Here We Go Again - Jill Bolte Taylor at TED
Posted on Apr 8th, 2008
by 
Julian
Julian
Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
Above is a video that is geting a lot of play in the spiritual community.
It's inspiring, it's exciting, it's deeply personal, poignant, intelligent and funny - but ultimately I think the message and it's underlying assumptions are hugely problematic.
I am going to save my comments until this has been up for a little while, and let any readers make their own observations.
My suggestion: watch it once and take the emotional/altered state ride - its great! Then watch it again and pay more attention to the details...
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INTRODUCTION
OK - now that we've got a juicy conversation going on below, I will flesh out my analysis begun in the comments section.
* Let me say first of all, this is not intended in any way to be hostile toward Ms. Taylor. She is obviously a bright and sincere woman, who has recovered from and struggled to make sense of a very intense experience of brain injury. She is clearly in touch with a feeling of wanting to share a message that is positive with the world. Her talk is engaging, intelligent, self-revealing and impactful.
At the same time, she is unwittingly enacting a set of fallacies that a basic knowledge of transpersonal psychology, integral theory, philosophical reasoning and recent studies on meditation and neuroscience can enable us to see.
Why does this matter?
Well, the subjects she is touching on regarding the brain, altered states of consciousness, stagewise development and the future of humanity are important and meaningful ones - and they not only deserve to be addressed with more clarity, but when misrepresented as she is doing perpetuate misconceptions that do none of us any good, let alone the ideal of world peace and unity.
Now before you get all bent out of shape, let me acknowledge that yes, of course this is opening a door for many who might otherwise not link these subjects or be exposed to certain possibilities. At the same time I maintain, as I have done with The Secret, What The Bleep, Steve Pavlina's blog and other purveyors of these kinds of fallacies - that it is sometimes better to not be exposed to important ideas than to be exposed to distorted, poorly-reasoned, incorrect manglings of important ideas, dressed up as the next big thing...
For those who will say - ah but this is stage appropriate, don't be so mean to people who think this way, I have one statement: fallacious arguments are not the domain of any healthy stage, especially once one has developed the capacity to reason. There is a healthy version of the interaction between Ms. Taylor's experience and an interpretation that weaves together spirituality, science and philosophy that would represent what integral calls healthy Green - this however is not it.
Here's why:
ALTERED STATES & THEIR INTERPRETATION
1) The talk falls into the trap of conflating an altered state experience with an uncritical interpretation of that experience, without differentiating the two and creating a three strands of science set of well described links and hypotheses. Now, I know its a short talk, but this could be done in a more exciting, though grounded/conservative way, that would map out some very fertile territory for future inquiry, instead of jumping right into a very grandiose narrative about saving the world by choosing to be in your right brain as much as possible.
What i think is going on here is that Ms. Taylor has yet to integrate the experience of this radical altered state with her scientific/cognitive abilities. Understandable - it was a radically different state of mind than she had ever experienced. Furthermore, as the talk progresses it becomes apparent that Ms. Taylor is in a bit of an altered state on stage, this is captivating at first, but read as a little hysterical and manic on second viewing. again - no judgment or mean-ness here, this is just a subjective observation of her mental state. I mean the words "hysterical" and "manic" in their technical usage - not as some kind of ad hominem.
I have written at length here about the importance of recognizing the distance between altered state experiences and the conditioned interpretations that we are all prone to filter them through based on three factors:
1) The universal (with varying degrees of intensity) human proclivity toward not only experiencing altered states but also towards finding those altered states to some extent meaningful and significant.
2) The personal stage of development from which one
a) Interacts with or “co-creates “ the experience and
b) Interprets the experience – both based on one’s psychological profile.
3) The socio-cultural context within which the experience both
a) occurs in the first place and
b) Is then interpreted
You'll notice that Ms.Taylor does something that a lot of badly structured attempts at integrating science and mysticism do - she starts off with simple but good scientific information and then dives right into spiritual assertions without carrying over a similar kind of rigor or analysis. Notice the cadaverous human brain, the qualifications, the scientific background that make us take her seriously - but then as soon as she goes into the emotive, exciting, compelling and humorous discussion of her stroke experience, she starts using certain words without defining them via, unpacking them with, or linking them to, the brain science she is using as their support.
Unfortunately, the listener may get the impression that Ms Taylor's empirical objectivity carries over into her subjective and socially conditioned statements of interpretation and conclusion - lending them more than their deserved objective weight.
This means that even though she gives a very faithful and balanced account of her experience in the body of her talk - the inability to use her muscles, the inability to think, understand language, the presence of extreme pain and chaos etc - as well as the novelty, beauty, wonder, freedom of being in an expansive state, she still somehow manages to arrive at a conclusion in her talk that is unsatisfying.
That conclusion, that begins at around 15:30 is that we could "choose" to step to the right of the left hemispheres and live in peace and beauty. Observe how emotionally charged this idea is for her and how it becomes the central driving force toward her recovery.
Then, at around 16:50:
"So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. "
Nirvana. Spirit. Energy. Surrender. Not the choreographer of my life. One with all that is. My moment of transition. Planes of reality. Life force power of the universe.
All of these are words that carry emotive power - and that's fine, they are descriptors of a experience, and they also exist within a context of meaning - but what would do her cause a better service and make the talk more than a cool story that seems to bolster somewhat superficial spiritual ideas, would be if she did more of a step-by-step linking of what integral theory labels the Upper Left (UL) and Upper Right (UR) quadrants. it would also help to step back a little and look at the socially constructed (LL) phrases used above and bear in mind that these are non-empirical observations - which is fine - but they should be identified as such! Instead it all kinda blurs together in an undifferentiated way that could be mistaken for integration or holism, but alas is more of a fun mess..
In other words, how about: I was experiencing something that felt to me like what I had heard called Nirvana. How interesting that a stroke that limited the function of certain aspects of brain function would induce a state of spaciousness, freedom from fears and pre-occupations, wonder at my connection to the universe. Perhaps this has to do with such and such structure in the brain that I know from my background deals with such and such processing, which makes me wonder what a healthy version of this pathological side-effect might be and what would make that possible.... This would ground her interpretation instead of sling-shotting it into speculative metaphysics and emotive argument that stumbles into several naive pitfalls.
This leads to my second point:
CHOICE AND BRAIN STATES
2) Again somehow Ms. Taylor comes to the conclusion that we can "choose" to be in the right brain, and that being in the right brain is the answer to our problems and the prescription for peaceful Nirvana.
Really, this is laden with two fallacies. One is that the left brain is 'the problem," the other has to do with an overstating of the possibility of choice regarding states of consciousness. (Stages too - but I'll get into that in a moment..) Bear in mind she was thrust into this expereince by a stroke - no choice there...
This plays too easily into the approach to spirituality that, rather than encouraging an integration of cognition, emotions, creativity, embodied experience - a real embrace of all that we are, pushes what I call the "self-attacking" position that something, whether it is sex, or 'the ego," or as in this case, the left brain, or materialism, or emotional attachments, something about what and who we are is in the way of being free and enlightened, and if we could just get rid of that, overcome it, choose something else that would be the key!
This is a dualistic oversimplification of any serious process of self-transformation and it does us two forms of dis-service. First: it feeds the fantasy that there is a simple answer, a utopian prescription that we could all just "choose."
Second: because of the previous heady misconception - it serves to keep people in an unfortunate cycle of failing at the impossible (just choosing to be in the right brain, transcending the ego altogether, not having sexual desires, completely controlling my emotions) but holding onto the idea that its their fault and they aren't trying hard enough, setting strong enough intentions, being disciplined enough, surrendering to the guru enough, choosing deliberately enough to be "in love" and so on.. This cycle is basically a dead-end, even though we all go dancing merrily down it with a gleaming hopeful eyes and well-intentioned hearts.
BRAIN PATHOLOGY = ENLIGHTENED AWARENESS
3) The third problem here is the most glaringly obvious: the talk conflates brain injury with enlightenment. It conflates disorganized pathology with integrated development and then draws conclusions from one based on the other, again without creating good links a la some kind of quadrant analysis.
This mistake shoots itself in the foot, because the quadrant reductionism and the variation on the Pre/Trans Fallacy being enacted here allow one to easily arrive at additional poor conclusions, thus: maybe spiritual experiences are just brain pathology, or maybe what we call the healthy brain is in the way of being more spiritual. This doesn't do brain science or any kind of viable spirituality any favors whatsoever!
While a reading of contemporary neuroscience and its study of meditative states (a la Newberg) gives a solid set of links between areas of the brain that serve particular functions and the experience one has as those areas are "turned on or off " by meditation, nowhere does one find the kind of conflating that suggests that states of mental illness are identical to states of meditative absorption.
Differentiating the qualitative value of various altered states and what they do and don't mean is a crucial responsibility that this kind of research needs to be engaging.
(It's also unfortunate that she mentions her brother's schizophrenia and then leaves that loose end dangling whilemaking a case for her brain disorder as a doorway into Nirvana - the implications are obvious and unfortunate - again they do neither meditators nor mentally illl people any favors... and leave the rest of us giddily confused on the matter.)
To quote Meister Eckhart " The madman is drowning in the same waters in which the holy man is swimming."
I have gone into some depth and detail about this here.
STATES vs STAGES
4) Altered states of consciousness are one thing, stages of development are another. We learned through the 60's and 70's (and had mapped out by Transpersonal Psychology) that one could experience meditative rapture, psychedelic ego-death, darshan from the great master, and the euphoria of mass demonstration or celebration and still return relatively unchanged to one's existing stage of development.
This niggling reality forced theorists to make a distinction between states and stages and try to make sense of which states were useful glimpses of higher stages and how they could then be translated into a developmental process that would turn the altered state into a permanent trait.
What the research clearly shows, is that one does not develop stagewise by wishing it so, by believing, by choosing, by magical intervention, or by one-off altered state explosions - one progresses through stages of development at the higher end of the spectrum by hard work, practice, self-inquiry, process, healing, study etc...
As inspiring as an altered state - or someone else's account/interpretation of their altered state may be as fuel for transformation - leaving out a map that actually engages the process of transformation renders the inspiration somewhat empty and lacking in direction.
IN CLOSING
Let me end by saying that I am immensely sympathetic to the message, the emotional tone, the intentions of this talk, and I have immense compassion for Ms. Taylor and her experience. At the same time, i think that identifying the popular fallacies that limit the healthy and differentiated integration of mind-body, brain/spirituality, stages and stages, science and mysticism, empiricism and idealism - and offering alternative lenses, is an important, grounding and forward-looking task.
It is the passion I share with Ms. Taylor for the subject that inspires this critique. May it be of service!
Access: Public
My immediate thought is that she's making the right hemisphere the “spiritual” hemisphere, and by extension, the left hemisphere is the unspiritual one – that interpretation seems kind of superficial, and also a dualistic, good vs. evil view of spirituality which is at odds with the Buddhist teachings.
The book Zen and the Brain has a chapter that deals with this idea on the level of science. The author (a long time meditator) talks about a case of a woman who could switch between right and left hemispheres at will:
“When she was in her right hemispheric active state, her behavior appeared more open, enthusiastic, and forthright. But (and here any wistful, simplistic analogies start to break down), she was more impulsive, emotional, and had more definite likes and dislikes.”
More directly:
“Does this suggest that kensho briefly suspends the usual, more left-sided discriminative… such questions may be too simplistic… On balance, the evidence reviewed throughout this book suggests that the brain undergoes no complete right/left split in its functions. Not during meditative states, not during absorptions, not during insights… Studies pursuing the view that meditation must be solely a right hemispheric phenomenon have so far yielded very mixed results.”
Also, her view of Nirvana is that it is a state of consciousness, which, again, goes against the nondual spiritual traditions. In her description of the state, she still seems to speak of an “I”, which leads me to think that she's reached an altered state of consciousness similar to what you sometimes encounter in spiritual practices.
Hi Julian,
I've watched this several times now and have found it to be interesting. I've been studying the split brain hypothesis lately (ala Roger Sperry, etc.) and am convinced that it is a solid partial truth of how we operate. Left-brain plays a big part in rational thinking and seeing the parts, the right-brain in intuitive/creative thinking and seeing the whole.
Jill is giving an emotional first-hand account of the experience of having the left-brain turn off and on and what that felt like. And she sums up by saying we don't have to constantly live with our left-brain dominance like we usually do in our society, but can also work at shifting into “right brain mode.” And, that might make a pretty positive impact in our life. Now, she does this in a very emotional way and makes some interesting interpretations about her experience of those moments of left-brain-absence.
I would like to hear your comments sooner than later. Given that you've tagged it with The Secret, WTB, PTF, etc. I am imagining you are going to throw her in the meanie-greenie box, but I'm not sure it's warranted in this case. We should be careful in how we wield our Integral-hammers else we start to see nails everywhere…
The biggest thought I had the first time I watched it was that it made me want to meditate even more. Though she didn't mention meditation, I think it is the definite gateway to her vision of more right-brained experiences for people.
I'll ask some specific questions:
1. While there are definitely some interpretive issues with her explanation of her experience, what is it that you find “hugely” problematic?
2. Do you have any arguments against the basic idea of split-brain theory (left/rational right/intuitive). If you have sources for/against this I'd love to get my hands on it (just finished Dragons of Eden - an older, popularized source, but interesting).
3. Where do you think Jill is from a developmental viewpoint? You sort of hint at placing this interpretation on the W/C matrix. Where would you put it and why?
Thanks for providing a forum for this stuff. I definitely had that emotional/icky feeling throughout this video, although I found it fascinating. But after a few times of watching it, I thought it was mostly her communication style and not so much related to the PTF/Secret/WTB stuff.
Thoughts?
-Eric
To ask a more concise question:
A neuro-scientist, who is obviously very rational and solidly orange* has an experience that opens her up to other possibilities and rather than simply interpreting it from her solidly orange* stance, she expands her interpretation to include some green* elements based on the now-expanded viewpoint the experience gave her and bases her interpretation on a wider set of assumptions than she probably had prior to the experience.
What is hugely problematic with that? Or am I interpreting the situation falsely? Are you judging her interpretation from the standpoint of how far away it is from an “integral” one? If so, why?
Not trying to sound confrontational. Just curious about the motivations involved.
Thanks,
Eric
* Since moving from Teal to Turquoise**, I've found using color-coding (of any flavor) of worldviews to be a disingenuous, unfortunate short-cut, but I just can't help myself. It's so much quicker.
** That's some integral humor to lighten the mood of the post. ;)
love the humor eric!
i will add my comments in the main body after some discussion.
i really appreciate your questions and observations.
mr. t absolutely i agree wholeheartedly with your critique.
for now let's just say there is a dualistic fallacy going on here that is related to the PTF in that it conflates disorganized pathology with more highly integrated development. this leads to the conflation of brain injury with enlightenment, which arrives at the erroneous conclusion that the left brain is the problem and if we could all just suffer injury to the left hemisphere the world would be a better place - though of course we wouldn't be able to understand language, dial phone numbers, drive cars or differentiate our bodys from the tiled walls of the shower stall….but thats a good thing! this is related to the “kill the ego” and your problems will all be solved fallacy.
yes, a life long empirical scientist wakes up ( or more accurately degrades via life threatening pathology) into another way of experiencing life and then soapboxes about it using her poorly developed other faculties. i kinda wish she had taken acid in her 20's, done some holotropic breathwork and studied grof, kornfield, wilber, etc and gotten a little more educated on altered states and common misconceptions or poor conclusions that people come to about them who don't know better before making this very convincing but ultimately somewhat meaningless and self-indulgent argument. an argumenmt that can easily be turned around because of its reductionisms into the claim that all UL spiritual states are really just UR pathology.
we are in r.d. laing territory here, wherein psychiatric disorders get elevated to the level of enlightenment….. thank eros transpersonal psych debunked this stuff over 30 years ago - not that this is widely known, but at least the literature exists!
more on this later.
also there is a naivete about the fusion of her description of her experience and her loading it with interpretive signifiers that are really emotionally driven. i love her description (though some of the naive language used made me cringe a little) believe me i love altered states i have pursued them most of my life (and entertained very similar interpretations to the ones she is proclaiming) - but i have come to the conclusion that how we interpret altered states is actually one of the central concerns that face us on the planet viz spirituality, religion and their impact on politics, government, education, war and personal sanity.
the other big problem is that it falls into the conflating of states with stages and the erroneous assertion that one can “choose” a stage - or even “choose” a state for that matter - which glosses over a few little details like - oh, shadow work, inquiry based practice and critical thinking - to name but three off the top of my hammer…. goshdarn those nails keep popping up don't they!?
so on a critical thinking level i observe that we actually are still in new age 415 paradigm, what the bleep ptf/quadrant fallacy- land here…. and that particularly prevalent worldview likes nothing more than using science to “prove” ipoorly reasoned spiritual beliefs about how consciousness works, the nature of choice, where suffering comes from and how it can be magically eliminated..
i will address your questions in more precise detail later eric - i promise….haha i just looked over this and realize i have the foundation for what i will rewrite above later - funny how that happens!
I don't know that there is a better idea worth spreading than Jill's. But just because we take her advice by paying attention to which “side” we choose doesn't mean choosing the “right” side is always right. Sometimes “left” is right.
But
There is a great deal of disagreement among the neuroscience community about the validity of the left, right dichotomy. I don't think it matters. The point is simply that the brain, or rather the psyche-brain-body system*, is capable of experiencing both autonomy and communion. We are both individual and whole, both cells and the larger bodies containing them, ad infinitum. The brain (psyche-brain-body system) is a recapitulation of a neuron. Human beings think and act together. Culture is intersubjective. We are of a single mind, or at least share a collective unconscious.
This doesn't mean each neuron doesn't and shouldn't “decide” (critically!) when to fire and when not to. It doesn't mean that the neuron always has to give up its autonomy. It means that its firing or not is never entirely independent of its prior causation by or subsequent effects on other neurons.
So
Jill has beautifully reenacted an experience which changed her colors forever, as aeryck pointed out above. She has demonstrated for us what I think we can all agree is an extremely important transformation that the majority of scientists and average people have not yet fully embraced. I understand your caution, Julian. But what is it really that is going to turn this planet around aside from individual realization that it IS a planet? Critical thinking, because it is doubtful, always asking for more evidence, may never recognize the wholeness of the planet. But I think it certainly CAN do so, just as Jill has done here.
“The life-force-power of the universe” may be a bit too poetic a phrase to include in science, but for every scientist with an ounce of wonder left, I think it makes perfect sense. We can strive for objectivity while engaged in the social artifact called “science,” but as human beings related and relating to one another we are forever tied to our experience. This is the shift from left to right. When I** want strictness, I choose left, I make science and discover facts. When we*** want compassion, we choose right, and we share our existence together to cocreate the future. Both have their place and time (though one is itself all of spacetime). What's important (and difficult) is how we choose.
* by “psyche-brain-body,” I just mean the entire human holon: the interior experience of the psyche, along with the exterior electrochemical existence of the brain and body.
** “I” as in the scientific observer, the one before whom knowledge is eternally projected upon a cave wall.
*** “we” in this context means all sentient holons
I just read your reply, Julian. I wanted to agree that the “choice” metaphor is problematic. But I think what it clumsily points toward is valid: that both of these states (left and right brained, or however you want to break them down) are possible. Of course full stage development is what we'd ultimately like to see, but I think that just means a critical integration of the truth of autonomy and the truth of communion.
how does she do it? how does she choose (!) left or right sphere?
:)
I feel love-energetically one with the guy who laughed at the moment she ask this question :)
at first she describes her 'altered' state as an infant in a woman's body - but then it turnes out to be 'enlighteneing' experience of limitations of this woman's brain, especially the left side of her brain, and conclusion that the right sphere is the place to be if we want to project peace and love to the world - idea worth spreading?
it seems like she experienced :
- no inner dialog
- beign only here and now
- not beign separate from other people
- no clinging to future or past
- everything is energy
- outside of our everyday experience there's a better, truer reality
sounds like 'nirvana', sounds like spiritual liberation - but I guess spiritual doesnt mean to escape, and spiritual doesnt mean brain injured
sounds like PTF!
well, first off, I wasn’t crazy about her style & delivery, although I do appreciate how tremendous an impact the experience had on her life, and also her desire to share it…share the “message” she had….it did get a tad evangelical at the end for me—and I didn’t really understand what she was doing touching the ground? repeatedly—some sort of prayer?
Julian, I picked up on what you said about her word “choose”. That’s where I took issue as well. I don’t think Jill herself, even having had the very experience she describes, could “choose” to just suddenly switch into her “right-brain” mode (I’m using her vocab here) — even though she is urging us to do so at the end, and saying it could be a world of people “choosing” to tap in to “Nirvana”.
How many spiritual practitioners try so hard at this (in extraneous or rather “strain”-eous effort, I might add) for YEARS and cannot “choose” to return to a place they might once have accidentally stumbled upon?
I looked through some craniosacral therapy books I had by Upledger to see if I could fins anything relevant on his take on the right/left brain(s)…but no dice…just a subtle hint that maybe he doesn’t believe they are totally separate (that’s my hunch too)…maybe Milne might have some kind of opinion on the 2-hemisphere interaction but I don’t have any of his books.
Julian, you mentioned RD Laing in your comment—again, like Jill, I don’t see his work as without value. Sure, some of it is *hella weird*, uncomfortable and obviously mining psychoanalytical turf…but I like some of what I’ve seen him do with language, break it down, use repetition, turn it inside out to get to the empty space that’s behind all narrative…I used to like to work with language in a similar way, patterns, folding, & undoing…it helped me and is interesting
to get back to Jill, it’s kind of the same—I’m not going to become her disciple but I don’t see her experience as without value. Where I get uncomfortable is in the translation of that personal experience, that “I” experience of Jill, into “THE ANSWER” and then the proselytizing of that. I do think it’s touching on a universal nerve, much like The Secret. I was less grossed out by Jill though because she wasn’t trying to “get” anything from it other than a better world.
We’ve lost rites of passage in our culture; we’ve lost the indigenous grounding to a reality beyond what is here being termed “left-brained”….I think this is the root here, why everyone is standing up and shouting out about what they’ve seen of the mystical—it’s divided, not unified, filtered through the “I”/ego lens and not through something simple and basic like grass or rabbits or trees (which are perhaps not so simple at all). It is a non-communal experience and it is a competition, just like everything else in 2008
but you might argue with me here because to even mention a re-turn to “indiginaeity” of the “spiritual experience” implies a motion through story & myth — two ends of a mobius strip or the motion of a pendulum finding balance through hitting extremes. I believe narrative & gnosis will continue to have a relationship throughout time. So here we are with all these spiritual “stories” about “gnosis” in this day and age. I too hope we will mature out of it; to what, I don’t presume to know. It is kind of like telling your friends in high school how much beer you drank and how cool it was.
I don’t think Jill was sending out anything harmful. I applaud her for making it through what certainly was a tryingly intense, near-death experience and for culling inspiration from it.
She’s one of many up there on the stage talking about it. Heck, we all do in our own ways. People in the audience were giving her love & validation for her experience, which she needed.
I thought TED gave people large grants to work on inspiring/innovative /philanthropic projects…was she given a grant for this? and if so, what is the basis of her work, the science, and the intention? (if you know)
What a rich soupy dicussion. Nice one Julian. I am taking the levity angle again, cause I agree with everything in general said here so well. Except yours. haha. Love ya bro.
I rewired my house two years ago, I read many books, the local code book and tore out all the old 1930's wiring. There was no grounding in those houses in those days. I say thank goodness for that green wire! Finally after slowly and diligently, um more slow than diligent, I put in many lights and receptacles, even a 20amp GFCI and a 220v dryer. Bit then came the 3-way switch for my top hall light - you know the one that has two on-off switches. Took me 5 hours and 3 rewires to get the thing to work! Because the book I was following had the IN and OUT reversed!
So I am making a few points here:
1. Its eventually easy to figure out wiring in your house. But no-ones got an empirical clue about how the brain does the complex stuff with our consciousness. Perhaps science knows where the breaker panel is, but you get the point. (the more you know the less you know)
2. She learned something very valuable about her wiring. (after a painful experience)
3. She took that understanding too far. (She forgot the grounding wire. (ahem))
4. Thats how we all learn.
I want to add something later about how, we as perhaps more integrally aware folks, can hold the opposites in a way that is friendly to our prior stage neighbours. That is our number one job I feel these days?
Wiring is the essential key to all this. My brother has Huntingtons Disease which effects the corpus callosum (the bundle of fibers which connects the right and left hemispheres). Anomolies in the corpus callosum are also found in people with schizoprenia and fetal alcohol syndrome. From an article on FAS children regarding imperment of the corpus calosum “Corpus callosum abnormalities have been linked to deficits in attention, intellectual functioning, reading, learning, verbal memory, and executive and psychosocial functioning, …” In my brother's case, with Huntingtons, I have seen marked shift in his ability to balance his analytical side and his emotions. He often uses lengthy and exhausting arguments supported by research and writing to support ideas which are based solely on his intense feelings. His emotions and the supporting logic he uses are out-of-proportion to the reality of the situation - he drives himself to exhaustion trying to convince everyone around him of things which they see as irrational.
As a person myself, who has been dianosed with a “mental illness” but then was treated by a very foreward thinking doctor who recognized the symptoms as those of a kundalini awakening, I don't think it's a question of favoring right hemisphere over left or vice versa. I think the importance lies in fostering balance and connectedness between the two hemispheres. Both act together to allow us to perceive material reality and to perceive ourselves as microcosms of a Greater Macroscosm. That connection between the two hemispheres gives us the ability to combine intellect and intuition - to understand that we can function as separate and inseparable entities at the same time.
I'm with Sanjuro - nice discussion you have going on here Julian.
To give a little background culled from the description of the TED event from Robb Smith's blog, Taylor gave the last talk in the session exploring “Who are we?” I think its important to keep the audience in mind when judging some of Taylor's stylistic choices. I think her highly emotional message could potentially been very powerful in shaking up the worldviews of the audience (my guess is that they were mostly orange).
Along those lines, I liked that her talk explored altered states of consciousness and potentially stretched the participants' view of what was “real.” I think the delivery and emotional tones probably helped make the message more powerful (especially for the first viewing, although a more critical second viewing reveals many problems as described by many here already). I also think her urging for people to open to more of the communion side or “right hemisphere” is a positive message as well (thinking only the right hemisphere is good is quite problematic). For people that are aware that contemplative practices can open them to experiences like what she described (but without a stroke or PTF), I could see this as a motivation for additional practice (although a more careful message indicating similarities between her state and those of advanced meditative states of consciousness while also not equating pathology with those states would really clean up a lot of the problems).
In addition to the many good critiques above, I would like to add that she does not situate how her cultural (LL quadrant) conditioning influences her later reconstruction of her experiences. The words she uses such as “nirvana” suggest that she has done some post hoc adjustments to the meaning of her experience (assuming she was not that spiritually inclined before). There is a classic psychology experiment where people who witness a car crash adjust the estimated speed of the collision based on the words used to ask the question. So, my guess which jibes with her phenomenological story is that she was not thinking about nirvana during the course of her experience and later added it to explain her experience (and perhaps also color her recollection of the event). Another issue around this that Lu hinted at above is that she didn't describe how to get to this state of nirvana without having a stroke. That makes it really hard to follow her message.
Best regards,
Elijah
Oh and I love this!
We are our perspectives. Thank you Julian and you all for being my extra eyes! :)
And Julian, I do not mean to sound like I am making everything um all relative… it is, it is not and it is both. But only when we have had the experience of all of them sufficiently to know. It is an extremely hard task, and this dialog is the perfect vehicle for clarifying, thanks again.
thanks so much for jumping in everybody.
i have now updated the post as promised with a more thought-out critique - please offer any thought on this more fleshed out piece.
all the best
~j
and here goes Julian stirring the pot (in a good way) again :)
great discussion, btw. but allow me to add one perspective that is not yet mentioned here. we can philosophize about Taylor's experience and interpretation ad infinitum but more likely we'd mostly end up with more of our own projections (integral or otherwise) on this issue. so i'll make mine short and sweet (less projection that way) :)
i see Taylor's experience and neuroscience background to be a promising exploration into the physiological correlates of “enlightenment” experience. in the long run, i prefer to focus more on the practical technological implications: using neurotechnology to re-create state experiences at will. here's what i've written on my blog when i riffed on this topic a while back.
“With the promise of neurotechnology, we don't have to delude ourselves in practicing decades of meditation (and other dogmatic spiritual practices) in order to get a glimpse of the “mystical” experiences spoken about by sages, spiritual teachers, athletes, artists, and some lucky few who had been favored by serendipity.
“One reason I find AQAL very interesting (i.e. Wilber-Combs Lattice in particular) is that it's an excellent attempt to map out the neurological and psychological domains of consciousness without collapsing one in favor of the other. This map is a good starting point for neuroscientists who are serious in studying “lala land.””
my two cents.~C
sure c4chaos - but the conclusion then would be that we should be figuring out ways to technologically induce blood vessel hemorrhaging so as to attain enlightenment, no?
i also dont agree that only projections are possible in looking at the problem of experience vs interpretatiion and find that position a little lazy and a lot relativistic.
three strands of science my friend - they may not be perfect but they work better than lazy relativism!
as a scientist she should carry her empirical rigor over into an equally rigorous philosophical and heremeneutic inquiry , and back again…
do you not agree that this is a more effective and integral way to link science and spirituality?
:O)
I agree with much of your extended analysis, Julian. Maybe be the most important thing about Jill's talk was that it will spark more discussions like this one. No speaker in the span of 15 minutes can cover every angle of something as controversial as the relationship between science and spirituality. That said, I am glad that Jill attempted to convey her experience and I think its overall effect has been positive, both within the scientific community and among lay people. All great scientific breakthroughs begin with wonder, and by expressing her own, I think Jill has and will continue to inspire the kind of mind/brain research that we all agree needs to go deeper to discover truths more solid than the flowery spiritual metaphors which so naturally accompany it.
Thanks for the updated post. I agree with your analysis. My main concern wasn't so much with whether she was falling into all the traps you mentioned, but why her doing so motivated your post. You covered that nicely in “why does this matter?” I'm still not sure I'd drop this video in the same bucket as WTB and Secret, but I can see the connection surrounding choice that you pointed out.
I must admit I had watched it three times a few weeks ago, and only skimmed it before my replies above. I forgot about the references to nirvana, etc. I had been focused on the different modes of operation as explained by the different sides of the brain. Definite PTF in there ala Jung (elevating psychological misfunction to “mystical experience”).
Again - thanks for the more detailed analysis. Easier to understand where you are coming from than extracting it and making assumptions from a couple key phrases and how you tagged the post. ;)
Eric
aeryk and matt - yes you are absolutely right and offer a nice balancing compassionate humanity to my cut and thrust analysis of the prevalent and confusing fallacies.
i tried to do that in several places, but obviously not quite enough!
oh and eric - whats my motivation?
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the better we are at determining what can be truthfullly interpreted from information/experience like this the more the research can move forward and be of value both spiritually and empirically.
truth matters. truth has implications. for mentally illl people, for spiritual seekers, for scientists, for philosophers, for artists.
i am using the eye of mind to look at the links being made between the eye of spirit and eye of flesh here - and as far as i can tell that is not only fun but illuminating activity, capiche?
part of what i am saying is that this is actuallly more likely an interaction between the eye of flesh and conditioned eye of mind beliefs run through with brief flashes of 'spirit.”
sanjuro - the monty hall link is fantastic! thanks - what a brain teaser..
Ok ok ok, I read everything everything!
I will not mention Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' again, if you don't mention PTF again! :)
I liked your more grounded version of her major points “I was experiencing something…”
This is THE best way I humbly think, to show the unpacking. More like a coach, less like a barrister. We do learn so much better from 'better' stories… could you do more? Very helpful!
My suggestion is more for bang for the critical thinking buck. Like what catches the eye on a web page, or how to a catch the attention of someone suffering from a bit of conflation, or new-agey pft. (crap I said it!). This is where we use Critical Feeling, there I just made that up. But in a sense if you consider how to maintain the laser skeptic with the interior MAIN purpose of how BEST to pass on the
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you have to then engage with the 'people' and their 'feelings'. It being very difficult for them to think critically. They need their hands held, and their minds engaged, at the same time.
All of us suffer from the reality that 'our words carry emotional power'. So we must encourage each other to be better at their least impressive strength. I will admit now that this frightens me to my very unconscious core!
Julian,
I'm all about the truth, so I understand the desire to pursue it doggedly, especially with important things getting lots of air-play. I suppose when I first read your post, I was reacting through my “respect the spiral” lenses. And, lately, I've only had the energy to extract what's useful from all the digital-data flowing into my brain, not enough energy to pursue the integrally-lacking aspects and deconstruct them, as such. But glad you are able and willing to do so! Looking forward to more discussion…
Eric
got it - thanks eric!
sanjuro - thanks. i will stop saying PTF when it stops being the lingua franca of popular spirituality - until then i'll let you know when my copy of “the road” appears in the mail… :O)
:)
Your intuition is HOT my friend, I am just looking at my copy on my bookshelf, which is beside my right hemisphere oddly enough, and I was thinking “I should mail this to Julian, that'd be a lark'… so mail me yer addy,and I will send you my copy. Then you need to pass it on to 0v0. Maybe when its gone I'll stop talking about it!
-c4, let me know when the iphone has a Rupert Sheldrake licensed synchronicity app. That'd be way cool!
Julian said: “sure c4chaos - but the conclusion then would be that we should be figuring out ways to technologically induce blood vessel hemorrhaging so as to attain enlightenment, no?”
that's your (projected) conclusion, not mine. the goal is exploration and understanding, not attainment of anything. do you still buy that attaining enlightenment crap? or you just being sarcastic with me? :)
my take on this is that exploring neurological correlates to states of awareness will enable us to understand consciousness and enable us to perceive “reality” differently than we're used to. in a sense, meditation is a poor man's neurotechnology. just like the cellphone extends communication, i dream of a future when neurotechnological devices will enable us to experience different states at will and navigate them based on our understanding of those states. whether AQAL will be the standard map for that, who knows. we can only wish for it, or a much better map in the future.
~C
Yes! Its the future, in a galaxy very far far away!
Where the power of the mind meets the power of the belly!
the word projection gets used and misused much to much for me c4 - i think it is imprecise and lazy - so there :OP
otherwise yes i hear your point and agree…:O)
to follow on from Mr t's point about the non-dual traditions …
yes - and she also ascribes the “i am” to the left brain - which would bear out an hypothesis that a non-stroke induced transrational non-dual experience would be accesed via utilizing both the expansive potential of the right brain and the witness i am-ness of he left brain - which stands to reason, but gets often overlooked…
let snot ignore that she is completely non-fucntional, undifferentiated (like an infant) and in extreme pain and confusion for much of the experience - hardly something to aspire to - and clearly PTF confusion.
Julian, just read your extended comment:
Not the choreographer of my life.
I picked up on that phrase during my viewing because there was something beautiful about it—not your traditional mumbo-jumbo about “you create your own reality”.
Seems like a surrender aspect was being pointed to, a “Big-Mind” space, not the control-oriented approach to modern spirituality that is so prevalent these days.
BUT
…sh'e turned it around by the end, asking us to BE THE CHOREOGRAPHERS of our lives by choosing “right-brain”.
This perhaps isn't saying anything new but I am interested in the shift, how the experience of a surrender then makes us desirous of a repeat of that experience—so in effect we are trying to then achieve a “controlled surrender”…which is a paradox and therefore not really possible.
OK, gotta go do my taxes. Maybe I should do them with my right-brain?
yes there moments of beauty - right brain beauty in what she says when she gets really emotional at the peak of the description.
but the left brain beauty gets left out and there is a) a reliance on conditioned LL language rather than a maintained scientific curiosity in tandem (integrated) with the emotive description and b) a real lack of continuity in terms of how the brain science relates to the altered state experience relates to the conclusion…..
did you even read my comment? i'm not in disagreement with anything you said in paragraph 2 above (even though i don't know what LL language is or for that matter, most Integral terms). i was trying to open up what i thought was another interesting point-within-a-point about Taylor's own shifting poles in terms of structuring her experience as a narrative and a process, and how the motion she made in doing so seems to be a prevalent cultural meme in terms of spiritual interpretation…i sort of feel dismissed; i clearly understand and agree with what you are talking about…
oh shit sorry rainwriter i wasn't disagreeing with you either - i must have missed something!
i really lked what you said - and did now reading it again - i was just adding stuff tangentially in the way i felt stimulated.
i always enjoy your point of view… and yes that is an interesting paradox isnt it?
Hi Rainwriter
This is a great observation you made:
“the experience of a surrender then makes us desirous of a repeat of that experience—so in effect we are trying to then achieve a “controlled surrender”…which is a paradox and therefore not really possible.”
It feels like you've touched on something significant. Gratefully pondering….
Thanks, James
Hi Julian,
I think perhaps this statement to Rainwater “but the left brain beauty gets left out …” could have been perceived as disagreeing. I think your first sentence largely followed Rainwater's observation and then the next statment starting with the “but” might have given the impression that you were making some distinction from what Rainwater said. At least that is my two cents on what might have happened.
For your updated post, I really liked your tone and the balance between compassion towards what Taylor was trying to accomplish, her sincerity, and the impact of this experience on her, and making critical distinctions where you disagreed with the message. I think the format you used where you start and end with acknowledging the positive aspects/intentions/etc. of the work helped give it this balanced feel. Nice job!
I also liked this phrase: “For those who will say - ah but this is stage appropriate, don't be so mean to people who think this way, I have one statement: fallacious arguments are not the domain of any healthy stage, especially once one has developed the capacity to reason.” This is an important distinction between accepting that people can be wherever they are, and encouraging healthy versions of a stage (defined by you here as those that don't use fallacious arguments). Also, I didn't find your updated post to have any of the “avenger of poor new age thinking” tone that people have remarked about in earlier discussions.
One quick question for you, do you know of a movie or clip that you believe would be a good representative of “healthy Green” spirituality? Contrasting that with The Secret, What the Bleep, etc. could provide an interesting topic for a future blog entry (unless you've already done this).
Best regards,
Elijah
thanks for your reflection elijah - i will get on this as soon as i return monday - i am off leading a retreat starting now…
thanks everyone for your support. Julian, i am not mad at you…. : )
Elijah, “healthy Green”….I don't know if i'm qualified to answer this as I am only becoming a tangential student of Integral via osmosis from these blogs—but 2 things come to mind, The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk (book) and Whale Rider (since you asked about movies)…
These emphasize mythological consciousness, the bringing together of community, and healing political action….deeply feminine. “Manifestation” or trying to get something/control/pull the strings of the universe are never part of the equation. (Well, the universal strings get pulled, but more out of a sense of destiny, order, chance, etc.) The broader concern for the world at large, humanity, community, and nature are the main themes—as well as the fact that the Earth is alive, Gaia consciousness—and maybe that's who's pulling the strings.
The hero(ine)s are also human in that they are fully-fleshed complex people with perhaps a weariness or reluctance to step up to their role in the play. (Unlike what I perceive to be unhealthy green—New-Age messiah complex.)
I've been very inspired by these works (I'm in the process of writing semi-mythological fiction as well). Since I'm bothering to write this, I must be open to attack on these works!! But I'll defend them! Yet still not sure if they are “Green”. Maybe they're from someplace higher.
A sincere question on “colors”:
When moving to the higher spectrum, are the healthy elements of earlier colors still in place? or, Is the color spectrum development necessarily linear?
i.e. I never want to lose metaphorical consciousness, organic relation to nature, my indigenous birthright as a citizen of the Earth, and my love for the mythological, but I want to be able to embody these in tandem with a clear place, where there is integrity and a willingness to work with shadow, as Julian says.
But, as you said, “Healthy green” may best be reserved for a future blog. Please, back to Jill Bolte Taylor.
Thanks,
rainwriter
rainwriter,
I think Julian would love to map that one out. But since he is away I WILL TAKE OVER HIS BLOG haha!!! Sorry that was very left brained of me!
One interesting way to look at this, that helps me anyway is that term 'transcend and include'. Or as my fave 'what is subjective becomes objective'. I should say that what becomes objective is masculine/feminine - not 'rational masculine'. So Jill as Julian is pointing at was not diligent at the expression of her experience, she was not experienced enough yet at grounding and holding both sides (of the brain, of the yin/yang, Thinking/Feeling whatever). So she jumped to a conclusion, without all the data.
It also seems that the mythology becomes inward, as we get more colorful… and Julian would be happy to express his love of Joseph Campbell in that area… and perhaps Jills story as a metaphor for a fairytale or a typical obstacle in the hero's journey…
haha you are so funny!
i like both the sayings you included. Good shortcuts to the heart of the relationship between self/witness-self. i'm never totally comfortable working in essentialized gender paradigms (even though sometimes i use them as kind of a shortcut) but here i think you are pointing to genuine awareness as some kind of hybrid of poles. as to inward & outward….seems like a big stretchy rubber band!
I’ve been recommending “My Stroke of Insight” to everyone I know. It’s the best book I’ve read all year! You can get Jill's book from Amazon for a good discount.
Here's the link:
http://www.amazon.com/My-Stroke-Insight-Scientists-Personal/dp/0670020745/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210709205&sr=8-4
I agree with much of what was said in the original blog. When I first watched the video of Dr. Taylor, I found it quite interesting but discomforting. Although I am not a neuroanatomist, I do know that the simplification of the right brain-left brain dichotomy tends to be exaggerated. There are many cases of significant damage to one hemisphere not being detected in behaviour at all and only found in autopsy. There certainly is plenty of evidence supporting the specialization of areas of the brain and the enormous importance of how they are integrated for various tasks and types of tasks.
Altered states of consciousness come in a variety of ways and do not necessarily belong to the same category. There is an undeniable difference between meditation, brain damage or dropping LSD. My personal suspicion is that Timothy Leary did not live in “nirvana” but rather a drug induced state that he preferred to normal reality. This is not really any different than a heroine addict.
Interpreting a disorganized state of consciousness depends very much on the concepts a person has to think with. There is always an attempt to undertstand experience even when it “blows our minds”. This does not mean that I believe that we are not more than our conscious minds think we are. I believe that there certainly is a plane of reality in which we are simply part of the creative impulse behind the universe. Furthermore there is a plane of reality in which we are intimately connected to all of humanity. Then, as Dr. Taylor knows, there is the plane of reality that results from our nature as human beings which gives rise to the creation of our individual personalities.
It is not possible to be truly human and not have such an individual personality. Yes, this does indeed create the experience of being separate from others and the universe itself, but it is not merely an illusion. A newborn baby does not have this separation but one would be hardpressed to believe that it is “nirvana” that this baby experiences.
I also would not care to be critical of Dr. Taylor as a person. She seems to be quite intelligent, witty and caring - qualities I would dearly love to see more wide spread in our human population. However her brush with “insanity” and perhaps even death is quite enough in itself to make a person aware of how much one could be missing by not stopping to smell the roses; that is, constantly relating to the world through the mediation of concepts is dry, boring and unsatisfying whereas the simple act of sniffing a flower in the present moment reinforces the pleasure of being alive. Many heart attack victims have similar insights while on a gurney heading to the operating room.
This is not so much science as it is a simple reminder to practice an intimate and immediate encounter with the world from time to time in order to refresh the pleasure of being alive. It does indeed follow that someone who enjoys being alive is far less likely to do destructive things to themselves or to others.