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Neuroanatomist and author Jill Bolte Taylor comes to Nonviolence Radio to talk about her understanding of the brain, consciousness and what we are as humans. She explores the nature of experience, both a kind of transcendent oneness revealing the interconnectedness of all things and the more familiar everyday sense of being in this particular body, at this spot in the world, as an individual. Jill insists that we all have the potential to cultivate our capacity to feel the kind of beautiful unity she herself experienced after a stroke, there are simple ways to direct and orient our brains so that we can gain a broader sense of what, where and who we are:
…what does the practice of meditation give you? It quiets that linearity across time. It quiets the cells giving you language. It quiets all those wonderful things that the left brain does so that you can have this expansive experience and peaceful moment of the instant of being at one with all that is.
This fundamental experience of oneness, of being fully in the present and in loving relationship with all other beings, reflects what part of our brains – our neurons and cells – do naturally; it is just a matter of learning to get out of the way to let them do it.
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Stephanie: Greetings Everyone and welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I’m your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I’m here with my cohost Michael Nagler. We’re from the Metta Center for Nonviolence.
Well, it was Gandhi who said that ahimsa, or nonviolence, is a science. And this aspect of the science of nonviolence and the science of our brains and how they relate to peacebuilding, nonviolence work – all of that – is one of deep interest to us at the Metta Center and here on Nonviolence Radio.
We had the opportunity to speak with neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. It was really a conversation about what it means to be human. In 1996 she experienced a stroke, and as a neuroscientist, she witnessed what was taking place in her brain. And all through this process and her recovery from it, she was observing it. When she emerged, she had a greater sense of a vision of peace for the world and insights to share with all of us about the brain and life and death, and again, what it means to be a human being.
You might even have heard of her from her Ted Talk, which was one of the first ones to ever go viral called, “My Stroke of Insight.” She also has a book by that name. Her latest book is “Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life,” which I highly recommend for anyone interested in understanding how to live a more peaceful life. And it draws from, again, that experience that she had after her stroke and recovery from it. And she repackages it in a way that helps us to have more control and understanding and even mastery over our own neural processes and the characters, as she mentions, that drive our life.
She says, “Peace is only a thought away.” So, let’s turn now to our interview with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
Jill: I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. And I’m the author of two books. One is “My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey.” And then a few years ago I wrote “Whole Brain Living The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life.”
And you may recognize me from my Ted Talk. It was the first Ted Talk to ever go viral, back in 2008.
Stephanie: Cool. Thank you. One thing I want to share is, Michael and I are both dedicated meditation practitioners, and we work in nonviolence. Our particular interest in meditation is the role of mysticism. And one special interest that we have in nonviolence is the science of nonviolence.
So, you sort of embody all of those sides for us. And it makes me think – I don’t know if you know of the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich?
Jill: I do not.
Stephanie: She was a nun. Mystical experience of meeting and seeing Christ that she had sort of longed for for her entire life and practice. And it happened to her when she was somewhat young, and then she did her first presentation of that material. And then years later she did a second book. How did they describe it?
Michael: She called it, “The showings.”
Stephanie: Yeah. The shewings. “Shewings”
Michael: The shewings.
Stephanie: And then later she did another version of that book, the same story, but from a more distanced perspective. And now that she had gotten a little bit older, what she realized about that experience. I feel like you’re a bit of a –
Michael: A modern Julian.
Stephanie: Modern Julian of Norwich in this way, between your “Stroke of Insight” and “Whole Brain Living”-
Jill: How exciting. How exciting.
Michael: Yeah. That was the 14th century we’re talking about.
Jill: Well, you know, it takes a few hundred years for people to come back around again.
Michael: Yeah. I guess it does. Hopefully, a little smarter than before.
Jill: Well, you know, that’s the beauty of linearity of time, is that, you know, it continues. And it just keeps marching on and we either march with it, against it, or we ignore it, you know?
Stephanie: Well, what that brings up is our kind of evolutionary mandate as well, is that you describe the workings of the brain so beautifully, that our brain is evolving as we are alive, and that we’re evolving towards some greater collective understanding of who we are. Can you speak to that?
Jill: Well, yeah. I mean when you think about the brain, think about the brain as a collection of cells. And, you know, the difference between what’s going on in the present moment, the present moment – consciousness has a value for what is happening in the present moment. It cares.
So, if I truly bring myself into the present moment, then my awareness and acknowledgement of what is now expands. And I expand because I’m a part of it, and it’s a part of me. And that’s a completely different experience and value than if I care about the past and I care about what is right and wrong and what is good and bad and what is the structure that my left brain now is going to place on what it values because it is measuring itself in relationship to a social norm.
And as soon as I have to fit my energy of the present moment experience of what I always am here in the present, as soon as I have to fit myself into a social norm that says there is a right and wrong and a good and bad, and comparison starts happening between me and that which is outside of me, I’m in a whole other world, which has a different definition of value.
But I still exist then as this consciousness that is capable of all of it, both of these conditions. So, how do I find my own peace? How do I find my own value? Anxiety doesn’t happen in the present moment when I am accepting of all that is and what is is, and I’m good with it.
Anxiety happens in that knowledge of the past and that anticipation of what I need the future to look like. And oh my God, will I ever be able to construct myself in that definition in order for me to fit into a societal norm where I excel, and I’m accepted, and I’m loved based on the conditions of that external world?
So, as the evolution of our relationship with ourselves happened – which is really an acknowledgement and an embracing of these different parts of who we are – recognizing the value of all of them, and that, in the big picture – because I am a part of the big picture, and the big picture is a part of me – in that acceptance of what is, that’s where I find peace.
And if I can find my peace in the acceptance of what I am in relation to the presence of what I am in relationship to what is around me, and I feel that peace, then I bring my peace into the world instead of just experiencing that anxiety in comparison.
Who knew we were going to have such a wonderful conversation this morning? I’m so glad we’re doing this. [Laughter] Because I don’t get to talk about this at this level, you know? I love it.
Michael: We’re loving it too. Talk away.
Jill: Yeah. That’s beautiful.
Stephanie: I was thinking about the definition of Maya, of the – is it a Sanskrit term, Maya?
Michael: Yeah.
Stephanie: Maya is considered ignorance or everything that’s false.
Michael: Appearance.
Stephanie: Appearance. But it also means that which can be measured.
Michael: Yeah. The root meaning of Maya is – the root, “ma” means to measure. So, when you impose measurement on something including, I would say especially the measurement of time – past, present, and future, it is already a big step away from its actual real self.
Jill: Exactly. I agree completely. Yeah. You know, because in measurement comes that definition of that left brain that says, “We’re going to say this is right and this is wrong,” right? “This is good and this is bad. Here’s the definition.”
And now, which are based on “it,” whatever it is – the big picture, the right/wrong, good/bad of societal norm. Well, you know, that’s very naïve if it is constricted away from the context of the present moment. Because the present moment changes.
So, you know, a simple example is, the left brain comes in and says it is wrong to kill, right? It is wrong to murder. Well, yes, under the circumstances – rigid circumstances of that, that is true. But then all of a sudden, we’re at war. And because we’re at war, now we have expanded into the conditions of the present moment, but we are at war.
And so, now, to kill becomes a standard accepted value. And so, once we end up now with the soldier, who believes that it is wrong to kill, and we take them and we put them in a war situation and we say, “But under these conditions, now you need to give up everything that you believed to be true or of value and go sacrifice your life in war.”
I mean, this is where, you know, we are trained to be one way and we’ve lost the understanding of us as a whole. And so, we end up traumatized because of the situation that we were just thrown into. And then, oh, now war is over, so now you got to go home. And you got to put your little children to bed again. And in the meantime, you’ve not resolved all of this confusion, and real violence on your own being. And we’ve not prepared you now to go home and be peaceful again.
So, there’s this naivety in where we are as a society sets us up for incredible intra – intra within me – conflict. And then conflict with my society, as well as conflict just within the different pieces of who I am.
Michael: It’s always bothered me that we kind of sanitize that whole experience by giving it a technical term. They say, “Oh, that’s moral injury.” Yeah. We know about that.
Jill: How interesting. Moral injury. I like that. Yeah. I’m not familiar with that term.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah, there’s books about it, as a matter of fact. What I don’t like about it is, as I say, that you know, language always has a way of distancing the immediacy of experience. And so, therefore, the lesson is lost. The fact that we have 20 service people a day committing suicide is like a huge lesson in letters 20 feet high. Don’t do this, you know. Do not kill. Do not make men kill. But we’re not – we don’t get it, partly because we pin this label on it.
Jill: Right. Yeah. No, it is true as soon as we reduce something to a title, as soon as we name it, it is no longer what it was. It is now the label.
Michael: Do we have any idea of the process on the molecular level which enables neurons to be conscious of the passage of time?
Jill: Well, there is a group of cells. Yes. The answer is yes. There is a group of cells in the left parietal region of the brain. And think about where is language? Language is also going to be the frontal and the posterior portions of Broca’s region and Wernicke’s region. Where Broca’s brings the ability to create sound. Dog. Dog is a sound.
And then meaning is placed on that. And the meaning is placed based on what it knows from its past. How is – what is a dog? When I learn a new word, I learn a new word based on now information that is fueling that. So, I have a picture of a dog. I have dogs from my past that I have personal relationships with. I might picture a specific dog. I might picture the letters, D-O-G because of the language of dog.
And so now, I have this relationship to dog, which is not in the present moment, right? I have named it. And I have named it and I have a memory of what dog means to me. So, that ability to experience time is literally a group of cells. Wipe those out, and people simply don’t have linearity across time anymore. And usually, their language is not preconceived. It is pretty much on automatic, which means not very filtered. And so, as we think about as we age, as different connections become fewer, often, generally, as we age. The aging brain is essentially fewer connections between the cells in the brain.
And as cells stop receiving stimulation, they tend to get bored and die. As we age, we tend to have one fewer connection between the cells, and we also have fewer cells. As that happens, our relationship with language, as well as linearity of time, gets bigger space in between, right? So, which is why a routine is actually a good idea.
So, it’s just how do we keep a healthy brain? How do we keep our brain healthy as we age? And what choices do we have? And one of them is to really maintain a connection to time. Which does not mean put me just on a rigid schedule, but it does mean, yes, I need to have an ongoing relationship with time. Otherwise, I get lost in the present moment. And that’s kind of a definition of Alzheimer, or dementia.
Stephanie: That aligns with our experience here at the meditation center where we live because we have a regular schedule that all follow throughout the day with certain times that we have for meditation or coming together for meals or time alone, and a program at the end of the day.
Jill: It’s so important. First of all, as life, we really – you know, if we go into the subject of meaning – the experience of meaning – when there is meaning, meaning, I believe, is a whole brain experience. I think that we take what is. We add value to it. And we then relate what is to what is in the big picture and in the detailed picture. And it brings it all together as purpose.
When we don’t have meaning – I mean I’m one of those people, I have to have meaning. If I don’t have meaning and purpose, then I wake up in the morning and wonder why am I still – why have I not shed my body? I love that perception.
So, if I’m going to be here in this form, in this body, I need to have this marriage between the experience of the present moment and my relationship with the external world in a way that brings out the intricacies of me, meaning. And I’m driven by that. I have to have that. Otherwise, it’s like, you know, why am I here? And I’m always asking that question.
My purpose is for me to take what I have gained and to share that in my best way, to push that into the world. And then those who resonate with that will find that and resonate with me. And those who don’t, they’re not my concern either.
Now, do I hope more people will find their own peace so that we don’t explode ourselves before we love one other? Yes. But again, that’s not my attachment. I’m not attached to that outcome. What will be, will be. In the meantime, how do I use the best of me?
Michael: Just this morning, about an hour ago, I read the following sentence from a sage – an Indian sage (Swami Ramdas) that I like very much. He passed away in 1954 and he visited the States. And so, here’s a question that he poses, “Let us question ourselves. What are we here for? What is the aim and purpose of this existence? What has our experience so far been teaching us?”
Jill: Beautiful.
Michael: Yeah. And I just read it about an hour before this conversation.
Jill: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s – there are those of us – and I think we can get lost in three places. One, we get lost in ourselves and it never goes beyond us. Or we get lost in finding our meaning or our purpose based on the construct of the external, which means we never find ourselves because we’re looking for us out there instead of in here.
Michael: Right.
Jill: Or we are in relationship with the other. And the other is the information of what the experience brings to us, and then the sharing of that.
Michael: There is a theory in ancient India that I think you’d be interested in. It’s basically a theory of language. And it says that reality exists in what they call a [spota] which means kind of a pop. It’s a way of saying in an instant, you know, the plank length of time, the irreducible instant of time.
And in order for that reality in that instant, that timeless instant, to become language, it has to enter the stream of time. Because if you rearrange the syllables in language – you know, if you say God instead of dog, it makes a big difference. When it becomes dependent on space-time and it becomes language, then we’re externalized to that extent.
Jill: Yes. Well, we are at least externalized in the expression of.
Michael: Yes. That’s right. That’s right.
Jill: So, when I experienced my stroke and my left hemisphere shut down – so I had no language. No sound, no nothing. It was blank. It was like, you know, it was blank. All I had was what was here because there was no recollection of anything from my past. There was no perception of time, so there was no perception of future.
All I had was what was. And I had no movement. So, the energetic of ‘toward’ was gone. There was no impetus. No impetus toward anything. So, because that’s effort and that brings in a new level of experience. And so, when I experienced that stroke, I actually visualized it like I was miles – I was blasted out of my brain miles out into space where it was all black in space – universal.
And I became a speck of energy in that consciousness of that whole. And yet, I wasn’t dead. I had not yet disconnected. I was still held by a tiny thread. I did not visual – I mean, that’s the best way for me to bring language to it. It was as though there was a tiny little thread still attached to this body. So, I wasn’t there. And I wasn’t here. I was in this space between.
And I remember thinking to myself, “What do I do now? What do I do with this,” right? Because I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t here. I was nowhere. I was bound and yet not. So, I got to experience this consciousness of universal consciousness, because that’s all I was, was a piece of that speck. And yet, I was still alive.
And I thought, “Somehow,” I thought to myself – and again, now I’m using words, so it reduces everything, right?
Michael: Sure.
Jill: But I thought to myself, “If I’m still alive, when I’m dead, this is where I’m going to be.” Right? I’m going to take that next step. I’m going to cut that line. And I get to exist like this for all eternity because that’s what that is, right? But I’m not there yet. I’ve still got the potential to be in the body. And if I still have the potential to be in the body, why wouldn’t I try?
Why wouldn’t I try to have a neuron connect with a neuron so that instead of being a single neuron, I have two neurons? And then build the third neuron. And then build and essentially claw my way back, literally miles, in order to get into a body that is so disabled that I would never be able to get it to move again. And yet, I’ll never know if I don’t try, right? So, why wouldn’t I try?
I mean I try or I don’t try. That was it. And I think that that impetus toward life, that self-preservation, that, but I am life. I have this form. The miracle isn’t gone yet, right? The miracle of life. Now, I might be an amoeba floating around in a sea all by myself, which is essentially what I had become. And it was like, “Okay, well, what do you do with that?” Right?
Now, could I have stayed in that place? Yeah, I could have. And my body was vegetative. I could have probably stayed in that state for 20 or 30 years because my body was in great shape. And our society would have hooked me up to a bunch of machines and kept me alive.
So, okay. Well, that’s something. And it was that willingness to try. And I was either willing to try to – you know, to me, the beauty of the universe and the beauty of the energy in relationship to the universe is that energy has a tendency toward order. It wants to create order out of disorder.
Don’t ask me how or why. All I know is that’s what it does. It creates order out of disorder in order to make sense out of nonsense. Somehow or another that’s the driving consciousness of that which is out there, from my perspective, based on my experience anyway. I can only speak to that.
And it was like, well, if I try to create order from disorder, perhaps with a lot of sleep. Balance that with a whole lot of sleep because this is called nothing but work. Right now, I’m in effort. And I’m either making that effort or I’m not making that effort. And if I’m making that effort, then who knows when you put one plus one together?
My mother and I always had this argument because she was a mathematician. One plus one equaled two, to my mother. No! One plus one equals one plus the other one. And then the reaction between them, which is much more than two, right? And so, she and I, you know, we were very different in our philosophies of what life was. But it didn’t matter because I either tried or I didn’t try. And if I tried, then I would end up in a different place than if I didn’t try. And to me, I was driven to try. So, I tried.
And I’ve never, literally, in a million years, would ever have expected myself to ever perceive myself as a normal human being again. I did not think that I was capable of that because all – I was just too detached. And then my agreement with myself was I will regain the body. I will regain the function. I will once again, perhaps, perceive myself as a solid separate from the whole when I knew I was nothing other than atoms and molecules in space, in vibration with the atoms and molecules and the space around me, and have the perception of myself as a liquid, a fluid, in relationship to the fluidity around me instead of as a solid separate from the whole.
But again, that’s a group of cells, right next to the group of cells that defines me as having linearity of time.
So, these groups of cells package themselves together. And then we end up with these abilities that we identify with as who we are. And then it’s like, but realistically, it’s just a bunch of cells. It’s beautiful cells. And we have much more power over choosing which of those cells we want to be – or run and exercise. I mean, you guys wouldn’t be living in a place where you get to protect your environment so you can shift yourself into the consciousness of the present moment through the practice of meditation.
Because what does the practice of meditation give you? It quiets that linearity across time. It quiets the cells giving you language. It quiets all those wonderful things that the left brain does so that you can have this expansive experience and peaceful moment of the instant of being at one with all that is.
Stephanie: Whoa.
Michael: Wow.
Stephanie: Thanks for taking us on that journey with you into consciousness. I think that will stay with me for my entire life.
Jill: Beautiful. And that’s because you’re ready for that. You’re ready for me to put words on an experience that you have been working with to achieve, at a level, as a normal human being. You are on a journey to get to where I went. I didn’t try to get there. I got whacked there by trauma.
And so, I can describe a place that you know because you worked to get there. And the beauty of the brain is that these are cells running in communication and circuits. And the more often you run a circuit, the stronger that circuit becomes, so it’s easier for you to run it. So, if you have a practice of meditation and you live in an environment that supports your ability to shift into that expansive connection to whole, then it’s going to be so much easier for you to get there or for you to follow me there when I paint a picture for you of a journey that I’ve had that you can relate to.
So, it’s not my journey that you will remember. It is your journey in matching the experience that I had.
Stephanie: You’re listening to Nonviolence Radio. We’re speaking with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor about her latest book, “Whole Brain Living.” Let’s tune back in.
There’s so much symbolism in the way that you described it as well. But the one that stood to me the most toward the end of your description was that of the image of the bodhisattva. In particular – who shed their bodies after having performed noble tasks and have accumulated ‘good karma’ and attained that awareness. And they choose. They make the conscious choice to come back into bodies because there’s something that we can do with our bodies that can help liberate other people.
And it seems like that’s what you’re working on too, is how – and you came back with the knowledge and skill sets that you’ve been training yourself with in order to present this material in a way that could be more widely accepted than religion or even meditation.
Jill: Yeah. I mean, the irony of my story is just ridiculous, right? I had a brother diagnosed with schizophrenia so I start asking the question, what’s normal? You know, what is going on, and why can he not create a connection between his thoughts and his reality?
So, he trained me to look at, how does our brain create our perception of reality? Well, that’s a pretty big question for a child, right? And so – and my mother was very mathematic, so she was all about math and science and the brain was cool. So, for me to choose to study the brain, well, I was brought up my whole life studying the brain because my brother was the alternative to me. He did it differently. He didn’t do it wrong. I didn’t do it right. We just did it differently.
And so, what made his brain capable of delusion and hallucination, and my brain didn’t get to do that? What is that? And that’s cellular. And so, I became a cellular neuroanatomist. So, that whole process happens. And then I end up at Harvard. My mother had been a Harvard woman, so I was just really following in the footsteps of my poor mother who wondered if my scholastic brain would ever turn on. And so, I was doing that.
And then, you know, I’m on the board of directors of NAMI, the National Alliance of Mental Illness. And the youngest person to ever serve on that board because I have a brother diagnosed with schizophrenia. So, I have a national voice, a national platform. And I’m at Harvard. And then boom, it all gets boom, gone.
It’s just like, you know, okay now we’re going to really give you your education, right? And so, the universe gave me this awareness. I had had all this study, all this book knowledge. I was teaching and performing research, so it was my expertise. And then I get to have this stroke that literally wipes out all those cells in that left hemisphere, shuts it down for eight years.
I mean, this wasn’t like I got high on psychedelics, my world exploded, and now I have new insight. No. This was an eight-year journey into the depth of disconnection from reality. And what did it take for me to use what I still had to rebuild what I had had before based on the anatomy and the cellular structure? And what do my cells need in order to get better?
I mean, it couldn’t be more of an ironic story. It’s a great story. And then what did I gain? What did I gain? And, you know, what’s the point of me going through that level of learning if not to share it with my fellow man, so once again, we can find more peace?
You know, if we were living in a peaceful world, maybe I would have let go that day. I don’t know. But we are in a living hell – so many of us. And I found heaven in my body, in my brain. And how could I not want to bring heaven and peace to those who are suffering the way they suffer because it’s a group of cells that they’re running?
What kind of consciousness could I be to deny my beloveds because we are all beloved? We are all one. Part of your suffering is a part of my suffering. So, why wouldn’t I do my best to come in and help relieve that suffering and bring a sparkle of celebration that I’m capable of suffering at all? Oh my God, I’m capable of suffering.
I always tell my friends, “I don’t mind if you’re miserable as long as you remember to celebrate that you’re capable of being miserable. And then go be miserable. Go feel that. Go celebrate that. And then go back to being a functional, prospering human being. It’s all of value, right? It’s all the experience of life.
I mean, what is life? Life isn’t – I’m not here to go make X amount of money or have a house that’s this big or to do this or to do that. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to bring the essence of what I am into a shared consciousness with others to celebrate that we exist at all. And wow, aren’t we magnificent?
Stephanie: It sounds to me, too, that you, at some point – there’s your will involved, but it also seems like you’re being used for a higher purpose too.
Jill: Well, I’m good with being dead at any moment, you know? Because to me, it is, use me and when I’m done being of value to the growth of what is, I’ve become – you know, I transform. I transform. The energy of what I am gets used in a different way. I’m okay with that.
At the same time, attachment – I mean, attachment is an interesting subject, isn’t it? Because it’s the attachment to the absence of attachment. Well, I don’t want to be completely unattached or I’m a sociopath, right? I mean seriously.
So, there’s this dance, this fine balance between taking myself seriously as an individual and not. And I think that really finding the value in all of it. So, instead of the ‘this or that’, I want to be a ‘this and that’. And when I am a this and that, I’m all of it. Eastern becomes a comrade, a balance of Western. And that’s the ultimate goal. Is to find that balance and the value of all of it.
And I think, we as humans, really forget the celebration that I exist at all. And I think that for me, boy, is that the message I got. Life is this – I am this magnificent collection of 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses. I’m not just a microbe floating around, having stimulation and stimulation toward or stimulation to repel me away. I’m 50 trillion cells with the exact same attraction toward or repel away. I mean, that’s how we process information.
But I have these magnificent cells that allow me to process vibration in a way that I can hear sound and differentiate. I have eyes that allow me to share this common reality with you. I mean, we’re just this miracle. We’re just a miracle. And wow, what a different world it will be when we are all perfectly clear that we are all a miracle.
And, you know, the terrifying thing is that there are a few brains out there that are – we have elevated to a level of power because they have elevated themselves to the power. And, you know, people don’t have power unless we give it to them. And it’s like cells. It’s like we have a few cancerous cells in our body all the time.
Because a cancerous cell is simply a cell that has forgotten that it’s supposed to stop reproducing itself. And so, we have these routinely in our body. Our immune system, hopefully, is stronger, and the army comes in of the immune system and clears those out and says, “No, that’s not conducive to a healthy living.” And we just haven’t figured out how to do that as a society.
So, we end up with a few of us who are, you know, capable of destroying the planet for the rest of us. And it’s like I just – I have to just trust that we’re going to play it out. Just going to play it out. And all we can do is bring our best forward and we’re part of the playing it out.
Michael: I’m trying to recover from all of this, could you comment for us on mirror neurons?
Jill: Well, yeah. We have mirror neurons. So, neurons – they’re different shapes, they’re different sizes. A neuron that is going to do vision is organized and looks physically, morphologically, physically, structurally different than something that’s going to hear, than a motor neuron that’s going to create, ultimately, movement in the body. So, we have literally hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of neurons. They have different structures to perform their job. And then we have these mirror neurons. And a mirror neuron’s in the frontal region of the brain.
And these specifically are designed to, essentially, monkey see, monkey do. What I see in the external world, I duplicate. And because we have mirror neurons, I have a level of attachment or I have a relationship with that which has life outside of myself.
So, if you smile, then I smile, right? I smile. And then you nod, and then I nod. And then I experience the experience of smiling and nodding because we don’t do things in isolation. It’s circuits inside of our brain. So, as we’re babies, for example, as people come in and they smile at us and they coo at us and they focus on us. And then I learned to focus on them. And then I mirror neuron monkey see, monkey do. And that’s one way that we, as humans, can attach to learning.
And again, I have to say whatever we’re learning, we have to balance that with adequate levels of sleep because it is during sleep that the effort, the work that the neurons are doing, they’re little living creatures. They’re eating and they’re creating waste, right? They’re pooping. And so, we have to go to sleep when the immune system comes in and cleanses – does the big brain flush so that we can do more the next time we’re awake and alert. Literally processing trillions upon trillions of bits of data every moment. So, it’s just this magnificent machine and how we treat it matters.
Stephanie: You mention in your book just sort of in passing – there’s so many gems in passing – this sort of question of who we are which we’ve been discussing, that we are neurons in a kind of global neural network. Or we’re neurons in a global network. Can you speak to that for a minute to help us understand that sort of micro/macro cosmological –?
Jill: Sure. Yeah. I mean, that goes right after perfectly mirror neurons because mirror neurons is how I take my network and I relate my network to your network so that we’re kind of sharing communication and network. And again, you know, the more time we spend running a circuit, the stronger that circuit becomes, so it becomes habitual and it runs on automatic.
So, we gain all these little habits whether we would later judge them and to find them as good habits or bad habits, it’s still habitual connections in circuits inside of our brain. And, you know, what we’re learning so much of – I mean, I live in the trees. And if you look at a tree, it’s a big neuron. Trees are like big neurons with these big dendrites receiving information, right? And then they got this massive root system. And they look just like neurons.
And now we know about the mycelium and how the trees and the tree roots are all communicating with one another, like a big neural network at the level of plant life on the planet in relationship to what’s going on in the collective air that we are breathing, and they are breathing. And we have this magnificent reciprocating relationship.
But when we think about neurons, if a neuron is going to form a habit, then I have that habit as a behavior in the external world. So, the microcosm of what’s happening at the level of our brain – say, for example, you guys have been practicing meditation. This has been a value that you have said, “We’re going to cut out all this other noise and we’re going to practice and we’re going to build a consistent pattern, behavior of the schedule inside of our environment, so we’re going to protect ourselves. And then we’re going to engage in these behaviors so that those circuits are much stronger in your brain than people who are out in the noise.” Right?
So, your microcosm of what those cells are doing inside of your brain is now expressed behaviorally by you into the world. And that becomes the macrocosm of the microcosm because there’s no point in cells doing anything if ultimately they don’t end up with an output, which at the human level looks at behavior.
So, it’s a, you know, practice until you get it. Talk it until you can walk it. You know, figure out how do I get myself to actually learn something new or to stop doing a behavior that I don’t want to engage in? ‘Fake it until you make it’ works because you’re faking it, even though it’s not happening in the external. If I’m faking it inside of my own mind, I’m encouraging that connection of circuitry inside of myself.
So, you know, in the early days of your meditation, I’m sure it was, “Okay, I’m going to sit down and I’m going to meditate. And here’s the practice. And then I’m going to focus on this and then I’m thinking about what happened or I’m thinking about dinner or I’m thinking about I got a pain in my side. I’m not comfortable.” You know, all of those distractions, but you’re still there, right? You’re still faking it until maybe however long it took you to master gain the mastery of your own meditation. It takes a while.
Stephanie: Yeah. I’m still working on it.
Michael: We’ll let you know when we’re there.
Jill: Right. Yeah. But what you don’t think about it is the neurons. And now you can visualize those neurons lining up saying, “Yeah, we’re the ones you want to attain.” And that is why I wrote “Whole Brain Living.” Because if all you have is a practice of meditation, but all you know is this fantasy of we’re you’re going, how do you ever get there? How do you ever find, “Oh, I had a glimpse”?
I’ve had people who have been meditators their whole lives come to me and say, “You know, I have achieved maybe two, maybe three times in my 30 years of meditation what you’ve described.” And it’s like, well, wouldn’t it be better if you actually knew what it was like and what part of your brain you were reaching toward and what it’s like and how to nurture that part, so that when you do meditate you can actually take yourself there on purpose?
And to me, that’s the power of the book “Whole Brain Living.” It gives you the roadmap to that part of you. But that’s not all there is. Attaining that is one thing. Spending more time in the peace of your Character 4 is a beautiful, magnificent experience. But it’s the brain huddle. And how do I now create a relationship between these different parts of me, consciously, on purpose so I can differentiate these skill sets? And I then gain the power to choose in an instant, who do I want to be right now?
Do I want to go zone out and be in my peace and blissful euphoria? I can go there in an instant, by choice. I don’t have to work so hard. Y’all don’t have to work so hard if you know what you’re doing.
Michael: Glad to hear that.
Jill: To me, that’s the power of “Whole Brain Living.” And that’s why, for me, it’s so much fun for me to talk to you because you’re on the path. You’re on the journey. You have achieved. And you’re in your life achievement. And then wow, you know, somebody like me who’s just had this wild experience gets to come in and say, “You know, this is how – this is what happened to me. And this is how I do this. And maybe you can use these tools yourself. Maybe they’ll help you find wherever it is – whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.”
And, you know, people resonate with this or they don’t. Again, I’m not attached to that. I’m attached to sharing the experience that I had, and if it helps in any way, people find their own peace, then for me, that was an achievement.
Michael: Yeah. We certainly salute that.
Jill: Thank you. Yeah.
Stephanie: I think probably aligning it – aligning all the pieces of the various questions to also the desire to make this show and our discussion with you of service to as many people as possible would be, I guess, to hear again sort of what is so magical about the brain, and what do you want people to understand?
Jill: So – and I’m going to take it beyond the brain to being human because without my body, I’m nothing, right? I’m one thing. I am a collection of cells that work together in perfect harmony – that is their goal – to manifest a life that we’re going to call ‘Jill’ and we’re going to, you know, give all that story to.
But ultimately, whether I am a single cell or I am 50 trillion cells, I am an internal world with a semipermeable membrane in an external world. And in that semipermeable membrane, if I’m a single cell, I’m going to let some things in and some things out, and some things will be blocked. And that semipermeable membrane will have receptors to attract me so I have information about what is outside of myself.
So, whether I’m a single cell or I’m 50 trillion cells, I’m just an organism. I’m a form of life. And as that form of life, when I value that I am life and I value the gift of all the billions and trillions and gazillions of things that had to happen, and has to happen, moment by moment for me to have this life – when I recognize that gift, I live my life differently than if I don’t.
And if I value that gift that I possess and I value that you possess it and that you are in an extension of me in consciousness, of all that has to be in order for us to be here, I live my life differently in relationship to everything. Everything.
And when I live at that level of value, my life has meaning. I have a purpose. I have an appreciation. And I just – I value the experience, whatever the experience is, simply because I have a life, and I’m capable of it.
You know, life – life is just – what an honor for me to be with you today. What an honor for me to be with you today. Thank you. Thank you for caring at this level, for exploring at this level, for what you value.
For anyone listening, just this is what we are. We are this beautiful, beautiful speck of magnificent life. Magnificent life. And oh my God, I get to look at another and I get to communicate with another. And I get to touch another and I get to connect with another. Wow! And then we’re gone.
Stephanie: You’ve been listening to Nonviolence Radio. We want to thank our mother station, KWMR. To our guest today, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, thank you very much. And then to all of those who make this show possible and post production, including Matt Watrous, Annie Hewitt, Sophia Pechaty. To Bryan Farrell over at Waging Nonviolence who helps to archive the show, thank you very much. To all of the Pacifica Stations that help to syndicate, thank you.
And to you all of our listeners, keep learning about nonviolence. You can find this show and more about nonviolence at MettaCenter.org. And until the next time, please take care of one another. Bye-bye.