How Could Different Individuals Hear the Same Hallucination in Preconscious Civilizations? Hierarchies of Hallucinations

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Some question Jaynesian psychology by asking “how could everyone hear the same hallucinated voices or see the same visions?” Several responses resolve this problem. First, most of the time individuals would not hear hallucinations; they only hallucinated when facing novel or relatively stress-inducing situations. Second, usually people navigated daily life by relying on ritualized routine, habit, and predictable rhythms of a highly structured social existence (something that conscious people do more than they realize). Third, people only had to believe they heard the same commands and admonishments; what mattered was possessing a basic idea of what was expected of them as social actors.

Consider the analogy of a military organization. Strategic plans are passed down to the tactical units, becoming specific orders as they cascade through the chain of command; these orders are then carried out by individual soldiers. It is not expected that every soldier hears the exact wording of the high command’s plan or has a direct line of communication with the organization’s upper echelon. Afterall, the actual execution of commands is shaped by local conditions, emerging expediencies, and other variables, so that orders will be interpreted somewhat differently. Nor does each soldier have to understand the reasoning behind high-level strategy. If every combatant is loyal to the overall mission, the plan of the generals can be achieved.

Finally, in preconscious societies it was assumed that each individual had a different set of authorizing voices to which they were subordinate. How many voices they listened to and obeyed was a function of demographic scale. In other words, the smaller a social grouping, the flatter was its social hierarchy and the fewer voices one heard. The larger, more complex societies were characterized by multi-layers with various voices. Large, urbanized bicameral civilizations socially cohered because they were governed by complicated hierarchies of hallucinations (though historically, these pyramidal social structures were not terribly stable). In principle, the more levels (social complexity), the more voices (lines of communication).

At the first or lowest level people listened to or were visited by their personal or guardian deities. Ancestral revenants and lesser divinities within or associated with the domestic unit or clan lived in the second level. Above the household and its immediate environs was the third level, where a diverse set of spiritual entities dwelled. First were the temple gods one visited to request favors, express thanks for a small miracle, or seek out oracles (in exchange for sacrifices and votive offerings). Second were patron gods who oversaw certain occupations and trades. In the third level angry, predatory demons and restless, hungry ghosts also roamed. These beings preyed upon those unfortunate enough to encounter spiritual entities looking to possess or haunt individuals. Also at the third level were local shrines or sacred spots in which assorted numina were active. The fourth level was home to the tutelary deity of one’s city-state or larger theopolitical community. The highest or fifth level was occupied by the powerful but distant high gods, often identified with the forces of nature or the cosmos itself.

Probably the higher up the hierarchy one went, the less often an individual heard from the divinities. There was probably no need on a typical day to communicate with one’s spiritual superiors as long as one responsibly fulfilled one's social role within predetermined parameters. Presumably, priests and kings communed directly and more often with the more important spiritual superiors.