The Purpose and Power of Art & Poetry (1/4): why it matters to me.

As I began to try and pull together all the material I had gathered (at least 20,000 words of it!) I began to feel more than a little intimidated by the task I’d set myself, and came close to giving up. How on earth was I going to write anything that would take it further than any of my previous attempts to tackle this issue?

In the end I decided to risk failure and blast on anyway.

At the start I’ll do a summary of some key personal experiences followed by an exploration of why science, art and spirituality are all important to any investigation of the truth, before using in later posts the poetry of R. S. Thomas as an illustration of my case.

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning at this point that, while I love pictorial art, my experience of any attempt to create a painting is non-existent: poetry plays rather more strongly to my strengths as a subject of investigation in terms of the power of art in general. So, much as I love pictorial art, I’m not competent to explore it deeply: I’ll have to stick to poetry as an example of the power of art. However, much of the first two posts in this sequence deals with art in general, and not just poetry. The focus on poetry comes in toward the end of the sequence.

Caveats

Right from the start I am aware of a couple of caveats that may disqualify my perspective, which is all this sequence could ever hope to be.

First, if poetry does not speak to my heart it is no better than mute for me. My prejudice against much modernist poetry stems in part from this. The absence of music puts off my heart and the obstinately cryptic obscurity repels my head so they both stomp off in a strop.

Also am I overrating poetry? As Stephanie Burt makes clear in her book Don’t Read Poetry[1] we should not ‘assume poetry ever means only one thing, other than maybe a set of tools for making things with words as music means a set of tools… for making things with sounds.’ There may be no such single generic thing as poetry. However, subjectively, I am convinced that poetry of some kind is close to my heart.

The Roots of my Connection with Poetry

My connection with poetry goes back deep into my childhood. My sensibility is rooted in the 19^th century thanks to my parents and the bookscase they filled with novels by Rider Haggard, and Walter Scott. I was probably still at primary school when I read my first poems. That’s what the memory feels like anyway. In the front room of our family home in that same tall book case with glass doors on its upper section, amongst many other books there were two books of poems: Lyra Heroica and Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.

I wasn’t particularly interested in boys on burning decks or Horatios at bridges – I think tales about my father and the First World War had well and truly scuppered Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori for me even by that stage so the Golden Treasury tended to win every time. I still remember the sight and feel of the dull red and slightly roughened cover as I strained to slide it off its high shelf.

So, I was primed to favour the lyric, I think. My attachment was strong to poetry but it competed with novels and sometimes lost the contest. After ten years of teaching literature I finally discovered what the real attraction of the novel was for me: it showed me how to understand people better.

I shifted careers and moved into psychology, and didn’t realise at first that poetry was paying a heavy price.

Then I had a wake up call.

Dancing Flames Dream 1980

When I was getting too immersed in studying part-time for my first degree in psychology at the same time as holding down a job in mental health, I had a wake up call. It was towards the end of my first degree in psychology, when I was doing a full time job as Deputy Manager of a Day Centre for people with mental health problems as well as studying for the BSc part-time, that I was struck by my dancing flames dream.

The key moment in the dream was when my car broke down. I clambered out to look under the bonnet to see what was wrong. It seemed like a routine breakdown. When I lifted the bonnet though everything changed. I didn’t recognize what it was at first— then I saw it was a golden horn. I mean the instrument, by the way, not the sharp pointed weapon of the rhinoceros. The engine was underneath the horn. When I removed the horn I could see the engine was burning.

A chain of associations, many of them involving Yeats’ A Prayer for my Daughter, explained that the golden horn represented the arts, and most especially poetry and song. The bottom line for me was that the dream was telling me in no uncertain terms that I was working too hard in the wrong way, and had sold out poetry/song for prose, heart for intellect, and intuition for reason and most of all the dream was emphasising that this choice was ‘breaking down,’ that perhaps even the car, a symbol of a mechanical approach, was the wrong vehicle to be relying on so exclusively.

Maybe this was the first time I got too close to the position Iain McGilchrist reminds us that Darwin found himself in.

He draws from Charles Darwin’s Autobiography which speaks of the great pleasure he derived as a young man from poetry, music and art, something now almost completely lost to him:[2]

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts . . . And if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through the use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Further reflection led me to feel that the spirit (petrol in terms of the dream) fuels (gives life to) my body (the engine of the dream). When I channel the flames of life appropriately there is no danger. However, if we, as I clearly felt I had, allow the patterns of work and relationships to become inauthentic and detached from our life force, we have bartered the ‘Horn of Plenty’ and

. . . every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellow full of angry wind.

(Yeats in A Prayer for my Daughter – stanza 8).

I shifted the focus then to art in general stating that art is an external representation of an inner state which is sufficiently expressive to communicate to other human beings an intimation of someone’s else’s experience of the world. Art not only conveys the artist’s experience but also lifts the understanding of both poet and reader to a higher level.

In a way poetry at that time was my substitute for religion. In 1980, I wrote in my diary:

Poetry is my transcendent value or position. It gives me a perspective from which I can view the ‘complexities’ of my ‘mire and blood’ with less distress.

When I found a religion, which gave me a sense that seemed to offer some hope of walking the spiritual path with practical feet, thereby balancing intuition and reason, efficiency and love, I ceased to monitor carefully the way I was treading the path. To extend the metaphor by imagining that my heart was my left foot and my head the right, each governed by the opposite side of the brain, I lost sight of whether I was using both feet. I didn’t notice that I had begun to limp. My left foot was growing weaker.

Was I again discounting art this time in favour of spirtuality?

 

Reminder of my STAR insight

Iain McGilchrist, in his recent book The Matter with Things, states that art can serve as bridge between our consciousness and the ineffable aspects of reality. When I came across that thought a couple of years ago, I came to see all too clearly a truth that I had been blind to all those years: art is not just a meaningful but subordinate domain to science and religion – it is of equal importance. We need all three if we are to mobilise all parts of our brain to enable our minds to grasp almost any important and complex truth more completely in all its aspects. One of these domains is in itself not enough for most of us, at least.

The realisation of art’s equivalent importance almost immediately created the acronym S.T.A.R. in my mind (Science, Truth, Art and Religion) — a peak experience, in its way, because of the uplift in spirits that it generated – certainly a light-bulb moment at the very least. If I am to provide true C.A.R.E., in the sense of combining consultation, action, reflection and experience, I must resolutely follow my S.T.A.R. It’s only taken me eight decades to realise this. In fact, only by taking CARE and following my STAR will I really be able to achieve anything remotely close to my life’s true purpose.

When I came to read Klebel’s book The Human Heart my sense of this essential unity was reinforced in at least one important respect (see Chapters 3 & 4).

Poetry and Revelation are closely related in Klebel’s view:

The affinity revelatory writings have with poetry, and the fact that some of them even take the form of poetry, can be explained by the fact that poetry speaks primarily to the heart, and only secondarily can be understood by the brain. This is true also for Revelation, as this is understood primarily by the heart and only afterward scrutinized and evaluated by the logical mind. It could be said that the language of the heart is not only the language of dreams but also the language of poetry; this is how spiritual values and understandings are expressed. Ultimately, it must be stated that the language of the heart is the language of divine Revelation.

He goes on to argue that just as ‘Poetry, for example, originates in the heart . . . [t]he same process underlies the poetic aspect of the Revelation; hence, the special language of any Revelation has this poetic style and needs to be understood by the heart. It speaks directly to the heart but also needs to be understood by the brain; or rather, it needs to be internally translated to the logical and intuitional ability of the human brain to be fully understood.’

When I was at the Bahá’í National Convention recently, I managed to snatch a few moments to wander around the room full of books for sale. I’d been alerted beforehand to the imminent appearance of a book by Margaret Appa on the importance of art. I had not expected it to map so closely onto my recent insights. As I quickly scanned the book there was no doubt I had to buy it. I dashed to the till cash in hand, rammed it into my shoulder bag and fled back to the meeting hall.

I didn’t have chance to do read it properly until I got home. I finished it remarkably fast and began the process of digesting some of its implications for incorporation into this sequence.

More on her book next time.

References:

[1]. Don’t Read Poetry – page 7.
[2]. The Matter with Things – page 619.

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Understanding the Heart (6/6): Lifting our Game with our Hearts

‘Guernica’ – Partial scan from Scala Publishers Edition. Simon Schama’s exploration on television is probably no longer available.

The wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine are just two more tragic and traumatic symptoms of the underlying sickness of our so-called civilisation. To fall into the trap of furiously taking sides, blinded with anger, simply serves to widen the divides. Only heartfelt unity will cure this plague.

That of course is easier said than done, and even the most enlightened forms of humanism might find such a perspective hard, or even impossible, to maintain.

Incidentally, I’ve just discovered that Kripal expresses a possibly relevant take on humanism:[1]

. . . this . . . materialism has been so destructive of the humanities, mostly by rendering the human literally non-existent, and certainly irrelevant in the technological world of objects and things.

… Most humanists, like most scientists, assume the same metaphysics. They assume some kind of physicalism or materialism.

. . . In the materialist or physicalist metaphysics, the humanities are the practices of something that is not real, studying other things that are not really real. The humanities are nothing studying nothing.

… The materialist metaphysics of modernity is our intellectual heart attack.

It is therefore hard to see something that is part of the disease being strongly enough motivated to attempt to cure it.

Readers of this blog will be well aware of my spiritual bias. I am also aware, on my side, that religions do not have an unblemished record in terms of divisive bloodshed. So why should I be so keen to suggest that some form transcendent perspective is essential if we are to acquire the hope, the compassion, the patience, the wisdom and sustained endurance to move humanity towards a concerted recognition of our essential oneness, towards an unshakable awareness that we are one family, and that only by expressing that understanding in collective and compassionate action can we cure ourselves?

Basically, the answer to that is simple. I do not see any other way. All other motivators in my view fall short of the intense and overwhelming role our circumstances demand that they fulfil. I have dealt with this elsewhere in various posts (see the sequence reviewing Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilisation as an example).

It is for that reason that I am hoping that readers will have the patience to plough through the following explanation, which may seem counterintuitive to most members of our planetary community in these competitive and materialistic days. I am convinced that the reality I am going to attempt to describe is deeply intuitive, and our understanding of it is rooted in our wisest organ, our hearts, whose whispers are all too often drowned out by the clamour of our limited brains.

The Heart

I am going to be drawing mostly on Nader Saiedi’s powerful and challenging book Gate of the Heart: Understanding the Writings of the Báb.

He makes it clear right from the start[2] that ‘the concept of “heart”… is one of the most important principles in the Writings of the Báb.’ The reason for this is:

The station of the heart is the highest stage of created being’s existential reality. It is the reflection of divine reality itself within the inmost reality of things.

Our materialistic prioritisation of the brain does not square easily with this, but I hope the earlier posts in this sequence have helped make this idea more plausible than it would otherwise have been.

The consequences of an effective acceptance of this insight are massive in their implications:[3]

To engage in the act of interpreting the [Writings of the Báb] at the level of the heart, in terms of its supreme Origin, seeing the reflection of the divine mirrored in every atom of creation, is to transform the phenomenal realm into its ultimate spiritual reality.

This concept immediately reminded me of the beautiful lines from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

It is important to hold in mind, as we will explore later when we consider the inaccessibility of the Essence of God, and the Will of God as the creative force, that this idea is perhaps not quite as simple as it seems at first sight.

There are also challenging concomitants to our achieving such a level of understanding:[4]

To know truth, one must attain the station of servitude, which means to travel the path of humility, self-effacement, and negation of all but God. As long as the obscuring layers of selfish desires, arrogance, and reliance on anything but God still exist, one cannot become worthy of beholding the Divine Beauty. When the station of servitude is realised, then the divine light will shine upon the pure mirror of the heart.

Servitude seems an unlikely source of powerfully transformative action. However, one of the readings used recently at a Bahá’í meeting I attended might help shed light on why such a reaction is too facile and simplistic:[5]

[The beloved of God] should conduct themselves in such manner that the earth upon which they tread may never be allowed to address to them such words as these: “I am to be preferred above you. For witness, how patient I am in bearing the burden which the husbandman layeth upon me. I am the instrument that continually imparteth unto all beings the blessings with which He Who is the Source of all grace hath entrusted me. Notwithstanding the honour conferred upon me, and the unnumbered evidences of my wealth—a wealth that supplieth the needs of all creation—behold the measure of my humility, witness with what absolute submissiveness I allow myself to be trodden beneath the feet of men…”

We cannot understand this with our heads, though, as the end of the reading hinted at:

This is the luminous Tablet, whose verses have streamed from the moving Pen of Him Who is the Lord of all worlds. Ponder it in your heart, and be ye of them that observe its precepts.

Interestingly, the starting point of this sequence – the hearth dream about the central important of the heart (see link) – lends support to exactly this line of argument. I might never have understood the quote I refer to there – ‘be as resigned as submissive as the earth’ – so fully without the dream.

The English poet-priest John Donne was well aware that truth was not easy to access as he forcefully expressed it in Satire III:

On a huge hill,

Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will

Reach her, about must and about must go,

And what the hill’s suddenness resists, win so.

And he was aware, in a time of atrocious religious divisions, of another important aspect of reality:

As women do in divers countries go

In divers habits, yet are still one kind,

So doth, so is Religion

This corresponds so closely to a translation of the Writings of Bahá-u-lláh I can’t resist quoting it:[6]

It is clear and evident to thee that all the Prophets are the Temples of the Cause of God, Who have appeared clothed in divers attire. If thou wilt observe with discriminating eyes, thou wilt behold Them all abiding in the same tabernacle, soaring in the same heaven, seated upon the same throne, uttering the same speech, and proclaiming the same Faith. Such is the unity of those Essences of Being, those Luminaries of infinite and immeasurable splendor!

Saiedi makes a parallel point, linking this understanding to the need for humility:[7]

Because the diverse perceptions of truth entertained by different minds are due to the varying reflections of the divine creative Word in the hearts, an approach of humility and tolerance is called for, as well as avoidance of conflict and contention… The attitude of those who occupy higher stations must be one of compassion and understanding towards those of lower stations.

I hope this is also conveying how close poetry and scripture are in terms of conveying crucially important insights from one heart to another.

It’s perhaps important to emphasise that the resignation, humility and submissiveness under discussion here does not mean that we should all be striving to become some kind of doormat.

Such a degrading concept does not square with the courage and determination of all those faithful Bahá’ís such as Badi who have, throughout the history of the Faith, refused to recant their faith in the face of torture and execution.

Saiedi explains this clearly with quotes from Bahá-u-lláh:[8]

To realise one’s destiny is not a mere acceptance of whatever ‘is’; on the contrary, it is an active movement toward realising spiritual values in one’s own life and developing the potentialities and perfections, hidden, like ‘gems,’ in the ‘mine’ of one’s own being.

He later goes on to give more detail:[9]

The pure heart is detached and purified from all limiting, particularistic, attachments and presuppositions while at the same time it is supremely attached to love of God and consequently it is completely committed to moral values as well as imbued with a universal love for all beings. The reader of the Kitáb-i-Íqán may be surprised that Bahá-u-lláh kindness to animals, one of the conditions of the spiritual journey! But this is precisely an integral expression of this holistic moral orientation that is the principle of the heart.

World Transforming Consciousness

Now, perhaps, we can begin to move on to where all this relates to achieving a world transforming level of consciousness. Such a massive level of resolute commitment is clearly necessary. Is there something else as well?

Saiedi captures another essential quality of this perspective:[10]

One can most directly approach noumenal reality through the sanctuary of the heart, which affords the only perspective from which an all-encompassing gaze of unity is possible.

Divided minds create divided societies. Most of the categories we generate inside are projected divisively onto the outside world. Bahá-u-lláh laments that ‘No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united’.[11] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains a crucial implication and the remedy:[12]

. . . all souls [must] become as one soul, and all hearts as one heart. Let all be set free from the multiple identities that were born of passion and desire, and in the oneness of their love for God find a new way of life.

This then enables us to reach higher levels of understanding:[13]

 . . . by attaining the higher perspective of the heart, one can transcend the oppositions of the limited station of intellect and arrive at a more comprehensive, holistic perspective.

Saiedi explains the potential implications of this for humanity as a whole:[14]

Humanity has now arrived at the beginning of a new age: human spiritual culture has evolved from the stage of the “body” through that of the “soul,” to that of “intellect,” and has arrived at the stage of the “heart.”

It may seem a body blow to hear that intellect lies below the heart in this spiritual hierarchy of capacities, but unless we accept that truth and achieve a better understanding of what that means we’ll remain locked in a cage of catastrophic tests indefinitely, though we should not arrogantly mistake this for a direct connection with the highest reality of God:[15]

Although the perspective of the heart transcends the limited and potentially divisive categories of intellect, this perspective is never suggested as a means of understanding the Essence of God, but, rather, the revelation of God at the level of the phenomenal world.

Saiedi explains in more detail the distinction between the unknowable Essence of God and the divine Will which emanates throughout creation and which the more spiritually advanced can sense to some degree.

Misidentifying the supposed signs of God has had dire consequences throughout history. Saiedi gives a key example:[16]

Taking the perspective of the heart, therefore, is the proper method of embarking on the search for religious truth, the spiritual journey that leads to [its] recognition….… As the Báb frequently emphasises, the tragic irony is that although the believers of the former religion were longing for their Beloved One to appear, when He did appear they universally condemned Him.

Only from ‘the perspective of the heart’ can true unity be achieved:[17]

The attainment of the station of the heart permits one to transcend the realm of limitations and oppositions and to behold all things in their station of unity.

This sense of oneness, as we have seen, needs to go beyond humanity alone, of course:[18]

… one should take into account not only the interests of human beings, but the interests of all creative things because the realm of nature is endowed with moral rights as well as spiritual significance.

Just so it does not appear that I am relying only on one source for this perspective, I’ll quote another author here as well – Julio Savi.

He writes that in Bahá-u-lláh’s list related to mysticism:[19]

. . . the most important symbol… is the heart as an organ of spiritual knowledge, a seat of divine revelation and an object of attraction. The heart can be enveloped by veils which abate its splendour; or it can be enlightened by the sun and its radiance, refreshed by springtime, cleansed by fire and water, perfume to by the wind and its scents. However, it always remains ‘dust’.

. . . It is usually intended as an organ of knowledge, as the seat of divine presence, and the object of attraction towards the ‘other’. In any case, the symbol implies that the heart will be able to function effectively only after it has been properly prepared through a cleansing process.

He quotes Schimmel who echoes one of Bahá-u-lláh’s constant reminders that we should purify our hearts:[20]

‘The heart is the dwelling place of God; or it is, in other terminology, the mirror in which God reflects Himself. But this mirror has to be polished by constant asceticism, and by permanent acts of loving obedience until all dust and rust have disappeared and it can reflect the primordial divine light.’

This absolutely cannot be divorced from essential action, as Saidi also makes clear:[21]

In emphasizing the primacy of recognition, Bahá-u-lláh affirms the ‘heart’ – inner recognition of faith – but He immediately makes this inseparable from the work of ‘hands and feet’ – action in accordance with the laws. At the same time, He stresses the significance of assisting the Cause of God through utterance and the pen, in the form of the promotion and teaching of the Cause of God. Together, these imply witnessing through one’s entire being.

So it can’t be a half-hearted response to the situation we are facing in the world as it stands. To be effective we must cleanse and unite our hearts so that we can draw as fully as possible upon powers that transcend the purely material forces that we are so attached to and limited by right now.

Nothing else will serve to ward off more atrocities such as those recorded in Picasso’s Guernica and Goya’s El Tres de Mayo. Standing before each of those powerful works of art when we visited Madrid some years ago reduced me to silent tears. To be watching daily the lived reality of comparable atrocities on my television screen brings back what triggered the nightmares of even my late childhood, where I woke in terror from dreaming I was vainly trying to escape the Gestapo, only to find I was trapped in the school gymnasium, clambering up the wall bars with nowhere else to go, as they burst through the door at the far end. ‘When will we ever learn?‘

It’s not just the wake-up call of climate catastrophe and Covid to which we must respond, but also the norm-shattering clarion of the morally contagious divisiveness that is spreading war and prejudice more widely along with a cruel indifference to the suffering it causes across the planet.

Scanned from Simon Schama’s ‘Power of Art’ His exploration on television is probably no longer available.

References:

[1]. Consciousness Unbound. Pages 374-76.
[2]. Gate of the Heart – page 50.
[3]. Op. cit. – page 51.
[4]. Op. cit. – page 163.
[5]. Bahá-u-lláh Gleanings V.
[6]. Gleanings – XXII.
[7]. Gate of the Heart – page 176.
[8]. Logos and Civilisation – page 86.
[9] Op. cit. – page 142.
[10]. Gate of the Heart – page 177.
[11]. Tablets of Bahá-u-lláh – pages 163-64.
[12]. Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — page 78.
[13]. Gate of the Heart – page 180.
[14]. Op. cit. – page 227.
[15]. Op. cit. – page 247.
[16]. Gate of the Heart – page 288.
[17]. Op. cit. – page 311.
[18]. Op. cit. – page 315.
[19]. Towards the summit of Reality – page 137.
[20]. Op. cit. – page 236.
[21]. Logos and Civilisation – page 260.

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Understanding the Heart (5/6): The Right Method of Approach to the Truth

Was Jill Bolte Taylor in contact with her heart rather than her right hemisphere given the fact she had no words at all, an alleged characteristic of the heart in a physical sense? This is a difficult enough issue to decide on.

There is a far more complicated one coming up right now.

Even given the alleged evidence to support the notion that the heart has at least a limited capacity for precognition and long-distance emotional communication, is it a leap too far to even begin to suggest that the pump in our chest is able to rise to the challenges I am about to address concerning our ‘understanding heart’ in the Bahá’í sense of that phrase?

The Understanding Heart

I have explored this phrase at some length in a previous sequence, but will share a few key quotations at this point in order to give a sense of its importance in the Bahá’í Revelation and clarify the context in which Bahá-u-lláh uses it.

Even at best, the heart has clear limitations as Bahá-u-lláh explains:[1]

Consider the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the essence of man. . . . . Wert thou to ponder in thine heart, from now until the end that hath no end, and with all the concentrated intelligence and understanding which the greatest minds have attained in the past or will attain in the future, this divinely ordained and subtle Reality, . . .  thou wilt fail to comprehend its mystery or to appraise its virtue. Having recognized thy powerlessness to attain to an adequate understanding of that Reality which abideth within thee, thou wilt readily admit the futility of such efforts as may be attempted by thee, or by any of the created things, to fathom the mystery of the Living God . . . . . . This confession of helplessness which mature contemplation must eventually impel every mind to make is in itself the acme of human understanding, and marketh the culmination of man’s development.

If we want to get the best out of it, we have to purify it:[2]

When a true seeker determineth to take the step of search in the path leading unto the knowledge of the Ancient of Days, he must, before all else, cleanse his heart, which is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God, from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge, and the allusions of the embodiments of satanic fancy. . . . . . He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth.

This helps get us closer to possessing an understanding heart:[3]

Then will the manifold favors and outpouring grace of the holy and everlasting Spirit confer such new life upon the seeker that he will find himself endowed with a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, and a new mind. . . . . . Gazing with the eye of God, he will perceive within every atom a door that leadeth him to the stations of absolute certitude.

So, despite its inescapable limitations the understanding heart has significant powers, including another key capacity:[4]

Were these people, wholly for the sake of God and with no desire but His good-pleasure, to ponder the verses of the Book in their heart, they would of a certainty find whatsoever they seek. In its verses would they find revealed and manifest all the things, be they great or small, that have come to pass in this Dispensation. They would even recognize in them references unto the departure of the Manifestations of the names and attributes of God from out their native land; to the opposition and disdainful arrogance of government and people; and to the dwelling and establishment of the Universal Manifestation in an appointed and specially designated land. No man, however, can comprehend this except he who is possessed of an understanding heart.

The Central Importance of the Heart

Klebel addresses these issues in Chapters 3 and 4 and is convinced, on the basis of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s clarification, that the system of nerves connected with heart are both spiritual and physical:[5]

‘The powers of the sympathetic nerve are neither entirely physical nor spiritual, but are between the two (systems). The nerve is connected with both. Its phenomena shall be perfect when its spiritual and physical relations are normal.’

He tries to unpack some of the possible implications of this duality:

Bahá’u’lláh, for example, speaks of the ‘eye of thine heart’[6] or He mentions a person who has ‘unstopped the ear of his inmost heart’[7] implying the heart has an ability that can somehow be compared to the senses of hearing and seeing. He states that hearts can be affected by touch, telling us ‘hearts have been sorely shaken’.[8]Bahá’u’lláh speaks of a ‘wise and understanding heart’[9] and places the function of memory into the heart as well when He lets us pray ‘to make my heart to be a receptacle of Thy love and of remembrance of Thee.’[10] He further instructs us to think, meditate, or ponder in our heart, saying in many places, ‘Ponder this in thine heart’.[11]

He quotes the Báb, the forerunner of Bahá-u-lláh, who is a Manifestation of God in His own right and not just some kind of John the Baptist figure simply prophesying the appearance of Bahá-u-lláh:

For the Báb, the heart is the central place where the belief in God is centred, and the heart encompasses the ‘expanse of heaven and earth’.[12]

With the help of Nader Saiedi and his book Gate of the Heart, I have attempted to take a closer look at the Báb’s Writings on the heart. There is a huge amount to ponder there but for now I will just flag up a key consideration.

Klebel raises an important point:

. . . the Báb proposes how . . . conflicting yet complementary attributes of the same thing or idea are unified only in the heart:

‘Such conclusive truth hath been revealed through the gaze of the heart, and not that of intellect. For intellect conceives not save limited things . . . No one can recognize the truth of the Middle Way between the two extreme poles except after attaining unto the gate of the heart and beholding the realities of the worlds, visible and unseen.’[13]

This same quote can be found on page 177 of Nader Saiedi’s book Gate of the Heart. Later, Saiedi complements that insight by stating:[14]

The essence of this discussion is that humanity has now arrived at the beginning of a new age: human spiritual culture has evolved from the stage of the “body” through that of the “soul,” to that of “intellect,” and has arrived at the stage of the “heart.” Humanity is now ready to receive a revelation based on the sanctuary of unity.

Picking up the threads of the previous post, where Klebel explains the heart’s relationship with poetry and dream and revelation, we find him quoting Bahá-u-lláh:

‘Do thou ponder these momentous happenings in thy heart, so that thou mayest apprehend the greatness of this Revelation, and perceive its stupendous glory.[15]

Poetry and Revelation are closely related in Klebel’s view:

The affinity revelatory writings have with poetry, and the fact that some of them even take the form of poetry, can be explained by the fact that poetry speaks primarily to the heart, and only secondarily can be understood by the brain. This is true also for Revelation, as this is understood primarily by the heart and only afterward scrutinized and evaluated by the logical mind. It could be said that the language of the heart is not only the language of dreams but also the language of poetry; this is how spiritual values and understandings are expressed. Ultimately, it must be stated that the language of the heart is the language of divine Revelation.

It is definitely a no brainer to realise why all this appeals to me so strongly given my lifetime of effort invested in decoding poems and dreams.

We can only access the language of the heart indirectly:

. . .  we always have a translation from the heart to the brain and have no awareness in the heart itself directly; we can only use the logical mind to become aware of what happens in the heart. The feelings we experience in the body must be understood by the brain.

Perhaps, in our case, because ‘[m]ost Westerners are well trained in using the brain and have little access to their understanding heart.’

As Nader Saiedi explains it in Gate of the Heart, the Báb’s position is clear (page 65): ‘,. . . it is “the gaze of the heart, and not of the intellect,” which is the right method of approach to the truth.’

The Báb places the heart at the highest level of four in terms of representing human reality. Saiedi states it in this way:[16]

The Báb employs a symbolic schema to represent human reality in terms of four levels: heart, spirit, soul, and body.…

The highest of these levels is the heart. “Heart” here should not be interpreted in the Western sense in which the heart is associated with emotion or sentiment. It is rather the supreme seat of spiritual truth, the abode of divine revelation. After the heart are the three lower stages of spirit, soul and body.

This was a radical change of perspective for me. Saiedi’s explanation is complex and will have to wait until next time. Even then I am not sure I will be able to do it justice.

References:

[1]. Bahá-u-lláh: Gleanings – pages 164-166: LXXXIII
[2]. Bahá’u’lláh: Kitáb-i-Íqán – page 162.
[3]. Op. cit. – page 196.
[4]. Op. cit. – page 174.
[5]. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, p. 308. As to the authenticity of this Tablet, the following information was provided Roger Dahl, Archivist of the US National Bahá’í Archives: ‘That Tablet . . . was to a Dr E. H. Pratt of Chicago. The Archives does not have the original Tablet but we do have the translation that Dr Pratt sent to Albert Windust which was used in publishing the book. From a note by Albert Windust apparently ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave permission for the Tablet’s publication, which Dr Pratt had requested. There is always the possibility that the World Centre Archives has the original Tablet. The translation was done by Ameen Farid on October 4, 1905 in Chicago.’
[6]. Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán, p. 91.
[7]. Bahá’u’lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 86.
[8]. Bahá’u’lláh, Prayers and Meditations, no. 9, p. 8. On this point touched by emotion seems more likely than touched in any direct physical sense.
[9]. Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 65.
[10]. Bahá’u’lláh, Prayers and Meditations, no. 40, p. 42.
[11]. Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 74.
[12]. Selections from the Writings of the Báb page 145.
[13]. The Báb – Tablet to Mirzá Hasan, Iran National Bahá’í Archives, 53:199
[14]. Gate of the Heart – page 227.
[15]. Kitáb-i-Íqán – page 236.
[16]. Gate of the Heart – page 102.

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Understanding the Heart (4/6): How deep does intuition extend?

After my slight detour down the path of the breath triggered by James Nestor’s book, I need to get back to what was supposed to be my original focus: the heart, and at last it looks as though I’m ready to start tackling the transpersonal possibilities.

Intuitive Foreknowledge

I think that it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the same sources that explore the more material-based processes of the heart also embrace its possibly spiritual capacities. So, the first step will be to pick up once more on Science of the Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance – An Overview of Research Conducted by the HeartMath Institute by Rollin McCraty (see Link).

His exploration in Chapter 7 continues:

 . . there is now a large body of documented rigorous scientific research on nonlocal intuitive perception that dates back more than seven decades. A variety of experiments show it cannot be explained by flaws in experimental design or research methods, statistical techniques, chance or selective reporting of results.[1]

By non-local he means ‘compelling evidence to suggest the physical heart is coupled to a field of information not bound by the classical limits of time and space,’ which comes ‘from a rigorous experimental study that demonstrated the heart receives and processes information about a future event before the event actually happens.’ [2]

They built on Dean Radin’s protocol and ‘found that not only did both the brain and heart receive the pre-stimulus information some 4 to 5 seconds before a future emotional picture was randomly selected by the computer, the heart actually received this information about 1.5 seconds before the brain received it,’[3] concluding that ‘the results of the . . . experiment confirm our and others’ previous finding that electrophysiological measures, especially changes in heart rhythm, can demonstrate intuitive foreknowledge.’

McCraty therefore understandably feels ‘it is not surprising that one of the strongest threads uniting the views of diverse cultures and religious and spiritual traditions throughout history has been a universal regard that [the heart] is the source of love, wisdom, intuition, courage, etc.’

In terms of his model he clarifies that ‘the terms intuitive heart and spiritual heart refer to our energetic heart, which we believe is coupled with a deeper part of ourselves.’

‘Several notable scientists’ he adds, ‘have proposed that such functions operate primarily in the frequency domain outside of time and space and they have suggested some of the possible mechanisms that govern how they are able to interact with biological processes.’[4]

In his view the benefits are clear:

. . . Heart intelligence is the flow of higher awareness and the intuition we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into synchronistic alignment with the energetic heart. When we are heart-centered and coherent, we have a tighter coupling and closer alignment with our deeper source of intuitive intelligence. We are able to more intelligently self-regulate our thoughts and emotions and over time this lifts consciousness and establishes a new internal physiological and psychological baseline.[5]

Moreover:

Our intuitive insights often unfold more understanding of ourselves, others, issues and life than years of accumulated knowledge. It is especially helpful for eliminating unnecessary energy expenditures, which deplete our internal reserves, making it more difficult to self-regulate and be in charge of our attitudes, emotions and behaviors in ordinary day-to-day life situations. Intuition allows us to increase our ability to move beyond automatic reactions and perceptions. It helps us make more intelligent decisions from a deeper source of wisdom, intelligence and balanced discernment, in essence increasing our consciousness, happiness and the quality of our life experience.

The Importance of Silence

One of the ways to strengthen this connection is by ‘developing deeper levels of self-awareness of our more subtle feelings and perceptions, which otherwise never rise to conscious awareness.’

What does that mean exactly?

 In other words, we have to pay attention to the intuitive signals that often are under the radar of conscious perception or are drowned out by ongoing mental chatter and emotional unrest. A common report from people who practice being more self-aware of their inner signals is that the heart communicates a steady stream of intuitive information to the mind and brain. In many cases, we only perceive a small percentage of intuitive information or choose to override the signals because they do not match our more egocentric desires.

When I try to explain to people the nature of my own experience of this, I describe it by saying that the head shouts but the heart whispers. Therefore, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wisely advised and Jill Bolte Taylor dramatically discovered in My Stroke of Insight we need to silence the brain-noise if we are to have any hope of listening to the heart. It is another of those strange correlations, rather like earth being an anagram of heart, that the same applies to the words silent and listen.

The words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are:[6]

Bahá’u’lláh says there is a sign (from God) in every phenomenon: the sign of the intellect is contemplation and the sign of contemplation is silence, because it is impossible for a man to do two things at one time—he cannot both speak and meditate. It is an axiomatic fact that while you meditate you are speaking with your own spirit. In that state of mind you put certain questions to your spirit and the spirit answers: the light breaks forth and the reality is revealed.

A Window on the Spirit

Does all this this justify Klebel’s next leap in Chapter 4 of his book The Human Heart?

He argues that just as ‘Poetry, for example, originates in the heart . . . [t]he same process underlies the poetic aspect of the Revelation; hence, the special language of any Revelation has this poetic style and needs to be understood by the heart. It speaks directly to the heart but also needs to be understood by the brain; or rather, it needs to be internally translated to the logical and intuitional ability of the human brain to be fully understood.’

Given that this whole sequence has its roots in the dream I had about the hearth in my family home and its connections with both the earth and my heart, and given that it is my only dream in which I have sensed the presence of Bahá-u-lláh, I am inclined to go with him on this. His perspective has a degree of plausibility for me. In the same chapter he writes:

Only in the dream, when the brain is excluded by sleep, is heart thinking present alone, but even that kind of thinking has to be translated by the brain into the normal style of thinking to become conscious and possibly be understood.

. . . These considerations are based on the understanding of the Bahá’í Writings that the mind or the soul, with its rational faculty, is using the body, in this case the brain and the heart, as instruments of their action.

He quotes from the Bahá’í Writings in support of this possibility: ‘Say: Spirit, mind, soul, and the powers of sight and hearing are but one single reality which hath manifold expressions owing to the diversity of its instruments.’[7]

The context there is interesting in the light of this perspective. Earlier on the same page Bahá-u-lláh writes: ‘Know, furthermore, that the life of man proceedeth from the spirit, and the spirit turneth wheresoever the soul directeth it.’ And He goes onto to explain on the next page, ‘In like manner, when this sign of God turneth towards the brain, the head, and such means, the powers of the mind and the soul are manifested.’

What meanings we derive from that are of course for each of us to decide.

Klebel feels that ‘ brain thinking constitutes a polar opposite between rational and intuitive thinking’ and ‘[t]ranscending this way of thinking of the brain is the thinking of the heart.’

One way in which, in his view, the thinking of the heart is superior to the thinking of the brain he explains in the following intriguing discussion:

One of the most distinguishing differences between the brain and the heart is the fact that the brain is divided into a right and left hemisphere, and how they work together in logical and discursive thought is not yet fully understood. In opposition to this is the fact that the little brain of the heart does not have this distinction or separation and seems to be undivided, as expressed in the following statement by Bahá’u’lláh. This has ethical or moral consequences which are important to notice, especially when considering the understanding of divine Revelation:

‘And as the human heart, as fashioned by God, is one and undivided, it behoveth thee to take heed that its affections be, also, one and undivided. Cleave thou, therefore, with the whole affection of thine heart, unto His love, and withdraw it from the love of anyone besides Him, that He may aid thee to immerse thyself in the ocean of His unity, and enable thee to become a true upholder of His oneness.’[8]

I won’t go back over all the ground I have covered in this blog on the left hemisphere versus right hemisphere challenges – suffice it to say, my deep engagement with that problem perhaps explains why I resonate to the possibility that the heart Bahá-u-lláh refers to has a physical dimension, as I have also been wrestling to deepen my understanding of exactly what the term ‘heart’ means at this spiritual level. I was taken, as I have explained elsewhere, with the idea that the heart is the experience of soul in consciousness, but perhaps it’s a touch more complicated even than that.

What does seem to be clear is this:

. . . Another conclusion is the understanding that the revelatory writings of all religions are actually speaking to the heart more than to the brain. Nevertheless, the brain is not neglected, because it must be used so that it gains awareness of the language of the heart which can then be interpreted in the logical way of the brain.

As I plunge more deeply into the spiritual perspective, we will find some puzzling and surprising insights in the next post or two.

References:

[1]. Hogarth, R. M., Educating Intuition 2001, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[2]. McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysiologi- cal evidence of intuition: Part 1. The surprising role of the heart. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(1): p. 133-143, and McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysi- ological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(2): p. 325-336.
[3]. McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysi- ological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(2): p. 325-336.
[4]. Pribram, K.H., Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing1991, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Laszlo, E., Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: how the new scientific reality can change us and our world 2008, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, Mitchell, E., Quantum holography: a basis for the interface between mind and matter, in Bioelectromagnetic Medicine, P.G. Rosch and M.S. Markov, Editors. 2004, Dekker: New York, NY. p. 153-158, Tiller, W. A., J. W E Dibble, and M. J. Kohane, Conscious Acts of Creation: The Emergence of a New Physics 2001, Walnut Creek, CA: Pavior Publishing. (pp. 201-202), Bradley, R.T., Psycholphysiology of Intution: A quantum-holgraphic theory on nonlocal communication. World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 2007. 63(2): p. 61-97, Marcer, P. and W . Schempp, The brain as a conscious system. International Journal of General Systems, 1998. 27: p. 231- 248, Pribram, K.H. and R.T. Bradley, The brain, the me and the I, in Self-Awareness: Its Nature and Development, M. Ferrari and R. Sternberg, Editors. 1998, The Guilford Press: New York. p. 273-307, and Schempp, W., Quantum holograhy and neurocomputer architectures. Journal of Mathematical Imaging and vision,1992. 2: p. 109-164.
[5]. McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysi- ological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(2): p. 325-336.
[6]. Paris Talks – page 174.
[7]. Bahá’u’lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, page 154..
[8]. Op. cit. – pages 214–15.

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Understanding the Heart (2/6): Just a pump or more than that?

It is seriously tempting to think that the heart, in any real sense, is just the organ whose steady beat helps keep us alive. Any other metaphorical usage simply stands for something else such as the emotional brain, the right hemisphere, the soul or spirit.

My own brush with heart problems in terms of the physical go back to May 2011 when a particularly stressful situation caused my blood pressure to burst through acceptable barriers. Fortunately, amlodipine has helped bring things under control since then so there’s nothing I need to do much, apart from pop the pills, take my BP regularly and make sure I exercise regularly and control my diet. That’s the heart taken care of.

I’ve then taken the easy step, perhaps especially in the light of Jill Bolte Taylor’s book My Stroke of Insight, of concluding that the heart is at most just another more accessible word for the right hemisphere. All that’s needed is for my impatient chatty head to quieten down enough for my whispering ‘heart’ to make itself heard, and also to slow down enough to give my ‘heart’ time to convey its perspective. My heart – no, let’s be clear my right hemisphere – is wiser but slower than my head. I was faintly troubled by the total lack of language. The right hemisphere is not totally speechless. Perhaps something else was going on.

Even at the purely physical level, before we go on later to explore the transcendent, there may be good reasons for doubting that. Things might be a touch more complicated even at the physical level. It seems important to take these into account in any attempt to understand the heart.

The ‘Little Brain’ Hypothesis

Wolfgang Klebel, in his recent book The Human Heart, argues that the heart has a more significant role in human cognition and experience than previously thought. Chapter Three explores this in some detail and is where the quotes I am about to use come from. It will make an easier read if I do not keep interjecting footnote numbers after the frequent short quotations I’ll be making.

In terms of his own life course he reports on experiences of inexplicable certainty about significant choices, comparable to the ones I describe in my sequence on my journey towards the Bahá’í Faith, which I call leaps of faith. My apparently impetuous decisions to leave teaching and work in mental health, and to commit to the Bahá’í path within a week of discovering it, seemed blind and irrational, but have proved to be absolutely correct and life affirming. I attributed them to what I call deep intuition, a probably right hemisphere capacity. Klebel is sure they come from the heart.

I’ve picked up warning signs over the years about the possibility that the heart may be more involved than I ever gave it credit for, but have never really bothered to explore them in any depth. I’ve read anecdotal evidence of people who hated classical music suddenly becoming passionately fond of it after receiving a heart transplant from a violinist. I knew of the research into how triggering an emotional state in one close friend, partner or family member led to a similar heart reading in their close connection.

Klebel goes much further.

Based on the work of McCraty and Childre, Klebel is convinced that ‘the heart is a sensory organ and a sophisticated information encoding and processing center . . . Its circuitry enables it to learn, remember, and make functional decisions independent of the cranial brain.’[1]

He argues that ‘In the last twenty years, evidence has accumulated for the presence of a functional heart brain’ termed the ‘little brain of the heart,’ explaining that ‘the heart, is made up of populations of neurons capable of processing information’ which is ‘sent to neurons in the base of the brain via afferent axons in the vagus nerve and to the spinal column neurons via afferent axons in sympathetic nerves.’

There is therefore, in his opinion, a ‘newly emerging view of the heart as a sophisticated information processing center, functioning not only in concert with the brain but also independent of it.’ He accepts that more work needs to be done to establish the exact nature of this possible system.

He tries to provide examples of what has already been established.

He asks, ‘How do we understand the intellectual functioning of the heart?’ and suggests that ‘One way that might help us is to make the assumption that dreams are developed primarily by the heart.’ This is clearly still speculative.

The absence of language in the heart poses a problem because ‘while the brain has consciousness and we know what we think, the heart does not have this.’  The heart, he argues, ‘can only express itself in feelings.’ However, ‘its decision has to become conscious in the brain, has to be translated from the language of the heart into the language of the brain, so to speak.’ Dreams are one way this might happen. He uses the anecdotal evidence that ‘dream memories can be transplanted together with the heart from one person to another’ to arrive at the possible conclusion ‘that the language of the heart is similar to the language of dreams.’

In a way that has parallels with but goes far beyond the rigorous work recorded by van der Kolk in his book The Body Keeps the Score, he shares another conclusion which he arrived at from seeing many patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): ‘memories heavily loaded with emotions seem to be located in the heart and not in the brain.’

He comes back to an earlier question and asks ‘is this little brain of the heart involved in dreaming?’ He picks up on evidence gathered from heart transplant patients, which suggests that ‘some of them experience dreams of the previous owner of the heart,’ which in turn strongly implies that ‘the dream memory was transplanted with the heart.’ He quotes a piece of anecdotal evidence from a conference[2] where it was reported that the dreams of an eight-year old girl who had received a transplant from a murdered ten-year old girl led to the conviction of the murderer because of the accurate details of the murder contained in the dreams.

From the same source he adds that Paul Pearsall also:

cites a heart transplant patient who had ‘surprisingly accurate dreams about her donor’ together with other changes experienced by a number of patients, such as food tastes, music preferences, and emotional states these patients had never experienced before.

He feels it probable that ‘memories which happened under severe emotional stress appear to be located in the heart and remembered in dreams or intrusive memories, as is known in post-traumatic stress disorder.’

I found myself wondering at this point whether, somewhat in line with Alexander and Newell’s conclusions after his NDE, would reducing brain activity while awake increase access to the heart as the sleep/dream association might suggest? More on that later possibly.

Klebel feels that ‘the heart is used by the mind of the dreamer when she is dreaming’ but ‘when dreams are remembered, they are remembered in the brain and translated into the normal language of the brain, which makes it difficult to interpret them.’

My inner sceptic was beginning to kick in quite strongly at this point, but I reined it in because there is other alleged evidence pointing in a similar direction.

Transpersonal Possibilities

For starters a short paper by Professor Mohammed Omar Salem on the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ website summarises research as going some way to confirm this kind of possibility:

After extensive research, Armour (1994) introduced the concept of functional ‘heart brain’. His work revealed that the heart has a complex intrinsic nervous system that is sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a ‘little brain’ in its own right. The heart’s brain is an intricate network of several types of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells similar to those found in the brain proper. Its elaborate circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain – to learn, remember, and even feel and sense. The heart’s nervous system contains around 40,000 neurons, called sensory neurites (Armour, 1991). Information from the heart – including feeling sensations – is sent to the brain through several afferents. These afferent nerve pathways enter the brain at the area of the medulla, and cascade up into the higher centres of the brain, where they may influence perception, decision making and other cognitive processes (Armour, 2004).

The heart’s role in the regulation of emotion, rather than simply responding to it, seems potentially significant:

Research has shown that the heart’s afferent neurological signals directly affect activity in the amygdala and associated nuclei, an important emotional processing centre in the brain. The amygdala is the key brain centre that coordinates behavioural, immunological, and neuroendocrine responses to environmental threats. It compares incoming emotional signals with stored emotional memories, and accordingly makes instantaneous decisions about the level of perceived threat. Due to its extensive connections to the limbic system, it is able to take over the neural pathways, activating the autonomic nervous system and emotional response before the higher brain centres receive the sensory information (Rein, McCraty and Atkinson, 1995 & McCraty et al, 1995).

There’s McCraty again.

In his summary of the conclusions he has reached, Salem seems to go in some respects at least as far as Klebel reaches in the end (more on that next time):

It has long been thought that conscious awareness originates in the brain alone. Recent scientific studies suggest that consciousness emerges from the brain and body acting together (Popper & Eccles, 2000). As has been shown, a growing body of evidence now suggests that the heart plays a particularly significant role in this process. The above findings indicate that, the heart is far more than a simple pump. In fact, it is seen now as a highly complex, self- organizing information processing centre with its own functional ‘brain’ that communicates with, and influences, the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways. The involvement of the heart with intuitive functions is another interesting piece of information. However, as persons with transplanted hearts can function normally, the heart can be considered here as a medium or tool, for an underlying more sophisticated integrating system that has the capacity to carry the personal identity of the individual. These new visions might give better understanding to the concept of mind as a multi-component unit that is not only interacting with the physical environment through demonstrable means, but also has the capacity to communicate with the cosmic universe through non-physical pathways (Lorimer, 2001). This gives rise to the concept of the spirit as the non-physical element, or the field, of the mind that can communicate with the cosmos outside the constraints of space and time. The evidence for such communication comes from the reported phenomena of extra-sensory perception (telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance), psycho-kinesis, psychic healing and religious experiences (Radin, 1997 & Henry, 2005).

So, it came to seem that I need to dig a bit deeper into the transpersonal possibilities hidden in the heart in spite of my inner sceptic’s protestations. I don’t want to fall short of as full an exploration of this topic as I can manage.

More on that next time, then. We will eventually get to the completely mystical stuff, believe me.

References:

[1]. McCraty and Childre, The Appreciative Heart: The Psychophysiology of Positive Emotions and Optimal Functioning – page 1.
[2]. Pearsall, The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy. The New Findings About Cellular Memories and Their Role in the Mind/Body/Spirit Connection, pp. 7–8.

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