How do we understand the world? How do we make sense of it, and find our place within it? Drawing on the insights of Carl Gustav Jung and Iain McGilchrist, this lecture explores how the way we attend to the world shapes the reality we experience.

Human experience is mediated by the brain. It inevitably influences what we notice and what remains unseen, shaping the possibilities of meaning that emerge in our lives. When the brain changes, a person’s entire way of being in the world can change with it.

Although the brain’s two hemispheres are deeply interconnected and involved in everything we do, each engages the world in a distinctive way. As McGilchrist describes, the difference lies in the kind of attention each hemisphere brings to experience. Attention is not passive: it brings certain aspects of reality into focus while allowing others to recede. In this sense, the way we attend to the world partly determines the world that comes into being for us.

Jung approached this question from another perspective: the orientation of the ego and the personality type of the individual. Each person has a characteristic stance toward the world — a particular way of perceiving, experiencing, and adapting to life. In making sense of our experience, Jung suggests that we use two different modes of thought: logical thinking and dream thinking. These complementary ways of engaging reality resonate in striking ways with McGilchrist’s description of the two hemispheres and their distinct approaches to the world.