Really? You couldn’t function without it? Why not?

Because of the way I usually make decisions. I’ve always had, since childhood, this inner voice awareness. I like to think of it as the subconscious mind acting as a co-pilot whereas the conscious mind acts ad the pilot. The conscious mind is to busy with all the stimuli coming through the senses. So, since I’ve always make decisions first by analyzing the information I consciously gather, once I get to a conclusion I ask the co pilot: “Is this O.K.?” or “Am I missing something?” Many times I am surprised by the answers I get. Now, what I call the conscious mind also has an inner voice, but I can distinguish it because I always start it, whereas what I call the subconscious mind suddenly starts for no apparent reason. If this sounds weird to you, I have to say, for the sake of appearing sane, that these voices sound like me and not like a different person

Thankfully no, my inner voice is still as chatty and active as usual (I couldn’t function without it).

Really? You couldn’t function without it? Why not?

It was like when the air-conditioning in the office suddenly stops - all of a sudden you’re aware that it was there, and is no longer, and this feeling of peace steals over you.

Wow! Very well put!

Where this is going is to solve the riddle of whether we exist solidly within this one dimension, with varied degrees of gross matter and wavelengths of light, or if indeed this whole kit’n kaboodle rests upon a different find of dimensional existence altogether.

It’s not hard to imagine the bi-cameral right brain so taking over the cave artists of Lasceux that they could capture the sublime animal forms they did. At the same time I wonder what legacy millenia of physical drudgery has had on the left brain, repressed by care and labor until the practical aims of survival eliminates hopes and dreams?

Maybe there are other reasons humanity developed left brain pragmatism: a buffer defense against the capricious faerie lands which the right brain opens the doorway to?

I also wonder how the goal of Christianity, operating under the supposed Fall and all the “sweat of the brow,” might not be the simple message it so claims. An easy formula to pull us all back to the increasingly distant other spiritual/psychic dimension, behind the sense world? Salvation with a twist.

Then explain Charismatic efforts by well -intended believers to engage in estatic practices like prophecy, glossolalia, speaking words of wisdom and/or understanding to people in need? In my experience, these all aren’t coming from the Holy Spirit … no how … are they forcing it, or just under false assumptions?

What struck me as the oddest thing was the manner of prescription: this old guy reaching into his desk for his special stash of happy pills. A one shot fix with minimal risk of dependency. He could probably have been struck off for it, but obviously he knew there was something in it.

That would be really interesting if you had listed the contents of those containers. I’m endlessly astounded that people actually take things without knowing what they are.

I use a homemade tincture of Voacanga Africana and Tabernaemontana Sananho for sensory enhancement and magical purposes. One of the beneficial side effects is providing a volume control for the internal dialogue.

Hi pmp,

The doctor told me that the Chinese names in the containers were some sort of “standard” formula so, in case I needed more, out of the city, and able to find a traditional Chinese medicine store, I had just to show the container with the characters to receive exactly what I was initially given. I am very demanding when dealing with modern medicine, but since I have spent the last 25 years reading about comparative religion, mysticism, alchemy and other topics, I have learned that being too analytical when it comes to tradition, something breaks and the experience becomes dull to say the least.

I know one of the elements of this formula though: cinnabar. This is something you probably could not get in the U.S. since mercury components are strictly regulated. The amount is minimal and there is no danger of poisoning, but a simple name in a container can create havoc in a country famous for its lawsuits.

Now that you mention herbs for magic and trance, I’ve used Salvia Divinorum and found I experience exactly the same sensations that makes me feel someone is hugging me or sitting in my bed during sleep, a phenomenon easily explained these days.

Alejandro - was the effect permanent? Is the inner voice still gone?

Hi Tim,

Thankfully no, my inner voice is still as chatty and active as usual (I couldn’t function without it). The only change is that I can now go to sleep early and staying up late (like right now) is difficult. I feel sleepy around 11:00 p.m. whereas in the past I felt sleepy until 2 or 3 in the morning

Part of what I am thinking now is that the “inner voice” is not actually inner at all. And that the way to dismantle it begins by recognizing it as a thing which is actually alien to “you”

Mostly, this book would be interesting particularly to those who are into studying details of Chinese medical model and traditional modes of thought and awareness. One of the footnotes, I found particularly interesting and confirmatory of suspicions I have voiced, but have been unable to document.

Quoting No. 102, p. 300: “Albrecht Dihle thus notes that the Homeric term menos comes ‘indeed very near to the modern notion of will,’ but adds that menos ‘does not belong to the normal or natural equipment of man according to Homeric psychology.’ It comes from the gods, as ‘an additional gift, provided only on a special occasion and not supposed to become a lasting part of the person…’ (THE THEORY OF THE WILL IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY [Berkeley: U.C. Press, 1982, p.34]). We may recall in a related vein, how Homer’s Agamemnon blames his tragedy not on any personal decisions or actions, but on ate, a distinctly impersonal clouding of the mind. E. R. Dodds (THE GREEKS AND THE IRRATIONAL [Berkeley: U.C. Press, 1951, pp.15-16]) interprets this not as a self-justifying evasion, but as a reflection of the fact that the Homeric Greeks had no concept of a unified personality. Bruno Snell, to whom Dodds refers, famously argued, indeed, that the Greeks in Homer’s time didn’t even ‘yet have a body in the modern sense of the body’ did not, that is, ‘know it qua body, but merely as the sum total of his limbs.’ (THE DISCOVERY OF THE MIND IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE [N.Y.: Dover, 1982; German edition, 1948, pp.6-8]). [[Not surprising, a German author!]] For a critique of Snell’s position see Bernard Knox, THE OLDEST DEAD WHITE EUROPEAN MALES (N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1993, pp.37-41.)”

found here

FWIW, based on my own experiences, it is not possible to enter altered states of consciousness through natural trance (that is, without the aid of substances) until there has been a total cessation of the inner voice.

I had to pour 5 drops of 5 different containers (25) in a…

That would be really interesting if you had listed the contents of those containers. I’m endlessly astounded that people actually take things without knowing what they are.

I use a homemade tincture of Voacanga Africana and Tabernaemontana Sananho for sensory enhancement and magical purposes. One of the beneficial side effects is providing a volume control for the internal dialogue.

I recalled an incident from my University days. I was stressed-out and having panic attacks. I went to the doctor’s; he reached in his desk and pulled out two little red pills called Diazepam (I think) and said ‘Take these and go to bed’. I went home and took them and went to dinner. When I felt strange during dinner I went to bed and slept for half a day. When I woke up… the voices had gone. The tape loop was broken. This was a /good thing/. Still haunts me now and then though.

Speedbird, I would like to share a similar personal experience. Sing a n early age my sleeping cycle was different. It was O.K. when young, but when I reached 34 and given the every day stress in my life, it became really annoying. Being a person that do not trust sleeping pills and sleep inducing medications, I went to see a Doctor who also happened to be licensed to perform acupuncture and provide traditional chinese medicine treatments.

I had to pour 5 drops of 5 different containers (25) in a glass of water with every meal. The first day something stroke me as unbelievable: my inner voice was quit or “under control”. All my life I’ve had this constant internal dialog which has served me well, but shutting it down for a while to rest was impossible: once I’d finished with one idea, project or worry, a new one was waiting to take me for a ride. The best thing about the drops was the lack of drowsiness or funny sensations. I was simply calmed and more alerts of what seemed to be important. My internal dialog only kicked in when it was necessary. All the containers had a name written both in Chinese and Spanish. The one that seem to quiet my mind (this I noticed by sometimes using some of the substances by themselves) said that its purpose was to “ease the mind”. I have not used them since I fished the treatment a few years ago, but I will never forget the sensation of a “calmed inner voice”.

Strange, I know! At my last job, in an engineering firm suffering somewhat from post-industrial stagnation and decline, the new boss sent a fair cross-section of the workforce on this 3-day residential course he’d been on himself. I guess it was just the right time for me, cos it really ‘clicked’, and I think I got a lot out of it.

The theme of the course was a field of psychology called ‘transactional analysis’. You can Google that, but decent references are hard to find, and it comes across as rather opaque - typical management BS. Anyway, the course tutor was a real live trained qualified psychologist and he did a pretty good job of explaining the concept.

The idea is that /effective/ communication between people can occur in only a small number of ways. You can either discuss objective facts and what people think about them quite dispassionately, or you can talk about internal stuff: feelings and hunches and intuition. Any attempt to control other people, to criticize or to talk about what they ’should’ be doing, is always counter-productive.

So this guy was as happy to talk about the science behind his theories as he was to discuss the drug-induced hallucinations he had had as a young man. And one of the threads of his presentation was voices-in-the head (’What? You hear them too?’) as a perfectly normal phenomenon - he called them ‘drivers’. No drivers and you sit on your behind all day. Too much shouting in the head and you don’t get anything productive done. Being aware of them is half the challenge.

I recalled an incident from my University days. I was stressed-out and having panic attacks. I went to the doctor’s; he reached in his desk and pulled out two little red pills called Diazepam (I think) and said ‘Take these and go to bed’. I went home and took them and went to dinner. When I felt strange during dinner I went to bed and slept for half a day. When I woke up… the voices had gone. The tape loop was broken. This was a /good thing/. Still haunts me now and then though.

Crazy? Maybe. But it’s a good kind of crazy

it’s useful to have some tools to operate in that sphere and tunnel through to the outside.

Yes, I agree which is why I have spent such a great deal of time constructing language trails and clues for other people who come after me to hopefully follow.

Simpler than positing the simplest conceivable explanation is to not posit, to spiritually apprehend the situation, which is automatically one with spirit.

I tend to agree, but since most of us start out trapped in a prison made of language and rational thought, it’s useful to have some tools to operate in that sphere and tunnel through to the outside.

Simpler than positing the simplest conceivable explanation is to not posit, to spiritually apprehend the situation, which is automatically one with spirit.

Yes! You have a way with words.

I also like here when you said, “The things we call “literally true” are _less_ real than the things we call mythologically true.” Which I found after I’d left almost an identical comment on that site more recently, in which I said: “I’m starting to think its the other way around. That Scripture is reality and we are the representation. We are taking OURSELVES too literally and scripture not literally enough.”

Materialists say that spiritism is wrong because it doesn’t follow Occam’s Razor, and it requires a number of supporting premises in order for it to be accurate.

They misconceive spirit. Spirit, intellect, nous is suprasimple, unitive beyond any description that we could assemble out of gross material. Simpler than positing the simplest conceivable explanation is to not posit, to spiritually apprehend the situation, which is automatically one with spirit. Sounds like gibberish to materialists, but they have not experimentally (experientially) explored the supersimple alternative.

I can think of for our minds to exist partially outside is that we are all part of a greater mind that is an integral whole.

Yes, that is really the essence of what I am trying to say. It is a matter of fumbling for words to describe it in a way that will be somehow real to people and will open them up more effectively to that reality of experience

Namely, that we can adopt conceptual filters - such as the number “23″ - which then cause us to select sets of data out of the possible field of experience which match our filters (we usually call them “beliefs”).

Yes. It all boils down to this: why would you want to adopt a conceptual filter that admits a drab boring world filled with abuse of every perverse sort?

So you’re saying your data - your experience of synchronicity - leads you to a certain conclusion. And that this conclusion is the simplest which fits the data you are experiencing (which is of course biased based on your selection processes)

Yes. I agree that all data selection is biased, so our conclusions often tell us more about our axioms and what data we will accept. [As a side note, I can share with you privately a very shocking and disturbing recent synchronicity that is difficult for me to ignore].

And your conclusion is that the universe has an integral intelligence. What does that mean, first off? My emerging hypothesis is rather different but could be drilled down by saying: synchronicities can be considered as “proof” (at least to the person experiencing them) that at least a part of their mind exists outside of them. Or rather, that they themselves exist within a larger mind (the universe)

I think your interpretation (mind existing “outside”) is a good one and consistent with mine. But, once again paying a visit to Occam’s barber shop, the simplest non-solipsistic mechanism I can think of for our minds to exist partially outside is that we are all part of a greater mind that is an integral whole. I’m avoiding the word G_d but you can see where I’m going with this I think. This last chain of reasoning is open to question I admit, but your immediate conclusion is not, in the face of a concrete personal experience of synchronicity.

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/11/16/explaining-the-23-phenomenon/

Namely, that we can adopt conceptual filters - such as the number “23″ - which then cause us to select sets of data out of the possible field of experience which match our filters (we usually call them “beliefs”). And as I wrote in the comments to that post:

If I am only recognizing information from the world which matches the conceptual filters I am applying, then I can change those filters and recognize new patterns of information. Further, if my conceptual filters cause me to select only certain sub-sets of the whole available data, then it follows that my senses are acting in the same way: filtering down to one specific sub-set of available data. Can I begin to modulate my sense perception in the same way which I modulated my conceptual recognition filters?

However, if your data selection process is biased, then you’re likely to get a biased explanation.

Well all data selection processes are biased, as are all explanations. Which is why, for the sake of integrity, at some point you simply have to drop all of them and disengage.

When I experience a very concrete synchronicity that is extremely statistically improbable (and I do experience these from time to time, in waves with an event profile that suggests strong inhomogeneity with respect to time) I am forced to conclude that the universe has an integral intelligence that is larger than that commonly assumed in the general modern population.

Sorry to go round and round in circles with regard to this, but I am hashing something out here. So you’re saying your data - your experience of synchronicity - leads you to a certain conclusion. And that this conclusion is the simplest which fits the data you are experiencing (which is of course biased based on your selection processes)

And your conclusion is that the universe has an integral intelligence. What does that mean, first off? My emerging hypothesis is rather different but could be drilled down by saying: synchronicities can be considered as “proof” (at least to the person experiencing them) that at least a part of their mind exists outside of them. Or rather, that they themselves exist within a larger mind (the universe)

However, if your data selection process is biased, then you’re likely to get a biased explanation.

In fact, this is not so different from the speculative interpretations of quantum mechanics, which state that all matter is a form consciousness. In fact, in QM, the core equation (Shroedinger equation) is a PDE, and it is the initial and boundary conditions that determine the state of a system. So the analogy is apt.

So, yes, in some ways we are not responsible for our lives. But the problem with materialist philosophy is that it completely inverts what I view as the correct priorities. We should honor the dignity of the one human soul, which flows from the Deity from which all things flow, rather than denigrating everything in the world as only so many particles of dust.

Because I still subscribe to Occam’s Razor, which has served me well (and has led me to many conclusions with which you agree and with which the general public would disagree). Assuming that our fundamental consciousness has not changed much is a simpler conclusion than its radical alternative, and therefore the alternative would require a greater weight of evidence.

But Occam’s Razor doesn’t give us a reliable tool to decipher which of two theories is actually “simpler”. It just says that the simpler one is preferable, all else being equal. But that doesn’t make it “right” nor does it give us criteria to judge which theory is actually truly simpler.

Ideas that are “simpler” are only ideas with which we are more familiar and hence have to spend less time and energy understanding. I think the best way to think about this is materialism versus spiritism. Materialists say that spiritism is wrong because it doesn’t follow Occam’s Razor, and it requires a number of supporting premises in order for it to be accurate. Whereas, they say that materialism is right because it doesn’t require those supporting premises.

But it *does* require a number of other inherently invisible supporting premises which when you drill them down are not simpler or better than those supporting spiritism. They are simply *different*.

But alternative explanations or systems of doing things are always going to seem more complex (needlessly so) when you are first beginning to learn them. That doesn’t make them wrong however. It simply indicates a learning curve. Think of calculus versus algebra. Or algebra versus simple arithmetic. Each is profoundly more complex, but that doesn’t invalidate their utility.

As understood by Skinner, ascribing dignity to individuals involves giving them credit for their actions. To say “Skinner is brilliant” means that Skinner is an originating force. If Skinner is right, he is merely the focus of his environment. He is not an originating force and he had no choice in saying the things he said or doing the things he did.

I think in ancient times they called this “Fate” but I think they are wrong somehow in saying that we have no choice. But I don’t think our choice lies in action so much as it has to do with the idea of “witness” which I wrote about here

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/11/15/the-metaphysics-of-media/

Why don’t you accept it? Simply because art does not equal proof of experience of consciousness?

Because I still subscribe to Occam’s Razor, which has served me well (and has led me to many conclusions with which you agree and with which the general public would disagree). Assuming that our fundamental consciousness has not changed much is a simpler conclusion than its radical alternative, and therefore the alternative would require a greater weight of evidence. If one is going to make general statements about the consciousness experience of every day life in the ancient world, one needs to survey a larger body of expression. Art is necessarily hyperbolic and poetic, so coming to a conclusion based only on artwork would produce a bias in a certain direction.

In fact, I think the evidence shows a gradual shift in consciousness away from the type described by Sorenson in pre-conquest cultures and towards a very self-conscious egoic state. But in that regard, I think the ancient world was much more like our modern world than the pre-conquest hunter/gatherer cultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people’s common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists claim that no neural correlates will be found for many everyday psychological concepts, such as belief and desire, and that behaviour and experience can only be adequately explained on the biological level.[1] Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pains and visual perceptions.[2]

Also wrote about this here:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/05/10/no-mind-says-who/

For people who believe in this, I always wonder what they think of themselves. Where does their own experience come from? Where do their ideas come from? Do they love their wives?

Sorenson describes a kind of group-consciousness that he observed in primitive (”pre-conquest”) peoples not yet exposed to civilization, one that is radically different from our own pronounced ego consciousness. Upon exposure to civilization, the group consciousness breaks apart and seems to release a certain amount of psychic energy that manifests as behavior that we would call “savage” in the negative sense of the word.

Lots of interesting things in what you said regarding units of consciousness. This in particular makes me wonder about why so many tribal groups after they are “broken” end up with such high incidences of alcoholism.

what? are you fuckin daft? did you actually read his linked blog? however incomprehensible and possibly insulting the dude was being, i very highly doubt that was his meaning.

No need for the swearing or insults. I guess we will just have to let the gentleman speak for himself about what his meaning was, rather than try to read too much into it

(I should review my own notes on the dangers of relating to an image you have constructed as opposed to the actual person behind them - It’s a difficult thing to stay consistent with)

did you actually read his linked blog?

Yes, which is why I came to the conclusion I did. I could be wrong of course, but that is the most transparent interpretation of his comment.

This feels to me very much like the description of what happens when an atomic nucleus undergoes fission. The state of a heavy atom, with its superposed matter waves combining to form something much more complex than a single proton, dissolves and the atom shatters into multiple smaller units that are less complex, thereby releasing energy.

One can apply this analogy at the electrochemical level with the same themes: shattering a large molecule results in smaller molecules, with a release in energy (usually). Alternatively, one can chain together small molecules and form very large and very complex molecules, or even larger structures (cells, multicellular organisms). To what extent is the consciousness of a civiliation, compared with an individual, not unlike a cell compared with a water molecule or a hydrogen atom?

This is not exactly a new idea around these parts, but what I’m suggesting is that units of consciousness behave exactly the same way atoms and molecules do. Not only is matter consciousness, but consciousness is also matter. That is, we are used to thinking of consciousness as being some indivisible unit, but in fact, like atoms and molecules, the putative units behave very differently when bound in some way to other similar units.

but I do not accept that they had no perceptions of an internal self.

Why don’t you accept it? Simply because art does not equal proof of experience of consciousness? I agree that it does not. Or rather, I agree that in our experience of life today, it does not *necessarily.*

But again, what does art reflect if not our experience of life? And part of the situation we are in today is that there are a multitude of different experiences of life, and different cultures smashing together. So it becomes tricky (although not impossible) to discern from someone’s artistic expressions the state of their experience of consciousness.

Further, if we can’t use art to infer someone’s experience of consciousness, than neither can we use language (since all art is constructed out of some type of language, whether visual, written, spoken or otherwise). Hence, for me, that becomes a dead-end of thought.

Switching gears though: what do anthropologists do? They enter a culture and study their cultural expressions, and from this are able to understand (in a sense) their experience of life and of consciousness. A lot of anthropology is quite distorted and blind to its own problems, but the basic idea is I think a good one. It is something each of us does on a daily basis in interacting with others. We look at what they say and what they do and how they dress (their “Art” essentially) and then we infer information about their internal states.

The problem you touched on above, of course, has to do with allowing these inferences to dictate our interactions. Because inferences and representations of “the other” will always be incomplete. The only fool-proof way to feel someone from the inside out - so to speak - is through love. And this threatens us because it causes us to lose hold of the image we have of ourselves as well…

(PS. Thanks for helping me sort through these ideas!)

No, he’s subtly insulting your blog and readers by suggesting that you (we) are autistic.

what? are you fuckin daft? did you actually read his linked blog? however incomprehensible and possibly insulting the dude was being, i very highly doubt that was his meaning.

Okay, then what *would* produce a complete picture of consciousness in every day life?

My own answer to this would be - for the moment - nothing. Because if you are looking for a complete “picture” you will never find one. For no representation of it can ever be successful or complete. You may however have a complete “experience” of it simply by being alive and aware. That seems to be the only reliable method

I agree completely. But my original comment addressed what one can reasonably infer about the consciousness of ancients by reading only their poetry and drama. These are works of art, and are not necessarily representative of anything other than art. Any good writer of modern fiction will tell you that characters are never afraid; rather, their knees weaken. I am prepared to accept that ancients had better access to less distorted personal daemons than do moderns, but I do not accept that they had no perceptions of an internal self. (I’m open to being convinced, and I concede that their sense of internal sense of egoic self might have been less pronounced.)

It’s a useful exercise, but it would not produce a complete picture of consciousness in everyday life.

Okay, then what *would* produce a complete picture of consciousness in every day life?

My own answer to this would be - for the moment - nothing. Because if you are looking for a complete “picture” you will never find one. For no representation of it can ever be successful or complete. You may however have a complete “experience” of it simply by being alive and aware. That seems to be the only reliable method…

Isn’t this a useful exercise in itself though? Why is it inaccurate?

It’s a useful exercise, but it would not produce a complete picture of consciousness in everyday life.

I think I grasp what you’re saying here: that the artifacts which we create or are created for us culturally cause us to erect certain measures in our minds to relate to and understand those artifacts. But neither the artifacts or the measures we erect to relate to them are us.

I agree with what you’re saying, but it’s not exactly what I meant. I was actually making a slightly more pointed political statement about how civilization, structured panoptically as it is, distorts certain cognitive structures that would naturally occur as supportive, helpful, cooperative inner voices and turns them into voices that sabotage and betray us at every opportunity. It may be a similar idea, but with different emphasis.

No, he’s subtly insulting your blog and readers by suggesting that you (we) are autistic.

If it is indeed an insult, good for him. Congratulations on insulting people you don’t know for no reason other than to gratify your own weird desire to be better than everyone else. I’m sure this type of thinking leads one to a very fruitful relationship with others.

I disagree. We can experience others’ internal states if we are on an intimate basis with them (i.e. “love” them) and are listening carefully with all faculties. I’ve experienced it. Indeed, I think that this capacity could serve as an operational definition for the word love. Read the Sorenson material I linked to above for a similar though slightly different perspective.

However, one needs to go beyond language (both verbal and nonverbal). “There is no language without deceit” (Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities)

Wow, yes. Awesome. You are right all around. And I probably misspoke when I said that Laing concluded the two were irreconcilable. That’s not what he’s saying at all. Hyperbole on my part. This is sort of where I was going with this piece, although it was too stupidly technical to be accurate:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/10/27/yours-mine-ours/

it would be similar to evaluating modern consciouness completely on the basis of our pop music and film

Isn’t this a useful exercise in itself though? Why is it inaccurate?

Much of our modern dysfunction is related to the internal panopticon that we build in our heads, in the service of civilization.

I think I grasp what you’re saying here: that the artifacts which we create or are created for us culturally cause us to erect certain measures in our minds to relate to and understand those artifacts. But neither the artifacts or the measures we erect to relate to them are us. Then what are they? What are we?

What do you mean by that? Are you talking about how the “theory of mind” says that we even have a mind to begin with and that we may in fact have no such thing?

No, he’s subtly insulting your blog and readers by suggesting that you (we) are autistic. Find “Theory of Mind” on Wikipedia.

RD Laing’s the Politics of Experience is an excellent book on this phenomenon and how it gets us into all kinds of trouble, because we only experience other people’s behavior, and they only experience our behavior - and never the twain shall meet.

I disagree. We can experience others’ internal states if we are on an intimate basis with them (i.e. “love” them) and are listening carefully with all faculties. I’ve experienced it. Indeed, I think that this capacity could serve as an operational definition for the word love. Read the Sorenson material I linked to above for a similar though slightly different perspective.

However, one needs to go beyond language (both verbal and nonverbal). “There is no language without deceit” (Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities)

Well none of your readers appear to have any problems with the ‘Theory of Mind.’

What do you mean by that? Are you talking about how the “theory of mind” says that we even have a mind to begin with and that we may in fact have no such thing?

Do you think, then, there’s a link between the traditional Biblical date for the Creation and the beginnings of human consciousness?

Well, it could very well be that time began when civilization did.

Do you think, then, there’s a link between the traditional Biblical date for the Creation and the beginnings of human consciousness?

I don’t know but its an excellent question. I have thought in the past that the Bible - especially the creation - tells the story of the dawning of the human mind moreso than the creation of the physical world. But then, the two are ultimately the same when you get down to it.

There is no such thing as a neutral voice. A voice is always provoking a response.

Very interesting point!

It was some kind of trauma, of that much I am certain.

Also very interestingly put. There is some interesting (if not particularly verifiable) writing out there about occult ritual abuse, linking it to the intentional creation of fragmentary personalities, etc.

I was once taught specifically on a workplace course that everybody hears them, just to different extents.

What kind of workplace and course was thus?

In good modern writing the principle of how you describe feelings still applies, I think. So the protagonist can ‘feel happy’, but someone who is being observed from the protagonist’s point of view can only ’smile’. It’s all about point of view…

RD Laing’s the Politics of Experience is an excellent book on this phenomenon and how it gets us into all kinds of trouble, because we only experience other people’s behavior, and they only experience our behavior - and never the twain shall meet.

A most excellent topic and incredibly transcendental since its successful resolution could give us clues about the dormant powers of human psyche and how modern day technology is being used to create a pseudo-reality

Do you think, then, there’s a link between the traditional Biblical date for the Creation and the beginnings of human consciousness?

Maybe. I don’t know why I included that last sentence. Just popped up so I typed it up. I would think this phenomenon would be more like the Fall than Creation. Or better yet the Temptation of Eve by the Voice of Satan. Knowledge of good and evil and all that. Don’t know about the Big Cheese, the the word of the Demiurge is all blah blah blah.

Slomo, nicely said. Shit, I have a voice now saying, “Dude, you’re late for work.”

I definitely believe there was a change in consciousness that occurred about 3000 years ago, at the dawn of civilization. See some of anthropologist Sorenson’s work and you may be convinced of the same thing. [However, I would caution against over-interpreting the literature of bygone eras; it would be similar to evaluating modern consciouness completely on the basis of our pop music and film.] Much of our modern dysfunction is related to the internal panopticon that we build in our heads, in the service of civilization. I see much of the goal of modern meditation and consciousness work as deconstructing this inner mental constable and replacing him with a spirit guide/guardian angel/cognitive process that is more loving and willing to engage in relationshiop.

Something’s very wrong with a theory that limits exploration by drawing a line in the sand and saying that everything before that is imaginary, regardless of where the line is.

There is no such thing as a neutral voice. A voice is always provoking a response.

If people in other times did not internalize experience, where and when and why did this practice start? Who is responsible for it? What cultural or other developments lead to its occurrence?

It was some kind of trauma, of that much I am certain. As Gary says above:

The Voice was an echo from memory trying to tell us how to avoid the emotional pain of punishment.

Sounds like your typical mind control scenario. In the beginning was the Word…

- ‘You see those plastic wristbands that mental patients wear, saying “Property of Broadmoor Psychiatric Institution, On Medication, Please Return”?

- ‘Yes?’

- ‘That’s your watch, that is.’

In good modern writing the principle of how you describe feelings still applies, I think. So the protagonist can ‘feel happy’, but someone who is being observed from the protagonist’s point of view can only ’smile’. It’s all about point of view…

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Voices in the head: I was once taught specifically on a workplace course that everybody hears them, just to different extents. Not as an auditory hallucination, but like a tape loop at the back of your mind. The teacher gave them names like ‘Please Others’, ‘Be Perfect’, ‘Try Hard’…

Brekin, your comment reminds me of something I read about John Nash:

Someone who visited him in the hospital asked him, how could you, a mathematician, someone who is committed to rationality, how could you believe that aliens from outer space were communicating with you? Nash’s response was, these ideas came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did, so I believed them.

Excellent blog, btw.

There was a time when I believed that the details of myths could always be correlated very precisely with the details of neuroanatomy — for
example, I once wrote that the gasserian ganglion was the “altar to Apollo” referred to in the Atgonautica — but my opinion has changed somewhat. As I now see it, the “altar” of many myths (I do not say all) is the area between the brows at the base of the nose, which, in the course of meditation, must necessarily involve what is behind that significant junction, within the cranium, i.e., the hypophysis and the gasseran ganglion; but given the immense antiquity of some of these myths, I feel it is unwarranted to too closely tie together myth and neuronantomy. One of the earliest altars in scripture is the spot where Abraham attempts to sacrifice Isaac, and I think it highly significant that, after Jehovah intervenes, Abraham sacrifces instead “A ram caught in a thicket,” which I interpret as referring to the agni cakra (the spot twixt the brows) because the brows form the shape of a ram’s horns (just one of many mythic shapes they play a part in describing, for example a bow, a cup, the arms of a balance, etc). Thus the ancient mythopoets coiuld have meant this general midbrain level without especially intending the pituitary to be the “altar.”

glad you picked this up, FYI Sansonese himself used to drop in on alt.religion.gnostic once in a while back inthe late 90s, i’ll poke around and see if I can’t find his email addy, he might make a good interviewee for ya.

Max

Divination & Augury:

The universal practice of these techniques among all ancient cultures (that I have ever heard of anyway) seems to suggest that people believed that external signs could be used to understand internal states. More appropriately put: people may have determined what their emotional state was by reading it externally - instead of feeling it internally

Synchronicity:

The modern experience of synchronicity was described (I think) first by Jung, who believed that there was something called the “psychoid” level of reality in which matter and consciousness intersected. He believed this to account for the “acausal connecting principle” of sycnhronicity: when internal states seem to be mysteriously connected to coincidental occurrences externally.

What I take synchronicity to actually mean would be something like: you are beginning to dismantle the introjected false image you believe yourself to be. As a result, your natural classical experience of an externalized consciousness begins to reaffirm itself [see also: All-Encompassing Compassion]. Suddenly external phenomena begin to match up perfectly with what you considered to be exclusively “internal” states.

Synchronicity then is simply you becoming “in sync” again with the true externality of your experience.

Psychics

Viewed in this light, psychics may simply be people who have - through some quirk of circumstance or biology - not lost or else re-gained this ability to experience things externally that we think of as being internal…