/lit/ - Literature

>>17068417
based

>>17002861
This is a bit of a stretch, but I think it goes back to Julian Jaynes controversial yet brilliant theory of the bicameral mind. In short, all the myths that we hear of from antiquity, in which the voices of "higher beings" and gods spoke to us, were associated with a part of our brains that was not yet fully integrated with the rest of it. Essentially ancient people heard the voices of the gods because one part of their brain was "speaking" and another part was "listening." This implies a sort of dissociation and generalization of the self, in which the part of our brains that is speaking in the right hemisphere is associated with the "great beyond" outside of us, while the left hemisphere is associated with the egoic self.

Various otherwise unexplained incidences in ancient histories, such as the Bronze Age Collapse, are associated with this theory. During times of great survival pressure, egoic rationality is privileged. The logical and rational side of the brain dominates the free-associating quadrant. Through such activity brain plasticity connections brought the "speaking" part of the mind under control of reason.

Children often have "imaginary friends" who they respond to as though they were actual beings. And schizophrenics essentially exhibit a vestigial recapitulation of bicameralism. Jaynes used this for evidence of his theory.

To bring it all together, religion and religious mystics and prophets, are individuals who have a distinct connection to bicameralism. They are capable of channeling this primordial state of consciousness which is the origin of religion. They do not have the mental blocks that shut these impulses out, which can occasionally be activated in normal individuals through psychedelics, sleep deprivation, or extreme events such as life or death experiences.

>>15362969