Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

Here are seven unprecedented applications for a theory of Life After Death,

seven signs of a new dawn in science-religion relations:

1. Division Theory explains a mystery within modern psychology - the scientifically inexplicable fact that the conscious and unconscious possess the very characteristics necessary to generate the classic Eastern and Western afterlife experiences, but only if they were to separate at death. If the two halves of the psyche separated yet still continued to function after death, the conscious would lose its memory while remaining free to enter into new experiences, while its partner would become trapped in a heavenly or hellish dreamworld (see below).

2. Division Theory explains a mystery within comparative religion - a virtually identical afterlife belief was once held in common by dozens of different ancient cultures scattered all around the globe (including Egypt, Persia, China, Greece, Hawaii, Alaska, and Australia). All of these cultures once believed that a human being possessed not one, but two souls, and that those souls divided apart at death, each entering a dramatically different sort of afterlife. These cultures all recognized these two souls as having virtually the same characteristics as do today's conscious and unconscious. These ancient cultures consistently maintained that one of their two souls would reincarnate after death, and/or the other would become trapped in a dreary netherworld reality (see below).

3. Division Theory explains a mystery within early Christianity - among the lost early Christian scriptures unearthed this century in Nag Hammadi Egypt, a select group of texts carry the same unexpected and doctrinally perplexing message focusing on "division" - The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Truth, The Apocryphon of James, and The Exegesis on the Soul (see below).

4. Division Theory explains a mystery within Near-Death Experience research - the unexpected loss of all emotion typically reported by subjects immediately after leaving the body.

5. Division Theory explains a mystery within Past-Life Regression research - the unexplained absence of all emotion and memory commonly reported by subjects regressed to a point in time in-between lives.

6. Division Theory explains a mystery within parapsychological research - the enigmatic yet archetypical "sleepwalking" behavior so frequently described in ghost reports, in which apparitions are seen unconsciously acting out emotional scenes from their past, automatically replaying the same scene over and over like a skipping record.

7. Division Theory parallels and even replicates the history of humanity as portrayed in the Bible. Improbable as it seems, the logical development of this simple dual-soul premise leads to the full gamut of Biblical themes, such as the Fall, Original Sin, Redemption, theodicy, the Resurrection of Jesus, and the Resurrection of the physical body (see below).

Division Theory

The Science Behind Our Traditions

The most basic and elemental tenets of modern psychology hold that the two sides of the human psyche, the conscious and unconscious, possess entirely different functions and characteristics. The conscious possesses free will while the unconscious operates more or less automatically. The conscious is more objective, rational and analytical, while the unconscious is more subjective, intuitive and emotional. And whereas the conscious possesses free will and the unconscious does not, the unconscious, according to Jung and others, possesses both the memory and the moral sense, while the conscious does not.

This division of function has been familiar to the scientific world for nearly a century, but its implications have never been fully appreciated by the theological community. But if these two halves of the psyche were to survive death, but were no longer able to function together as a dynamic partnership, each half would, by its very nature, then experience conditions startlingly similar to what classic Eastern and Western theology have been teaching for millennia.

Division Theory

A Universal Vision of Death

Such an afterdeath split was widely recognized in ancient times. Regardless of whether one examines the ancient cultures of China, Persia, Egypt, or Greece, one always finds the local faiths repeating the same, curiously familiar story: the after-death division of double souls.

Although separated by thousands of miles, the ancient religions of the pre-Buddhist Chou dynasty of China, the Indo-Iranians of Persia, Egypt's Old Kingdom, and the ancient Greeks all believed that people had not one, but two souls which both continued to exist after physical death. Each of these ancient traditions claimed that their binary souls possessed two completely different sets of characteristics, and although those double souls were closely united during life, at death they would then completely part from one another, each going its separate way into a different afterlife.

Parallels to such a doctrine can also be found in the scriptures of many present world religions, as well as those of other more obscure faiths, suggesting that a wide range of cultures not only once acknowledged this split in human consciousness, but also recognized that such a split carried with it profound religious implications.

An after-death division of double souls appears in Gnostic Christian scriptures as the separation of the soul and spirit, in Egyptian texts as the detaching of the "ba" from the "ka", in Greek teachings as the rending of the "thymos" from the "psyche", in Hinduism as the withdrawing of the "vital spirit" from the "reasonable soul", in Zoroastrian works as the breaking of the "urvan" from the "daena", in ancient Chinese religion as the splitting of the "p'o" and "hun", in Native American tradition as the cleaving of the "ni" and "nagi", and in Swedenborgian theology as the parting of one's "inner and outer elements",

Just as with today's conscious and unconscious, each of the above traditions held that one of the two soul-units was more willful, objective, and intellectual, while the other was more responsive, subjective, and emotional. And in each case, the two soul-units encountered radically different afterlife conditions after separating at death.

Even today, identical beliefs are still shared by the Mossi of Burkina Faso in West Africa, the Melanesians of the Solomon Islands, the Eskimos of the Arctic, and the Guarani-Apapocuva of South America. All these peoples' religions not only believe in binary souls, but that those souls divide apart at death, with each separate soul-unit then experiencing a different sort of afterlife. And of all the traditional beliefs of all the peoples on earth today, those of the Australian Aborigines and the Luba of Zaire most closely mirror DivisionTheory: the people of both cultures believe that one of their two soul units goes on to reincarnate after death, while the other becomes trapped in a fixed unconscious realm.

The fact that so many cultures past and present all held this same peculiar concept about death and the afterlife, coupled with modern science's discovery that the human psyche possesses the very characteristics needed to theoretically produce both the Eastern and Western afterlife scenarios, is a coincidence which deserves to be thoroughly explored.

Division Theory

Christianity's Lost Theology

Numerous passages within the recovered Nag Hammadi scriptures make it clear that such a division-based doctrine was not only present in the early stages of Christianity, but may have constituted the very heart of the mysterious Gnostic Christians' theology:

* As did the cultures surrounding them, the Gnostics viewed man's inner being as bipartite in nature, differentiated into two entirely different elements - soul and spirit:

...without the soul the body does not sin,

just as the soul is not saved without the spirit.

But if the soul is saved when it is without evil,

and the spirit is also saved, then the body becomes free from sin.

For it is the spirit that quickens the soul....

- The Apocryphon of James 11:38-39, 12-1-6

* For the Gnostics, death specifically meant having these two parts divide apart, having one's inner being sliced right down the middle at death:

For such [death] is the judgment which had come down from above.

It has passed judgment on everyone;

it is a drawn sword, with two edges, cutting on either side.

- The Gospel of Truth 25:35-26:4

On the day you were one you became two.

But when you become two, what will you do?

- The Gospel of Thomas 11

* They were even under the impression that Jesus Himself underwent such a division

at His death:

"My God, my God, why, O Lord, have you forsaken me?"

It was on the cross that he said these words,

for it was there that he was divided.

- The Gospel of Philip 68:26-29

* To be "divided" was spiritual doom, while being "undivided" meant spiritual salvation:

If he is undivided, he will be filled with light,

but if he is divided, he will be filled with darkness ...

` - The Gospel of Thomas 61

* The story of Adam & Eve was inextricably linked to their ideas about death, seeing

the separation of Eve from Adam as a profoundly seminal "First Division", the tragic origin of death itself:

When Eve [the soul] was still in Adam [the spirit], death did not exist.

When she separated from him, death came into being.

If he again becomes complete and attains his former self,

death will be no more.

- The Gospel of Philip 68:22-26

* This division and its reparation are themes these Gnostic scriptures return to again

and again, often using the term "woman" to indicate "soul", and "man" for "spirit" :

For they [the soul and spirit] were originally joined to one another

when they were with the Father

before the woman [the soul] led astray the man [the spirit], who is her brother. This marriage has brought them back together again

and the soul [the woman] has been joined to her true love,

her master [the man, the spirit]....

- The Exegesis on the Soul 133:4-9

* Repairing this ancient division was expected to restore the souls of the dead to life:

If the woman [soul] had not separated from the man [spirit],

she would not die with the man.

His separation became the beginning of death.

Because of this, Christ came to repair the separation

which was from the beginning, and again unite the two, and to give life

to those [souls] who died as a result of the separation and unite them."

- The Gospel of Philip 70:9-22

* This "Reunion of the Two" is a common theme in the Gnostic scriptures. But instead of always calling them "soul and spirit" or "Adam and Eve", they sometimes portray

the two in terms very reminiscent of science's "conscious and unconscious":

"When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside,

and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you

make the male and the female one and the same ... then you will enter the Kingdom."

- The Gospel of Thomas 22

* To firmly unite these two, they thought, would make a person like Christ Himself:

Jesus said, "If two [the soul and spirit, the conscious and unconscious] make

peace with each other in this one house [body], they will say to the mountain, `Move away', and it will move away ... "

- The Gospel of Thomas 48

Division Theory

Reviewer's Comments

Bridging Eastern and Western cultural traditions as well as the long-alienated realms of religion and science, Division Theory is being recognized as a "revolution in thought" by scientists, theologians, and journalists across the globe:

"Thrilling ... original and insightful. This interpretation of the afterlife is pregnant with meaning.... The traditions of the underworld, heaven, hell and reincarnation all come alive and mean so much more.... This is a work of great significance."

- Bob Jackson,

Editor,

"The Independent Review"

Armidale, Australia

"[Division Theory is] fascinating ... it would explain a great deal ... The whole theory is quite an ingenious development of Jung and others in the direction of 'explaining' the afterlife beliefs of so many peoples. It's convincing in many ways."

- Dr. Tamar Frankiel,

Professor of Religion,

UC at Riverside

"It is too important of a work [to be dismissed].... 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."

- Thomas Ragland,

Nag Hammadi Scholar,

Nashville, TN

"Fascinating.... It gives a breath of fresh air to theology and yet remains within the broad scope of Christian theology. What I found interesting was the consistency the theory developed with regard to traditional Christian theological concepts... [Novak was] able to synthesize [his] new concept of the double soul with traditional Christian tenets, such as the...Fall, Original Sin, Redemption, theodicy, the Resurrection of Jesus, and the Resurrection of the physical body. .. Division Theory helps to explain, and in some cases even simplifies, traditional Christian theological tenets ... his approach of delineating and defending the division of consciousness is logical and consistent. Any seeker of truth should read Novak."

- - Dr. Bill Lanning,

Professor of Philosophy and Religion,

Butler College, Andover, Kansas

"So original, gripping, and controversial that [it] leaves the reader feeling slightly stunned."

- Colin Wilson

Award-Winning Author/Philosopher,

London, England

"[Division Theory] strikes to the very core of my practice.... I use certain methodologies to prove the very thing you discuss ... it seems to verify your theory.... I will be using your book in my practice...."

- Hugh Smith, Ph.D. in Psychology

* * * * * * * * * * * *

A more extensive presentation of Division Theory,

the full texts of the above reviews,

and numerous supplementary articles can be found at

http://www.oocities.org/~divisiontheory

* * * * * * * * * * * *

To obtain a review copy of

The Division of Consciousness,

please contact:

Peter Novak phone 219-325-0862

1428 Illinois Ave.

LaPorte IN 46350 email division@csinet.net

or

Christine Farish, Publicity Director

Hampton Roads Publishing Company phone 804-296-2772

134 Burgess Lane

Charlottesville, VA 22902 email christine@hrpub.com