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                   The Bipartite Human Mind: 
 Functional Differences Between the Essence and the Personality
                        By Ralph B. Allison, MD
                        Presented at the
               18th International Conference on 
    The Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing 
                      Santa Sabina Center 
                    San Rafael, California 
                        September 3, 2001
Abstract: All humans are born with an Essence and a Personality alloyed together at birth. With
life threatening trauma before the age of seven, a few persons experience a separation between
these two components of the mind. For 20 years I have watched and studied such a person and
learned which part handles which function. The findings include mental (intuition, memory
management, problem solving, perceptions), physical (sleep, illnesses, pregnancy, accident
proneness, death), and social (falling in love, job satisfaction). The Essence operates primarily on
intellect, logic, and situational evaluations, while the Personality operates primarily on emotions,
gender related concepts, and laws. 
     While doing therapy with highly hypnotizable patients who suffered life threatening abuse
before the age of seven, I met what I called the Inner Self Helper or ISH. I later learned that the
ISH is a job title for what philosophers and theologians have called the Soul or Spirit, which I
here will call the Essence.
     The Essence is one part of the human bipartite mind, the other half being called the
Personality. At birth, the Essence and Personality are alloyed together, but they may be separated
(dissociated) under certain special circumstances. Life threatening trauma in highly hypnotizable
children is one of those conditions, which causes what we in medicine call an Experiment in
Nature.
     Plato called the Essence the "Rational Soul" and the Personality the "Irrational Soul." For
the past several hundred years, study of the Essence has been the province of religion while study
of the Personality has been the province of the psychological branch of science. While much has
been learned and written about how the Personality works, very little has been learned about how
the Soul, Spirit, or Essence works. Here I offer a glimpse into what the Essence does all day long
with us normal folks.
     While I met dozens of ISHs while doing therapy with dissociators, most such patients left
town and contact with me when therapy was over. However, I made contact with one such
patient 13 years after she integrated of all her alter-personalities. We wrote her story together,
calling her Personality "Marie" and her ISH "Becky." Becky always referred to Marie as her
"Charge." Becky told me that she and Marie were integrated at birth, but they had to dissociate at
the age of six months when Marie's mother tried to kill her. Becky sent Marie to a safe place,
which I call Thoughtspace, and Becky then created a series of alter-personalities to run her body
for the next 30 years.
     After my therapy, Marie came back into her own body and absorbed into herself all her
alter-personalities, becoming a total Personality once again. But now, Becky remained dissociated
from Marie in her adult body. Becky now preferred to be called an Essence, rather than Soul or
Spirit, since those two words have become contaminated with other meanings in our culture. For
the past seven years I have had daily contact with Becky and Marie, thus being given an
unparalleled opportunity to observe this Experiment in Nature. I have learned how a dissociated
Personality operates on its own, without instant involvement with its Essence, and what functional
influences the Essence can have on its human Charge.
     There are several basic differences in the natures of the Essence and of the Personality
which underlie the details. The Personality is the only part capable of experiencing all human
emotions, such as lust, greed, rage, passion, etc. Only the Personality has a gender identity, male
or female. The Personality must have a set of rules to go by, or it goes into a panic. In this way
the Personality decides what is Right or Wrong. This is known as the Legal Ethic way of making
decisions.
     The Essence uses only logic in making decisions, like Star Trek's Vulcans and Androids,
Spock, Tubak, and Commander Data. This is the Situational Ethic way of making decisions. The
Essence has no gender identity and experiences no emotions. It is in a state of bliss when all is
going well and in a state of watchfulness when there are problems. It can have strongly held
opinions but no emotions regarding those opinions. Only the Essence knows the assigned Life
Plan of its Charge, a knowledge which underlies all of its decisions.
Mental Operations of the Essence
1.   Memory Management: The Essence decides what is recalled by its Charge at all times.
     What is "forgotten" is stored in the Akashic Records until the Essence deems it safe to be
     remembered.
2.   Intuitive Warnings: The Essence know what danger is pending and makes its Charge
     refuse to get on planes which will crash, it such is not in its Charge's Life Plan.
3.   Intuitive Pushes: The Essence causes its Charge to have an intense desire to act in a way
     which may seem illogical to others, but which is needed to lead to the next step in its
     Charge's Life Plan.
4.   Situational Problem Solving: The Essence knows what present facts are relevant to
     solving a problem and proposes only win/win solutions. The Personality often strives for
     emotionally loaded win/lose solutions instead.
5.   Dreams: The Essence supplies dreams to the sleeping Personality for instruction, insight
     and direction.
6.   Flashes of Insight: The Essence supplies flashes of insight to its Charge, when its Charge is
     in a calm state of mind, and thus able to see them.
7.   OOBE & NDE: The Essence creates what can be called either "positive hallucinations" or
     "virtual reality experiences" commonly known as Out-of-Body-Experiences and Near-
     Death-Experiences. These are provided as teaching devices to its Charge at times when by
     the Personality must make important decisions.
8.   Inspirational Imagination: Whereas the Personality is responsible for "emotional
     imagination," the source of imaginary companions of all sorts, the Essence taps into the
     Akashic Records to supply the sources of creative and inspirational imagination. This
     helps its Charge complete its Life Plan as a professional artist, architect, theoretical
     physicist, etc.
9.   Map Reading: To the Personality, a map is only a piece of paper with lines and names
     printed on it. The Essence is needed to relate those graphic symbols to the curbs and
     pavement the Personality is driving on in a strange town.
Physical Operations of the Essence
1.   Sleep making or blocking: The Essence has full control over the brainstem's sleep center
     and can keep its Charge awake all night or sleeping all day, as desired.
2.   Walking away from danger: If the Personality is frozen in fear, the Essence can take over
     control of the physical body and move it out of danger, even with broken bones and steep
     terrain in the way. Survival is job number one for the Essence.
3.   Cause infections: The Essence has control of the body's immune mechanism and will
     decide which infection its Charge will have, for how long and how severely.
4.   Cause chronic and fatal diseases: The Essence knows its Charge's Life Plan, which
     includes when it is to "cease to exist." It can create chronic disabling conditions as well as
     fatal illnesses. When terminally ill, the Essence gradually shuts down the body in the
     proper order, if left alone. It does not want the body put on a life support machine if the
     time has come to "cease to exist."
5.   Pregnancy: The Essence decides when its Charge will become pregnant, and whether or
     not that pregnancy will result in a live birth. It can initiate a pregnancy, then a spontaneous
     miscarriage, or allow the pregnancy to continue to term. If, at delivery, the child's
     Essence+Personality is not introduced into the newborn's body, this causes a stillbirth. It
     all depends what is proper for the Life Plan of the mother and the child.
6.   Filling in blanks in visual field: Under hypnosis, it is possible for a hypnotist to suggest that
     the patient have a "negative hallucination," such as not seeing the therapist in his chair
     when he is really there. In reality, photons are reflected from the therapist into the
     patient's retina, but the patient's Essence prevents them from triggering a mental image of
     the therapist's body in front of the chair seat and back. The "blank field" is then filled in by
     the Essence with a "positive hallucination" of the seat rocking back and forth with no one
     in it. A negative hallucination has been followed by a positive hallucination to convince the
     patient that the therapist is no longer there.
7.   Arrange accidental death: When its Charge's Life Plan requires it to "cease to exist," the
     Essence may allow its Charge to be hit by a drunk driver or get on an airplane it knows
     will crash, killing everyone on board.
Social Operations of an Essence
     While the Essence is primarily involved in personal and internal operations of its Charge, it
does relate to other Essences constantly and to its supervisors, whom I call the CIE for Celestial
Intelligent Energy. They cooperate to bring about social changes they desire the Personalities to
make.
1.   Falling in love: When the Essence wants its Charge to be romantically involved with a
     specific other person, it will turn on its Charge's erotic emotions, focused only on that one
     other person. The same may be happening with the Essence of the love object at the same
     time, leading to "love at first sight."
2.   Making work intolerable: When the Essence wants its Charge to quit a job and move on, it
     will conspire with the co-workers' Essences to set up discriminatory and disrespectful
     situations which will make its Charge hate coming to work each morning. When its
     Charge decides to quit and look for a better job, all harassment ceases.
3.   Impotency: When the Essence does not want its Charge to become sexually involved with
     a certain partner it considers unsuitable, it can make its charge impotent with that one
     Personality.
4.   Sapping energy: The Essence is the source of ki, of kundalini, of life energy. Its energy
     can be sapped by another Essence, if that person is self centered and immature. This
     makes the sapped Personality feel fatigued and tired without physical exertion, such as in
     Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
5.   Breaking with family traditions: If a family expects its children to follow in the footsteps of
     a patriarch, the Essence of a child is what gives that child the urges and determination to
     go into a "deviant" line of work, one which is required by that child's Life Plan.
Conclusions
     This is not an exhaustive list of actions conducted by Essences, but it covers those I have
personally observed in my search for such information. A whole group of what are called
"paranormal" phenomena are also under the control of the Essence, including telepathy at several
different levels. In those of us with integrated Personalities and Essences, it is impossible to know
which part is taking which action. But when one has an Experiment in Nature, as I have had with
Marie and her dissociated but ever present Becky, these facts can be determined. In this way, one
can get some idea as to what the Essences of normal, integrated human beings like yourselves are
doing to help you complete and accomplish your own Life Plans.