zoofence.com

I watched an interview of this doctor, and find her quite amazing. I recently read a book that brings this idea of the left and right brain into a great understanding of ourselves. For me, it is just another way to describe what we have all been talking about. I usually talk of the mind and the heart, same thing. The heart is where we experience the mystical. When these two parts work together, heart/mind or right/left brain---we are in the world, balanced and whole as we were meant to be.

With your eyelids closed, did you ever press on your eyeballs with your fingers? If so, you "saw" briliant lights and a never ending fluxuation of patterns. The harder you pressed, the brighter, more frequent, and varied those patterns became. Were they haluciations? No, because you created them, with the preasure you applied to your eyeballs. While the preasures on her brain were not self-inflicted (as she did not give herself the stroke) nevertheless, the varrying degrees of pressure the stroke applied to her brain, resulted in what she "saw."

Nothing out of the ordinary occured here.

nothing out of the ordinary is her message, I believe.
When her left brain was completely quieted, she experienced the oneness and connection with the universe. Exactly her message, nothing out of the oridinary, we are all meant to live with this part of us wide open too. Matthew Fox speaks of this also in a book I just read. We are all mystics, we have lost our connection with this part of ourselves.

Just to address the original entry suggesting that although 80 people read the entry, none had commented upon it. I think that the majority of readers of this forum are just readers, and prefer not to comment, but to quietly go about their own investigations into consciousness or God privately and silently, so that, there is no way to ascertain whether or not this particular interpreter of human brain consciousness reached others besides those who actually finally commented upon her message.

That said, I have visited the link and find her message confirmatory and solid, and in particular find her scientific background to be of great usefulness to those who need science to support their otherwise more esoteric views of consciousness. Indeed, she is essentially stating what the great masters throughout history have stated, and thus serves the great quest for Self for those of us who need the imprimatur of a “scientist” to confirm what they already know unconsciously, or consciously, as the case may be.

I do wonder if the brain can be so easily divided into linear verus “nirvanic”, since the stroke affected only part of her left hemisphere, thus leaving parts of that hemisphere intact, even while experiencing her detachment from limitations. I would suggest that perhaps what happened to her was less a case of functioning or non-functioning hemispheres as it was a case of physiological crisis that resulted for her at least, as an opportunity to get away from her limited consciousness and experience herself as she truly is. In many ways, her experience reminds me of near death experiences. As she was a scientist by nature, this may have been somewhat unique for her, as numerous stroke patients do not experience her delight or nirvanic conclusions -- while no doubt, others may -- and it seems that her nature even before the stroke was one of curiosity in the potential of consciousness to begin with. In other words, she was already primed for the experience.

In the end, it seems to me that her greatest message is that from the worst of experiences, including strokes, great things evolve. I am in complete agreement with her on that score – only through crises do many of us come to discover what is important and what is incidental, not to mention that crises are always an opportunity for God, or Self-discovery.

I'm reminde her of a book I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed, The shack by Wm. Paul Young. The protagonist is placed in a situation in which he msut relate to God entirely apart form his religious preconeptions. At one point he is agonizing over the old "why good thngs happen to bad people and vice versa" issue, and observes, "I just can't imgine any final outcome that would justify allt this." The answer from God is, "We're not justifying it. We're redeeming it."

I'd venture to say, for example, that a stroke is not, and cannot be regarded as, a good thing; but if one is open, at a deep level, to the Ground of All Being, then the GoAB will redeem any event or situation by using it as a building block to higher realms of consciousness. As ACIM reminds us, this would be a miracle, and miracles are natural -- when they do not occur, something has gone wrong.

Jai Ram
Art

I'd venture to say, for example, that a stroke is not, and cannot be regarded as, a good thing ...

Well, now.

Of course, I would agree that a stroke is surely among the last things I would like to experience.

And yet, not long ago I saw a television report of Ram Das at St. John The Divine Church in New York City talking about his stroke. "Stroked by my Guru," he called it. He said that despite all the "spiritual work" he had done over the decades since he'd met Babaji in India, all the meditation, studying, disciplines, and so on, when the stroke hit him, he completely lost it. No spiritual thoughts, no centeredness, none of that was present.

And so, he seemed to conclude that the stroke was a necessary instrument in his practice.

Again, "stroked by my Guru".

there is only the path