Two Halves of the Brain Make a Beautiful Whole

Iain McGilchrist's excellent book

The human brain is not much to look at; just a pinkish-grey mass with the consistency of firm jelly; but it is the seat of human consciousness, and contains upward of 100 billion densely inter-connected nerve cells, each one receiving, processing and passing information to other cells. According to Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist and highly accomplished author of The Master and his Emissary,* there are very likely more connections in the human brain than particles in the known universe. Even more remarkably, the brain’s two hemispheres, while similar, are different. The brain is asymmetrical, and the significance of this is highly revealing.

The two halves – left and right – are connected to each other by a band of between 300 million and 800 million fibres, the ‘corpus callosum’, yet only about 2 per cent of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex on each side are linked by these fibres. Furthermore, many of the connections in this transverse bundle are inhibitory. They are designed to stop the other hemisphere from interfering. Thus, to a considerable extent, the two brains are capable of operating separately, in parallel. They are structurally similar, but have significant differences of emphasis and function; and here is a paradox: although they work independently, they continuously maintain some contact with each other. Simultaneously, in other words, they work both separately and together. Indeed, in the right circumstances, they function as if one, working as a united whole.

The speech centres of the brain are in only one hemisphere, usually the left, and this forms part of a design in which that side of the brain tends to deal with ‘parts’, with pieces of information in isolation. The right side deals with whatever is under consideration as a ‘whole’. In general, the silent right brain is attuned to whatever is new, while the speech-capable left focuses rather on what is familiar.

Like a Forest - a Network of Brain Cells

In order to appreciate things whole and in their context, the right hemisphere has been found consistently to exhibit breadth and flexibility of attention (like a floodlight) compared to the focussed intensity of which the left hemisphere is more capable (like a spotlight). The left half discerns things removed from context and divided into parts – parts which it is able to name. From these, it then reconstructs a paradoxical ‘whole’: a whole that is not really whole. It is a concocted ‘whole’, of a qualitatively different nature from the seamless whole of unitary or ‘holistic’ perception.

According to McGilchrist, the human brain must attend to the world in two different ways at once. In one, we ‘experience’ as people the live, complex, embodied, world of individual, always unique beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world with which we are deeply connected. In the other, we ‘experience our experience’ as a re-presented version of it, containing static, separable, bounded, but essentially fragmented entities, grouped into classes, on which predictions can be based.

The two halves of the human brain bring two different types of world into being. The left-brain isolates, fixes and makes each thing explicit, but renders everything inert, lifeless and mechanical. On the other hand, it also gives us what we call knowledge, enabling us to learn and make things. The left brain, associated with right hand dominance, as well as being the seat of speech and language, is concerned with making and using tools and machines.

The right brain, which sees nothing in the abstract, only things in context, takes interest in what is living and personal. It enables self-awareness, humour, poetry and metaphor, and so helps to make our lives feel rich. Appreciating whole things, it is responsible for recognizing that faces are faces, not just juxtapositions of separate eyes, nose, mouth etcetera, as the left brain would see them. It therefore recognizes people as individuals, and appreciates even extremely rapid changes of facial expression. It is central, therefore, to satisfactory social interaction, and to those functions and abilities that enable we human beings to form emotional bonds. The right brain is involved in our very human capacities for empathy and compassion. By extension, it is also the seat of morality and our sense of justice; these matters being closely bound up with our emotional sensitivity to others

The Logical Left Brain and the Creative Right Brian

Concerning the two ways of thinking or knowing. The right hemisphere largely mediates ‘unitary’ or ‘holistic’, poetic, both/and type thinking, which involves knowing as experience. Here we have the sense of encountering something (especially someone – a unique living person) as a whole, with our whole being, in a particular context. This kind of knowledge is hard to put into words in a way that fully conveys the experience. The left hemisphere, in contrast, mediates rational, dualist, either/or thinking, which involves ‘knowing about’ something or someone, second-hand so to speak, from a list of impersonal facts and observations about them; such as their date of birth, height, weight, eye colour, skin colour and so on.

Both kinds of knowledge – unique (right brain) and general (left brain) – can, of course, be applied to the same object or person. Everyone ‘knows about’ clay, for example, but only a skilled potter or sculptor ‘knows’ clay intimately enough to become one with it and use it, almost like living matter, to create a distinctive object – a simple bowl perhaps – that is both useful and beautiful at the same time.

Left Brain - Right Brain Essential Reads

Developing Extraordinary Abilities Through Savant Syndrome

Why Some People Have “Two Left Hands”

Consider this enduring metaphor: “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” (Genesis 2: 7) It says that we human beings are made from the earth’s soil, from clay, by a great cosmic potter many call God, through a divinely creative cosmic breath and energy that may rightfully be called the Holy Spirit, for ‘spiritus’ in Latin can equally mean ‘breath’ or ‘wind’. Consider also this: “In his own image God made humankind” (Genesis 9: 6), which adds that, as the sacred universe expands and unfolds, we are capable of being potters too, both craftsmen and creative artists.

The task is to mould ourselves, and help fashion each other, into wiser, more loving and compassionate human beings. Evolving as a species, we shall need to exercise both halves of our brains, and learn better – more sympathetically – to co-operate with each other, to do that.

Copyright Larry Culliford

*Iain McGilchrist (2009) The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, New Haven & London; Yale University Press.

Larry’s books include ‘The Psychology of Spirituality’, ‘Love, Healing & Happiness’ and (as Patrick Whiteside) ‘The Little Book of Happiness’ and ‘Happiness: The 30 Day Guide’ (personally endorsed by HH The Dalai Lama).

Keep an eye open for Larry’s next book, ‘Much Ado About Something: A Vision of Christian Maturity’, to be published by SPCK London in 2015.

Listen to Larry’s Keynote Address to the British Psychological Society’s Transpersonal Section via You Tube (1 hr 12 min).

See Larry interviewing JC Mac about ‘spiritual emergence’ on You Tube (5 min).