The Balance between Heart and Brain Intelligence

Mind is not physical and so its not commensurate with the brain. Mind is our soul or spirit. Moreover, 3D science has already ascertained that 60-65% of the cells in our heart are neural; in effect, identical to brain cells.(1) Presumably that is why we are often exhorted to follow our heart and `think from the heart.' Arguably then, our mind is the 'intelligent force' behind the intuitive thoughts and feelings we all experience and those intuitive thoughts and feelings come to us through our heart. In other words information coming to us from Source is transmitted to us via our heart neurons rather than through our neural brain networks. 
 (Ron Chapman)

Throughout the ages, the heart has been referred to as a source of not
only virtue and love, but also of intelligence. One of the most
prevalent themes in ancient traditions and inspirational writing is
the heart as 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 in Proverbs
23:7, "For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," is further
developed in the New Testament in Luke 5:22, "What reason ye in your
hearts?"

The characteristic of psychic and spiritual balance and the attainment of physical bodily equilibrium are recognized as the essence of Yoga traditions, which also identifies the heart as the seat of individual consciousness and the center of life. In traditional Chinese medicine, the heart is seen as the connection between the mind and the body, forming a bridge between the two. And so it is.

Despite all these traditions and colourful heart metaphors, Western science and society persist in proclaiming that the heart is just a ten-ounce muscle that pumps blood and maintains circulation until we die. Medical science asserts that the brain rules all of the body's organs, including the heart. Medical science does not bother to explain how this situation can occur despite the fact that it has been scientifically demonstrated that the heart starts beating in the unborn fetus BEFORE the brain has been formed.

Neuroscientists have recently discovered exciting new information
about the heart that makes us realize it's far more complex than we'd
ever imagined. Instead of simply pumping blood, it appears that it may direct and align many systems in the body so that they can function in
harmony with one another.

These scientists have found that the heart has its own independent
nervous system – a complex system referred to as "the brain in the
heart." There are at least forty thousand neurons (nerve cells) in the
heart – as many as are found in various subcortical centres of the brain.

The heart communicates with the brain and the rest of the body in
three ways documented by solid scientific evidence: neurologically
(through transmissions of nerve impulses), biochemically (through
hormones and neurotransmitters), and biophysically (through pressure
waves). In addition, growing scientific evidence suggests that the
heart may communicate with the brain and body in a fourth way –
energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions). Through
these biological communication systems, the heart has a significant
influence on the function of our brains and all our physical systems.

The scientific evidence shows that the heart uses these methods to send our brain extensive emotional and intuitive signals. Along with this understanding that the heart is in constant communication with the brain, scientists have discovered that our hearts seem to be the "intelligent force" behind the intuitive thoughts and feelings we all experience.

Accepting that heart intelligence, with its premise of the heart as a primary source of emotions, gives us a new paradigm for understanding our emotions. It also establishes a strong scientific tie between our psychic and physical wellness and our emotional management. The more we learn to listen to and follow our heart intelligence, the more
educated, balanced, and coherent our emotions become. And it naturally
follows that the more balanced and coherent our emotions become, the
less likely we will be to experience stress, sickness and disease.

Because of the ever growing scientific research on heart intelligence,
it may be time we developed a new personal attitude about following
our hearts."
See: http://www.therealessentials.com/followyourheart.html 

Joseph Chilton Pearce (2) puts it this way:

`The idea that we can think with our hearts is no longer just a
metaphor, but is, in fact, a very real phenomenon. We now know this
because the combined research of two or three fields is proving that
the heart is the major center of intelligence in human beings.
Molecular biologists have discovered that the heart is the body's most
important endocrine gland. In response to our experience of the world,
it produces and releases a major hormone, ANF—which stands for Atriol Neuriatic Factor—that profoundly effects every operation in the limbic structure, or what we refer to as the "emotional brain." This includesthe hippocampal area where memory and learning take place, and also the control centers for the entire hormonal system. And
neurocardiologist have found that 60 to 65% of the cells of the heart
are actually neural cells, not muscle cells as was previously believed. They are identical to the neural cells in the brain, operating through the same connecting links called ganglia, with the same axonal and dendritic connections that take place in the brain, as well as through the very same kinds of neurotransmitters found in the brain.

Quite literally, in other words, there is a "brain" in the heart, whose ganglia are linked to every major organ in the body, to the entire muscle spindle system that uniquely enables humans to express their emotions. About half of the heart's neural cells are involved in translating information sent to it from all over the body so that it can keep the body working as one harmonious whole. And the other half make up a very large, unmediated neural connection with the emotional brain in our head and carry on a twenty-four-hour-a-day dialogue between the heart and the brain that we are not even aware of.

The heart responds to messages sent to it from the emotional brain,
which has been busy monitoring the interior environment of dynamic
states such as the emotions and the auto-immune system, guiding
behavior, and contributing to our sense of personal identity. The
emotional brain makes a qualitative evaluation of our experience of
this world and sends that information instant-by-instant down to the
heart. In return, the heart exhorts the brain to make the appropriate
response. All of this is usually on a non-conscious level.

In other words, the responses that the heart makes, effect the entire
human system. Meanwhile, biophysicists have discovered that the heart
is also a very powerful electromagnetic generator. It creates an
electromagnetic field that encompasses the body and extends out
anywhere from eight to twelve feet away from it. It is so powerful
that you can take an electrocardiogram reading from as far as three
feet away from the body.

The field the heart produces is holographic, meaning that you can read
it from any point on the body and from any point within the field. No
matter how microscopic the sample is, you can receive the information
of the entire field. The intriguing thing is how profoundly this
electromagnetic field affects the brain. All indications are that it
furnishes the whole radio wave spectrum from which the brain draws its
material to create our internal experience of the world.
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/JCP99.html 

Perhaps most importantly, we now know that the radio spectrum of the
heart is profoundly affected by our emotional response to our world.
Our emotional response changes the heart's electromagnetic spectrum,
which is what the brain feeds on. Ultimately, everything in our lives
hinges on our emotional response to specific events.' See:
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/JCP99.html 

END NOTES

(1) In recent years, neuroscientist Dr. Armour made the exciting
discovery that the heart has its own intrinsic brain and nervous
system. This helped to explain what physiologists at the Fels Research
Institute* found in the 1970's — the brain (in the head) was dutifully
obeying messages being sent from "the brain in the heart." Doc Childre
and colleagues at the Institute of HeartMath take these discoveries
even further. HeartMath researchers have established the heart's
capacity to "think for itself." Their aim was to determine how the
heart formulates logic and influences behavior. HeartMath researchers
believe that the heart communicates with the brain and the rest of the
body through four biological communication systems. Through these
systems, the heart has a significant influence on the function of our
brains and all our bodily systems. IHM's extensive research led to a
number of published studies in medical journals such as The American
Journal of Cardiology, Stress Medicine and Integrative Physiological
and Behavioral Science.

…. According to co-authors Childre and Martin, as we learn to become
more heart intelligent and increase the emotional balance and
heart/brain coherence in ourselves, new enhanced levels of mental
clarity, productivity, physical energy, overall attitude and quality
of life may well surprise us.'
http://www.deepplanet.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=52&SectionID=4 
http://www.heartmath.org/research/our-heart-brain.html 
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Heart_and_Brain/id/1961 
http://www.therealessentials.com/followyourheart.html 

*http://www.temple.edu/medicine/departments_centers/research/fels.htm 

SO, 3D research confirms that the advice we get from the Celestials
and our Space Brethren is SPOT ON! We become what we think and what we
think depends on what we feel. And our feelings can be intuitively
intelligent. Thus we find that 3D research is rapidly confirming the
truth of the basic spiritual message we receive from the Celestials.
Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe: BUT ultimately we
will not have to believe – we will KNOW, both intuitively and in reality.

Source; http://abundanthope.net/pages/Ron_71/The_Balance_between_Heart_and_Brain_Intelligence_4123_printer.shtml

Full Heart, Empty Mind

There is no path to truth, it must come to you. Truth can come to you only when your mind and heart are simple, clear, and there is love in your heart; not if your heart is filled with the things of the mind. When there is love in your heart, you do not talk about organizing for brotherhood; you do not talk about belief, you do not talk about division or the powers that create division, you need not seek reconciliation. Then you are a simply a human being without a label, without a country. This means that you must strip yourself of all those things and allow truth to come into being; and it can come only when the mind is empty, when the mind ceases to create. Then it will come without your invitation. Then it will come as swiftly as the wind and unbeknown. It comes obscurely, not when you are watching, wanting. It is there as sudden as sunlight, as pure as the night; but to receive it, the heart must be full and the mind empty. Now you have the mind full and your heart empty.

Be in communion with sorrow 

 Most of us are not in communion with anything. We are not directly in communion with our friends, with our wives, with our children. So to understand sorrow, surely you must love it, must you not? That is, you must be in direct communion with it. If you would understand something, your neighbor, your wife, or any relationship, if you would understand something completely, you must be near it. You must come to it without any objection, prejudice, condemnation, or repulsion; you must look at it, must you not? If I would understand you, I must have no prejudices about you. I must be capable of looking at you, not through barriers, screens of my prejudices and conditionings. I must be in communion with you, which means I must love you. Similarly, if I would understand sorrow, I must love it, I must be in communion with it. I cannot do so because I am running away from it through explanations, through theories, through hopes, through postponements, which are all the process of verbalization. So words prevent me from being in communion with sorrow. Words prevent me -words of explanations, rationalizations, which are still words, which are the mental process- from being directly in communion with sorrow. It is only when I am in communion with sorrow that I understand it.

Live with sorrow    
   
We all have sorrow. Don't you have sorrow in one form or another? And do you want to know about it? If you do, you can analyze it and explain why you suffer. You can read books on the subject, or go to the church, and you will soon know something about sorrow. But I am not talking about that; I am talking about the ending of sorrow. Knowledge does not end sorrow. The ending of sorrow begins with the facing of psychological facts within oneself and being totally aware of all the implications of those facts from moment to moment. This means never escaping from the fact that one is in sorrow, never rationalizing it, never offering an opinion about it, but living with that fact completely.
You know, to live with the beauty of those mountains and not get accustomed to it is very difficult. You have beheld those mountains, heard the stream, and seen the shadows creep across the valley, day after day; and have you not noticed how easily you get used to it all? You say, 'Yes, it is quite beautiful,' and you pass by. To live with beauty, or to live with an ugly thing, and not become habituated to it requires enormous energy,an awareness that does not allow your mind to grow dull. In the same way, sorrow dulls the mind if you merely get used to it,and most of us do get used to it. But you need not get used to sorrow. You can live with sorrow, understand it, go into it -but not in order to know about it. You know that sorrow is there; it is a fact, and there is nothing more to know. You have to live. 

An immensity beyond all measure                                                              

What happens when you lose someone by death? The immediate reaction is a sense of paralysis, and when you come out of that state of shock, there is what we call sorrow. Now, what does that word sorrow mean? The companionship, the happy words, the walks, the many pleasant things you did and hoped to do together -all this is taken away in a second, and you are left empty, naked, lonely. That is what you are objecting to, that is what the mind rebels against: being suddenly left to itself, utterly lonely, empty, without any support. Now, what matters is to live with that emptiness, just to live with it without any reaction, without rationalizing it, without running away from it to mediums, to the theory of reincarnation, and all that stupid nonsense,to live with it with your whole being. And if you go into it step by step you will find that there is an ending of sorrow,a real ending, not just a verbal ending, not the superficial ending that comes through escape, through identification with a concept, or commitment to an idea. Then you will find there is nothing to protect, because the mind is completely empty and is no longer reacting in the sense of trying to fill that emptiness; and when all sorrow has thus come to an end, you will have started on another journey,a journey that has no ending and no beginning. There is an immensity that is beyond all measure, but you cannot possibly enter into that world without the total ending of sorrow.

J.Krishnamurti- Book of life

Keep discontent alive

"Is not discontent essential in our life, to any question, to any inquiry, to probing, to finding out what is the real, what is Truth, what is essential in life? I may have this flaming discontent in college; and then I get a good job and this discontent vanishes. I am satisfied, I struggle to maintain my family, I have to earn a livelihood and so my discontent is calmed, destroyed, and I become a mediocre entity satisfied with things of life, and I am not discontent. But the flame has to be maintained from the beginning to the end, so that there is true inquiry, true probing into the problem of what discontent is. Because the mind seeks very easily a drug to make it content with virtues, with qualities, with ideas, with actions, it establishes a routine and gets caught up in it. We are quite familiar with that, but our problem is not how to calm discontent, but how to keep it smoldering, alive, vital. All our religious books, all our gurus, all political systems pacify the mind, quieten the mind, influence the mind to subside, to put aside discontent and wallow in some form of contentment. Is it not essential to be discontented in order to find what is true?"




Source: http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20110726.php
J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life