A Gentle Critique of Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight

An interesting critique of “My Stroke of Insight” by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor from the Buddhist  perspective.
Published December 13, 2009 Books 9 Comments
Tags: brain, dzogchen, mahamudra, natural state, neuroscience, no-mind, zen

There is an amazing presentation of the brain researcher, Dr Jill Taylor (1959-), about her own stroke in her left brain. You can watch her My Stroke of Insight presentation here. Her delivery is very passionate and professional, and she knows how to connect with the audience. She has also published My Stroke of Insight book but it contains mainly expanded explanation of all concepts she already covered in her 18 minutes talk above, so you may benefit from reading her book but do not expect too much…

Other Jill Bolte Taylor links:

1. The TED Video
2. Jill on Oprah’s Spirit Channel – (audio and video available)
3. Jill’s web site
4. My Stroke of Insight – official web site
5. Jill’s Wikipedia entry

(originally published at http://sensit.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/my-stroke-of-insight-by-jill-bolte-taylor/ by “sensit” and retrieved via Google cache)

The critique (in a gentle way)

1. The worldview

Dr Jill Taylor uses pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo to describe and explain her personal spiritual awakening. She had been forced by her illness to spend a lot of time being self-aware without being distracted by so-called inner voice (i.e. semi-automatic mental chatting, what can be also named as mind). Her illness gave her unmistakable experience of (what is called in Buddhist tradition as) no-mind. Yet somehow she felt a need to explain her experience, almost like reason it, using unnecessary and irrelevant scientific concepts. Foreign scientific vocabulary and New Age references used by her create impression that nonduality can be described; yet words cannot describe awareness, and scientific vocabulary won’t help either. Perhaps, she hoped that utilizing the language of her colleagues (in the field of neuroscience and neuroanatomy) she would make her message more credible

The common problem with presenting any subjective experience (especially, specific to prolonged practice of meditations) is that no one else has a way to objectively verify it. There have been some experiments with scanning brain during meditation but such experiments cover only specific types of meditation as of now, and we do not know how that can scale to those type of meditations that do not use concentration

Her worldview is not a problem as long as you understand that it is just her way to make sense from what she experienced, and she had to use some dictionary to express herself. Non-dualism can be also described in many other ways

2. Pre/Post Fallacy

This is a gross mistake that is easy to make - to confuse pre-rational with post-rational (read Ken Wilber for more details). What she observed during the most intense moments of her illness was not external but internal. Her brain was deteriorating rapidly, and if we are allowed to use naive triune brain model proposed by Paul D. MacLean, her Neocortex Coping Brain was dying, and she was slipping into Reptilian Coping Brain. Since the world how it really is is never what we are allowed to perceive by our brain, what she experienced from her Reptilian Coping Brain was not any closer to the reality than what we experience from our Neocortex Coping Brain at this very moment, when you read this. It is just her Neocortex Coping Brain, the most advanced brain’s functional subsystem (level, layer, module, whatever) was going offline, and she was witnessing how her reality was becoming less and less familiar. But that reality was still constructed by brain, it was just less developed constructs. Absence of thoughts, feeling that body has no borders, sense of infinite unity with everything are all of biological nature, and represents regression of brain into pre-rationality. To call it post-rational is to make a serious mistake. The loss of ego was not an achievement, it was a fallout of dying brain that could not afford to maintain expensive self, which is ”essential inconstant nucleus, integrated representational system distributed over changing patterns of synaptic connection” (quoting The Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux, 2002)

3. The attachment to bliss

Dr Jill Taylor developed dysfunctional attachment to bliss (which is an understandable reaction to immense pain she suffered), and such attachment is only a transient stage according to the Buddhist path, and Nirvana (or the final liberation) is beyond bliss

4. The egocentrism

Dr Jill Taylor had used many coping strategies. She had to exploit whatever she could to survive, and she did that job very well since she is still around (and even recovered so well that we can hear her message!). Her story is similar to the story of Edwyn Collins who collapsed with aphasia (read about his case here)

There was no workaround to not be selfish. Everything and everyone was about her well-being and for her survival. The whole world was there to make her happy. She strongly believed that the universe was there to serve her, and such obligation was unquestionable. The fact that her child-like demands were fully met is a vivid demonstration how advanced Western society is. However, her attitude should not to be taken as the blueprint of how the results of self-awareness enabled should look like, and every coping strategy has EOL (end of life) when it needs to be transcended

The lessons

1. 90 seconds rule

Dr Jill Taylor hints that if you can avoid reacting to impulse for 90 seconds, than it will be gone, and you will be free (to face another impulse?). She says 90 seconds is how long it takes for blood to flush it (what?) away

90 seconds rule is what basically mindfulness meditation is all about, a practical habit of not reacting on impulses, and just observing them, and letting them disappear on their own. Religious or spiritual metaphysic, worldview, and cultural baggage surrounding such simple and highly effective technique of self-management is secondary, and should not be overemphasized. Self-awareness is a gift that you can easy reclaim after you’ve been introduced into the fact that you’ve already have it, and just need to cultivate and develop it fully. You can be aware of impulses (thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.), and since you are not them (you observe them!), you can manage how you react to them. This is something similar to what is used in Emotional intelligence, Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and other Mindfulness (psychology)

Interestingly enough, her hint does work. If you close eyes and wait until you cannot resist temptation to open eyes any more, the clock will show you that you spent with closed eyes no longer than 90-120 seconds although subjectively it felt like ages! That seems to suggest that perception of time is linked to blood flushing through the brain. And that may also explain why most of the people start to feel impatient after waiting for 2-3 minutes (because, again, subjectively they do feel like it’s very long time!)

2. The Natural state

Unless Dr Jill Taylor fully derived her worldview from New Age (and New Age derived it from the world’s religions), we assume that her message is independent. What she says resonates well and sounds in tune with well-known mystical and spiritual teachings

Comparing her experience with two nondual schools (Dzogchen and Mahamuda) of Tibetan Buddhism, it becomes apparent that

• Natural state of Dzogchen and Mahamuda is the skill of physiological and cognitive nature
• The skill can be learned and cultivated
• The skill allows spontaneous dynamic balancing between the left and the right brain hemispheres
• Mahamudra (and Zen, as well) call the left brain as mind and the right brain as no-mind
• The key is balancing without being stuck for too long in either mind or no-mind

3. Treating a patient like a machine

Dr Jill Taylor provided many practical advices in her book (My Stroke of Insight) on how to look after people with brain-related problems, and that certainly must be studied and taken into an account. She also highlighted very serious issues about the whole medical system, and how insensitive hospitals to patients

• Hospital personal are more interested in following the procedures; they do not have time, knowledge, tools to treat brain-damage effectively. To be fair, following procedures is what they are rewarded for
• There are too many patients, and it is easy to devalue people into objects that needs to be repaired, as broken machine in factory’s line
• It is highly tempting (and everyone does that) to standardize the routine and apply it to everyone like they all are the same. That works well for machines but human being is not a machine! Personal approach is what makes the whole difference, and increase efficiency of treatment

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