I watched Jill Bolte Taylor’s talk on the rolls of the hemispheres of the brain yesterday on TED, and it has me thinking more about Zen and Kabalah. Both of these disciplines enjoin the practitioner to learn to control the mind for a metaphysical end, and one of the meditation techniques described as “quieting the mind” sounds very similar to the experience Dr. Taylor describes in her talk about her stroke. The idea that we can move out of the ego based context of the left brain into the right brain’s experience of the universal whole by our own volition is captivating and exciting. To me, this seems like a neurological holy grail on the path to gnosis or bodhi.  Having experienced a glimps of this state as a youth, I can understand how people through the ages would dedicate years of hard work to cultivate this ability.  Dr. Taylor’s work reinforces much of what I intuitively feel about the nature of my internal dialog and it’s relationship to me and the world around me.  It’s easy to conclude that this voice is the self, but the transendental experienceso eloquently described by Dr. Taylor shatters that illusion.  The ego is not the self, and allowing the dialog to go silent is not the end of the world.  Rather, it is a means to get in touch with our true selves and experience the peace of knowing that we’re a part of something bigger that the ego can comprehend.