Friday 28 March 2008

Jill Bolte Taylor discovers her Daemonic Consciousness

I would like to thank Dr. Art Funkhouser, Ed Gilchrist and Gary Plunkett who all contacted me at almost exactly the same time with regard to this wonderful piece of itladian science.

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ... Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist."
"How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I've gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career." Jill Bolte Taylor

A video of Jill describing her encounter can be viewed via the right hand column of this blog. Please note that for some reason you will only get half a picture. However the sound works fine. If you wish to watch it with the whole picture click http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

When watching it please recall how I suggest that the non-dominant hemisphere of the brain contains a consciousness that I term the 'Daemon'. Our everyday consciousness (that which knows itself as 'I' or 'me') inhabits the dominant hemisphere. This I call the the Eidolon. What I think happened to Jill is that her stroke gave her access to the perceptions of her own Daemon. As William Blake termed it, she opened up her "Doors of Perception" and for a short time perceived the true nature of reality - the "Bohmian IMAX". Of course some individuals (such as TLErs) have regular access to this alternative reality.
Another interesting point is that Jill's experience also mirrored many of the elements of the classic Near-Death Experience. If my theory is correct then that is exactly what should happen.
Yet more evidence, if it was needed, that ITLAD and CTF are real paradigm changing concepts.

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