Jewish Mysticism and the Divided Brain Theory: Religion, Neuroscience and Understanding

Join Men’s Club for an enlightening program with Dr. Gary Goldberg, a specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He’s worked extensively with veterans afflicted with PTSD as well as many other disorders.

We begin with the recognition of the basic brokenness of human existence. And how the dominant secular philosophy of Cartesian dualism contributes to this fragmentation. In this context, what does it mean to be ‘healthy’ and what does it take to deal successfully with stress? How might prayer and meditation—for example, with the aid of a ‘Shiviti’–help? We then examine the ‘Divided Brain Theory’ of Iain McGilchrist^* that posits two very different ways the two halves of the brain deal with the world, we look at how Kabbalah frames the problem of paradox, and recall how the Baal Shem Tov proposed that existence requires ‘equanimity’, based on an interpretation of Psalms 16:8. These ideas come together in a hypothesis regarding how the one G!d may be mapped into the divided human brain in congruence with the panentheistic understanding that is at the heart of Judaism—ie. that G!d is both within and outside of space-time, both transcendent and immanent. While a meta-conscious ‘Ego’ undergoes reportable focal experiences of the world as separate from itself via processes unfolding in the left cerebral hemisphere, a conscious ‘Id’ experiences the world globally as an undivided whole via unreportable processes unfolding in the right hemisphere.

*author of ‘The Master and His Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.”

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