Review of Brian McVeigh, The Vestiges of Japanese Spirituality By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/167650188/Review_of_Brian_McVeigh_The_Vestiges_of_Japanese_Spirituality?email_work_card=title American psychologist Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) published one influential book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). His idea that modern consciousness was a comparatively recent invention and prior to that humans experienced auditory hallucinations that were interpreted as coming from God/ the gods is controversial and has not gained traction, though it has some admirers. The author of The Vestiges of Japanese Spirituality: Challenging the Standard Model of Religious History, Brian McVeigh, is one of the principal disseminators of Jaynes’ ideas, and a researcher at the Julian Jaynes Society. This is an interesting short book in which McVeigh proposes that a Jaynesian perspective can provide new data on Japanese religions, both old and new. ...