The Archetypal Heart
Some years ago when I was in the Peruvian Amazon teaching yoga at an ayahuasca centre, I asked one of the curanderos, “What’s the biggest problem you see with all the gringos you work with?” He replied, “It’s simple really. You think too much, read too much. You live too much in your head, not enough from your heart.”
Carl Jung received a similar diagnosis when he visited the Pueblo Indians in the American Southwest back in 1932. In his autobiography he shares this encounter with Ochwiay Biano (“Mountain Lake”), a middle-age chief of the Taos pueblo.
“See,” Ochwiay Biano said, “how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their 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 that they are mad.”
I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.
“They say that they think with their heads,” he replied.
“Why of course. What do you think with?” I asked him in surprise.
“We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.”
— C.G. Jung. “Memories, Dreams, Reflections.”
So what is this heart? Where is it? How do we think with it? How do we live from it?
We already have some intuitions about the heart that reveal themselves in our common language. We say things like, “I know it in my heart”, “It broke my heart”, “My heart is bursting with excitement” or simply, “Oh my heart!” when we see a cute baby or animal.
The heart is hidden in the word courage, which has the French word for heart, coeur, at its core. In fact, the word core probably comes from the French coeur or Latin cor, both meaning “heart.” Core and heart are interchangeable. So it follows that the heart is hidden somewhere in our core.
When we speak about ourselves, we unconsciously point to the centre of our chest. When we speak of something deeply important to us, we bring our hand to our heart. When we are confronted with something beautiful, a piece of art or a panoramic vista, there’s a sharp intake of breath as our hand flies to our heart. Not the physical heart on the left, but somewhere in the middle or just to the right of the chest. The body knows where the heart is, even if the mind can’t place it.
People can die of a broken heart. The heart can be filled with sorrow or joy. When we have a personal and intimate exchange with someone, we call it “heart to heart.”
People can be cold-hearted or warm-hearted. Our hearts can be open or closed. They can be cracked or blown wide open. You can have a big heart or no heart at all. Hearts can be cruel or kind. We can do or believe things whole-heartedly or half-heartedly. Sometimes our heart isn’t “in it” at all. The heart can be set on something, or the heart can sink. The heart can be soft and it can be hardened. It can be gold and it can be melted.
The Sanskrit word for heart is Hṛd (हृद्), and has multiple (but related) meanings: The mind, heart; The chest, bosom, breast; The soul; The interior or essence of anything.
The Indian yogis give us an image of the heart as a cave in which the eternal divine Self dwells. The Mundaka Upanishad says, “Bright but hidden, the soul dwells in the heart. The soul is the source of love and may be known only through love, not through thought.”
Pop songs from the Western tradition affirm the idea that heart and soul go together and link both to love.
Heart and soul, I fell in love with you
Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, madly
— Heart and Soul, Hoagy Carmichael
Indian Yoga presents us with an image of a knot in the heart (granthi). The practice of Yoga is largely concerned with the cutting of this knot using the sword of discernment via intellectual inquiry. The initiate must first see where her desire is entangled with the objects of her desire. The knot is the alchemical massa confusa, the “confused mass” which is a confusing mess. When the granthi is cut through detached observation, she can then reconnect, or re-yoke (yoga) to the objects of her desire with clarity and directness.
Countless American pop songs, plays and films warn that the heart can lead us to love, but in doing so, can drive us mad and make us a “fool for love.”
The night is like a lovely tune
Beware my foolish heart
How white the ever constant moon
Take care my foolish heart
There’s a line between love and fascination
That's hard to see, how many names such as this
For they both have the very same sensation
When you're locked in the magic of a kiss
— My Foolish Heart, Bill Evans
The line between love and fascination (from the Latin fascinare “to bewitch”) points to a dual aspect of the heart of which we need to be aware (beware).
The universal symbol of the heart (❤) reflects this dual nature of the heart. The heart is divided and inherently paradoxical. It holds wisdom, but can also make a fool of us. The heart is both innocent and wise.
The Christian tradition offers two different but related images of the heart. The Sacred Heart of Christ is bound by a crown of thorns, pierced with arrows, and emanates fire. The Immaculate Heart of Mary, Jesus’ mother, is also aflame, but pierced by swords and wrapped in roses. These images suggest that the heart has something to do with passion (suffering) and compassion (suffering together).
The image of Christ on the cross contains a hidden message about the heart. The vertical axis (connecting heaven and earth) crosses the horizontal axis (connecting self and world) at the locus of Christ’s heart. This image contributes to the idea of the heart as a place of connection.
In Catholic paintings of Jesus we see him opening his robes and pointing to his sacred heart, as if to say, “That which you seek is already within you.”
The Sufis offer an image of a heart with wings. The founder of the Sufi Order, Hazrat Inayat Khan, explains that the heart is an intermediary between soul and body, spirit and matter. The heart that is open and responsive to spirit (inspiration) grows wings and becomes free.
So we know the heart can be full, bursting or broken. It can be cold or warm, open or closed. It’s a vessel, or a cave, or a space that can hold knowledge, love, joy, desire, lust, sorrow, grief, hatred, fear, resentment and secrets. The heart is the dwelling place of the soul and meeting place of spirit and matter, self and other.
I’ve heard it said that the heart is the sense organ of the soul. The soul is concerned with innate knowledge, instinct, emotion, desire and longing. The heart will lead us to what our soul desires, if we know how to listen.
Emotions, because they arise in the heart, are closer to our soul than what comes from the mind. The head can hold lots of information but it’s the heart that holds wisdom. We both know and feel in our heart what is true and good.
So what does it mean to live from the heart? From what we’ve learned we can say that living from the heart has something to do with being in touch with our emotions, accepting paradoxes, expressing oneself authentically, opening or closing to connection (spiritual and earthly), and following the soul’s desires, longings and destiny.
It follows then that living from the heart would mean consulting the heart before speaking and acting. Try posing the questions to your heart: “How do I feel about this person, thing or situation?” “Is this the right decision?” “What do I really want?”
Notice the feeling that each question provokes. Unlike the rational mind, the heart doesn’t speak in direct, clear language. Its language is feeling, sensation, mood, image. The heart requires us to attune, and become sensitive to more subtle responses which are often felt as a movement. It leaps, sinks, flutters, pounds, trembles, resonates. The Quakers tell us to be quiet and listen for the “still small voice” inside.
The poet Rilke suggests:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
So “thinking” with the heart might mean that when you contemplate a particular action, you give the feeling in your heart precedence over the thoughts in your head. The heroic ego is mostly interested in dividing, controlling and conquering, while the heart is interested in connecting, submitting and surrendering. The ego wants answers now. The heart asks us to be patient.
The heart, if we submit the ego to its longings, will lead us toward the things we love and care for. In doing so, we might make decisions that seem foolish to the rational mind, but, as countless pop songs remind us, only fools fall in love.
That’s not to say the rational mind doesn’t play a crucial role. We must develop and exercise discernment to make sure we don’t get lost in love or fall into addiction. But as 20th century yoga master TKV Desikachar tells us, we need to “make the heart the boss and the mind its dutiful servant” — effectively overthrowing the dominant Western power hierarchy and enlisting the heroic ego in service to love, beauty, friendship and creativity.
