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A preliminary look at Julian Jaynes' 

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

"
At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human
consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a
learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory
mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still
developing. The implications of this new scientific paradigm extend
into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and
culture, our religion-and indeed, our future. In the words of one
reviewer, it is "a humbling text, the kind that reminds most of us who
make our livings through thinking, how much thinking there is left to
do.""

"
When Julian Jaynes...speculates that until late in the second
millenium B.C. men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying
the voices of gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this
remarkable thesis through all the corraborative evidence..." (John
Updike, in The New Yorker)

A 'nutshell' analysis of this book is inconceivable. What follows is
the beginning of an overview, growing as time allows. Any insights,
comments or corrections welcome
here.

(December 7, 1997)
Though by no means finished, more has been done here. Also included
are some astute comments and links. This is an ongoing work... 

Here is the table of contents:

Book I The Mind of Man
1 The Consciousness of Consciousness
2 Consciousness
3 The Mind of Iliad
4 The Bicameral Mind
5 The Double Brain
6 The Origin of Civilization

Book II The Witness of History
1. Gods, Graves, and Idols
2 Literate Bicameral Theocracies
3 The Causes of Consciousness
5 A Change of Mind in Mesopotamia
6 The Moral Consciousness of the Khabiru

Book III Vestiges of the Bicameral Mind in the Modern World
1 The Quest for Authorization
2 Of Prophets and Possession
3 Of Poetry and Music
4 Hypnosis
5 Schizophrenia
6 The Auguries of Science

The Consciousness of Consciousness

"O
, WHAT A WORLD of unseen visions and heard silences, this
insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these
touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it
all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel,
an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite
resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each
of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding
what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled
book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more
myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that
is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet nothing at all - what
is it?
And where did it come from?
And why?"

Thus begins "Origins." Jaynes then discusses the vast history of human
attempts of solve the Problem of consciousness, detailing eight of the
solutions he feels are the most important.
* Consciousness as a Property of Matter
* Consciousness as a Property of Protoplasm
* Consciousness as Learning
* Consciousness as a Metaphysical Imposition
* The Helpless Spectator Theory
* Emergent Evolution
* Behaviorism
* Consciousness as the Reticular Activating System

The introduction amounts to a thorough overview of consciousness
theory, and could bear weeks of study. He finishes with:
"We must therefore try to make a new beginning by stating what
consciousness is. We have already seen that this is no easy matter,
and that the history of the subject is an enormous confusion of
metaphor with desingation. In any such situation, where something is
so resistant to even the beginnings of clarity, it is wisdom to begin
by determining what that something is not. And that is the task of the
next chapter."

The Mind of Man

..."We feel it is the defining attribute of all our waking states, our
moods and affections, our memories, our thoughts, attentions, and
volitions. We feel comfortably certain that consciousness is the basis
of concepts, of learning and reasoning, of thought and judgement, and
that it is so because it records and stores our experiences as they
happen, allowing us to introspect on them and learn from them at will.
We are also quite conscious that all this wonderful set of operations
and contents that we call consciousness is located somewhere in the
head.

On critical examination, all of these statements are false. They are
the costume that consciousness has been masquerading in for centuries.
They are the misconceptions that have prevented a solution to the
problem of the origin of consciousness. To demonstrate these errors
and show what consciousness is not, is the long but I hope adventurous
task of this chapter."

He talks about neurological reactivity; then:

But let us go no further. Consciousness is a much smaller part of our
mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious
of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; how
difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room
to search around for something that does not have any light shining
upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it
turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so
consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does
not."

"It is much more probable that the seeming continuity of consciousness
is really an illusion, just as most of the other metaphors about
consciousness are. In our flashlight analogy, the flashlight would be
conscious of being on only when it is on. Though huge gaps of time
occurred, providing things were generally the same, it would seem to
the flashlight itself that the light had been continuously on. We are
thus conscious less of the time than we think, because we cannot be
conscious of when we are not conscious."

..."But there is a better way to point this out. If you close your
left eye and stare at the left margin of this page, you are not at all
conscious of a large gap in your vision about four inches to the
right. But, still staring with your right eye only, take your finger
and move it along a line of print from the left margin to the right,
and you will see the top of it disappear into this gap and then
reappear on the other side. This is due to a two-millimeter gap on the
nasal side of the retina where the optic nerve fibers are gathered
together and leave the eye for the brain. The interesting thing about
this gap is that it is not so much a blind spot as it is usually
called; it is a non-spot. A blind man sees his darkness. But you
cannot see any gap in your vision at all, let alone be conscious of it
in any way. Just as the space around the blind spots is joined without
any gap at all, so consciousness knits itself over its time gaps and
gives the illusion of continuity."

Jaynes uses the example of playing the piano to show how
"consciousness is often not only unnecessary; it can be quite
undesireable." The piano player, coordinating both hands to enact
commands read from two lines of hieroglyphics on a page, has to
combine a fiendishly complex blend of dexterity and memory, and then
"forget." If the pianist were to suddenly become conscious of every
trill, mordant, and arpeggio, they would have to stop playing
abruptly. If you had to spell every word in your head before you said
it, it would be impossible to talk. "To be conscious of the elements
of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech...Consciousness
functions in the decision as to what to say, how we are to say it, and
when we say it, but then the orderly and accomplished succession of
phonemes or of written letters is somehow done for us."

"And so in writing, it is as if the pencil or pen or typewriter itself
spells the words, spaces them, punctuates properly, goes to the next
line, does not begin consecutive sentences in the same way, determines
that we place a question here, an exclamation there, even as we
ourselves are engrossed in what we are trying to express and the
person we are addressing. For in speaking or writing we are not really
conscious of what we are actually doing at the time. Consciousness
functions in the decision as to what to say, how we are to say it, and
when we say it, but then the orderly and accomplished succession of
phonemes or of written letters is somehow done for us.

Consciousness Not a Copy of Experience

Although the metaphor of the blank mind had been used in the writings
ascribed to Aristotle, it is really only since John Locke thought of
the mind as a tabula rasa in the seventeenth century that we have
emphasized this recording aspect of consciousness, and thus see it
crowded with memories that can be read over again in introspection. If
Locke had lived in our time, he would have used the metaphor of a
camera rather than a slate. But the idea is the same. And most people
would protest emphatically that the - chief function of consciousness
is to store up experience, to copy it as a camera does, so that it can
be reflected upon at some future time.

So it seems. But consider the following problems: Does the door of
your room open from the right or the left? Which is your second
longest finger? At a stoplight, is it the red or the green that is on
top? How many teeth do you see when brushing your teeth? What letters
are associated with what numbers on a telephone dial? If you are in a
familiar room, without turning around, write down all the items on the
wall just behind you, and then look.

I think you will be surprised how little you can retrospect in
consciousness on the supposed images you have stored from so much
previous attentive experience. If the familiar door suddenly opened
the other way, if another finger suddenly grew longer, if the red
light were differently placed, or you had an extra tooth, or the
telephone were made differently, or a new window latch had been put on
the window behind you, you would know it immediately, showing that you
all along "knew', but not consciously so. Familiar to psychologists,
this is the distinction between recognition and recall. What you can
consciously recall is a thimbleful to the huge oceans of your actual
knowledge.

Experiments of this sort demonstrate that conscious memory is not a
storing up of sensory images, as is sometimes thought. Only if you
have at some time consciously noticed your finger lengths or your
door, have at some time counted your teeth, though you have observed
these things countless times, can you remember. Unless you have
particularly noted what is on the wall or recently cleaned or painted
it, you will be surprised at what you have left out. And introspect
upon the matter. Did you not in each of these instances ask what must
be there, Starting with ideas and reasoning, rather than with any
image? Conscious retrospection is not the retrieval of images, but the
retrieval of what you have been conscious of before, and the reworking
of these elements into rational or plausible patterns.

Let us demonstrate this in another way. Think, if you will, of when
you entered the room you are now in and when you picked up this book.
Introspect upon it and then ask the question: are the images of which
you have copies the actual sensory fields as you came in and sat down
and began reading? Don't you have an image of yourself coming through
one of the doors, perhaps even a bird's-eye view of one of the
entrances, and then perhaps vaguely see yourself sitting down and
picking up the book? Things which you have never experienced except in
this introspection! And can you retrieve the sound fields around the
event? Or the cutaneous sensations as you sat, took the pressure off
your feet, and opened this book? Of course, if you go on with your
thinking you can also rearrange your imaginal retrospection such that
you do indeed 'see' entering the room just as it might have been; and
'hear' the sound of the chair and the book opening, and 'feel' the
skin sensations. But I suggest that this has a large element of
created imagery - what we shall call narratizing a little later - of
what the experience should be like rather than what it actually was
like.

Or introspect on when you last went swimming: I suspect you have an
image of a seashore, lake, or pool which is largely a retrospection,
but when it comes to yourself swimming, lo! like Nijinsky in his
dance, you are seeing yourself swim, something that you have never
observed at all! There is precious little of the actual sensations of
swimming, the particular waterline across your face, the feel of the
water against your skin, or to what extent your eyes were underwater
as you turned your head to breathe. Similarly, if you think of the
last time you slept out of doors, went skating, or - if all else falls
- did something that you regretted in public, you tend not to see
hear, or feel things as you actually experienced them, but rather to
re-create them in objective terms, seeing yourself in the setting as
if you were somebody else. Looking back into memory, then, is a great
deal invention, seeing yourself as others see you. Memory is the
medium of the must-have-been. Though I have no doubt that in any of
these instances you could by inference invent a subjective view of the
experience, even with the conviction that it was the actual memory.

Consciousness Not Necessary for Concepts

A further major confusion about consciousness is the belief that it is
specifically and uniquely the place where concepts are formed. This is
a very ancient idea: that we have various concrete conscious
experiences and then put the similar ones together into a concept.
This idea has even been the paradigm of a slew of experiments by
psychologists who thought they were thus studying concept formation.

Max Muller, in one of his fascinating discussions in the last century,
brought the problem to a point by asking, whoever saw a tree? "No one
ever saw a tree, but only this or that fir tree, or oak tree, or apple
tree . . . Tree, therefore, is a concept, and as such can never be
seen or perceived by the senses."' Particular trees alone were outside
in the environment, and only in consciousness did the general concept
of tree exist.

Now the relation between concepts and consciousness could have an
extensive discussion. But let it suffice here simply to show that
there is no necessary connection between them. When Muller says no one
has ever seen a tree, he is mistaking what he knows about an object
for the object itself. Every weary wayfarer after miles under the hot
sun has seen a tree. So has every cat, squirrel, and chipmunk when
chased by a dog. The bee has a concept of a flower, the eagle a
concept of a sheer-faced rocky ledge, as a nesting thrush has a
concept of a crotch of upper branch awninged with green leaves.
Concepts are simply classes of behaviorally equivalent things. Root
concepts are prior to experience. They are fundamental to the aptic
structures that allow behavior to occur at all. Indeed what Muller
should have said was, no one has ever been conscious of a tree. For
consciousness, indeed, not only is not the repository of concepts; it
does not usually work with them at all! When we consciously think of a
tree, we are indeed conscious of a particular tree, of the fir or the
oak or the elm that grew beside our house, and let it stand for the
concept, just as we can let a concept word stand for it as well. In
fact, one of the great functions of language is to let the word stand
for a concept, which is exactly what we do in writing or speaking
about conceptual material. And we must do this because concepts are
usually not in consciousness at all.

Consciousness Not Necessary for Learning

A third important misconception of consciousness is that it is the
basis for learning. Particularly for the long and illustrious series
of Associationist psychologists through the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, learning was a matter of ideas in consciousness being
grouped by similarity, contiguity, or occasionally some other
relationship. Nor did it matter whether we were speaking of a man or
an animal; all learning was "profiting from experience)) or ideas
coming together in consciousness - as I said in the Introduction. And
so contemporary common knowledge, without realizing quite why, has
culturally inherited the notion that consciousness is necessary for
learning.

The matter is somewhat complex...... (Jaynes discusses signal, skill,
and solution learning processes...)

...And athletic trainers whom I have interviewed are unwittingly
following such laboratory proven principles when they urge their
trainees not to think so much about what they are doing. The Zen
exercise of learning archery is extremely explicit on this, advising
the archer not to think of himself as drawing the bow and releasing
the arrow, but releasing himself from the consciousness of what he is
doing by letting the bow stretch itself and the arrow release itself
from the fingers at the proper time...

Thus, consciousness is not a necessary part of the learning process,
and this is true whether it be the learning of signals, skills, or
solutions. There is, of course, much more to say on this fascinating
subject, for the whole thrust of contemporary research in behavior
modification is along these lines. But, for the present, we have
simply established that the older doctrine that conscious experience
is the substrate of all learning is clearly and absolutely false. At
this point, we can at least conclude that it is possible - possible I
say - to conceive of human beings who are not conscious and yet can
learn and solve problems.

Consciousness Not Necessary for Thinking

As we go from simple to more complicated aspects of mentality, we
enter vaguer and vaguer territory, where the terms we use become more
difficult to travel with. Thinking is certainly one of these. And to
say that consciousness is not necessary for thinking makes us
immediately bristle with protest. Surely thinking is the very heart
and bone of consciousness! But let us go slowly here. What we would be
referring to would be that type of free associating which might be
called thinking-about or thinking-of, which, indeed, always seems to
be fully surrounded and immersed in the image-peopled province of
consciousness. But the matter is really not that clear at all.

Let us begin with the type of thinking that ends in a result to which
may be predicated the terms right or wrong. This is what is commonly
referred to as making judgments, and is very similar to one extreme of
solution learning that we have just discussed.

A simple experiment, so simple as to seem trivial, will bring us
directly to the heart of the matter. Take any two unequal objects,
such as a pen and pencil or two unequally filled glasses of water, and
place them on the desk in front of you. Then, partly closing your eyes
to increase your attention to the task, pick up each one with the
thumb and forefinger and judge which is heavier. Now introspect on
everything you are doing. You will find yourself conscious of the feel
of the objects against the skin of your fingers, conscious of the
slight downward pressure as you feel the weight of each, conscious of
any protuberances on the sides of the objects, and so forth. And now
the actual judging of which is heavier. Where is that? Lo! the very
act of judgment that one object is heavier than the other is not
conscious. It is somehow just given to you by your nervous system. If
we call that process of 'judgment thinking, we are finding that such
thinking is not conscious at all. A simple experiment, yes, but
extremely important. It demolishes at once the entire tradition that
such thought processes are the structure of the conscious mind...

...Another way of saying it is that one does one's thinking before one
knows what one is to think about. The important part of the matter is
the instruction, which allows the whole business to go off
automatically. This I shall shorten to the term struction, by which I
mean it to have the connotation of both instruction and construction.

An Example:

Suppose we have a series of figures such as the following:

XOXOX

What is the next figure in this series? How did you arrive at your
answer? Once I have give you the struction, you automatically 'see'
that it is to be another O. I submit that if you try to introspect on
the process by which you came up with the answer you are not truly
retrieving the processes involved, but inventing what you think they
must have been by giving youself another struction to that effect. In
the task itself, all you were really conscious of was the struction,
the figures before you on the page and then the solution.

So we arrive at the position that the actual process of thinking, so
usually thought to be the very life of consciousness, is not conscious
at all and that only its preparation, its materials, and its end
result are consciously perceived.

Consciousness Not Necessary for Reason

The long tradition of man as the rational animal, the tradition that
enthroned him as Homo sapiens, rests in all its pontifical generality
on the gracile assumption that consciousness is the seat of reason.
Any discussion of such an assumption is embarrassed by the vagueness
of the term reason itself. This vagueness is the legacy we have from
an older 'faculty' psychology that spoke of a 'faculty' of reason,
which was of course situated 'in' consciousness. And this forced
deposition of reason and consciousness was further confused with ideas
of truth, of how we ought to reason, or logic - all quite different
things. And hence logic was supposed to be the structure of conscious
reason confounding generations of poor scholars who knew perfectly
well that syllogisms were not what was on their side of introspection.
Reasoning and logic are to each other as health is to medicine, or -
better - as conduct is to morality. Reasoning refers to a gamut of
natural thought processes in the everyday world. Logic is how we ought
to think if objective truth is our goal - and the everyday world is
very little concerned with objective truth. Logic is the science of
the justification of conclusions we have reached by natural reasoning.
My point here is that, for such natural reasoning to occur,
consciousness is not necessary. The very reason we need logic at all
is because most reasoning is not conscious at all.

Consider to begin with the many phenomena we have already established
as going on without consciousness which can be called elementary kinds
of reasoning. Choosing paths, words) notes, motions, the perceptual
corrections in size and color constancies - all are primitive kinds of
reasoning that go on without any prod, nudge, or even glance of
consciousness. Even the more standard types of reasoning can occur
without consciousness. A boy, having observed on one or more past
occasions that a particular piece of wood floats on a particular pond,
will conclude directly in a new instance that another piece of wood
will float on another pond. There is no collecting together of past
instances in consciousness, and no necessary conscious process
whatever when the new piece of wood is seen directly as floating on
the new pond. This is sometimes called reasoning from particulars, and
is simply expectation based on generalization. Nothing particularly
extraordinary. It is an ability common to all the higher vertebrates.
Such reasoning is the structure of the nervous system, not the
structure of consciousness.

The essential point here is that there are several stages of creative
thought: first, a stage of preparation in which the problem is
consciously worked over; then a period of incubation without any
conscious concentration upon the problem; and then the illumination
which is later justified by logic. The parallel between these
important and complex problems and the simple problems of judging
weights or the circle-triangle series is obvious. The period of
preparation is essentially the setting up of a complex struction
together with conscious attention to the materials on which the
struction is to work. But then the actual process of reasoning, the
dark leap into huge discovery, just as in the simple trivial judgment
of weights, has no representation in consciousness. Indeed, it is
sometimes almost as if the problem had to be forgotten to be solved.

The Location of Consciousness

The final fallacy which I wish to discuss is both important and
interesting, and I have left it for the last because I think it deals
the coup de grace to the everyman theory of consciousness. Where does
consciousness take place?

Everyone, or almost everyone, immediately replies, in my head. This is
because when we introspect, we seem to look inward on an inner space
somewhere behind our eyes. But what on earth do we mean by 'look'? We
even close our eyes sometimes to introspect even more clearly. Upon
what? Its spatial character seems unquestionable. Moreover we seem to
move or at least 'look' in different directions. And if we press
ourselves too strongly to further characterize this space (apart from
its imagined contents), we feel a vague irritation, as if there were
something that did not want to be known, some quality which to
question was somehow ungrateful, like rudeness in a friendly place.

We not only locate this space of consciousness inside our own heads.
We also assume it is there in others'. In talking with a friend,
maintaining periodic eye-to-eye contact (that remnant of our primate
past when eye-to-eye contact was concerned in establishing tribal
hierarchies), we are always assuming a space behind our companion's
eyes into which we are talking, similar to the space we imagine inside
our own heads where we are talking from.

And this is the very heartbeat of the matter. For we know perfectly
well that there is no such space in anyone's head at all! There is
nothing inside my head or yours except physiological tissue of one
sort or another. And the fact that it is predominantly neurological
tissue is irrelevant. 

Now this thought takes a little thinking to get used to. It means that
we are continually inventing these spaces in our own and other
people's heads, knowing perfectly well that they don't exist
anatomically and the location of these 'spaces' is indeed quite
arbitrary. The Aristotelian writings, for example, located
consciousness or the abode of thought in and just above the heart,
believing the brain to be a mere cooling organ since it was
insensitive to touch or injury. And some readers will not have found
this discussion valid since they locate their thinking selves
somewhere in the upper chest. For most of us, however, the habit of
locating consciousness in the head is so ingrained that it is
difficult to think otherwise. But, actually, you could, as you remain
where you are, just as well locate your consciousness around the
corner in the next room against the wall near the floor, and do your
thinking there as well as in your head. Not really just as well. For
there are very good reasons why it is better to imagine your
mind-space inside of you, reasons to do with volition and internal
sensations, with the relationship of your body and your 'I' which will
become apparent as we go on.

That there is no phenomenal necessity in locating consciousness in the
brain is further reinforced by various abnormal instances in which
consciousness seems to be outside the body. A friend who received a
left frontal brain injury in the war regained consciousness in the
corner of the ceiling of a hospital ward looking down euphorically at
himself on the cot swathed in bandages. Those who have taken lysergic
acid diethylamide commonly report similar out-of-the-body or
exosomatic experiences, as they are called. Such occurrences do not
demonstrate anything metaphysical whatever; simply that locating
consciousness can be an arbitrary matter.

Let us not make a mistake. When I am conscious, I am always and
definitely using certain parts of my brain inside my head. But so am I
when riding a bicycle, and the bicycle riding does not go on inside my
head. The cases are different of course, since bicycle riding has a
definite geographical location, while consciousness does not. In
reality, consciousness has no location whatever except as we imagine
it has.

Is Consciousness Necessary?

Let us review where we are, for we have just found our way through an
enormous amount of ramous material which may have seemed more
perplexing than clarifying. We have been brought to the conclusion
that consciousness is not what we generally think it is. It is not to
be confused with reactivity. It is not involved in hosts of perceptual
phenomena. It is not involved in the performance of skills and often
hinders their execution. It need not be involved in speaking, writing,
listening, or reading. It does not copy down experience, as most
people think. Consciousness is not at all involved in signal learning,
and need not be involved in the learning of skills or solutions, which
can go on without any consciousness whatever. It is not necessary for
making judgments or in simple thinking. It is not the seat of reason,
and indeed some of the most difficult instances of creative reasoning
go on without any attending consciousness. And it has no location
except an imaginary one! The immediate question therefore is, does
consciousness exist at all? But that is the problem of the next
chapter. Here it is only necessary to conclude that consciousness does
not make all that much difference to a lot of our activities. If our
reasonings have been correct, it is perfectly possible that there
could have existed a race of men who spoke, judged, reasoned, solved
problems, indeed did most of the things that we do, but who were not
conscious at all. This is the important and in some ways upsetting
notion that we are forced to conclude at this point. Indeed I have
begun in this fashion, and place great importance on this opening
chapter, for unless you are here convinced that a civilization without
consciousness is possible, you will find the discussion that follows
unconvincing and paradoxical. 

CHAPTER 2
Consciousness

T
HUS HAVING CHISELED away some of the major misconceptions about
consciousness, what then have we left? If consciousness is not all
these things, if it is not so extensive as we think, not a copy of
experience, or the necessary locus of learning, judgment, or even
thought, what is it? And as we stare into the dust and rubble of the
last chapter, hoping Pygmalion-like to see consciousness newly step
forth pure and pristine out of the detritus, let us ramble out and
around the subject a little way as the dust settles, talking of
different things. 

Metaphor and Language

Let us speak of metaphor. The most fascinating property of language is
its capacity to make metaphors. But what an understatement! For
metaphor is not a mere extra trick of language, as it is so often
slighted in the old schoolbooks on composition; it is the very
constitutive ground of language. I am using metaphor here in its most
general sense: the use of a term for one thing to describe another
because of some kind of similarity between them or between their
relations to other things. There are thus always two terms in a
metaphor, the thing to be described, which I shall call the
metaphrand, and the thing or relation used to elucidate it, which I
shall call the metaphier. A metaphor is always a known metaphier
operating on a less known meta-phrand. I have coined these hybrid
terms simply to echo multiplication where a multiplier operates on a
multiplicand.

It is by metaphor that language grows. The common reply to the
question "what is it?" is, when the reply is difficult or the
experience unique, "well, it is like -." In laboratory studies both
children and adults describing nonsense objects (or metaphrands) to
others who cannot see them use extended metaphiers that with
repetition become contracted into labels. This is the major way in
which the vocabulary of language is formed. The grand and vigorous
function of metaphor is the generation of new language as it is
needed, as human culture becomes more and more complex.

A random glance at the etymologies of common words in a dictionary
will demonstrate this assertion. Or take the naming of various fauna
and flora in their Latin indicants, or even in their wonderful common
English names, such as stag beetle, lady's slipper, darning needle,
Queen Anne's lace, or buttercup. The human body is a particularly
generative metaphier, creating previously unspeakable distinctions in
a throng of areas. The head of an army, table, page, bed, ship,
household, or nail, or of steam or water; the face of a clock, Cliff,
card, or crystal; the eyes of needles, winds, storms, targets,
flowers, or potatoes; the brow of a hill; the cheeks of a vise; the
teeth of cogs or combs; the lips of pitchers, craters, augers; the
tongues of shoes, board joints, or railway switches; the arm of a
chair or the sea; the leg of a table, compass, sailor's voyage, or
cricket field; and so on and on. 

EOT - Until the next free hours... Much More to Come
Jaynes now begins his thesis of showing that humans were NOT conscious
as we know it until middle Grecian times. The 'Voices of the Gods'
that people commonly heard in the past were actually our own minds
talking to us, and the onset of language induced awareness quieted
those voices.

Now, Jaynes E Mail:

Subject:
Bicameral Mind Date:
Sun, 08 Jun 1997 04:21:29 -0700 From:
jayson setera
It is good to see that others are beginning to understand the
bicameral mind. I've read "The origin of consciousness.." a couple of
times through and i think that it is an important work because it
reveals the source of influence for many of peoples thoughts and
actions.What's also interesting is that to deny the work's validity
really just underscores it.The reason I think this is true is that to
some degree every person on earth is searching for distilled
certainty.For example, even the so-called Macho types who appear that
they need nothing from no one and act like bad-asses all the time
still probably turn to habits of some kind (including
drugs,smoking,drinking,etc.) to soothe thier own mind.If they were as
free from authority as they appear to be then, they wouldn't act like
threateningly macho jerks because in my opinion a person truly free
from authority would definately be strong,but compassionate as well.
Anyway, I guess I got sidetracked, but thanks for your website!

Subject:
bicameral mind
Date:
Sun, 8 Jun 1997 18:24:32 -0700
From:
jayson setera
Thank you for your recent reply to my comments on the "Origin". I know
of a web site you may be interested in on your research of the
bicmeral mind. The keyword is "Neo-Tech". A lot of information
involving the bicameral mind (among other subjects as well) is woven
in throughout thier literature. I can't really say anything original
here, but one thing that sticks out in my mind about one aspect of the
post- bicameral period we are in now is how soon after consciousness
was discovered, so too was the manipulation tool of guilt. Guilt,
apparently is something that can only be used on conscious minds. In
my experience, after reading the "Origin" I could begin to appreciate
the struggle early conscious man went through. And, you know , it
really makes sense that it took catyclysmic survival pressures to push
people into previously unknown but powerful mental realms. And I think
that that process still continues to this day. The internet will help
advance the next leap of consciousness.
Thanks, JMS

Subject:
a further view
Date:
Tue, 17 Jun 1997 15:31:48 -0700
I read this a month ago. It grows on you. It has made me wonder what
device in our consciousness replaced the bicameral mind that allowed
society to flourish. It must be our social construction of reality.
This is a device that is suggestable, is able to accept a construct of
reality with little real evidence to support those beliefs. This has
allowed society to share basic common beliefs, values, etc. that allow
a continuity of shared society. It is also rigid enough to maintain a
consistancy of this perception of reality that would be necessary to
maintain this common shared reality necessary for society to function.
We are developing a new consciousness, (The Aquarian Conspiracy,
forget the author). I wonder if under the onslaught of change in our
society our device for maintaining our perception of reality, (the
social construction of reality), isn't breaking down. It can't
maintain itself in an environment of such change. This is forcing us
to develop a new device for understanding and perceiving reality. The
social construction of reality perceives reality linearly. I wonder if
general systems theory is the beginning of our developing this new
device.
Darrell Johnson

Check Back for updates ...
Jaynes Links
Consciousness: The End of Authority
An Analysis in Zonpower at Neo-Tech
A Preliminary Look
A Discussion: The Tower of Babel 

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