"MY STROKE OF INSIGHT" - Neuro-Scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

TED talk (Video) by Jill Bolte Taylor:  http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html  
(Viewers: 11 lakhs)

Hidden potential of our amazing human brain / mind  

In the modern scientific world-view, if God exists at all, he has the role of a great engineer who had, initially, made this giant clock. But having done that and set it into motion, he really has no further role to play. In other words, he is a retired engineer - and, like all retirees, has been pushed to the background. As the economist Schumacher of “Small is Beautiful” fame has explained, in the academic world it is okay to indulge in polite talk about God, provided of course it is accepted that He is not capable of doing anything in our world!As in folklore stories, God seems to have answered, by choosing two ‘representatives’ to go to those higher realms and return to tell us how things ‘up there’ are like. And He has chosen - two brain specialists with absolutely impeccable credentials - both having strong connections with that institution we educated people revere more than any God - Harvard!! They have published two books:

One is “My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor, a Ph.D. in neuro-anatomy, and the other is “Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon of repute. Both had very unusual experiences, ‘journeys’ into levels of consciousness far above the material level of ‘duality’. What they tell us questions in a very deep and effective way the basic tenets of the ‘scientific world view’. In effect, both of them have ‘come back after experiencing heaven’, so to speak.

But the most important message contained in both these books is not a theoretical one about whether God exists or not. As recognized brain scientists, both Dr. Taylor and Dr. Alexander are telling us, “Hey, we understood much more about our brain’s (or, more accurately, our mind’s) hidden capacities during this experience than what we did in decades of research on the brain. Our human brain has fantastic, unbelievable, hidden capacities. …… - the Kingdom of Heaven is within us - each one of us is a microcosm carrying the entire macrocosm. If we want to know the truth about who we are, we need to go within, tap these hidden resources. Once we do so, we will emerge as a new human being, full of unbelievable love and compassion for all, for we will then see ourselves as one with the entire universe, not just a minute part of it.”

I am giving below details of the publishers, so that you can obtain them easily. I am also giving a brief preview of what they contain. Please also view the  TED presentation  by Jill Bolte Taylor, and in particular focus on the concluding of what she has to say under the heading “WHO ARE WE?”.   

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html 

The two scientists presentations represent a very great break in the way we human beings, especially the educated class, look at life and its purpose - and, in particular, realize the path to “be the change we want to see in this world”, to borrow Gandhi’s famous words - words which, together with Einstein’s quotes integrating his discoveries in science with the ‘cosmic religious experience’, form an integral part of both these books, even though they have been written independently and without reference to each other. 

“My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor:Published in paperback by Hodder and Stoughton (2009)Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuro-anatomist by profession.

In 1996, she was at the Harvard Medical School, performing research, and teaching students about how the brain functions. On the morning of December 10, 1996, when she was only 37, she herself experienced a brain stroke - a major haemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain. Technically, what attacked her was an AVM (arterio-venous malfunction) - a very rare form of stroke that results in the rapid leakage of a lot of blood into the brain. As blood is toxic to neurons, such a leakage of blood has a devastating effect on the brain’s functions. Within four hours, she could not walk, talk, read, write, calculate or recall anything of her life. Recovery from such a state is considered very rare. But not only did she recover, she has regained her ‘left hemisphere’ capabilities completely. It has been a miraculous recovery, and she is convinced that there is a higher purpose to the efont-style: normalvent that happened to her - and has been dedicating her life to spreading awareness of what she learnt during that stroke.

Being a neuro-anatomist, she could watch meaningfully as her brain deteriorated - and realize which circuits were getting ‘shut down’ one by one. As the haemorrhage had occurred in the left hemisphere, it is capabilities associated with the left hemisphere (such as talking, analyzing, calculating, etc) that she lost. But, she realized to her amazement, faculties associated with the right hemisphere of her brain became very pronounced. Her levels of inner peace, love, joy, compassion, intuition, innocence and a feeling of ‘connectedness’ with the rest of the universe experienced a huge quantum jump.

The right and left hemispheres of our brain normally function in a complementary way. The circuitry of the right side is organized somewhat like that of a parallel processor in a computer, and is designed to take in data ‘moment by moment’. That means, there is no ‘flow of time’ in its perception. Each moment is vibrant with sensation, and so this circuitry plays the central role in our feeling of joy, of intuitive insights, of spontaneous outbursts, of connecting with the rest of the universe. The left hemisphere, by contrast, is a sequential processor of information: it superimposes a time-frame to what the right hemisphere senses by putting them together in timely succession. Thus, it commands us to put on our socks before we put on our shoes; it enables us to describe, evaluate, categorize and communicate; it breaks up the ‘big picture’ of the present moment presented by the right hemisphere’s circuitry into manageable and comparable bits of data that we can talk about. Of course, the two hemispheres act in conjunction, as complementary parts of a single whole: which is why, for instance, when we come across a rainbow, we see beautiful colours - the right hemisphere capabilities point out its grand beauty, while the left hemisphere capabilities, acting simultaneously, dissect it into the colour components.

It is the function of the left hemisphere to dissect, to analyze, to break into parts. It is because of our left hemisphere capabilities that we see ourselves as an “I”: separate from the rest of the universe. We draw boundaries to ourselves: in particular, we identify ourselves with our body. Thus, if someone were to attack us, it is the left hemisphere’s circuitry which ignites the defense mechanism within us, because we see ourselves as residing within a limited amount of space which is being threatened by an outside force.

If we wish to understand the difference between the functioning of the two hemispheres in terms of physics, one way of doing so is through the range of frequencies that the two hemispheres respond to. Of the huge range of sensory inputs constantly bombarding the brain (20^th century physics tells us we are all the time ‘swimming’ in a great ocean of electromagnetic waves), the left hemisphere responds to the shorter wavelengths of light and higher frequencies of sound. Thus, it is able to ‘confine’ our existence to our physical body, whose boundaries it clearly perceives. But the right hemisphere is able to respond to longer wavelengths of light and lower frequencies of sound.

One would imagine that a health calamity such as the serious stroke which Jill had experienced would make her feel ill and at a lower level of consciousness than a normal person. While she did realize the loss of basic faculties which we associate with the “I” such as the ability to remember, to analyze, etc., what astounded her was that, simultaneously with that loss of the “I”,  came an enhanced level of consciousness. In her words:

“As.. I became detached from the memories of my life, I was comforted by an expanding sense of grace... my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a being at one with the universe, if you will. In a compelling sort of way, it felt like the good road home and I liked it. [As I] lost touch with much of the physical three-dimensional reality... I could no longer discern the physical boundaries of where I began and where I ended....I sensed the composition of my being as that of a fluid rather than that of solid.... I now blended in with the space and flow around me.... My consciousness slowed to a soothing and satisfying awareness that embraced the vast and wonderous world within.”

She goes on to describe in detail how, despite a certain reluctance to give up her new-found state of consciousness - she refers to it as nirvana - she did force herself to somehow get help from her colleagues at work. Her colleagues decided on a very risky surgery for her. Amazingly, the surgery was such a great success that her ‘left hemisphere’ capacities returned fully, though it has taken eight years for that to happen.But having experienced the nirvana state, Jill willed herself not to return to the same state of mind as she had been before. As she has put it, her aim was to “rejoin the rat race without becoming a rat again”.So, she willed herself:

·to develop an attitude of gratitude for anything and everything happening to her·never blame others for anything happening to her·to disallow impatience, criticism or unkindness from entering into her interaction with others·not to allow other people’s approval or disapproval to determine her decisions·to concentrate on developing inner peace, joy and compassion·to observe without judgement and take things in stride·to treat all humans as equal, with no artificial boundaries of race, religion etc.

How did she accomplish all this? By realizing the great potential stored in the upper part of our body, what we call the ‘brain’ - not so much the physical ‘cerebral cortex’, but the mind which we know is ‘up there’, whose programming is determined by how we, the programmers, have written our codes.

For instance, when someone insults us, our brain ‘senses’ the words and emotions being thrown at us, and responds with anger. As long as the “I” is there in us, the left hemisphere circuitry is such that a threat is perceived and so there is no way we can avoid such a response. But, Jill points out based on her understanding on how the circuitry of the left hemisphere is organized, such a ‘natural’ response is designed to last only for 90 seconds. Each of us has a choice as to whether this anger should be fuelled further or allowed to die down. We can re-program our brain either way. Most of us have already programmed it into some sort of a ‘do loop’, resulting in an escalation of anger (or worry, or criticism, or self-pity, or depression) through a ‘positive feedback’ circuitry - based on a feeling that these emotions of anger, worry, self-pity, depression etc, are ‘inevitable’ responses to the situation we are facing.

But what Jill realized as a result of her stroke is that such a response (anger, worry, depression etc) seems inevitable only because we have given too much prominence to the left part of our brain. Each of us has the capacity to reprogram the brain in a different way. As she puts it:“Ultimately, [my book] is about my journey into my right hemisphere’s consciousness, where I became enveloped in a deep inner peace. I have resurrected the consciousness of my left hemisphere in order to help others achieve that inner peace - without having to experience a stroke!”

So, she dwells at length on how we can learn to manage responses to the situations we face in life - how long should we brood over something ‘bad’ that has happened in the past; how much do we allow our mind to be gripped by a ‘devastating possibility’ that might happen in the future. How much we allow our mind to live in the past or future versus the present is a choice available to each ‘programmer’ of the brain/mind.

She asserts that even physical pain need not make us enter an ‘emotional loop’ of suffering, pointing to how easily children can forget pain caused at the physical level - because their ‘left’ brain has not yet been overemphasized, and so they can more easily switch back to the ‘here and now’.

So, she recommends that we adults also ‘re-mind’ ourselves of our right half of the brain, and thereby recognize that while we are not in control of what happens to us, we are in control of our reactions to what happens to us. The core of her book revolves around the realization that our minds are very sophisticated “seek and ye shall find” machines - she invokes this phrase to convey the immense possibilities that lie hidden within each one of us. Based upon this realization, she sets forth a very interesting definition of our ‘responsibility’:response-ability = ability to choose how to respond to stimulation coming in through our sensory systems at any moment in time.

View/hear the TED video talk by Jill Bolte Taylor:  
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html  

Saints like Ramana Maharishi have stated that when the "I" drops,
we experience the Whole.
अहमि नाशभाज्यहंतया स्फुरति ह्रुत्स्वयं परम पूर्णसत् | Upadesa Saram

The second book is: 
“Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander
Published in paperback by Simon & Schuster, 2012
Review: 
In 1975, the medical fraternity had reacted with skepticism bordering on ridicule to the work of one of their colleagues, Dr. Raymond Moody, who had described the ‘out of body’ experiences of many people who had been victims of ‘cardiac arrest’ but were resuscitated because of new techniques developed in medical science in the 1960s. But Dr. Moody bravely stuck to his guns, pointing out the great similarities between the experiences of so many ‘clinical death’ cases, cutting across cultural, religious and racial divides. He got the unstinted support of the highly respected doctor, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the founder of the hospice movement, who had herself had one such experience. Gradually, other doctors too got interested in this phenomenon, giving rise to a new branch of study that goes by the name of Thanatology. Several doctors, such as the cardiac specialist Dr. Michael Sabom, who set out to debunk what Raymond Moody had initiated, became converts when data they accumulated pointed to the truth of what Dr. Moody was saying, and slowly a vast amount of literature has been collected documenting what are now classified as “NDEs” - near death experiences.

Attempts have been made to link these experiences to the mystical notion of “dying while living” extolled by the mystics of all ages and cultures, in particular of India and China - the Tibetan Book of the Dead being seen as an ancient document which describes such ‘out of body’ experiences in terms that are very strikingly similar to what the Thanatolgists are recording.
. Among those who dismissed them as of no consequence was Dr. Eben Alexander, who regarded such experiences as ‘impossible’ - that is, until he himself had one!

Direct perception is the best proof of anything. Once we have direct perception, nothing can shake our faith. That is why Dr.Eben Alexander has boldly titled his book “Proof of Heaven”. He asserts that what he experienced was no hallucination or dream - and he knows it because he himself experienced it. It was, he insists, ultra-real: even more real than what we experience here at the physical level. It was a huge jump in his level of consciousness, after which life here on earth seemed to have ‘extraordinarily cumbersome limitations’.