[Gary]

And this all fits beautifully, I think, with Iain’s approach to the differentiation of function between the left and right hemispheres. The approach of the left hemisphere is analytic and mechanistic. The left hemisphere seeks deterministic certainty and this is what the mechanistic formalism provides for it. So it holds onto the fundamental belief that the universe is a physical mechanism which fits well with its materialistic, nominalistic foundation and its focal mode of attention that tends to see the trees, but not the forest. The left hemisphere approach is ‘bottom-up’ starting with the ‘pieces’ and moving toward putting them together to assemble the ‘whole’. This can work under restricted conditions and scales. Which is what it was evolved to do–basically to provide a non-veridical ‘interface’ with reality that enables survival in the context of physical embodiment at the human scales at which the evolved non-veridical sensory interface operates. But, as Donald Hoffman maintains, this is a NON-veridical interface that HIDES the underlying relational reality from us. In the context of human species-specific ‘meta-consciousness’, it is the left hemispheric perspective that dominates through language-encoded thought (ie. egoic ‘self-talk’). This is the ‘approach of the line’–ie. the linearization of externality.

The Right Hemisphere takes a completely different approach which is fundamentally relational and based on vibrational frequencies that link to the relational reality through interactive resonances and nonverbal communication. It interacts with the world through a holistic, relational approach that links to the ‘big picture’ through a global pattern-seeking view. And it operates through affective connection, through ‘feeling’. As opposed to the tendency of the left hemisphere to see everything as machinery, the right hemisphere links to the rhythms of life and through musicality. This is the approach of the circle which involves relational communicative connection with alterity through affect-based intuition. And the recognition that interaction between self and other occurs through cyclical dynamics in which the perceiving of the other changes the other which in turn changes the perceiver which in turn changes the other, which in turn changes the perceiver… and so on. All interaction is a cyclical ‘coupling’ of connectional influence. This is the magical mystique of the right hemisphere that is not readily articulated but can be felt in a context of attunement.