8.7.10

rhythmical discharges from subcortial structures


Three different words for three different kinds of gibberish, a simple path to primordial pasts, perhaps a link to the divine:

lalation: "ga ga goo goo gaa ga"
(babytalk)

embolalia: "um...uh...um....errr..."
(meaningless syllables)

glossolalia: "ehbu ondu wan akka rar"
(speaking in tongues, and similar phenomenon)

"And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. / And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. / And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. / And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."
-- Holy Bible, King James, The Acts of the Apostles, 2:1-4

"It is, then, this pattern of essential ingredients, the strong cognitive imperative of religious belief in a cohesive group, the induction procedures of prayer and ritual, the narrowing of consciousness into a trance state, and the archaic authorization in the divine spirit and in the charismatic leader, which denotes this phenomenon as another instance of the general bicameral paradigm and therefore a vestige of the bicameral [pre-speaking] mind."
-- Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976.