The Internalization of God: A Tragedy of Silence

If you read the Iliad, you will find something terrifying: there is no consciousness. Achilles does not “decide” to stop fighting; a goddess pulls his hair and tells him to stop. There is no introspection. There is no “I” moving in a metaphor of time. There are only men who hear voices and obey them.

This was the Bicameral Mind. For millennia, human nature was split in two: an executive part called a god, and a follower part called a man. The right hemisphere spoke, and the left hemisphere obeyed. There was no “Free Will” because there was no need for it. There was only command and obedience.

But then, sometime around the first millennium BCE, the voices began to fade. The stress of civilization—the chaos of mass migrations, the collision of empires, the trauma of exile—caused the bicameral structure to collapse. The gods fell silent. And man was left alone in the terrifying silence of his own head.

The Invention of the Analog ‘I’

It is in this context of breakdown that we must understand the notes on Moral Dualism and Free Will. These are not metaphysical discoveries; they are psychological desperate measures. They are the scar tissue forming over the severed connection between the hemispheres.

Zoroaster stands at the precipice of this change. He looks into the silence and, finding no external god to command him, he invents an internal one. The note on Moral Dualism states: “The battleground exists within each individual’s heart and mind… Only what you feel in your heart matters.”

Do you understand how radical, how horrifying this is to a bicameral man? To a man used to hearing the voice of Marduk or Ashur clearly in his auditory cortex, the idea that the battle is “inside” is a form of madness. It implies that there is an “inside.” It implies a subjective space, a “mind-space,” where these battles can take place. This is the birth of consciousness. Consciousness is the invention of an analog ‘I’—a metaphor of ourselves—that we can move around in a metaphorical space to make decisions that the gods used to make for us.

The Burden of Free Will

The concept of Free Will is described in the notes as a “revolutionary human understanding.” I would call it a burden of crushing weight. In the bicameral era, there was no responsibility. If you killed a man, it was because a god told you to. You were innocent. You were an automaton of the divine. But Zoroaster says: “Actions must arise from your own desire, will, volition, and choice.”

This is the expulsion from Eden. This is the moment we realized we were naked. To have “Free Will” is to admit that the gods are gone. It is to accept that we are the authors of our own atrocities. The note on Individual Responsibility says: “External authorities cannot determine what is truly virtuous; only the individual’s authentic choice… matters.”

This is the lonely cry of the conscious man. He is cut off from the collective hallucination of the tribe. He is stranded on the island of his own subjectivity. He must “choose” between Asha (Truth) and Druj (The Lie) because the voice that used to tell him which was which has fallen silent.

The Internal War as Neurological Echo

The “Internal War” described in Moral Dualism—the struggle between Asha and Druj—is a memory. It is a ghost of the old bicameral structure.

• Asha is the memory of the righteous voice of the god (Right Hemisphere).
• Druj is the chaotic noise of the world, or the deceptive voice of demons (also Right Hemisphere, but disordered).

When the bicameral mind broke down, the clear commands of the gods turned into the confused “struggle” of conscience. We internalized the gods. We swallowed them. And now they fight in our bellies. The “conscience” is nothing but the vestigial voice of the god, now quiet, now easily ignored, now requiring “will” to follow.

This transition was not smooth. It was catastrophic. It caused the “Exile” mentioned in other notes. The Babylonian Exile was not just a physical displacement; it was a psychological shattering. When the Temple (the house of the god’s voice) was destroyed, the Jews were forced to find the god somewhere else. They found him in the Text (Torah) and in the Heart (Conscience). They became the first fully conscious people, the first People of the Book—because the Book is what you read when the Voice stops speaking.

Personal Reflection

I often wonder if we are happier now. We have this thing called “consciousness,” this flickering flashlight in a dark room, and we are so proud of it. We have “Free Will,” and we use it to destroy the planet and each other. Sometimes, in the twilight between waking and sleeping, or in moments of great stress, we can still hear the echo of the bicameral mind. We hear a voice tell us what to do. And for a split second, we feel a profound relief. The burden of “Individual Responsibility” is lifted. We are children again, held in the arms of the divine.

But then we wake up. The silence returns. And we must go out into the world and make “choices.” We must fight the “Internal War” alone. Zoroaster was a hero, yes. But he was a tragic hero. He taught us how to live in the silence. He taught us that since the gods will no longer speak to us, we must speak to ourselves. And we have been talking to ourselves, incessantly, anxiously, ever since.