our society as a whole relies largely on the functions that the
left brain carries out. In times of stress and tension, we use
left-brain thinking to power through and survive; our public
schools emphasize logic and memorization, with programs
like music and art taking a backseat to math and science.
We also tend to be tethered by pretty tight schedules
— being busy means being successful, it seems — allowing
little to no time for truly creative thoughts and feelings to
take hold. “The right brain is timeless,” says Calef. “The only
moment we truly give ourselves free time is when we’re high
on a drug. Well, guess what? If you gave yourself an entire day
of timelessness, you would have the same mystical percep-
tions that you would have in conjunction with a chemical.
All psychism, all spiritual understanding, comes when you’re
allowed the luxury of having some period of timelessness.”
This line of thinking was recently, and interestingly,
encountered firsthand by Harvard-trained brain scien-
tist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, who in 1996 had a massive stroke,
involving the explosion of a blood vessel in the left hemi-
sphere of her brain. During her episode, Taylor was able
not only to recognize but to enjoy what was happening to
her. As her left hemisphere was essentially neutralized, she
was given the unique opportunity to experience life purely
through her right hemisphere.
“We have the power to choose, moment by moment, who
and how we want to be in the world,” says Taylor in her TED
talk “A Stoke of Insight” (also the title of her best-selling
book). “Right here, right now I can step into the conscious-
ness of my right hemisphere, where we are, I am, the life force
power of the universe … at one with all that is. Or, I can choose
to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere, where
I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow.”
In a way, Taylor found what Buddhists call nirvana.
She was physically forced to experience what all mystics
claim to know innately — that life is about more than
just the physical.
“If someone can tap into the right brain and perceive
that life is love, wouldn’t you call them psychic? Someone
who can see the unseen?” asks Calef. “How thought affects
everything is going to be an area of great study; quantum
physics is all about this. You could even say that ultimately,
what we’re trying to awaken is the ‘quantum psychic’ —
somebody who is in touch with the laws of reality, but can
also understand what life is.”
Who IS A PSYCHIC?
Most intuitives say access to the psychic brain is not lim-
ited to those who were born with supernatural gifts. “I
think everyone has the potential to access the unseen,”
says Converse. “But maybe not everyone is supposed to.
We each have a choice.”
There’s a learning curve as well. Amid the fast pace
and societal conditioning of the modern world, figur-
ing out how to quiet linear thinking is difficult for some,
perhaps impossible for others. But the more we know
about this not-so-separate way of thinking and feeling,
the more easily it can be translated into our own lives.
It’s not so mysterious after all.
“Have you ever had a puppy? When they’re very little,
and you throw a ball, they run for it,” Gojkovic says. “But
if you throw the ball up in the air, they just stare at you
because they don’t know to look up. As they get older, they
learn and remember to look up. People are like that.” M
Opposite page,
clock wise from top left:
Open Secret Bookstore
owner Robert Calef;
intuitive coach Cece
Converse; the temple
room at Open Secret
Bookstore. This page: A
statue at Open Secret;
Zorica Gojkovic of The
Time of Light.
