on the surface of existence. The inner world is, however, much more than mere
introspection and encompasses what is often described as expanded consciousness,
altered states and shamanic reality and, in actual fact, takes us into the realm of
quantum physics. I ndeed the work of scientists such as Rupert Sheldrake, I tzak
Bentov and others, along with shamans and mythopoeic writers reveals that we see
our common reality through a very restricted window. As Borges averred:
Let us admit what all idealists admit: that the nature of the
world is hallucinatory. Let us do what no idealist has done: let
us look for the unrealities that confirm that nature. (Borges,
1977:114)
(a) The Evolution of Consciousness
I n 1977 Julian Jaynes of Princeton University published his study, The Origin
of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, in which he hypothesized
that until late in the second millennium BCE, humankind did not possess
consciousness as we know it today and were, literally, unconscious, a result of the
domination of the right hemisphere of the brain, and further, automatically obeyed
the voices of ‘gods’. Fundamentally, Jaynes asserts that contemporary human
consciousness, a product of human history and culture which is essentially that of
cataclysm and catastrophe and one that issues from the brain's left hemisphere, is a
learned process brought into being out of an earlier unconsciousness or
hallucinatory mentality similar to that experienced by schizophrenics and one that is
still developing.
Jaynes’ work examines three forms of human awareness, the bicameral or
god-run human; the modern or problem-solving human; and contemporary forms of
throwbacks to bicamerality, such as, religious frenzy, hypnotism, and schizophrenia.
I n the introduction to his seminal work, Jaynes poses the dilemmas, questions and
impressions of consciousness that are inherent in the Western cultural tradition:
O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this
insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these
touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy
of it all! A secret theatre of speechless monologue and prevenient
counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and
mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A
whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone,
questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden
hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we
have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than