‘Peace is only a thought away’ — what neuroscience tells us about nonviolence

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s insights on neuroscience, nonviolence, the meaning of life, and the motivations for her latest book, Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters that Drive Our Life.

Neuroanatomist and author, Jill Bolte Taylor, comes to Nonviolence Radio to talk about her understanding of the brain, consciousness and what we are as humans. She explores the nature of experience, both a kind of transcendent oneness revealing the interconnectedness of all things and the more familiar everyday sense of being in this particular body, at this spot in the world, as an individual. Jill insists that we all have the potential to cultivate our capacity to feel the kind of beautiful unity she herself experienced after a stroke, there are simple ways to direct and orient our brains so that we can gain a broader sense of what, where and who we are:

…what does the practice of meditation give you? It quiets that linearity across time. It quiets the cells giving you language. It quiets all those wonderful things that the left brain does so that you can have this expansive experience and peaceful moment of the instant of being at one with all that is.

This fundamental experience of oneness, of being fully in the present and in loving relationship with all other beings, reflects what part of our brains – our neurons and cells – do naturally; it is just a matter of learning to get out of the way to let them do it.

Transcript archived at Waging Nonviolence