I t must be noted at this point that all of the respondents to the research
questionnaire extolled the virtues of poetry and poetic reverie in some form or
another, all the readers and one of the shamans, citing their favourite poets.
Jaynes also illustrates how phenomena like hypnosis, acupuncture, and déjà-
vu also function through vestiges of the bicameral mind by demonstrating how
hypnosis steadily narrows the sense of self, time, space, and introspection as
consciousness shrinks and the mind reverts to a bicameral type organization; the
same sort of organization that is manifested in SC and MLC. By comparison,
bicameral and schizophrenic minds have little or no sense of self, time, space or
introspection and the hypnotized mind is urged to obey the voice of the hypnotist;
the bicameral mind is compelled to obey the voices of authority or gods. Jaynes
also identifies how modern quests for external authority are linked to the bicameral
mind.
Partial support for Jaynes’ theory and my thesis regarding the involvement
of the cave pictographs in altered states of consciousness, comes from the research
of psychologists Nicholas Humphrey (1999) and Mell, Howard and Miller (2003),
who all come to similar conclusions although they have based their work on
different hypotheses. In an article entitled Cave Art, Autism, and the Evolution of
the Human Mind, Humphrey (1999:116-143) illustrates the remarkable similarities in
style and technique that exist between the cave paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic
and the drawings of an young autistic patient who was almost completely devoid of
language yet produced a series of remarkable drawings, mainly of horses and other
animals that were technically much superior to those of normal children. As in the
cave pictographs of the Upper Palaeolithic, the subjects are shown in motion, using
perspective and foreshortening, and often in three-quarter profile. As the young
female patient grew older and began to acquire some language the quality of her
drawings deteriorated. I n another study that establishes a link between levels of
consciousness and artistic ability, three neurologists studied cases in which artists
had suffered brain damage leading to dementia and yet in spite of this their art
became freer and more original (Mell et al, 2003:1707-1710).
I n other words, the bicameral mind is the human mind functioning in a
particular, unconscious mode intended by nature. While it exists in all people, it can
be controlled or dominated by a special mode of consciousness developed not
through nature but volitionally, by each individual being. An individual can exercise
ron
(Ron)
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