Anyone familiar with the bicameral mind theory?
Two hemispheres? It does indeed involve the two hemispheres. All the sane praying to god and making sacrifices and stuff like that? They did things as a matter of course that would land someone today in a criminal insane asylum for life.
Well, the theory is that consciousness as we know it, self awareness as we experience it today, arose within the span of recorded history. That originally the two hemispheres of the brain didn’t behave as a single entity. People may have encountered the spirits or god / gods through commonly occurring hallucination.
The first metanoia, the experiences of metanoia in the Bible, actually reflect hallucinatory symptoms, even temporal lobe seizures both in their perceptual structure and physical symptoms. Saul likely had a grand mal seizure on his way to Damascus. (I believe that was where he was going.)
A three-day seizure — in which he was blind for three days.
The point is, the efforts our brain makes to unify, to heal and integrate itself, give rise to a pattern of behaviour. Bicameral mind or not, that is still playing itself out today. Which is mythology more like, your night dreams or your waking paranoia? The gods were crazy, but they haven’t gotten any more sane. They’re just more technologically advanced now. Better apotheosis through chemistry? God now is a machine. Are we any saner for it?
No. It isn’t the self that needs redeeming. The self is damned before it even has a thought. It’s the gods that need redeeming. Can we do that through our social milieu? Can we do that through this system that sustains roles and posturing? Status and denial of innate nature and instinct in favour of “rationality”?
I ponder the “crabs trying to crawl out of the bucket” metaphor — and being pulled back in by the other crabs.
Beneath the supposedly sane rational mind, and the seemingly insane god mind, is a singular presence, a spark or seed of life principle. It seeks to mend and promote the eventual evolution of the individual. So as much as we can become confused by our complex and elaborate rationalizations, or drown ourselves in the bacchanalian demands of an emotionally volatile and ultimately egotistical subconscious self, this third principle applies pressure to both. It ultimately moves both, like the sun itself moves both animal and plant life. The devil did not make you do it. God wants you to do all of the things, even wants you to do the things god doesn’t want you to do.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~