I’ve finished Dr. Taylor’s book, A Stroke of Insight, that I mentioned in my last post. I’ve also discovered the TED.com’s forums in which people discuss all the videos on the site, including this one. In fact I posted there, and I’ll probably borrow heavily from that post here–maximizing return on investment.
Many people in the forum wrote about various ways of achieving something like Dr. Taylor’s stroke experience: drugs, meditation, accidents, etc. While Dr. Taylor talks about left brain versus right brain, it is not clear in her case–or in these variations–just to what extent the left brain is totally inoperative. It does seem clear that the linguistic systems, at least, are off-line in all these instances, and so I lump them all together as “nonlinguistic perception.” That being the case, it’s impossible to talk about them while they’re happening.
Once the language systems are back online, everyone who’s had such an experience faces the same dilemma: how to describe nonlinguistic experience linguistically. It seems to be the case that one’s description of this kind of perception is based upon whatever cultural context one finds oneself in on emergence. Once one reacquires the use of language, people from Eastern religious traditions usually talk about “enlightenment,” while people from Western religious traditions usually talk about “union with God.”
In Dr. Taylor’s case, she worked with a gestalt therapist to help her find words for the experience. Needless to say, the words she uses are based largely on the categories of gestalt therapy. I’ve been struggling with this problem of “speaking of the unspeakable” for years, and I prefer more scientific terminology.
In her version, she describes all of us as energy beings in an energy universe, and in fact, there is a scientific context for describing ourselves as, “energy beings:” E does equal MC squared after all. Nonlinguistic perception can provide a dramatic first-hand experience of Einstein’s equation, if we’re so inclined. But it is difficult–near impossible–to satisfy our survival needs while in the throes of such an experience. Back in the “real world,” someone has to put food on the table and in our mouths, and that’s where all our dog-eat-dog troubles begin. A thousand years or so from now, when we’re all free and prosperous, there’s a possibility that “we-are-all-one” could become a ubiquitous perception. In the meantime, there are many left-brained problems to be solved. Occasional visits to what Dr. Taylor calls right-brained consciousness, or “la-la land,” might inspire our problem-solving efforts, but the solutions happen in language-land.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I do think that there are valuable implications for our left-brained world in the experience of nonlinguistic perception. The fact that la-la land is described differently–dependent on the cultural context of the speaker–is a great example of cultural variation, and reminds us of how much our own descriptions of reality depend on our personal history and the concepts we have been exposed to. Broadening our own and everyone else’s exposure seems a worthwhile goal. Education, anyone? TED’s efforts are a valuable contribution toward that end, and the videos available there are a tremendous asset.
Gaining access to non-linguistic perception is not all that difficult, even without drugs, if one takes away all the mystical trappings. Our capacity for attention is limited, and the more we learn to concentrate on any sensory modality–take your pick–the less attention we have for language production. Just get your focus out of Broca’s and Werneke’s areas. I’ve talked about several techniques in the Bare Brains podcasts.
A little break from the chatter can greatly enhance our everyday life. Language is so socially useful that it permeates our sensory experience and sucks out the juice. We can get so involved in complementing our hostess, or planning how we are going to complement our hostess, that we don’t actually feel the textures in our mouth, the aromas in our nostrils, the visual complexity on our plates, etc. Being able to dampen the verbal chatter gives us more neurons to apply to other aspects of our experience. Absorption in our food with an occasional smile of sincere appreciation to its provider may be more complementary than all our wordiness.
What Marvin Minsky calls “dumbbell ideas,” which contrast two extremes–like left-brain and right-brain–come easy to us, since we are confronted early on with “twos:” two eyes, two hands, two feet, two parents, etc. Things that are “both-and” are much more difficult for us, like light, which behaves like a particle under some circumstances and a wave under others.
We are both integral parts of the universe and separate organisms–not either or. It’s a ticklish position.
Black or White?