The ‘heart’ is a mighty image and metaphor for the most vital and essential dimension of our lives. The richness and variety of imagery and symbol that have surrounded it in various cultures and civilizations suggests that it is a multidimensional reality, implicating body, soul, mind, emotions, imagination and will, and the dwelling place of Spirit or Divinity. Many layers of meaning, physical, emotional, and spiritual are condensed in the symbolism of the heart, making it a highly fertile image of the fullness of being and inner life of human beings.

The word heart, has long been association in religion and myth, in art and literature, folklore with courage, valor, desire, will, truth, love, purpose, compassion, kindness, trust, beauty, feeling and imagination. We could go on, but these meanings take us well beyond the literal pumper in the chest. Nevertheless, the etymology of ‘heart’ is linked to this pumper, and we must continually keep in mind this fleshy, incarnate dimension no matter how spiritually lofty or psychologically subtle the heart becomes. I am reminded of a poem by Lilian Moore:

All dimensions implicit in the meaning of the word ‘heart’ owe something to this fleshy pumper. In European languages, the Latin form is cor, the French coeur (from which we get courage), and this is linked back to the Greek kardia, and more ancient forms of ker and kear. The Germanic forms are herz hearte, hairto, and the Anglo Saxon roots are hiruz, and heort. Etymologists have also linked this word to ‘hart’ the word applied to deer, the leaper, and hence the heart is the leaper which bounds in the chest, full of life pulsing energy. This meaning also resonates with the Sanscrit krid, or kurd which also means to leap. Evidently, our Indoeuropean ancestors felt the beating, leaping organ in their chests, and called it, in poetic fashion, ‘the leaper.’

Underlying the plethora of images, ideas, and expressions relating to the heart, I have distinguished three organizing patterns of meaning. One pattern of meaning falls around the symbolism of the “center”, another falls around the symbolism of a “vessel” or container holding, third, the many “contents”. The English dictionary definitions of the heart are amongst the largest entries of any word. Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary offers 43 definitions followed by another forty words that include the root ‘heart’ in them. The first two definitions are biological, after that the definitions offer the meaning of heart as center of the total person, as core, as linked with spirit, soul, and divinity. These are followed by what comprises a catalogue of various human psychological contents: emotions, desires, states of consciousness which can be found in the heart, or found arising from the heart. These presuppose an underlying image of the heart as a vessel in which one can “go inside” and search and find these various moods, desires, memories and so on. This is roughly analogous to what we mean by the inner contents of a person. The person, in heart theory as we are discussing it, has any or all of these kinds of contents, but the person’s core or center is the heart. When considered as the image of a center or core of the person, the beating heart becomes a metaphor of vitality, of life giving energy, which the heart is.

Amongst those conceptions and images associated with the heart as a deep center are the Following: core, center, nucleus, germ, kernel, seed, pith, marrow, nut, essential part, axis mundi, ontological navel, point of origin, still point, the Self, the Atman, Shiva dancing in the heart.

Amongst those images implying that the heart is a vessel or container, we have such expressions as the “inner recesses of the heart,” from the bottom of my heart, in the “chambers of the heart” as the space in which the god dances, as the home of Allah, Buddha-nature, the dwelling place of Tao in the heart, the Heart of hearts. In heart theory, as we are proposing it in this book, the heart vessel is considered to be part of the person, the inner space of the person which can be open or closed, expanding or contracting, defensive or, heart-open. Hence when we speak of the heart, we shall be referring to our embodied core and not the vessel, for which, in our heart theory, we shall reserve the terms “person” or “inner person.”

The heart’s contents are basically any kind of psychological, emotional, or spiritual state, condition, attitude. Anything considered an attitude, condition, or state can reside in the heart, along with cognitions, images, memories, plans, desires. Moods, emotions like anger, fear, jealousy, greed, instinctual desires, lust, emotional conditions such as grieving, longing, loneliness and so on. In heart theory as we are articulating it, any such contents may be found in the person. Some expressions of the states or conditions of the heart are reflected like this : she was broken hearted; he has a vexed heart; one day she stole my heart; we can dance till our heart’s content; his response was heart-felt; he will take it to heart (consider it deeply); he has a cold heart (e.g.;, unfeeling, unforgiving, scheming) she has a warm heart (open, unguarded, congenial); he set his heart against (determined to oppose something).

We do not know how far back in human history or evolution the concept of the heart goes, it is very deep in literate civilization, already found in China, India, Egypt and Summeria by 2500 BC, and in the new world amongst the Aztecs and Inca civilizations. A Cro Magnon cave painting in Pindal,

Spain

dating back 50,000 years appears to have the image of the heart in the thorax area of a wooly mammoth. We can’t be sure if this is what the image is, and so can only say that it “appears” to be so. No doubt one of the reasons for the heart being such an ancient or early symbol is the fact that, unlike the intangible concepts of ‘soul’ and ‘spirit,’ one could indicate it with a gesture in the chest area, such that one is clear of its reference, even if one doesn’t know the language of a given culture.

The heart’s embodiment is bound up with the discovery of the cardiac organ beating in the chest. At some early stage, perhaps amongst hunter-gatherers, it must have been realized that when the cardiac muscle stops beating, the animal dies. The beating heart and life blood are early identified, but for all this, lack of any scientific or objective understanding is evident. Although we don’t have access to documents and texts of prehistoric peoples, we can get a sense of how they may have viewed the heart through modern indigenous peoples whose conceptions of human nature have developed outside the stream of western civilization. We find an appreciation for the relationship between the beating heart and life, and death upon the cessation of the beating, and the relating of this to a psycho-spiritual understanding, such that the heart becomes the seat of life, the seat of the soul or inner most essence. Blackwolf Jones, a contemporary psychotherapist and spiritual teacher of the Obijway tradition speaks of the heart, metaphorically as a beating drum. He invites his readers to “listen to the Drum”. This not only turns a literal drum into a meditation device, it links the beating heart to the heart beat of the Universe, as a spiritual practice. That he is not speaking of the cardiac pump should be clear, that pump is a drum a metaphor:

Listening to the drum requires you to be present in the now. The space between the beats, is where one listens in respect. I invite you to put your ear to the pulse, to the drum of creation, and listen to the heartbeat of the Universe.

…make no mistake. A connection is needed. An experience is required. Stop and pay attention to the now, to the silence, and experience.

People try to get to the Spirit World mentally. You can’t get there from there. …In fact, the longest distance in the Universe is from the head to the heart. Listen to the Drum 13

This is an excellent example of the ancient heart psychology that is still alive amongst indigenous peoples today, and which makes a classic distinction between the mind (head) and the heart. The heart is the seat of the mind, and in its proper relationship it thinks in accord or alignment with the heart. The ancient idea that the mind is properly seated in the heart, meaning properly governed when kept close to the heart and guided by the heart is reflected in the beliefs of many indigenous peoples today. Recall C.G. Jung’s memoirs on his visit with the Taos Pueblo medicine man, Ochiway Biano:

See Ochwiay Biano said, “how the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses are sharp, their faces are furrowed and distorted by folds. There eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they are mad.” I asked him why he thought the whites were mad. “They say that they think with their heads”, he replied. “Why of course, what do you think with? I asked him. “We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.

For the ancient Egyptians the heart was the central organ of the human being. It plays a prominent role in their religion, and particularly in the areas of morality, contemplation of truth, and preparation for the afterlife. The Egyptian word ‘ab’ meant ‘heart’ in its narrower sense of cardiac organ, but also signified desire, longing, courage, wisdom, and will. Five chapters of the Book of the Dead are concerned with the care and preservation of the heart, which accompanies the deceased in the afterlife, and is weighed the results of which determine if one proceeds to life with Osiris, or enters the netherworld.

Barbara Walker elaborates on this Egyptian meaning and compares it with Eastern mystical, and subsequent Western religious conceptions:

The ‘ab’ was the soul that would be weighed in the balances of Maat after death, in her underground Hall of Judgment, to see if it was too heavy with sins to balance her feather of Truth. The ‘ab’ was most important because it was the central blood-soul emanating from the essence of the mother.

The maxim that a pregnant woman carries her child “under her heart,” began with the Egyptians. ….The Book of the Dead addressed prayers to “My heart of my mother…My heart of transformations,” meaning the source of rebirths.

…The Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for ‘ab’ was a dancing figure, and as a verb it meant ‘to dance.’ This referred to the mystic dance of life going on inside the body, the heartbeat. The same mystic symbol in

India

was the dance of Shiva, who was supposed to dwell in the heart of the cosmos within the world-body of Kali.

….So vital was the idea of the heartbeat in Oriental religions that the very center of the universe was placed “within the heart” by Tantric sages.

….The Tantric idea of the heart’s dance surfaced in early Gnostic Christianity, when Jesus was equated with the dancing god-within. In the Acts of John, Jesus said to his followers: “The Universe belongs the dancer. He who does not dance does not know what happens. Now if you follow my dance, see yourself in Me who am speaking…You who dance, consider what I do, for yours is this passion of Man which I am to suffer.”

Amongst the Babylonians the liver was evidently the first symbol of the seat of soul and life, however later knowledge of the heart replaced the liver in this role, but the extant hymns reveal the belief in the powers of the liver never completely disappeared: “May they heart be at rest, thy liver be appeased.” Amongst the ancient Hebrews a few traces of the Babylonian the idea of the liver being the seat of life and emotion can be found, but these give way to the concept of the biblical ‘bowels’ the instinctual-emotional-visceral centers of the body-mind which influence behavior, which are subordinate to, yet intricately connected with, the heart. The idea of the heart as the vital center of life is dominant in the literature, e.g. Prov. 4:23: “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the sources of life.” There are many such biblical examples, but we shall some up with one biblical scholars overview of the Hebraic conception of the heart:

the Heart is the central unifying center of personal life. …the inner most spring of the individual life, the ultimate source of all its physical, intellectual, emotional, and volitional energies,…the part of man through which he achieves contact with the divine. …In the recesses of the Heart dwelt thoughts, plans, attitudes, fears, and hopes which determine the character of the individual.

The Old Testament (Hebrew scriptures) are full of references to the heart vessel, and seem concerned that its contents be upright and pure, and that the person be aware that although he may deceive himself and others, Yahweh looks on the heart, knows its condition. The heart is by nature of loving, it tends to love idols (false powers upon which to center your life), but God commands it to love ‘Him’ above all others.

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. [Deut 6:5-6]

For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart.[1 Sam 16;7]

…for the Lord searcheth all hearts, anfd understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts…. [1 Chron. 28:9]

And he did evil because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord. [2 Chron 12:14]

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. [Prov 4:23]

While that heart as a center in which the divine Spirit may dwell is not emphasized, and while this literature relies on the heart as a vessel for contents which may be right or wrong in God’s sight, the fact that God is always looking upon the heart suggests that God is also somehow implicit within the heart, by virtue of omnipresence which suggests that there is something in the heart that inclines towards God, in praise, and song, in prayer and worship, in psalm and wisdom utterances. The great spiritual value given to the heart by the ancient Hebrews was a tremendous source for Islam centuries later, who carried this idea of the divine in the heart forward and elaborated it, as did the later Jewish mystical school of the Kabbala.

Prior to the formulations of philosophers and scholars, the ancient Greek poetry gives us a sense of the heart as the seat of feelings and passion, and as such feelings and passions could be aroused by the gods, who could somehow penetrate and motivate the heart. Homer particularly held the view of the heart as a center of passion: “And now go, whither the impulse and thy heart impel thee.” “My heart swells with rage.” For homer emotion and passion constituted the primary contents of the heart, considered as a vessel. In Aeschylus the heart is powered by desires, and is associated with love as well as with passion and a power of determination that can be appalling: “Thy heart is ardent for things which make the blood run cold.” In Euripides we find the heart is a kind of space or vessel having depths and associated with loving as a taking into the heart: “I will carry thee in the depths of my heart”. For Aristophanies and Theocritus the heart is the source of love: “But if thou truly lovest me in the depths of thy heart” and again “Thou canst not love me with all thy heart.”

The ancient Greeks thinkers loved to differentiate, classify and assign the implicit wholeness of the psyche into parts and associate them with bodily organs. Such was the embodied nature of Greek thinking. It was hard for them to imagine any psychological or spiritual quality that was not somehow in the body, and in some specific location. I am speaking of the By the 5^th century b.c.e. there was great interest in the question of where, in the body, the soul (psyche) was seated. Hippocrates of Cos, the great physician, speculated that the intellect was seated in the head. Plato was not content with such formulation and subdivided the soul various ways. In one such formulation Plato placed the immortal soul, which transcends life and death, in the head. The mortal soul he placed in the heart.

Aristotle firmly rejected Plato’s scheme, insisting that there could only be one soul, and it has to be situated, so he thought, in one place: the heart. He considered the heart to be the center of the human being, the place of perception and feeling, and the moral center of the person. He established the classical pre-eminence of the heart for western civilizations, but as we shall see, the heart continued to evolve in various ways amongst theologians, mystics, and eventually medieval troubadors and poets and novelists in Europe. The Romans added no great contributions to he Greek understanding of the heart, but we find the heart doctrine further refined. In Tacitus for example it becomes the basis of friendship, and friendship can unite a divided heart. Lucretius suggested that the heart is the center of love, primarily a receiving center for piercing by love’s arrows: Casting loves gentle darts into all hearts.

Jesus of Nazareth built on the Hebraic tradition of the heart, and used the concept of the heart as vessel , which can be defiled or made pure, which and be afflicted and healed, and which can be deceitful, or open before God. This vessel of the heart can thus harbor contents that determine the can of person on is. He presupposes the heart-vessel in his most penetrating sayings:

“But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” [Matt 15:18-18]

Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth the your hearts.” [Luke 16:15]

When Jesus told the parable of the sower and the soil, he interpreted it for his disciplies in terms of the seed (Word of God) as being sewn in the heart, and which grows there and brings forth good fruit, a mixed metaphor, but one suggesting the divine seeding itself and wanting to grow in the heart, and bear fruit from its rich soil. [Mark 4;15]. This is a very incarnate, earthy idea, and St Paul seizes on the heart concept, with its earth and incarnate overtones as the proper dwelling place of Christ. But rather than viewing the heart as a house, Paul, following Moses, picks up the old idea of the heart as a scroll (or book), a form of vessel in whose pages inscribed the “law written in their hearts.” [Rom 2:15], ‘…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living god; not in tables of stone but in fleshy tables of the heart.” [2 Cor 3:5] this ‘book of the heart’ is thus a heart of flesh, which enabled St. Paul to craft an image that resonates with the incarnate Christ he is trying to express. The heart of flesh becomes the dwelling place of the law, and of the Christ.

The imagery of the heart becomes large and inexhaustible in the devotional literature of the early and late middle ages and beyond. Ambrose of Milan emphasized the heart through the book idea, to which he gave the name ‘liber cordis’. This idea inspired St. Augustine to explore the book of his own heart as a route to finding God within. He thus writes a book from the heart. Beginning the first spiritual autobiography of the Christian era, St. Augustine, in his Confessions, opens his heart before God and begins an inward search for the God whom he knows and assumes is everywhere, for we are in god, and god is in us. Thus the searching in the heart autobiographically became Augustine’s method. He found his own heart to have a deep restlessness and longing that could only find its repose and fulfillment in god: “For thou hast created us for thyself, and our heart [cor nostrum] cannot be quieted til it may find repose in thee [ requiescat in te].” [Confessions, First Book, chap 1]From St Augustine onward, the human heart is both a vessel and a deep ontological center where the Spirit of God dwells, making the heart restless until it find its ultimate resting place in the divine life. We carrying many things in the heart, have many contents, good or bad, but there also is our ultimate Source and ground of being. To find God, we only need look within our own hearts and find that ultimate center.

Literature; Shakespeare, Goethe, Pascal, and then the decline in late 19^th century to use heart idiom.

The spiritual literature of the East is resplendent with references to the heart as a sacred organ par excellence, as the abode of Buddha’s compassion, as the residence of deity; as the dwelling place of the deepest Consciousness, of Spirit, ultimate Self, the Atman, the Buddha-nature. In the mythography of ancient

India

the heart is the seat of Brahman, the ultimate reality. The body is accordingly imaged as the “city of Brahman” and the heart itself is the “Royal Palace” in the small “lotus of the heart”. What exists in the heart is thus worthy of great care, of study, of observation, and is the object of meditation, and the thing to be actualized in concrete living. According to the Indologist George Feurstein, the heart, in the sacred texts and practices in

India

is a complex and multilayered concept, and refers not so much to the physical, cardiac organ:

…as to a psycho-spiritual structure corresponding to the heart muscle on the material plane. This spiritual heart is celebrated by yogins and mystics as the seat of the transcendental Self. It is called hrid. Hridaya, or hritpadhma (“heart lotus”). It is often referred to as the secret ‘cave’ (gusha) in which the yogin must restrain his mind. In some schools, notably Kashmiri Shaivism, the word hridaya also applies to the ultimate Reality.[i]

In the famous Tantric Yantra meditations, the deity is sometimes imagined as dwelling in the heart, and when the adept begins to meditate offers a puja ritual (worship) in which through deep breathing (pranayam) the deity is blown from the heart onto the geomotric center of the yantra, which now offers itself in a visual representation, an image when the meditator can vividly contemplate and explore. When the ceremony and meditation is completed the sacred power invested in the yantra is dissolved (Visarjana), in essence the deity is extracted from the visualized yantra and taken back into the heart, through inhaling breath.[ii]

In Zen Buddhism traditions, the wholehearted response to reality is sought that is felt afresh, with original, and uncomtaminated by the mind and its concepts, theories, and logic. Consider the revered Zen poet Ryokan:

We find explicit references to the heart in Zen literature and they generally reflect the heart as a vessel or inner space idea, in which good or evil can take root. This ‘taking root’ ideas implies a kind of inner soil in the heart in which things can take root and grow and become big, and the metaphor has been used most recently by H. H. the Dalai Lama and by the Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh. In a discussion of how to create a ‘peaceful heart,’ he writes:

Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. [iv]

The Buddhist master invites us to inquire within and examine the heart very carefully, as in mindfulness meditation, sometimes employs this image of the heart as an inner space or vessel, as can be found in the contemporary teachings of Jack Kornfield. (Insert quote)

The great religion of Islam, and in particular its mystical branch known as Sufism, has been influenced by the mystical ways of its neighbors, the Jewish Kabbalists, the Indian Hindus and Buddhists, and others, and has also influenced them as well. Sufism offers perhaps the most complex range of uses of the heart, which can refer to the heart center, heart charka, or to the soul to essence, your true being, and to the Divine, Allah. Perhaps no Sufi is so famous and familiar in the West as Jelaludin Rumi, whose ecstatic poetry, thanks to Coleman Barks and Kabir Helminski translations has become widely known in the modern West. Rumi sought through poetry, rather than through theological doctrine and concepts to draw his listeners into the depths of the heart itself, to listening to the divine voice whispering there like Beloved and Friend: “Only the inward voice heard in the chest does not fade….For seventy years I’ve been forgetful, but / not for a moment has this flowing toward me slowed or stopped.” [v]

Rumi does not literally speak of Allah (God) much, but uses the images of “Beloved”, and of the “Friend’, to express a sacred power an presence in the heart that is always Inviting us, through earthly desire imagery, and always through the power of Love, a gentle, persuasive and persistent force arising within the heart of each being and calling it to itself. Thus he invites us to: “Let yourself be silently drawn / by the stronger pull / of what you really love.”[vi] Through following what we most deeply love we come into communion with the divine Lover. Much of Rumi’s poetry consists of dialogues between the Sufi and the Beloved, and these might be called conversations with the Heart. The heart is also considered as a perceiver, not through the senses, but through the Imagination, the ‘alam al mithal’ or spiritual realms are accessed, but Rumi says: “The eye of your heart continually opens and closes…”[vii] you have to open the eye of the heart to see the Divine.

Sufis often speak in different ways about the heart when speaking to different to aspects of the intricacy of the Sufi path, but when the divine reality is meant, it is usually capitalized. Metaphors and images abound in Rumi for the divine reality and its relation to the human heart. One of my favorite images is that of the heart as an Inner Mosque, Rumis version of the vessel idea:

Kabir Helminski, who translated this poem, speaks of the heart (Qalb) as multidimensional conception, it includes the core of our being, the soul, or deepest and most comprehensive knowning, and yet implicates the Divine, in the form of “ a point of contact with the infinite dimension of Spirit, the source of all qualities....’ [ix] Helminski suggests that all the higher stages of spiritual realization for the Sufi can be considered going deeper into the heart, each stage a dimension that has the others implicit in it, so that Qalb, or ‘heart’ as implicit in it ruh (Spirit) and Ruh has implicit in it Sirr (secret) and Sirr has implicit in it Kafi, and so on through the Nafs (soul/self) and Haqq (Truth).

[i] Georg Feurstein, Ph.D.. The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 1997.p 123.

[ii] For a discussion of this process see Madhu Khanna. Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity. London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd. 1979, p. 106

[iii] I am indebted to Jack Kornfield for bringing to my attention Ryokan’s poem. See Jack Kornfield. A Path with Heart: a Guide through the Perils and Promises of Spiritua lLife. New York: Bantam Books. 1993

[iv] Thich Nhat Hanh. Living Buddha, Living Christ. New York: Putnam & Sons. 1995. pp126-7

[v] Coleman Barks, trans. The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems. New York: Harper SanFrancisco. 2001. p42

[vi] Coleman Barks, trans; and Michael Green, Illustr. The Illuminated Rumi. New York: Broadway books, 1997. p21

[vii] Barks, The Soul of Rumi. P 183

[viii] This poem is translated by and cited in Kabir Helminski. The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation.Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 1999. P 88, M.II 3108

[ix] Helminski, Ibid. 81-2