Unrealized Opportunities to Further Explore the Self

I found one of the most interesting pieces of evidence for the existence of the self as I was researching intuition and insight. In the book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, a brain scientist speaks about her eight-year journey after a massive brain hemorrhage that wiped out her left brain. For eight years, she felt as if she was living in the “La-La-Land” of her right brain.⁽¹²⁾ It was in some ways a wonderful experience for her. She writes about her experience of functioning without her left brain, without being able to sequence action or thoughts, without being able to learn or understand why any sequential action was necessary. But she doesn’t seem to explain why, if she was so happy in the La-La-Land of her right brain and her left brain wasn’t functioning, what part of her fought this eight-year battle to recover the use of her left brain. What part of her even had enough consciousness to decide that it wanted to fight this battle? Her only comment, but one that is dropped immediately, is as follows: “My scientific training did not teach me anything about the human spirit and the value of compassion.”

Only very briefly is the human spirit referred to and implied as her source of motivation. Well, I asked myself, if so, wouldn’t we all want to find out more about this human spirit? How does it function? How can we develop it? What nourishes it? How does it interact and relate to the body and mind?

Unfortunately, Jill did not take up that line of questioning. She was content to use the term human spirit and felt that she and everyone else knew exactly what she was talking about. I am certain, in her mind, no research is necessary, and the question of the existence of the human spirit, or self, continues to be unanswered.