Aspects of Worship (3): the brain!

I decided to call this sequence 'aspects of worship' as I wasn't intending to set out a fully developed theory of worship, only to call attention to certain things – and in large part those certain things are matters that I am currently thinking through for myself. Which is why this week I want to describe, in very brief terms, something that I have been researching in my academic work, which is to do with the brain, and in particular how the different sides of the brain pay attention to the world in different ways.

In the first talk in this sequence I set out the contrast between the call to put God first, and the way in which we so often fall into idolatry, which is when we take something good and make it more important than it deserves to be, or when we lose our sense of proportion and our lives become chaotic as a consequence. There is a way of describing that collapse into idolatry that indicates a clear link between modern neuro-psychiatry and ancient biblical wisdom. Funny that...

The thinker that I'm drawing on here is Iain McGilchrist, who is, frankly, a genius – a fellow of All Souls in Oxford and through his career our most eminent practicing psychiatrist. In his book 'The Master and the Emissary' he sets out an account of how the brain functions which emphasises the difference between two ways of paying attention to the world. He uses the example of a small bird to bring out the difference.

Consider a small bird seeking to find bits of seed or other food scattered across the ground. It will need to pay attention to what is on the ground, to assess whether a particular object can be used as food or discarded as hazardous. It will also need to exercise control over what it is paying attention to – in other words, to actually pick at the food and bring it into its body. The part of the brain that leads in doing these things, assessing the quality of what is being examined and then exercising control over it, is the left hemisphere of the brain. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, so when a bird is engaged in this sort of activity it will focus on the ground with its right eye.

In contrast the bird will also need to pay attention to its surroundings. There might be an attractive bird of the same species passing by offering an opportunity to mate. More dangerously there might be a passing cat or other hazard that if not noticed or ignored will lead to a swift and messy end for the life of the bird. So the bird must also have a part of the brain that provides a general awareness of the surrounding area, that isn't operating according to fixed expectations but which is open to being surprised, and this is the domain of the right hemisphere of the brain. So as the bird looks at the ground with its right eye, it uses its left eye to remain aware of the local context and surroundings.

We have the same sort of brain as that bird. McGilchrist calls the left hemisphere the Emissary, and the right hemisphere the Master. The left hemisphere is an extremely powerful part of the human brain, it is the part that engages directly with the world and exercises control over it – in most of us it is why we are right-handed. It is responsible for our words, for our conscious reasoning capacity. It is very good for achieving our purposes.

What it is not good at, and what in fact it is blissfully unaware of being not good at, is working out what those purposes need to be. That is the role of the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere in humans is the part of us that is comfortable with the not-knowing, it is the part of us that understands meaning, it is the part of us that deals with our emotions and our imaginations, it is also – and here we get to the important bit – the part of our awareness that engages with religion.

McGilchrist's argument in his Master and Emissary book is that in our modern Western society we have let the left hemisphere take control of the steering wheel of our society, usurping the Master, and in consequence we are in the process of crashing the car. What we most need is to recapture the insights, rediscover the importance, of the right hemisphere. In other words we need to be released from our idolatry and returned to the worship of the living God.

There is an insight that is common across many major religious traditions that applies directly to this phenomenon of left hemisphere capture. In the Abrahamic tradition it is rooted in the prohibition of idolatry and the refusal to speak the divine name. In Taoism it is the insistence that the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao, in the Vedic tradition it is 'not this, not that', it is the insistence upon paradox – and therefore the humbling of the intellect (the conceptual emphasis of the left hemisphere), it is the tradition of the zen koan, the 'sound of one hand clapping'. All the great religious traditions have a way of stopping this 'left-hemisphere capture'. Our civilisational tragedy is that we have forbidden ours.

I mentioned the Abrahamic tradition in which we stand. Abraham, when he bound his son Isaac and raised the knife, was not operating from his left hemisphere. What he did was not something that made sense. It wasn't something that could be understood or incorporated into his existing view of the world. Yet it was God's will, and he trusted and obeyed and conceded control to God. Which is how he became a blessing for the world. That is the path we are to follow too.

Next week: the mystical tradition and contemplative prayer