Are we hard-wired for happiness?

It's been a busy week filled with homework, costume creation, and fun and games for the kids in celebration of both Nevada Day and Halloween, so it has been awhile since I've had a chance to sit and write. In the intervening week I had the opportunity to view a short lecture by an inspiring and amazing person, and that video gave me a lot to process (another reason it's taken me so long to write). This video is a presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who suffered a stroke at the height of her career. In her short lecture she describes her experiences during the incident and in her subsequent recovery, and gives a physiological interpretation of what she experienced.

The gist of her story is that she ended up with a huge hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain that rendered her unable to speak, to understand language, or to move her right arm. Despite the urgent and life-threatening nature of her illness, her experience was nothing short of euphoric - a sense that she was intimately connected with everything around her, that her body was filled with the life force energy of the universe, that she couldn't define the limits of her self, and that the experience of the present moment was all-absorbing and perfect. Wow. For those who have read the Yoga Sutras and are familiar with the 8-fold path, sounds an awful lot like Samadhi, doesn't it?

Even thinking about an emergency like that makes my heart quicken and I start to sweat; in short I have a fearful 'fight or flight' reaction. However what she experienced was quite different, and she attributes this to the differences in 'processing styles' in the two hemispheres of the brain. She describes the left hemisphere as the source of linear, time-based thinking: remembering the past and using that information to project into the future. The left hemisphere, according to Dr. Bolte Taylor, is also where ego (separateness of self), intellect, criticism, emotional baggage (samskara) and mind-chatter (chitta vrtti) reside. When her ego was forcibly shut down, the part of her brain that lives entirely in the moment and welcomes all of experience (her right hemisphere) was able to come to the forefront and she could experience the perfectness of the moment, even though she was in the middle of a medical emergency.

Her experiences raised a great deal of discussion between my husband and me after we watched her presentation. He asked me, 'so, is your left brain keeping you from Nirvana?'. We speculated about the temptation to use mind-altering pharmaceuticals to achieve a similar state, and wondered whether Samadhi is a mystical and spiritual experience when there is evidence of it being a biochemical and physiological brain process. After some thought I came up with the following conclusions.

It may be true that the ego-intellect-linear processing of the left hemisphere keeps us from living in a constant state of Samadhi but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. The reason Dr. Bolte-Taylor is alive to share with us today is that her injured left brain intermittently kicked back in and alerted her to the danger she was in. With effort she was able to call for help. If she'd stayed in her right brain happy place, she would not have lived. Similarly but less dramatically, we all live in the world. Though we are beings of spirit we are housed in physical bodies, and we have jobs, children, spouses, responsibilities. If we were all mystics living in caves with devoted disciples bringing us offerings of food and clothing maybe we could live in that state all the time. However as householders in the real world, we need the ego, intellect and linear processing of the left brain to survive. After all, the Buddha chose to come back to the world and share his insights rather than to stay aloof. To quote one of my favorite Zen sayings, "before enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water."

As for taking mind-altering drugs to achieve the same state, why bother? If we consider that the left brain helps us survive, we have to realize that we need to keep it healthy and functioning, and taking a drug-induced shortcut to nirvana is downright dangerous. Besides, we have myriad tools at our disposal to help us rest the ego/intellect and access the subtle mind in a safe and healthful way. This is what yoga and meditation techniques do. Rather than being forced to relinquish ego through brain injury (like Dr. Bolte Taylor) or choosing to irresponsibly hinder brain function using drugs we can mindfully and methodically choose to exercise our right brain experience. When we meditate we place ourselves in a safe environment, we set time aside and ensure other responsibilities do not intrude, and we consciously lead the processing side of our intellect to a state of rest. When we can rest the dominant left hemisphere, we can experience life as processed through the right hemisphere, and we can stay linked to that sense of wonder and perfection even as we re-awaken the parts of our mind that we need to function in our world.

Finally, perhaps the most challenging question: is it a real spiritual experience if there is a biochemical and physiological explanation for what we are experiencing? Well, does knowing that thoughts can be seen as electrical impulses in the brain mean that their content is any less real? Does knowing that a complex series of neural impulses, chemical reactions and muscle contractions results in the creation of a pleasing painting make the artwork any less wonderful? I think that knowing our brains are wired for bliss is a great opportunity and a source of gratitude. We're built to be happy and content in the present moment, so why fight it?

(Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor will be speaking in Reno on April 20, 2011 as part of the Insight Lecture Series: http://www.insightlecture.com/speakers/jill-bolte-taylor-ph-d/)