Quotes from Julian Jaynes

As the stag pants after the waterbrooks, So pants my mind after you, O gods! My mind thirsts for gods! for living gods! When shall I come face to face with gods? —Psalm 42

Let the learning go on without your being too conscious of it, and it is all done more smoothly and efficiently. Sometimes too much so, for, in complex skills like typing, one may learn to consistently type 'hte' for 'the'. The remedy is to reverse the process by consciously practicing the mistake 'hte', whereupon contrary to the usual idea of 'practice makes perfect', the mistake drops away—a phenomenon called negative practice.

Language too is a brake upon social change.

Courtiers in some of their inscriptions referring to the king say, "I did what his ka loved" or "I did that which his ka approved

The essential point here is that there are several stages of creative thought: first, a stage of preparation in which the problem is consciously worked over; then a period of incubation without any conscious concentration upon the problem; and then the illumination which is later justified by logic.

The first poets were gods. Poetry began with the bicameral mind. The god-side of our ancient mentality, at least in a certain period of history, usually or perhaps always spoke in verse. This means that most men at one time, throughout the day, were hearing poetry (of a sort) composed and spoken within their own minds.

He felt the evidence showed that some metaphysical force had directed evolution at three different points: the beginning of life, the beginning of consciousness, and the beginning of civilized culture.

Indeed I have begun in this fashion, and place great importance on this opening chapter, for unless you are here convinced that a civilization without consciousness is possible, you will find the discussion that follows unconvincing and paradoxical.

Poetry begins as the divine speech of the bicameral mind. Then, as the bicameral mind breaks down, there remain prophets.

For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of a much more recent origin than has heretofore been supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious.

The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all.

We have said that consciousness is an operation rather than a thing, a repository, or a function. It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog 'I' that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it. It operates on any reactivity, excerpts relevant aspects, narratizes and conciliates them together in a metaphorical space where such meanings can be manipulated like things in space.

Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world.

No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the Iliad. Good and evil do not exist.

Every god is a jealous god after the breakdown of the bicameral mind.

Poetry begins as the divine speech of the bicameral mind. Then, as the bicameral mind breaks down, there remain prophets.

I shall state my thesis plain. The first poets were gods. Poetry began with the bicameral mind.

Poetry, from describing external events objectively, is becoming subjectified into a poetry of personal conscious expression.

The king dead is a living god.

Every god is a jealous god after the breakdown of the bicameral mind.

No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the _Iliad_. Good and evil do not exist.

Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.

History does not move by leaps into unrelated novelty, but rather by the selective emphasis of aspects of its own immediate past.

Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.