Jill Bolte Taylor – My Stroke of Insight

I keep recommending this blog’s readers to many many video talks. These are talks which have impressed me. There is one talk that I listened to today, which even moved me. This is probably the first talk, I have ever heard, where a neural-anatomist – a person who studies the human brain — talks so clearly of a feeling of nirvana. I am not sure, if Dr. Taylor has ever read the hindu texts, but what she talks about, is exactly what the vedas have been talking about. The vedas may not have talked about the left and right hemispheres, or the cerebral cortex, but it certainly talks a LOT about the atman, the feeling of all pervasiveness, the feeling of being ONE with the universe, or with the surroundings. Listen to the talk below, and see how much sense, it all makes. Brilliant. Dr. Taylor gets emotional towards the end of the talk, as she talks about her near-death experience.

As TED introduces her, “Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.”

Watch the video either in youtube (above) or directly at TED.com here. And I promise, you will not regret the 18 minutes of your time.

Green dot pink dot Green dot pink dot …..

My uncle is the email-forward-expert in our famly. Some of the emails that he sends, though, are mind boggling. I would like to share the following optical illusion with you all.

Concentrate on the rotating dot, you will see the dots, pink in colour. Focus on the black ‘+’ sign in the middle, and you will see the pink dot change to green. In reality, there is no green colour in the picture. Wow.