The brain is divided into two hemispheres and the conflict between the two lays the basis for the ways of the world, says OSHO
Modern research has come to a very significant fact, one of the most significant achieved in this century, and that is that you don’t have one mind, you have two. Your brain is divided into two hemispheres: The right and the left. The right hemisphere is joined with the left hand, and the left hemisphere is joined with the right hand. The right hemisphere is intuitive, illogical, irrational, poetic, platonic, imaginative, romantic, mythical, religious; and the left hemisphere is logical, rational, mathematical, Aristotelian, scientific, calculative.
These two hemispheres are constantly in conflict — the basic politics of the world is within you, the greatest politics of the world is within you. You may not be aware of it, but once you become aware, the real thing to be done is somewhere between these two minds. The left hand is concerned with the right hemisphere — intuition, imagination, myth, poetry, religion — and the left hand is very much condemned. The society is of those who are right-handed — right-handed means left hemisphere. Ten per cent of children are born left-handed but they are forced to be right-handed.
Children who are born left-handed are basically irrational, intuitive, non-mathematical, non-Euclidean. They are dangerous for society so it forces them in every way to become right-handed. It is not just a question of hands; it is a question of inner politics: The left-handed child functions through the right hemisphere — which society cannot allow, it is dangerous, so he has to be stopped before things go too far. It was suspected that in the beginning the proportion must have been 50-50 but the right-handed party has ruled so long that by and by the proportion has fallen to 10 per cent and 90 per cent. You may be right-handed now but in your childhood you may have been forced to be so. The left hemisphere is reason; the right hemisphere is beyond reason, its functioning is not mathematical. It is intuitive, graceful but irrational. The left-handed minority is the most oppressed minority in the world, even more than the poor people. With the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the proletariat is always functioning through the right hemisphere of the brain: The poor people are more intuitive. Go to the primitive people, they are more intuitive. The poorer the person, the less intellectual — and that may be the cause of his being poor. Because he is less intellectual he cannot compete in the world of reason. He is less articulate as far as language is concerned, reason is concerned, calculation is concerned — he is almost a fool. That may be the cause of his being poor. The rich person is functioning through the left hemisphere; he is more calculative, arithmetical in everything, cunning, clever, logical — and he plans. That may be the reason why he is rich. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot disappear by communist revolutions, no, because the communist revolution is by the same people. The Czar ruled Russia; he ruled it through the left hemisphere of the mind. Then he was replaced by lenin who was of the same type. Then lenin was replaced by Stalin who was even more of the same type.
The revolution is false because deep down the same type of people are ruling — the ruler and the ruled mean the same, and the ruled are those of the right-sided hemisphere. So whatsoever you do in the outside world makes no difference really, it is superficial.
Excerpts from Osho’s discourses