Gates of Eden

Gates of Eden Julian Jaynes speculated in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind that schizophrenics’ auditory hallucinations — hearing voices — are the remnant of a once-universal internalisation of authority that broke down in the second millenium BC, and that from this breakdown arose our subjective consciousness; that is to say, our experience of ourselves as actors with free will. On his view, consciousness is more recent than literature, and he traces its emergence in the books of Homer and the oldest parts of the Bible.

Consciousness emerged in suffering with the disappearance of god-given certainty. By the waters of Babylon, we lay down and wept. Jaynes describes how early matter-of-fact representations of the divine companions of rulers gave way to rulers and priests supplicating the gods. My god, my god, why hast Thou forsaken me? This shift is depicted in the artwork on Sumerian cylinder seals, the oldest art objects we have. (There is a large collection in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, though I didn’t see the shift clearly when I looked.)

Science continues the religious project to recover the lost certainties of Eden.