I'm not sure there was even the hint of a way back during the age where the radical hippie student practicing yoga and envisioning peace was conflicted with the patriotic for-god-and-country soldier gone to fight the enemy. It was as if the Christian God and concept of salvation was mutually exclusive with the counter culture sense of Eastern ethics. As Ravi Shankar played his sitar for the kids, they sensed a sense of holiness not found in the pipe organs of Christianity. It could not be denied by those who knew they had found truths and insights in the East that the West could only turn a blind denial to.

When the Nag Hammadi Library was first published in 1978, those who were still looking for a chance of a way home again were enthused and shocked that there once existed a much more eclectic form of Christianity that not only could accept Eastern concepts, but apparently did. The quotations from Nag Hammadi texts in The Division of Consciousness may prove to be the hinge point on which many come to understand the difficult vision at hand. I say difficult because the suppression of Gnosticism, within the establishment of Fundamental/Catholic Christianity, has shifted the Eastern concepts out of the paradigm that builds up the very meme of Western thought. The challenges made by the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library will continue for centuries to come. Scholars like Peter Novak will have to continue to rediscover systems of thinking that were commonplace in ancient days gone by.

We are at an age unlike any other in the past in that ideas can be bounced from computer to computer, appended and rehashed, concepts once thought completely alien can now be placed side by side and analyzed by those highly trained down to those simply curious. We can build upon diverse traditions from translations readily available of sacred texts from around the world and throughout the ages. For once in history, there can be no absolute book burnings that can destroy ideas. This book can be dismissed today, but it will be around a hundred years from now in some library, perhaps only as a text file on a computer's data base or a scanned in image, and it will make sense to someone who reads it and dissipate the information. It is too important of a work, for it is that long sought "way back" from Eastern psychology to the long lost God of the Bible (remember that book on the top shelf that has been collected dust for years?).

As is obvious, the response from Fundamentalist/Catholic Christianity could only be one of a closed mindedness to the heresies from the concepts of reincarnation, the emphasis on the free will of the conscious mind being spoken of in a good light, the argument that the Holy Ghost is a product of the auto- sacrifice of Jesus. All of the Bible quotations that can be used to support reincarnation have been interpreted by the surviving Christian tradition as not being supportive of the Eastern concept.

The "fly in the ointment" of late is that there have been parallel scholarships that are studying the relationships between the historical pre-propagandistic Jesus and the religious groups of his time. As far back as 1894, with the release of The Gospel of Buddha by Paul Carus, and more recently with The Original Jesus by Elman R. Gruber & Holger Kersten [1995, Element Books], the striking parallels between the greatest teacher in the East (Gautama -- The Buddha) and the greatest teacher in the West (Jesus --The Christ) have been laid out to where there is little doubt as to the influence the Therapeutae of Alexandria had upon Jesus, in both his message and personal vision.

As the references within The Division of Consciousness point out, Jesus did not respond by pointing out the fallacy of those who wondered about reincarnation. The redactors and final editors of the gospels did not alter these dialogues to lean toward a rebuttal of the later forbidden concept. As it is too easy for someone of the narrow persuasion of the West to dismiss even the best argument in this arena, I'm not sure that it could have been put in a more convincing set of attacks than was accomplished here.

As is obvious, the response from traditional Buddhism could only be one of a quick dismissal of the concept of the ego (atman) surviving death along with the transmigration of the mind (manas). Buddhism has long been inspired by the moral teaching of Jesus (which are practically Buddhist) but has not seen any in desiring a Messiah figure to absolve a non-eternal soul of the consequences of a "fall of man" that can be dismissed as Jewish ignorance of the teachings of Buddha. Also, the concept of heaven in the West is seen as a fairy tale paradise of the influence of maya on the atman. The denial of the soul for Buddhism is as strong as the denial of transmigration for Fundamentalist/Catholic Christianity.

The one redeeming quality of the East is that every so often a teacher comes along and throws out all of the old tradition and starts over from square one, but these are usually Zen masters that place so much emphasis on looking for answers within that such a conceptual work as this would never be considered. The reference to the feminine counterpoint to the Jewish "one male god" is refreshing. The text already has no hope but to be branded as heresy by the traditional Christians, and this point really needs to be made. There are many who have left the Christian fold because they wanted to discover a Goddess experience.

Wicca is developing quite a sub-culture, especially on the Internet, with an emphasis on the more feminine aspects of religion. The Hindu cults focusing on the Goddess figure come to mind as well. The stance of Pope John Paul II of pushing Mother Mary up to a status of practically being the Christian Goddess, the Mediatrix of all Grace from the Father God, is astonishing to those that have watched this most conservative of all Christian groups change so much since Vatican II and Creation Spirituality. The very concept re-introduced in The Division of Consciousness that we must deal with the spiritual needs of our two halves in different ways brings home the ancient belief that the god feeds our heads while the goddess feeds our hearts. The brief run-through of the concepts from the various cultures of antiquity in "The Primordial Division" chapter could only leave the reader begging for more details for each example, if not an entire book devoted to the study. The very acknowledgement of the Holy Ghost as a feminine aspect (the perfected soul of Jesus) is a resurrection of the ancient Gnostic stance that would be most refreshing to those feminist seekers out there. Perhaps even this could be made a way home for them, if this could be focused in on more.

Missed in the text is the Jewish mystical "gilgul" tradition, which would be an interesting focal point in the potentiality of a formal religious acceptance of both the transmigration of souls and traditional Western religion. [p. 535, The Jewish Almanac, Carl Rheins, 1980, Bantam] Hayyim Vital (c. 1571) describes an exorcism in which the possessed describes himself as Cain, who is further defined as the left side of the First Man. [p. 572, ibid.] The concept of the division of Cain and Abel could also be introduced. I suppose one could never stop writing and has to publish one's vision at some point.

I still see this thesis as being one that is beyond the author's ability to contain or even control. If taken seriously by others who are inclined to write other books, these concepts could take on a life of their own, exploring relevances in texts and in fields of study that the original writer never encountered. There are absolute dogmas written in ink that are closed books. This seems, in true neo-Gnostic form, etched in pencil and the pencil is being passed around the room in case anyone has any other insights into the discovery at hand.

There are so many radical concepts at hand that the serious reader is required to stop and stretch one's paradigm and library. This book will definitely be looked back upon as a turning point in the scholar's collection of ideas, as one of those hinges that opens the field of vision to possibilities of thoughts that were not possible before this point. One's previous collection of concepts have to be reevaluated in the light of the new revelation at hand.

This is even more striking in that two pools of concepts can finally be synthesized, the Bible of one's youth and the collection of Eastern ideas from one's older search for truth. Just when it seemed that the folly of youth had to be dismissed in light of one's spiritual growth, the narrow path is found and the bridge is discovered. The promise of The Division of Consciousness in that we can have it both ways is one of those enrapturing ideas that we so want to be true that we will continue to look for clues and references in every arena of study to which we can possibly apply the question of life after death.

The Jungian references are very effective in the focusing in of the points at hand as they are referenced, however Jungian Psychology is in itself the domain of a very few eclectic individuals. I have spoken with psychologists who only relate the name back to some required course in school, which they have long since dismissed. But, it seems that Jung is being picked up by the New Age crowd that is studying Nag Hammadi. Gnosticism is discovered to be more about psychology than the association with the blind-faith dogma-collection that Fundamentalist/Catholic Christianity has become. I believe that the grounding of The Division of Consciousness is to be more of a psychological exercise than another rationally or blindly accepted dogma.

How are we to be if we are truly eternal, if we have truly been here time and time again, if we ultimately have to experience full forced all that we have repressed for many a lifetime? It is discomforting to think that one's past life souls could attack like a swarm of locusts.

This book could be simply shelved without fully digesting its implications. While some fundamentalists dismiss such books as heresy, some New Age thinkers dismiss books out of the sheer saturation of ideas that are pelting us during the past few decades.

The survival of The Division of Consciousness is in the validity of the subject at hand. It will always hit close to home when the subject is death and how we will survive. Past life regressions will continue. Those who are ready to think about such matters will continue to be ready for such a thesis. Such a thread of thinking will have to continue, it is too ingrained in human make-up to be curious about life before birth and after death. On opening up this can of worms, one is reminded of the reaction of Jed Clampett-- whoooh doggies! The ancient Gnostics would be proud.

Thank you for the evaluation copy of your book. I anticipate the discovering of future books from you and books inspired by your work.

Sincerely,

Thomas Ragland
PO BOX 270012
Nashville TN 37227-0012

Tom.Ragland@firstdata.com