The Left Brain is Concerned with What it Knows

"The left brain is concerned with what it knows...the right brain with what it experiences."

The title of this post is taken from page 78 of The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist and I resonate with this sentence so strongly. In the past with left brain dominance, knowledge and knowing were all important. Those who could remember and recite spiritual literature were seen as gurus and followed in the belief that the states of spiritual consciousness suggested by such knowledge could be transmitted. Many devotees were disappointed when this state couldn't be transmitted, or at least not transmitted in a
permanent and lasting way. That which Knows cannot Experience — they are two different worlds. To go from one to the other requires a shift.

On page 79, Iain makes a fascinating (at least for me) distinction between left and right in terms of certainty:

'The left hemisphere likes things that are man-made. Things we make are also more certain: we know them inside out, because we put them together. They are not, like living things, constantly changing and moving, beyond our grasp. Because the right hemisphere sees things as they are, they are constantly new for it, so it has nothing like the databank of information about categories that the left hemisphere has."

This got me thinking about the ego and how it is something that human beings construct from the way we interpret ourselves and from the sensory information we ingest from world around us. It is formalized when we get language and then for the rest of our lives, we fight tooth and nail to maintain these constructs which takes the form of being right and defending a point of view.

This is not wrong. If taken from the perspective of what is written about the left brain in this book, it is a simply a structure we have put together. If we are aware of the tendency of the left brain to be rigid and inflexible, then we have a choice to shift — as choice is always possible with awareness. In ignorance, choice is not possible.

On page 80, the author goes on to say, "The right hemisphere is virtually silent, relatively shifting and uncertain, where the left hemisphere by contrast may be unreasonably, even stubbornly, convinced of its own correctness."

This makes sense to me because of how reluctant people are to shift their points of view or validate their opinions. There is a rigid rightness in the left brain, which doesn't allow for the right to express itself, which, in turn, really doesn't care about being right (no pun intended!).

Hemispheres of the Brain

To say that I am dining out on this book at the moment is an understatement. I am poring over each word in each sentence and resonating with all of it. For the first time in many years I feel the excitement that comes from being authentic, having finally found something that mirrors my thoughts and feelings about this topic.

This is an important book. If there wasn't the shift happening from the left brain to the right, I wouldn't be so excited, but it is happening. You only have to Google "spiritual awakenings" and you will find YouTube videos created by people speaking about this shift, which never happens in the same way for any two people, but whose effects and realizations are the same. The means are different depending on the quality of conscousness and the degree of awareness.

Finally, I don't want anything I write or quote from this book to be seen as a value judgement on the qualities of either hemisphere of the brain. Of course, I am biased towards the right brain because it's my natural orientation, but the left is also needed to organise what is experienced and give voice to the experiences of the right brain. The left has asserted mastery over the right for too long and must now assume the role of interpreter for the right brain.