S2E37: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: What a Stroke Revealed About Consciousness | Talk Tracks

What happens when three-fourths of a neuroscientist’s brain goes offline, and what remains is not emptiness, but peace, connection, and love? Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist who spent her life studying the brain, until a massive stroke made her the subject of her own life’s work. As the parts of her brain tied to language, identity, linear time, and the sense of being separate began to shut down, she entered an expansive state that would shape the next chapter of her work. After eight years of rebuilding her brain, Dr. Bolte Taylor emerged with a new framework for understanding the brain and the self: four inner “characters” that influence how we think, feel, react, relate, and move through the world. In this episode of the Talk Tracks, Ky Dickens speaks with Dr. Bolte Taylor about what her stroke revealed, how Whole Brain Living can help us engage all four parts of ourselves, and how we can learn to choose who and how we want to be. Together, they also explore emotional reactivity, inner peace, intuition, telepathy, energy healing, and the possibility that some forms of awareness may reflect capacities of the brain and consciousness that science is still learning how to understand. _______ Join The Telepathy Tapes Backstage Pass to get ad-free episodes, never-before-heard interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, and access to our private Discord community. This is your invitation to come closer. To help shape what’s next. To be more than a listener… to be a co-creator of this paradigm shift. So if you’ve felt moved, if you’ve felt seen, if you’ve felt the call, subscribe today and join us: thetelepathytapes.com. https://thetelepathytapes.com/ _______ Thank you to our sponsors! Alloy http://myalloy.com/ - Try the original estrogen-powered M4 skincare from Alloy. Visit myalloy.com http://myalloy.com/ and use code TAPES for $20 off your first order! Dose https://dosedaily.co/pages/16oz-partnership?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=TAPES&selling_plan=5291213041 - Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to dosedaily.co/TAPES https://dosedaily.co/pages/16oz-partnership?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=TAPES&selling_plan=5291213041 to get 35% off your first subscription. Redmond Re-Lyte https://living.redmond.com/pages/tapes - Ready to give Re-Lyte a try? Go to redmond.life/telepathy https://living.redmond.com/pages/tapes and use code TAPES for 15% off your first order. Luminara https://www.luminara.care/ - If you’re curious about energy healing and ready to experience it for yourself, Luminara is offering 20% off your first session for listeners of The Telepathy Tapes. Just go to luminara.care https://www.luminara.care/ and use code TAPES20. Quince https://www.quince.com/tapes - Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to Quince.com/tapes https://www.quince.com/tapes for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Ka'Chava https://kachava.com/ - Go to kachava.com https://kachava.com/ and use code TAPES for 15% off your first order. BiOptimizers https://bioptimizers.com/tapes - Make this the year you finally get your sleep, your energy, and yourself back. Get 15% off at bioptimizers.com/tapes https://bioptimizers.com/tapes when you use my code, TAPES. Shopify http://shopify.com/tapes - Start your business today with the industry’s best business partner, Shopify. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at Shopify.com/tapes http://shopify.com/tapes. Zenni http://zenni.com/podcast - If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, go to Zenni.com/podcast http://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ky Dickens?

  Hi everyone, I'm Kai Dickens and welcome to The Talk Tracks, brought to you weekly by TTT Media. In this series, we explore the threads that weave together our understanding of reality, science, spirituality, consciousness, and even unexplained phenomena. Because every era has ideas once dismissed as impossible until someone was willing to investigate them seriously. And on this show, we do just that.

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• 1:59Ky Dickens?

  Today's guest, Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist, bestselling author, and one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. Dr. Bolte-Taylor spent her life studying the brain. Then, one morning, she had a massive stroke and became the subject of her own life's work, watching from the inside as three-fourths of her brain went offline. Over the course of four hours, she lost the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or remember the details of her life. The parts of her brain tied to language, identity, linear time, and the sense of being a separate self began to shut down. And yet, she wasn't met with nothing. What remained was an experience of the present moment

• 2:44Ky Dickens?

  that she describes as expansive, peaceful, connected, and full of love. Over the next eight years, as she rebuilt the abilities she had lost, Dr. Bolte-Taylor began to understand the brain in a new way, not just as regions and functions, but as four distinct inner characters, each shaping how we experience ourselves, each other, and the world. In this conversation, we explore what her stroke revealed about consciousness, what it means to live from the whole brain, and how we can learn to tap into and engage all four parts of our brain. Then, we turn to the bigger mysteries and how her experience shapes her perspective on unexplainable phenomena like telepathy, intuition, and energy healing. So, Dr. Bolte-Taylor, welcome. It's a delight to have you here.

• 3:29Ky Dickens?

  And can you introduce yourself in your own words?

• 3:31Speaker 04

  I am Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor. I am a trained and published neuroanatomist. My specialty is in cellular anatomy. I'm the author of two books, My Stroke of Insight, and second book is Whole Brain Living. And I do my best to counter all work time with paddle boarding.

• 3:53Ky Dickens?

  And then, how did you first get interested in neuroscience?

• 3:55Speaker 04

  I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother, who is only 18 months older than I, who, when we were children, his point of view was very different from mine. And I recognize- Then we would have the exact same experience, but we would walk away with completely different interpretations about what had just happened. So I became fascinated with body language, facial language, intonation of voice, just context of how do we communicate? And how does our brain create our perception of reality? My brother would eventually grow up to be diagnosed with a brain disorder schizophrenia. So I studied anatomy and the brain in undergrad.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  And then I got a PhD in neuroanatomy. And then I went to Harvard Medical School, where as a postdoc, I was teaching and performing research into how does our brain create our perception of reality?

• 4:52Ky Dickens?

  And that question would be answered in a way Dr. Bolte Taylor could have never imagined when one morning she had a stroke and became the subject of her own life's work.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  You have to be very careful what you ask the universe for. And the universe said, OK, little girl, you want to understand how your brain works? We're going to take three quarters of your brain away. And so I experienced a major hemorrhage in the left half of my brain. And over the course of four hours, that hemorrhage grew to the point where I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. I became an infant in a woman's body. I all but died.

• 5:32Ky Dickens?

  In her TED Talk, Jill describes the extraordinary moments of that morning as she oscillated between her left hemisphere flickering on and offline and entering the vastly different reality of only her right brain being online.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  At first, I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me.

• 5:56Ky Dickens?

  Without her brain's left hemisphere, she lost sense of her own boundaries of self and could no longer delineate between the molecules of her own arm and that of the wall or anything else around her.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  I felt enormous and expansive, but one with all the energy that was. And it was beautiful there.

• 6:15Ky Dickens?

  She was drifting into a vast consciousness, detached from the body or the world she knew. But then, all of a sudden, her left hemisphere would come back online.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  And it says to me, hey, we got a problem.

• 6:26Ky Dickens?

  Because she was still getting these brief waves of clarity, Jill was able to do just enough to save her own life. She found her business card and for 45 minutes, attempted to call for help by matching the squiggle shapes on the card to those on the phone pad. And I'm talking about the numbers here. And finally, she managed to get through to her colleague.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  And he says to me, I say to him, this is Jill. I need help. And what comes out of my voice is, I didn't know that I couldn't speak or understand language until I tried.

• 6:56Ky Dickens?

  Luckily, the colleague understood enough to know something was wrong and sent an ambulance. While riding to the hospital, Jill recounts those last moments of her consciousness as she knew it.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Just like a balloon with the last bit of air, I felt my energy lift and I felt my spirit surrender. And in that moment, I knew either the doctors rescued my body or this was perhaps my moment of transition.

• 7:23Ky Dickens?

  But she did wake up. And when she did, she was shocked at the reality she was met with.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  My mind was now suspended between two very opposite planes of reality.

• 7:33Ky Dickens?

  Sensory stimulation was overwhelming. Light burned her brain, and she couldn't distinguish voices from background noise. And yet, she also experienced something else. No longer tied to her body in space, she felt liberated.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  My spirit soared free like a great whale, gliding through a sea of silent euphoria. I found nirvana.

• 7:56Ky Dickens?

  As the parts of the brain tied to language, memory, identity, time, and the sense of being separate from the world shut down, she was met with a sense of being connected to everything. So Jill, you make it to the hospital. You undergo surgery where the doctors removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball. And then what happened?

• 8:13Speaker 04

  Once they took that pressure off my brain, they sent me home and said, we have no idea how much you'll ever get back. I used what I still had to rebuild the circuits of

• 8:25Speaker 04

  The skill sets and abilities that had gone offline. So it took eight years for me to completely recover all lost function. And that was a wild ride.

• 8:36Ky Dickens?

  And as those other parts slowly came back online, she began to understand the brain in a new way, as four distinct parts, each with its own way of experiencing reality. But maybe the most powerful part of her realization was that this loving, connected state wasn't something outside of her. It was part of her consciousness. And if she had access to it, maybe all of us did. And here she is in her TED Talk reflecting on that moment.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  If I have found Nirvana and I'm still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana. And I pictured a world filled with beautiful, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time and that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace.

• 9:26Ky Dickens?

  That realization became part of what motivated her recovery and eventually became the foundation of her work, helping people understand the different parts of the brain and how we can learn to access more of ourselves. So before we get into the four characters, I want to make this as simple as possible. Many of us are familiar with the general idea that the left brain is analytical and thinking while the right brain is creative and emotional. But in reality, it's more layered than that. The left and right hemispheres do process information differently, but both sides have emotional tissue and both sides have thinking tissue. So instead of just left brain and right brain, Dr. Bolte Taylor sees four parts: left thinking, left emotion, right emotion, and right thinking. And each gives us a different way of experiencing reality. Can you walk us through a brief overview

• 10:11Ky Dickens?

  of the brain's structure itself?

• 10:12Speaker 04

  So we have a reptilian brain. And this is going to be everything that runs on automatic. And then on top of the reptilian brain, in each hemisphere, is the emotional limbic tissue. And this is the difference between a mammal and a reptile. So all mammals then have this limbic tissue.

• 10:31Ky Dickens?

  Put simply, the limbic tissue is where emotional processing happens.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Then for humans, we add thinking tissue on top of the limbic tissue. So now we have higher cognition.

• 10:42Ky Dickens?

  Okay, so now we've got all four parts. So tell us about the difference between the left and the right emotional parts.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  In the left hemisphere, the limbic tissue actually has the ability to step out of the consciousness of the present moment. Now, just think about what I just said. A group of cells inside of the left limbic tissue has the ability to step out of the consciousness of the present moment so that we can have a past, a present, and a future. So these cells give us linearity across time, and it's going to process deep emotions. And then in the right hemisphere is a right here, right now, present moment experience.

• 11:26Ky Dickens?

  Okay, so to summarize, the left hemisphere is able to pull things from the past to inform our present, whereas the right hemisphere is just experiencing what's happening right here, right now, before the mind turns it into a story.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  Yes, so these two limbic groups of cells are always running, but they're dancing back and forth between who's being dominant and who's dominating and inhibiting the other.

• 11:50Ky Dickens?

  Okay, and then on top of that emotional tissue, we have the thinking tissue in both the left and the right brain as well. So how does the left and right thinking tissue differ?

• 11:58Speaker 04

  In the left higher cognitive tissue, it's going to have linearity across time, and it's going to have me, the individual. I am Jill Bolte Taylor, who is separate from you. And then in the right hemisphere, it doesn't have me, Jill Bolte Taylor. And in the absence of my past or my experience of the future, all I have is the collage of experience in the right here, right now. And so the right thinking tissue is simply connected to all that is. There are no physical boundaries for where I begin and end. And so I end up with these four different groups of cells that are always all running, but they are inhibiting who is being dominant in any moment.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  So each of those four groups of cells, left thinking, left emotion, right emotion, right thinking, manifest a constellation of skill sets individually. And each end up looking like very distinctive personalities.

• 13:02Ky Dickens?

  So what you're describing is consciousness not as one single thing, but as something layered with different parts of the brain, giving us different ways of experiencing reality. And during your stroke, you didn't just understand that intellectually, right? You experienced what happened when most of the layers are quiet, and then what it felt like when they gradually came back online. So can you walk us through what you call the four characters?

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

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• 15:17Speaker 04

  According to traditional medicine, the only portion of our brain that is conscious is the left-thinking portion of our brain. So I call that Character One, simply because I had to organize and communicate about these different parts of the brain somehow. Character One is the part of us that is designed to take our internal world and relates it to the external world. So first, I have an identity. I am Jill Bolte-Taylor because I have a group of cells in my Character One constantly reminding me where I live, what my phone number is, what I'm supposed to do today. It loves a to-do list. It has language. It creates sound. It's gonna read, and it's gonna write, and it's gonna have mathematics.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  It defines the boundaries of where I begin and end so that I experience myself to be a single, solid, separate from all the energy around me. And again, it's gonna have linearity across time. So Character One's that alpha personality that most of us can relate to. It likes to control people, places, and things so that we can create order out of the external world so that our internal world can feel safe because we have this idea that we can actually control things.

• 16:36Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, I mean personally, I can definitely relate to this Character One, like as a mom, and at work, and all those different places. It's pretty important.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Thank goodness, though, for the intellectual side. I mean, where would we all be? Life would be a mess. If we don't have some semblance of Character One in our life, we have no order in our life. So I encourage people to get to know these four characters. There are different identities inside of each one of us, and I encourage people to give them a name. So I call mine Helen. Character One is Helen, Helen Wills. She gets it done. She runs my to-do list. She keeps everything organized and structured. So let's go to Character Two, which is gonna be the emotional limbic tissue in that left hemisphere. So this is all of our emotions from the past. Pain, as well as... This is always running.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  Sometimes it's having emotional reactivity because it is constantly comparing everything coming in through the right brain from the present moment and making a decision instantaneously. Is that something that feels safe to me? Or do I need to knee jerk against that and push it away? Thank goodness, we have this little character two, because otherwise, you know, I'd be stepping off the street and getting hit by a bus because I haven't learned that, oh, no, that is something I don't want to do. And then it's about all the pain from the past. And every piece of pain from the past, though, is designed to be information to inform me

• 18:08Speaker 04

  in the present moment, character two, as to whether or not that feels safe or I need to get away from it.

• 18:15Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, and it's a helpful way to frame emotional reactivity and trauma is something our bodies are actually, you know, using to keep us safe.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  And in our society right now, we tend to be focused on our trauma, running that circuit more and more and more, rerunning the loops. And my whole life becomes about my trauma and it becomes a lifestyle. So because character two has a past, then this is my ability to hold a grudge against you. And so I might not be speaking to you because of something you did 30 years ago and that person might even have passed away, but it's still running the loop. And at the same time, it's going to be positive emotions like pride. So little character two, I call mine Abby, which is short for abandonment, because I think the moment I came flying out of my mother's womb, all of a sudden I was startled

• 19:05Speaker 04

  into respiration and poking and prodding. I see that as my original trauma.

• 19:11Ky Dickens?

  And so this makes up part of what you call our inner tub.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, it never matures because by the time we're born, it has to be online.

• 19:20Ky Dickens?

  So character two is the left emotional brain. How does that emotional process differ when we move to the right hemisphere?

• 19:26Speaker 04

  In the right hemisphere, little character three is the other emotional, but it's the emotional of the present moment. So what does it feel like? What did it feel like when I was born? My left hemisphere might have recorded this as a negative trauma. My right hemisphere viewed this probably as, oh, my gosh, wow, wow, new possibility. Wow, what's this? So little character three, it's right here, right now. It's curious, it's open to possibilities, it's expansive. It's not about me, the individual. It's about me, the big energy ball. So I call mine Pigpen because the first step in the creative process is make a mess.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  It's our entrepreneurialism, our possibility, our collective whole connectedness. It's excitable, it's empathic, I'm connected to you. So character three is this really beautiful, wonderful possibility part of who we are that wants to go and play and explore and adventure and just be in the present moment, feel the life of the present moment.

• 20:33Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, and that feels like a part that was more readily accessible, you know, when I was younger, but slowly gets a little more overrun by character one and two as time goes by. So then we get to character four, which is the only part you were left with during your stroke. How do you describe this character?

• 20:48Speaker 04

  Character four, the right thinking portion of our brain, it is not active. Well, it's active in that it is running, but it is observing and aware of, oh, my God, I'm alive. Oh, my God, I'm alive. Imagine what life is like if you take away your character one and all the language and all the noise and all the right and wrong and the good and bad and all that, get rid of Helen, and then you get rid of all your pain from the past and you get rid of linearity across time altogether. And so that's not distracting you. And then you're not distracted by your own little character three, the right emotional portion of the brain, which is active and engaged in creating and doing, doing, doing, and, and all that goes offline and all you have is love.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  All you have is this intense sense of gratitude, big picture perspective. I look at the world with wonder and awe and I'm just grateful that I'm alive. So that's that deep sense of gratitude that this portion of our brain is like that portal to a transcendence from simply being me, I am this mass of cells to I am this massive collection, this ball of energy connected to all the energy around.

• 22:03Ky Dickens?

  And that is the part many of us are probably not as in touch with on a frequent basis. But you're suggesting that we can all connect with this, and it starts by getting to know our four characters.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  Yes, we end up with these four very different parts of who we are, and we all have them. But some of them you may have listened to and said, oh, yeah, I recognize those parts. But no, I don't recognize that part at all. And it doesn't mean that it's not there. It simply means that the others are being so loud that it's being pushed down and suppressed or possibly even inhibited. So we're living in a skewed to the left brain dominant society where character one and character two are what we really value. And the value of that left hemisphere is about me, the individual. I want to control how I feel. I want to control you.

• 22:56Speaker 04

  And if you don't fit into my box about what's right and wrong, I'm going to move into my character two, and I'm going to punish you, or I'm rarely am I open to new possibility because that's going to take my right hemisphere. So step one is the willingness to observe yourself.

• 23:13Ky Dickens?

  Okay, so even if we are sort of societally conditioned to operate more in our character one and two by bringing awareness to our different parts, we can change that. And in your book, you recommend we pause 20 to 30 times a day and just notice which character we're in.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  You know, gaining awareness of these four different parts of you and then paying attention, whatever tools you use to pay attention. A character one might put it on the clock. Every hour on the hour, it's going to ping, and I'm going to ask myself, what am I doing? And which character am I being?

• 23:47Ky Dickens?

  And then, once people become familiar with all four parts of themselves, you offer a practical tool to really engage all four and start to choose a new way forward.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, so getting to know the four parts of who you are and then being able to bring them into conversation with one another is what I call a brain huddle, B-R-A-I-N huddle.

• 24:08Ky Dickens?

  And here's Dr. Bolte Taylor describing those five steps of the brain huddle in an interview from the Weekend University.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  So B, breath. It brings your mind to the present moment. R, recognize which of the characters called the brain huddle, because now you know them well. So they say, here, here, here, here. A is, it doesn't matter who called the huddle, appreciate the fact that we are four of us here. I inquire, okay, who do we want to be? Do I want to stay in my pain from the past? Or, no, I want to go to the movies with you. I don't want to have some fun. And then N is navigate moment by moment by moment.

• 24:45Ky Dickens?

  It's really a way of pausing the automatic reaction and bringing more of ourselves into the room. Instead of letting one activated part take over, the anxious part, the controlling part, the wounded part, we can breathe and recognize what's happening, give appreciation to the part of us that's triggered, listen to what each different character needs, and choose how we want to move forward with more awareness of all four parts rather than just the one triggered part.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  And then you can bring them into conversation with one another on any intra-inside-of-yourself, reflective conflict. It's a beautiful thing. I mean, what this really boils down to is that if there's four characters inside of me and there's four characters inside of you, then that means in every relationship we have, there's eight of us that we have to negotiate. And that's a lot of negotiation. And it's really obvious, probably, to most people that two-character twos will never find a resolution. Because biologically, they're not supposed to find a resolution. They're supposed to protect us from that which is threatening.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  So pay attention to who you are, what you're doing. Really start looking at everybody as four characters. And if you do that, everything in your life will change.

• 26:02Ky Dickens?

  Alongside the brain huddle, you also talk about something called the 90-second rule, the idea that when something triggers an emotion, sadness, anger, fear, the body releases a wave of chemicals that creates a physical feeling of that emotion. But that chemical wave only lasts 90 seconds. So if the feeling continues beyond that, it's usually because we're reactivating it with our thoughts, or our stories, or our memories. And here's Jill again, explaining how to witness these emotions without continuing to re-trigger them.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Whenever you're feeling yourself emotionally triggered, if you literally pause and look at your watch, as soon as you do that, you're pulling yourself actually up out of character two into character one. And as you shift that energy, now it's just going to run its loop on automatic and you're going to observe your physiological response instead of engaging and simply being your physiological response.

• 27:00Ky Dickens?

  Wow, so these tools, the brain huddle and the 90 second rule, really do help to pause and bring in all parts of ourselves and choose how we want to proceed. So the goal isn't to ignore the emotion or push it away. It's to witness it without letting it become the whole story, to let it inform the present without taking over the present. And through this, we can work to engage with the more expansive, less reactive parts of ourselves more and more.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  It just makes life a whole lot easier because I don't have to be in my pain anymore. I don't have to live my trauma. Do I value my trauma? Oh, my God, I absolutely do. My trauma has saved my life to get me where I am today. But I want that to inform my present, not take over and become the lifestyle of my present. So pay attention to who you are, what you're doing.

• 27:48Ky Dickens?

  It's so wonderful. So thank you for sharing those tools. And I mean, I just think all of us could benefit from learning how to pause, bring more of ourselves into the room and engage more of our consciousness. And with that perspective in mind, I want to turn to some of our bigger questions we explore in the show, especially on forms of communication that don't use ordinary language. So we've heard a lot from non-speaking, appraxic people who describe telepathic communication with a parent or caregiver or teacher. And we've also heard a similar thing from people who care for those with dementia or who've had a stroke. So from your perspective, where does your mind go when you hear these stories?

• 28:23Speaker 04

  So I will say that every ability we have, I believe, we have because we have brain cells that perform that function. I'm a biological creature. If it's out there, I have to have cells that can perceive that. At the same time, if I am... I'm capable of having a religious experience, a experience of transcendence, then I believe that I have cells that permit me the ability to have that experience. I can have all the prayer in the world, but if I don't have the cells that get me there, then I can't get there. And people who have right-brain, right-thinking tissue damage, they actually complain about that.

• 29:07Ky Dickens?

  So from Dr. Bolte Taylor's perspective, these experiences still have a biological basis. She's not saying they happen outside of the brain. She's saying the brain may have capacities we just don't fully understand yet. And as many listeners know, we've also interviewed people who do think it's happening outside the brain. But in her framework, one of the keys is which parts of the brain are dominating our awareness.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  This left hemisphere is very loud. So if you wipe out that character one and you quiet that down, and then character two, let's quiet that down. And then the character three group of cells, I'm going to purposely consciously settle that down. And then what do I have? If I am not distracted by all of the details and all the rest of the noise in three-quarters of my brain, then I have me in the presence, open to all possibilities. And in that possibility is the great unknown that science doesn't know how to measure, doesn't know how to do that. Because it's not about data. It's about the lack of data.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  And the scientific method, by definition, is about measuring data.

• 30:18Ky Dickens?

  OK, so that's interesting. So you're saying that perhaps, you know, when characters one through three are quieted down, or we choose to quiet them down, something might be existing in character four where telepathy can occur, but we don't have the tools to measure what's actually happening there. And so many of the non-speaking individuals that we've featured on this show have described telepathy as a form of communication that they believe we're all born with, but has been conditioned, you know, out of us over time. What do you make of that?

• 30:46Speaker 04

  The brain is this massive tool that is designed to figure out how to communicate. Because as a biological human, that's what I'm designed to do, right? I've got all these cells for that. But language is very complex. It takes literally a third of your brain, if not more, to figure out language. And that doesn't mean that the right hemisphere doesn't have language. The right hemisphere has a different language. So we don't have an alphabet over here. It's not about that. It's about an awareness. For example, warmth. Well, how do you define warmth? The left hemisphere is going to come in and try to define it.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  But the experience of warmth, when sunshine comes through a window and lights you up, warmth is an awareness. I think that if we're going to look at telepathic conversation, it's going to be about the experience of an awareness.

• 31:51Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, it's interesting because some people who describe experiencing telepathy will say they hear words, and others will say they see pictures or images, and others experience it as a sense of knowing, or even like they'll feel physical pain if someone's feeling pain in the arm. And some people say they get a full-on download of all of it. And so who knows? I mean, maybe that relates to which parts of the brain are being activated.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  I'm the first to say, if we all stem from the consciousness of the universe, whatever that is, and that's where we begin, then every ability we have is because we have cells that perform that function. And if I don't have the cells that are now inhibiting the cells that need to be dominant in order for us to be able to communicate at a different level in a different way, then I have those skills.

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• 33:24Speaker 04

  So I'm open to possibility. However, having said that, I will say, I do tend to really value the skill set of science supporting things. But science is a growing knowledge base. And to me, good science and good scientists are people who are open to possibility of exploration.

• 33:46Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, and I think it can be such a challenge to explore these topics deeper and for scientists to get funding because they run into that wall of materialism and the materials framework.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  So for me, if somebody comes in and says, "Oh, it's not real, it's not this, it's not that." It's like, then maybe we could challenge you to decide that it is real and create tools that could help us understand it better. And to me, that's a good use of science, not just come in and say, "No, if we can't measure it, it's not real and it doesn't exist." And science should be curious. And it should be, well, if we have children who are making claims and relationships that we don't understand, then it's like, well, let's be creative in how we test that. And if we can't prove it to be true, how might we look at that differently?

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Because we're still using tools that can't measure that. But I'm not one to go in and simply discount everything because, "Oh, I have to see it and taste it and hear it in order for it to be real." It's like, no, I've been too far detached from normal reality. To discount what I gained because of that stroke. And most people look at people who have deficit as people who have deficit. And I don't do that. I look at people and I say, this person no longer has the tools that are inhibiting the other side and therefore what is that? And what is there? And how might we study it or learn more about it?

• 35:24Ky Dickens?

  Yeah. And I mean, I think it's something we're all starting to see a change in that not assuming that difference means absence of something. Because, you know, it almost seems obvious that if one system is quieter or less dominant, something else has room to move forward.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  But scientifically, as long as we got this cranial vault keeping this brain inside and we can't visualize everything going on. You know, it's going to remain a mystery for a long time. But thank goodness for the mystery because the mystery is life. And we have a life. And how would anybody ever believe that we exist at all anyway? I mean, it's magnificent.

• 36:01Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, beautiful. So when you say you're open to the possibility, I'm curious. You know, were there things that you dismissed prior to your stroke that you're more open to now?

• 36:09Speaker 04

  So I was actually not a left brain scientist. I was a right brain child. And when you're not focused on language and communicating in that level in that way with that language, there's a lot of information that you pick up intuitively. I mean, what is intuition? Intuition is our ability to connect dots that seem to not be connected to the left brain, which is looking for organization and categorization and definition.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  The right hemisphere is just connected. It is connected to everything. So when you think about even healing, how do we heal ourselves? How do we self heal? For me, it's a matter of we're wired to self heal. But in order to self heal, we have to get rid of all the noise. And in our society, we function in a medical world that is based on disease, not on wellness. And that was a purposeful decision made by, I don't remember who, and I should, but back in like 1900. And so from that moment forward, everything was established based on the disease model, what's wrong with the system, instead of what is in the way of the system being healthy.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Wellness. So, you know, there's us as these biological creatures with perception. And then there's the world within which we live. And how do we fit ourselves into the world that we live and still come out as healthy people?

• 37:50Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, and I think it's great that you bring that up because in season two, we explored energy healing. And specifically, we looked at one of the studies happening at MD Anderson around Reiki and its ability to slow the progress of pancreatic cancer cells. And I'm curious what you think about energy healing and what might be happening, you know, biologically or energetically?

• 38:11Speaker 04

  This is what I think. I think when we are first conceived, we start as a single cells called the zygote cell. And that cell is activated to multiply and divide its DNA at a rate of 250,000 new cells per second. And these multiplying cells are nothing other than atoms and molecules and energy. And so the energy that is multiplying, dividing, that's energy that is, you know, connected to everything. And if we are energy, is there a consciousness? I mean, that's the next question, of course. Is there a consciousness in this energy? And when I had was character four, which is the portion of me that is energy connected to the energy of the universe.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  It felt like love. I'm just gonna say it, it felt like love. The absence of experience was one of bliss. So for me, what is going on in that energetic zone of character four is energy. So if the universe feels like love at a fundamental level, and if energy holds the consciousness that feels like love, and it starts with those little cells making up me, the consciousness of that energy is the consciousness of every cell. So I am that love. I am that connection.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  I am energetically alive because I have that energy.

• 39:43Ky Dickens?

  So when you think about healing, it sounds like you're not separating biology from energy. You're saying that the body is cells and systems and chemistry, but also energy connection, and maybe even consciousness moving through those cells.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  If the consciousness of every cell in my body is the consciousness that is connected to that consciousness all around me that I am not separate from, because I have a tiny little group of cells in my left hemisphere that says I am separate from that energy. I'm not separate from that energy. I just might have a group of cells that freaks out if it thinks all I am is a tiny little collection of cells in this body, and oh my God, I don't have half the importance that I actually attribute myself to, because it's all about me, me, me, because I live in a society that values the me. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm open to the possibility of absolutely, anything's possible.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Not all of our scientific method is sophisticated enough now to be able to measure things. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That means that we, you know, science is young, and our understanding of the brain is young. But I do believe that self-healing happens. I think I'm a living example of that. And when we become unwell, if I have cells not in the energetic flow of my health and well-being, then maybe I'll... Grow a tumor. But I'm a believer that we're all always having strange cells going offline in our body that would be cancer cells.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  And that we have this magnificent immune system specifically designed to go and bring the health and wellbeing back to the cells. Our immune system is this masterpiece of glory. Oh, my gosh, we have no idea how sick we are on a regular basis because we have these magnificent cells that are designed to bring us health. I believe life is designed to be well.

• 41:43Ky Dickens?

  I love that. And it echoes what we explored in season two, which is that energy healing is really about bringing the body back into coherence. And it's like resonant vibration of health.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  You cannot do healing without an awareness of the energy that is bringing the wellness. And if you are doing it, you're working against yourself.

• 42:02Ky Dickens?

  I mean, what a powerful way to think about healing, not just as something happening in the body, but as a process connected to, you know, returning to balance and connection and awareness. And that feels so connected to your larger message that we don't have to be ruled by one reactive or fearful part of ourselves. And through tools like the brain huddle, we can begin to notice which part is leading, bring more of the whole brain online and choose to move through the world with more compassion and presence and connection.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think we are at an incredible juncture. And if we are functioning as a society at the level of humanity around the world, and the medical world believes that only one quarter of our brain is conscious, and that means the rest is running on automatic. And I think if you look at the level of violence and crime and sadness and just emotional mental health depletion, we're not doing a very good job with just a quarter of the brain turned on. And so do I want other people to wake up their whole brains? Thousand percent, absolutely. And I believe that whole brain living, each one of us who has a brain, which is all of

• 43:14Speaker 04

  us, when we become aware of these four magnificent Of who we are and we bring them into conversation and balance. I don't have to feel my suffering anymore. I don't have to be angry at you anymore. I'm making conscious decisions moment by moment, who and how I want to be in the world. And maybe I don't want to be mad at you tonight because I actually want to go have a good time and have some fun. So if we're making these decisions all the time, let's just get to know who's inside of our head, who's who inside of you, who's who inside of me? And start having a really conscious negotiation so that we can elevate ourselves to looking

• 43:56Speaker 04

  at what that left thinking brain is doing and it's saying, it's all about me. I want more land. I want my people to do this. I want this and that and the other. And all those terrible things that lead to war. You know, it's like, hello? If we have our whole brains functioning, those things aren't okay with us anymore. And we won't do that anymore. And if that means we vote differently, then we vote differently. But what we really care about is human life on this planet. And I think whole brain living is a, an easy, affordable way to get there.

• 44:27Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, what a great framework you've provided. And hopefully we can all work to activate and value the right brain a bit more. I mean, gosh, what a difference that would make.

• 44:35Speaker 04

  I mean, you know, I have to look at the big picture and say, this stroke couldn't have happened to a more perfect person. I grew up wanting to understand how our brain creates our perception of reality, which means the whole brain, not just a quarter of it that is conscious. And then it's like wipe out three quarters of the brain and start with, you know, bliss and love and euphoria. And then use that to rebuild the brain to be able to say, this is what was happening in that part of my brain. And then I had to turn on this part of my brain. And these are the things that it did. And this is what it feels like. And this is what it likes to be. And it has an identity and it feels different. Character three feels different than character four.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  And then it's like, okay, let's do some repair in the left hemisphere. Character two feels different than any of the other parts of my brain. And then Finally, they're all working together to get Character One to come online. It took eight years of rebuilding to get Character One, Helen, to come back online. And I'm telling you, the day she came back online, she came in full force and it's like, wow, you guys did an excellent job rebuilding me and now I want to be the boss again. And the rest of my three characters are going, uh, no. We're so glad you're back. We desperately need your skills, but we have a different

• 46:03Speaker 04

  value structure and the value structure is now of the right brain collective whole, not about me, the individual. Now, that doesn't mean that me, the individual, isn't important. It is. I have to have it in order to be a completely functional human. But I don't make my life decisions based on me, the individual. I'm actually looking at the collective whole and how do I want to spend my time?

• 46:28Ky Dickens?

  Beautiful. And are you still in agreement with the medical community that looks at three fourths of the brain as being offline or unconscious?

• 46:34Speaker 04

  No, not anymore. I think that's why we're in the world we're in. A whole brain living is completely conscious living. I can jump into any of my four characters in an instant.

• 46:44Ky Dickens?

  That's like a superpower.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  It's a superpower. Yeah. Oh, my God, we all have it. Let's say somebody comes over and they're trying to make you mad and you can jump into your character two and you can get mad or you can look at that person and think, I'd rather go paddleboard. I'm going to go do my character four or I'm going to go do my character three or I'm going to go do my character one. I can love you in spite of your own character two. I can love me in spite of my own character two because I have a beautiful character four who can come in and self-soothe me. And I have a character one who can come online and say, do I need to make a phone call right now? Are we safe? Are we okay? And one of the arguments between a lot of spouses is I come to you, I'm unhappy, I'm

• 47:27Speaker 04

  upset and you want to fix my problem and I don't want you to fix my problem with your character one. I want you to hold me with your character four and then I want you to distract me with. Your character three, right? So when we know our own four characters and we get to know those and the people around us, oh my gosh, all of a sudden, we're all living much more peaceful lives. And the more peace we feel within is what we're projecting into the world and the world becomes a more peaceful place. And I think people are ready for a more peaceful place.

• 47:59Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, I think so, too.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  You know, life is the miracle. Life is the miracle. And I encourage everyone to just look in a mirror and just look at yourself without the left brain, character one judgment or distraction of another time and space and just look at yourself in a mirror and think to myself, oh, my gosh, I'm alive. And just reflect upon that concept. I am alive. We are this magnificent design. We are just this magnificent, beautiful thing. And I want people to go and gain that wonder of their own existence because that will change your life.

• 48:38Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Thank you, dear. It's good to meet you.

• 48:43Ky Dickens?

  Yeah, you too. Bye bye.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  Okay, bye bye.

• 48:45Ky Dickens?

  That's it for this episode of The Talk Tracks. But new episodes will be released every Wednesday, so stay tuned as we work to unravel all the threads, even the veiled ones that knit together our reality. And please remember to stay kind, stay curious, and that being a true skeptic requires an open mind. To dive in deeper, subscribe to our Backstage Pass by visiting our website. With it, you'll unlock access to bonus content like telepathy tests, Ask Me Anything interviews with myself and guests. You'll be able to enjoy the podcast ad free, connect with other members on our Telepathy Tribe Discord, and hear and see exclusive content from the Telepathy Tapes Vault. Visit our website at thetelepathytapes.com for more info on how to subscribe to our Backstage Pass. Thank you to my amazing collaborators, producers Catherine Ellis and Selena Kennedy, technical

• 49:30Ky Dickens?

  directing, audio mix and finishing by Jeremy Cole, opening and closing music by Elizabeth P.W., and original logo and cover art by Ben Kandora Design. I'm Kai Dickens, your executive producer, writer, and host.