That eminent philosopher and avatar of the inner city, James Brown, once told a stadium full of devotees, “you got to use what you got to get what you want.”
Psychologists, neurobiologists and enlightened medicine men have repeatedly told us that humans are only using 10% of our brain capacity. Obviously, we’ve strayed from the path of the Godfather of Soul. We’re not using what we got. And that’s probably why very few of us are getting the world that we want.
The human brain isn’t a single unit, it’s a lot of “brains” layered one atop another and two brain hemispheres doing their things and viewing reality in completely different – and often opposing – ways.
The left-brain divides wholes into parts based upon external differences. Its function is what allows you to separate all these letters into different words. Home of the two speech centers, the Wierneke and Brocca, it communicates verbally. It utilizes syllogistic logic to, in vain, arrive at truth. Since truth is either “whole truth” or simply a misleading “fact,” the left-brain cannot possibly apprehend truth because it incessantly breaks wholes into parts and those parts into still smaller parts.
Left unchecked it will create so many divisions and separations that the essential unity of the object or event will be lost. The resulting false picture of the environment is the maya (illusion) bemoaned in Eastern philosophy.
The separative faculty of the left (“sinister”) brain creates sexism, racism, class distinction, medical malpractice and ecological injury to the environment.
The left-brain’s logical faculty can tell us that if a = b and b = c then a = c. But it’s deficit lies in the fact that is conclusions are only as valid as its premises, i.e., its fundamental presumption. It can, therefore, create whole libraries full of very logical nonsense.
The left-brain never wants to shut up. It’s the seat of the “monkey mind” meditators try so hard to silence and still.
The right brain combines parts into wholes based upon external differences (such as a lock and a key). Left unchecked it’ll create unions which are detrimental to the parts and the whole (like Ike and Tina Turner).
The right-brain’s integrative function produces art, harmony, diplomacy, marriage, parties, fashion, scientific apercus and eureka moments (like Einstein’s out-of-body trip, riding a beam of light which led to his Theory of Relativity), and the urge to experience unity with God.
The right brain is at least as intelligent as the left, but where the left communicates verbally, the right communicates graphically. It utilizes pictures, images, icons, music, form, rhythm and dance to get its point across.
The right-brain’s integrative function is what allows you to link these separate letters into words, separate words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs.
Left unchecked, however, it’ll decide “it’s all good” and unite a person with destructive activities like drug and alcohol abuse, unhealthy sensual pursuits and even disco music.
Meditation is the most effective means known of linking the two hemispheres to arrive at centered, balanced or integrated consciousness.
The brain also consists of three brains which sit atop one another.
The oldest, most primitive brain is the Reptilian brain (R-complex or brain stem). It is perched on the top of the spine and is the source of body language and the body’s swaying and rocking to music.
In meditation, as one begins to relinquish external Beta state (“monkey mind”) consciousness the body often will sway and rock involuntarily. That indicates consciousness has entered the Reptilian brain.
Covering the reptilian brain like a limbus is the mammalian brain. It is the seat of the emotions.
When a meditator enters Alpha brain wave consciousness (mediumistic trance) they may dream, move about or even speak. Mediumistic trance is a type of dream state in which the will is relaxed and the meditator sometimes speaks and moves according to the power of an archetype. But because the will is absent, the person rarely recalls what she said or did.
A light form of this type of trance is used by advertisers to get us to relinquish our will so we can be programmed to buy their products.
Waking trance is a hyper form of inner wakefulness that accesses the higher centers of the brain and stimulates dormant senses (like clairvoyance) into activity.
The first form of waking trance is characterised by deep, slow breathing which applies pressure to the pneumogastric nerve, which, by reflex, stimulates the waking centers in the R-complex and cerebral cortex. Eventually, the pituitary gland is stimulated and its secretions assist in granting visions and expanded consciousness.
A deeper form of waking trance takes the meditator to the Delta brain wave state where the mind’s thought-formation function relaxes and the mind becomes still and at rest in the no-thought zone. This is the Nirvana of Buddhism. The pineal gland is stimulated and its secretions allow consciousness to transcend space and time. In such a state deep knowledge of previously unknown subjects can be downloaded into one’s everyday consciousness.
The needs of modern human civilization have outgrown the minor miracles that our little left-brains can produce.
If we are to really embrace (and not pervert) our “global community” then we can start by employing meditative techniques to use more and more of the brain we’ve got so we can enjoy a whole lot more of the universe we want.