Think of yourself as a laptop computer with a powerful battery, which is your brain. This battery has the potential to store Electrical charge for up to a certain amount of time before it needs to be recharged through sleep cycles. Now think of Consciousness as Electricity. Electricity itself has no form of individuality. Yet, when transmitted into a specific device, it is the animating energy that "brings it to life".
Now, compare two such laptops: they are different in size, design, memory, RAM, processor speeds, software, applications, video cards, sound cards. Even their batteries have different storage capacities and performance capabilities. But what is the difference between the Electricity each one stores? Is one laptop's electricity different from the other's? How the electricity manifests itself in terms of function and performance of course is completely different in each laptop. Yet, the Electricity itself is no different in one battery or the other, or from that in a mobile phone or an electronic shaver for that matter. The Electricity itself is single and undifferentiated.
So when speaking about individual Consciousness, it is important to understand that I don't mean my consciousness versus your consciousness versus someone else’s' consciousness versus Universal Consciousness. To speak about consciousness in this way is as absurd as comparing one battery's electricity to another's. What is individual is the unique expression that is a result of Consciousness interacting with the brain. It is only in the Material reality that such a separation appears. But within Consciousness itself, there is no such separation.
The Illusion of an Independent Consciousness
Your brain is programmed to perceive itself as a separate entity. In other words, it perceives itself according to its own design, power and capacity rather than by the Consciousness that is animating it. When it perceives other entities, human, animal, plant and inanimate it revalidates its separate identity by comparing these differences. So for example when you walk past a mirror on the street, it takes you a fraction of a second to separate your own image from that of other people walking past based on subtle differences in design, power and capacity. This programming of separative perception is partly biological and genetic but to a large extent also socio-cultural. Over many centuries of perceiving ourselves as individual entities, it has become ingrained within our evolutionary programming.
However, this is not how it always was. Many ancient cultures from all over the world including the Native peoples of North America, the Shinto traditions of Japan, the aboriginals of Australia, the various pagan cultures of Europe, just to mention a few, unanimously believed in a spiritual inter-connection of all beings within nature, including the elements; a single Consciousness that illuminated everything. In fact, a lot of their daily activities and healing techniques incorporated and cultivated awareness of and connection to this aspect of reality. While the sense of individuality did exist on one hand, it was balanced with a simultaneous awareness of the unity of Life.
Yet, as the more separation-driven cultures of the world began to dominate in power and influence, this balance between the two perspectives began to skew more and more in the direction that we now find ourselves in. Yet, the capacity for the modern human brain to re-establish this balance very much still exists. The ability of your brain to perceive itself not only as a separate entity but also as the Consciousness underlying the foundation of the Universe may be currently dormant but is not extinct. What is required then, in the words of J.Krishnamurthi, "is the kind of Insight that brings about a very mutation in the brain cells."
The Left Brain, the Right Brain
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a prominent neuroanatomist, in her TED talk speaks about her experience with having a stroke. I have attached the link here because it provides a unique insight into how we actually perceive ourselves differently through each of the brain's two hemispheres.
I won't go too much into how each hemisphere functions, as much of this is covered in the link and is widely accepted in our mainstream understanding of the brain. Stated briefly, the left brain (hemisphere) is the analytical, logic-driven part of your brain. It is what divides, compares, evaluates and judges in your experience of your life and of yourself. It experiences life in linear terms, creating a timeline of part, present and future. It's almost constant preoccupation is with estimating its own position with respect to various points on that timeline.
Imagine a number line, with Zero in the center and intervals going in the positive one, two, three till infinity to the right and negative one, two, three till negative infinity to the left. To the Left Brain, this abstract number line is what it believes represents the experience of Life: where Zero is the present moment and the negative numbers are moments in the past and positive numbers are moments in the future. And so to the Left brain, each moment is of equal value. The present is no more important or significant than a random moment in the past or future. And so it is constantly attempting to reposition and re-orient itself to create the "best possible trajectory" of moments in this experience of life.
Contrast this against the Right Brain. Now the Right hemisphere is the part that is rooted in spontaneity and present moment awareness. To the Right Brain this number line is purely nonsensical and imaginary. The experience of reality is only ever in the Present moment so the Zero is all there ever really is. With no past or future to consider, there is no notion of any movement, any sort of transition or any evolution. Everything is already as it is and its existence itself is proof of its perfection. This appears as a complete contradiction to the Left Brain.
And herein lies the divine irony, the great cosmic joke of the Universe. Because the brain that powers you contains two paradoxical capacities. And this paradox is evident in the way humanity functions. No person or culture is entirely left-brain oriented or right-brain oriented, but there are a variety of combination of left-brain right-brain skews. For example, most religions (I refer to their philosophies, not the institutions that follow) are largely Right-brain dominant. They believe in divine intelligence that creates and unites us all, they believe in the unity of all beings, they believe in a Divine Will that drives all beings, they believe in destiny and a master plan for the Universe. Of course, once you lay on all the mythology and ritual it starts to deviate. But the core of Faith is extremely present-moment centric.
Contrast this to Science, dominated by the Left-brain, which requires theory backed by analysis and empirically verifiable proofs to sustain its view of reality. The chronological aspect of time is absolutely critical to its approach. It is far from being centered in the present moment. Rather the scientific approach creates absolutely no distinction between the present moment and any other moment. A moment is a moment, more precisely - a specific interval of time. Without accepting the reality of Time, logic has no foundation to stand on.
In the past few hundred of centuries, we have witnessed an evolutionary dominance of the Left brain within the human species. This is evident from the way Left-Brain-dominant civilizations systematically colonized, enslaved and reconditioned the smaller and less aggressively oriented Right-brain-dominant cultures of the world. The aforementioned Natives of America, the Aboriginals of Australia, pagans of Europe, Ainu of Japan among thousands of others were all dominated, subjugated and reoriented.
Our technological evolution is a testament to the rapid dominance of Left-brain orientation within the human species. But despite all the progress we have made, the very attributes that caused the rise of the Left-brain skew are the very attributes that limit our evolution as a species. It is a double edged sword. This fact is also readily observable. We live on a planet with fast depleting resources, where global economic and social inequalities are stark, where the very eco-system that sustains our species is beginning to reject us, where power and acquisition takes priority over the existence of life-form.
Consciousness and the Two Brains
Depending on which hemisphere is dominant within your particular experience in any given moment, your perception of yourself and your world will shift its reality. This actually happens to you several times in any given day, but because we are a left-brain dominant species, these "pockets of time" are conveniently glossed over and swept under the rug by the left-brain processes.
For example, when you 'zone out' or 'stare-off' for a while, or when you become absorbed in meditation, or when you are lost in a beautiful scenery, or when you go into deep sleep, your Left-brain actually ceases to dominate. In these moments, the sense of being some separate individual self simply doesn't exist. Whether in deep meditation, caught up in an inspirational moment, lost in prayer, the experience in those moments is one of deep interconnectedness with everything. Those lines of separation between you and the world seem to blur if only for a short while. You cease to experience time in the traditional sense. You have experienced a glimpse of the Right-brain perspective.
But how do these two hemispheres interact with Consciousness? The left-brain and the right brain are actually the tools of two different aspects of reality and, in fact, are instrumental in perpetuating them. Earlier, we spoke about Consciousness being the Reality which underlies the Material plane that we call the physical Universe. Your brain with its two hemispheres is what creates and maintains the link between these two planes of reality.
The Right-brain is the instrument of Consciousness, the Left-brain is the instrument of Materiality. You can think of the whole brain as a prism: Where the Right-brain is one face of the prism through which the undifferentiated white light of Consciousness enters, and the Left-brain as the second face which projects a completely differentiated spectrum of colors - the material Universe. This is how your brain works.
The Right-brain is useless when dealing with material practicalities and theories. As Jill-Bolte Taylor described, when having her stroke which shut her entire Left-brain down, she had no idea what the numbers on her phone even were and couldn't identify where her own body began or ended with respect to the things around her. When the Right-brain perceives the environment it doesn't see a tree, a house, a street, a dog and other people; all it perceives is a single dynamic flux of energies. This is the first filter that Consciousness must pass through in order to generate the illusion of a Material Universe. A pure, undifferentiated, unchanging Consciousness is filtered through the Right-brain to generate the perception of a still unified but dynamic flux of energies.
Now this perception then passes through the second filter which is the Left-brain. Here is where, the unified fluz of energies is further distilled and crystallizes into the various separate elements that form our material realities. Through a process of double distillation, Pure Consciousness is translated by the Right-Brain into a Unified singular flux of energies which is then translated by the Left-brain into a differentiated Material Reality.
The Shifting Self
The "Self", the way I define it, is simply the lens of perception. It is the Awareness of existence, whether Unified or Differentiated. And this is where my views "apparently" contradict Jill Bolte-Taylor's who considers the Self to be a Left-brain construct. I say "apparently", because what she refers to as the "self" is really what I call the individual-self, that sense of being a single isolated entity in a vast disconnected Universe. And from that perspective, yes, the individual-self is a Left-brain construct.
However, even a purely Right-brain perception of Unity and Oneness, while it not perceiving the separation of individual from Universe, is still perceiving something. There is an in-built acknowledgement in both the Left and Right perspectives of an existence, whether it is of a small individual or of a Oneness. In the second case, this image is still of a Self, but this is the Higher Self - the Unified Self or God as it is known in different theological traditions.
However, the way I define "Self" is not as the image being perceived (individual or Unity) but rather as a vector (the direction in which the perception is pointed). Depending on which direction the perception shifts a different image of the self becomes a reality. When a mystic is immersed in a deep trance state and rejoices in the Oneness of all things, the Self he perceives himself to be is "one with God" or "one with the Universe". As a result, he exclaims "I am the Universe, the Universe is me, we are one and the same." When the corporate-worker gets onto a packed train at the end of a long day and can't find a seat to sit down on he sees the world and everyone as distinctly separate and distant from him. He feels tired and isolated and laments his poor, pathetic individual existence in this cold and detached Universe. Both images of the Self exist, depending on which brain's perception is dominant. But which image is the real one? Which Self is the true Self?
The answer is neither. Since the Self is nothing more than a vector it has no properties within existence. Existence is literally configured based on the direction in which the vector points. Existence can either be a singularity or a multiplicity. But it cannot be neither. Therefore, the Self is what actually facilitates existence. The image of the Self literally shifts as we move from Left-brain to Right-brain perception and back. And yet, neither of them is anything more than an approximation.
This notion of Self, transcends both Scientific reason as well as the Metaphysical viewpoint. This is the notion that allows the paradox of the human mind, of the Left-brain and the Right-brain to rest at ease and in harmony. This is the notion that says the scientific view is potentially true AND the metaphysical view is potentially true, because Truth when seen from this perspective is shapeless, formless and fundamentally unknowable.
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