Novak - The division of consciousness: the secret afterlife of the human psyche

Copyright 1997

by Peter Novak

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages in connection with a review.

Cover art by Bob Holland

Cover design by Frame25 Productions

Graphics by Grace Pedalino

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002103103

ISBN: 978-1-57174-053-3

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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for
Ayriel Gold

CHAPTER 1:
YOU WILL BE BROKEN INTO PIECES

CHAPTER 2:
EVIDENCE OF TWO SELVES THAT SURVIVE DEATH

CHAPTER 3:
TWO VISIONS OF DEATH

CHAPTER 4:
THE PRIMORDIAL DIVISION

CHAPTER 5:
MAKING THE TWO ONE

CHAPTER 6:
EVER HEARING BUT NEVER UNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER 7:
A TAPESTRY FOLDED IN HALF

CHAPTER 8:
THE GOSPEL OF DIVISION

CHAPTER 9:
JUDGMENT DAY

CHAPTER 10:
MORNING IS COMING, BUT ALSO THE NIGHT

APPENDIX A:
FRUIT OF THE DIVISION

APPENDIX B:
RAPTURE BY DEATH

APPENDIX C:
NOSTRADAMUS

Suffering from a crippling psychological disorder, my beautiful young wife took her life in the summer of 1985, just months after having given birth to our daughter, Ayriel Gold. The devastating grief I felt over this tragedy, rather than subsiding over time, grew ever greater as I agonized over what I would tell Ayriel when she was old enough to start asking questions.

Following her suicide, I had three extraordinary dreams which affected me deeply. In the first, I saw my wife laid out on a high, rocky ledge, and was told that she was well, sleeping comfortably, and was in the process of healing. Coming shortly after her death, this dream brought an irrational but nonetheless deeply felt sense of relief. In the second dream a few months later, I again saw this high place, but my wife was no longer there. While looking for her, I was told that, having awakened healed, she had flown away. While renewing my relief, this dream also brought an entirely new sense of loss, as if only then had our ties been truly broken.

The third and most powerful dream came years later, when our daughter had grown to childhood. In this dream, I had taken Ayriel to a school conducted in a sunny, spacious field. While at this field, I was summoned by a high authority to attend a special meeting, with whom I could not even imagine. Crossing a small stream, I was led far away from the field, eventually descending into a clean and well-built subterranean structure, and was left to wait alone in a neutral, empty room. Although no windows were in evidence, I somehow understood that the meeting about to take place was going to be monitored and carefully controlled. Shortly after entering the room, I was shocked and delighted to see my wife hesitantly enter, also alone, from the other side of the room. I will never forget the feeling of that momentit was glorious, delicious, indescribable. Embracing her, I was overwhelmed with gratitude, sensing that this meeting was a supremely rare privilege granted us by an unseen authority. Without a word spoken, volumes passed between us; I simultaneously felt, saw, and understood that she was well, happy, in good hands, and had begun a new and interesting future, and that no ill feelings existed between us. We were both surprised and delighted we had been given such a precious chance to say our goodbyes, and we parted satisfied and at peace.

Immediately awakening, I marveled at the vivid sense of reality this dream had possessed; entirely unlike any other dream I'd ever known, it had felt bright, clear, fairly pulsating with life. Had the meeting really taken place, I wondered? While realizing I could not intellectually know for sure, I also knew it had felt as real (perhaps, if such a thing is conceivable, even more real) than waking reality itself.

Although I did not make the connection until years later, it was at this point in time that I began to earnestly seek answers to my own questions and uncertainties about death. Through past browsings, I'd learned of some variety of ideas and beliefs about death, but until that moment it had not concerned me that these different beliefs contradicted one another. After the third dream, I became consumed by the need to settle the matter in my own mind once and for all. As I reread the holy books of humanity's religions, the question of death seemed to grow ever larger and more inscrutable. The East believed one thing, the West another, and it seemed the twain indeed would never meet since each side had what appeared to be equally legitimate reasons for following its own ancient traditions.

I persisted in asking, seeking, and knocking, studying the classics of religious and psychological thought in hopes of comprehending how humanity's many different perceptions about death could possibly fit together. I consumed everything that seemed even remotely relevant. One week found me more or less simultaneously reviewing Jungian psychology, Swedenborgian theology, both the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead, a collection of Hindu Upanishads, a handful of previously unknown Christian Gospels unearthed in Egypt in 1945, and the Biblical prophecies of a Universal Resurrection and Judgment Day. Slowly, over the course of that week, in the chaos of all this, the question which unlocks the entire mystery took form in my mind: How might such a Universal Resurrection transpire if reincarnation indeed is a fact?

With the simple asking of that question, something profound changed. A door opened; a new perspective dawned; an alternate possibility presented itself. Maybe I just had an idea, or maybe it was something more. Whatever else it may have been, it seemed (and continues to seem now, after nine years of inspection) to be the genuine articleone of life's ultimate answers, for which I, like untold billions before me, had searched.

For a long time I hesitated; such a discovery would be so monumental that I could scarcely suspend my own disbelief. For nine years I studied this thing, examining it from every angle I could think of, always expecting its premise to fall apart at the next turn. Scared that I had lost touch with reality altogether, I wondered how I could have possibly discovered what so many others had not. How? Simply by being in the right place, asking the right question at the right time? Wouldn't it be the height of egotistic arrogance and ignorance to even suggest one might have discovered such a thing?

As much as these questions scared me, a final thought kept drawing me onif one assumes that the psyche survives death in a whole state, that assumption doesn't lead anywhere. It most particularly doesn't lead in any logical way to reincarnation, heaven or hell, or the sort of automatic repetitive ghosthood so typical of ghost reports. Nor does it lead in any rational way to the existence of a Devil, a Fall from Grace, a Judgment Day, or a Universal Resurrection. That road, one finds, simply leads nowhere. But if you suppose instead that the psyche survives death in a divided state, you find to your amazement that this premise leads everywhere. That single, deviously simple twist leads logically and directly to the entire tradition of death we find in existence today. From that single assumption, all elseall our tradition, all our religion, even all the findings of our most modern scientific afterlife researchcan be deduced.