Division of the Self: Life After Death and the Binary Soul Doctrine

Abstract

Ancient Egyptians believed that each individual had two souls, a ba and a ka, which separated at death unless steps were taken to prevent this division. Egyptian descriptions of the ba and ka are strikingly similar to modern scientists' descriptions of the conscious and unconscious halves of the human psyche. Many other cultures all over the globe believed in two souls, one like the conscious, the other like the unconscious, which separated at death. Many cultures held that one soul would go on to reincarnate, while the other would become trapped in a dreamlike netherworld. Some believed that this division could be prevented or reversed, while others saw the division as being inevitable. The two stages of near-death experiences, a detached, objective, and dispassionate “black void” followed by a subjective, relationship-oriented, and emotionally intense “realm of light,” reflect the distinctions between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The “darkness” stage seems to be experienced exclusively through the conscious half of the psyche, while the “light” stage seems to be experienced exclusively through the unconscious, as if the two were operating independently during these episodes. A similarly polarized dichotomy can be found in the accounts of reincarnation, of the Realm of Bewildered Souls, of the void between lives, of the behavior of ghosts and apparitions, and in statements about the afterlife by parapsychologists. The “Binary Soul Doctrine” hypothesis, that the two halves of the psyche separate after death, offers a consistent explanation for these afterlife phenomena.