The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 23 of 125
LSD and the right hemisphere
For centuries, Western industrial society has overplayed the importance of the left hemisphere, referring to it as the major hemisphere, while systematically downgrading the right and calling it the minor hemisphere. The idea I was pushing around in my journal was that LSD brought about a revolutionary reversal of this hemispheric dominance. Could Aldous Huxley’s “reducing valve of the brain and nervous system” be delineated more precisely, as something specifically designed to throttle the contribution of the right brain? A reducing valve that, when “bypassed” by mescaline, LSD, or other psychedelics, could no longer prevent the left brain being flooded by the very different way the right perceived, allowing a glimpse of the possibility the two hemispheres could one day be harmonized, bringing about a far richer, literally stereoscopic vision of life in the world?