Dual Consciousness

Four big ideas that often preoccupy my thoughts are:

1. Panpsychism, which is beginning to (re)gain traction in the scientific and philosophical space, is the idea that consciousness is fundamental to the existence of the universe.

2. The "split brain" experiments of the 1950's, which was meant to treat people with extreme seizures, showed us that the two hemispheres of the brain can have their own personalities. One could even be atheist and the other spiritual.

3. Aldus Huxley famously hypothesized that the brain is a "reducing valve" of experiences, giving us a narrower sensory field so as to promote human survival by not overwhelming our senses with extraneous information.

4. Carl Jung taught us that the human psyche is both male (animus) and female (anima).

So where is this going??? Okay, let me try to put it together...

If we can make a BIG assumption, that the four ideas mentioned above are "true", let's assume that the brain is basically a sensory organ for universal consciousness. Let's also assume that the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain can independently sense consciousness. In sort of a duplex mode, they modulate them as seemingly one consciousness. I say "seemingly" because, the two hemispheres could be independently tuned to a specific modality of consciousness - one animus and one anima.

So, that's the relationship between the four distinct ideas. Now, what could be the implications for how we understand the human psyche based on this relationship?

1. Consciousness, as far as the universe is concerned, is not non-dual, but dual - male and female, for lack of better words.

2. Our personalities are also dual (left and right brained), but come together as seemingly one persona through "crosstalk" between the hemispheres.

3. Our brain is yet another sensory organ, but for consciousness - a sixth sense. It aggregates our six senses to give us the experience of, "I see. I smell. I hear. I touch. I taste. And, I am."

4. To be fully individualized, according to Jung, our anima and animus must be fully realized. If one hemisphere is dominant, the other loses its' "voice". Or, if the hemisphere that senses "male consciousness" is weaker than the hemisphere that sense "female consciousness", either because of societal constructs or normal brain development, our persona is more anima-centric.

In summary, we are dual-natured creatures, experiencing a dual-natured universe as both "male" and "female" through two hemispheric sensory organs, each tuned to one aspect of consciousness, but "marrying" them together as one conscious experience.

Further thoughts: As society has changed over the past 50 years or so, we have quit teaching children through nursery rhymes that, "little boys are made of snakes and snails and puppy dog tails" and that "little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice". This sort of gender identity engineering is what has reinforced patriarchal societies for millennia. However, removing these artificial constructs has led to much of the gender identity confusion we see in young people today. We have not adequately replaced the constructs with anything that explains our duality.