The Brain’s Two Hemispheres and Our Mind. 

Science agrees, more or less, with Swamiji some 130 years later!

It is known that the brain’s Left Hemisphere controls the right hand – if you’re right handed. Research shows many other activities done by each hemisphere. Although there is overlapping between the hemispheres, it is clear that large parts of an activity are confined to one hemisphere.

Dr. Iain McGilchrist (neuroscientist), with his enormous research and assimilation about the brain’s complexity, has given a neurologist’s explanation of why our ‘brain-model’, largely from our culture, has led us in to today’s serious world situation.

In: (1) YouTube – ‘We are Living in a Deluded World’. By Unherd. (2) YouTube – ‘Imagination. A way to Remake the World’. Iain McGilchrist and Phoebe Tickell. By Perspectiva. [Phoebe Tickell, in our need to imagine, talks about ‘Unplanned Time’]. (3) YouTube – ‘What happened to The Soul?’ Iain McGilchrist. By RSA. An exceptional 25 mins! (My thanks, please forgive this horrible simplification – his book on hemisphere roles and our ‘brain-model’, ‘The Master and his Emissiary,’ has 600 pages. Yale University Press. 2009).

Swamiji says: ‘Your mistake is you teach only using the intellect and you take no care of the heart. This makes you selfish’.

Taking up Dr. McGilchrist’s major points (he humbly calls it an hypothesis), it is clear our way of thinking has come from an imbalance between the functioning of these two hemispheres.  These hemispheres are largely our mind!

Dr. McGilchrist proves this in showing how the Left Hemisphere behaves when a person has had a Right Hemisphere stroke (stoppage of blood flow to a section of the brain causing cell death only in that section) – so only the Left Hemisphere is functioning. This person will usually deny there is anything wrong with them! A key role of the Left Hemisphere is in stressing it is correct and adamant that the issue is clear-cut and closed. In animals, it needs this sharp-focused, quick-decision role when catching food or avoiding being prey! Whereas a person with a Left Hemisphere stroke has only the Right Hemisphere functioning, and is able to understand the damage caused. From these two cases, Dr. McGilchrist describes the main roles of each hemisphere (while stressing that the separation is not clear-cut, each can play some role in all functions) as –

The Left hemisphere largely has: A narrow perspective, an approximately 3 degree arc of view, needs black and white definition, rapid decision making, needs a map to run things along it, needs fixed categories/’puts into boxes’ (this is divisive), is calculating, scheming, selfish, grabbing, needs to recognise – ‘nothing new please’, needs confirmation it is correct, does not ‘feel’, mostly without emotion (but has anger), no hunches, unable to imagine, no humour! (Some of these are vital in an animal). It shuts out signals stating where it could be wrong, from the Right Hemisphere! While it has a role, it is in the dominance today (and shouldn’t be) evolved from our culture over some 200 years.

Swamiji would suggest this is the world of The Intellect: Reasoning. Limited by definitions, by words. Without feeling. Swamiji – ‘They cannot find the solution because they only use reasoning and are confined to the intellect’.

The Right hemisphere largely has: a 360 degree view, tries to see the whole perspective (to unite), sees the abstract, imagines, no boxes, no maps, ‘feels’, manages the emotions, enjoys the esthetic and the arts, has humour, produces a hunch. It tries to warn the Left Hemisphere from its wider perspective – but is rejected.

Swamiji suggests this is the world of The Heart: Sensitive. ‘Feels’. Limitless. Expansive.

In the last 200 years, as science has developed, mindless machines have taken over vast areas, and capitalism has led to greed, we (in the West) have established the ‘I’m all right Jack’ attitude at the expense of the community. This shows, according to Dr. McGilchrist,  the Left Hemisphere is dominant over the Right Hemisphere and is dictating the show. Plenty of cultures are not run this imbalanced way, they have the balance and live in harmony with significantly less greed, less selfishness – some have none.

Swamiji agrees – he says: ‘If all this vast amount of effort had been spent on making people purer, gentler, more understanding, more forgiving, this world would have a thousandfold more happiness than it has today’. And, ‘Our material needs have hardened us. We have lost the feeling to be sensitive’. Being considerate needs deeper time to dwell, to imagine and to find that feeling. We don’t have that time, it is already booked to arrange some material need.

To make the time to be more considerate.

This means understanding and working with the Right Hemisphere. Training and listening to the Heart. Sitting Still! Imagining!