Thoughts And Trivia

We have two hemispheres in our Brain, Right & Left. Both are quite separate with a minimal shared bandwidth between them. Both are quite different. Right one is a parallel processing computer hooked to various energy sensors in our body, simultaneously gathering millions of streams of data. It connects to the world outside. Its very chaotic, it cannot make sense of what it gathers, because it cannot distinguish self from the universe, present from the past and future.
Its the left brain which is a serially, logically processing machine, which has enormous wealth of past records. It also has a sense of "SELF". Its this brain which makes sense of Right Brain inputs and its effect on our selves.
Right brain is what gives us a sense of being connected to the rest of living beings and with the rest of the grand universe. It gets the sense of being permeating the whole universe and vice-versa. Its raw, fleeting, slippery and transient and present moment in time - that has no past no future.
The left brain is what brings us down to earth, controls our actions and makes us a calculating, methodical entity, separate from the rest of living beings and we-and-they feeling regarding the rest of the universe. Its past and future with the present moment missing.
One can understand this when we just come to conscious from anaesthesia generated unconscious. I wrote about my experience of this 80 Fathoms below conscious. As I regained consciousness, the right brain kicked in with gibberish data. Immediately left brain came back, failed to resolve the inputs but alive enough to say that "you are ok, I cannot make sense of it but its enjoyable even in raw form. Do not let others shake you out of it, enjoy while it lasts".
Without the left brain (as can happen in a left brain stroke) you feel the feeling of becoming one with the universe, but you become non-functional - cannot process language, cannot understand numbers or remember who you are. The feeling is not unpleasant - as told by people who have gone through it. The feeling is of "Nirvana" or "Moksha" of release from the limited life to unlimited peacefulness. Here is the talk by Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight about her such experience. If the video doesn't work go to the site.

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Saturday, August 23, 2008