When the ancient Egyptians spoke of the ba and ka, it was, perhaps, only a belief. When the early Christians wrote of the soul and spirit, it was really still just a belief. When folk cultures everywhere referred to the head and the heart, when astrologers discussed the 'sun' and 'moon' in a person's chart, even when Freud and Jung described the conscious and unconscious, it was, at least arguably, only a matter of belief. But no more. Finally, in this age, we have moved from shaky faith to solid and secure knowledge on this issue.
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung first introduced psychology's binary-mind hypothesis in the
early 1900's, and while it was reluctantly accepted as valid by the scientific community for many
decades, it was increasingly dismissed by later theorists, until, by the end of the 1970's, it was on the
verge of being unceremoniously discarded altogether by modern scholarship. But then
neuropsychology came along and provided substantiating objective evidence for what had previously
been a purely subjective hypothesis. After applying the most rigorous tests possible, modern man has
again arrived at the conclusion that we are indeed two-part creatures - that two entirely separate and
distinct minds do indeed co-exist in the brain, one residing in the right hemisphere, and one in the left.
This conclusion was first made public in the 1981 split-brain study Right Brain Left Brain by Sally
Springer and Georg Deutsch, but further neuropsychological studies since then have continued to
support those conclusions. In his 1998 work Of Two Minds, Harvard Professor of Psychiatry Fredrick
Schiffer wrote
"Ordinary people have two autonomous minds, each associated with one hemisphere"
and "...we have discovered two intact minds in split-brain research and in psychology
[and] we have found that in both cases, the two minds seem to interact in similar ways.
...a number of authors, including myself, have turned to the split-brain studies to advance
the notion that the right hemisphere is the site of the Freudian unconscious".
Incredibly, the ancient religious concept that we all possess both 'head' and 'heart', both soul and spirit, was not merely reintroduced once by science over the last century, but twice. Just when the world was about to entirely forget about the ancient Binary Soul Doctrine, Freud and Jung gave it a whole new lease on life with 'soft science' - analytical psychology. And just when psychology was about to abandon the Freudian model, then a 'hard science' - neuropsychology - came along to reinforce this binary model all over again. In every case, the two components were the same - one was conscious, objective, rational, masculine, and held exclusive access to the free-will decision-making ability, while the other was unconscious or only semi-conscious, subjective, emotional, feminine, and held exclusive access to the memory. It almost seems as if, after science struggled to climb, inch by inch, to the top of the mountain, in the end it only found religion sitting there already, having patiently waited thousands of years for science to catch up.
The only real question is not why the world keeps rediscovering these two, but why we keep turning away from this insight. Despite modern science's repeated reconfirmations of the binary model of the psyche, many today still question if such a thing as this mysterious and invisible 'unconscious' half of the psyche really exists. Yet, the evidence is much closer than any laboratory. Who has not awoken suddenly from a vivid and deeply involving dream only to find that, in that brief transition, their own mental wall came crashing down, not only removing them from the dream but blocking out all memory of it as well, leaving only the nagging suspicion that something which only a second ago had been extremely important to them could no longer even be guessed? Who has not felt the urgent rush of love, unbidden but irrepressible, rise up within from the unknown source of all feelings? Who has not had his own unconscious 'buttons' pushed, turning him in one moment from a seemingly rational and objective figure into a wild and irrational creature of blind instinct?
Why do we keep questioning, denying, and ignoring the existence of the unconscious?
Perhaps because it is frightening to admit that a part of our own minds is invisible to us, a part we
cannot control, a part which, indeed, sometimes seems to control us. Yet, every time we find
ourselves saying to ourselves, "Oh for crying out loud - what on earth made me do that?!", we
realize, if but for an instant, that this other, invisible half of ourselves is still very much a force to be
dealt with in our lives.
THE SPLIT-BRAIN RESEARCH
Scientific research over the last 20 years indicates that each side of the brain is home to a
separate and distinct mind, each of which have quite different natures and functions. It is even
possible to experience one's two minds separately; in his book, Dr. Schiffer relates a remarkably
simple experiment anyone can do which easily confirms that we indeed do have two distinct minds,
which, in most of us, are really not very integrated at all. Dr. Schiffer describes covering the right eye
of subjects and then interviewing them about their personal lives and outlooks, and then changing the
covering to the other eye and repeating the same interview. The difference between the subjects'
responses was often quite different. While not all subjects' responses betrayed a striking difference
in outlook from one eye to the next, the majority did. When looking through the right eye alone
(which stimulates the left brain), subjects' responses were more anxious and self-critical. When
looking through the left eye alone (stimulating the right brain), subjects' responses were more happy
and comforted.
THE DIVISION OF LABOR
Modern science has not merely rediscovered humanity's two souls, but has greatly added to the scant information about them that had managed to trickle down to us through history. And what modern science has added to our knowledge about the nature of the conscious and unconscious seems to explain a great deal about the afterlife traditions of the ancients, as well as the reports of today's afterlife researchers.
The two halves of the mind, we have discovered, see the world very differently. They can both observe the same photograph and come away with radically different descriptions of what they saw. The conscious and unconscious each act as filters, straining and coloring and interpreting the person's thoughts, data, insights, and perceptions in very different ways. Each is blind and deaf and crippled without the other; by itself, each sees only half the story.
Classic psychology has long held that the conscious and unconscious are exact opposites in many respects: the conscious is active, while the unconscious is reactive and responsive; the conscious seems to exercise autonomous free will, functioning under its own initiative and volition, while the unconscious functions automatically and instinctively; the conscious is objective while the unconscious is subjective; the conscious is intellectual when the unconscious is emotional.
But recently, modern neuropsychology has added even greater depth to our understanding of these dynamics, teaching that the left-brain conscious mind is verbally-oriented while the right-brain unconscious is nonverbal, thinking and communicating instead via images, symbols, pictures, gestures, and metaphors. The left-brain conscious mind sees the differences and distinctions between things, while the right-brain unconscious is geared to do just the opposite - see the connections, relationships, and similarities between things. The conscious sees the trees, the unconscious sees the forest; the conscious reads the text, the unconscious perceives the context; the conscious notices the details, the unconscious grasps the meaning.
This division of labor seems to explain why the ancients insisted that only one of their two souls possessed independent free will. Being blind to the differences and distinctions between things, the unconscious does not realize the existence of choices, options, and alternatives. Unable to realize the existence of choices, options, and alternatives, the unconscious cannot choose one thing and reject
another; it has no word for 'no'. Unable to choose or decide, the unconscious cannot exercise self-determination. Unable to exercise self-determination, the unconscious lacks autonomous free will.
Lacking autonomous free will, the unconscious is like a mindless machine running on automatic.
DANCING PARTNERS
Remarkably like the Yin and Yang of classic Chinese philosophy, the conscious and unconscious seem to be closely embraced in an ecstatic yet subtle dance. The conscious always leads in this dance, doing so by making new choices and decisions. Whenever the conscious mind initiates a move, the unconscious responds with a corresponding move. Whenever the conscious mind chooses or acts, the unconscious mind reacts immediately and directly to that choice or act, automatically generating its own responses, in the form of feelings, emotions, impressions, connections, associated ideas, and insights, that are then released back into the conscious mind.
These two halves of the psyche remain bound together during life. They are always dancing in unison, and although one or the other may seem to have the upper hand at any given moment, both are always involved in the overall experience we register at any given time. Thus, when the conscious mind seems to have full control, such as when one is most fully awake and involved in logical thought calculations, the unconscious is still there in the background, still intimately involved in co-producing one's total mental experience. And in the same way, when one is most deeply asleep and dreaming, and the unconscious seems to be fully in charge, the conscious mind is still also secretly assisting in generating one's experience.
The conscious and unconscious are so tightly intertwined in this dance, they give the compelling illusion of existing and functioning as a single unit. Just as one's left and right eyes produce two separate and distinct visual images which are then united and integrated together in one's mind into a single vision, so too the two halves of the psyche are so intimately integrated together in one's mental experience that they also seem to be a single unit, a single experience, a single self. This explains why people commonly rebel against the binary-soul model - this illusion of singularity is so persuasive that it has taken our most sophisticated scientific research to penetrate and expose.
Neither of the visual images the two eyes send to the brain contains three-dimensional
depth-perception. On its own, each is a flat, two-dimensional visual image. But the brain combines
these two images into a new thing that never existed before - a superior visual experience containing
three-dimensional data. Our three-dimensional visual universe is the product of the integration of
these two flat images, and seems far greater than the mere sum of its parts. In much the same way,
each of the two halves of human consciousness are, alone, severely limited and inadequate, but when
they function together as a team, they produce something almost magical, something that never
existed before - the fullness of human consciousness - a self-aware individual.
WHOLENESS VS. PARTNESS IN THE HUMAN PSYCHE
Most things are both wholes onto themselves, but also at the same time parts of other, larger wholes; Arthur Koestler came up with the word 'holon' to refer to this dual nature. Individual atoms, for example, are distinct and autonomous wholes that are, at the same time, also mere parts of other wholes - molecules - which are themselves parts of whole cells, which are parts of whole organs which are parts of whole creatures which are parts of whole families which are.... These two different natures - wholeness and partness - are always in a state of dynamic, balanced conflict: one nature is concerned with preserving the holon's sense of 'wholeness' - its independent distinctness and autonomy, while the other nature is concerned with preserving the holon's sense of 'partness' , its interdependent, integral relationship to the world around it.
This functional dichotomy is perfectly reflected in the two halves of the psyche. The left-brain
conscious mind is 'wholeness-oriented' while the right-brain unconscious mind is 'partness-oriented'.
The conscious mind tends to recognize the distinctions and differences between things. The conscious
mind tends to view itself as independent, separate, and autonomous, a complete whole onto itself.
The unconscious, on the other hand, seems to always focus on the similarities and relationships
between things, always carrying the implicit assumption that "I am interconnected with all else - I
am a part of everything I see, and everything I see is a part of me." Thus, it seems that the two
natures of holons have manifested in the human psyche as two distinct spheres of consciousness; like
everything else, it seems, the human mind is also a holon. Every holon, Koestler realized, is equally
dependent on both its 'wholeness' and its 'partness' for its continued survival. If a holon lost either
its distinct autonomy (its wholeness) or its integral relationship with its environment (its partness),
he warned, it would cease to exist. This, of course, has sobering implications for the dividing soul
doctrines of the ancients.
FORM VS. SUBSTANCE IN THE HUMAN PSYCHE
Ancient Egypt credited the ka, or unconscious soul, with the ability to assume different forms, and the nature of the unconscious does seem to explain this - the unconscious excels at form-recognition. Because the unconscious is designed to recognize the connections, relationships, and similarities between things, one of its jobs seems to be to recognize meaningful patterns within data. In other words, it seems to be the half of the mind that can discern form. The neuropsychological studies of the last 30 years show that the right-brain unconscious is far more adept at recognizing patterns, forms, connections, and relationships than the left-brain conscious. Thus, the classic philosophical dichotomy between form and substance also seems to be embodied within the distinctions between the conscious and unconscious - the conscious is like an eye that only recognizes substance, the unconscious, an eye that only recognizes form.
The unconscious is receptivity itself; it receives, takes in, and stores as memory all the input
it receives from the conscious mind. This makes it a perfect memory-machine, forming itself into a
flawless record of all the person's experiences, both internal and external, all his memories, thoughts,
deeds, impressions, convictions, desires, dreams, hopes, loves, hates, etc. In this it is easy to see a
possible origin for the curious fact that so many cultures specifically described the unconscious-like
soul as being a perfect double, or image, or form, of the individual.
CHOICE + MEMORY = CONSCIENCE
Many of mankind's early belief-systems maintained that the unconscious-like soul contained (or produced) the conscience, an innate moral sense of right and wrong, and the combination of two of the unconscious' chief characteristics - responsiveness and memory - does seem to explain this connection. Like a mirror, the unconscious forces a part of us to always be looking back upon ourselves and our own past thoughts. Whenever the conscious mind makes any new choice or decision, the unconscious automatically responds by looking for relationships, patterns, and connections with what had come before. Comparing that latest choice or decision with the full gestalt of all that person's memories, the unconscious automatically evaluates the current decision in light of all his or her previous thoughts, attitudes, impressions, perceptions, decisions, and conclusions on the matter.
The unconscious merely records all our decisions and conclusions, treating them simply as commands to be followed, carrying them out like a computer carries out its programming, or a hypnotized person carries out the commands he or she is given. Thus, if the unconscious contains a memory that the person at one time or another decided or concluded that 'this is bad', then if at any later point in time the person does that 'bad' thing, the unconscious will compare the present act and the previous judgment, and then generate and release appropriate and corresponding psychological material - i.e., bad or guilty feelings. Like a mirror, the unconscious always responds in kind, good for good and bad for bad.
This 'conscience' function of the unconscious deceives many into assuming that the unconscious is actively judging our actions and decisions in life, but in reality, the unconscious is, throughout the entire process, functioning automatically, without will or intent. Instead of our unconscious judging us, it seems, it is the conscious mind that is actually making the crucial judgments; the unconscious simply reminds us of them later on.
As we will see, this conscience function seems to be directly responsible for the intense
'Judgment' experience that so very many have reported during NDEs, as well as the heavenly or
hellish experiences that often follow.
DOES THE MIND SURVIVE DEATH?
Although modern science has (re)discovered the existence of the conscious and unconscious minds, we still don't really know what these are, or even where they are. Science has not yet truly defined the full natures of the two halves of the psyche. Perhaps it never will; if, as the ancients seemed to have believed, these two inner components of the self are each divine and therefore infinite, they could arguably never be fully defined. However, while science cannot claim to know everything about them, it has at least been able to flesh out a few salient details, and these, the most basic and obvious characteristics the scientific method has thus far been able to discern, are perfect matches with humanity's ancient Binary Soul Doctrine, as well as our most common afterlife reports.
Of course, many today bluster that the conscious and unconscious are not infinite or immortal at all, but are simply physical phenomena produced by the physical brain that will cease to exist the instant the brain ceases to function. But in reality, it still remains very much an open question in modern science whether or not the mind is produced by the brain, or whether the brain is merely functioning like a radio receiver.
Since this uncertainty remains, and the mind has not been clearly shown to be produced by brain function, it is not extrapolation to ask "How would the mind work if it continued to exist after the body died", and to answer, "according to the same laws it did before". Merely dying, merely leaving the body, would not necessarily seem, in and of itself, to produce any changes in the laws governing the way the mind functions. Obviously, there might be some additional bit of crucial knowledge we are missing, which, if we had it, we would see instantly that death would change the laws of how the mind functions. But as it stands today, are we not bound to assume that the operational running of the conscious and unconscious would follow the same laws they do now? If so, then after death the conscious would still possess free will and intellect, but not emotion or memory, while the unconscious would still possess memory and emotion but not free will or intellect.
One thing we do know about the way the psyche functions is that the two halves of the mind can only communicate and interact with one another through a tiny bit of flesh connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, a mass of nerves called the corpus callosum. Their entire partnership is dependent on this fragile connection. When this bit of flesh is severed, as has been done in many split-brain studies over the last few decades, the two separate halves of the psyche each still continue to function, but now do so entirely independently of one another. Without that bit of flesh, their partnership is destroyed, and each is then forced to continue on alone, functioning as best it can without any further input from its equal-but-opposite partner. From that moment on, in split-brain patients, there is no longer just one person living in that human body, but two quite separate persons, neither of which can see or feel or communicate with the other.
In death, of course, that bit of flesh would no longer be there.
When things die, they deteriorate, breaking down into their constituent components. Systems
break down, then tissues, then cells. Perhaps the mind does as well, as so many ancient cultures
believed. Perhaps this explains why so many religions still focus so strongly on the importance of
integrity, on forging oneself into a solid integrated wholeness. If the union between the two halves
of the psyche is dependent on the corpus callosum, as modern neuropsychology has seemed to prove,
and if the two halves of the psyche are not products of the physical brain, as religions all over the
world have insisted and modern science has (so far at least) not been able to disprove, then at death,
the two halves of the psyche would indeed seem to be in danger of being disconnected from one
another, just like in the split-brain experiments. And just like the Binary Soul Doctrine.
IF THE MIND SPLIT AT DEATH?
If the two parts of the human psyche each survived physical death, but divided from one another in the process, what would happen? Where would they be? What would each experience? Well, this frankly doesn't seem so hard to figure out; each would, obviously, lose what the other half gave it, and would be forced to rely exclusively on its own capacities.
When people died, their minds would divide into two partial semi-human fragments. Both parts would still possess awareness of a sort, but vastly different kinds of awareness, and neither would enjoy the full volitional self-awareness that we possess during life. In life, it is the interaction between the conscious and the unconscious, the objective and the subjective, that provides us with this self-awareness, that allows us to turn our attention back upon ourselves, to see ourselves and realize that we are conscious. The unconscious is rather like a mirror in this respect, always reflecting our attention back to ourselves, providing us with a subjective perspective. If the phrase "I AM" indicates self-aware consciousness, then the subjective unconscious mind, on its own, knows only the "I" but not the "AM", and the objective conscious mind, on its own, knows only the "AM" but not the "I". We need the two together to be able to say "Hey! I'm here, and I'm alive, and I'm free to choose as I wish."
After the division, one side, the conscious, would experience purely external awareness,
seeing everything objectively. It would be like a computer that was able to recognize, identify,
classify, and distinguish a million different things, but could never realize that it itself, the subject
perceiving all these objects, was there as well. Meanwhile, the unconscious would experience purely
internal awareness, seeing everything subjectively, and could never glimpse anything "outside its own
skin" as it were. Everything it saw and experienced would simply be a reflection of its own inner
contents.
THE AFTERLIFE EXPERIENCE OF THE CONSCIOUS MIND
After the division, the conscious half would lose everything it used to receive from the unconscious; although it would still possess free will, it wouldn't have the slightest clue what to do with it, remembering nothing, feeling nothing, and seeing nothing but random meaningless chaos around it.
Alone, the conscious mind would have no reference of perspective, no context in which to understand its environment. Without the unconscious, the conscious mind would have no memory and therefore no sense of form, system, connections, or context, leaving it just like a newborn baby, unable to make out any patterns in anything around it. Without any sense of context, without any instinct or intuition, everything it observed around it would just seem empty, meaningless, irrelevant chaos - pure nothingness. The conscious mind by nature perceives details, distinctions and differences, rather than connections and similarities, so it would see the trees but not the forest, the text but not the context, the data but not the significance. It would be aware of every last speck of all the raw data, seeing it all in the sharpest detail and clarity, but it would be blind to the patterns within the data. The data would have no meaning - it would all seem pure random chaos, completely empty of significance.
And without the unconscious' subjective, emotional perspective, it would not feel related or connected in any way to its environment. It would feel completed isolated and uninvolved. In fact, without the unconscious, it would not experience any feeling or emotion whatsoever. Objective to the end, the conscious would then just be a bodiless, identityless, emotionless, historyless, uncomprehending point of pure, living awareness.
However, while the conscious would lose its entire memory if separated from the
subconscious, it would still have free will, and so would remain free to make new choices and thereby
move on to new experiences, never knowing or even suspecting that any previous life had ever
occurred. In time, such an amnesic conscious spirit could be expected to drift innocently into new
experiences, from which it would slowly build up a whole new sense of identity. Free as a lark, it
would be likely to repeat this reincarnation-like pattern indefinitely, perpetually creating new identities
and leaving behind a steady stream of discarded past selves, like a plant endlessly growing shoots that
are pruned as soon as they are grown.
THE AFTERLIFE EXPERIENCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
Is there a division in consciousness at death? Those who believe in reincarnation already believe so - a part containing the memories is taken away before the spirit reincarnates again. But it is not usually taught that this memory-containing part then falls away into a netherworld. The memory-containing part is generally thought to just be 'filed' harmlessly away into a state of dormancy. But modern science would argue that the unconscious mind, the half of the mind that stores memories, is never dormant. Freud's great discovery was his realization that a half of the mind exists that we do not naturally see and cannot easily reach, which nonetheless is very much active, running quite robustly outside of our conscious awareness. The world of science in the early 1900's was very shook up about Freud's discovery. Why? Because they were being told that a part of their own minds was beyond their ability to monitor and control.
When we sleep, the unconscious mind is dominant, but the conscious mind is still running and functioning as well. When we are awake, the conscious mind is dominant, but the unconscious is still running and functioning too. The parts of the mind do not ever become dormant, at least according to all the data our scientists have been able to study so far. If the unconscious was cut off and separated from the conscious mind after death, modern science suggests it would still continue to function - energy, after all, cannot be destroyed, nor can it be stopped from continual activity.
An afterdeath division would affect the unconscious very differently than it did the conscious mind. The unconscious would lose all ability for objective thought, logical analysis, and discriminative reason, as well as all ability to make new choices. But it would still possess emotion and memory, it would still be reactive and responsive, and it would still see connections and patterns and relationships.
The unconscious would contain the complete and unedited memory of the person one used to be before the split of conscious from unconscious at death. Neither side would really be that person anymore, for that person was the product of the union of the two sides, and in a very real sense, once those two sides were no longer united, that person would no longer exist. But at least the unconscious would contain a memory of the person that it used to be, including every thought, belief, impression, and suspicion that had ever crossed the person's mind in life. But it wouldn't be the same person. Without the conscious mind, the unconscious would no longer have any free will - it wouldn't be able to change its mind, or make any new decisions, or be creative, original, or spontaneous in any way whatsoever. But since the unconscious would now also be cut off from its rational intellect as well, it would never realize it was not the same person. Unable to use reason or logic, unable to arrive at any new conclusions or make any new decisions, it would remain convinced that it was still the same person it had been prior to the division, and would never notice that anything had changed or that anything was missing.
Without any free will, the unconscious would be totally unable to move in any way. It would have to just sit perfectly still, with nothing left to do but fall back deeper and deeper into itself, deeper and deeper into its own center. Being cut off from the input of both the physical body and the conscious mind, cut off, in effect, from all it had known outside itself, from all objective reality and all external stimuli, it would turn its attention inward. There, it would rediscover everything the person had stashed away and forgotten inside his own unconscious over the course of his life - including all his abandoned memories, denied feelings, ignored ideals, betrayed insights, and rejected self-judgments.
Now, while we are alive, our unconscious is constantly reacting and responding to all our different choices and decisions. It is forever whispering to us, continually comparing those choices and decisions with our own inner sense of right and wrong. That's its job. But, while we're alive, we can consciously choose to block out those whisperings. The conscious mind is stronger, and can repress the unconscious. We can, and often do, choose to ignore these whisperings, pushing their messages back down, out of our awareness.
It is these repressed judgements and emotional reactions, this still-energized content of the unconscious, that we are re-confronted with after death. If our unconscious found itself cut off from the conscious mind after death, that conscious mind would no longer be there to repress those judgments any longer, leaving them free at last to resurface into our awareness. Without the ability of the conscious mind to discriminate between one thing and another, the unconscious mind would not be able to reject, deny, or ignore any of its memories, or the feelings and self-judgments stored up inside those memories. It would not be able to hide from itself any longer. The unconscious would suddenly find itself face to face with all those repressed self-judgments, a whole lifetimes' worth, remembering all its memories at once, and feeling all the feelings connected with them. It would be swimming in them.
This is why it is so important to let the voice of one's unconscious be heard and consciously acknowledged while one is alive; by so doing, one releases the 'charge', or power and strength of those feelings and reactions and judgments. But that input which the unconscious generates but is never allowed to be released into one's consciousness while alive, that is what we find our souls swimming in after death. Although the judgments are experienced after death, the judging itself occurs during life, not really after death at all. But it is all too often only after death that we finally find ourselves coming face to-face with those judgments, where earlier, during life, we had run from them. Women, instinctively more in-tune with their unconscious, understand this process and this need, and tend to be far less willing to repress and deny the feelings that arise from the depths of their souls, and far quicker to acknowledge how 'healthy' and 'restoring' it is to purge the unconscious soul of repressed feelings it may have bound up within itself.
Collapsing into itself, an unconscious mind that had become detached from its conscious half would become completely preoccupied with redigesting its own memories. Running on full automatic, the unconscious would review and re-experience its memories, feelings, and self-judgments over and over, and since the unconscious is automatically responsive and emotional in nature, it would also be expected to react emotionally to them. If those self-judgments were primarily favorable, the unconscious, being automatically responsive and emotional, would automatically respond to them by generating even more positive feelings and emotions.
And since the unconscious would still remain active in its own way, and since it is image-, form-, and pattern-oriented, it would then create dream images for itself out of those memories, self-judgments, and emotional reactions. If those memories, self-judgments, and feelings were more self-affirming than self-condemning, then the unconscious would create a dream-experience for itself that was filled with absolute, positive emotion - pure pleasure and happiness. It would think it was in heaven. But if those memories, self-judgments, and feelings were more self-condemning than self-affirming, it would experience a dreamscape filled with absolute negative emotion - the pain of self-condemnation. It would think it was in hell.
Lacking any objective, external window into the 'real world', this inner soul-searching would be its entire experience. Since it would be cut off from all external input, the unconscious would remain in this dream-state permanently, and 100% of its experience would derive from its memories and dream-reactions to them. With no external input possible, and no decision-making ability available to make changes, this process would continue without interruption, compounding upon itself - one's afterlife dreams would just keep groowing ever stronger and more intense. Due to its absolute isolation from all outside stimuli, these experiences would come to fill the unconscious mind's entire field of awareness, and so would be felt on an absolute level of intensity. The unconscious could never awaken from these dreams, at least not under its own power, since it would have no independent volition of its own. Caught in a circular pattern of automatic behavior, it could be expected to perpetually review its memories, react to them emotionally, and react to those reactions emotionally as well, all automatically, over and over, forever, squeezing every last drop of emotional content from its life memories. This virtually duplicates the classic afterlife scenario of an eternal heaven and hell that is always becoming ever-more intensely felt and experienced. The pains of hell would grow ever more horrible, the bliss of heaven, ever-more delicious.
One of the things so satisfying about the Binary Soul Doctrine is its suggestion that the
universe doesn't punish us at all after death. The universe is, as they say, out of the loop. The
characteristics of the psyche would, all by themselves, produce one's heavenly or hellish afterlife
experience. The soul would, in effect, automatically judge itself, and then automatically pronounce
and execute sentence upon itself as well, automatically sending itself to whatever heavenly or hellish
experiences it feels, based on its own inner value system, that it deserves.
THE DIVISION WOULD HIDE ITSELF
What is particularly interesting is that such a division would also hide itself: The division itself
would never get reported by any eyewitnesses - only the aftereffects of the division would get
reported. Neither of the two parties involved would be aware, after the fact, that any division had
occurred; each half of the mind would be prevented from understanding what happened because each
would be functionally crippled after the division, lacking the mental capacities necessary to arrive at
this realization. The conscious would not remember the division, and the unconscious would not be
able to figure out that a division had occurred. Since memory is stored in the unconscious, the
conscious mind would have no reason to think that anything had changed after the division - it would
have no memory of anything prior. And, since the unconscious would have no rational intellect after
the division, it would never analyze the data (its memories) and arrive at a logical conclusion. This
would explain why reports both of heaven/hell netherworlds and of reincarnation have both continued
side by side down through the ages, keeping both legends alive, while the reports of the division itself
got lost in the confusion during the Dark Ages.
WHAT'S AT STAKE
If this afterdeath division does occur, death suddenly become far less hopeful a place than the reincarnation scenario of the East or even the heaven/hell of the West. Instead, we are split apart, losing our very SELFhood. If the two non-physical components of individuals survive death disassociated from one another, the individual, as he knew himself in life, would no longer truly exist. When a car is disassembled, and its parts are scattered across the world, does that car exist anymore? Its parts all still exist, and so one might say that technically nothing had been lost. But the car itself does not exist, for the unity of its parts, when they were together, created something special, something unique, that only existed when those parts are together. A person can disassemble a watch and examine its parts, but that won't tell anyone what time it is. We are not our components, nor any individual specific component, nor any relationship between those components. What we are is that which is created, and which only exists, when those components are functioning together as a unity.
Perhaps the Secret of Death hasn't remained elusive because it was too far removed from us, but because it was too close. Division is, after all, at the very core and essence of the human experience. What was a stunning revelation to Freud 100 years ago - that we are all divided - is, and has always been, humanity's surprised cry of discovery. It is, admittedly, very hard to imagine being split apart at death. The mind rebels at the notion - how could a person's experience be in two 'places' at once? But modern science informs us that we are all doing this already, right now. While one part of the mind is consciously aware of reading these words, another part of the mind, the unconscious, is off doing all sorts of who-knows-what on its own. Some parts of it may well be one's past-life souls, all wrapped up in experiencing their own private little dreams of being in heaven or hell.
The revolutionary message of modern neuropsychology is that the left-brain conscious and
right-brain unconscious are components of the psyche, not merely states of awareness. There are only
two components, only two elements in the equation, but there are an infinite number of different ways
these two can mix together, and so, an infinite number of different possible states of consciousness.
While we are alive, these two components are always intertwined, never allowing us to experience
one or the other in a pure and undiluted state. It is not natural for either to be experienced completely
independently of the other in life, any more than it is natural for male to exist without female, for
happiness to exist without sadness, for light to exist without dark, for day to exist without night, for
form to exist without substance, for inside to exist without outside. Each defines the other, and it is
not possible, in the universe of the living, at least, to have one entirely without the other. To separate
these eternal pairs is to violate the very nature of reality.
Yet that, the Binary Soul Doctrine suggests, is precisely what death is.