On Thinking - An Introspective View Into The Symbology Behind Duality

Duality—such as science and religion, analysis and intuition—is not opposition but two ways of attending to one reality. The felt task of perceiving wholeness corresponds, by metaphor and possibly measurable correlation, to integrating the brain's two hemispheres across the corpus callosum. Drawing on split-brain research, hemispheric asymmetry, fractal aesthetics, Jungian psychology (Persona, Ego, Self, individuation, and the mandala as a symbol of wholeness), the pineal gland as Descartes's seat of the soul and a symbol of the balancing Ego, recent neuroscience of endogenous DMT and the dying brain, and the neuroscience of ego-dissolution, the essay holds a deliberate seam between empirical finding and symbolic interpretation. It closes on quieting the self-narrating mind as a path to balance and inner peace.

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Abstract

A philosophy-of-mind reflection on duality. It argues that science and religion, fractal and mandala, analysis and intuition are not opposites but two attentions turned upon one world — and that the felt task of "seeing whole" corresponds, at least by metaphor and at most by measurable correlation, to the integration of the brain's two hemispheres across the corpus callosum. Drawing on split-brain research, hemispheric asymmetry, the fractal aesthetic, Jungian psychology (Persona, Ego, Self, and individuation; the mandala as a symbol of wholeness), the pineal gland as Descartes's "seat of the soul" and a symbol of the balancing Ego — including the surprising recent neuroscience of endogenous DMT and the dying brain — and the neuroscience of ego-dissolution, the essay holds a deliberate seam between empirical finding and symbolic interpretation, and closes on the quieting of the self-narrating mind as a path to balance and inner peace.