‘The left hemisphere of the brain, without sufficient input from the right, is overconfident.’

Arguments about God, says Jacqui Poole, might just come down to the way we choose to think about them

I wonder how many readers of the Friend are familiar with The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. I ask because the weight of McGilchrist’s arguments, and his overarching purpose in writing the book, seem to me to have a bearing on the dialogues and dichotomies that dance across these pages as week succeeds week.

The subtitle of the book is: The divided brain and the making of the western world. The author is a former fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He taught English but subsequently became a psychiatrist and clinical director and he gives his thesis as follows: ‘for us as human beings there are two fundamentally opposed realities, two different modes of experience… each is of ultimate importance in bringing about the recognisably human world… their difference is rooted in the bihemispheric structure of the brain… the hemispheres need to co-operate but, I believe, they are in fact involved in a sort of power struggle, and that this explains many aspects of contemporary Western culture.’

The title of the book derives from a story attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: there was once a wise spiritual master who was the ruler of a small but prosperous domain. He was known for his selfless devotion to his people. As these people flourished and grew in number, the bounds of this small domain spread and with it the need to trust implicitly the emissaries he sent to ensure the safety of its ever-more-distant parts; as he wisely saw, he needed to keep his distance from, and remain ignorant of, such concerns. The master nurtured and trained carefully his emissaries. Eventually, however, his cleverest and most ambitious emissary began to see himself as the master and used his position to advance his own wealth and influence. He saw his master’s temperance and forbearance as weakness not wisdom. On his missions on the master’s behalf, he adopted his mantle as his own and became contemptuous of the master. And so it came about that the master was usurped; the people were duped, the domain became a tyranny and, eventually, it collapsed in ruins.

For McGilchrist, this story epitomises a process that he traces through the history of Western culture. The two hemispheres of the brain involve two different ‘modes of being’ or ‘ways of functioning’. To function well and efficiently, the two hemispheres need to cooperate. But the left hemisphere, he argues, has increasingly taken over control, to the detriment of the right.

Let’s take a deep breath here. The subject is vast and complex and my challenge is to link the arguments and evidence the author presents to those topics we come back to again and again in the Friend, whether through letters or articles, reports or poetry – namely, theism versus nontheism, God versus no-God.

To come back to Nietzsche’s story, the emissary – the practical, hands-on person who’s got the measure of the territory and knows how to manipulate the world of form – typifies left-brain expertise. We depend on this for our survival. McGilchrist is not berating the amazing skills that the human species has developed through use of these faculties.

But the left hemisphere, functioning in dissociation from the right (as shown by work done with people whose right hemisphere is damaged or temporarily out of action) has a number of critical limitations – and we, if we are depending too heavily on left hemisphere functioning, become subject to those limitations. (Of course, all brain function depends on both hemispheres at any given time – the issue becomes one of degree.)

The seat of language is in the left side of the brain. It, or we, using that part of our brain, achieve ‘understanding’ by classifying everything and everyone we meet. We do this by placing them into categories. The more complex the categories we are able to handle, the more intelligent we are deemed to be. Thus, using this part of our brain, we develop ‘models’ of the world and all that we encounter within it. That is helpful and necessary, as far as it goes. But the danger, according to McGilchrist, is that we so easily mistake the model for the real thing.

The left hemisphere, without sufficient input from the right, is overconfident. It needs the right hemisphere to provide the overall grasp of the territory, in order to put its achievements into context and also to become aware of those matters inaccessible to its methodology. If it is allowed to become the dominant mover, it quickly claims to have discovered truth and certainty. It is sure it is right.

Its role, in the ideal world of healthy brain function, is to yield its findings to the right hemisphere, which has the power to interpret these understandings in the light of a broader, more comprehensive vision. The right hemisphere is comfortable with mystery, flexible and more open to new possibilities.

If, however, as McGilchrist argues, in a power struggle between the two hemispheres’ worldviews, the left is winning comfortably – at least in our Western culture – this would yield a world in which we believe – indeed, are sure – that we are justified in coming to conclusions about the ultimate mysteries of ‘life, the universe and everything’ on the basis of the models provided by the left hemisphere. In fact, our education system has encouraged us to do just that: we have been trained to analyse and categorise in whatever discipline we have individually favoured and, particularly if we have found we can do that well, we have been led to believe that, in this way, we can discover Truth.

But, says McGilchrist, the emissary will never provide us with an overview of the territory – will never furnish us with insights about our place in this universe that we have so brilliantly uncovered.

So, where does this get us in relation to the theist/nontheist debate? To, I would argue, a very helpful place.

Firstly, arguments for and against the ‘existence’ of God use faculties developed and refined in the left hemisphere. They therefore take place within the context of ‘models’, of ‘concepts’ or of ‘ideas’. If I am a ‘theist’ I’m claiming that the concept I have of ‘God’ equates to a reality in the world of things – of what’s really ‘out there’. If I am a ‘nontheist’ or ‘atheist’ (if there is a difference then it is subtle), I’m claiming that the concept ‘God’ I’m working with does not find an equivalence in our world or, indeed, in any other world or dimension.

Some models and concepts may be rationally less compelling than others, of course. If, as Quakers in this twenty-first century, we feel compelled to play this game (which is part of the discipline known as the ‘philosophy of religion’), then we should, at the outset, ‘define our terms’. Before a discussion takes place, it would be helpful to agree precisely ‘the model’ we have in mind, the better to dismiss it or support it by argument. This approach is not one I have witnessed among Friends as an established method. It is, however, effective, as far as it goes. You can, for example, using this method, establish whether the model is coherent or not in the light of reason and in the light of modern physics. Some concepts of God are more ‘user-friendly’ in this respect than others.

But the overarching question is this: how does reasoning about a concept or model you have developed in your mind justify you in making claims about the nature of reality – however coherent the model? The short answer is: it doesn’t. In thinking it does, we are mistaking the model for the real thing – and it’s taking us down a blind alley.

McGilchrist is telling us that we have faculties available to us that provide us with other ways of seeking answers to the kind of questions we’re asking. The emissary can’t do it alone (but thinks he can). The master, working in cooperation with the emissary (with the emissary submitting to the master, and the master using the emissary because he can’t do it alone) has a different methodology.

Those who have explored the territory yielded by this other methodology – and we have a library of writings both current and dating back to the earliest of written records – convey insights and experiences whose coherence and beauty transcend the barriers of time and varying cultural backgrounds. It’s what J B Phillips described in Ring of Truth. When our experiences gel with something written five thousand years ago by someone in the subcontinent of India, and we find the equivalent ‘truth’ conveyed in different language by a Quaker writer in the seventeenth century, or a current writer like Eckhart Tolle or Richard Rohr, then we sense that those writers may have accessed aspects of an ‘ultimate reality’ not accessible to the left hemisphere of the brain as a lone agent, but available to us when both hemispheres are working in conjunction the one with the other.

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