The President Of The Wallace Organization Reality
The President Of The Wallace Organization Reality
A person could make an excellent bet by wagering a hundred ounces of gold that Julian Jayness book.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind will someday rank among the ten most important books ever written.
Jayness book signals the end of a 10,000-year reign of authoritarian institutions.
His book also marks the beginning of a new era of individual consciousness during which people will increasingly act on the authority of their own brains.
That movement toward self-responsibility will increasingly weaken the influences of external or mystical "authorities" such as government and religion.
The discovery of the bicameral mind solves the missing-link problem that has defied all previous theories of human evolution.
But more important, that discovery is generating a new field of knowledge called Neo think with which all human life can evolve into abiding prosperity and happiness through powerfully competitive honest business advantages.
Dr,Jaynes discovered that until 3000 years ago essentially all human beings were void of consciousness.
Man along with all other primates functioned by mimicked or learned reactions.
But, because of his much larger, more complex brain, man was able to develop a coherent language beginning about 8000 B.C.
He was then guided by audio hallucinations.
Those hallucinations evolved in the right hemisphere of the brain and were "heard" as communications or instructions in the left hemisphere of the brain (the bicameral or two-chamber mind).
In effect, human beings were super-intelligent but automatically reacting animals who could communicate by talking.
That communication enabled human beings to cooperate closely to build societies,even thriving civilizations.
Still, like all other animals,man functioned almost entirely by an automatic guidance system that was void of consciousness - until about 1000 B.C.
when he was forced to invent consciousness to survive in the collapsing bicameral civilizations.
Today,mans survival still depends on his choice of beneficially following his own consciousness or destructively following the voices of external "authorities".
The major components of Jayness discovery are:
All civilizations before 1000 B.C. - such as Assyria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, pharaonic Egypt - were built, inhabited, and ruled by nonconscious people.
Ancient writings such as the Iliad and the early books of the Old Testament were composed by nonconscious minds that automatically recorded and objectively reported both real and imagined events.
The transition to subjective and introspective writings of the conscious mind occurred in later works such as the Odyssey and the newer books of the Old Testament.
Ancient people learned to speak, read, write, as well as carry out daily life,work, and the professions all while remaining nonconscious throughout their lives.
Being nonconscious, they never experienced guilt, never practiced deceit, and were not responsible for their actions.
They,like any other animal,had no concept of guilt, deception, evil, justice,philosophy,history,or the future.
They could not introspect and had no internal idea of themselves.
They had no subjective sense of time or space and had no memories as we know them. They were nonconscious and innocent.
They were guided by "voices" or strong impressions in their bicameral minds - nonconscious minds structured for natures automatic survival.
The development of human consciousness began about 3000 years ago when the automatic bicameral mind began breaking down under the mounting stresses of its inadequacy to find workable solutions in increasingly complex societies.
The hallucinated voices became more and more confused, contradictory, and destructive.
Man was forced to invent and develop consciousness in order to survive as his hallucinating voices no longer provided adequate guidance for survival.
Today, after 3000 years, most people retain remnants of the bicameral guidance system in the form of mysticism and the desire for external authority.
Except for schizophrenics,people today no longer hallucinate the voices that guided bicameral man.
Yet,most people are at least partly influenced and are sometimes driven by the remnants of the bicameral mind as they seek,to varying degrees,automatic guidance from the mystical "voices" of others - from the commanding voices of false external "authorities".
Religions and governments are rooted in the nonconscious bicameral mind that is obedient to the "voices" of external "authorities" - obedient to the voice of "God", gods,rulers,and leaders.
The discovery that consciousness was never a part of natures evolutionary scheme but was invented by man) eliminates the missing-link in human evolution.
Essentially all religious and most political ideas today survive through those vestiges of the obsolete bicameral mind.
The bicameral mind seeks omniscient truth and automatic guidance from external "authorities" such as political or spiritual leaders - or other "authoritarian" sources such as manifested in idols,astrologers,gurus.
Likewise,politicians,lawyers,psychiatrists, psychologists, professors,doctors,journalists and TV anchor men become "authoritarian voices".
The idea of civilizations consisting entirely of non conscious,yet highly intelligent,automatic-reacting people and the idea of man bypassing nature to invent his own consciousness initially seems incredible.
But as Jaynes documents his evidence in a reasoned and detached manner,the existence of two minds in all human beings becomes increasingly evident:
(1) the obsolete,nonconscious (bicameral) mind that seeks guidance from external "authorities" for important thoughts and decisions, especially under stressed or difficult conditions; and
(2) the newly invented conscious mind that bypasses external "authorities" and provides thoughts and guidance generated from one's own mind.
Understanding Jayness discoveries unlocks the 10,000 year-old secret of controlling the actions of people through their mystical or bicameral minds.
What evidence does Jaynes present to support his discoveries?.
After defining consciousness,he systematically presents his evidence to prove that man was not conscious until 3000 years ago when the bicameral civilizations collapsed and individuals began inventing consciousness in order to survive.
Jayness proof begins with the definition of consciousness:
Defining and Understanding Consciousness
Julian Jaynes defines both what consciousness is and what it is not.
After speculating on its location,he demonstrates that consciousness itself has no physical location,but rather is a particular organization of the mind and a specific way of using the brain.
Jaynes then demonstrates that consciousness is only a small part of mental activity and is not necessary for concept formation,learning,thinking, or even reasoning.
He illustrates how all those mental functions can be performed automatically,intelligently, but unconsciously.
Furthermore,consciousness does not contribute to and often hinders the execution of learned skills such as speaking,listening, writing, reading - as well as skills involving music, art, and athletics.
Thus,if major human actions and skills can function automatically and without consciousness,those same actions and skills can be controlled or driven by external influences, "authorities",or "voices" emanating under conditions described later.
But first an understanding of consciousness is important:
Consciousness requires metaphors (i.e.,referring to one thing in order to better understand or describe another thing - such as the head of an army, the head of a household,the head of a nail).
Consciousness also requires analog models,(i.e.,thinking of a map of California,for example,in order to visualize the entire,physical state of California).
Thinking in metaphors and analog models creates the mind space and mental flexibility needed to bypass the automatic, bicameral processes.
The bicameral thinking process functions only in concrete terms and narrow, here-and-now specifics.
But the conscious thinking process generates an infinite array of subjective perceptions that permit ever broader understandings and better decisions.
Metaphors of "me" and analog models of "I" allow consciousness to function through introspection and self-visualization.
In turn, consciousness expands by creating more and more metaphors and analog models.
That expanding consciousness allows a person to "see" and understand the relationship between himself and the world with increasing accuracy and clarity.
Consciousness is a conceptual,metaphor-generated analog world that parallels the actual world.
Man,therefore,could not invent consciousness until he developed a language sophisticated enough to produce metaphors and analog models.
The genus Homo began about two million years ago.
Rudimentary oral languages developed from 70,000 B.C. to about 8000 B.C.
Written languages began about 3000 B.C. and gradually developed into syntactical structures capable of generating metaphors and analog models.
Only at that point could man invent and experience consciousness.
Jaynes shows that mans early writings (hieroglyphics, hiertatic,and cuneiform)reflect a mentality totally different from our own.
They reflect a nonmetaphoric,nonconscious mentality.
Jaynes also shows that the Iliad, which evolved as a sung poem about 1000 B.C., contains little if any conscious thought.
The characters in the Iliad (e.g.,Achilles,Agamemnon, Hector, Helen) act unconsciously in initiating all their major actions and decisions through "voices", and all speak in hexameter rhythms (as often do modern-day schizophrenics when hallucinating).
Hexameter rhythms are characteristic of the rhythmically automatic functionings of the right-hemisphere brain.
Moreover, the Iliad is entirely about action...about the acts and consequences of Achilles.
The Iliad never mentions subjective thoughts or the contents of anyones mind.
The language is nonconscious - an objective reporting of facts that are concrete bound and void of introspection and abstract thought.
With a conscious mind, man can introspect;he can debate with himself; he can become his own god,voice,and decision maker.
But before the invention of consciousness,the mind functioned bicamerally:
The right hemisphere (the poetic, god-brain) hallucinated audio instructions to the left hemisphere (the analytical, man-brain),especially in unusual or stressful situations.
Essentially,mans brain today is physically identical to the ancient bicameral brain;but with his discovery or more precisely his invention of consciousness,he can now choose to focus on integrating the functions of the left and right hemispheres.
Beginning about 9000 B.C. - as oral languages developed -routine or habitual tasks became increasingly standardized.
The hallucinating voices for performing those basic tasks, therefore,became increasingly similar among groups of people.
The collectivization of "voices" allowed more and more people to cooperate and function together through their bicameral minds.
The leaders spoke to the "gods" and used the "voices" to lead the masses in cooperative unison.
That cooperation allowed nomadic hunting tribes to gradually organize into stationary, food-producing societies.
The continuing development of oral language and the increasing collectivization of bicameral minds allowed towns and eventually cities to form and flourish.
The bicameral mind, however,became increasingly inadequate for guiding human actions as societies continued to grow in size and complexity.
By about 1000 B.C.the bicameral mind had become so inadequate that mans social structures began collapsing.
Under threat of extinction,man invented a new way to use his brain that allowed him to solve the much more complex problems needed to survive - he invented a new organization of the mind called consciousness.
Jaynes eliminated the missing link in the evolution of man by discovering that consciousness never existed in the evolutionary processes - consciousness was invented by man.
The Development of Consciousness
Dr. Jaynes shows through abundant archaeological, historical,and biological evidence that the towns, cities,and societies from 9000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.were established and developed by nonconscious people.
Those societies formed and grew through common hallucinating voices attributed to gods, rulers, and the dead - to external "authorities".
Various external symbols that "spoke" (such as graves, idols,and statues)helped to reinforce and expand the authority of those common "voices".
Such "voices" continued to expand their reach through increasingly visible and awe-inspiring symbols such as tombs,temples, colossuses, and pyramids.
But as those unconscious societies became more complex and increasingly intermingled through trade and wars, the "voices" became mixed and contradictory.
With the "voices" becoming muddled, their effectiveness in guiding people diminished.
Rituals and importunings became ever more intense and elaborate in attempts to evoke clearer "voices" and better guidance.
The development of writing and the permanent recording of instructions and laws during the second millennium B.C. further weakened the authority and effectiveness of hallucinated voices.
As the "voices" lost their effectiveness,they began falling silent.
And without authoritarian "voices" to guide and control its people,those societies suddenly began collapsing with no external cause.
As the bicameral mind broke down and societies collapsed, individuals one by one began inventing consciousness to make decisions needed to survive in the mounting anarchy and chaos.
On making conscious and volitional decisions,man for the first time became responsible for his actions.
Also,for short-range advantages and easy power,conscious man began discovering and using deceit and treachery -behaviors not possible from non conscious,bicameral minds.
Before inventing consciousness, man was as guiltless and amoral as any other animal since he had no volitional choice in following his automatic guidance system of hallucinated voices.
As the "voices" fell silent, man began contriving religions and prayers in his attempts to communicate with the departed gods.
Jaynes shows how man developed the concept of worship, heaven,angels,demons, exorcism,sacrifice,divination, omens,sortilege,augury in his attempts to evoke guidance from the gods -- from external "authorities".
All such quests for external "authority" hark back to the breakdown of the hallucinating bicameral mind - to the silencing and celestialization of the once "vocal" and earthly gods.
Much direct evidence for the breakdown of the bicameral mind and the development of consciousness comes from writings scribed between 1300 B.C. and 300 B.C.
Those writings gradually shift from nonconscious, objective reports to conscious,subjective expressions that reflect introspection.
The jump from the nonconscious writing of the Iliad to the conscious writing of the Odyssey (composed perhaps a century later) is dramatically obvious.
In the Odyssey,unlike the Iliad, characters possess conscious self-awareness,introspection powers, and can sense right,wrong,and guilt.
That radical difference between the Iliad and the Odysseyis,incidentally,further evidence that more than one poet composed the Homeric epics.
The transition from the nonconscious Iliad to the conscious Odyssey marks mans break with his 8000-year-old hallucinatory guidance system.
By the sixth century B.C.,written languages began reflecting conscious ideas of morality and justice similar to those reflected today.
The Old Testament of the Bible also illustrates the transition from the nonconscious writing of its earlier books (such as Amos, circa 750 B.C.) to the fully conscious writing of its later books (such as Ecclesiastes, circa 350 B.C.).
Amid that transition,the book of Samuel records the first known suicide - an act that requires consciousness.
And the book of Deuteronomy illustrates the conflict between the bicameral mind and the conscious mind.
Likewise,the transition to consciousness is observed in other parts of the world: Chinese literature moved from bicameral non consciousness to subjective consciousness about 500 B.C.
With the writings of Confucius. And in India, literature shifted to subjective consciousness around 400 B.C. with the Upanishadic writings.
American Indians,however,never developed the sophisticated,metaphorical languages needed to develop full consciousness.
As a result,their mentalities were probably bicameral when they first encountered the European explorers.
For example,with little or no conscious resistance,the Incas allowed the Spanish "white gods" to dominate, plunder, and slaughter them.
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