26. ACCESSING THE SOURCE
– THE SURPRISING ROLE OF
THE HEART

THE INTUITIVE MIND IS A SACRED GIFT AND THE RATIONAL MIND IS A FAITHFUL SERVANT. WE HAVE CREATED A SOCIETY THAT HONORS THE SERVANT AND HAS FORGOTTEN THE GIFT.
– Albert Einstein

In my attempts to understand how best to access the Source, I learned that the “intuitive mind” is potentially present not just in the brain, but throughout the body. Complex neuronal structures exist throughout the body, particularly in the heart and the gut. Some researchers even talk about the “little brain in the heart.” One of them is Bruce Cryer, CEO of HeartMath LLC. The work of HeartMath involves measuring the impact of consciously accessing what HeartMath calls “heart intelligence.” There is compelling evidence that the body’s perceptual apparatus is continually scanning the future and that the heart is involved in processing and decoding intuitive information.

I first met Bruce and Doc Childre, the founder of HeartMath, in 2000 at the beginning of the research project for the Alliance. Bruce and Doc have achieved global recognition for their work in harnessing the power of the heart-brain connection. They and their team of research scientists have developed practical, scientifically validated methods and groundbreaking products designed to increase individual workplace performance while reducing stress. Their training programs and techniques are being used by Fortune 100 companies, hospitals, police academies, and schools on four continents to achieve better business outcomes, including employee retention, reduction in health costs, and increased performance, both in creativity and productivity.

When I first met Bruce, he said, “Intelligence in the human system is far more distributed than we used to think. The old model that the brain was the master computer and everything else followed its commands is wrong. We’re saying the heart is a highly intelligent system, although nowhere near as neurologically complex as the brain. It produces hormones and neurotransmitters that we used to think were only produced in the brain. The heart affects brain function in many ways – electrically, biochemically, etc. Biologically, there’s compelling evidence to suggest the heart is an intelligent system.”

In that same meeting, we learned that heart and gut intelligence have also been demonstrated at a cellular level. The implications of this are far-reaching. Bruce explained that neurochemicals, the carriers of nervous-system information, are produced in vast quantities in the gut and the human heart. These chemicals in turn affect brain processing and virtually every other organ in the body.

For several years, he said, researchers have studied the enteric nervous system, which is a complex set of nerves found in the intestinal tract. This elaborate network of neurons and neurochemicals is so sophisticated and complex that it is now called the “gut brain.” Its activity directly affects brain function. More neurons exist in the gut – about one hundred million – than in the entire spinal column.

And, he continued, new research has been published showing that a sophisticated intrinsic nervous system is now known to exist within the human heart. Neurochemicals such as norepinephrin and dopamine, formerly believed to be produced only in the brain and nervous system, are also produced within the heart, as well as hormones such as ANF, known as the balance hormone.

These appear to directly affect brain function. Just as the gut brain’s circuitry allows it to act independently, learn, remember, and produce “gut feelings,” so the existence of the heart’s brain may help to explain the wide range of feelings associated with the heart. So it appears that at least three brains – mind, gut, and heart – are networked together, influencing each other twenty-four hours a day, much of it below our conscious awareness.

Bruce told us that day that it is important to see the heart for what it is – the source of our core power and essential in helping us to access new intelligence: “In a sense, the physical heart is the transmitter station of spirit. Many cultures throughout history have considered the heart to be the core of the soul, even the core of intelligence. It’s really only been during the last hundred years in Western civilization that the heart has not been viewed to be a source of intelligence. In most other cultures of the world, the heart is still seen as central to what the experience of being human really means.”

He said that evidence is mounting that the heart’s intelligence is a core operating system in the human being, capable of the coherent organization of mental, emotional, and cellular intelligence. Mental intelligence, he said, is to analysis as heart intelligence is to intuition. The management of one’s emotional nature, including the ability to generate positive emotion, provides the gateway for unleashing intuition.

“One of the key insights that has shaped our research over the last fourteen years was the suggestion that intuition is a type, or bandwidth, of intelligence central to the design of the human being. We are suggesting that the human system is preprogrammed to operate with a high level of operational intuitive intelligence, and that in this accelerated information age we have created the perfect conditions to optimize it.”

In 2004, experiments by HeartMath, led by researcher Rollin McCraty, extended Dean Radin’s presentiment findings. McCraty and his team showed emotionally arousing or calming pictures to twenty-six subjects who were experienced meditators or skilled in emotional management techniques taught by HeartMath. The HeartMath subjects showed a significant presentiment effect in the behavior of the heart. About five seconds before viewing a randomly generated image on a computer screen, the subject’s heart rate pattern would begin to change to reflect, in advance, whether the image would be stressful or calm. The heart “knew” what lay ahead, even though the subjects were alone in the room and had no conscious knowledge of what image would appear.

The researchers also produced evidence that the heart may perceive future events before the brain does:

… recent work in neurocardiology [suggests that] the heart is a sensory organ and an information encoding and processing center with an extensive nervous system, enabling it to learn, remember, and make functional decisions independent of the cranial brain…. The body’s perceptual apparatus is continuously scanning the future. The heart is directly involved in the processing of future emotional stimulus seconds before the body actually experiences the stimulus…. What is truly surprising about this result is the fact that the heart appears to play a direct role in the perception of future events; at the very least it implies that the brain does not act alone in this regard.

The report concluded:

Although our finding that the heart is involved in intuitive perception may be surprising from one perspective, it is worth noting that in virtually all human cultures, ancient and modern, the heart has long been regarded as a conduit to a source of information and wisdom beyond normal awareness. Thus, our data may be seen as providing scientific evidence for an intuitive capacity that humankind has known and used for many millennia.”

The HeartMath researchers had reached the same conclusion as the physicists at Pari and as Jahn and Dunne. Here is the way they reported it:

Assuming these psychophysiological effects continue to be demonstrated in future research, they are strong evidence for the idea that intuitive processes involve the body accessing a field of information that is not limited by the constraints of space and time. More specifically, they provide the compelling basis for the proposition that the body accesses a field of potential energy – that exists as a domain apart from space-time reality – into which information about “future” events is spectrally enfolded.

The report concluded with the following language:

The investigation of intuitive perception promises a rich harvest for humankind: an enlarged scientific understanding of human perception and consciousness, and even a new view of ourselves and of our relation to the material and nonmaterial worlds. In this rapidly changing and highly complex world of ours in the twenty-first century, we believe there is a critical role for intuitive perception in informing choice and decisions in virtually every aspect of human life. It is through scientific research, such as this, that we can build an understanding of how and under what conditions intuition occurs, and thus also learn the keys to harnessing and developing its power.

Although the language may differ, in every instance I’ve encountered, I’ve heard the same basic conclusion: that there exists an eternally creative Source (the field of active information) that lies beyond the orders of time, enfolded in an implicate or nonmanifest state, constantly prepared to give birth to manifest reality – the explicate order – at every moment. Human beings are exquisitely designed to sense the future, shape it, and bring it to reality – to actualize it when necessary and meaningful, as it desires.

But what about sensing the future together in groups? I was eager to learn what science had to say about this possibility.