The following is an excerpt from my new book, The Secret Teachers of the Western World. In it I look at the history of the western esoteric or ‘inner’ tradition through the lens of the work of two important thinkers, the German-Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser, and the contemporary neuroscientist and English scholar Iain McGilchrist. My central idea is that the western …
Do We Only Use 10% of Our Brain? — Exploring the urban legend
When I was a lowly graduate student—doing my PhD thesis on the brains of boas and pythons—I had the great fortune of having dinner with two Nobel prize winning brainscientists, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I asked the great men: where did the idea that we only use 10% of our brains come from, and …