Two of us

Credit: Jeff Dahl 

Previously posted on September 13, 2018 

"The Lost Secret of Death" by Peter Novak is a controversial book on Near-Death Experiences. It could (very broadly!) be placed in the same category as P.M.H. Atwater's "Beyond the Light" and even Seraphim Rose's "The Soul after Death".

We are dealing with yet another book which claims that all is *not* well after death, and that NDEs have a negative side. All isn't as rosy, nice and light-filled as claimed in Raymond Moody's or Melvin Morse's classical books on the subject. Atwater connects NDEs to all kinds of occult phenomena, while Rose (an Orthodox Christian monk) did one better, claiming that even positive NDEs are really the work of the "demons of the air". Novak offers a more thought-out alternative. His book comes with a foreword by Colin Wilson and positive blurbs from Gary Schwartz, Gnosis magazine and Atwater, among others.

Novak bases his speculations on the fact that many cultures believe in the existence of more than one soul. He calls this the Binary Soul Doctrine (BSD). I haven' checked the anthropological references, but I suspect that most cultures actually believe in *more* than two souls. The BSD is probably a simplification. Still, Novak believes that the BSD answers a whole lot of perplexing questions.

Why are after-death experiences so different from each other? They have strongly subjective components, often reinforcing the previous religious beliefs of the experiencer. Unfortunately, many religions have diametrically opposed after-life scenarios. Weirdly, NDEs also have a (usually brief) ultra-objective phase, during which the soul floats around in a kind of limbo, with heightened consciousness but no subjective feelings at all. Why the transition from objective to subjective? Novak also believes that there are important discrepancies between NDEs and the results obtained from past-life regressions (PLR). Novak claims that the "life between lives" uncovered during PLR is similar to the objective phase of the NDE, but much longer. Many regressed subjects don't see the (subjective) worlds of light described by those who had NDE's. The PLR-uncovered intermediate states seem to be all-limbo.

Why these discrepancies - surely, everyone should see the same thing? Novak also mentions Robert Monroe's astral travels, during which Monroe met souls who were older versions of himself. In the end, Monroe turned out to have a kind of collective identity of at least a dozen people! (Our old friend Seth, channelled by Jane Roberts, claimed something similar.) Both Monroe and others have encountered souls who were so "subjective" that they repeated the same experiences over and over again, as if caught in a time warp. This was especially true of those caught in the hell realms.

Novak's explanation for this is that all humans have two souls. During physical existence, they represent the left and the right halves of the brain. After death, the two souls are rent apart, never to be re-united. The "conscious" soul has a strictly objective consciousness, while the "unconscious" soul is subjective and lodges all memories, feelings, etc. Our moral sense is situated in the unconscious soul. The conscious soul casts off the unconscious soul during the intermediary state, and then reincarnates. This explains why most people don't have any memories of their past lives - these are stored in the unconscious soul, which is left behind. Meanwhile, the unconscious soul creates a subjective reality out of its memories, heavenly or hellish depending on the individual's past actions while alive. In the worst case, the unconscious soul might be trapped forever in a hellish existence, or roam the material plane as a ghost or poltergeist. During an NDE, the experiencer switches between the conscious and unconscious souls, while a person undergoing PLR will mostly identify with the conscious soul (which reincarnates). The author discusses Monroe's weird technique of letting a laboratory assistant give constant feedback to the subject undergoing an out-of-body experience. He believes that Monroe, in effect, was substituting the conscious soul in order to aid the unconscious soul to greater objectivity in its astral travels. If you believe in astral travel, this makes sense - Monroe's far journeys are more "objective" and coldly "scientific" than the usual OOBs or NDEs.

Novak admits that his speculations are controversial. Many people in the NDE community are very "New Age" and want to believe that everyone will get to Heaven, and that all is therefore well. As for PLR therapists, some report that their patients *do* experience the worlds of light also mentioned in NDEs. Personally, I also suspect that the anthropological data may be less consistent than the author wants to believe. Further, Novak seems to support Hancock's and Schoch's modernized speculations about Atlantis and "voyages of pyramid builders", which most historians and archaeologists would reject as pseudo-scientific. Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan make a brief guest appearance. Like red flags to a bull?

Still, I admit that the BSD is interesting, especially in its rejection of the idea that the after-life is all joyful. The author rightly points out that *no* traditional religion held to this opinion. Quite the contrary, death was seen as a calamity to be either averted or faced only with careful preparations. The all-rosy view is a very recent development. What if the traditional opinion is right? It's also interesting to compare Novak's objective limbo state with mystical concepts of nirvana, and the subjective states to the often fanciful descriptions of heaven and hell in various religious traditions. Even sceptics might find this interesting, at least as a phenomenological description of various psychological states. My main problem with Novak's book is that he never seems to explain how past-life regression is possible at all. If the conscious soul casts off all its memories of a previous life, how can the subject of PLR retrieve and relive these memories? Can the conscious soul somehow find the unconscious soul in hyperspace? This seems to be implied, but at another point the author claims that the conscious soul is still imprinted with all the memories of the unconscious soul - a somewhat different theory, which makes me wonder why a binary soul doctrine is necessary at all?

Here, "The Lost Secret of Death" could have ended. But it doesn't. Instead, Novak ends his book by prescribing the solution to our dire predicament. It turns out to be a version of Christianity. According to Novak, Jesus Christ really did sacrifice himself to save humanity. He saved us from the very bifurcation of our souls, making it possible for each human being to reintegrate the conscious and unconscious souls, and hence experience a "resurrection". Somehow, Christ has melded with every soul in the entire universe, becoming "all in all" and "making the two one". Before Christ, only a spiritual elite could attain salvation by very hard works. After Christ, salvation through integration of souls is possible for everyone simply through faith and charity. Christ's "harrowing of Hell" was his release of all the souls trapped in their negative memories. Novak also suggests that salvation doesn't mean a return to a primordial, undifferentiated unity. Rather, each person will continue as a distinct individual, but no longer alienated from his previous souls (or fellow men). Novak also believes that Jesus somehow saved us from a truly bizarre apocalypse, in which our minds would have been flooded by the innumerable (and often negative) memories and emotions of all our cast-off souls - and they are legion. I wonder where this theory comes from? I've heard something similar years ago at the Amazon religion forum... I further note that Novak's peculiar version of Gnostic Christianity is Inclusivist. Everyone is saved by and through Jesus, but not everyone is conscious of it.

Novak is brave enough to admit that he can't really prove that Jesus saved our souls. This part of his message is faith-based. However, he does firmly believe that the rest of "The Lost Secret of Death" is based on empirical observations.

In the end, it's up to the readers (or their twin souls) to make up their own minds on the matter...