(Part 4)
Let us try to take a further step into the depth of our self-knowledge to approach our understanding of the mystery of the heart and the question why it has become ill. To do so, we would like to have a look at our experience which is stored in the universal information field of the Sophia perennis. All the testimonies of wisdom of humanity and their unvarying message are drawn from this timeless cosmic treasure chamber.
There we shall learn that the human being carries a double nature: he is a citizen of two worlds. He is an immortal, spiritual son of the Kingdom of Heaven as well as a mortal, material child of this earth. We live in the “temple” of a spiritual microcosm as mortal personalities.
This double being with the “two souls in its breast”, as Goethe describes it from his experience, possesses seven essential aspects in its structure. Here we also encounter the special number seven, a number which is repeated in cosmic hermetic analogies on numerous levels.
The mortal personality possesses four carriers:
- the visible physical form;
- the invisible, subtle ether body, an energetic vital body which penetrates and vivifies the material form;
- the equally invisible energetic astral body, in which and through which we experience our emotions;
- the energetic mental body, with whose help our thoughts develop and our creative possibilities can unfold.
This fourfold biological personality has come forth from the biological evolution.
With the development of the mental body, of the self-aware thinking capacity, the consciousness of the ego has developed. The “Cogito ergo sum“, which was first formulated by Descartes, exemplifies this. At the same time there is now the great danger of the illusion that the human being sees himself as the culmination of creation and starts to shape the world according to his own will, separated from that of the divine spirit.
Only an unmasking self-knowledge can liberate us from the illusion that we are in today’s state of being already the final purpose of development. We are, above all, the means with whose help our deepest inner core can achieve its consciousness evolution. Ken Wilber told us at the end of the last century that we have only arrived in the middle of the evolution. Friedrich Nietzsche also said in his “Zarathustra” that today’s homo sapiens has the task of being a bridge between the animals and the superhuman. The development of this perfect human being who can see himself as the image of the divine conception is only possible if we serve the immortal spiritual being of our microcosm. It consists of three aspects:
1. the pure spirit, also called Atman,
2. the immortal soul, also called Buddhi,
3. the higher creative reason, also called higher Manas.
These spiritual principles are innate in us mortal personalities as a seed. Most people are not aware of their spiritual identity and their high nobility, however.
Our heart lies in the centre of our microcosm. There the heavenly seed of our immortal soul core is hidden, which we designate symbolically as the “Rose of the Heart”. In the Asian wisdom teachings, it is also referred to as the “jewel in the lotus flower”.
In our more or less consciously controlled life we will see if our heart is a temple of the soul, a soul, which is in unity with the world soul and the nameless spirit or if the heart is a workplace of lower, selfish forces, in which dichotomy and ambivalence dominate.
The former leads to healing, the latter to a further rupture and desperation.
The high creative task of human beings consists of no longer letting their lower, egocentric personality rage as a ruler in their system and in the world. If they let themselves become a voluntary servant of their intrinsic spirit-soul, this will guide them with wisdom, which is in accordance with the creative order and which will transform the mortal being, finally into immortality.
This means a conscious and fundamental reversal from a centre-focused activity of our egocentricity to the centrifugal devotedness to the Unio mystica with the world soul and its wise order.
If the ego refuses, represses or simply ignores the fulfilment of this task because it is afraid to lose itself, then the intrinsic spirit-soul has no other possibility than to guide it to a higher insight into his sense of life through “visitations”.
The soul as an obstetrician for our spiritual awakening
This will then be “development aid”, which is born by pure love, which our microcosmic being gives us, to enable the breakthrough of a new, transpersonal consciousness beyond time and space.
If we look at these finely woven correlations and begin to understand that the “first cause of being ill lies in falling out of the creative order”, as the grandmaster of the European medicine, Paracelsus, formulated it, then also the therapeutic approach of a heart therapy will have a completely different valuation.
A therapy for heart diseases which is to really heal a person can never limit itself to a treatment which will only suppress the symptoms through pharmaceuticals and surgical repairing measures.
In situations of crises such measures are always indispensable and often lifesaving, and therefore they are in such high esteem nowadays because modern medicine and the pharma industry as well as the insurance systems only care about a person once they have become seriously ill. They show little interest in measures of health-maintenance and prevention.
The Son of Heaven and the Child of the Earth touch each other in the heart of the human being. Therefore, our contemplation in the centre of the heart is the key to self-knowledge. There, we will encounter our true self and there we will find self-fulfillment.
If we suppress or miss this way inwards, blinded by the illusion of self-importance, then we will need crises, losses, and heart attacks, with which our soul admonishes us to take a step to a new consciousness.
Particularly in the second half of life a reversal from extraversion to introversion is essential. This is often the time when the heart gets ill to show us the necessity of such a fundamental reversal.
Let us remember that, if we are on an initiation path, all suffering and all illnesses become springboards for a new life, which finds its sense in the experience and testifying of a transcendent reality.
The middle of life as a threshold to the afternoon of life has its own sense and intrinsic task. From now on advancement, development, augmentation and life exuberance are no longer in place, but internalization, willingness to reduce oneself and contemplation in the centre of the heart.
There is a saying getting to the heart of it: “If you die before you die, you will not die when you die.”
The silence of the heart as the birth womb of a new creature
We are only connected with our soul if the controlling mind has been silenced. The pure heart energy is the leading life force. The heart centre precedes time, the heart logic works outside of the egologic of the mind.
The way to this high nobility which has been stored for the human being in the evolution leads him into the silence of the heart, in which a constant connection with our true self and the world soul can be maintained. In this spiritual presence, in this now, we are connected with the omnipresence, outside of the linear time. We emerge into an integral consciousness, which operates horizontally interlinking as well as vertically integrating and is carried by an all-encompassing compassion.
Let us listen to our heart and take it into both hands, so that in its great power we can become the change ourselves, which we would like to see realized in this world. The Little Prince in St. Exupéry’s work said:
„You can only see well with your heart, the essential is invisible for your eyes.”
Supportive literature:
Sri Aurobindo: The life divine, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, India
Dahlke Rüdiger: Herzensprobleme, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt, München 1990
Dispenza, Joe: Becoming supernatural, Hay House, 2017
Jan van Rijckenborgh: The mystery of life and death, Rozekruis Pers, Haarlem
Schleske, Martin: Herztöne, Lauschen auf den Klang des Lebens, adeo Verlag, Asslar 2016
Wehr, Gerhard: Lebensmitte, Claudius Verlag, München 1991
Wilber, Ken: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The spirit of evolution, 2001
