As one might expect, I’m still reading through Julian Jaynes’ “The Origin of Consciousness.” In today’s reading he made a point relevant to the topic of demonic possession. And I think his observations line up with those of others.

Let’s sidetrack a second and consider the research that Mike Gazzaniga did with split brain patients. Gazziniga ran a series of tests on patients who had had their left and right hemispheres separated (for medical reasons.) The details are described here, but, basically, he concluded that each hemisphere was, in a sense, its own person, unaware of what the other hemisphere was doing. Since most of a person’s talking ability is housed in the left hemisphere only that hemisphere could speak, but the right had other ways of making its thoughts known.

Now let’s consider Jaynes’ thoughts on demonic possession. Demonic possession, as anyone who’s ever seen The Exorcist can tell you, seems to involve a person’s body and speech being taking over by another entity, usually one that talks quite differently (in both voice and use of words) than the “real” person. In “The Origin of Consciousness” Jaynes essentially asks, “What if possession is really the silent right hemisphere taking control of a person’s speaking apparatus?”

It’s an interesting theory and seems plausible. And it opens up a thought-provoking question: does everyone’s right hemisphere sound like an evil demon when given voice? Do we all have these dark sides festering without language in one half of our brain? The observation that Jaynes notes is that usually people who become possessed are not great intellects. But is it possible their right hemisphere persona is smarter than the left (vocal) hemisphere, but deprived, most of the time, of speech?

Crazy stuff, y’all.

Of course, I’ve hinted at this stuff before: Do we have multiple consciousness(es)?