Purgatory - and developing your Brain
Join us on a new journey starting this week, with daily reflections on how to grow your mental faculties and outlook on the world.
This week we’re embarking on a new journey, and we’re inviting all of you to follow us on a gradual and joyful process of developing your right hemisphere, whilst also rejuvenating your left hemisphere, and leading towards a transformed new unity of your mind.
As we have touched upon earlier, in McGilchrist’s seminal works with “The Master and his Emissary” and “The Matter with Things”, two of the perhaps main key insights regarding our brain biology and the development of a balanced outlook on the world are:
The “Modern Brain” has become somewhat tilted and dominated by left hemispheric excesses
The brain itself is a unity of two asymmetrical parts, which McGilchrist suggests might also reflect a deeper structure of reality and more fundamental ontology
Both of these deep insights are essential and give us a precise description of the current challenges and illnesses culturally, and also an overall understanding of the biological nature of the brain. But they do not however give us a remedy or solution to the problems. A rebalancing can be achieved through the domains of nature, culture, the body and religion McGilchrist states, but he withholds anything more specific on frameworks and processes to accomplish this. But for that, we can turn to Dante’s Divine Comedy for help. This extraordinary poem from the 13 hundreds might be the sole work of literature and philosophy in our European tradition that most concretely and structurally provides us the answers, with an abundance of examples and a detailed “map” for the process, including built-in guiding and support from Dante himself.
Therefore, from July 25th we have started a new journey through Purgatory on our X/Twitter account with daily reflections - here:
As for the two key insights above, the most central point of Dante’s Work, literally, is that Being itself is at the deepest level a churning, living unity of two asymmetrical dimensions. And this unity can be expressed and found in infinite expressions on different levels throughout the Creation. We’ve talked about the “two wheels” of the rational and spiritual working together in an earlier essay here, but it also applies to the unity of the material and immaterial realms, to Love and Wisdom as the two highest shaping forces of reality, and also to how the nature of the right and the left brain hemispheres work together to create a unified experience of the world, when they are working properly.
"To sail through better waters now,
the little boat of my intellect raises up its sails -
and yes, leaves behind that cruel ocean"
And in some ways, Dante’s famous opening lines of having “lost his way” and being trapped in a “dark forest” is a precise description of the condition of left hemispheric excess: a sterile, meaningless and empty outlook on the world, and what McGilchrist often calls a “hall of mirrors”. It represents a disconnected separation from reality (and from oneself) - which is what Dante sets out to help us with here, with his poem. And the overall move from separation and fragmentation, to unity and new wholeness applies equally to the individual as it does to cultures, societies, civilizations and even to humanity at large.
In our daily reflections series which will be based on the original medieval text from Dante, we will start with the second book and Purgatory, after the mistaken paths and aims in life have been vividly elaborated in Inferno. And as the second book opens we are “sailing for better waters”, and what this means is that we are at a starting point for reshaping our brain. What we will go through with our daily reflections forward is a gradual discovery and growth of the right hemisphere, together with a new understanding and healing of the excesses of the left hemisphere. In order to “re-balance” the brain properly, both of these changes are necessary: an exploration and growth of the right, and a scaling back of the left. And through this, a new unity of two improved assymetrical parts can form and come to life, and elevate us to a fuller happiness and to a much richer life.
In other words, Iain McGilchrist has given us a clear diagnosis as a brilliant physician with his work, and now we can use Dante Alighieri’s work as the medicine to cure the ills. And we can do this from a purely secular and rational perspective, with Virgil as our guide, as a symbol of rationality and tradition for Dante.
So please join us on X in the coming months, and I would love to hear your thoughts and reflection on the postings! A big part of this endeavour will be to build a community and share individual processes, and what we can learn from each other. Each journey (and brain) is different, but some things might also be more in common and shared for everyone.
So with Dante’s opening tercets, let us renew our minds with beauty, new wisdom, and aim for Virtue, the Good, and getting a new connection to the guiding “stars” that will lead us to a better life!
“In other words, Iain McGilchrist has given us a clear diagnosis as a brilliant physician with his work, and now we can use Dante Alighieri’s work as the medicine to cure the ills. And we can do this from a purely secular and rational perspective, with Virgil as our guide, as a symbol of rationality and tradition for Dante.”
So interesting as how Purgatorio is perhaps a bit more easily accessible to the secular mindset than Paradiso, because it’s much more about the internal work of the person than about the spiritual heights of Paradiso. Should be very interesting to go through Purgatorio with the “self help/medicine” mindset!