Jill Bolte Taylor response

Zach Rice 

I often fantasize about the concept of true silence. The thought of having no “brain chatter,” as Taylor put it, is truly entrancing. If I were to experience the type of silence Taylor speaks of, I would be joyfully amazed.

It seems that our current world is one full of all types of chatter, both internal and external. Stress spreads like a plague amongst people. This is a product of too much chatter in one’s mind. In the state pure silence Taylor describes, however, she is experiencing the most intense presence in all moments. He was experiencing no reflection, no distracting thoughts, and no previous experiences to compare the current one to, and only raw absorption. Her only job at the time was ‘being.’ All of these aspects further my belief that in said state, I would flourish. I say that because there is no thought or language to represent the inability to do so. In this state there is no existent right or wrong, there aren’t things that one would be better off spending his or her time on. In this silence the world can become more navigable.

Removal of all of the random, chaotic, and distracting chatter allows focusing on the only two things that we really truly have – what we see and what we feel. Everything becomes strictly “sensual intake,” as Krulwich puts it. In this purely sensual intake the previously stated ease in navigation is displayed. Jill Bolte Taylor said, “lying in that bed without words she felt connected to things, to everything, in a way that she never had before.” This is an example of something that is likely to only be achievable through an experience of this pure silence. When the words that describe the difference between something vanish, the differences themselves virtually vanish as well and this connection is achievable.