Many people have sought to uncover the truth that sets human beings free from pain. And some, arguably, have even succeeded. But steeped in ancient mystique, superstition and dogma, the core dynamics lie buried.
What you are about to discover is a new option of how to live, free of blindness, with eyes wide open. A new way to tap into the very essence of what it means to be a human being.
And in this clarity lies a hope — that anyone who wants to can move beyond whatever division and frustration blights their lives, and see, with clear eyes, the dawn of a new day.
This piece was originally commissioned as an investigation into a book called The Master and His Emissary, by a man called Iain McGilchrist.
Iain McGilchrist was a Consultant Psychiatrist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley NHS Trust in London, where he was Clinical Director of their southern sector Acute Mental Health Services. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He trained at the Maudsley Hospital in London, working on specialist units including the Neuropsychiatry and Epilepsy Unit, He also worked as a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA.
He's been published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, and the American Journal of Psychiatry, and has published original research on neuroimaging in schizophrenia, the phenomenology of schizophrenia, and other topics.
Here's a quick quote regarding his new piece: »McGilchrist's careful analysis of how brains work is a veritable tour de force, gradually and skilfully revealed. I know of no better exposition of the current state of functional brain neuroscience.« — W.F. Bynum
W.F. Bynum is a Yale MD, with a Cambridge PhD in the history of science, who held a professorship in the same at UCL.
The Master and His Emissary won the Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize, and the Bristol Festival Of Ideas Book Prize, and was longlisted for the Royal Society Book prize.
After reading it, it became rapidly apparent that a simple review piece would be wholly inappropriate, and it needed a much deeper examination, and my client agreed. I hope, by the time you're finished reading here, you'll understand why.
McGilchrist's success in The Master and His Emissary is that he's cut through a huge amount of data, with a very clear idea that brings it all together, about how the brain works, and what it is fundamentally doing. This has many clear connections with the work I do, which is on the core structure of human suffering. And I hoped, and now believe, that from this new perspective, a new depth could be struck. A very strange, but very powerful truth can be used — by anyone — to free themselves of needless suffering, rapidly, and in real life, forever. A new future for anyone who chooses it. And perhaps, given enough time, a new future for us all.
So let's start with McGilchrist's work. It's all about hemispheric difference, the different roles and various interactions of the two sides of the brain, the hemispheres. And what makes it so new, so radical, and so fresh is that it cuts right through oceans of data with a clear vision that makes hitherto unimaginable sense of the brain itself, and what it's really doing. From this clarity, a whole new raft of possibilities open up.
Now, there's an important caveat to keep in mind during what you're about to read. The hemispheres work together, and there are very few mental events, if any, that are purely one-sided.
With that said, there is a striking clarity that can be brought to the separate agendas of these hemispheres. This is what McGilchrist's book focuses on, and opens up in a genuinely groundbreaking way. I of course owe him an enormous debt of gratitude for this, and have worked hard to make sure that the way in which I've handled the science here, and elsewhere in this piece is faithful to the research.
Any mistakes made are of course, my own.
Another thing to say is this. In looking at neuroscience and physics, we're going to be going very far out on a limb. There is a conjecture to be made about how all this ties together, and it hasn't been made before. I have tried to mark out clearly where we are stepping beyond the accepted understandings into new territory, and the new way of looking at things must stand and fall on its own merits.
With that said — because of the nature of what we're looking at, everything we're about to see converges on a real way that human beings can undercut needless suffering at source. With this clarity, you can do something with this conjecture. You can test it. And I hope you do.
So let's take a look, shall we, at what the man has to say…