Joseph Campbell, in his seminal book, The Hero’s Journey, explains that one such heroic quest is into the underworld (what the Irish call ‘the otherworld’), the hero returning with a boon for his or her community.
The title of the book captures this exactly, for Jill Bolte Taylor (pronounced Boll-tee) slipped into this other world, within herself, aged thirty-seven, in December 1996. It’s suddenness was not unlike Persephone’s experience, although in Bolte Taylor’s case, it was a severe left-hemisphere stroke which pulled her down into the other world of the consciousness of her right-hemisphere.
It was only in retrospect that she understood – and her readers understand – how it was that witnessing the dissolution of so many of her perceptions and abilities she heard this thought: “Wow! This is so cool! Wow! How many neuroscientists have the opportunity to study their own brain function and mental deterioration from the inside out?”
This best-selling book tells of her unexpected pilgrimage, as she calls it, to a new understanding and appreciation of the wonder of the human brain and the mystery of human consciousness. Famously, she was an early TED talks speaker, holding a real human brain and its spinal column in one hand, to the bemusement of the live audience. (It garnered 8.6 million views online.)
The book is the story of the stroke, her full recovery (which took eight years) and what she learned about the brain and human consciousness, particularly how important it is to experience more fully what it is to be a human being by accessing the right brain as a counterpoint to the left.
In two short chapters it contains an accessible neuroscience primer to help the general reader understand enough about her stroke and the different, but complementary, forms of consciousness now known to characterise the left and right brain hemispheres.
As readers of Iain McGilchrist know, we live in an age in which the left hemisphere is dominant. With her right brain hemisphere released from the other’s domination, her consciousness became expansive, euphoric, connected to all things. Simultaneously she lacked the means of linearly processing the perceptions and abilities lodged primarily in the left hemisphere: the bounded sense of her body, being able to speak aloud or understand others speaking (but she could sense intent and emotion).
She was unable to tolerate bright lights, loud or unfamiliar sounds; unable to walk, see shapes, perspective or colours – thus unable to read or write either. Nor could she remember her past life. Yet, curiously, she knew who she was and there was still an inner voice, in a long present moment, which lacked the story-telling ability of the left brain.
All this is startling, gripping, uplifting and educational. However, the book has flaws.
The average British reader (myself as a proxy) will find her gushing ‘gospel of Bolte Taylor’ a challenge. This is in part because of her religiosity. Further, in appealing to the general reader, she overdoes the brain as a computer, so at odds with her experience of right brain consciousness and its functioning – nothing like any computer we are ever likely to see, hopefully. Most difficult, I found, was her over-eagerness to endow the left and right hemispheres with separate personalities (even more pronounced in her latest book, apparently) and in the way she eccentrically speaks to them in daily life.
Thus many of her views differ greatly from McGilchrist’s more nuanced and comprehensive examination of the consciousness of each hemisphere. That said, his books are tomes and not an easy read, although compelling, whilst Bolte Taylor’s book is a short read, still thought-provoking and well worth repeated readings.
© Kit Pearce