It is not only since I’m working with biestmilch that I’m interested in the various states of cognition and being in the world. Biestmilch makes me deal first of all with the question of well-being. I know by now that the condition of well-being has so little to do with health. This candid talk of Jill B. Taylor supports my notion.
When I was working in psychiatry, I was confronted with states of being and cognition of a very different kind. Psychotic states made me realize the versatility and volatility of what we call real. The presentation of Jill Taylor is enlightening, and may give you an idea about the fluidity of cognition, consciousness, awareness, reality, you name it. Jill B. Taylor translates her experience on the edge of life into words, into the words of a scientist – another person might have done this differently. She gives us a logic explanation for 2 very different but fundamental conditions of being in the world: 1) feeling boundless as an integral part of the universe or/and 2) being a creature confined to the body embodying a social being. Our awareness of being in the world is drifting between these poles of existence depending on the signals we are exposed to from the insight and the outside.
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke. As it happened – as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding – she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.