[Rodney Marsh]

Heard another pointless radio discussion with parents from an ‘expert’ in digital matters about the use of devices in schools and about limiting screen time… all discussion seems to ignore the fact that the use of devices is, in essence, only uses a LH attention. This only further suppresses RH attention to the world and others and damages the user. NO solutions to the damage digital devices are doing to children and young people’s brains can come via technology. The LH attention MUST be suppressed for reality to be faced. Then time taken to join the flow of life and pay RH attention to what is – it is the only way ahead that will lead anywhere. At present the digital emphasis in education, promoted as a solution (to what? – the problems it has created) is leading children away from life, healing and hope. The ‘experts’ in these areas seem not to even be aware of the evidence IMG has provided for the necessity to pay RH attention. To do that we must teach kids how to suppress their LH in order to see with new eyes the world and others through their RH.

[Rodney Marsh]

Yes.

The governing metric must be utility for an AI but using such a closed data system it is not possible for the system to answer the question “utility for what?”

We are blindly following machine learning toward an undefined nirvana which may turn our to be a big black hole from which the giant gravity permits no escape! Maybe no different to what we’re doing now only speeding up the descent.

[Rodney Marsh]

Stop Press: AI researchers install a Right Hemisphere<div>

I had argued in the general discussion (which I wrote before reading ch 22 on Time) that since a data based approach cannot have a right hemisphere attention nor a presence in the ‘eternal now’ of the present moment – It can never have a RH virtue/conscious present attention to tasks or opinions expressed. The moderation of a RH AI instalation MUST we rules based (and rules can be gotten around!). Nor can AI ever have the imagination for what is not yet known and have an Eisteinian “ah ha” moment. This new form of intelligence is very backward looking. AI will fix us in an eternal loop from which it could never provide an escape route. Combined with an infinite capacity for banal evil I think it very dangerous. Does ANYONE see holes in this opinion? What should/could we do?

“AI, both machine learning and language models, using an immense superhuman data bank are uncannily predictive on the basis of past learnings and so can help create great new tools to live with reality. But only creative human attention to the ‘now’ can provide the knowledge needed to live into a secure future for a rapidly changed and changing world. Past human insight and wisdom, harvested by AI, will be necessary to build the world of the future, but a secure future cannot be built without the creative leadership of the open attention of the right hemisphere to the present moment. As Jesus said, a true teacher “brings out new and old treasures from the storeroom.” Most importantly, the living practices of training the attention and paying attention, which are embodied in the world’s Wisdom meditation practices, are always ‘in the moment’ and hold the keys to humanity living in harmony with what is. We cannot live into the future without building on the past, but neither can we walk backwards into the future using old methods to solve new problems.”

(The footnote was

”…we fear that the most popular and fashionable strain of A.I. — machine learning — will degrade our science and debase our ethics by incorporating into our technology a fundamentally flawed conception of language and knowledge.” Opinion | Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT – The New York Times (nytimes.com) It seems to me that a purely left hemisphere machine learning system can only have a ’second hand’ right hemisphere perspective so, whilst it can be immensely useful, there are no limits to the damage it can do. In life, only the right hemisphere can provide limits to the left hemisphere‘s capacity for banal evil. For the opposite opinion see scottaaronson.blog ”The False Promises of Chomskyism” and an interesting discussion particularly Chatbot’s own opinion (comment#16) that it possesses a ”unique kind of intelligence”.)

</div>

[Rodney Marsh]

I understand Don what you mean by ‘a negative meaning – a kind of religious catechism’ since often, in Christianity at least, the ‘physical’ (bad) is opposed to the ‘spiritual’ (good). However, in the New Testamant this opposition between the material and the spiritual does not hold up. A better interpretation is that the material creation is spiritual hence the Jewish Christian belief in the resurrection of the body and the early condemnation of gnosticism which affirmed an evil/corrupted creation from which true believers could be spiritually rescued from the material. It is the case that ‘believe in Jesus and you’ll be rescued from Earth’s suffering and go to a blissful heaven’ (the slave religion of the US) is a modern version of this gnostic heresy. The Bible reather teaches a reconciliation between God & humankind, the physical and spiritual and a restoration of heaven on earth. This tendency for a LH escapist approach to religion/science/politics anything is not restricted to Christianity but seems to be a human phenomena to live in ‘unreality’ rather than find meaning in experience.

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks for the wonderful, information in this thread – the videos and the discussion… From the literary end and the Wisdom traditions end I wish to add perspective on Danial Dennett’s views…

Marilynne Robinson in “The Givenness of Things” (2015) writing on Humanism says “… the spirit of our times is one of joyless urgency, many of us preparing ourselves and our children to be means to inscrutable ends that are utterly not our own.” Then, astoundingly it seems, notes “the antidote to our gloom is to be found in contemporary science.” But NOT, it seems in Neuroscience, because the data gathered is seen to represent the “the whole of reality” and so “seem predisposed to the conclusion there is no “self.” Then says, “But to take a step back. It is absurd for scientists who insist on the category “physical,” and who argue that outside this category nothing exists, to dismiss the reality of the self on the grounds that that its vulnerabilities can be said to place it solidly within this category. How can so basic an error of logic survive and flourish?” I suspect this rejection of the (ludicrous) materialistic reductionist reasoning was written without any familiarity with Iain’s writing. But who would endanger their scientific career by naming the elephant in the room…

‘Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole’ (IG). Seeing the whole and the bits. So Robinson, “But for these scientists it is a business of nuts and bolts, a mechanics of signals and receptors of what no more need be known. Their assertions are immune to objection and proof against information. One they dismiss and the other they ignore”. But then, what would a novelist (from the Humanities!!!) know about hard Neuroscince.

‘The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious’ (IEP). This problem seems to be intractable to the nuts and bolts approach of the LH. However, we can use a different attention to approach the problem – to question what is meant by ‘physical state’ & to ‘see the whole’ – and once we do that and take a RH approach to reality (Part III ch 20-26) the hard problem does not disappear but is changed by being absorbed into the ‘mystery’ of eternal becoming. What will emerge?

I had been thinking about the ‘self” from the Wisdom end of thinking. It seem mistaking the map (bits) for the terrain (whole), is a ubiquitous sin. Time for Dennett and Dawkins and others to repent (metanoia – change your mind & go in a different direction). Here is what I wrote in an afternote of my essay of education.

Does the individual ‘self’ exist?141 This question mimics the question “Does God exist?” These questions are left hemisphere framed category questions based on the presupposition that only ‘things’ exist. Neither the self nor God exist as an object within ‘what is’ and they cannot be dismembered and forensically examined by some separate self-consciousness (ie: me). There is no ‘view from nowhere’, when examining the experience of being and becoming. The material/machine model of reality is not a view from nowhere and is not capable of independently examining lived reality with a view to answering the above ontological questions. Descartes thought that ‘thoughts’ (parts) exist, so a ‘thinker’ (whole) must exist since ‘non-material thought’ must be caused by a ‘thinking me’. He was wrong. This is ‘materialistic’ reasoning and has led Western Philosophy down the ‘ghost in the machine’ rabbit hole and set up more than one ‘hard problem’ to amuse Western philosophers for hundreds of years. McGilchrist has clearly shown that no aspect of reality, when re-presented as a machine with parts to be examined, can live. Such ‘bits’ can only participate in reality when they are re-presented to the RH to be integrated into the flow of life. ‘Dem bones’ (concepts, thoughts, maps or models of being), do not and cannot live. The body/mind category, when applied to a living person, can never describe or understand the experience of a lived life in any meaningful or adequate sense. The rule is that life can only be lived, never examined. Only in the abandonment of a left hemisphere examination of experience (though it is still true that the unexamined life is not worth living). For ‘dem bones’ to live they must first die, then, after disposing of all analysis, words and concepts, return to the open, receptive, unknowing, empty attention to what is (this is living ‘the examined life’). It seems to be a Divine command that only when we say, “…our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, there’s nothing left of us”, then, and only then, will God say, “I’ll breathe my life into you, and you’ll live. Then I’ll lead you back to your own place and you’ll realise that I am God. I’ve said it and I’ll do it. God’s decree.”142 Living as ‘me’ is the examined life, not thinking about my experience of living. With respect to the existence of the ’self’ (or individuated ’soul’ or ’spirit’), the fact that the map is not the terrain (= the ego is not the self) cannot be used to argue that the terrain (self) does not exist. In “The Matter with Things” Iain McGilchrist has provided a wonderful map to reality, but only a reader, through participation in ‘the flow of becoming’ that their individuated unique life is, can ’know’ life. This, of course, as McGilchrist shows, has always been known and taught. After all, the “Buddha did not say, “You don’t exist.” He only said, “You are without self… Your nature is nonself”. Both the concepts of ‘non-self’ and ‘self’ are themselves only notions, words, concepts by which we attempt to systematise and understand our life. These concepts are a locked gate when approaching the experience of reality. As the Buddha said, “We only have these notions, and we suffer because of them”.143 The mystical traditions (apart from Buddhism), emphasise the existence of a ‘true self’ sharply distinguished from the gaggle of false ‘selfs’ we carry with us. These delusions of the ’self’ must die if we are to live. Then when ’trueself-noself’ encounters its own place in what is, there ’enlightenment’ flows. Here there is no separate self-consciouisness only ’pure consciousness’. “We become like the eye that cannot see itself, that sees all”144. For the Oneing of ’self’ with ’being’, Christian mystics speak of union with God – a Oneness at the centre of our image-of-God-true-self with the Being and Becoming of God. Hindu teachers emphasise ’enlightenment’ (Moshka) when the ‘true self ’ (Atman) is released from the cycle of existence (Samsara) to know “I am Brahman“145. All traditions agree that the ‘false-selfs’ must die (be decreated) for the non-self = true-self to emerge. When the non-self and true-self (the image of God self, referred to above) become one there is enlightenment, union with God, Nirvana. This ’state’ is not, however, stasis. Neither is it some ‘thing’ or ‘no-thing’. Rather it is a participation in the flow of being. So, Thich Nhat Hanh (Buddhist tradition) says, “Emptiness does not mean nonexistence. It means interdependent coursing, impermanence, and nonself”146 (McGilchrist could have written that!). Ramana Maharshi (Hindu tradition) regards the central task for each life is to answer the question “Who am I?”. To discover an answer to “Who am I?”, Ramana takes a via negativa or apophatic way (perhaps Daniel Dennett could try this?). After negating options and deciding ‘not this’, ‘not that’, He asks: “I am none of these, then who am I? … that Awareness which alone remains – that I am.”147 For Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, this (image of God) centre is “a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth … which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. [It] is the pure glory of God in us … It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.”148 These three traditions concur that the no-self and the self are found together in the ’nothingness’ and ’emptiness’ of ’union’, ‘enlightenment’ and ’pure consciousness’. 149

141 I wrote on the question of the ’self’ before being informed by reading Mc Gilchrist’s answer to the question: “Should you be yourself?” in ch. 21 of The Matter with Things. Readers would be well advised to read his account for a broadly informed view.

142 ”Dem bones Dem bones Dem dry bones, Hear the word of the Lord.” …finishing with, ”Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around. Hear the word of the Lord.” Song based on Exekiel 37. Quotes from Ezekiel 37:1-17 (MSG).

143 Quotes from Your True Home –The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh Compiled and edited by Melvin Mcleod

144 “The Way of Attention” by John Main OSB in The Hunger for Depth and Meaning, ed. by Peter Ng (Singapore: Medio Media, 2007), p 196. Sam Harris makes the same point in “Waking Up – A Guide to Spirituality without Religion” He quotes Douglas Harding’s experience described in On having No Head as “… an unusually clear description of what it’s like to glimpse the nonduality of consciousness.”

145 ”Whoever knows the self as “I am Brahman,” becomes all this universe.” Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10 Ātman (Hinduism) – Wikipedia, Brahma is both creator of all things and all things created – ”This Being (neuter) entered all beings, he became the overlord of all beings.

That is the Atman (Soul, Self) within and without – yea, within and without!” — Maitri Upanishad 5.2 Brahma – Wikipedia. Sounds a bit like panentheism to me.

146 Your True Home –The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh Compiled and edited by Melvin Mcleod loc 110

147 “1. Who am I? The … body …, I am not; the … senses …, I am not; the five (organs)… functions speaking, moving, grasping, excreting, and enjoying, I am not; the … airs, (in-breathing, etc.), I am not; even the mind which thinks, I am not; … the residual impressions of objects, and in which there are no objects and no functioning’s, I am not. 2. If I am none of these, then who am I? After negating all of the above-mentioned as ‘not this’, ‘not this’, that Awareness which alone remains – that I am.” Who Am I? (Nan Yar?) The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi https://www.sriramanamaharshi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/who_am_I.pdf

148Quotes from Christ lives, alleluia! — Living Water (thelivingwater.com.au Also, ”Benedictine monk John Main also described this centre beautifully when he wrote that it is in our hearts that Christ prays day and night. “I can describe it only as the stream of love that flows constantly between Jesus and his Father. This stream of love is the Holy Spirit.”

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks Don

V wise and knowledgeable as usual and interesting stuff about Aurobindo.

I hope Robinson has read McGilchrist… and vice versa. I’m sure they would both inform the other.

My own uninformed opinion comes from my intuitions informed by the Christian faith and the affirmation that it provides (through the central doctrines of the incarnation and resurrection) of the importance of ‘matter’ (the body) as part of the process IMG describes and affirms as God and the importance of mythos in understanding and celebrating becoming.

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks, Lucy, for your comment. I think learning techniques and ways to suppress (if that’s the right word) the LH is an urgent need for all humans in the 21stC. One of IMG’s main insights is that the fibres connecting the hemispheres are mainly inhibitory – so when one hemisphere is attending to a task which is energy consuming and needs concentration it tells the other hemisphere to “keep out of this – none of your business”. The trouble is that nobody seems to use anything other than LH attention these days. The necessity for suppressing the LH in order to understand what is and who I am, explains why all mindfulness/meditation requires the withdrawal of attention from tasks, memories, resentments, hopes, desires, prayers, images etc… so the attention of the RH can attend to… ? (what) – essentially a RH attention is empty and open to what is – the other. This can be applied in education in so many ways – teaching students to attend to a flower, a bird, music, poetry etc…. not LH attention to break these down into bits and analyse and control and ‘understand’ but an open attention which lets the other be that which it is… So I think it is entirely useless to teach children (or adults) about the dangers of too much screen time when we have such weak wills to control or change behaviour. I argue in the essay attached that teaching meditation is ONE traditional way adopted (in different forms) by all Wisdom traditions to suppress LH attention and train the mind to attend to what is with open attention. As to the LH being essential, so it is, just not when you want to be not do. As one child described their meditation time in class – “we meditate, then we do maths” (right priority, I think).

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks for an interesting reply Don

Before I read IMG Marilynne Robinson’s Terry Lectures published as “Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self“. A central dogma of Christianity has always been the resurrection of the body and Christians have never believed in a ‘separate immaterial (superior) invisible self (soul)’ – Robinson’s views are orthodox that a dualistic view has never been an element of Christianity. I knew I couldn’t do Robinson justice so I asked Bing to summarise her views on the soul and compare them to Buddhist views…..

“Marilynne Robinson is a novelist and essayist who delivered the Terry lectures at Yale University in 2009. Her lectures were published as a book titled Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self¹.

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks Mike, very enlightening…. Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek published “Fundamentals : ten keys to reality” in 2021. He gives a summary of current thinking about fundamental particles – quarks etc (technical details https://pdg.lbl.gov/) and his book ends (ch 10) with a very IMG chapter “COMPLEMENTARITY IS MIND-EXPANDING”

This is the beginning of the chapter:

“Complementarity, in its most basic form, is the concept that one single thing, when considered from different perspectives, can seem to have very different or even contradictory properties. Complementarity is an attitude toward experiences and problems that I’ve found eye-opening and extremely helpful. It has literally changed my mind. Through it, I’ve become larger: more open to imagination, and more tolerant. Now I’d like to explore with you the mind-expanding insights of complementarity, as I understand them.

The world is simple and complex, logical and weird, lawful and chaotic. Fundamental understanding does not resolve those dualities. Indeed, as we have seen, it highlights and deepens them. You can’t do justice to physical reality without taking complementarity to heart.” A RH approach…

Here is the end of the section on complementarity in science:

“… complete understanding of the fundamental laws, if we ever achieved it, would be neither “the Theory of Everything” nor “the End of Science.”* We would still need complementary descriptions of reality. There would still be plenty of great questions left unanswered, and plenty of great scientific work left to do. There always will be.”

Wilczek makes no reference to IMG but reaches astoundingly similar philosphical conclustions. To make progress it seems we all must respect the coincidentia oppositorum!

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks Don for this helpful explanation

I am now ploughing through ch20- 28 and my understanding is that Becoming/Being in Time and Consciousness just are… they fundamental properties of what is and resist analysis at any level.

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks for your reply sjahari but I must confess my ignorance of any section of brain science. I have entirely relied upon Iain and have no capacity to extend or comment on his conclusions. I have dipped my toes in the ocean of mysticism and have a passing acquaintance with philosophy, but going as far as commenting on things like ‘synchronicity as explored by Harald Atmanspacher’ I know nothing. I know Jung’s ego and archetypes have parallels in mystical thinking, but I do not know who has explored this in relation to the hemisphere hypothesis. So often in these areas (neurobiology, psychology, etc) I think we work via negativa (see the Ramana quote) using science and reason to eliminate various suggestions or finding an interest is sparked for further exploration.

I too, like Zak would be interested in learning about Jung’s archetypes in relation to the hemispheric hypothesis. You say, “These archetypes that create synchronistic events.” and speak about these archetypes (angels or devils?) having purpose and agency, “They do it because they can do it. And I guess occasionally they do it for a purpose.” I am wary. It sounds like Aldous Huxley’s acceptance of ‘an intermediate world between matter and spirit – that fascinatingly odd and exciting psychic universe, out of which miracles and foreknowledge, ‘spirit communications’ and extra-sensory perceptions make their startling irruptions into ordinary life.” (in “The Perennial Philosophy” p437). Personally, I am sceptical. We have no tools to investigate an alternative universe. I do think however, even if these phenomena are investigateable and investigated it would be difficult to get ‘published’! Having LH methods and presuppositions (eg using segmented time) investigate alter the RH is impossible – but the reverse is life.

[Rodney Marsh]

Thanks for replying Don…. Your thoughts and experience are very valuable. I will patiently absorb your wise words.

[Rodney Marsh]

a few more points….

1. I can take nothing of my scant knowledge of the hemisphere hypothesis into my practice of silence and stillness. Like everything, it must be decreated, but since it is part of the flow of my life. Yet, what is ‘given up’ of our life is, however, restored in full, nothing is lost. Much more is gained that cannot be discovered without the first self being lost. This mystical insight is surely of cruicial importance in psychology.

2. Upon observing my meditation practices there are two other ‘hemispheric’ practices I use: – I rest my right (LH) open hand in my open left hand (RH) in representation that it is now time for the LH to rest and assure it that is being safely supported by the RH – I pay (not always, but often) attention to my breathing in a chiastic way: in breath with attention to the RHS of my body and LHS of my brain and in the out breath switch attention to the LHS of my body and the RHS of my brain. I tried the Yogic bi nostril breathing and without blocking one side of my nose with my finger (just using attention) – this goes: out (RHS) in (LHS) out (LHS) in (RHS) out (RHS) but I found it difficult and switched to my own version.

3. The relevance of neuroscience for psychological practice…. I remember reading pre- McGilchrist Marilynne Robinson in ‘The Givenness of Things’ in her chapter on Humanism of how a non-scientific neurology has removed the humanity from humanism. “Nothing can account for the reductionist tendencies among neuroscientists except a lack of rigor and consistency, a a loyalty to conclusions that a prior to evidence and argument, and an indifference to science as a while.”….. “One might reasonably suspect that the large and costly machines that do the imaging are very crude tools whose main virtue is that they provide the kind of data their uses desire and no more.” etc. etc. devastating critique!

[Rodney Marsh]

I meant the “I” of me is time-bound (LH) not the present moment (RH)

[Rodney Marsh]

Hi again Don

Your question has been like an earworm!

How has the ‘hemispheric’ world view changed my walking the dog? …listening to music? …eating? …meditating?

The answer is the same ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ – I take all I am with me into the present moment – I have no choice – I don’t like lots of the memories, plans, views (hemispheric or not) attitudes, emotions, body pains, but I have no choice – I carry all of me body-mind-relationships (Augustine used the traditional division – memory, understanding & will – to describe our mind) with me at all times, everywhere I go, for that is who I am. So in a sense ‘technique’ (right, left or religious or otherwise) are irrelevant. BUT the none of ‘me’ that I take into the present moment (because it is time-bound etc) so meditation becomes for me a (sometimes frustrating) dispossession of me by turning up and being where I am, who I am.

I could not turn up and be present to my life if I wasn’t using the agency of my LH, but no LH agency can participate in the flow of being in the present moment of my life. My being (‘me’) is participating in the flow of the present moment and meditation, walking, music, being a part of Nature etc. etc. All matter is holy because it participates in this flow of being. The gift to humans is that we can dispose ourselves and become aware of our place in the flow of life.

‘Techniques to balance the hemispheres’ appears on the surface to me to be a LH trap into which we must not fall. To add Iain’s view of who I/the world is and how I/the world work to the list of control mechanisms for life would be a giant betrayal – though that is how I fear many will react to it!

God’s name given to Moses (YWH) means ‘I will be who I will be’ indicating that it is not possible to control God.