The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind QUOTES

21 " Osiris, to go directly to the important part of this, was not a "dying god," not "life caught in the spell of death," or "a dead god," as modern interpreters have said. He was the hallucinated voice of a dead king whose admonitions could still carry weight. And since he could still be heard, there is no paradox in the fact that the body from which the voice once came should be mummified, with all the equipment of the tomb providing life's necessities: food, drink, slaves, women, the lot. There was no mysterious power that emanated from him; simply his remembered voice which appeared in hallucination to those who had known him and which could admonish or suggest even as it has before he stopped moving and breathing. And that various natural phenomena such as the whispering of waves could act as the cue for such hallucinations accounts for the belief that Osiris, or the king whose body has ceased to move and is in his mummy cloths, continues to control the flooding of the Nile. Further, the relationship between Horus and Osiris, 'embodied' in each new king and his dead father forever, can only be understood as the assimilation of an hallucinated advising voice into the king's own voice, which then would be repeated with the next generation. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

23 " CIVILIZATION is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does not know everyone else. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

25 " Signal learning (or classical or Pavlovian conditioning) is the simplest example [of learning without consciousness]. If a light signal immediately followed by a puff of air through a rubber tube is directed at a person's eye about ten times, the eyelid, which previously blinked only to the puff of air, will begin to blink to the light signal alone, and this becomes more and more frequent as trials proceed. Subjects who have undergone this well-known procedure of signal learning report that it has no conscious component whatever. Indeed, consciousness, in this example the intrusion of voluntary eye blinks to try to assist the signal learning, blocks it from occurring. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

27 " No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the Iliad. Good and evil do not exist. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

29 " The first poets were gods. Poetry began with the bicameral mind. The god-side of our ancient mentality, at least in a certain period of history, usually or perhaps always spoke in verse. This means that most men at one time, throughout the day, were hearing poetry (of a sort) composed and spoken within their own minds. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

31 " For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of a much more recent origin than has heretofore been supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

33 " We have said that consciousness is an operation rather than a thing, a repository, or a function. It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog 'I' that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it. It operates on any reactivity, excerpts relevant aspects, narratizes and conciliates them together in a metaphorical space where such meanings can be manipulated like things in space. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

35 " No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the "Iliad". Good and evil do not exist. "

― Julian Jaynes , The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind