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🦋 Streams of Consciousness
I shut my eyes and try not to think, but consciousness still streams on, a great river of contents in a succession of different conditions which I have been taught to call thoughts, images, memories, interior dialogues, regrets, wishes, resolves, all interweaving with the constantly changing pageant of exterior sensations of which I am selectively aware.-- Julian Jaynes
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Here is something that has been running through my head as I read John Limber's essay "Language and Consciousness: Jaynes' 'Preposterous Idea' Reconsidered":
What about meditation? I have had mixed results with my occasional attempts over the years to meditate; but my understanding is that it is intended to address precisely this state of streamingly verbal consciousness. When one is in a successfully meditative state, so I believe, the stream of thoughts, images, memories, interior dialogues, regrets, wishes, resolves falls away and one is left with quiet interiority... Is this a reversion to bicamerality? In his piece "The Self as Interiorized Social Relations," Brian McVeigh suggests (if I am taking his point correctly -- it is an extremely dense essay) that hypnosis and spiritual possession can be seen as forms of reversion to the bicameral mentality. I wonder if meditation is another point in the same continuum -- I have heard meditative prayer described as "listening to the voice of God" which is certainly suggestive of something along these lines.
posted afternoon of Saturday, May 21st, 2011
➳ More posts about The Bicameral Mind
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That is unless god talks too loud! ;) I wonder if it's really possible to get to that state, I guess I'd get scared if the stream stops.
posted afternoon of May 21st, 2011 by Jorge López
Ha! It has never been possible for me, I can't really imagine what it would be like. But it's what I've been trying to achieve any time I have worked on meditation.
Kind of funny in this regard, when I think of the "quiet interiority" that I'd like to achieve, the mental description of it that I have in mind is my internal space, the place where I do all my thinking, emptied out and black. But (if I'm right that this is a regression to bicameral thinking) (and if Jaynes is right about what bicameral thinking looks like) -- the goal state of mind might not be internal at all... Jaynes says the metaphorical "internal space" is entirely a product of verbal consciousness, that a bicameral thinker does not have such an identity space inside his head. This is something I really find impossible to imagine.
posted evening of May 21st, 2011 by Jeremy
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