Scientists stuck in the materialist, the Newtonian conception of the Universe believe that human consciousness is only 3,000 years old.
With my limited consciousness, I would like to put an end to this nonsensical notion that has been around for eons, which I will back up with ample evidence.
In his 1976 book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, Julian Jaynes claimed that human consciousness appeared only 3,000 years ago. He also claims that this time period explains when humans first developed spoken language.
Before I argue against these absurdities, I will explain what Jaynes proposes, using Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as references, to argue that consciousness within the human being is so incredibly infantile.
Jaynes claims that in the time of the “ancient” Greeks, we did not understand metaphor, had no insight, and could not reflect on an inner world – the foundation of what we now call consciousness. This is known as the Bicameral Mind and has been adopted by many other philosophers.
Jaynes contends that thoughts occurred to us and that we obeyed them without question, believing that we were receiving orders from a higher authority.
This would also account for the numerous “voice of God” testimonies that have given rise to religion. Those who believe in the Bicameral Mind theory would then argue that there is no God, only declarations in our heads. This is the essence of Bicameralism: in our heads, there is one voice that “speaks” and another that “listens and obeys.” It’s as if we’re living in a two-chambered echo-system, like a bad version of the telephone game, with only two deranged players exchanging messages along a string under water. Though our egos frequently garble messages to such an extent, the underlying premise appears absurd.
According to Jaynes, in epic poems such as “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” characters were simply told what to do and then did it. They were unable to consider the consequences of their actions.
To address the foundations of Bicameralism, consider when humans first developed a sense of introspection and self-awareness, allowing these markers to be used as indicators of consciousness, though I would argue that there are many others. It stands to reason that scientists have yet to discover the actual brain process(es) underlying our consciousness, so relegating it to a twin dialogue seems odd.
Furthermore, science still largely supports the notion that our brains house consciousness, despite the fact that consciousness most likely exists outside of the human brain, though it interacts with and informs our thoughts on a second-by-second basis.
Because research has shown that consciousness existed before birth, how could consciousness simply “become” 3000 years ago?
Humans were highly conscious, introspective beings at least 15,000 years ago, if not much earlier in our Universal existence.
Archeological sites 6,000 years before Stonehenge provide evidence of a highly intelligent civilization. Could places like Gobekli Tepe exist for the uninformed? They may have heard “voices” from the Bicameral Mind that “instructed” them to build temples on a hill, but we haven’t even discovered the entire site, let alone all of its secrets. This single site has already rewritten our past.
If we simply look at the true age of the Sphinx in Egypt, which has now been water-dated to more than 7,000 years ago, we can make the same argument: this highly advanced civilization could not possibly have accomplished all they did – aligning the pyramids with specific astrological cycles that occur only once every several thousand years with highly advanced engineering techniques – if they were not both contemplative and highly conscious.
It is also simple to refute the Bicameral Mind based on the formation of language, because the first conscious sound, “Aum,” and all derivatives of it, have been scientifically proven to be an utterance of extremely high consciousness – a fractal vibration of the sound of consciousness creating itself, regardless of the widely dispersed cultures on our planet.
Aum is the disturbance of entropy that produces limited consciousness in order for it to experience its infinite self. It makes no difference whether you call this God, Brahman, the “voice” in some yogi’s head, quantum reality, or any other name.
Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Swami explains that when we make a sound, the nerve centers in our bodies vibrate, causing an emotion to arise in our minds.
Emotions cause the pulse rate to change. They also alter the chemistry of our brains. When we say or hear a mantra, it creates a positive vibration in our minds. The life breath must pass through the vocal cords, tongue, and lips for a sound to be audible. When we say a word, the nerve center in these areas vibrates, and an emotional state is created in the mind.
How could a word that has been in use for centuries alter human physiology to such an extent without being “consciously” created?
Isn’t “Aum” a language? Regardless of whether consciousness exists in geometric forms, symbols, or other non-syllabic utterances, this would support the idea that human consciousness is much older than 3,000 years.
We cannot seriously entertain the notion that cosmic or mystical experience is simply one voice in our head talking to another when even modern quantum physics struggles to explain what consciousness is.
The scope of consciousness is far too vast for such petty theories.
Though we may never understand the true nature of consciousness, dismissing mysticism as a ridiculous religious phenomenon created by hopeful bipedals seeking external justification for their existence is akin to dismissing science without a grain of salt.
Scientists are always wrong – thank goodness – because this is what allows us to keep exploring consciousness – to the point where we’ve discovered that even scientific attention alters the outcome of an experiment (the basis of quantum theory) – proof that consciousness is much older, more complex, and grander than we’ve ever imagined. And if that doesn’t result in someone having a “religious experience,” we’re unlikely to change the mechanistic, Bicameralism’s mind – but hey, we might change the two-way dialogue.
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