Healing Tones

HALF OR MORE OF THE CELLS OF THE HEART, it is estimated, are neural cells like those comprising our brain. According to some reports, the percentage may be as high as sixty to sixty-five percent. Just like in the brain, these neural cells cluster in ganglia — small neural groupings connected through axon-dendrites like those forming the neural fields of the brain, where neurotransmitters perform the same function as those in the brain.

I found this chapter in Joseph Chilton Pearce’s fascinating book “The Biology of Transcendence ~ A Blueprint of the Human Spirit” most interesting and enlightening, as the following excerpt from his book demonstrates. The heart-brain appears to penetrate the entire body through its network of neural ganglia.

Through long axons, the spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, one aggregate of the heart’s neural ganglia connects to the myriad smaller neural ganglia found scattered throughout the body’s tissue, muscle spindles, organs, and so on . . . .

. . . Other aggregates of the heart’s neural structures have unmediated neural connections with the emotional-cognitive, or limbic, brain, “unmediated” meaning here that no ganglia interrupt or interpret the communication between the heart and emotional-cognitive brain in the way that they do between the heart and the other bodily organs and muscles. An ongoing dialogue takes place between the heart and brain through these direct neural connections.

THE HEART IS BOTH UNIVERSAL AND INDIVIDUAL

Years ago my meditation teacher in India, Gurumayi, pointed out that there is essentially only one heart, a universal function expressing through each of us in infinitely varied yet similar ways. This one heart is the universal in our life, and our life is that heart’s diverse expression. Perhaps this is one reason that heart transplants are feasible to a certain degree. While critical neural connections are lost in the transplanting process and can’t be retrieved, other traits may be picked up that we haven’t bargained for, such as some personal idiosyncrasies of the donor. Any heart may take on the color or characteristics of the unique individual in which it functions. Thus, following a transplant, heart transplant recipients occasionally begin to express new characteristics similar to those of the deceased donor. (Lest we get too carried away by this observation, consider that the same phenomenon occurs occasionally in transplant of other organs, such as kidney. Our new biology points out the continuity and coherence throughout all the spectrums of energy in a being—each part contains, at some level, all the information of the whole.)

The heart takes on the subtle individual colors of a person without losing its essential universality, however. It seems to mediate between our individual self and a universal process while being representative of that universal process. The dynamic between the universal in the heart and the specific variant in the head is, of course, the recurring theme of this book. Meister Eckhart made the audacious claim that when “God becomes Eckhart, Eckhart becomes God.” The Sufi Ibn Arabi claimed that God takes on the coloration of each of the infinitely unfolding personalities and is simultaneously each, without any change to God-as-God. Thus, Ibn Arabi pointed out, each name is a name for God, each object is a “face” of God. My meditation teacher Muktananda’s favorite phrase was “God dwells within you as you.” His teacher, Nityananda, spoke of “God dwelling in the cave of the heart,” and urged us to “go there and roam with him.” These quaint sayings are taking on a new light of biological support and may have to be considered a bit more seriously.

This speaks to the Genesis account of the creation of man where God said “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness” (emphasis added). However, the creation of man was not a one-time event but continues in the creation of man in the womb to this day. As divine creator beings, we each form our bodies in our own image and after our own likeness to accomplish our individual mission and purpose for incarnating — an insightful view, which is for me an updating of my understanding of this aspect of our co-creative roles. I touch upon this in the new section of SACRED ANATOMY, now being published in its FOURTH EDITION and soon to be released.

I do enjoy how this author frames the capacity of heart where true understanding takes place. Also how the feelings and attitudes held in the heart affect our physiology and behavior. For example the negative impact that fear has on the human immune system — which is actually comprised of an alliance of organs, glands and tissues, the heart having connection with every part of our anatomy and physiology. By the same token, love and gratitude have a positive and empowering affect on the entire body. This emphasizes the simple way by which the Spirit of God is able to “roam” throughout the body temple via this heart substance.

Once again recall Eckhart’s observation that there is no being except through a mode of being. For the universal torus of potential energy-consciousness to be actualized or made real, there must be a mode of and means for such actualization. For us, the heart is the primary mode of being and all else in our life springs from it. The end result is a heart that generates species-specific characteristics that we all share, yet reflects the personal characteristics of each brain and its experiences to make for a unique expression of shared form. The interaction of these two aspects—the universal and the individual, unity and diversity, creator and created—results in a human being that is the same as all others but different too, and a world that may be as different as that of the Australian Aborigine and technological man.

The kind of world we experience is determined largely by the feedback we receive from energy fields and how that information is perceived and interpreted within our heart-brain network. Here’s how the author lays out the process.

A step-by-step explanation of the biology of this process of creation of individual-yet-universal man might look something like this:

1. Our brain, with its ganglia extensions throughout the body, is, figuratively speaking, an instrument of the heart.
2. Our brain, in turn, is an instrument or representative of the universal function of life itself.
3. Our brain and body are manifestations of that universal heart’s diversity, or individual expression. Brain and body are fashioned to translate from the heart’s frequency field the information for building our unique, individual world experience. The brain and body then respond to the resulting perceptual experience and determine or interpret its quality. This qualitative analysis, or emotion, is relayed back to the heart, moment by moment. This influences the heart’s own neural field, which responds to the emotional report and relays it to the field of its origin, subsequently changing those fields, if only on a minuscule level.
4. In response to the brain’s reports, the heart also changes its own neural and hormonal signals to the body and the brain, and to the production of that em field of information itself. The changed neural, hormonal and em action then influences the kind of world we experience.

We live in an environment of feedback or “mirroring” in which creator and created give rise to each other both within us and outside of us.

THE DIALOGUE  BETWEEN BRAIN AND HEART 

Over many years of research under grants from the National Institutes of Health, John Beatrice Lacey traced the neurological connections between the brain and the heart. Their discovery of these connections and the ongoing heart-brain dialogue was largely ignored by academic science. Today the new field of neurocardiology has verified and validated the Laceys’ work, which means that in time acceptance will follow.

The heart certainly has an intelligence, though this calls for a new def­inition of the word to differentiate it from cerebral intellect.  The heart’s intelligence is not verbal or linear or digital, as is the intellect in our head, but rather is a holistic capability that responds in the interest of well-being and continuity, sending to the brain’s emotional system an intuitive prompt for appropriate behavior. Intellect, however, can function independently and can take over the circuitry and block our heart’s more subtle signals.

To better understand the brain in our heart and the concept of an intelligence or wisdom of the heart, we need to understand a bit about the nature of glial cells, which accompany neurons and are as important to the brain as they are to the heart.  

LIFE OR DEATH? IT’S OUR CHOICE

This sentence opened a portal to a deeper understanding of human function: “Intellect, however, can function independently and can take over the circuitry and block our heart’s more subtle signals” — not a very intelligent thing for one to allow one’s cerebral intellect to do. Therein lies the cause, I do believe, of man’s problems — as well as the likely cause of man’s “Fall” from grace and loss of Paradise.

The Heart is the Garden of Eden where the seeds that bring forth Paradise are sown, nurtured, germinate and grow to manifest Life’s many colorful forms and fragrances. When the human ego steals and commandeers the intellect and takes over the circuitry of life, baring the heart from offering its more subtle and wise signals, it isolates itself, the individual and the collective Body, from Source by shutting down the current of the Spirit of God through the circuitry, the flow of the River of Life itself. The Spirit of God, Love, dwells in our hearts, in the One Heart of Mankind. Death, as promised by the LORD God, is the ultimate price men pay for functioning solely out of human intelligence with no regard for the wisdom and intelligence provided by the Heart. Man dies individually and will die collectively if he stays the course in his current isolated behavior.

The human intellect, by playing God, falls out of the current of Spirit that brings forth life, in the end evaporating into thin air, with all its “knowledge of good and evil,” when the body that gives it its very existence dies of starvation from the fruits of the Tree of Life. The fruits of the Tree of Life are: patience — tranquility and mental focus — the power to realize and manifest creation — the ability to see God through a purified heart — radiant expression and experience of the Spirit of Life — design and control inherent in the wisdom of the Spirit of Truth — and oneness with the All in the Spirit of Love. The Tree of Life that produces these gift of Spirit is available only through the heart. Shut off the “subtle signals” of the heart and you shut down the spiritual energy inherent in the circuitry of life.

The choice of life and death is ours and ours alone. God did not drive man out of Paradise. Man turned his heart and face away from the Creator and found himself out on his own in Eden-turned-wilderness from a lack of the care its appointed keeper has failed to provide. Man needs only to turn his collective face back to face the Creator — repent, make an about face, and see that truly Paradise is at hand and awaits our co-creation and loving care as One Heart, One Mind, One Way. The Way of Love.

I will continue in this series to consider the nature of glial cells. So, stay tuned. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony (tpal70@gmail.com)

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