As mentioned in the previous post, brain experts are beginning to realize the right side of most normal people’s brains harbors genius, savant-like abilities. But, you were born with two very impressive brain hemispheres, and your left side is important too.

Let’s use George W. Bush as an example. To the right we see Bush, with both sides of his brain intact.

In this picture, Bush’s left side brain is controlling the right side of his face, and his right side brain controls the left side of his face. Your brain hemispheres control the opposite side of your face and body, too.

So, what would Bush be like if he only had a wonderful savant-like super talented right side brain, and vice versa?

The Godlike Right Brain

Meet Bush with two right side brains (actually, the right-brain controlled left side of his face and its mirror image.)

The right side brain is like God. When freed from the left hemisphere, it has almost miraculous savant-like abilities. It’s exceptional at imagining and creating (In the beginning…), processing spatial information (separating light from dark, water from land…), and seeing the big picture when faced with many shapes and sizes and complex interrelationships (all the little children of the world…)

And like God (I AM), the right side brain is always living in the present.

The down side is that Mr. Right Side Brain is pretty scatterbrained ( it might show up as a burning bush one day, a cloud the next, or just disappear and leave a crowd wandering in the desert for 40 years…) It stinks at organization, and it’s horrible at explaining itself verbally (Abraham, kill your son Isaac…but wait! No, not really…)

Frankly, the right side brain would rather keep dreaming big dreams and leave the details up to others (I gave you ten big ones on tablets; somebody else can write the New Testament…)

The Egocentric Left Brain

Now, meet Bush with two left side brains (the right side of his face, doubled.)

I’m not the first to suggest the left side brain is home of the ego. It’s even jealous of the right side brain, and proud of its own talent for language and verbal expression. If the right side brain paints a picture, the left side brain immediately slaps a name on it.

The left side brain is orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. It tends to see everything in a linear way, past or future, black and white, good and evil, with no gray areas in between.

The down side? The egocentric left side brain doesn’t understand emotions. Emotions don’t make sense. Your puppy died? So, get another one. Problem solved. Now, back to balancing the checkbook…

The Perfect Human Brain

A lot of people say the dissident teacher Jesus was as close to a perfect human as anybody has ever come. Jesus supposedly attained Christ Consciousness. Jesus said he was the son of God, and the son of man. Maybe he was trying to tell us that he used both the godlike right and the egocentric left sides of his brain. Equally.

Perhaps to thrive in the world, we need to strike a balance between our godlike and egocentric brain halves.

Balancing Your Left and Right Side Brain

Most everybody has a dominant side of the brain. (Take this quiz to find out which side of your brain is dominant.)

Over 90% of Americans have the same dominant side of the brain. Care to guess which side it is? Here’s a clue: The left side of the brain is used for reading, writing, and basic arithmetic.

Add to this the fact that programs like No Child Left Behind require schools to spend even more time teaching Reading and Math — at the expense of already little-taught right-brain subjects like Art and Music — and the future culture of this country is looking even more egocentric brain imbalanced. If you think everybody is either with us or against us now, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

But there is something you can do about it; you can help restore balance, and you can start with your own brain.

Your left and right brain hemispheres are connected by a bridge called the corpus callosum. Like a muscle, it can be exercised and strengthened until it is physically larger, which will allow better communication and cooperation between your egocentric left brain and your godlike right brain. (If it’s any encouragement, Albert Einstein’s brain had a huge corpus callosum.)

Try this exercise on for size: visual brain-balancing exercise.

Look at the circles above. Cross your eyes until you see the third circle between the blue and red one. When your left brain is dominant, you’ll see the blue circle/verticle line. When your right brain is dominant, you’ll see the red circle/horizontal line.

Try to focus your eyes so that you see a cross, which means you’re seeing both circles equally, which means you’re using both sides of your brain at the same time, which not only induces a very pleasant meditative state, but also grows your corpus callosum by leaps and bounds.

Alternating Left and Right Brain Dominance

Another interesting tidbit is that your left and right side brains switch dominance all the time, every 90 minutes or so on average, but at times as often as every few seconds.

Yogis say you can tell which side of your brain is currently dominant: if you’re breathing more through your left nostril, it’s the right side, and vice versa. Because they tend to feel more peaceful and connected with the world when their right side brain is dominant, yogis practice breathing through their left nostril to help turn on their right side brain.

Nose Peace. Who’d a thunk it? ;-)

Read More: left side brain, right side brain, hemispheric dominance, corpus callosum, George W. Bush

Savant syndrome occurs when a person with below normal intelligence displays an incredible ability in a specific area — like, for instance, if George W. Bush had extraordinary musical, mathematical, or artistic talent. ;-)

One thing to note about the super abilities of savants: they are gifts usually associated with the right side of the brain.

The Divine Right Side Brain

People with savant syndrome seem to have right-side brain abilities on steroids.

Savants may be able to mentally double 8,388,628 up to 24 times within a few seconds, paint amazingly accurate cityscapes from photographic memory, or sit down at a piano and play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 after only one listen.

Until recently, savant syndrome was thought to occur due to some sort of injury to the left side brain — occurring either inside the womb, or shortly after birth — which caused the right side brain to overcompensate.

But more recently, scientists have pondered whether we all have unconscious right side brain super abilities.

Allan Snyder, award-winning physicist and director of the Center for the Mind at the University of Sydney, says everybody has the innate capacity for savantlike skills:

Even something as simple as seeing requires phenomenally complex information processing.

When a person looks at an object, for example, the brain immediately estimates an object’s distance by calculating the subtle differences between the two images on each retina (computers programmed to do this require extreme memory and speed). During the process of face recognition, the brain analyzes countless details, such as the texture of skin and the shape of the eyes, jawbone, and lips. Most people are not aware of these calculations.

In savants the top layer of mental processing — conceptual thinking, making conclusions — is somehow stripped away. Without it, savants can access a startling capacity for recalling endless detail or for performing lightning-quick calculations.

This theory has been bolstered by a growing number of cases in which normal people suddenly acquire savant-like super talents after a head injury, after the onset of frontotemporal dementia in old age, and also, sometimes during deep hypnosis.

The Right Side Brain Experience of Jill Bolte Taylor

Brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor got the opportunity to experience the full power of the right side brain firsthand. One morning, when a stroke disabled her left side brain, she experienced the world according to her right side brain.

After years of rehabilitation, Taylor was able to tell the world about her experience:

TEDTalks Video: Jill Bolte Taylor describes what it’s like to lose your left side brain.

Daniel Tammet: The Rosetta Stone of Brain Research

Daniel Tammet is a savant gifted with super mathematical and natural language abilities. He’s most famous for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits, and for learning Icelandic in a week. He’s also fluent in English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Welsh and Esperanto.

There are fewer than 50 prodigious savants in the world, and unlike the rest of them, Tammet has no obvious mental disability. Because his language skills are functioning to a high degree, he can describe his own savant thought processes, which makes him a scientific Rosetta Stone for brain researchers.

Tammet explains that he “experiences” numbers, each with its own unique shape, color, and texture, and emotion. When solving math problems, he doesn’t consciously work out the answers, but sees the answers appear, emerging from mutating, multiple-sensory landscapes.

In 2005, Tammet was the subject of an engrossing UK documentary, well worth the watch:

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (1/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (2/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (3/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (4/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (5/5)

Update: Don’t miss the next post on Achieving Left and Right Brain Balance.

Read More: autistic, savant, savant syndrome, left side brain, right side brain, Jill Bolte Taylor, Daniel Tammet

“The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while.

“Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride?

“And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey — don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride …’

“And we … kill those people. Ha ha, ‘Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.’ It’s just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok.

“But it doesn’t matter, because — it’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want.

“It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.

“Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.

“Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead, spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”

~The Late Great Bill Hicks

Read More: Bill Hicks, life, war, peace, amusement park

Given any date in the last 25 years, a woman known as AJ can recall the day of the week, the weather, personal details, and major news events that occurred on that date.

The scientists at the University of California, Irvine, call her the human calendar. She contacted them six years ago. Since then, they’ve put her through exhaustive interviews and psychological tests, but still don’t understand how she does it. There have been savants who have narrow perfect memories, pertaining to music or a particular hobby, for example. But AJ’s memories are broad in scope, and she seems to be normal otherwise: early 40s, college graduate with average IQ, has held a job and gotten married.

So how does AJ’s brain store so much information, even when she’s not trying.

What if Brains Aren’t Memory Storage Devices?

In the UK in the 1970s, the University of Sheffield’s campus doctor was treating a math student for a minor ailment when he noticed the student had a larger than normal head. The doctor asked neurology professor Dr. John Lorber to take a look.

Dr. Lorber ran a CAT-scan and discovered that the student (a male math major, 126 IQ, went on to graduate with honors…) had virtually no brain. He had less than a millimeter of tissue at the top of his spinal column. The condition is called hydrocephalus, and it’s usually fatal in the first months after birth when the cranium fills with fluid. The fluid doesn’t leave room for the brain to develop.

Professor Lorber went on to locate several hundred people with similar conditions, some with “no detectable brain.” No brain, but they had memories and functioned normally…

If Not the Brain, Where Are Memories Stored?

The Akashic records, the Book of Life, the Cosmic Mind, and Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious all refer to some sort of universal memory storage that records all events and responses concerning Consciousness in all realities. Some say that we experience memories when our conscious minds access the Akashic records.

Many NDE experiencers say that before we come to earth, in order to learn, we promise to forget that the world is really an illusion. Part of the brain’s function is to block our consciousness from freely accessing the Akashic records while we’re here.

If this is true, then sometimes the brain fails. And when that happens, people like AJ can remember practically anything.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ~Albert Einstein

Read More: memory, brain, autism, hydrocephalus, John Lorber, Akashic records, Jung, collective unconscious

Would you rather make $80,000 or $100,000 per year?

Ok, how about a tougher question: assuming no difference in the price of milk, gas, and iPods, would you rather:

• Make $80,000 while everybody makes less than you?

OR

• Make $100,000 with the caveat that your friends all make much more than you do?

Sometimes Less Is More

Cornell Economist Dr. Robert H. Frank shows that most people would opt for less money as long as they could have a larger house and more toys than their neighbors.

Wise men have often said that wealth can’t buy happiness. Often left unmentioned is the fact that RELATIVE wealth DOES seem to deliver happiness. Relative wealth: it’s not your rich cousins; it’s a percentage of the pie.

There’s Only So Much Pie

The average yearly full-time income in the US is about $40,000. The average CEO of an S&P 500 company made $13.51 million in 2005. The ratio of average CEO pay to average non-manager pay was 301:1 in 2003, and it rose to 431:1 in 2004.

As CEOs cut themselves larger and larger pieces of the pie, others are left to divvy up the shrinking remainder. And the gulf of inequality only gets wider.

The Gini Coefficient

The Gini coefficient is a method used to calculate wealth inequality. In a society with a Gini coefficient of 0, everybody has equal wealth. In a society with a Gini coefficient of 1, a single person has everything, and the rest have nothing.

The perfect Gini coefficient is a subjective value. However, most agree a Gini coefficient that’s too low causes a sluggish economy stemming from incentive problems (why knock yourself out when you’re going to earn as much as the next person regardless?). On the other hand, a Gini coefficient that’s too high yields a slow economy topped with serious social conflict. Studies show the optimal Gini coefficient lies between .20 and .40. Coefficients in that range deliver enough aspiration without too much frustration and while limiting violence.

The rich would obviously prefer a high Gini coefficient, and the poor a low one. To take the personal bias out of the equation, economists use the Veil of Ignorance, named by John Rawls, one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th century.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet ponders the perfect Gini coefficient using Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance:

“Let’s say that it was 24 hours before you were born, and a genie appeared and said, ‘What I’m going to do is let you set the rules of the society into which you will be born. You can set the economic rules and the social rules, and whatever rules you set will apply during your lifetime and your children’s lifetimes.’ And you’ll say, ‘Well, that’s nice, but what’s the catch?’ And the genie says, ‘Here’s the catch. You don’t know if you’re going to be born rich or poor, white or black, male or female, able-bodied or infirm, intelligent or retarded.’ Now, what rules do you want to have?'’

The Gini coefficient and the wealth gap in the USA has been rising over the past 40 years. It’s currently pretty far above the happy and safe .04 value:

1970: 0.394
1980: 0.403
1990: 0.428
2000: 0.462
2005: 0.469

The world’s lowest Gini indexes are in Scandinavia and Central Europe, at around .28 percent. The USA and China are outside the healthy range, in the upper .40s. Latin American and African nations tend to have indexes in the .50-.60 range, well into the “slow economy topped with serious social conflict” zone, where the USA appears to be headed.

Where to Find Happiness

The data speaks for itself—you’ll be more happy with your financial lot in life if you’re around people who are poorer than yourself. For example, don’t move into a ritzy neighborhood where you’ll have to drive your beat up Accord past your neighbor’s new Jaguar each morning. But, don’t move into a crack house, either. There are better options for being around and getting to know people less fortunate than yourself (which, as the data shows, will make you happier…)

Nearly every town has hospitality shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries that need volunteers. Boys and Girls clubs need tutors and homework helpers. You can volunteer at hospitals, charity events, elderly care homes. After making friends at these places, not only will you feel good about your soul, but you’ll feel healthy and wealthy and blessed by comparison.

Being Rich is a Point of View

Not long after I moved into my first house, the doorbell rang. I answered to find a guy, named Tyler, asking for some cash to buy his wife medicine. He said she had Lupus. She was with him, and so were his two small children.

Leery of being scammed, I resisted, only to have him beg and offer to mow my yard. I explained that I mowed my own yard to save money—I couldn’t afford to pay somebody else to do it. I had a new house, a credit card balance to pay off, and a budget with every penny allocated. Not to mention I’d saved about twenty dollars by eating lunch at my desk all week, and I didn’t feel like losing the hard-earned savings.

Tyler said his kids were hungry. He asked if I had any food…anything.

It was August, about ninety degrees in the shade, and he and his family had walked miles. I invited them inside, and before long there was no doubt I was not being scammed. They devoured a leftover half of pizza from the refrigerator, and downed big glasses of ice water.

While they were eating in my living room, Tyler saw the shelf containing my CD collection. He said he’d never seen so many CDs. He was genuinely excited—not trying to make me feel guilty. But I felt guilty, nontheless. I gave him the twenty out of my wallet when he and his family left.

Tyler thought I was super duper rich, and when I saw myself through his eyes, I agreed. No matter how poor you are, there’s somebody somewhere poorer. There’s somebody working in a sweatshop for pennies, and moms who can’t feed their kids. For a nice change, see your life through their eyes and feel like a billionaire.

Read More: wealth, inequality, hunger, poverty, economy