The Birth of the Ego and Morality

Once one has read through the Old Testament from this point of view, the entire succession of works becomes majestically and wonderfully the birth pangs of our subjective consciousness.  No other literature has recorded this absolutely important event at such length and with such fullness.

(Julian Jaynes, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

p. 312-313)

All spiritual perception begins with the Messengers of God articulating new dimensions and perspectives on the spiritual world.  Spiritual perception gets turned into human learning, which can block the acceptance of deeper spiritual perception.  And it is spiritual perception that opens up vast new horizons for human consciousness.

Western consciousness has been described as the result of two main influences, called the Hebraic and the Hellenic, the Hebrews and the Greeks.  The religious or Hebraic consciousness is based on faith and certain kind of hearing.  It is the foundation of divine knowledge.  The scientific or Greek consciousness is based on “rational” knowing and a certain kind of seeing, which is the basis of human learning.  Jaynes writes, correctly, that: “the more secular developments of the last three millennia are related to their emergence from a different mentality.  I am thinking of the history of logic and conscious reasoning from the Greek development of Logos to modern computers…” (The Origins of Consciousness:319)

Jaynes also asserts: “The coming of consciousness can in a certain vague sense be construed as a shift from an auditory to a visual mind.” (The Origins of Consciousness:269)   But here Jaynes is equating consciousness with the Hellenic mind, and the auditory with the Hebraic.  This perspective is typical of the secular way of thought that dominates our consciousness, but it leaves out the sacred experience which, as our leading quote says, always leads in the birth of human subjective consciousness.

Let us ask: What is the criterion used to decide when and where human mental evolution consciousness began and grew?  We are taught that "rational" consciousness began pretty much with early Greek thinkers, but from the religious Hebraic perspective one could say consciousness began with Adam’s naming things in the garden.  This is a mythical account of the birth of conscious intellection, of seeing the physical universe as separate and objective from oneself.  It is the birth of mind as a thinking agent thinking about the world, and the establishment of an interior intellectual universe through the naming of things.  Thus, saying the name brings the thing to the mind even when it is not physically present.          

Later, with Abraham, a unique consciousness began; that of faith and moral self-consciousness.  I mean that with Abraham there is a two-fold development: first, toward, a deepening of true self -consciousness subjectivity; second, the development of ego-consciousness.  Paradoxically, this is a separation both from God and from Nature, making the human soul in its two conditions of eternal and contingent.  Let me explain.

The Bible says that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (The Book of Romans 10:17)  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá echoes St. Paul when He says that “the voice of God hath made thine ears to hear.” (Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. V.1:132)  

The opening of both the dimension of faith and ego-consciousness by Abraham (Genesis chapter 22) was based on a new development in consciousness of God, namely, obedience to the inward “hearing” of the Voice of God’ and knowing it to be the Voice of the Divine and not a projection of human subjectivity.  It is what Walter Ong in his book, The Presence of the Word, would call “the interiority of consciousness.” 

This originating “event” of faith by Abraham, the encounter with God through His Voice and Abraham’s absolute obedience to this voice in defiance of all human laws and social and ethical principles brought the light of faithfulness into human experience.  This light, also, however, creates the shadow of faithlessness and this contrast on the human plane makes the human individuality a moral entity.  Now the soul has a new dimension of moral choice.  That is, the moral choice is not just to obey or disobey the outer social law.  Now the soul has an inner existential choice, to obey the Voice of God or the voice of itself, and to choose God, as Abraham did, may oppose the whole order of human laws and customs.  This is individuality. 

The consequence of this new choice was the birth of the individual ego, the analog “I” of the higher selfhood, the dark shadow of the light of the higher nature.  The ego is the subjective consciousness whose “mind” is the shadow of the ideal self, but which is also an objective self to the inner eternal self; for we must objectify ourselves in order to create a new subject with its own subjectivity.  This subjective development was unknown to the early Greeks.  Jaynes remarks: “Iliadic men did not have subjectivity as do we; he had no awareness of his awareness of the world, no internal mind-space to introspect upon.” (Origins of Consciousness: 75)

Thus with Abraham is the beginning in human psychology of introspection, subjectivity and the like, for it is the creation of that interior space inhabited by a “living” person in relation with himself, because in a new relation with God. The ego is an internal mind-space that can hear either God, which is its own higher self, or itself.  The difference is that the eternal self may hear the Word of God directly as a full existential resonant actuality, but we can only overhear ourselves, the inner chatter that we call subjectivity.  But, again, the birth of this subjective, narratizing self makes disobedience to God now possible, as law makes the criminal.  For before there was law, there was only action, neither right or wrong.  The law, by deciding what is right, also defines wrong.

Now it is with this Abrahamic event, I believe, that an ego-consciousness passed out from its embryo to experience itself as distinct and separate and different from the unconscious selfhood it was before and overcome the psychic drag back into it.  Only now can a conscious inner, individual self be formed that stands entirely on its own.  Once this core idea of self is established, this personality, this stranger within, as Baha’u’llah calls him, then related ideas, beliefs, and images begin to constellate around it which seem to be consistent with each other.  The birth of the individual ego, that self-conscious individual subjective selfhood, now can narratize purely interiorized thoughts, the abstractions which cannot be seen except by the intellect.  Narratize means organize abstractions as intellectual objects of knowledge in themselves.  Adam opened the world to intellectual apprehension, but Abraham opened the inner world to intellectual apprehension so a purely inner self could be built.  How is this done? 

This process occurs because the self-center acts as a magnet on the disparate thoughts, images and feelings swirling around it in the general human space which it captures and brings into its orbit.  In this way a reflecting ego having cognizance of itself emerges at the center of its own consciousness.  This rational self-conscious ego can now set up both itself  and human learning in competition with the Divine Voice for the attention of the individual.  Only there is this difference in their temper.  The ego’s voice is “legion” and is a “loud roaring” while the divine voice is the “still, small voice.”  Whereas the ego’s response to the Voice of God is: “Who are you?”  The eternal self responds with: “Here am I!”  

            But, finally, because there is competition with the Voice of God there is now also guilt for breaking the new internal covenant.  Before there may have been right and wrong actions, but the criteria were ethical and behaviorist only.  But now, with the self as a conceptualized entity, something one can “see” in an imaginary “space”, right and wrong becomes a moral question of divine or human authority right and wrong get tangled up with new ideas of personal intent.  Guilt is now possible, for guilt cannot be before there is the sense that one’s soul is one’s own as a self-consistent being maintained by one’s own effort.  Only with this internal development and sense of personal responsibility to respond in some manner to the voice calling one to faith, can feelings of guilt, unworthiness and remorse occur.  “One has to have an analog “I” surveying a mind-space to so see.” (Origins of Consciousness:296)