A Resurgence of Julian Jaynes’ Theory of Consciousness

by Peter Sellick

Adam Mars-Jones begins his review of Alvaro Enrigue’s “You Dreamed of Empires” (London Review of Books, Volume 46, Number 10) with the following:

“Culture shock​ seems too mild a phrase to describe the arrival of Europeans in South and Central America. In his 1976 maverick classic, The Origin of consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (its category speculative neurohistory, at a guess), Julian Jaynes proposes that, at the time Pizarro and his men reached them, the Inca didn’t have full mental autonomy but only ‘protosubjectivity’. They functioned largely by a sort of automatism, acting according to unchanging patterns and ritual clues, able to absorb only slight disruptions to their routines, so that this was less a clash of civilisations than of mental structures.”

This sent me scrambling for my old copy of Jaynes’ monumental book that I read in the late 80s. Scrambled, because while I had been convinced that the theory was revolutionary, I have heard little or nothing of it since, and have assumed that the theory had not been taken up by mainstream academia. A re-reading affirmed my original fascination with the idea that before around 1000 BC, the human mind could be described as being bicameral, i.e. the two hemispheres functioned in a way that precluded the sort of communication between them that would eventually produce self-consciousness: the arrival of the allegorical “I”. Bicameral human beings were “other- directed” having no volition of their own. The “other”, here referred to was perceived as hallucinated voices emanating from the right hemisphere either of a ruler or elder or as the voice of the gods. The voices were sustained by idols that were not representations of the gods but were themselves gods. The voices of elders or rulers were reinforced by close burial in chambers that were equipped with the necessities of life, i.e. they were not considered dead, their voice continued through time until they eventually faded or replaced by others. Rather than equipping the dead for the afterlife (did they have such a concept?), funeral goods were meant to sustain the influence of the those buried. There is ample archaeological evidence to support this theory, one has only to think of the terracotta warriors that were buried with Shi Huang, the first emperor of China who died in 210 BC or the Cypriot terracotta army that was active between 1200-600 BC. Jaynes proposed that the emergence of self-consciousness, and hence individual volition, was a cultural process that altered the way the evolved brain functioned. We are all born with bicameral minds, and we become self-conscious through enculturation. This enculturation begins at an early age as our mothers interacted with us in evocative ways. Early stories engender the stories of the child’s own life and awareness of the self among selves arises.

If there is something to Jaynes’ theory of the origin of consciousness, the repercussions will be felt in a great array of academic disciplines — from archaeology, ancient history, biblical studies and theology, as well as psychiatry and developmental psychology. For example, our understanding of the conflict between Westerners and nonliterate indigenous communities will be seen in a new light, as the above quotation from Mars-Jones illustrates. This is not an argument from race but from culture. It may be that the barbarian hordes who plundered Europe at various times were remarkably innocent as well as cruel. Just as we observe various stages of bicameral mentality in children and the neurodiverse, we may also observe cultures in transition and conclude that “civilization” consists in the movement towards full self-consciousness and awareness of others.

There is some speculation about the forces that were involved in the transition: societal disruption which destroyed the habits of mind or the hierarchy of voices necessary for continued action, the development of metaphorical language, and the advent of writing. If the voices of the gods could be written, then they were found to be unnecessary for the ordering of society. The written word took precedence over the hallucinated word of the prophet. Jaynes places the beginning of this movement in Mesopotamia coinciding with the first writing (cuneiform). One would expect to find evidence of the decline of bicamerality in the bible, whose written origins go back to about 500 BC and its oral origins extend further into the past. The story of Moses coming down from the mountain bearing the ten commandments written on stone to a people who craved the golden calf indicates just such transition. While social disruption caused the voices of the rulers or gods to become confused, writing, being permanent portable and shared, displaced the individually apprehended voices with objective law.

The most obvious example of the transition from bicameral mentality to self-consciousness is found in the mentality of actors in the Iliad to that of the Odyssey. The two texts are separated by some centuries. The actors in the Iliad are guided by the voices of the gods while we find Odysseus “fretting over and narrativizing every aspect of his life.” Further examples of bicameral people may be found in the Old Testament. Abraham displays bicameralism when God instructs him to take his only son Isaac “whom he loves” and sacrifice him. We do not have insight into Abraham’s thoughts — he does not protest, he simply obeys the command of God. There is a tasty irony here because Paul makes much of Abraham being an example of faith: “For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4.3) Paul was not to know that Abraham did not have a choice in the matter. If Abraham was a bicameral man, he believed nothing, and it is absurd to understand him as a man of faith. The misunderstanding was extended by Luther who used Paul to construct a dichotomy between faith and works. While this does not remove the theological reasons for the Reformation it does cause us to pause when we project our own consciousness onto biblical characters.

In The Minds of the Bible, Rabbi James Cohn reconstructs the timeline of Old Testament, not using their biblical attribution but from historical critical analysis. This scheme places Amos and Isaiah as the earliest books and Ecclesiastes and Daniel as the latest. He traces a progression from bicameral mentality to consciousness from the language used in these books. Amos and Isaiah are typical OT prophets who voiced the words of God. Jaynes explanation is that these men “heard” the voice of God and understood themselves to be simple mouthpieces of the Lord. It is typical for OT prophets to introduce their speech with “Thus says the Lord”; a proclamation that was taken literally. Daniel and Ecclesiastes are very different, they are introspective and for the first time in the OT Daniel has something to say about an afterlife while Ecclesiastes ruminates about the emptiness of all things, impossible for a bicameral mind. It is of interest that thoughts of life after death do not occur in the OT until the breakdown of the bicameral mind and the emergence of self-consciousness. If a bicameral person has no analogical “I” then any reflection of the survival of the self beyond death is impossible. This observation undercuts many Christians’ belief in the continuance of consciousness after death since its genesis only appeared when the individual had some skin in the game. On the other hand, it justifies an interpretation of eschatological literature in late OT texts and in much of the NT to indicate an ongoing progress towards the kingdom of God/heaven of compassion and justice revealed as we live and breathe.

One of the many repercussions of the silence of the gods, rulers or elders was a great upsurge in divination be that based on the examination of the entrails of slaughtered animals, portents in nature, the throwing of dice or, most importantly, by oracle. For example, the oracle at Delphi functioned for a thousand years well into the first century AD. The oracles themselves were young women with no education that were trained so that they could enter a trance-like state and speak of the future. It took a long time for us to trust our analysis of a situation or our intuition to stand as authoritative. We hankered for the voice of God to give certainty. The more moralistic religious expressions in our time continue to provide both negative and positive authentication to human action thus displacing individual volition. The tension between the will of the individual and that of the community straddles bicameralism and self-authentication.

The bicameral state explains why early human beings can be so cruel because since they had no “I” themselves they could not attribute an “I” to another. They could not situate themselves within an “other.” Our history up to the present illustrates a gradual move into compassion for the other that leaves our soldiers with post-traumatic stress because they can identify with the persons they have killed. In the bicameral ages, God could command mass slaughter of all living with no expression of feeling for those who died and no discussion of morality. This could explain how the Incas, for example, could practice ritual human sacrifice over hundreds of years without suffering overwhelming grief or rebellion. Adam Mars-Jones’ reference to Jaynes in the context of the Spanish conquistadors contacting the Incas who “didn’t have full mental autonomy but only “protosubjectivity.” This would explain how Pizarro’s small band could overcome a much larger Inca force and plunder the city. The Incas’, relying on what seemed to be external authorization, simply did not know how to act in the face of the unprecedented arrival of men quite unlike themselves. This indicates the complete absence of what we would call morality. However, while strongly bicameral people could only follow their voices, they could not go beyond them, they could not lie, cheat, plot, torture or commit all of the other crimes that “civilized” people could invent.

Jesus is an important figure in this scheme because he emphasizes the humanity of the other, even when that other has been designated a sinner by the religious authorities. Thus, the core of Christian belief is a movement away from the heartless (legalistic) bicameral and towards compassionate concern for the other no matter where they stood in the social hierarchy. The kingdom of heaven is marked by this concern, it is a journey to self-knowledge. On the other hand, the rise of totalitarian states represents a return to bicameralism, since the self is denied in favor of (in China) the party. Every person in China, and eventually all people “under heaven,” will be guided by Xi Jinping’s thought that is deemed infallible. One wonders if this is possible once the cat of self-consciousness is out of the bag!

The presupposition to any analysis of this kind is that the gods do not have existence in themselves. When the prophet says “thus says the Lord,” it is not really the Lord but the prophet’s own right hemisphere; the voice of God is really our voice. This does not mean that it is gibberish, like the ecstatic speech of the charismatic movement, because the right hemisphere has a logic of its own, it sees and says things that the left hemisphere is incapable of, as does the prophet who reaches to greater depths of meaning. The religious path begun by Jesus in his opposition to the legal Judaism of his time and towards greater self-knowledge and decisiveness ushers in a new heaven and a new earth in which violence is intolerable and justice for all reigns. John’s gospel is famous for the many “I am” sayings of Jesus that asserts that he is, the truth, the light, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life. This may reflect God’s answer when Moses asks for the name of the one who addresses him from the burning bush; “I am who I am.” Of course this is not definitive, but it is evidence that God, both in the form of Jesus and the one speaking out of the burning bush, epitomizes a person who entertains the analogical “I”. It is the destiny of believers “to be like Him” having also this “I” that has a will of its own and see the other as like themselves. Hence salvation becomes the transition from unreflective life to reflective life that may relate to another in love.

Peter Sellick has a PhD in auditory physiology and a Bachelor of Divinity. He is an Anglican Deacon and lives in Perth Western Australia.

Learn more about Julian Jaynes’s theory by joining the Julian Jaynes Society and reading our books.