My frequent long road trips through the Ohio countryside are times to enjoy the outstanding company of such people as Victor D. Hanson‚ Ben Shapiro‚ Carolyn Glick‚ Jordan Peterson and their guests. Just this past week‚ Peterson had as his guest Dr. Iaian McGilchrist‚ an Oxford don‚ who brilliantly combines psychiatry‚ neuroscience and literature in his teachings. It made for a compelling hour and three-quarters I wished it could have gone on.Petersons training and clinical practice was psychology‚ and his deep acquaintance with the research informs his talks and books. Lately‚ Petersons thought has led him to an ever-deepening religious stance that flows from a growing appreciation of the role God plays in our thought. His interest here parallels that of McGilchrist‚ and their dialogue entered into a deep exploration of how consciousness of the divine informs our understanding of the mind and how it works.(READ MORE: Team Biden Declares War on Christians)Neither Peterson nor McGilchrist are trained theologians‚ and so much the better. Their explorations have a freshness and absence of cant‚ which is there not only by the fortunate (or providential!) accident of their training‚ but also as a thought-out consequence of their methodPeterson as an interviewer is never content merely to draw out his guest. He engages his own thought in the process forthrightly‚ most often introducing what he has to say with the command: Now tell me what you think of this! This is deliberate and turns out to be crucial in his approach to God everything must be by invitation. Under normal circumstances‚ the truth‚ beauty‚ and goodness of the idea will speak for itself. Reversion to hectoring of any sort is clearest evidence that what is being put forth is unworthy of being associated with God.God Is the Principle of ThoughtPetersons core theological idea right now is that God is manifest in the structure of our thought as the superordinate principle. As he explains‚ we find that our thought relies on principles. The deeper the principle‚ the more thought depends on it; removing a deep principle pulls out the foundation of a lot of thought. God is manifest in our thought as the deepest of principles; when that is removed‚ the entire structure collapses. The civilizational breakdown he sees in the West as its enduring key principles of liberty of expression and thought collapse he believes stems from a deeper collapse of engagement with God in our thought.Peterson sees that our engagement with the good is expressed in the fundamental decisions we make at each moment about where we place our attention. He believes the fundamental error of the Enlightenment materialism that has ruled Western thought for a few centuries is in believing that‚ if we could only deal with facts‚ all would be set straight; theology is therefore not essential to thinking‚ as it deals‚ by common consent‚ with that which is unknowable at least‚ that cannot be reduced to a set of facts.The insurmountable problem for this way of thinking is that the number of facts is beyond count and we can never amass for consideration more than a fragment of the wholeness of the reality we know to be there. Therefore‚ we are choosing where to place our attention‚ and that is fundamentally a moral choice‚ as it will guide the nature of what we know and can act upon. The more our attention is directed by the deepest‚ the more deeply meaningful our lives will be.McGilchrist did not engage the political aspects of this discussion and Peterson did not force it. McGilchrist was far too interesting in his laying out the import of his own writings on the meaning of the right-brain/left-brain construction of our psyche and what it means.The left hemisphere of our brain functions by abstraction and focuses on a single outstanding aspect of our reality. It forces an either/or choice: You grab this thing NOW or you will fail; you flee from this danger immediately and nothing else matters more. It grabs our attention‚ brings about executive action‚ ruthlessly strips away everything except a core item which it grabs tight.(READ MORE: Those Who Disavow God Entrust Their Faith to Aliens and Bigfoot)The right brain‚ on the other hand‚ perceives the entirety of the context from in which individual facts reside. It is not abstract and reductive like the left brain‚ but holistic. It provides us with both/and thinking‚ the realization of how petty our choices can be‚ how often the tight focus of the left brain errs and leaves us blinded to other parts of the whole that may be more relevant. (A civilizational example from our recent COVID experience which I offer: The exclusive focus on vaccination and isolation was a left-brain leap into executive action; the cautionary warnings of people like Jay Bhattacharya‚ who said that our exclusive focus on these two things will expose us to much greater dangers.)The right brain‚ McGilchrist says‚ is the more important of the two because it alone tells us that both its approach and the tight focus of the left brain are needed; it makes room for the left brain and is capable of guiding it. The left brain is not inclined to see the worth in anything other than what it has focused on. It is inclined to tyranny. The right brain knows that there are always things‚ important things‚ that lie beyond our tight focus and we need the freedom to approach that larger reality for which the grabbing left-brain process is unsuited. It is the ability to be in the flow of the wellsprings of being‚ to be a part of the unfolding of reality as the petals of a flower.How We Know According to the KabbalaIn this short engagement with the talk‚ I will focus in a left-brain manner on one thing that grabbed me. My own study has centered on philosophy and the Jewish holistic explorations of the consciousness in the Kabbalisitic and Chassidic literature (Chassidic thought builds upon the Kabbalistic foundation).(READ MORE: Humanitys Greatest Agent of Peace: In Defense of the Insult)I was reflecting as this conversation between Peterson and McGilchrist was unfolding on how this idea of the hemispheric functions was present in the Kabbala centuries ago. Kabbala proposes that our mind is divided into three basic faculties: chochma‚ bina‚ and data.Chochma (wisdom) is like when in a cartoon a light bulb flashes. You know that you know what you are looking for. It is an all-inclusive flash‚ seemingly out of the darkness‚ when what you did not know before is present in its entirety‚ all in one concentrated point. It is visual we see the whole picture.Bina (understanding) is the faculty that analyzes and breaks down the picture into a series of concrete steps‚ making clear every ramification it can of the thought. It is aural we describe the picture bit by bit‚ ultimately allowing us to break it into pixels and then have oit at our disposal.Daat (knowledge) mediates and synthesizes the other two‚ taking the whole vision as the context in which it will put the vision into action in real life as the break-down afforded by bina allows it to do. It combines the moral sense given by the whole vision of chochma with the actionable‚ accessible‚ either/or steps of bina to transition from the world of thought to the worlds of emotion and actions. It guides our relations with others‚ as now the thought moves out of the hiddenness of our head into the realm where it can be seen be others.As I was ruminating on how much the understanding of McGilchrist follows the pattern of the Kabbalistic psychology‚ McGilchrist asked Peterson if he was familiar with the Kabbala. He noted that it had been brought to his attention by some of the Christian theologians that he had been engaging on his topic of consciousness.I was listening intently. It is of no small significance‚ I believe‚ that this topic is coming up and in such an inviting way‚ free of preachiness and institutional staleness.It is also part of a historical pattern. When the Renaissance brought its breath of fresh air to the scene at the end of the Middle Ages‚ the Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola found himself drawn to the Kabbala. He studied under a Kabbalist‚ Rabbi Yaakov Allemano‚ who lived in Italy at that time. Pico was convinced that he found in it the key to overcoming the differences that had divided Christian and Jew over the centuries. He called it the Prisca theologica‚ the core theology that manifests in all thought about God.Kabbalistic thought did not make Pico a hermit. Picos voice cried out to the pioneers of political liberty in the West in the ensuing centuries. His great essay‚ Oration on the Dignity of Man‚ spurred the development of religious humanism‚ and influenced such people as John Locke and Thomas Jefferson to take the Genesis story of man and translate it into a conception of human rights and human dignity that must be worked into national law.For the harmonious grasp of the right brain leaves room for the left-brain work of law. It orients it and establishes a sense of constitutionality‚ which provides the only context by which laws can avoid corruption into tyranny. This was also seen by Christian humanist scholars as the way to join the Jewish effort of divine law‚ which now seen in the constitutional prism‚ means the work of self-limitation of the government following the divine process of creation through self-limitation‚ which Pico saw as basically the same as the Christian idea of Gods accepting incarnation and the participation in the limitations and the sufferings of this world‚ and acceptance of living a sacrificial life‚ giving of ourselves in order to transform it.Any good talk continues within ones own mind well after it is over. Another day in America‚ riding its roads‚ living my faith‚ seeing common work with all the others similarly blessed with liberty who are using it for its best ends.The conversations will continue. They are the basis of real hope for healing our troubled world‚ as free people uncompelled show Gods ways in their own lives and throw light on how much good we can do even in the simple act of where we turn our attention.The post Right Brain‚ Left Brain‚ and the Kabbala: Knowing How We Know Matters appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.