Few days ago, I stumbled upon this very unique and interesting video. This is a talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor on her ‘Nirvana’ experience. In the morning of December 10 1996, Dr. Taylor had a brain stroke, a blood vessel in the left half of her brain exploded, and that’s when she experienced a great shift in awareness, she found Nirvana!
The way Dr. Taylor explains her experience is very similar to the way yogis and spiritualists explain their ‘enlightenment’ experience. Dr. Taylor says that we all can have such experience when we can switch off our ‘I and mine’ness, the sense of individuality, the thing more popularly called as ‘ego’. In almost all spiritual traditions, we are advised to renounce our selfish ego (or at least have conscious control over our ego) in order for our awareness to shift higher into more spiritual realms.
But it’s very unique to have a ‘brain scientist’ explain her ‘enlightenment’ experience. We know that there are two halves of the brain, left and the right. From what Dr. Taylor says, the left part of the brain is that which gives us the sense of individuality. The left part of the brain thinks sequentially, it’s the logical part of the brain, it’s that part of the brain which stores and analyses your past experiences and plans for the future. While the right side of the brain is what connects us to the universal consciousness, it’s the intuitive part of the brain, it’s all about the (present) moment, it’s all about Love, Peace and Joy. Dr. Taylor explains in the video how the dominant part of our brain controls our awareness.
Dr. Taylor says that we can willfully switch our awareness back and forth between the universal and individual consciousness when we can have control over the ego. She says that any of us can do this, and when when everyone living in the world can have this conscious control over themeselves, she pictures a “world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time.” A beautiful vision indeed!
