I just had my mind blown by a woman who had hers blown literally: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, had a stroke that was made to order—for my purposes, anyway—and recovered to tell about it. I hypothesized just such a stroke in Bare Brains Episode Four, and talked about the implications at some depth.
I first read about her a few days ago in Wired News, and downloaded the PDF of her book, My Stroke of Insight, from lulu.com. I anticipated writing about it when I finished digesting it, but today’s New York Times had a link to the video of her talk at the Ted Conference, and I wanted to pass it along posthaste.
Her stroke was a rare kind that involved hemorrhaging, and certain crucial areas of her left hemisphere were shut down progressively over a few hours. She became unable to speak or understand language, and unable to distinguish herself from her environment. With her left hemisphere activity so diminished, the activity in her right hemisphere became prominent enough to achieve consciousness. (That’s not her description; I’m putting my spin on it.)
She talked about the expansiveness of her right-brained experience: the feeling of unity with the environment, with all other human beings—with the universe itself. She contrasted that with her left-brained experience of separation and individualism, and encouraged our learning to switch between the two points of view—what the old Zen guys would call moving freely between the two realms. I am certainly in favor of developing this kind of flexibility—it’s life altering and enhancing.
Her description of right hemisphere consciousness was beautiful and inspiring, but of course she could only describe it after the fact—after her left brain had recovered enough to attach language and concepts to the experience. As is always the case, then, how her left brain described the experience was a result of all her prior history, and the values and concepts that had evolved in that history. I’m entirely sympathetic with her perspective, but I suspect that I have been exposed to a wider range of cultural variation than she has, and have, perhaps, a broader context within which to view her experience (I am pretty old, remember). Episode Four, which I mentioned earlier, goes on at length about this broader context.
While I’m a total advocate of learning fluidity of perspective, at the same time—and unfortunately—I’m afraid it’s a practice that will not be widely pursued any time soon. Too much of the world’s population is absorbed in the more basic left-brained pursuit of food, clothing, shelter and mates. When we all become educated, prosperous, and enlightened…
In the meantime, we do what we can: help, educate, advocate.
Left Brain says, “Foam;” Right Brain Just Hums
I read “My Stroke of Insight” in one sitting – I couldn’t put it down. I laughed. I cried. It was a fantastic book (I heard it’s a NYTimes Bestseller and I can see why!), but I also think it will be the start of a new, transformative Movement! No one wants to have a stroke as Jill Bolte Taylor did, but her experience can teach us all how to live better lives. Her TED.com speech was one of the most incredibly moving, stimulating, wonderful videos I’ve ever seen. Her Oprah Soul Series interviews were fascinating. They should make a movie of her life so everyone sees it. This is the Real Deal and gives me hope for humanity.