I wrote recently here about Jill Bolte Taylor's book My Stroke of Insight. It is the culmination of what I have been thinking and writing about for the last year: how to block out negativity like self-pity, and achieve inner peace, and show kindness and compassion for others. Jill did it by losing her left hemisphere of her brain! Eight years later she fully recovered, but still chooses to remain right-brain dominant, because she liked the inner peace, and the ability to be kind and compassionate. Now that she has recovered the use of her left brain, she gets some of that previous neuronal activity for maybe 90 seconds; things like self pity and anger. But she has trained her brain not to allow those negative circuits to dominate (unless she wants to enjoy a good debate with someone about a subject she feels passionate about).
She describes the "euphoria," "oneness with the universe," "inner peace," "glorious bliss" and other similar adjectives she experienced when all she had was the right brain. That led me to wonder if God has placed our souls in our right brains!
5 comments:
This is an interesting question you bring up, Bob. Where exactly is the "soul?" In Genesis there are two points made about man: 1) He is made in the image and likeness of God, and 2) God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living being. So there is the basis for the classic view of man as spiritual, made in the image of God, and physical, a living being. But these parts are inseparable.
Here's my question, though, Bob, what if this woman had lost the function of her right brain and had to regain it from the left? According to the idea you are playing with, would she no longer have a soul? Are people who are left-brained by nature less spiritual? I think you would have to agree that the answer is no. What do you think about that?
Huh. That's a good question. Now, I'll be pondering that for days.
CIiff, "I think you would have to agree that the answer is no."
My left brain tells me that I do not have to agree. I think it is more difficult for a left-brain- dominated person to be loving, compassionate, kind, and to find inner peace.
She would continue to have a soul. It would be covered in blood and dead brain cells, waiting to heal, or to be called home.
But then again there's the agency aspect. She choose to let her left brain dominant until she couldn't due to a stroke. Then she decided to let her right brain continue to dominant because she liked it better. Still comes down to agency to me and that's an intergal part of our spiritual development. We choose. The painting always depicts the knob on the door is on our side. Let Christ in or not.
While it is interesting to study the great processes of the brain, the concept of the soul and the brain being one belongs to the materialistic atheists, who quote often the phrase, "the soul is what the brain does." This is too simple an answer, even for evolutionary neuro-psychologists. As for your assertion about the difficulties of "left-brain-dominated persons," I strongly disagree with you, based on the sheer number of the famous scientists, philosophers, professors, and leaders of history and the present age who are or were great believers, and very spiritual and compassionate. If you need a list, here goes: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, the Apostle Paul, Luke - the physician who wrote two books of the New Testament, Moses, Solomon, Blaise Pascal, Mortimer Adler, Francis Collins, William Wilberforce,
St. Thomas Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis, just off the top of my head.
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