the reincarnating spirit (conscious mind). The memories and personalities that are lost during reincarnation must go somewhere. Science, knowing that memory is stored within the unconscious, suggests that the unconscious is "cut away" during the reincarnation of the conscious spirit.
The known dynamics of the unconscious suggest that all those discarded unconsciouses would gather together, congealing into a single mass, within the depths of the collective unconscious (in the unconscious, "like" always merges with "like". We even see this dynamic in our dreams, in which a single figure may be made up out of a number of people we know in real life). Such a mass, as crowds are known to be, would act as one, and at a very primitive and instinctive level.
We have seen this monster awaken occasionally - in individuals like Hitler, Stalin, and Dahmer, in groups like 1940's Germany, the "People's Temple, the "Wackos at Wako".
Peck arrived at conclusions strikingly similar to DivisionTheory - while there was a devil, it's only power, its only way of acting, was through a human host. DivisionTheory arrives independently at the same conclusion.
Peck concluded that the Devil "possessed", "owned", and was perhaps even "made up of" the souls of the evil dead. DivisionTheory arrives independently at the same conclusion.
These beliefs are not new. More than 5,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians taught the existence of a "Devil", and believed that those who were not "pure" would, upon their deaths, have their souls "consumed", "eaten", "swallowed", by that Devil.
Now modern science has arrived at the same conclusion.
Our unconscious is preprogrammed by our creator to produce appropriate experiential responses to our choices and decisions in life. In other words, when we choose wrongly, we automatically feel pain, misery, sorrow, remorse, etc.. We feel these because they are feelings automatically created within our unconscious. Our unconscious automatically generates these appropriate responses to our choices, and then deposits them back into our conscious awareness. This, I believe, is the system as it was intended to work.
But we humans discovered long ago that we have the power to force such negative feelings back down, out of our conscious awareness. We can repress it. Refuse to acknowledge it.
We have all seen the people who can do horrible things and seem to feel nothing. We always ask "why?" they feel nothing, but we all know the answer - we can keep these feelings from surfacing during life if we try, and each time we do it, the next time it is easier and easier (In Dr. Laura's book, she asks "How Could You DO That?" But we all know how. This is how.).
But the cost of this trick, if we do it enough, is becoming alienated from our own souls. The problem is, before long, we become so adept at this trick that we don't even realize any more when we are repressing the input from our unconscious. Repressing the input of the unconscious is, seemingly, what this world is all about - drugs and alcohol, and so on. And all psychoanalysis, and most spiritual practices (such as meditation), is all about restoring the connection between the soul and spirit, between the conscious and unconscious.
I submit that becoming alienated from our own souls during life is exactly the danger - we can actually "lose" our own souls after death, with the conscious and unconscious, or the soul and spirit, detaching from one another and each going their separate ways.
The Bible often describes the danger of death as having one's soul "cut off". I don't think this was flowery language. I think it is to be taken literally.
Thus, we each of us have who knows how much negative experience stored up in our unconscious just from this one lifetime, which we have never allowed ourselves to consciously experience.
And if we have been repressing our feelings for MANY lifetimes (as is likely if reincarnation is part of the picture), the sum total of repressed pain waiting to be consciously released would be like a lake of burning fire (think the Bible). Suddenly released, it would be like a flood (think Judgment Day - "the end will be like a flood", the Bible says.).
Kierkegaard taught that we must experience our hells while on earth if we did not want to experience them after we died, and DivisionTheory would suggest the same thing.
Any negative experience that we refuse to allow to be released into our consscious minds while alive, DivisionTheory suggests, will BECOME our afterlife experience.
I believe that we must not hide from the feelings our unconscious generates within us, but allow them to be experienced fully, as our creator intended. To do less is to divide ourselves and violate our integrity.
DivisionTheory suggests that the disembodied soul in in fact just a human unconscious that has been separated from its conscious mind. A strikingly similar vision, of a soul running on automatic, lacking any self-consciousness, or any intellect, can be seen in the majority of Ghost Reports that continue to be reported today just as they have for the last 4,000 years. Everywhere around the world, in every age, people die. Everywhere around the world, in every age, people have believed in life after death. And, everywhere around the world, in every age, people have reported seeing ghosts. Besides these three, no other facet of death seems to be absolutely universal. Certain cultures have had no belief in heaven or hell, others have had none in reincarnation. Besides death itself and the belief in an afterlife, only the reporting of ghosts appears virtually across the board.
Even today, according to a survey conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Council, 42% of all Americans, and a staggering 67% of widows, believe they have had apparitional contact with the dead. Of those, 78% reported having seen a ghost, and the rest believed they'd heard or felt one.
Such sightings, if true, seem at first to conflict with the expectations of Division Theory, since ghosts don't seem to have merged into the collective unconscious, but appear instead to have retained their separate identities, somehow hovering faintly on the threshold of the conscious realm of the living.
Ekimmu: In ancient Assyria, the evil ghost of one who was denied entrance to the underworld and was doomed to wander the earth. - The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits
Legends similar to the above, suggesting that ghosts are the exception rather than the rule in the realm of the dead, can be found in virtually every culture throughout the world. Such souls, for whatever reason, seem either unable or unwilling to merge with the collective. In the middle ages, the Roman church taught that ghosts were souls trapped in Purgatory until they paid for their sins, and it is common to find stories in native folklore which maintain that the souls of the dead only become ghosts through sin or tragedy, i.e., when something goes wrong.
While ghosts seem to somehow avoid being swallowed up in any unconscious collective, they still exhibit many of the characteristics DivisionTheory predicts for a separated unconscious, and so provide further support for Division Theory's basic premise that the conscious and unconscious divide apart after death. Haunting apparitions, researchers have found, often seem to have an emotional tie to the place where they are seen. Like "a hiccup in time", ghost appearances often seem to either cyclically or endlessly replay events from the past. Ghosts are commonly reported re-enacting some long-past emotional trauma, moving about in period clothing, often following floorplans that no longer exist. Such apparitions, researchers suggest, are merely unconscious recordings running on automatic, possessing no more independent consciousness or self-awareness than does a videorecording of a man talking on TV.
Ghosts, especially haunting ghosts, usually but not always make no attempt to communicate with others. Such ghosts generally do not speak, acting as if they are entirely unaware of the presence of the living. But when communication does occasionally occur, it tends to be subjective in nature, often involving pictures and/or symbols; in short, ghostly communiques typically involve classic `Right Brain' formatting of information.
Communicating to a ghost does, on the other hand, seem to be possible (in certain cases at least); exorcism rites occasionally appear to successfully convince a ghost to leave. The majority of ghosts, however, those which endlessly reenact the same events, tend not to respond to exorcisms, or any other attempt at communication. This raises the question whether such ghosts possess any conscious awareness, or if they are merely unconscious automatons, unaware psy chic recordings. While there is little consensus among researchers whether or not ghosts possess any objective conscious intelligence, one of the most dominant schools of thought in the field holds that they don't, closely paralleling Division Theory. Noticing that apparitions often appear to be sleepwalking, psychic research pioneer F.W.H. Myers suggested that ghosts were actually the unconscious dreams of the dead, somehow made visible.
Although the universality of ghost reports suggests that there may indeed be at least some personal-souls which don't enter any unconscious collective after death, ghosts do nonetheless seem to exhibit many of the characteristics Division Theory predicts for a separated and disembodied unconscious. Most exhibit virtually no intelligence or objective consciousness, appearing instead as automatons mindlessly reenacting their unconscious-based, emotionally- charged memories of the past. The subjective, `Right Brain' nature of ghostly communication, when it does occur, also suggests that ghosts are operating primarily with their unconscious. The cold spots often reported near ghosts seem, in light of Division Theory, to betray the constant sensation of cold that would logically be experienced by a dead personal-soul. And, in that the sense of smell is thought to be the most subconscious and instinctual of humanity's five natural senses, the frequency with which scents and smells are reported in ghost sightings also seems to reinforce the suggestion that ghosts function primarily in and from the unconscious hemisphere of reality.
WHAT ABOUT MEDIUMS AND CHANNELING ?
But in the case of mediums, another factor is present, which could theoretically account for the apparent intellect observed at such times. Channeling requires a living host for the "disembodied entity" to use. It is possible that the "disembodied entity", if it is in fact a discarded unconscious soul, is able to use the host's conscious mind at such times, "borrowing" a stranger's conscious intellect to temporarily use as its own, but when the channeling session is over, that disembodied soul once again becomes just as dimwitted as any other ghost.
This possible end - peace - is certainly not denied, but is in fact PROMISED, in this scenario - IF one succeeds in establishing communion during life between one's own personal soul and the soul of Jesus within it.
I find MUCH to celebrate in this theory. I'm quite sure that off the top of my head I'll not be able to come up with a full and comprehensive list, but here's some of the biggies:
(A) By providing a framework to integrate & reconcile the Eastern & Western afterlife scenarios, DivisionTheory stands as substantiating evidence that nether the Eastern nor Western views were totally wrong in their views about life after death. Until now, each side was forced to arrive at the logical conclusion that if they were right, then the entire other half of the world was dead wrong. And this is a troubling conclusion, for if one half of the world can be totally wrong about something, it can just as easily be one half as the other. Thus, if one must assume that one half of the world is wrong, one must also assume that both halves of the world may indeed be wrong.
It just undermines all belief in life after death.... (a house divided cannot stand).
(B) By pointing out how modern science leads to the very same afterlifescenarios that religions both East and West have taught for millennia, it both acts as substantiating evidence for the validity of life after death, and acts as a bridge to integrate and reconcile science and religion.
(C) Thus, DivisionTheory, by promoting the reconciliation of East & West AND science and religion, stands as a powerful tool to heal the divisions in society. It promotes confidence in science AND Eastern AND Western religions, allowing the world to see truth as a singularity at which many different paths can indeed successfully arrive. Thus, DivisionTheory is (better late than never) religion's response to the Enlightenment, which held that the truth man found thru science was mutually exclusive with the truth taught by religion.
(D) In showing an underlying DivisionTheory theme within the ancient writings of Egypt, Persia, China, the early Christians, and more recently, Nostradamus, it shows a long and enduring line of peoples who have rediscovered this same concept, further supporting our confidence in it, and so in life after death in general.
(E) By relieving society of the barriers to belief in life after death, by relieving society of the logical conflicts that promote distrust of life after death beliefs, it will promote the belief in life after death. A people that believes in life after death will believe it cannot escape the consequences of its actions, for they will follow them even beyond the doors of death. Thus, responsible behavior will increase throughout society. Thus, DivisionTheory would promotethe reduction of crime, war, and the full host of nasty consequences of irresponsible and immoral behavior.
The above (A-E) were merely social advantages.
(F) DivisionTheory's premise that we ourselves initiated the Primordial Division releases God of the accusation of being malevolent or vindictive. We become the authors of our own fates from beginning to end in the cosmic drama. Unless one prefers to have someone else to blame, this is a good thing. As authors of our own fates, we possess power. Thus we are empowered in this scenario, also a good thing, especially from the 20th century point-of-view. And in restoring the center of power to the inner man, we find that people will search out their own hearts for moral guidance rather than seeking it in dead institutions.
(G) In explaining WHY ghosts are reported to behave the way they do, in explaining WHY we don't remember when we are reincarnated, in explaining WHY the horrific vision of hell and the netherworld has persisted for so long all over the globe, in explaining WHY NDErs seem so peaceful immediately after leaving their bodies, in explaining WHY Past-Life Regression Subjects possess no memory or emotion in-between lives, in explaining WHY the various details of Judgment Day were included in those ancient prophecies, in explaining WHY possessions subjects report the experiences they do, and in explaining a thousand other nagging questions al with this one simple little elegant hypothesis, DivisionTheory is comforting, for it behaves the way correct answers do - it explains all the weird little mysteries of this subject.
(H) In promising that all our past lives are not really lost, but that we will recover them again one day, it is tremendously reassuring.
(I) In promising that all those in the netherworld will be given one last chance to redeem themselves, it is comforting.
(J) In explaining how and why the creation known as the Devil developed, we are relieved to find that (1) it is not the "equal but opposite" to God, but merely a subconscious "complex" in the collective unconscious with no conscious reality whatsoever other than what individuals choose to lend it of their own consciousnesses., and (2) it will not survive the full transfer of all its members back into the conscious world during Judgment Day.
(K) In showing that many of Christianity's earliest beliefs revolved around DivisionTheory, one is encouraged to believe the Christian promises - that death has been overcome and will not, in the end, prevail.
(L) In showing that the many different spiritual exercises various religions have adopted over the ages, such as meditation and the various yogas, are all but different paths to the same goal - the integration of the conscious and unconscious, one is encouraged that the goal of salvation, of full reintegration, is achievable.
(M) One is also encouraged that even if one does not achieve this full integration, the Christian promises that help is available are substantiated by DivisionTheory . This is something I have not spoken of yet, but from the perspective of DivisionTheory, the achievement of Jesus Christ would indeed have been the center focus of the entire history of mankind, and what he did would indeed have resulted in salvation for all who wished to take advantage of His offer. Briefly, when He resurrected, this would have had the effect of exploding His soul throughout the length and breadth of the entire realm of the unconscious. Thus, His soul would have been shotgunned into all other souls, everywhere. Thus Jesus would indeed, as the scriptures teach, be "inside" us all, and would greatly change the entire afterlife experience for anyone who made the attempt to forge a link in his mind with Christ during one's lifetime. Even if they did not achieve full integration, that link would save them from the horrors of going through the hellish experience. Although still divided, the dreamworld they would experience after death would instead be a heavenly one.
(N) In providing a scientific basis for the belief that Jesus' soul may indeed exist within out own, we are encouraged to accept this belief and seek Him out from within.
IS THERE SUCH A THING AS GRACE ? IF SO, WHAT IS IT, AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
" So far, the discussion has been about hell. But what about grace? There also seems to be wisdom, positive synchronicity, and other good stuff in the collective unconscious. Again, God is within Jesus, and Jesus is within us. So within the individual, virtually unlimited resources exist, and greatly powerful assistance. But again, one must be aligned on an inner, unconscious level with these inner resources before they can be expected to consistently provide aid.