Man's Fate and God's Choice - Bhimeswara Challa (best e books to read .TXT) 📗

way to a fuller realization of man’s true potential. But, to achieve that, man needs to journey inwards, turn his sights from the stars to his soul. The irony is that man makes his destiny but cannot make his day: no one can be sure if he will see the next

 

 

 

440 Khalil Gibran. The Voice of the Master. 1958. The Citadel Press. Secaucus, New Jersey, USA. p.79.

 

sunrise or sunset but he can contribute to the very process of evolution by his thoughts and deeds. He cannot predict or change the nature of the next minute, but he can change the very climate that sustains life. He cannot prevent his own decay but he can destroy the planet.

It has often been said that the universe within, mirrors the universe outside, that which one does not have, one cannot project, be it hate or love; and there is no problem that man faces that is beyond his innate capacity to tackle it. That truism has practical implications. It means that we cannot just stay as we are and hope that the world will be okay. Man is a microcosm of the cosmos, and the universe is a man magnified billions of times. It is the inability of man to reach out and tap the spring inside, that is the problem. He has methodically sidelined probably the most important source of energy inside the heart, and focuses entirely on his mental capacities. It is the distancing of the self from the heart that has cut off the spiritual guidance and nourishment that the heart alone can provide. Throughout the ages, the heart has been referred to as a source of not only virtue and love, but also of compassion and a flowing spring of intelligence. “Many ancient cultures, including the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek, assert that the heart is the primary organ responsible for influencing and directing our emotions and our decision-making ability.

Similar perspectives of the heart as a source of intelligence are found in Hebrew, Christian, Chinese, Hindu, and Islamic traditions. For example, the Old Testament saying “For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs, 23:7), is further developed in the New Testament (Luke, 5:22), “What reason ye in your hearts?”441 According to the ancient Hindu texts, for a long time in human evolution, the center of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. Before that, it was not even the heart; it was still lower, near the navel. It appears that what we metaphorically say ‘gut-feeling’ is literally feelings drawn from the gut.

On the subject of the intellect, which is often used interchangeably with ‘intelligence’, although some draw distinction, Swami Vivekananda said, “First, it is absolutely necessary to clear the intellectual portion, although we know that intellectuality is almost nothing; for it is the heart that is of most importance. It is through the heart that the Lord is seen, and not through the intellect. The intellect is only the street-cleaner, cleansing the path for us, a secondary worker, the policeman; but the policeman is not a positive necessity for the workings of society.”442 The Sufi saint Hazrat Ibn Arabi in his famous book ‘Fusus-ul-Hukm’ said: “Those who have come to know Allah, through His own self-disclosure to them, they did not come to know Him via their minds, have known him with the light which Allah imparted to their hearts and minds.”443 The heart is caring and compassionate and less self- serving than the mind. It is less susceptible to the negative external environment. Extremism, fanaticism, intolerance, obduracy, one-dimensional visions, these are all attributes of the mind. Tenderness, kindness, sensitivity, love are the very grain of the heart. The mind is exclusive and intrusive; the heart is inclusive and subtle. The mind seeks hegemony; the heart, harmony. The voice of the heart is soft and light, but is often drowned in the cacophony coming from the mind. Its attributes are intuition, insight, sixth sense, gut-feeling, knowledge without thought, and so on. While we put all our talents to assiduously cultivate the mind, the heart is left to its own rhythm and relentless beat.

 

 

 

 

441 Cited in: The Real Essentials. Follow Your Heart. Accessed at: http://www.therealessentials.com/followyourheart.html

442 Cited in: Friedrich. Notes on the Word “Intellectual”. 8 august 2003. Accessed at: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2003/08/notes_on_the_word_intellectual.html

443 Cited in: SufiBlog.com. Ibn Arabi. Accessed at: http://www.sufiblog.com/ibn-arabi.html

 

That ‘beat’ of the heart starts very early, barely 21 days after conception, and by then it is already pumping (through a closed circulatory system) blood whose type is different from that of the mother. With the help of new tools and techniques, science is showing that “the heart begins to beat in the unborn fetus even before the brain is formed so it appears that the heart truly holds primary status as the initiator of human life.”444 It has also been said that there is “a spot in the heart which is the first to live in the fetus and the last to die.”445 Thus far, our perception of identity, who we are and what we want to be, is identified with the brain-mind. Thus far, this entire ‘heart thing’ has been relegated to the realm of the philosophical, spiritual speculation, and New Age mysticism. Since the waning years of the last bloody century, new light is being thrown by researchers on a new source of energy called L-energy, centered in the human heart, which has a memory and intelligence of its own, which is independent and beyond the control of the brain. It is part of a new discipline, cellular memory, which postulates that cells contain clues to our personalities, tastes, and histories independent of other genetic codes or brain cells. Some remarkable stories of heart transplant recipients throw fresh light, and indicate that hearts may have memories beyond bodies. It is reported that some people who underwent heart-transplant surgeries suddenly acquired the tastes of the heart donors. In a moving ‘story’, Paul Pearsall (The Heart’s Code, 1999; p.7), under the heading The heart that found its body’s killer, recounts a case in which a little girl, who received a transplanted heart from a murdered girl, managed to identify the donor’s killer; based on her ‘evidence’, the murderer was even convicted. The scientific explanation offered is that the heart is loaded with molecules that contain memory, which go along with the heart into another body. These molecules can then form memories of rhythmic patterns like the nerve cells in the brain that store patterns of events to form memories.

Scientists have found that the heart has its own independent nervous system, not only memory, a complex system referred to as ‘the brain in the heart’, sometimes called the ‘third brain’, the other two being the one in the head and the other in the stomach. Medical science is exploring the physiological mechanisms by which the heart communicates with the brain, thereby influencing information processing, perceptions, emotions, and health. Researchers have found that the heart can record a whole event and that it is possible to induce the heart into states of love. It is said that “there are at least forty thousand neurons (nerve cells) in the heart — as many as are found in various subcortical centers of the brain.”446 It means that hearts too can think and feel, learn and carry one’s personal code and that a heart’s biophysical energy and information travels throughout the body and reaches the surface of the skin. Evidence is mounting that the heart, “instead of simply pumping blood, may actually direct and align many systems in the body so that they can function in harmony with one another” and that although it is “in constant communication with the brain, scientists are discovering that our hearts may actually be the ‘intelligent force’ behind the intuitive thoughts and feelings we all experience.”447

 

 

 

 

444 Virginia Essene. Heart and Brain: How are Your Heart and Brain Connected to God? Global Onenness. Accessed at: http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Heart_and_Brain/id/1961

445 The Heart’s Mind. The Theosophical Movement. September 2001. Vol.71. No.11. Theosophy Company. Mumbai, India. Accessed at: http://www.ultindia.org/Mumbai/7111heart.html

446 Cited in: The Real Essentials. Follow Your Heart. Accessed at: http://www.therealessentials.com/followyourheart.html

447 Cited in: The Real Essentials. Follow Your Heart. Accessed at: http://www.therealessentials.com/followyourheart.html

 

Some researchers also think that the heart is a balance organ whose function is to balance and regulate the physical, mental, and emotional natures. The phrase Heart Intelligence is now widely used as a metaphor for the independent wisdom inherent in the heart. The heart is the source of natural love and the task is to nurture and expand it until it fills the entire being. Maybe the heart does not solve problems, but it dissolves them. In short, it tells us that the heart is not only a source of independent but integrated source of energy in the body, but also that hearts can communicate with other hearts. Rollin McCraty, the lead researcher at the Institute of HeartMath, says that “the planet is really moving through a paradigm shift. A shift from the head to the heart. The heart is the base frequency that we’re hard-wired to live in.”448 These findings reinforce the long held view in ‘esoteric circles’ that the heart sends us intuitive signals to govern our lives, if only we listen and pay heed.

The scriptures, prophets and poets have long recognized the spiritual role of the human heart, and as the favored abode of God. God is everywhere and in everything, but the ‘cave of the heart’ or the ‘lotus of the heart’ is his abode, his nest. The Upanishads give great prominence to the heart in their conception of the universe and divinity. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad says that in the heart of creatures the self is hidden. The Katha Upanishad warns man that the ascent to the summit of consciousness is not from the mind and the path is ‘sharp like a razor’s edge.’ The Manduka Upanishad speaks of the Self dwelling hidden in the heart as the source of love, to be known through love but not through thought. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that God dwells in the hearts of all human beings. The ancient Greeks were divided over the respective roles of the heart and the brain. Socrates habitually listened to and obeyed an ‘inner voice’ which he called the daimonion, a sort of ‘voice of God’. Mahatma Gandhi said the only tyrant he accepted in the world is the still, small voice within. That voice comes from the heart. Some, like Aristotle and Homer, speculated that the heart was the seat in which intelligence rested. The heart in the human system is the ‘access point for experiencing God’; the route to the divine dimension of man.

Some strongly contend that the path to paradise and the gate to heaven are through the heart. In the 17th century, Descartes felt that the flow of blood from the heart to the brain served the purpose of producing ‘animal spirits’ which animated the body. Spiritualists viewed the heart in terms of divinity. God is omniscient, formless, and featureless; he is also manifest within the human heart as its innermost self. Sri Ramakrishna, the great Indian sage, said, “You should remember that the heart of the devotee is the abode of God. He dwells, no doubt, in all beings, but He especially manifests Himself in the heart of the devotee. The heart of the devotee is the drawing room of God.”449 The notion that God dwells within is not exclusive to the Vedantic thought. The Russian Orthodox Church exhorts, “find a place in your heart, and speak there with the Lord. It is the Lord’s reception room.”