The idea that there are 'left-brainers' and 'right-brainers' is a misleading oversimplification. The reality is that the two hemispheres have different specializations but work together unless your brain is damaged. As I read the research you quote, 'openness to spirituality' is about having a better-connected brain, not right brain orientation. More on this in my blog post: Left brain – right brain: Beyond the myth: https://adrianharris.org/blog/2020/02/04/left-brain-right-brain-beyond-the-myth/
Thank you Adrian and Don for reading (and for your thoughtful comments). I am aware that the picture is more complex than I may have laid it out. I debated with myself whether or not to go there as I was trying to make a broader point about modes of thinking. The brain example was really just a vehicle to do that—and I could have made that more explicit.
Well, yes and no. I noticed in your article you reference 1970s pop culture.
Are you familiar with Iain McGilchrist's work? For years, he had to start every presentation with, "Everyone you've learned about "the two brains" from the 1970s is wrong."
So he completely agrees with you.
Unfortunately, Adam has mixed up here the pop myths you rightly criticize and Iain's very different approach. Iain's view is very simple, and even he (I think) makes it much too complicated.
There are two major forms of attention (see, nothing about logic or emotion or creativity or terrible dry analysis here) that most humans employ most of the time:
1. Narrow, detail focused, linear, literal, quantitative, seeing the parts as more important than the whole
2. Wide, spherical, non linear, metaphorical, qualitative, seeing and distinguishing the parts but always in the context of the whole.
The problem with Iain's thesis is that generally and quite broadly speaking, the LH is the means by which #1 attention is mediated; and RH is the mediator for #2.
But not necessarily. In cases where one or the other hemisphere is damaged beyond "repair," both forms of attention are mediated by the remaining hemisphere.
So it's not really a brain thesis at all (and in fact, Iain admits this many times in his books and presentations). Its about attention.
And neuroscientists are pretty lame when it comes to studying attention (psychologist with strong neuropsychology background here, so I may be prejudiced)
Neuroscientific studies are generally done within very limited time frames (I don't mean the research is conducted in a limited time but it deals with limited time frames, which is why for example, Libet's famous experiments were originally thought to disprove free will, but when seen in a larger time context, they actually PROVE the reality of free will!)
Having said that much, I actually agree in essence with what Adrian writes. All of the brain is active all the time, and whatever one may find in the library with all kinds of scans hooked up to the brain, in practice our attention is so multidimensional it's counterproductive to try to single out one or the other with such precision.
In practice, it's quite easy to say:
1: Focus on the breath, try to exclude all other phenomena; don't pay attention to the experience of the breathing, just note the specific, identifiable features and make sure you analyze carefully how they relate to each other (Attention type #1)
2. Let your attention be open, with a gentle attention to the feeling of the flow of breathing be in the background, just attending enough to let the breath keep you from getting lost in thought. The features of breath (heavy, light, fast, slow, interrupted, flowing) etc may come to your attention but make no attempt to consciously label or analyze them or even to remember them. Let your attention be all encompassing, all embracing and let go of any judgments that may arise.
This is the most useful comment on McGilchrist's work I've read to date. I keep wondering how such a smart guy can have such a dumb theory, but it's not his theory that I keep hearing about but half baked misinterpretations. Your explanation - that's it's a theory about attention - makes it much more appealing. I'll go and read his book! Thanks!
Ok, I just kept going on your site, and got to an interesting article on mindfulness.
There may be - possible - as beautifully as you write about it - even more about what mindfulness is about.
I've been exploring talking to "doubters" and "skeptics' - especially people who say, "I've tried to meditate and I just can't" - and I ask them, 'Do you sleep?"
Think about the implications;
What is this person doing?
1. Creating an inspiring quiet, darkened environment
2. Getting their body into a position of complete stillness, yet utterly relaxed
3. Relaxing the whole body, allowing the breath to just be.
4. Slowly detaching attention from emotions, then from all thoughts,
5. Shifting into a radically different state of consciousness.
Now, every human being does this once a day from the moment they're born.
Is this sleep, or is it meditation?
And what's the difference?
Well, if you fall into apparent unconsciousness between step 4 and 5, we call it sleep.
if some kind of deep awareness reminds even after the mind falls asleep, we call it meditation.
Something to ponder (and by the way, there has been, since 1973, evidence that it's perfectly possible to be fully aware in stage 3 -delta wave- sleep. Since then, of course, we have countless accounts of near death experiences where awareness remains even when the brain is nearly flatlined, which makes it pretty obvious it's quite possible - and may be the case with all of us - that there is an awareness that remains present even in deepest sleep.
Gives a whole different sense of what meditation might be. To maintain that awareness in the midst of all activities - .......
Glad you liked it. Are you in the field of neuroscience or simply interested?
I mention this because I have a lot of major philosophic quibbles with McGilchrist's presentation - but my concern is because he doesn't go far enough away from physicalism, which puts me in a group of about 5% of neuroscientists.
I'm happy to say that among all "scientists" (I'm technically trained as a research scientist because that's how clinical psychology training is conducted, to include such training) I'm in a <1% category that questions physicalism, taking it to be more of a supernatural utterly faith based and ultimately incoherent religion rather than anything remotely scientific!
In the Katha Upanishad, circa 800 BC, "manas" is defined as that functioning of mind which makes two out of one, and "buddhi" as that which makes one out of two. That may sound like a very primitive rendering, but if you're familiar with Vedantic philosophy at all, it's a guide that could get us past literally all the problems in the world today (it's not merely a primitive, quaint "oneness" but literally, seeing all that is finite in the light of infinity, which is essentially what Chapter 10 of the Bhagavad Gita is all about). Also, in case you or anyone here has a passing acquaintance with Sanskrit, the meaning of both "manas" and "buddhi" has radically changed.
The worst aspect of McGilchrist's approach is - defying virtually universal contemplative traditions going back thousands of years, he thinks any sort of meditative practice is a "left brain" limited attempt at control, rather than the "openness" of the right hemisphere.
Having said all that, he certainly is brilliant and has many insights. I'd say, before you take all that time to read the book, look at some of his more recent videos. I find he's saying the same thing over and over again (pretty much what I summed up in the previous comment).
on the other hand, there's one chapter in Culadasa's "The Illumined Mind" (it's near the beginning, on "selective attention" vs "peripheral awareness") which has more in 20 or so pages than in all 3000+ pages of McGilchrist's books on practical applications. Culadasa - aka John Yates - was a neuroscience professor.
I wrote to him in 2016 after discovering his book, mentioning how similar his approach was to McGilchrist. Synchronistically enough, he had just the previous week read McGilchrist's 2010 book for the first time, and agreed on some similarities.
As far as practicality, students came to Culadasa with 20, 30 or more years of experience and said the way he integrated the two forms of attention enabled them to open to levels of pure mental silence in a way decades of practice hadn't.
I found the same thing. First meditated in 1973, had increasing moments of inner silence (which, by the way, many famous meditation teachers nowadays say is impossible) but never understood how to sustain the silence until I read Culadasa. Truly life saving (also, hard work, but it's not so much scientific /intellectual as simply going into astonishingly fine detail about what happens in very deep meditative states. All of science, sport, art, economics and politics would be utterly transformed if just this was put into action.
I work as a therapist/coach, but have a long term interest in neuroscience, especially embodied cognition and ways of knowing. I'm also interested in altered states, with a long term mindfulness practice and involvement in psychedelics. I'll definitely check out Culadasa. I too have experienced moments of mental silence, and would say they are, on average, becoming more frequent and longer. I also share your interest in what we might call metaphysics. I've had some interesting discussions with colleagues (Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes) about physicalism and alternatives. I'm an explorer rather than an academic in this, but learning and Panpsychism is of interest at the moment.
Great stuff, and a new name to check out. Just remember to focus in on that one chapter - Culadasa’s later chapters are a bit heavy going, and as Loch Kelly points out in his book “Effortless Freedom”, Alan Wallace has a book on the same Buddhist text that Culadasa does - and he gives a clue as to the short cut near the beginning.
The path normally involves months of hours a day practice, first perfecting unceasing attention on the breath, then longer and longer periods of mental silence until one can sit effortlessly in open, silent awareness for at least 4 hours, and beyond that it starts to pervade one’s entire day (and night, if you’re really advanced:>)).
THEN and only then, as Wallace put it in a Dzogchen workshop I took with him about 25 years ago, “you “turn around” and inquire - what is it that is aware of all this?
But Loch teaches differently, based on teachings he received in North India and Nepal about 40 years ago - as Wallace hints, for some people, it’s much more effective to start with awareness.
You simply inquiry, right now, “What is it that is awake and aware, here and now?”
As the Tibetans put it, “brief glimpses, many times.” Loch frames it, “Learn to return” (you touch open, empty awareness, and then forget. No problem, return again and again, as Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach sings in his Jewish version of “returning again and again.”
And “Train to remain,” _ more and more, as you return, the periods of resting IN awareness turn into resting AS awareness and then being an unbounded field fo awareness-energy pervading and constituting everything and nothing.
And at that point, one begins to have significant reservations about Whitehead, Spinoza and panpsychism altogether, but it’s hard to put it in appropriate philosophic terms (though for my money, Sri Aurobindo does a damn good job, except most people find him impossible to read:>))
Whew, I got chills up and down my spine reading this. It is ever so true! Thank G-d, I am more right-brained than left-brained. The left has a usefulness in coping with our humdrum tasks in life, but the right makes everything glorious. Thank you. Going to share it on FB. Maybe you will get even more happy readers.
The idea that there are 'left-brainers' and 'right-brainers' is a misleading oversimplification. The reality is that the two hemispheres have different specializations but work together unless your brain is damaged. As I read the research you quote, 'openness to spirituality' is about having a better-connected brain, not right brain orientation. More on this in my blog post: Left brain – right brain: Beyond the myth: https://adrianharris.org/blog/2020/02/04/left-brain-right-brain-beyond-the-myth/
Thank you Adrian and Don for reading (and for your thoughtful comments). I am aware that the picture is more complex than I may have laid it out. I debated with myself whether or not to go there as I was trying to make a broader point about modes of thinking. The brain example was really just a vehicle to do that—and I could have made that more explicit.
Well, yes and no. I noticed in your article you reference 1970s pop culture.
Are you familiar with Iain McGilchrist's work? For years, he had to start every presentation with, "Everyone you've learned about "the two brains" from the 1970s is wrong."
So he completely agrees with you.
Unfortunately, Adam has mixed up here the pop myths you rightly criticize and Iain's very different approach. Iain's view is very simple, and even he (I think) makes it much too complicated.
There are two major forms of attention (see, nothing about logic or emotion or creativity or terrible dry analysis here) that most humans employ most of the time:
1. Narrow, detail focused, linear, literal, quantitative, seeing the parts as more important than the whole
2. Wide, spherical, non linear, metaphorical, qualitative, seeing and distinguishing the parts but always in the context of the whole.
The problem with Iain's thesis is that generally and quite broadly speaking, the LH is the means by which #1 attention is mediated; and RH is the mediator for #2.
But not necessarily. In cases where one or the other hemisphere is damaged beyond "repair," both forms of attention are mediated by the remaining hemisphere.
So it's not really a brain thesis at all (and in fact, Iain admits this many times in his books and presentations). Its about attention.
And neuroscientists are pretty lame when it comes to studying attention (psychologist with strong neuropsychology background here, so I may be prejudiced)
Neuroscientific studies are generally done within very limited time frames (I don't mean the research is conducted in a limited time but it deals with limited time frames, which is why for example, Libet's famous experiments were originally thought to disprove free will, but when seen in a larger time context, they actually PROVE the reality of free will!)
Having said that much, I actually agree in essence with what Adrian writes. All of the brain is active all the time, and whatever one may find in the library with all kinds of scans hooked up to the brain, in practice our attention is so multidimensional it's counterproductive to try to single out one or the other with such precision.
In practice, it's quite easy to say:
1: Focus on the breath, try to exclude all other phenomena; don't pay attention to the experience of the breathing, just note the specific, identifiable features and make sure you analyze carefully how they relate to each other (Attention type #1)
2. Let your attention be open, with a gentle attention to the feeling of the flow of breathing be in the background, just attending enough to let the breath keep you from getting lost in thought. The features of breath (heavy, light, fast, slow, interrupted, flowing) etc may come to your attention but make no attempt to consciously label or analyze them or even to remember them. Let your attention be all encompassing, all embracing and let go of any judgments that may arise.
This is the most useful comment on McGilchrist's work I've read to date. I keep wondering how such a smart guy can have such a dumb theory, but it's not his theory that I keep hearing about but half baked misinterpretations. Your explanation - that's it's a theory about attention - makes it much more appealing. I'll go and read his book! Thanks!
Ah, just found you: https://adrianharris.org/blog/
Great article, very well written! If you feel like it, drop me a note at info@remembertobe.life
Ok, I just kept going on your site, and got to an interesting article on mindfulness.
There may be - possible - as beautifully as you write about it - even more about what mindfulness is about.
I've been exploring talking to "doubters" and "skeptics' - especially people who say, "I've tried to meditate and I just can't" - and I ask them, 'Do you sleep?"
Think about the implications;
What is this person doing?
1. Creating an inspiring quiet, darkened environment
2. Getting their body into a position of complete stillness, yet utterly relaxed
3. Relaxing the whole body, allowing the breath to just be.
4. Slowly detaching attention from emotions, then from all thoughts,
5. Shifting into a radically different state of consciousness.
Now, every human being does this once a day from the moment they're born.
Is this sleep, or is it meditation?
And what's the difference?
Well, if you fall into apparent unconsciousness between step 4 and 5, we call it sleep.
if some kind of deep awareness reminds even after the mind falls asleep, we call it meditation.
Something to ponder (and by the way, there has been, since 1973, evidence that it's perfectly possible to be fully aware in stage 3 -delta wave- sleep. Since then, of course, we have countless accounts of near death experiences where awareness remains even when the brain is nearly flatlined, which makes it pretty obvious it's quite possible - and may be the case with all of us - that there is an awareness that remains present even in deepest sleep.
Gives a whole different sense of what meditation might be. To maintain that awareness in the midst of all activities - .......
Glad you liked it. Are you in the field of neuroscience or simply interested?
I mention this because I have a lot of major philosophic quibbles with McGilchrist's presentation - but my concern is because he doesn't go far enough away from physicalism, which puts me in a group of about 5% of neuroscientists.
I'm happy to say that among all "scientists" (I'm technically trained as a research scientist because that's how clinical psychology training is conducted, to include such training) I'm in a <1% category that questions physicalism, taking it to be more of a supernatural utterly faith based and ultimately incoherent religion rather than anything remotely scientific!
In the Katha Upanishad, circa 800 BC, "manas" is defined as that functioning of mind which makes two out of one, and "buddhi" as that which makes one out of two. That may sound like a very primitive rendering, but if you're familiar with Vedantic philosophy at all, it's a guide that could get us past literally all the problems in the world today (it's not merely a primitive, quaint "oneness" but literally, seeing all that is finite in the light of infinity, which is essentially what Chapter 10 of the Bhagavad Gita is all about). Also, in case you or anyone here has a passing acquaintance with Sanskrit, the meaning of both "manas" and "buddhi" has radically changed.
The worst aspect of McGilchrist's approach is - defying virtually universal contemplative traditions going back thousands of years, he thinks any sort of meditative practice is a "left brain" limited attempt at control, rather than the "openness" of the right hemisphere.
Having said all that, he certainly is brilliant and has many insights. I'd say, before you take all that time to read the book, look at some of his more recent videos. I find he's saying the same thing over and over again (pretty much what I summed up in the previous comment).
on the other hand, there's one chapter in Culadasa's "The Illumined Mind" (it's near the beginning, on "selective attention" vs "peripheral awareness") which has more in 20 or so pages than in all 3000+ pages of McGilchrist's books on practical applications. Culadasa - aka John Yates - was a neuroscience professor.
I wrote to him in 2016 after discovering his book, mentioning how similar his approach was to McGilchrist. Synchronistically enough, he had just the previous week read McGilchrist's 2010 book for the first time, and agreed on some similarities.
As far as practicality, students came to Culadasa with 20, 30 or more years of experience and said the way he integrated the two forms of attention enabled them to open to levels of pure mental silence in a way decades of practice hadn't.
I found the same thing. First meditated in 1973, had increasing moments of inner silence (which, by the way, many famous meditation teachers nowadays say is impossible) but never understood how to sustain the silence until I read Culadasa. Truly life saving (also, hard work, but it's not so much scientific /intellectual as simply going into astonishingly fine detail about what happens in very deep meditative states. All of science, sport, art, economics and politics would be utterly transformed if just this was put into action.
I work as a therapist/coach, but have a long term interest in neuroscience, especially embodied cognition and ways of knowing. I'm also interested in altered states, with a long term mindfulness practice and involvement in psychedelics. I'll definitely check out Culadasa. I too have experienced moments of mental silence, and would say they are, on average, becoming more frequent and longer. I also share your interest in what we might call metaphysics. I've had some interesting discussions with colleagues (Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes) about physicalism and alternatives. I'm an explorer rather than an academic in this, but learning and Panpsychism is of interest at the moment.
Great stuff, and a new name to check out. Just remember to focus in on that one chapter - Culadasa’s later chapters are a bit heavy going, and as Loch Kelly points out in his book “Effortless Freedom”, Alan Wallace has a book on the same Buddhist text that Culadasa does - and he gives a clue as to the short cut near the beginning.
The path normally involves months of hours a day practice, first perfecting unceasing attention on the breath, then longer and longer periods of mental silence until one can sit effortlessly in open, silent awareness for at least 4 hours, and beyond that it starts to pervade one’s entire day (and night, if you’re really advanced:>)).
THEN and only then, as Wallace put it in a Dzogchen workshop I took with him about 25 years ago, “you “turn around” and inquire - what is it that is aware of all this?
But Loch teaches differently, based on teachings he received in North India and Nepal about 40 years ago - as Wallace hints, for some people, it’s much more effective to start with awareness.
You simply inquiry, right now, “What is it that is awake and aware, here and now?”
As the Tibetans put it, “brief glimpses, many times.” Loch frames it, “Learn to return” (you touch open, empty awareness, and then forget. No problem, return again and again, as Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach sings in his Jewish version of “returning again and again.”
And “Train to remain,” _ more and more, as you return, the periods of resting IN awareness turn into resting AS awareness and then being an unbounded field fo awareness-energy pervading and constituting everything and nothing.
And at that point, one begins to have significant reservations about Whitehead, Spinoza and panpsychism altogether, but it’s hard to put it in appropriate philosophic terms (though for my money, Sri Aurobindo does a damn good job, except most people find him impossible to read:>))
Whew, I got chills up and down my spine reading this. It is ever so true! Thank G-d, I am more right-brained than left-brained. The left has a usefulness in coping with our humdrum tasks in life, but the right makes everything glorious. Thank you. Going to share it on FB. Maybe you will get even more happy readers.
According to this my brain is healthy . Thanks for sharing ✨