anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of
selves, that is everything, and yet is nothing at all — what is it?
And where did it come from? And why?" (Jaynes, 1977:1).These dilemmas, or more the case, perturbations to the Western psyche, however,
are seen by others, particularly those in preliterate cultures where the content of
the interior world is as privileged as that of the exterior world, as perfectly normal;
they do not erupt into consciousness. I ndeed, such a state might be seen as more
akin to the state of participation mystique.
Jaynes believes that until approximately 3000 years ago essentially all
human beings were without consciousness, as we experience it today (Jaynes,
1977:82, 317). Human beings, along with all other primates functioned by mimicked
or learned reactions. However, because of their much larger, more complex brain,
the human individual was able to develop a coherent language beginning about
8000 BCE (Jaynes, 1977:66). Human beings were then guided by audio
hallucinations, ‘authority voices’. I n effect, these human beings were quite
intelligent and could communicate by talking but were still, in a sense, according to
Jaynes, automatically reacting even though that form of communication enabled
them to cooperate closely to build societies, even thriving civilizations.
Jaynes’ primary construct is the concept of a bicameral (two-chamber) mind
that functions as an unconscious, two-step process. Hallucinations, automatic
reactions and thoughts evolved in the right hemisphere of the brain and were
transmitted or heard as communications or instructions in the left hemisphere of the
brain to be acted upon (Jaynes, 1977:208, 269). The bicameral functioning is
nature's automatic, learned mode of response without regard to conscious thinking.
By contrast, human-initiated consciousness functions through a deliberate, volitional
thought process that is independent of nature's bicameral thought process.
The major historic markers of Jaynes’ theory of archaic thought and the break-
up of the bicameral mind are:
(i) All civilizations before 1000 BCE were built, inhabited, and ruled by non-
conscious people.
Jaynes cites examples from civilizations such as Assyria, Babylonia,
Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt, but also suggests that the transition to
consciousness may be observed in other parts of the world. Chinese literature
moved from bicameral non-consciousness to subjective consciousness about 500
BCE with the writings of Confucius. I n I ndia, literature shifted to subjective