Spiritual Journal, 12/13/01

from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976 (just twenty five short years ago):

p. 228: "In the classical bicameral mind, that is, before its weakening by writing about 2500 B.C., I suggest that there was no hesitancy in the hallucinated voice and no occasion for prayer." [emphasis mine]

p. 229: "Prayers as the central important act of divine worship only become prominent after the gods are no longer speaking to man 'face to face' (as Deuteronomy 34:10 expresses it). What was new in the time of Tukulti [from Mesopotamia] becomes everyday during the first millenium B.C., all, I suggest, as a result of the breakdown of the bicameral mind."

p. 230: "The very exaltation of the god, and indeed the very idea of divine worship, is in contrast to the more matter-of-fact everyday relationship of god and man a thousand years earlier."


p. 269: "Noos, deriving from noeo = to see, is perception itself. And in coming to it we are in a much more powerful region in our intellectual travels." [That is, as in nous, the noetic.]

p. 269: "It is interesting to note parenthetically that there is no hypostasis for hearing as there is for sight. Even today, we do not hear with the mind's ear as we see with the mind's eye. Nor do we refer to intelligent minds as loud, in the same way we say they are bright. This is probably because hearing was the very essence of the bicameral mind, and as such has those differences from vision which I discussed [earlier]. The coming of consciousness can in a certain vague sense be construed as a shift from an auditory mind to a visual mind."


p. 289: "In all the intervening [Greek] writers we have been looking through the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., psyche is never the ghost-soul, but always has its original meaning of life or livingness."

p. 291: "The word soma had meant corpse or deadness, the opposite of psyche as livingness. So now, as psyche becomes soul, so soma remains as its opposite, becoming body. And dualism, the supposed separation of soul and body, has begun."

Spiritual Journal, 11/29/01

6:28 a.m.

Emergent insight. This is what psychoactive entheogens induce, produce, and/or enable.

Consciousness is an emergent quality of the brain's properties. Likewise, insight is an emergent quality of the properties of a brain whose impulses are sufficiently altered.

These are the Moments of Truth.

* * *

Of all the people in my collegiate social group, to me I seem the least likely to have headed in this direction. I'm such a strange, uncategorizable person, often directionless and ambivalent.

This year, I attained several 'goals' of which I originally had no intention of achieving or even pursuing. Philosophy meant little to me; enlightenment, a mere abstraction. I had no idea, when I made the conscious, rational, adult decision to ingest marijuana that I'd be led down this path.

Now, I have a bunch of ideas and theories. I happen to feel the ideas are good and the theories plausible. I don't know any of them to be true. I question the very existence of eternal truths. But, in me, I have found twin reservoirs of faith and wonder. This is why I feel I have something to contribute to the whole of the universe.

So far, in my few years of existence, I have learned little. However, I have regained, and refined, my ability to learn. Like a child before Christmas morning, existence itself excites me so much I have trouble calming my heartbeat and falling asleep. I am infused with the energy of life.

The Private Sea, William Braden

The Private Sea: LSD and the Search for God. Published originally in 1967.

I skipped around and began with the last chapter--chapter 13. Give it a read. It's mind-opening stuff.

etymology of Baal

Etymology: Hebrew ba`al lord
Date: 14th century
: any of numerous Canaanite and Phoenician local deities


Interesting. Always interesting. For a verbalist like me, etymology offers an uncommon glimpse into history.