Carole Brooks Platt, Ph.D.


Carole regularly attends the Science of Consciousness Conference in Tucson, AZ, except 2020, the year of the coronavirus. She has presented her research there, as well as at poetry events and other academic settings.


Her work was originally informed by Julian Jaynes's theory on the hallucinatory origins of poetry and prophecy in the right hemisphere of the brain.


She was an invited speaker at the Julian Jaynes Conference in Charleston, WV, in 2013, and, more recently, at a symposium on "Further Reaches of the Imagination II" at the Esalen Center for Research and Theory in Big Sur, CA, Nov 1-6, 2015. She was also invited to speak at the Poetry by the Sea global conference in Madison, CT, May 2016, but, unfortunately, was unable to attend.

On February 23, 2017, she presented her research at the Jung Center of Houston.


Her book, In Their Right Minds: The Lives and Shared Practices of Poetic Geniuses, brings together all of her literary and neuroscientific research and was an Amazon Hot New Release in Neuropsychology and Poetry / Literary Criticism.


Carole also provides research on hemispheric differences, atypical lateralization, and handedness at:

https://www.facebook.com/RightMindMatters/.


Carole is currently working on a book on female mystics and mediums, beginning with Joan of Arc, and female poets who felt aligned with Joan. Carole's popular stand alone article on Joan of Arc is available for purchase from her publisher:


https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2019/00000026/f0020011/art00008

The Incredible Lightness of Being and Its Dark Antecedents

I've been studying the neurobiology of mystical states for about 15 years, since a dear friend of mine believed she was channeling angels after her mother died. To get the background of all this, see my Web site www.carolebrooksplatt.com. It's been a very long and complicated quest since I had no background in science. I have studied language and literature all my life and have a Ph.D. in French.

Oddly, what seemed to pull it all together for me was the movie, "Amélie," that I saw for about the tenth time last night. The beginning of the movie is a long narration with clever, off-beat imagery about a strange little girl who will grow up to be the equally strange young woman in the movie.

The beginning of the movie shows her troubled childhood, a distant father (a doctor) who only touches her once a month to give her a physical examination. She's so excited by this rare contact that her heart beats furiously and he diagnoses a heart condition. Her mother, an obsessive compulsive, is struck down one day in front of a church by the falling body of a Canadian tourist who decides to end it all in her great leap.

Now we have a sad, angry, motherless child, with a distant father, who is friendless at school. Amélie lives under a dark cloud with sprinkles of fantasy that keep her alive and the most amazing visual imagination that carries through to adulthood.

One day, she takes a blind man by the arm and describes the everyday wonders of the Paris street where they walk and she leaves him off at the métro. As she walks away, she has an incredible sense of lightness, the air she breathes is freer, clearer, the flowers smell much sweeter and everything has a sense of wonder about it. After long suffering, she tips into the nirvana zone with open-hearted compassion and a mission to help others.

This awakening, this incredible lightness of being, this compensation for the trauma of her life up to that point made total sense to me after my years of research into mystical states of consciousness. But it was after sleeping on it and awakening that fresh ideas came to me this morning.

Andrew Newberg has used neuroimaging to see into the brains of Buddhist monks and praying nuns before and during their religious practices. Michael Persinger has used electromagnetic stimulation to the temporal lobes to produce a "God" experience and gave questionnaires to college students to find out what kinds of people are more likely to sense an invisible presence near them. Newberg ends up wondering if certain people are predisposed to have mystical experiences because of their brain circuitry or if their long practice makes it happen. Persinger believes it's an overaroused right hemisphere that does it, especially in people who are interested in creative writing or do it themselves.

I have come to believe that childhood trauma, like Amélie suffered, physically changes the brain, in line with the research of Allan Schore and others. Newberg doesn't take into account the deprivations that monks and nuns suffer as part of their vocation and Persinger doesn't take into account why certain people are more drawn in the first place to poetry and prose. His "God" helmet works best on people with either the circuitry or previously held beliefs that can allow it to happen. I suggest that a genetic predisposition to more right hemispheric dominance along with childhood trauma can lead to brain processing that favors both mysticism and the paranormal, along with novel, creative ideas, more visual imagery and poetic language.

The brain's complex, interconnecting networks, when synchronized, can confer great talents and insights, often feeling or sounding as though they come from someone or somewhere else. We are the authors of our ideas, our feelings, our creativity, but as a consequence of what precedes them, the combined resonances in the books we have read, the movies we've seen, the people we have talked to, all of which can recombine during the dark night, when our senses have shut down, then bursting into consciousness in the morning. The new thread of ideas is tenuous, though, likely to evaporate in the dream mist unless we write it down as quickly as possible.

5 comments:

My Galveston Cottage said...

My bursts -- of ideas and creativity -- come when I walk. And I walk a lot. The rushes are addictive. Enjoyed the read, your insights -- and now I must see the movie! Keep writing and sharing.

jdempsey said...

You're saying, then, Carole, that both nature and nurture are at work and what we create comes from within us, not from any outside, mystical or mysterious source?

I dreamed the start of a new short story the other morning, wrote it down, and created a new character who most definitely didn't come from a heavenly presence. :)

Right Mind Matters said...

Hi Susan, Looks like I needed a pop-up window (not embedded) to reply to your comment. I know you're a great walker and a very creative person. Thanks for your comment.
Joan, yes, you understand what I'm saying. Can't wait to read your fiction!

Nadira said...

I've been reading your posts one after another and I find it most intriguing. Clearly there is so much that we don't know of or understand that is going on in our ganglia and in our glands at the behest of a thought or a drive or a voice speaking from within ourselves. A mystery for most of us...the nature of that voice. I can understand why you're obsessed with this search. Once the virus gets you ,it's there in your system as long as you are conscious...dormant sometimes...but never gone.:-)

Right Mind Matters said...

You're right it is an obsession, possibly never to be resolved completely. It's the journey, as they say; the love of knowledge and the love of writing keep me going. Thanks for your astute reading and your engaging language too!