Look at the above painting. I mean really look at it. What do you see? Well, we see a human on the left (Adam) and the God on the right (with his/her angels) touching their fingers. But there is more to it. See the right side of the picture where the God stays. Doesn’t it look like a human brain? A doctor realized this similarity 500 years after the picture was drawn.
The general idea he come up with is that divine power does not come from outside world. It comes from within our mind. Adam represent us humans, and the God represents our mind. And this touching of fingers is us, reaching out to ourselves.
When we talk about the God, we are actually talking with our own mind. It is not a God, but us alone.
Julian Jaynes first introduced the term ‘Bicameral Mind’ in his writing ‘The Origin of Consciousness’ in 1976. He talks about the human brain having two states/parts. One is appearing to be “speaking” and the other one is just “listening and obeying”. This speaking happens in an auditory form. It is basically talking to ourselves. We use verbal language to talk, like speaking English or Spanish.
Try to speak to yourself but without using a language. It’s impossible.
The consciousness comes from this exact topic. It is not some divine power or a mysterious soul that exists inside us. No, it is just us. The consciousness is us talking to ourselves. We think, ask, wonder and become curious about almost anything. All of this happens all the time inside our mind. We argue with ourselves. We decide whether to go outside with our friends or just watch the new episode of The Boys. We get angry with ourselves because of a mistake we did years ago. It’s all us.
Early humans brain was different than ours. The biological difference mgiht not be too much. But the way it works is sure to be different. When they first heard their own voices, they were probably surprised and scared. I mean, who is in their mind that just constantly speaks and wonders? They thought this voice as a God or some divine power. Their own desires and needs are spoken to them by this ‘God’. The God said “drinking wine is not good because it makes you do bad things” so they just stopped drinking.
In order to ‘gain’ consciousness we must realize that the voice inside us is no one’s but our own. And that we must speak with ourselves. Without these two there is no consciousness. Speaking only happens with usage of a language. The more advanced the language, the more we can speak and the more conscious we become. Let me give you an example to help you better understand what I’m talking about.
Try to When you are just a kid you don’t know not many words. As you get older, your vocabulary grows. You know what space, ocean, divine, god and devil means. Where before you only knew mama, dad and food. When your language grows your consciousness grows with it.