Separated at death?

A couple of my recent posts have looked at the possibility  of a deep division in every human being between an immortal soul and a mortal ego-mind. Most recently I looked at traditions from around the world  stating that such a division, in some form, exists. But as some commenters have pointed out, it is arguable that the alleged divisions simply reflect different levels or aspects of the soul, rather than two or more separate entities.

I think, however, that this interpretation doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Many of the traditions I cited hold that these two aspects of the self separate at death–either at the moment of dying, or sometime afterward. Typically, though not always, these traditions go on to say that true personal immortality can be achieved only if the two distinct elements are reunited.

In what follows, I'm drawing exclusively on a book called The Lost Secret of Death, by Peter Novak, which goes into this subject in some detail. Although it is possible that Novak oversimplifies some of this information, his descriptions seem basically accurate as best I can tell from my own, admittedly cursory investigation.

The purpose of this post is simply to lay out a number of specific examples without much elaboration. All quotes are taken from Novak's book.

Egypt: “But once the person died, the ba and ka, which had until then known only partnership, having functioned as virtually a single unit all during the person's life, now found themselves separated, alienated, ripped apart from each other. This abrupt and disorienting rupture seems to have been associated with the ba experiencing a loss of memory; multiple chapters in the Egyptian Book of the Dead pray for the deceased's memory to be returned to him after he has left the body. How was this memory to be restored? By reconnecting the ba to its ka, which contained the full pattern and record of the person's life, including his memories and his subjective sense of self. Virtually all of Egypt's famous Pyramid Texts, as well as virtually the entire Book of the Dead, had but a single purpose: to cause the ba and ka  to reunite again after they split off from each other at death.”

China: “The po, or yin soul, was thought to take shape over the course of an individual's lifetime; being very impressionable and sensitive, it was molded by the person's environment. The po provided one's personal sense of self-identity, and was held to be what makes a person feel fully alive and real and present in the moment.… After departing the dead body, the yang soul would return to heaven unchanged, sometimes returning to reincarnate later, while the yin soul became imprisoned in a dreary underground netherworld in a feebleminded state. Like the ancient Egyptians, these Chinese Taoists also realized that an afterdeath soul-division would spell the disintegration of the known self, and they were just as anxious to ensure its survival.… They designed techniques to construct a ‘spirit’ body by welding these two souls together while the person was alive, so they could no longer disconnect at death.”

Inca: “Like Egypt and China, the Incas subscribe to a dualistic philosophy that included the idea that people possess two souls which divide at death…. At death, one soul was thought to return to its place of origin in heaven, while the other soul remained with the corpse.”

Greece: “In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Greece's oldest literary texts, two distinct types of souls are distinguished–the psuche and the thumos....  Death shattered the unity of psuche and thumos in two stages. First, the two souls detached in unison from the body when its functions ceased, and shortly thereafter, they separated from each other as well, an event called the ‘second death.’ One soul disappeared into the air while the other sole, transformed into a shadowy replica of the living person, descended into Hades.”

India: “Modern Hinduism still teaches there two different entities that coexist in the human body, the atman and the jiva.… During life these two are integrated deeply together, but after death they divide, after which the jiva, or astral-emotional body, is thought to deteriorate."

Hawaii: “Hawaiian thought called their two souls the uhane, which was thought to be masculine, intelligent, and processing free will, and the unihipili, which was thought to be feminine, emotional, and possessing the memory.… The ancient Polynesians believed that their two souls might split apart from each other at death. If this happens, they said, the uhane would lose its memory and sense of self-identity, ending up as a ghost wandering in great confusion. The unihipili, meanwhile, would still recall its memories very well, but would become a different sort of ghost–feebleminded and behaving in an automatic and suggestible fashion.” (This description seems to be drawn mainly from the work of Max Freedom Long, whose claims have been challenged by anthropologists, so it should be taken with a grain of salt.)

Persia: “Zoroastrianism, the indigenous religion of Persia prior to the introduction of Islam, is yet another echo of mankind's early dualistic perspective.…  The two parts of the soul were called the urvan and the daena, and … were thought of as twins. Thought to exist before birth, the urvan survived death unharmed. It was conscious, active, and verbal, and was free to make its own independent choices and decisions. Meanwhile, the daena was, like Egypt's ka, also conceived of as the person's own image or self.… After wandering alone for three days after death, the urvan would again encounter its daena… This encounter … was critical; the nature of the after death ‘conversation’ of these two halves of the soul … would determine the entire afterlife experience of the individual. Immortality required a successful reconciliation of the urvan and daena after death.”

Judaism: “At the time the Old Testament was being written, and there seem to have been two primary soul concepts in the Jewish language. Ancient Israel held that people are comprised of two spiritual elements–a ruah and a nefesh.… The ruah was active, strong, conscious, intelligent, and communicated with words. It was immortal, pre-existing the person's birth and surviving his death unharmed, always ‘returning to God who gave it.’ But the nefesh, which embodied one's emotions, memories, and sense of self identity, was vulnerable and could be greatly harmed by death, becoming trapped in a weak and feebleminded state in She'ol, a dark, underground, dreamlike netherworld.”

Christianity: “The Mandaean religion, a small but still-living relative of early Christianity, believes even today that living people possess both soul and spirit, and that these two elements of the self split apart after death…. Mandaean priests still celebrate a ritual called the masiqta three days after burial, the aim of which is to reunite the person's soul and spirit in the afterlife.”

“Manichaeism, a once vigorous but now dead offshoot of early Christianity, also believed there were two distinct components to the human soul.… The nous, according to Manichaeism, was the half of the self that was immortal and invulnerable, while the psuche was the personal part of the self, which was extremely vulnerable and in imminent danger of being destroyed during the death transition. It was thought that a special emotional catharsis during life would unite the psuche with the nous, thereby saving it from destruction at death.”

Islam: “Ancient Islam called these two souls the ruh and the nafs… The ruh is believed to be an immortal soul that never dies, but at least some nafs, the Scriptures declare, will taste death. Thus, it seems, these two elements may be able to divide from each other after death.”

Voodoo: “Voodoo pictures the soul was being comprised of two distinct parts, the gros bon ange, or ‘big good angel,’ and the ti bon ange, or ‘little good angel.’… When a person dies, both the gros bon ange and the ti bon ange continue to exist and function, but they divide from each other.”

Buddhism: “Traditional Buddhism recognizes five constituents,  or skandhas, which make up a person… None of those, by itself, is anything we can recognize as the self, which leads Buddhists to declare that there isn't any self at all, only these pieces. But these skandhas match up perfectly with the ancient world's three-part model of a human being; Buddhism's form, feelings, and perceptions are all functions of the unconscious soul, while volition and consciousness are functions of the conscious spirit. When they are all united, these five create the illusion of the existence of a self, but that's all it is, Buddhist thought insists, an illusion.… Buddhism teaches, just as the binary soul doctrine once did, that the multiple components of the self divide from each other at death. The major difference between the two views is that Buddhism insists that these components can never recombine again to reconstitute that self.”

Siberia: “The Khanty and Mansi [tribes] of Siberia also believed in a binary soul system. One soul, the lili, is associated with the breath, the head, and the handling of raw intellectual data, while the is, or shadow soul, is related to a person's emotions and is particularly active during sleep…. The lili  soul is thought to be reincarnated in one's own kin after death, while the is soul would either depart for a realm of the dead, or remain behind on earth as a shadowy ghost.”

Australia: “Many Australian aboriginal tribes still believe that people possess two souls which divide at death. The true self, which pre-exists the person's birth, comes from a timeless, primordial, heavenly realm called Alcheringa, or ‘The Dreaming,’ and returns there after death…. The other soul, meanwhile, separates from that self after death, remaining behind on earth to take up residence in another human body. Mirroring this belief in double souls, the practice of double funerals [is] very common in Australia, just as they once were all throughout the ancient Middle East.”

Africa: “Africa's present-day Mossi  tribe believes that human beings have one masculine and one feminine soul, and that death divides these two. The Samo Tribe calls their two souls the ri and the mere. The ri soul contains the person's thought and life force, reincarnating after death, while the mere soul, thought of as a perfect double of the person, becomes permanently trapped in a netherworld when it experiences a second death sometime after leaving the body. The Ba-Huana tribe credits human beings with two souls, the bun and doshi. The bun is the soul, or self, and survives death unharmed, while the doshi  is a shadowy second self, or double, that tends to linger around on earth after death, haunting its enemies and persecuting its own relations if a proper burial is not made.”

Inuit: “The Inuit (Eskimo) of Canada and Greenland believed in two souls; the inua held the life force and reincarnated into a new body after death, while the tarnneg, or double of the person, became a permanent occupant of the realm of the dead.”

American Indian: “North America's Dakota Tribe called their two souls the nagi and the niya. The nagi soul held the power of movement and independent free will, and after death, it could either join the world of the spirits, or be forced to wander aimlessly. The niya soul, thought to contain one's conscience and memory, helped the person to relate to and interact with others. After death, the niya was thought to testify against the other soul in a great judgment after death, much like Persia's daena and Egypt's ka.”

“Deep in the rain forests of the northwest Amazon, the Maku tribe still subscribes to the binary soul doctrine.… We all possess one hot soul, or baktup, the Maku declare, and one cold soul, or bowugn. When we die, these two divide; the baktup soul becomes something akin to a ghost, hanging around and frightening people, while the bowugn souls shrivels up into a little ball and flies away to heaven.”

All quotes are from Peter Novak's The Lost Secret of Death, Chapter 1. 

Comments

[Juan]

It's curious, but certain mediumistic communications reliable, as investigated by Drayton Thomas, concluded just the opposite, considering that after death, consciousness and the unconscious become one, because for biological life our consciousness is separate from our unconscious, we lack direct access to our unconscious. Then as the mind of the deceased get to experience both conscious and unconscious memories, they have to select only conscious memories so they can be recognized by the living through a medium, explaining that communications are often difficult and problematic.

So this conclusion is consistent with these ideas drawn from many religions throughout time? Apparently not. So what is more reliable source? I would go to psychical research and mediumship, because in the end we do not know how these religions came to acquire knowledge about these alleged separation of the soul after death. Instead psychic research have been an intellectual and experimental hard battle to exclude other hypotheses and find out what the most plausible hypothesis in some cases.

[no one]

I think Novak is not a good source. His interpretations are weird and not at all collegial. I am wondering where he draws from to come to his synopsis of each tradition.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead certainly is contrary to Novak's conclusions. Taoist traditions do not agree either.

His version of Voodoo belief is way over simplified. Voodoo actually holds a version something more akin to our discusions involving the "group soul". The ti (pigeon french for petite) bon ange is like the ego that becomes secondary to the oversoul, the gros bon ange (pigeon french for the big soul). So these do not separate. Rather, the ego of a specific life experience becomes subordinate to the larger soul entity. Subordination and separation being importantly different concepts.

Why rely on Novak (whoever he is)? Why not research the actual beliefs, one by one; keeping in mind that dogma for the masses is not necessarily compatible with the true teachings for the initiated. And further keeping in mind that what one tells an anthropologist is notnecessarily what one actually believes...and, on top of that, what the anthropologist ends up writing may bear little resemblance to what what he was told.

On the native American beliefs he takes one tribe and skews what they have to say. Different tribes have different beliefs concerning details. Still, "The nagi soul held the power of movement and independent free will, and after death, it could either join the world of the spirits, or be forced to wander aimlessly. The niya soul, thought to contain one's conscience and memory, helped the person to relate to and interact with others. After death, the niya was thought to testify against the other soul in a great judgment after death, much like Persia's daena and Egypt's ka.” is inaccurate. It's like a biased interpretation of a badly translated statement that is, if properly translated, really closer to what we are more familiar with from life reviews in NDEs. Something in us bears witness to what our personality has done (or not) in the life experience. This is not a schizism. This is an awaking to a totality that has been there all along. I am sure that Native American authorities would agree with me.

"Inuit: “The Inuit (Eskimo) of Canada and Greenland believed in two souls; the inua held the life force and reincarnated into a new body after death, while the tarnneg, or double of the person, became a permanent occupant of the realm of the dead.”

Where does this come from?!!??

Ian Steveson researched cases suggestive of reincarnation related to these people and they specifically stated that they believed in reincarnation as we normally think of it (e.g. Leinninger) and they would describe a present living personality as being the reincarnation of a deceased grandftaher or uncle. So what Novak says cannot be, verbatim, what they believe. Stevenson was able to accumulate evidence to support some of these claims. Who, again, is Novak? What supporting evidence has he accumulated?

There has been a lot of emphasis on schizisms as opposed to the totality of being and the oneness of all things lately on this blog. I guess it is a valid area of thought experiment, but I really don't think that an honest presentation of spiritual gnosis from around the world would support or endorse such thinking.

[no one]

One more thing, and I'm guilty of it too....it's a more than a little racist and silly to say things like, "Native Americans believe......xyz....". It makes no more sense than saying "New Yorkers believe....xyz" or "The French believe.....xyz...". or "Jews want to....xyz..."

Really?

This is the problem with all of this "science" whether it comes from a lab or it comes from the field. Some "authority" says something and that something gets endlessly quoted until it becomes accepted truth.

It is an even bigger problem with the internet. Stupid wrong crap gets repeated over and over endlessly, exponentially, until accepted as truth.

Ditto mainstream media.

At any rate, I'm pretty sure that Native Americans - or any other people of any other culture - are not zombies, mindlessly accepting the message of the hive concerning spiritual beliefs (or anything else). I am sure that they have a variety of opinions and beliefs on these topics just as we do.

But Novak has books to sell and minds to titalate.

[no one]

"Stupid wrong crap gets repeated over and over endlessly, exponentially, until accepted as truth."

Sorry. This harsh statement, although too often true enough, was not meant in any way as a critique of what Michael wrote. Just generally to highlight the danger of relying on second sources as to opposed to going staright to the original.

BTW, the Dalai Lama is supposed to be the reincarnation of the previous one. He is even shown items that he is supposed to identify as a test of his actual reincarnation. How could a destroyed personality recognize possessions from a previous life?

[Matt Rouge]

I'm not feeling the double soul deal either. Seems like this fellow had an insight and proceeded to perceive every culture in the world as partaking in it.

This isn't some sort of hidden knowledge. If these dots were there to be connected for the past 2,000 years, was he really the first to do so?

I don't know about all of these, but he seems to have gotten the Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu perspectives pretty darn wrong. Egyptian: 5 parts, not 2. Greek and Egyptian: Aspects, not parts.

As has also been noted, the dual soul thing has not been observed in NDEs or mediumistic communications.

As I said in the other thread, I do think the human _psyche_ has multiple parts. Heck, I think Freud's division of id, ego, and superego is a pretty good one.

Michael, I also think your ego/witness division is like this. I think they are two levels/aspects/parts/modes of the _mind_ and not the soul.

So I just don't personally think, feel, or intuit that we have multiple spiritual entities existing in the same self.

Cheers,

Matt

[Matt Rouge]

no one,

I take your point, but I think the Dalai Lama is a nice old guy, nothing more. :)

Cheers,

Matt

[Art]

"As has also been noted, the dual soul thing has not been observed in NDEs or mediumistic communications." - matt
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A much more common theme in NDE's is "oneness and connectedness." Feeling like "one with the Universe." One consciousness and one with everything. Feeling like they are literally "everywhere in the Universe at once."

In Mellen Benedict's NDE he said that the Light was made up of all the soul's in the Universe, like a Matrix or Mandala. Michelle M's NDE said that there is really only one consciousness. Mark Horton said that he felt Unique but the tiniest part of the whole.

[no one]

"I take your point, but I think the Dalai Lama is a nice old guy, nothing more. :)"

Yes, Matt, he is a nice old guy.

And perhaps the last of his tradition. Which I find sad.

On Novak, as opposed to a bunch of grouchy ramblings, I think I could have better summed up my perspective of his perspective as "self confirming bias". Start out with your own idea and then make the data or evidence fit to prove it; no matter how tortured the effort.

All the best to everyone this Holiday season!

[carl]

I have to reiterate the criticism regarding Novak saying "China believes" or "Africa believes" -- Africa, for example, is too big and diverse to say that its inhabitants adhere to one belief. Perhaps Novak is referencing beliefs more common in western Africa, but, again, there are varying western African religions. Whenever I see this kind of language, it just makes me think how unaware or uninformed the author is about large segments of the world.

[Michael Prescott]

"I have to reiterate the criticism regarding Novak saying 'China believes' or 'Africa believes'"

Though it may not have been clear from my excerpts, Novak is talking about specific belief systems such as Taoism or the traditions of particular tribes. Whether he has reported/interpreted these beliefs correctly is a different question.

"he seems to have gotten the Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu perspectives pretty darn wrong. Egyptian: 5 parts, not 2. Greek and Egyptian: Aspects, not parts."

He does say that the Egyptians divided the soul into five parts, but believes that the ka and ba correspond to the elements of his binary soul doctrine. I wouldn't agree that the ka and ba are only aspects, not parts; the myth of Osiris seems to imply an actual division and eventual reunion, and the "opening-the-mouth" ceremony makes sense only if part of the soul remains with the mummy. With the Greeks it's harder to say, but certainly the Gnostic tradition, which seems to have evolved from ancient Greek beliefs, held that there were different parts of the soul ...

Overall, I agree that Novak must be taken with a grain of salt and is tendentious in some ways (even more so in other parts of his book), but I think his basic point that many societies have worried about a postmortem breakup of the soul remains valid.

[Art]

"but I think his basic point that many societies have worried about a postmortem breakup of the soul remains valid." - Michael Prescott
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Speaking of "break up of the soul" and "how many?" How about breaking up into millions of atoms with each being able to think its own thoughts and have its own feelings?

excerpt from Randy Gehling's NDE:
"That was really cool! I kind of felt as though my body exploded - in a nice way - and became a million different atoms - and each single atom could think its own thoughts and have its own feelings. All at once I seemed to feel like I was a boy, a girl, a dog, a cat, a fish. Then I felt like I was an old man, an old woman - and then a little tiny baby."
http://near-death.com/experiences/animals04.html

Now there's another take on it!

[sbu]

excerpt from Randy Gehling's NDE:
"That was really cool! I kind of felt as though my body exploded - in a nice way - and became a million different atoms - and each single atom could think its own thoughts and have its own feelings. All at once I seemed to feel like I was a boy, a girl, a dog, a cat, a fish. Then I felt like I was an old man, an old woman - and then a little tiny baby."
http://near-death.com/experiences/animals04.html

Now there's another take on it!

So everything becomes seperated at death. Merry christmas!