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Book: The Jaynesian: Newsletter of the Julian Jaynes Society (Vol. 3, Issue 1)
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  1. Marcel Kuijsten _ The Jaynesian: Newsletter of

    Completely unrecognized is the whole presumption of this saying according to which individual body parts could possess independent volition and as such can inform {sway/direct} the acting of the whole body. Even more seriously - the presumption that self-mutilation can stop or somehow influence higher mental processes. Even the person who is not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist can recognize that we are dealing with a seriously pathological state of mind. I am inclined to believe that gospel sayings represent atavism - a regression to older stages of development. It is one of the vestiges of development of modern consciousness. This is an example of physiological metaphor which never made it through the whole process to unification of consciousness. On the contrary it remained stuck somewhere in stage III. In this stage physiological hypostases represent internal stimuli and are starting to create internal spaces where metaphored action can occur. In this position they hypertrophied unable to move into the next stage of unification into one consciousness. Already at the time of recording in the gospels this saying was perceived as anomalous. Luke, the most educated and refined of synoptical authors, preserved the immediate context, but edited out most of the peculiar parts concerning disseminated volition and self-mutilations. Further and broader contexts which may be mentioned and discussed: other Greek and Hebrew physiological and anatomical metaphors; the popularity of a metaphor of the body for structuring and functioning of society in Hellenism; the ancient practice of religious self-mutilation; the potential for facilitating our understanding of brutish penal codes or modern self-mutilations.
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