Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Historic planetary instability and catastrophe. Evidence for electrical scarring on planets and moons. Electrical events in today's solar system. Electric Earth.
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Brigit
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Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Brigit » Thu Feb 16, 2023 5:16 pm

Welcome. This is an invitation to dialogue on planetary catastrophe, Julian Jaynes' Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and on myths and legends which might be related to a past global cataclysm which triggered a profound shift in the way the human brain works.

In "It’s Time for Change," February 15th, 2009 Wal Thornhill wrote:
  • Time for change

    The American people have voted for change in this time of financial and political turmoil. The world is seeking new answers and renewed confidence in their leaders. It is easy to forget that it is only a few months since there was blind faith in experts who were telling us that our global financial systems were sound. “Trust the economists, they are the experts.” We give Nobel Prizes to such people and now find that their mathematical science doesn’t apply to the real world. They, and we, have suffered a historic reality check.

    However, what is not readily accepted in this age of the “cult of the expert” is that the same problem applies to all the sciences. The training of experts is so narrow and specialized that, as George Bernard Shaw wrote, “No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.” Perhaps that is why no university on this planet offers a course that seamlessly sews the specialties together into a broad interdisciplinary canvas. The pieces don’t match up. The idiots cannot even converse!

    This disconnect has allowed a surprising depth of ignorance to hide at the heart of our science. We have a gravitational cosmology that trumpets an understanding of the history of the universe back to the first nanosecond. Yet we do not understand gravity!! We have merely a mathematical description of what it does using words that have no real meaning—like “space-time” and an assumption of universality. Meanwhile the dismissal of the fundamental role of the powerful electric force in cosmology borders on pathological.

    Entrenched science is constantly bolstered by sensational speculative announcements of “facts.” But wildly imaginative constructs such as “dark matter,” “dark energy” and “black holes” are fictitious, not factual. Notwithstanding, pronouncements about the big bang have become a quasi-religious ideology, or scientism.
    “These scientisms, as I shall call them, are clusters of scientific ideas which come together and almost surprise themselves into creeds of belief, scientific mythologies…. And they share with religions many of their most obvious characteristics: a rational splendor that explains everything, a charismatic leader or succession of leaders who are highly visible and beyond criticism, certain gestures of idea and rituals of interpretation, and a requirement of total commitment. In return the adherent receives what the religions had once given him more universally: a world view, a hierarchy of importances, and an auguring place where he may find out what to do and think, in short, a total explanation of man. And this totality is obtained not by actually explaining everything, but by an encasement of its activity, a severe and absolute restriction of attention, such that everything that is not explained is not in view.”
    — Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

    It is an evident truism that history repeats itself. Why? One of the reasons is that historiography—the processes by which knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted—is not required reading in most university courses. Nor is epistemology, a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. What little historical understanding we are given tends to be distorted by a Darwinian perspective, which presents our present state as the culmination of a long upward struggle from ignorance into the light of understanding. Whereas, as Arthur Koestler characterized it, “The revolutions in the history of science are successful escapes from blind alleys.” The blind alleys have become much longer and the escape more difficult since science became government-funded and institutionalised. Our universities have been tirelessly extending blind alleys for a century since the advent of “modern physics.”

    “As these institutions founder in metaphysical emptiness, their words as dead leaves, all the texts and icons are there in their midst, waiting to have life breathed back into them.”
    —John Carroll, The Western Dreaming.

    As Carroll put it, “A culture is its sacred stories.” Our scientific culture has its sacred icons and stories. Bertrand Russell wrote of the increasing power of scientific experts and their “sacred stories” over the unscientific masses in his 1931 book The Scientific Outlook.

    “..to obtain power over any given material, one need only understand the causal laws to which it is subject. This is an essentially abstract matter, and the more irrelevant details we can omit from our purview, the more powerful our thoughts will become. The same sort of thing can be illustrated in the economic sphere. The cultivator, who knows every corner of his farm, has a concrete knowledge of wheat, and makes very little money; the railway which carries his wheat views it in a slightly more abstract way, and makes rather more money; the Stock Exchange manipulator, who knows it only in its purely abstract aspect of something which may go up or down, is, in his way, as remote from concrete reality as the physicist, and he, of all those concerned in the economic sphere, makes the most money and has the most power. So it is with science, though the power which the man of science seeks is more remote and impersonal than that which is sought on the Stock Exchange.”
    See Scientific Technique and Power.

    The power of scientists may be remote and impersonal but its effect on us all has the potential to be more negative and long lasting than that of specialists on the global market.

The back cover of Julian Jaynes' book says, "At the heart of this seminal work is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but was a learned process that emerged, through cataclysm and catastrophe, from a hallucinatory mentality only three thousand years ago and that is still developing."

What myths and legends describe a shift in the way the human mind works ?
What kind of planetary catastrophe might have had such an effect?
What did Immanuel Velikovsky publish on this topic?

Let the dialogue in the Wal Thornhill Invisible College begin ! Please enjoy this topic together. A few rules to guide a new level of conversation will be posted in https://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum3/phpBB3 ... ?f=3&t=973
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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nick c
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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by nick c » Tue Feb 28, 2023 3:05 am

I first read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976) about 25 years ago. It made a profound impression upon me. It is a remarkable book!

Jaynes theorizes that consciousness (first he defines consciousness) arose, possibly the result of catastrophe, relatively recently in the 2nd Millenium BCE. He analyzes the Iliad and concludes that it was written by a Bicameral author, where as the Odyssey was written by a conscious author. Jaynes pinpoints the interval between the two books as the time of the origin of consciousness, at least in Greek history.

Pre conscious Humans were previously guided by amulets and idols, which acted as a hallucinatory agent connecting humans with voices which were perceived as the gods. The voices actually spoke to humans, especially in situations where the person did not know what to do and action was needed. The voices of the gods directed the human how to act.

Conscious humans are still in the process of developing their new found tool...the Analog "I" which operates in the individual's mind space, an abstract place which is created by the use of analogies and metaphors to the physical world. In that mind space, the person can visualize scenarios, strategies, and possibie results of considered actions. Consciousness is created by language, and is different from simple "awareness", it is the awareness that we are aware.

Jaynes notes that once consciousness took its hold, conscious humans were separated from direct connection with the voices. To the newly acquired consciousness, the greatest sin was idol worship, which to them was totally useless in that it no longer invoked guiding voices. That is because there was a transitional time where many humans were still not conscious, and were mixed in with those who had acquired the ability to visualize within a language/culturally created mind space.

Jaynes' theory teaches that humankind is still in the process of developing this relatively new tool.

I highly recommend this book!


There is a Julian Jaynes Society which is devoted to the exploration of and continuation of Jaynes' work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origi ... meral_Mind

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224 ... meral_Mind

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 11295/full

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by nick c » Tue Feb 28, 2023 4:14 am

Brigit wrote:What myths and legends describe a shift in the way the human mind works ?
What kind of planetary catastrophe might have had such an effect?
What did Immanuel Velikovsky publish on this topic?
1. All of them. I think that mythology in general may have been the product of the bicameral mind. That is why we as conscious humans have had such a difficult time understanding the message of myth. Myth's are the historical stories of the bicameral mind. (my opinion)

2.Jaynes puts the origin of consciousness at around the time of great Solar System instability, or the Venus catastrophes. His theory fits nicely into a catastrophic scenario. Furthermore, I think that Jaynes theory fits in best, with the short chronology of ancient history by Heinsohn, Rose, Sweeney, and Ginenthal, but that is another story.

3. As far as I know, Velikovsky never wrote anything on Jaynes. Maybe if he was younger he would have had more to say. It was around 1978 that Jaynes book started to attract attention, and Velikovsky died in 1979. Nor did Jaynes specifically attribute the origin of consciousness as being connected to Velikovskian type catastrophes. But the two theories mesh together well.

Jaynes attributes the rise of consciousness to the arrival of complex social and economic structure of the newly arising urban civilization. Bicameral man was equipped to live a tribal hunter/gatherer existence. But I disagree, it seems to me that it was not the arrival urban life that sparked the arrival consciousness. That is putting the carriage before the horse. I think that urban socioeconomic structure arose as a result of the new tool of consciousness.

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Arcmode » Tue Feb 28, 2023 2:46 pm

What evidence is offered to support the idea?

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by nick c » Tue Feb 28, 2023 4:04 pm

Hi Arcmode,
What evidence is offered to support the idea?
The book is 446 pages of evidence. The structure of the human brain and its functioning are analyzed. Ancient writings are shown to be the product of a bicameral author and others the product of a conscious author.

For example, the Iliad was, according to Jaynes' analysis... written by a different author than the Odyssey. (Perhaps Homer wrote both but was merely recording the older oral traditions as he received it.) But the Iliad has characters that receive their orders directly from their gods in the form of audio hallucinations. This in contrast to the The Odysssey where the characters plot, plan, and scheme to achieve their aims. The word "psyche" in classical ancient Greece meant the human soul or consciousness, but in the Iliad "psyche" is the physical substances of he human body. When a warrior is slain he loses his "psyche" in the form of lost blood and breath.

The Origin of Consciousness.... is subdivided into 3 "books". I strongly recommend that if you are interested, read the first book, which is Jaynes' discussion of the definition of consciousness. If you connect with that then continue to read the other two books, which is the application of his revolutionary analysis to the ancient world and the modern world.

This book was written in the late 1970's and it is the only book Jaynes ever wrote. He published numerous papers and made speaking appearances all focused on the book and its implications.

This book is not going to go away.

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Arcmode » Tue Feb 28, 2023 7:07 pm

Chat GPT spat this out for me, it's quite a tool:

Julian Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind proposes that early humans experienced a state of consciousness that was fundamentally different from our own. According to Jaynes, these early humans did not have a fully developed sense of self-awareness, and instead experienced a kind of "bicameral" mind in which one hemisphere of the brain issued commands to the other, effectively creating the illusion of hearing voices or commands from a higher authority.

Jaynes offers a variety of evidence to support his theory, including:

Ancient texts and myths: Jaynes argues that ancient texts and myths from a variety of cultures, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Old Testament, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, suggest that early humans experienced a different kind of consciousness. For example, the gods in these texts often communicate with humans directly and give them specific instructions or commands, which Jaynes argues is evidence of a bicameral mind.

Archaeological evidence: Jaynes points to evidence from archaeological sites, such as the lack of personal possessions or evidence of self-reflection in early humans, as evidence that they did not have a fully developed sense of self-awareness.

Language development: Jaynes argues that the development of language was a key factor in the emergence of a fully conscious mind, and that early humans did not have the same kind of linguistic abilities as we do today.

Split-brain research: Jaynes draws on research on patients with split brains (i.e., those who have had the connection between their left and right hemispheres severed) to support his theory. According to Jaynes, these patients often experience a sense of disconnection between their two hemispheres, which is similar to the experience of the bicameral mind.

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Brigit » Tue Feb 28, 2023 8:58 pm

I had a very good experience with the Julian Jaynes book also. It was quite a while ago, out of interest in what Wal Thornhill had written about it -- actually back in 2009.

I was deeply affected by Jaynes' thoughts on auditory hallucinations, and I personally found the split-brain patient testing to be not only completely and utterly fascinating, but the most natural explanation for what many people may experience even today as "voices" in their head. I think a lot of modern people experience auditory hallucinations -- the book says that 7-12% of men and women report hearing voices.

I had no idea that these kinds of operations had been performed on people (commissurotomy), and I still follow presentations and lectures on the subject. There is a lady who wrote a book recently, basically contending that the split-brain individual is actually two persons/consciousnesses. And she makes interesting arguments.

But for us normie whole brain people, the descriptions of the right hemisphere knowing the correct answer to a test question, to which the left hemisphere verbally gives a wrong answer, is enlightening. It gives a bit of help in appreciating some of our own intuitive doubts, and also in noticing when our own left hemisphere is weaving just a bit too elaborate of a story.

I liked the implication of a catastrophic shift in human brain organization. Not to agree with all of Jaynes' dates and "psychohistorical" interpretations, but it is bold that he made a solid case that "consciousness" is not a result of slow animal evolution. I think it is linked to a planetary catastrophe, of course !
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by allynh » Mon Mar 06, 2023 12:14 am

I need to read the book again, it's been since the 90s. If I remember, he mentioned that the Greek island Thera blew up leaving the archipelago Santorini.

Santorini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini
The island was the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred about 3,600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization.[4] The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of metres deep.
The eruption caused a cascade effect of dislocating people who when they came in contact with other groups forced them to start being conscious. They basically had to learn how to lie to keep from being attacked.

- "Lying" takes conscious thought.

HA!

BTW, These are stories that are based on Jaynes:

- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

The people are controlled remotely by implanted controllers.

- Cell by Stephen King

The "Group Mind" is capable of telepathy and telekinesis.

- The novel Ice Crown by Andre Norton has Forerunner technology controlling a planetary society the same way. This was long before Jaynes.

This is an Original Star Trek episode that demonstrates the concept.

- The Return of the Archons, with Landru and "Are you of the body".

The people are not conscious, they are following the programing set by the computer. They used to be an advanced society, but chose to simplify their lives, which required them to not be "conscious" individuals anymore.

At the beginning of the episode, Sulu is zapped and forgets that he was ever on Enterprise. As he saw that the people around him were not "of the body" he got increasingly violent. McCoy got converted and forgot that he was a Doctor on Enterprise, and lashed out at people when he saw they were not "of the body".

Watch the episode many times and you will see the same thing happening today with the "Woke" who are not conscious. They are clearly part of a "Group Mind" i.e., a "Mass Formation" as described in the book:

- The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet

This has happened many times in recorded history. People go crazy as a crowd and only become sane as individuals. This was described in the classic:

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordi ... _of_Crowds

The same concept was talked about in:

- The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot

There are countless examples of this, "One Mind spread across Many Bodies", in the Archeological record. See the Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse by Hancock. When he talks about "Giants" he means "One Mind spread across Many Bodies".

But I digress, and start sliding into discussions that belongs in the NIaMI thread as "Story".

"We now return control of your television set to you, until next week at this same time, when the Control Voice will take you to... The Outer Limits."

The Outer Limits OST-End Credits (Long Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fejp6uZySQ

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Brigit » Thu Mar 09, 2023 12:30 am

We leave the floor open to impressions and thoughts on Julian Jaynes' book, of course.

But I want to play with the parameters of his theory. A lot.


What was the means of expression and communication that was so intrinsic to the people of the ancient times that would seem foreign to us now?

And how about this:

If we look into the myths and legends across the world, what are some of the stories and descriptions we might have encountered which describe a shift away from a previous expression and brain organization to a more modern, recognizable one?

Again, I want to widen, or open up, the characteristics of the ancients and their state before the development of "consciousness." And I want to use world wide myths and legends to do so.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by danda » Thu Mar 09, 2023 5:57 am

There is a lady who wrote a book recently, basically contending that the split-brain individual is actually two persons/consciousnesses
I find this an interesting notion.

For a while I've held the idea that we have a soul formed of a dynamic energetic ether pattern (eg a vortex) which is what holds our pattern/blueprint/purpose/conciousnes/memory. This etheric soul (or energy field if you prefer) organizes otherwise inanimate matter to create what we call a living being. (DNA may just be an antennae/bridge to make this work.) This is basically a vitalist viewpoint, rather than a materialist one. And I figured that egg and sperm each contain a mini vortex that copies the parent's at the point in time of its creation, and when they meet they merge into a single new vortex with a new blueprint/purpose.

Ok, so with that as background, this notion of one-person-per-lobe could have implications for my merging-vortexes concept. Perhaps they still merge, but retain their individual pattern/coherence. The resulting product is still unique as a whole, but the pattern of the mother and father are retained and one lobe accesses the mother's pattern and the other the father's. Quite likely the left brain would be the father, and the right would be the mother. The physical connection between left and right brain could then be a mechanism for the mother's and father's patterns to essentially talk to eachother and argue it out before presenting a unified answer for the child (the self).

Going a bit further, the father and mother would themselves also have 2 sub vortexes for their father/mother, and so on. So the 'self' becomes kind of an amalgam/sum of all of one's ancestors.

This then, is the true mechanism of inheritance/genetics, and DNA is just a tiny material reflection of it. Eg it seems that DNA only encodes how to produce certain proteins, but says nothing about an organism's overall form, and also DNA varies within the body and over an organisms lifetime.

Ok, well its fun to think about anyway. btw, much of this ties in with what Dr. Tom Cowan and others are saying about the role of DNA, etc, as part of "the new biology".

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by ForumModerator » Thu Mar 09, 2023 7:08 pm

Posts on this thread should deal with the subject of "Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", and especially on how that theory relates to planetary catastrophism.
This is not the thread to put forth other theories of consciousness. Jaynes, in his book, spent many pages in elaborating on his definition consciousness.
Forum members who wish to put forth their own theories on the subject should do so by opening a thread on the New Insights and Mad Ideas board.

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Brigit » Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:56 pm

Here is an Okanogan legend of a time when humans and animals and animal people understood each other:



"The earth was once a human being. Old-One made her out of a woman. 'You will be the mother of all people,' he said. Earth is alive yet, but she has been changed...She lives spread out, and we live on her. When she moves, we have an earthquake.

After changing her to earth, Old-One took some of her flesh and rolled it into balls, as people do with mud or clay. These balls Old-One made into beings of the early world. They were the ancients. The were people, and yet they were at the same time animals.

In form, some of them were like animals; some were more like people. Some could fly like birds; others could swim like fishes. In some ways the land creatures acted like animals. All had the gift of speech. They had greater powers and were more cunning than either animals or people. And yet they were very stupid in some ways. They knew that they had to hunt in order to live, but they did not know which beings were deer and which were people. They thought people were deer and often ate them.

Some people lived on earth at that time. They were like the Indians of today except that they were ignorant. Deer were also on the earth at that time. They were real animals then too. They were never people or ancient animal people, as were the ancestors of most animals. Some people say that elk antelope, and buffalo also were always animals, to be hunted as deer are hunted. Others tell stories about them as if they were ancients or half-human beings.

The last balls of mud Old-One made were almost all alike and were different from the first ones he made. He rolled them over and over. He shaped them like Indians. He blew on them and they became alive. Old-One called them men. They were Indians, but they were very ignorant. They did not knew how to do things. They were the most helpless of all creatures Old-One made. Some of the animal people preyed on them and ate them.

Old-One made both male and female people and animals, so that they might love and multiply. Thus all living things came from the earth. When we look around, we see everywhere parts of our mother.

Most of the ancient animal people were selfish, and there was much trouble among them. At last Old-One said, 'There will soon be no people if I let things go on like this.'

So he sent Coyote to kill all the monsters and other evil beings. Old-One told Coyote to teach the Indians the best way to do things and the best way to make things. Life would be easier and better for them when they were no longer ignorant. Coyote then traveled the earth and did many wonderful things."





ref: Ella E Clark, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest, 1953.
ref: The Okanogan Tribe today lives in Nespelem, Wa.
"The Twelve Bands compose the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation:
Chelan, Chief Joseph Band of Nez Perce, Colville, Entiat, Lakes, Methow, Moses-Columbia, Nespelem, Okanogan, Palus, San Poil, Wenatchi

Total Size: 1.4 Million Acres (2,100 Square Miles), Tribal Enrollment Total: 9,290"
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Brigit
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Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Brigit » Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:21 pm

When I find other Native American legends of people sharing a language, both with each other and sometimes with animals, I'll place them here.

I did a search in some of the texts of the Zoroastrians -- which was time well-spent, but I did not find any mention of a loss of communication, or of the development of an entirely new kind of communication. If I do, I'll put it here. Certainly planetary catastrophe is there in the Avesta and other Pahlavi books.

The legend above has some of the elements we are listening for, in which the end of the previous era (perhaps of megafauna?) closes with catastrophe. The new era after the monsters were killed was a great improvement of life for the Indians. I have seen that theme quite often. This is just one example in which the planetary catastrophes were viewed as a positive event by tribes of North America, making life safer for humans.

Does it necessarily fit to say that all of humanity is traumatized? Is it necessarily fair to psychoanalyze all of humanity and assume a negative response to the period of planetary chaos? These traditions may be a counter example.

While planetary catastrophes are abundant in myths and legends from around the world, this is a search for just those which are connected with a shift in communication, expression, and brain organization.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

allynh
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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by allynh » Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:13 pm

Just to add a comment:

- The discussion is not just about humans, it is also about the "Entities" or "gods" that we were once part of. They are still there, either in Corbin's Imaginal Realm, or scattered among us as shattered pieces waiting for conditions to change so that they can reform back into "One Mind, Many Bodies".

When you read "myths" the "Entities" discussed are not just metaphorical.

In other words, the "trauma" is spread across the entire Noosphere, and we keep getting hints of that "trauma" from more than just our collective memories.

If that is too much to take in, that is a normal response. The term "Boggled" refers to ideas that researchers would rather not address.

Pay attention to what is being discussed, but do not pay more than what you can afford.

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Re: Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Unread post by Arcmode » Tue Mar 14, 2023 12:49 am

I have a few problems with this theory. First, while I'm not completely familiar with all the ancient texts, I have read some of them, and I've read some of them a lot. And from what I've read, a bicameral mind that can communicate in some kind of supernatural way is never presented as being the general experience of humans at the time. It's always presented as being something that is exceptional. You're either chosen by God to be a prophet, or you're a sorcerer who's in contact with spirits, or you are seeking the help of the gods in some way. There's some kind of reason for it, and it's an exception. That's why there's scriptures written about it when it happens . So I don't think we can really appeal to ancient texts as evidence for a bicameral mind as a general experience of humanity in ancient times.

It also ignores the ongoing experience of supernatural communications that occurred and still occur into modern times after the supposed shift into regular consciousness. In the tradition of the Old Testament texts the Christian religion had many saints and holy people in contact with God - receiving instructions, witnessing apparitions and such things, while the general population goes about quite normally, maybe only occasionally experiencing something similar. The same can be said for many other traditions. In this sense there is no evidence of any change at all.

I am still looking into the book, but I see it as very similar to the chasing of cosmic gnomes. In the same way that those searching for dark matter are resting all their hopes on the unfounded assumption of the gravity only Big Bang universe, looking for an evolutionary process for the origin of consciousness is assuming that humans have evolved from something more primitive or less sophisticated, with a different consciousness, which has never been firmly established. In fact the evidence for it is extremely thin and in many cases observations contradict the model, such as with the fossil record.

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