The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Author: Julian Jaynes

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2000-08-15

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 0547527543

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National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry


The Julian Jaynes Collection

The Julian Jaynes Collection

Author: Julian Jaynes

Publisher:

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9780979074493

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Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes's revolutionary theory on the origin of consciousness or the "modern mind" remains as relevant and thought-provoking as when it was first proposed. Supported by recent discoveries in neuroscience, Jaynes's ideas force us to rethink conventional views of human history and psychology, and have profound implications for many aspects of modern life. Included in this volume are rare and never before seen articles, lectures, interviews, and in-depth discussions that both clear up misconceptions as well as extend Jaynes's theory into new areas such as the nature of the self, dreams, emotions, art, music, therapy, and the consequences and future of consciousness.**Expanded to include a new, previously unpublished wide-ranging 30-page interview with Julian Jaynes.**


Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind

Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind

Author: Marcel Kuijsten

Publisher:

Published: 2021-04-08

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780979074486

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Does consciousness inevitably arise in any sufficiently complex brain? Although widely accepted, this view inherited from Darwin's theory of evolution is supported by surprisingly little evidence. Offering an alternate view of the history of the human mind, Julian Jaynes's ideas challenge our preconceptions of not only the origin of the modern mind, but the origin of gods and religion, the nature of mental illness, and the future potential of consciousness. The tremendous explanatory power of Jaynes's ideas force us to reevaluate much of what we thought we knew about human history.Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind both explains Julian Jaynes's theory and explores a wide range of related topics such as the ancient Dark Age, the nature of dreams and the birth of Greek tragedy, poetic inspiration, the significance of hearing voices in both the ancient and modern world, the development of consciousness in children, vestiges of bicameralism and the transition to consciousness in early Tibet, the relationship of consciousness and metaphorical language, and how Jaynes's ideas compare to those of other thinkers.


Dark Night, Early Dawn

Dark Night, Early Dawn

Author: Christopher M. Bache

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2000-05-26

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780791446058

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Combining philosophical reflections with deep self-exploration to delve into the ancient mystery of death and rebirth, this book emphasizes collective rather than individual transformation. Drawing upon twenty years of experience working with nonordinary states, the author argues that when the deep psyche is hyper-simulated using Stanislaw Grof's powerful therapeutic methods, the healing that results sometimes extends beyond the individual to the collective unconscious of humanity itself.


Coming Home to Myself

Coming Home to Myself

Author: Marion Woodman

Publisher: Conari Press

Published: 2001-04-01

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9781573245661

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A meditation book for women seeking to raise to their self-esteem & connect more fully with themselves.


Is This a Dream?

Is This a Dream?

Author: Anoop Kumar

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2020-01-31

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1789042526

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Using the philosophy of non-duality as a framework, Anoop Kumar takes you on an exploration of identity, the core factor that is at the heart of not only spirituality, but also science, philosophy, religion, and every other facet of life, including washing the dishes on Saturday night after the guests leave. But identity isn't only about us. It also influences what we see of the world around us. What is this world, after all? How does it relate to who we are and how we experience the world? As we explore these questions, the falseness of the dichotomy of you and the world around you is exposed. We are now upon a time in which our perspectives on spirituality, science, philosophy, and religion have evolved enough to stand together in the glare of the spotlight as we ask the most practical of questions: What is the common truth among all these? How does it change my life right now? How does it change the world? Is This a Dream? includes a Foreword by Deepak Chopra


Passion of the Western Mind

Passion of the Western Mind

Author: Richard Tarnas

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2011-10-19

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0307804526

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"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.


Instinct and Revelation

Instinct and Revelation

Author: Alondra Oubre

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1134384742

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Instinct and Revelation revolves around the hypothesis that ritual behavior and imaginative awareness in early hominids may have helped to spawn the evolution of the human brain and human consciousness. Using an integral perspective comparable with systems theory, the book carefully interweaves fact and theory from physical and cultural anthropology, psychobiology and the brain sciences, psychology, and to a lesser degree, eastern philosophy. This book breaks from tradition by discussing from a primarily anthropological perspective the origin of human consciousness within a philosophical framework that embraces precepts from human evolution, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, biocultural anthropology, and cultural symbolic anthropology.


How Religion Evolved

How Religion Evolved

Author: Brian McVeigh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1351514830

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Why did many religious leaders—Moses, Old Testament prophets, Zoroaster—claim they heard divine voices? Why do ancient civilizations exhibit key similarities, e.g., the "living dead" (treating the dead as if they were still alive); "speaking idols" (care and feeding of effigies); monumental mortuary architecture and "houses of gods" (pyramids, ziggurats, temples)? How do we explain strange behaviour such as spirit possession, speaking in tongues, channelling, hypnosis, and schizophrenic hallucinations? Are these lingering vestiges of an older mentality? Brian J. McVeigh answers these riddles by updating "bicameralism." First proposed by the psychologist Julian Jaynes, this theory postulates that an earlier mentality existed: a "human" (the brain's left hemisphere) heard voices of "gods" or "ancestors" (the brain's right hemisphere). Therefore, ancient religious texts reporting divine voices were recounting of audio-visual hallucinations—a method of social control when early populations expanded. As growing political economic complexity destabilized god-governed states in the late second millennium BCE, divine voices became inadequate. Eventually, humans had to culturally acquire new cognitive skills (modern religions) to accommodate increasing social pressures: selves replaced the gods and history witnessed an "inward turn." This psychological interiorization of spiritual experience laid the foundations for the world's great religions and philosophies that arose in India, China, Greece, and the Middle East in the middle of the first millennium BCE.