Jaynes never suggests the voices were from *actual* gods or spirits

I never suggested he did. As I say in the article, he was talking about one part of the mind speaking to the other.

It would be more accurate to say the “second part” (right hemisphere) generated the voices, not “received” them.

In the article ‘the second part’ refers to the left hemisphere, which ‘received’ the voices.

So to say “Jaynes took divine inspiration seriously” I think is somewhat misleading.

Those words don’t appear in the article. What I said was ‘[Jaynes] seriously entertained the idea of divine inspiration’ – meaning that he was prepared to consider it as a genuine (albeit highly subjective) aspect of human experience worthy of scientific investigation.

So I think we are agreed on what Jaynes was saying.

I noticed the Kuijsten book recently and was wondering if it was worth reading. Thanks for the recommendation – I’ll add it to my wish list…

By the way for those interested in more on Jaynes’s ideas, there’s a great new book out called “Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited” edited by Marcel Kuijsten…

I like your emphasis on working hard and taking responsibility for the results – while I would argue that Gilbert does the same in a different way, it shows that where creativity is concerned there are plenty of ways to skin the cat!

@ Chuck – love the ‘gaffe’ quote!

Whether you consider your muse to be coming from angels or spirits (externally), or the unseen powers of the subconscious (internally), the fact remains that you must believe in this process, and give your muse jobs to do, problems to mull over. If you dismiss this idea, then chances are you are starving your creative fires. Your loss!

Secondly, when ideas and intuitions bubble up, you must capture them before they get away – as the late Earl Nightingale described it, you must “gaffe them on the point of a pencil.” Otherwise, they will retreat back to the murky depths of your mind – or as poet Ruth Stone so colorfully described it, the rumbling “train” of thought will pass you by and disappear into the distance.

The idea of continuously creating while hoping that my genius will do his end of the work is a de-motivator. It also detracts from the idea that a person who works hard at something can improve. Every word I write makes me a better writer. Every photo I take makes me a better photographer. According to Gilbert, that’s wrong. Every word I write is jut another word, and every photo I take is just another photo. Until, that is, my genius comes along and sprinkles fairy dust on it.

So, as much as I’d like to avoid responsibility for the garbage that I have produced (and will inevitably produce), I would rather see it as a learning experience than work for work’s sake that was not blessed by my muse.

Besides – it feels really awesome to take credit for a great piece.