Never prompted to that quest:
Death and rebirth!
You remain a dreary guest
on our gloomy earth.
Goethe
The heart – is it a replaceable suction pump?
Modern cardiology has developed some amazing diagnostic techniques, which inform us about the quality of the cardio-vascular system and its functionality. Despite this gigantic development, the number one cause of death is cardio-vascular disease, particularly in our Western civilization.
The reparative, operative techniques have also been perfected in an admirable way, so that faulty heart valves can be exchanged, vessel blockage can be repaired by means of bypasses, temporary artificial hearts can be implanted into the body if the heart muscle has become non-functional, artificial pacemakers can control the pulse rate and, finally, transplantations of foreign hearts are possible if the organ has become completely unfunctional and is no longer able to beat on its own.
The basis of this enormous development is the mechanistic-physiological view of the heart organ as a rhythmically pulsating suction pump, as was already William Harvey’s theory in 1628.
In this symptomatic and purely mechanistic approach to the human heart, however, the real understanding of the significance of the human heart and the causes of heart diseases remain foggy.
Heart intelligence
In the last few years there have been completely new findings in the energetic research of our being, which, however, are still not much heeded by classical cardiac medicine.
We have learnt a lot more about this special organ and its manifold vital functions from the measurements of the heart frequency and its fine variability. This shows us clearly that our heart achieves a lot more than just pumping blood through the vessels in the body. This organ in our midst is a second brain, as it were. Its nerve system consists of approx. 40’000 neurons and it is interlinked with our brain on different levels and exchanges vital information with the brain. It controls cognitive and emotional information, just as the higher brain areas do. It is in close communication with the amygdala, our brain centre, in which all our emotions, fears and instincts are judged and processed. Thus we can say that our heart is able to “think”.
This research of our “heart intelligence” can also show us that feelings of joy, love and gratefulness have the measurable effect that the heart and breathing rhythms are aligned whereas anger, stress and fear disturb this balance.
This research shows us clearly that a consonance or a dissonance in these psychosomatic rhythms, a synchronization or chaos play a role for our health and particularly for our biological aging process that have not been taken into consideration very much until now.
The resonance behavior of the spindle-shaped muscle cells in a healthy heart, which all contract at the same time after an impulse of the sinus knot, is a prime example for an economical and health-promoting cooperation. This behavior reminds us of the synchronous movements of a school of fish.
Our heart shows us its love behavior down to every single cell. One cell is there for the others without any exception and they all receive r impulses from a centre. This is innate, as it were, in the healthy heart cells. In a culture we can see that two heart cells with different heart beats leap into a sudden synchronization when you approach them to each other, even before they touch.
Thus, it becomes clear even on the cell level whether we are half-hearted and whether there is an ambivalent heart beating in our chest.
The original heart – the creative gate of our individual life
If we have a deeper look at the mystery of our heart, we will encounter some fascinating processes in the embryonic development, which will fill us with breathless amazement. The heart develops in the third week of pregnancy above the future head. It is the original heart. It is filled with blood cells that are formed early on and behave strangely. The liquid in the embryonic heart suddenly gets completely still for about 48 hours. It is filled with a dynamic silence. It is as if a spiritual seed of love and wisdom was sown into the heart during this silence. This original heart only consists of one chamber, it is still in unity. After these 48 hours the original heart moves from the place above the head to the middle of the body of the developing embryo. (see Michael Shea and Erik Sliepen: „Embryonale Entwicklung. Forschungen zur Biodynamischen Wahrnehmung“).
The one-chamber heart stays in its unity until birth. During the embryonic time there is only one heart chamber and one circulatory system. At birth, when we breath for the first time, the heart opens into its two-chamber-system and it is then that the large body circulation comes about, which brings the blood to the inner organs and to the whole body and also the small lung circulation starts its work. We only dive into the twofold world at birth, when we, crying, take our first breath.
If we extend our viewing angle in this way, it will be clear that the heart is the life-determining centre of our organism.
It is the gate for our incarnation as well as for our excarnation. We will only really breathe our last when the heart stops beating, independent of the instrumental determination of the clinical death.
The heart – a highly responsive vessel for our feelings
Our material heart is the physiological control centre in the flowing balance of our organism. It is, at the same time, the vessel, through which our feelings are perceived and can be expressed.
We all know from experience that our heart beats faster when we see a beloved person. We also know that our heart comes to a halt and starts stumbling when a sudden shock unsettles us.
When we experience a sudden and painful loss our heart feels as if it was “broken”. And repeated insults or frustrations lead to a hardening of the heart out of a self-defense of the ego.
Thus, we understand that the cause for heart problems are always also problems of the heart.
The heart as a temple of our soul
The heart’s even greater significance than the one as a link with our emotions, is that it is the temple of our soul, of our true self.
In the heart, in the middle of our life system, the innate divine light spark touches our biological being. Here, eternity breaks into temporality. The encounters with our spiritual identity take place in the silence of our heart. Here is the birth womb of the pure soul intuition. And here is the gate for an eventual awakening in a transpersonal space of consciousness, beyond time and space.
Our rational ego logic collects its knowledge from the experiences of the sensory world, which are, however, deceptive. The heart, which engages itself with a silent presence, knows and understands. The heart has its own wisdom, which transcends the knowledge of the rational mind by far.
Sri Aurobindo writes in his booklet “God’s hour”: „Keep your soul away from the noise of the ego, even if it is just for a while, then you can encounter the unexpected, the unpredictable, which is beyond all worldly cleverness.”
In such moments of silence, we can hear the cosmic pulse in our heart.
(to be continued in part 2)
