In response to the previous post, Sidak asked some very good follow up questions with respect to the heart:
“Can one understand it psychologically or via neuroscience? Or is it just not meaningful to do so? 🤔 Basically, what does it really mean to be using the heart?”
When we try to understand the movement of a single gas particle, we cannot say much, our tools are too limited — all we can do is talk about the average movement of many such particles.
Since the individual particle is not so important, statistics is good enough. But, when we are dealing with people, can we really make such a statement?
A map is useful as it helps us navigate, but each journey is new. Maps are useful, but not meaningful. Which is why, in some sense, the study of the heart would be meaningless.
Now, as to the last question. When we use thought, that is, words, to understand the world, we always find ourselves short. To describe any situation in its entirety is like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon.
Yet notice how, the heart, seems to be speaking the same tongue as the world. Describing what the heart says is the task of poets; they do this, not by a literal translation, but by using words that move us.
When the heart speaks you can try to analyze what it means all you want. However, to understand it, you simply do. Similarly, you can’t choose to laugh at a joke. You either do, or you don’t.
What it really means to be using the heart is to be in conversation with the world around us. It is this, why, I think, Rumi once said that “there is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” . And, it is this why, in the Upanishads it is said, “Tat Twam Asi” — you are it.
Nature speaks to us. But we are also that which does the talking. We are our heart as much as we are our head. But we often forget. Perhaps if our eyes would be in our chest we would all be holy… but where would be the fun in that?
It is thus that, on the sixth day, God decided to place the eyes on the head, instead of the chest.