The Ancient Doctrine: The “Door” Religion

The aim of ancient Egyptians was to maintain sense of continuity and coherence of self experience attained during life time while passing through the doors of death. They believed the living possess three elements: a body, a soul (ka), and a spirit (ba), in fact Cheops pyramid has three unique chambers that seem to mirror the expected afterlives for each of these elements. Similarly, the passageways between these chambers closely reflect Egypt’s vision of the processes and changes thought to occur along the journey from life to death.

This kind of “reunion” or alchemy of the different souls could be considered as a transmutation to an upper kind of being, possibly mentioned as the golden mind (or golden gate) in some traditions.

When all the different souls of a human being survive to death and they keep united a third soul-like element is created out of the reunion of the “ba” and “ka” called “aakhu” or “khu” considered as a third soul.

The “ba” could be considered as the conscious mind and the “ka” as the unconscious mind, both the “ba” and “ka” carried, independently one of another, the meaning of "the self.". Let’s see more in detail some aspects of them.

The “ba” as the conscious mind:

• Independent and autonomous free will

• Conscious self or “I”

• Like the conscious mind, embodies the objective perspective viewing of the outer world as something distinct and separate from itself

• As the conscious mind is the founder of the intellect

• Credited with the possession of life spark, and the power of motion and animation
  
  

The “ka” as the unconscious mind:

• Unlike the “ba”, the “ka” could cease to exist

• Unconscious self or “you” ("ka" is the Egyptian word for "you")

• Dream activity during sleep
  Note: If the unconscious is related with dream state, could the lucid dreaming be a sign of the reunion of the conscious and the unconscious aspects of the souls or minds...?

• Can work in secret and in some cases betray the owner

• Contains a record, a model of all one’s personal memories and subjective emotions and thus one’s sense of self identity

• One’s sense of morality and conscience

• Sense of belonging, provides the internal subjective orientation to relate and interact with others

• Malleable, changeable and potentially unreliable

Something remarkable is that since the “ka” is changeable, malleable and subjective could be the source of mental conditioning and manipulation ruling over the conscious mind, making possible to take control of the irrational side of the people’s individual and collective mind.

Analysis of Egyptian art suggest identifying the “ka” as the equal but opposite dark interior to the lightened exterior of the conscious mind, so the “ka” was often depicted in art as a blackened reverse image of a person representing the person's "double"; it embodied the pattern of one's person by molding itself into a perfect image or likeness of the individual and his character.

On the other hand the “ba” was the inner, private self, the utterly alone experience of being that can never be truly shared with another. And like the conscious mind, the “ba” was conceived of as the fount of intellect. While the “ka” was credited with making the body talk, the “ba” was what caused the words to make sense.

Note: There are many different ways to combine and join words, some do not make sense, but others in fact they do have a specific meaning if placed correctly. The faculty of representing a meaning could be considered as a miracle of “the creation” due to it comes from “nothingness” as the life it self: “...at the beginning there was the word”.

The “ka” was said to be the person’s “double”, it embodied the pattern of one’s person by molding itself into a perfect image of the individual and his character. “Ka” preserves a complete record or pattern of one’s life history and personal nature; in other words, it contained the shapes of one’s memories, on which continuity and coherence of one’s sense of self-identity depends.

Greece called these two souls the psyche and the thymos, Egypt called them the ba and ka, Israel called them the ruah and nefesh, Persia called them the urvan and daena, Islam called them the ruh and nafs, India called them the atman and jiva, China called them the hun and po. Haiti called them the gros bon ange and ti bon ange, Hawaii called them the uhane and unihipili, and the Dakota Indians called them the nagi and niya. The list goes on and on. In each case, these native cultures described their two souls the same way modern science now describes the conscious and unconscious halves of the human psyche.

As we can see, similar allegories of soul division are found in creation myths around the globe, additionally, in the book The Nine Worlds of Mary E. Litchfield we can find this note: “Odin’s ravens were, Hugin (thought) and Munin (memory); each day they flew over the nine worlds, bringing back tidings to Odin". Humankind comprises not one but two divine elements, which are at odds with one another in the human breast.

In Basque language the word for referring heart (earth’s anagram?), or c(u)ore (core) in Italian, is “bihotz”, which is made by two words: bi + hotz; where “bi” means “two” and “hotz” or “hots”, depending on phonetics, could mean “roar”. Actually, this can be an explanation for the basis of creation itself taking in consideration that at least part of the human being’s cognitive faculties and understanding are based on two psyches or souls that are bound (according to the binary soul doctrine). In fact, in some traditions as the Indian with the “ida” and “pingala” or, the Norse mythology, which explains that the world (Ymir) was created by a “big roar” (the primordial vibration) when the two opposite poles “hifelheim” and “muspellheim” found themselves and they were compacted into a unit. More over, the heart symbol is made by two waves. Those symbols can be found portrayed in many places as we can see in the next image.

The unconscious automatically records all our decisions and conclusions, treating them as commands to be followed, carrying them out as a computer carries out its programming or a hypnotized person carries out the commands he or she is given. Thus, if a person at one point decided that “this is bad,” then at a later time does that “bad” thing, the unconscious compares the present act and the previous judgment, and generates appropriate and corresponding psychological material that is, bad or guilty feelings. Like a mirror, the unconscious always responds in kind, good for good and bad for bad. It is always reflecting back to us our own decisions, showing us: “This is what you are,” “This is what you did,” “This is how you felt about this then, but then this is how you acted here, and the two don’t match up.” It is always comparing ourselves to ourselves, and when it finds an inconsistency, our sense of integrity, wholeness, and self esteem suffers.

Relationship of the “ba” and “ka”

It was thought that the “ka” lacked substance, spark of life force that could keep eternally alive, energized and active. It needs to look for any source to supply nourishment. The “ba” was thought to possess the eternally-living spark of life force.

So, the “ka” could be considered as the container of the “ba” as if it were embracing it in some way. The conscious mind can be said to be contained and shaped by the unconscious, because the conscious mind does not have shape by itself.

Note: For those gullible and feeble minded, behaving in a suggestive fashion there is an expression ins Spanish that is “alma de cantaro” translated as “soul of a pitcher” which means someone who is empty, dull or without will (without spark of life).

During the persons life “ba” and “ka” work as a single unit but if after death is divided causes a loss of memory experimenting an abrupt disorientation associated with the “ba”.

In the other hand, if the “ba” and “ka” are reunited after death, that person would be transformed into a “aakhu” or in an angel, shining glorified immortal angel often called or refereed as “Osiris” whose parts have been pulled back together after death.

This drives the subject to experiment:

• The true, complete self in its fully awakened, perfected and whole state after death

• Fully self possessed

• Re-acquisition of self identity

The handful of ancient cultures that believed soul division could be avoided felt this could only be accomplished by unifying a person’s two halves together so tightly in life that they wouldn’t divide at death.

Note: There are beliefs that to gain the golden mind it is needed to maintain coherence between mind and heart, a good approach might be to think in behaving as it would an angel.

The second death

Falling the reunion of both souls after physical death, “ka” would be utterly annihilated (will die or disintegrate) which is considered as a second death.

This is because the “ka” being disoriented and lost after wandering ghostly and hungry to fulfill the attachments attained during life, after death are unmet due to it lacks physical body for that.

The consequence of this is the wandering ghosts in mourning due to, even after death, they remain strongly attached to habits and needs they had in life which try to nourish somehow.

Some people affirm, as mediums and so on (see reports of psychics and mediums), that this ghostly form of beings try desperately to nourish with the vital essence of those living, driving them to commit acts to satisfy those needs to which they are subject in death.

Different cultural versions

Next we will find different point of views regarding the binary soul doctrine for different cultures. For a more complete description of this section refer to “Division of the Self and Life After Death and the Binary Soul Doctrine —Peter Novak”.

The Persian version

The two twins “ba” and “ka” during the great judgment after death had a great falling out, this is, when “uruan” found itself confronted by the full memory record carried within the “daena”. The immortality required of the successful reconciliation of “uruan” and “daena” after death.

The Hawaiian version

The ancient Hawaiian claimed to be able to control, manipulate and slave the separated souls of dead, commanding them to do their bidding much as hypnotic control of the thoughts and actions of his or her subject.

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