Many of you know Dr. Thomas Cowan, M.D from our posts at the American Intelligence Media where we posted his videos about the viruses based on his book The Contagion Myth: Why Viruses (including “Coronavirus”) are not the Cause of Disease.

In the video below, Cowan asks what does the heart have to do with saving humanity?

This is an important question to consider as you read what the heart organ really is, and what its capacities are in the evolution of humans.

The Heart Is Not A Pump!

The Human Heart is a Supersensible Organ of Perception

By Douglas Gabriel

Chapter Four: Great Thoughts About the Heart

“A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.”
Edward Bulwer-LyttonEdward Bulwer-Lytton

In researching the human heart, we encountered many great minds who have concerned themselves with the mysteries of the heart and brought forward their best perspective on the central importance of the cardiovascular system for health and spiritual development. One could extract a summary of these ideas to share the content, but we felt it was important to present these diverse opinions in the original words of the author so as to not lose the poetic quality of their insight. Each author shares his own penultimate expression of wisdom concerning the heart in words that cannot easily be abbreviated or condensed. We have chosen to present these concepts in somewhat long quotations that give the flavor and emphasis of the original.

Much of the content is also found in the quotations of Dr. Rudolf Steiner found later in Chapter 5 in a different form. Each of these authors build their view of the human heart upon Steiner’s indications and try to take that content further through their expression of spiritual scientific facts that are part of their own understanding and interpretation.

***The Heart*, Sue Pegler**

“The heart is a dance hall and a meeting place where opposites meet and polarities exist side by side: where opposing spirals twirl without interrupting each other. It is a place with an immense richness of nerve endings, a second brain of sorts. The heart is a space that is the inside-out in time, the fourth dimension of inner space and time. It is a place where etheric or life force streams come in from the world through nourishment and the senses. These streams are mediated in the heart through the interplay of pulse and breath. It is a place where the soul or emotional life builds pictures of the world and expresses them through speech and movement. The translation of inner intention to external deeds happens in the heart. It is the seat of conscience and morality. Through the experience of another’s heart space or love, new links to the world are forged.

The heart is the organ of self-realization and self-consciousness. It is the central organ of reflection and integration and can respond flexibly to the demands of the whole organism. It is an organ of love that practices the gesture of giving and receiving but does not act out of power.

The volume of blood that leaves the heart at any time is regulated not only by the venous return, but also by the hunger of the organs for oxygen and food. The heart is formed by the spiraling flow of blood. The spiral tendency arises when time enters space and develops towards a center. As the blood moves through the heart, spiraling in vortices, it reaches a still point. In each heartbeat there is a brief moment where the blood stops – a moment of death, a moment of eternity. Finding this still point means finding the harmony of inner coherence between heart and brain. From this inner coherence, one can begin to work towards harmony and coherence with the environment.”

The Art of Perceiving from the Heart, by Paul Salkovskis

“Perceiving is not just hearing, seeing and listening. Perceiving from the heart goes further than that. It is feeling, sensing, knowing how to listen without judging. It’s having no prejudices, savoring life with all its flavors and touching reality with all its textures. We now know that the art of perception depends on many different factors: our motivation, our emotions, culture, intuition, past experiences, and expectations. Essentially, everybody perceives the world differently.

Perceiving from the heart has to do with sensitivity and openness. It is the ability to not only retain what our senses convey to us, but also to apply resolve, feeling, empathy and intuition in order to get to deeper interpretations. It allows us to be more aware of things, nature, people and the world.

Perceiving from the heart is also one of the highest abilities that human beings can develop. It allows us to synchronize our senses (brain) with our emotions (heart) using our experiences. We do it with objectivity and a love that invites us to see the world through the lens of respect and consideration. Let’s learn to perceive our surroundings with more awareness, openness and, most of all, heart.

The perception of spatial layout is influenced by emotions like fear, disgust, social support, and sadness that can actually produce changes in vision and audition – change perception. The perceptual system is highly interconnected, allowing emotional information to influence perceptions and influence cognition. Taking the adaptive significance of emotion into account allows us to make predictions about when and how emotion influences perception. Emotion influences perception and states or capabilities of the body can alter perception.”

Heart Lectures, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer

“The radiation from this etheric organ of the heart is actually developing into a spiritual sense organ. A new sense organ is developing in this etheric heart, and this is the only organ by which man is able to sense and to recognize the Etheric Christ.

In our time there are certain changes taking place in the heart, by which gradually a fifth chamber will develop. In this fifth chamber man will have a new organ which will allow him to control life forces in a different way than is possible at the moment.

The heart is not a pressure pump, but an organ in which the etheric space is created so that the blood is sucked to the heart rather than pumped.

In discussing the blood circulation and the motion of the heart, Rudolf Steiner said that with some people the heart is not quite in its proper place. He said that in the case of dancers, the heart is moved from its proper position on the left to the right side. When this happens, it makes man more perceptive in an inner way to the influence of his surroundings.

Together with the wrong concept of the heart as a pump is connected the fact that we have a wrong social life today. A healthy social life can develop only if the old pump‐concept is removed and is replaced by the proper one. He said that only when people know that it is the invisible in man which moves the heart, will it be possible to construct proper machines and to solve social problems.

The heart is a different muscle because its fibers are laid down differently, and also it is a hollow muscle. The fact that it is a hollow sphere brings about an inner motion, because there is empty space inside.

Concentrate your entire God‐made Cosmos to a center, and from this center radiate outward what will someday be a new cosmos. This is what makes the heart move, the motion which radiates out from the heart.

The etheric center of the heart draws the blood towards it and then pulses out again. Here is where substance is transformed into ether, and forms rise up to the etheric brain and thence to the physical brain so that it can function and so that there may be harmony in the organs of the body. The organs and their functioning are regulated by what takes place between the etheric heart and the etheric brain. Through this heart muscle, with a hollow sphere and etheric center inside it, pulses the blood. The blood enters the heart with its four chambers. Between the second and the third chamber it goes to the lung to be regenerated, and from the fourth it goes out to the body again. There is no pulse in the main vein which brings blood to the heart – there is no pressure – it is taken from every vein by suction.

In the lung, with its oxygen, the blood is touched by the outer world. The old, poisoned, used up blood goes back from the lung as regenerated blood. There is really a constant dying and regeneration. New blood is really born. The heart is the only muscle that only gets tired once (except if diseased) and that is in the moment of death. This shows the eternal youth force in the etheric heart; the heart lives entirely in cosmic rhythms.

Changes in the heart take place with everything we eat. The secret of digestion is that we do not take foreign matter into our system, but all foods are broken down and their forms are changed. Indigestion takes place when this process has not been carried out. This imposes action on the heart. The heart has the task of regulating everything and the blood mirrors everything that happens in our body. The kidney in a healthy person is able to filter out sugar from the blood. Then at another point, in the glomeruli, the blood reabsorbs the sugar. It is necessary that the sugar be out while the blood is being purified in the kidneys, then it is returned. Through the lung the blood is regenerated, through the kidney the blood is purified, and the heart cooperates in both these processes.

At the moment when a person becomes spiritually active, at that moment the composition of the blood changes again.

With every pulse of the heart a certain amount of substance is absorbed, is taken away as physical pressure and added to the etheric substance. This then begins to radiate outward. A clairvoyant can see the amount of radiation that goes up from the heart to the brain. The radiation from this etheric organ of the heart is actually developing into a spiritual sense organ. A new sense organ is developing in this etheric heart, and this is the only organ by which man is able to sense and to recognize the Etheric Christ. “Not I, but Christ in me” has to work through the etheric heart, transforming substance into pure ether, pure radiance.

If you become aware of the heart as a spiritual organ, you begin to develop the power to see the Etheric Christ. You do this by realizing that the force in the heart is the same as the force in the sun, physically as well as spiritually.

It is a peculiarity of the heart that it is the only bodily organ which is self‐maintaining. This is because the blood going through the heart also nourishes the heart. The coronary vessels around the heart are like hands holding it. These coronary vessels nourish the heart and take away the used up substance. The etheric is not able to take up the impact of physical things on the heart. So it becomes stiff or clogged. We can then suffer a sudden end. Modern scientists also know that fear or despair bring about an increase of these diseases. These diseases come because the heart does not get proper spiritual nourishment.”

Clairvoyance and Consciousness, The Tao Impulse in Evolution, by T. H. Myer

“The present day sense organs were laid down during the time of Old Saturn. The heart, on the other hand, has only developed during the Earth evolution. The senses, therefore, have a very ancient past. By comparison the heart is only at the beginning of its evolution; this is demonstrated by a peculiarity of its anatomical structure; it possesses striated muscles which are otherwise only found where muscles can be activated voluntarily. The heart is therefore predisposed to become a voluntary muscle and will reach perfection (even if not in a physically material form) during the future evolutionary phase of the Planet Vulcan.

It is evident that such “time-secrets of the physical body” were known about in Hibernia by the ‘Great Initiate of the Secrets of the Physical Body’, Scythianos.”

Chestahedron – The 7 Sided Etheric Geometry of the Heart – Frank Chester

On the Human Heart and its Mission, by John Barnwell

“Just as love is felt as a heart-force; so conscience is the action of this heart-force resonating in harmony with the life of thought. This is the ‘still small voice’ spoken of in the Gospel of John – a golden seed planted from above – that must be nurtured. And so, the acts of will that freely arise through this heart-force – or negate it – will determine the totality of your character; and, as a result, your future life and being.

For if you lack conscience, you are not yet truly human, not yet truly living; but only sleeping within an illusory dream of life. Within this dream you are but merely a shadow of life – waiting for humanness to arise – needlessly creating more pain and suffering for oneself and others.

There are those that may never find this; be kind to them that they may find a way through their self-created cold world of darkness to the heart-force of warmth and light of which I speak. I have pondered this my whole life, and I am convinced this is really all one needs to know in order to find a sure path to wholeness as a truly human being.”

Matthew (6:19-25)

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

The Heart as an Organ of Perception, by Charles B. Parselle

“Dr. Harvey made the discovery in London that the heart functions as a pump for blood. Until then, the teachings of the Roman physician known to us as Galen, who taught that the blood moved with a kind of pulse or wave motion, had been treated as the established orthodoxy for more than fourteen hundred years. Modern research tells us that the heart is simply incapable of pumping blood through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in a human body, and that Galen was partially right. Certainly the heart muscle functions as a powerful pump, capable of throwing a jet of water vertically ten feet into the air, but to pump two gallons of blood per minute through 60,000 miles of blood vessels would require a pump capable of throwing a 100-pound weight a mile into the air.

Today we know that the heart emits powerful bio-electromagnetic impulses with every heartbeat and is by far the most powerful such transmitter in the human body. Shortly after conception, the collection of cells that make up the beginnings of an embryo begin to pulsate, and those pulsations are electromagnetic.

The developing embryo perceives nothing but the steady heartbeat of its mother. The embryonic heart develops long before the embryonic ear, which hears first only the rush of blood, but the developing embryo starts to interpret the mother’s heartbeats, and those electromagnetic transmissions are interpreted as emotions. The four principle emotions are sad, mad, glad and scared, just as the four basic tastes are sweet, sour, bitter and salt, but from these simple bases we combine and interpret an enormous range of information. The heart is a transmitter and interpreter of emotional states.

Although our science has been slow to recognize the heart as an organ of feeling and perception, our language is in no doubt. Consider the plethora of heart-based expressions in English usage: heartfelt, from the bottom of my heart, I wish with all my heart, with heart and soul, heart-stricken, heartsick, heart-rending decision, heavy-hearted, lighthearted, with an innocent heart, a black-hearted villain, the heart has its reasons that reason cannot comprehend, our hearts are joined as one, I heartily agree, and so on. As a culture, our hearts are uneasy, which is why diseases of the heart are the commonest cause of death.”

The Harmony of the Human Body, by Armin Husemann

“Two opposing streams interpenetrate in the human being – a sculptural generative stream in the physical vehicle of the arterial blood and a musical stream which is embodied in the venous blood as the vehicle of degenerative processes. The “I” uses the sculptural stream when we move and act, the musical stream when we sing, speak and think.”

The Heart-Mind Matrix, by Joseph Chilton Pearce

“There is only one heart, Baba explained, “the one beating in my chest is essentially the same as the one in you. Billions of egos in heads up there, but only one heart.” He further claimed that in the center or “cave” of the heart, there is a point from which the entire universe arises and radiates outwardly. Meditate on the heart long enough and you will begin to sense the presence of these wave-forms enveloping you like a warm cocoon of love and power. As Earth’s magnetic fields stream out into space, so the heart’s electromagnetic field streams out beyond our body.

These magnetic waves of heat and Earth fuse or merge in varying ways, depending on the coherence of our heart’s field. Coherent heart-fields merge into Earth’s radiating fields, which, in turn merge with those of the Sun. Thus, we are incorporated into and reciprocally interact, directly and indirectly, with this whole solar system, to the extent our heart-fields are coherent.”

The Mystery of the Blood, by James Dyson

“The blood is that organ through which all these substance processes are inter-connected, mediated, held in a condition of openness to influences of temperature, pressure, hormonal variations and much else of a more subtle, ever cosmic nature.

Red blood cells have essentially sacrificed their life, yet they carry on functioning. They are the only cells in the body which have died and are not excreted or metabolized. They remain in a state of suspended animation for about 120 days. They carry hemoglobin and combine with the oxygen in the lungs as one of the main gases involved in the processes of cellular respiration.

Within each of these red cells the iron prevents a death process which then allows the entire organism to continue to live through carrying the process of oxygen into the depth of the organism. White blood cells digest and sacrifice themselves in the process of dealing with foreigners in order to protect the integrity of the inner space of human immunity; they maintain physiological integrity and separateness from the outside world.

They conceal some of the deepest mysteries of human existence and they guard the very foundations of our earthly life and destiny. Steiner connects the red blood cells to the phosphorus “substance process.” Phosphorus exists in a bound form in which its energy remains hidden in the realm of potential and in a free form after the energy has been released. Red blood cells are a kind of organ of breathing in their own right, holding the balance between the free and the bound phosphorus, between energy that is realized through a spiritualized process of combustion and energy which is held back as potential.”

The Dynamic Heart and Circulation, by Craig Holdrege

“We cannot understand the heart’s activity unless we consider the blood, peripheral circulation, and the metabolic activity of the other organs. The heart is continually adapting its activity to the needs and state of the body and person as a whole. Changes in the blood’s pressure, viscosity, warmth, and biochemical composition are communicated to the heart. This communication is mediated by the nervous system, hormones, and heart and blood vessels sensory receptors.

The heart therefore exists as a perceptive center for the body via the circulation. The heart is a sense organ for the organism, enabling it to perceive what transpires in the upper and lower poles of the body. The heart does not just perceive what comes to it via the blood. It also alters its activity based upon its perceptions. The heart secretes a hormone in response to the changing consistency of blood. If the blood is too viscous, it secretes a hormone named natriuretic peptide into the blood, and the hormone stimulates the kidneys to secret more water into the blood. The heart muscle itself is a source of warmth for the blood, while the peripheral circulation can expand and contract to give off or contain warmth.”

Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart, by Florin Lowndes

“True human love is rooted in the spirit. Wherever such love is truly avowed and truly received, impulses will invariably be present which prepare the way for a real logic of the heart. The logic of thinking can lead to the greatest egotism. The logic of the heart is capable of gradually overcoming egotism and making all people part of an all-encompassing human community.

The six virtues (control of thoughts, control of actions, perseverance, patience, faith, and equanimity) combine to form the six lotus petals of the heart that are being developed in our time. The other six petals have been developed in previous incarnations.”

The Human Organs, by Walter Holtzapfel

“The sense-perceptible physical appearance receives life from the etheric body, is animated by the astral body and integrated by the ego. The etheric body is active in the liquid element, the astral body in the aeriform and gaseous processes and the ego in the warmth differentiations. It is the feelings of the soul which give rise to the movement of the blood; the soul drives the blood, and the heart moves because it is driven by the blood. The heart speaks with the inner voice of conscience, audible only to each individual alone.

But what is suffered involuntarily by man today, will later, at a higher stage of evolution, be in his own power. Later on he will drive his blood by his own volition, and cause the movement of his heart as today he moves the muscles of his hand. The heart with its peculiar structure is a crux, a riddle for modern science. It has diagonally striped fibers, which are otherwise only to be found in voluntary muscles. Why? Because the heart has not yet reached the end of its evolution, but is an organ of the future; because it will in the future be a voluntary muscle. Thus it already shows the rudiments of this in its structure.

Four organs characterize the predominance of one of the four elements, the lung by the predominance of the earth element, the liver by that of the watery element, the kidney by the predominance of the element of air, and the heart by the predominance of the warmth element. In the warmth there lives the ego. The warmth is the true element of the human ego.”

Warmth and the Heart, The Human Ego Organization, Heinz-Hartmut Vogel

“The heart is actually a universal organ which develops a unique and simple polarity in its anatomy and function by uniting center and periphery. In rhythmical alternation the periphery becomes center and the center becomes periphery. The individual self is carried out into the environment and the outer world is brought into one’s inner world. We call this balancing force the “I” or Ego. We actively identify ourselves with our “I” in the confrontation and harmonizing of our being with the surrounding world.

The heart and circulation together form the central organ of the Ego organization. The Ego organization, working by means of the “connective tissue foundation system” and intermediate metabolism, maintains rhythmical order in the physical organism. In the heart, the polar streams of venous and arterial blood come into direct contact. The right venous heart is subject to an endothermic warmth process, the left arterial heart to an exothermic warmth process. In the interstitium between the right and left heart and capillary systems, the regenerative metabolic process and form-giving nerve-sense process are harmonized. The silica process serves the balance-creating Ego organization in the heart.

Ego activity and Ego organization (individualized warmth or Ego warmth and the silica process) largely coincide in the blood, which is the organ of the Ego. Silica as substance is found in the blood only in the minutest quantities. Consequently, the Ego is active in the blood almost exclusively as warmth of will, and only to a limited extent in its sense perceptive nature. From this point of view, the heart is clearly more of a sense organ than the blood.

The Ego in the physical body lives in warmth. The Ego organization makes use of the silica process in order to work in the physical; but only in such a way that it continually overcomes silica as substance and is freed from it. Through warmth activity, the Ego organization dissolves physical form. The substances taken up in nutrition are first destroyed and then new substances are formed.

In their anatomical construction and their energetic function, the right and left heart repeat the polar formative principles of the venous liver process and the arterial kidney process.

Myocardial infarction stems from a failure of the balance-creating warmth/silica organization which is the physical carrier of the Ego organization. Following this, the upper nerve-sense man and lower metabolic man become dissociated. These processes strike directly against one another in the left heart. Here the arterial blood process is most strongly exposed to the influence of the catabolic sense-nerve process. Thus it is the left heart that failure of the Ego organization and silica process takes place. Therapeutic indications have been given by Steiner for this situation.”

The Bleeding Wound of King Amfortas, Karal Jan Tusenius

“As the largest and least formed organ of the body, the blood is par excellence the bearer of the field of tension between physical substance and the working of processes. In the periphery, where the blood flows through capillaries, and to a certain extent leaves even these smallest of blood vessels, the blood is much less substantial and not, or hardly, subject to gravity. Thus, there arises in these areas the possibility for the activity of non-physical influences. The rhythmic alteration between concentrating and diluting, between major and minor circulation, between the large vessels, the heart and the periphery, thus represents the interaction between the congesting and the sucking activities of the heart and the peripheral tissues. In this, the heart plays a sensing (nerve-sense) and an impelling (metabolic) role.

The blood is a suspension of cells in plasma, a solution of protein and salts. The principal component of the blood plasma is water containing dissolved ions and three classes of proteins; carrier proteins, coagulation proteins, and immunoproteins. The blood cells consist of red blood cells (erythrocytes), platelets and white blood cells (leukocytes). The main function of the red blood cells is to carry oxygen to the tissues and to return to the lungs carrying carbon dioxide.

Platelets work with the coagulation proteins to defend the circulatory system in the event of laceration or rupture.

The normal function of white blood cells is to defend the organism against infection. So both in the plasma proteins and in the blood cells there is an interesting tripartite division consisting of, first:

Salt principle: carrier proteins and carrying, hardly vital, red blood cells

Mercury principle: coagulation proteins working together with the half-vital platelets in the field of maintaining a balance between structuring and dissolving processes

Sulphur principle: immunoproteins and vital white blood cells, being the most autonomous and active part of the blood in the defense mechanism

Leucocytes, white blood cells, are described as the expression of a process of self-consciousness, the I, an ego activity. Leucocytes, which at the present time are still fulfilling their task in secret, are described as the seeds of future consciousness. The immune process of the blood seems to display to a high degree aspects of the preservation of the identity and of personality, which is characteristic of ego function. The human ego enhances the fluidity of the blood.”

Parsifal and the Fisher King — Beginner’s Mind

Polarity of Center and Periphery in the Circulatory System, by Heinrich Brettshneider

“The arterial system, is a biological system that slows down blood flow, increases the pressure wave amplitude and transposes pressure pulsations into a higher octave by breaking each pressure curve into two peaks. In other words, it is both a biological flow resistor and a biological pressure amplifier, that is, a pressure wave resonator. Approximately 85% of the body’s blood encounters almost no resistance to its flow, that is, it flows without being under pressure. The so-called low-pressure system includes the capillaries, the venous system, the right side of the heart, pulmonary circulation, and the left atrium. This low-pressure system is the polar opposite of the high-pressure system in that it relaxes in response to increased pressure and contracts in response to a drop in pressure. It is also capable of counteracting pressure without recourse to central nerve activity. Flow is inversely related to pressure. When the flow increases, pressure readings fall.

Physiological blood flow in the capillaries is highly independent of anything correlated with the movements of the heart, since there is absolutely no relationship between the cardiac cycle and the flow velocity of the blood in the capillaries themselves. Oxygen consumption in the tissues is the only measurable factor that has been shown to increase consistently in proportion to the flow of blood. Blood production by the tissues expands the vascular system, thus producing the pressure that fills the heart with blood.

The function of the heart, with regard to the blood returning in the veins, is to regulate resistance. Human blood is two-thirds venous by volume and only one-third arterial. The blood always flows faster when the venous return increases and the total resistance to inflow exerted by the heart and vessels decreases.”

Human Heart Cosmic Heart, by Thomas Cowan

“Blood actually stops moving in the capillaries, which is necessary for the efficient exchange of gases, nutrients, and waste products. After the blood stops moving, it oscillates slightly, and then begins to flow again as it enters the veins. The capillary system is massive; if it were spread out, it would cover at least one entire football field.

Water exists in not three but four “phases.” The fourth phase is an intermediary between liquid, or bulk, water and the solid phase of ice. There have been many names given to this fourth phase. Pollack calls it the exclusion phase, gel phase, or structured water. He describes in his book, The Fourth Phase of Water, how structured water forms. Any time you have a hydrophilic surface such as gelatin or nafion (a plastic) and you put it in water, a zone of structured water will form. This zone is sometimes referred to as the exclusion zone (EZ) because it excludes toxins, solutes, and other substances. The thickness depends on the charge on the surface of the hydrophilic substance and some other factors. This fourth phase of water forms best at certain temperatures (around 4 degrees C), and it highly structures the bulk water near it.

The ability of highly hydrophilic substances, especially proteins, to structure water is central to biological life. The majority of the water in biological systems, including cells, is in the form of structured water. The cytoplasm in our cells is in a gel-like state because of the network of hydrophilic proteins that make up the interior framework of the cell.

As water becomes structured, the electrical charges separate. The structured water becomes negatively charged while the bulk water is positively charged. There are many interesting properties of the structured water that forms right next to these hydrophilic surfaces. These include having an increased viscosity compared to bulk water near it. The structured water layer is also negatively charged as a result of having an abundance of free electrons. The presence of these free electrons is an intrinsic part of the structuring process of water As the water becomes structured, it also becomes negatively charged. The pH of the structured water zone is different from that of the bulk water. The molecular configuration of the structured water zone is more dense than that of bulk water simply as a result of a hydrophilic surface being placed in bulk water, with essentially no outside inputs, a layer of structured water forms next to the hydrophilic surface that has a different chemical pH, electrical voltage, and molecular configuration (density) than bulk water.

If you take the hydrophilic surface and roll it up into a tube, you produce a hydrophilic tube with a layer of structured water lining the inside of the tube. As a result of the separation of the electrical charges – the natural and inevitable consequence of the interaction of a hydrophilic tube and water – the bulk water will begin to flow from one end of the tube to the other and then out. This flow will be indefinite, unless acted upon by a force that stops it. All you need to do to get water to flow, and for mechanical work to be done, and for it to be done indefinitely, it to put a hydrophilic tube in a pot of water. This creates a “perpetual motion machine!”

There are four phases of water, but for biological life two are most important: The structured water phase creates the electrical charge that does the work, and the juxtaposed bulk phase simply flows. There are many sources of natural energy that drive this flow, but the most important is sunlight. Sunlight charges the hydrophilic tubes and creates the electrically charged structured water, causing the bulk water within the tube to flow indefinitely, as if life were just a big, blissful, abundant dance.

Knowing this, it is easier now to imagine how blood flows in our arteries and veins. Start at the precise place and moment where the blood in the vast network of capillaries has stopped, the gases and nutrients have been exchanged, and the waste products have been picked up. The blood needs to flow upward, coalescing into larger and larger vessels until the venous blood reaches its destination of the heart. The small venules are very narrow hydrophilic tubes; they are exposed to sunlight that pick up the Earth’s electromagnetic field, and hopefully they experience the warmth and touch of another human being or animal.

As a result, they, too, form a tubular layer of structured water on the inside of the venules. At the center of this layer of structured water is the positively charged bulk water with squeezed protons repelling each other. The blood begins to move upward. It goes faster and faster as the large “field” coalesces in a raging central river. There are, of course, contributions to this upward movement from the squeezing of the muscles of the legs and arms, but they are mostly helpful to maintain the spiral movement that support the flows. There are also valves that keep the blood from succumbing to gravity if there are weak moments in the flow. The bulk water carries the waste and nutrients, and the structured layer creates the voltage or energy that runs the systems. Life in all living systems, we are powered by the Earth and sun.

Pollack refers to the thick, viscous structured layer lining the vessel as the exclusion zone because it excludes toxins, solutes, and other substances. This layer protects the vessel from inflammatory damage. When the structured, protective gel layer is not formed properly, the vessel walls become damaged and inflamed. They protect themselves from the high pressure by forming plaque.

Viktor Schauberger observed that for a stream or river to be healthy, first the flow pattern of the water must be in a vortex or spiral flow pattern. The second is that the temperature of the water, particularly at night, must be very close to or exactly 4 degrees C (9.2 degrees F) – the temperature that water is most likely to exist in the fourth, or structured, phase of water. When water is healthy, according to Schauberger, it results in a balance of the forces of gravity with the forces of levity. He was even able to observe in a waterfall a channel of light within the streaming water. This light was the force of levity that flows upward in vortices in the river. This force of levity allows for the effortless flow of water and is dependent upon certain conditions of temperature and flow dynamics (spiraling or vortex-based patterns). This is the natural state of structured water. Schauberger’s natural state of structured water is also the basis for the flow of blood in our circulatory system.

In nature, fluid motion often chooses to spiral rather than stream linearly. A beating heart, with its helical myofiber architecture and twisting-untwisting motion, also reveals spiraling streams of blood flow. This mechanism is highly conserved in vertebrates. Why does nature choose to move blood in a helical manner, and how does that make normal cardiac function efficient? These are important but complex questions that are just being answered.”

Viktor Schauberger: “Water Wizard” The Nikola Tesla of water and his secret source of inspiration.

Healing Sounds: Fundamentals of Chirophonetics by Alfred Baur

“Rudolf Steiner has often pointed out that in many respects we should regard the heart as a sense organ. It perceives the nature of the blood passing through it, therefore, we can justifiably compare what takes place in the heart with a sort of taste perception. The rhythmical movement is probably the fundamental basis of its sensory activity. The activity of the heart implies a center, which looks into and actively perceives a wisdom-filled moving and living environment.

In the vortex process within the heart we can find that sensitive chaos which can sense how the blood flows. From the movement of the blood it can sense how the fluids are mixed.

The blood pulsates in accordance with the predominating temperament of the moment. The “mixture of blood” is equivalent to the pulse which skips, thumps, creeps, or drags. How a person deals with life depends on the nature and mixture of this “special fluid. The will to act is based on the metabolic processes of the blood.

The heart is the result of the circulation of the blood, and not the reverse, because the blood already circulates long before the heart of the embryo is formed. The heart just listens, experiencing the quality of our deeds through their influence on the movement of the blood. Then another mighty transformation of the heart occurs: the content which has been absorbed while listening is poured out into the world.

The contents of the inverted experiences which were absorbed in one incarnation are now poured into the external world and thus karma can express itself. Now one can perceive what the inverted heart of the past incarnations are poured outward, and from outside our destiny comes toward us. It is the contents of our heart from a past incarnation which have been thrust out that now obstruct our path.

We must seek the source and origin of our ability to speak within the human heart. For the etheric forces of the heart overflow, and this surplus of life-force creates the necessary preconditions for articulation in the mouth. If the heart retained its abundance, the result would be an excess of vitality, and man would possess the physical strength of a lion. In this overflow, however, the activity of the heart is transformed into the activity of articulation. The same etheric forces which pulsatingly structure the blood-flow in the heart are now raised to a new level, and they sub-divide the breath.

The Heart Perceives

The sensory activity of the heart is based on the perception of the blood’s movement. This varies according to the qualitative consistency of the blood. The heart perceives the temperament of the blood.

The Language of the Heart

The heart is not a pump. The blood is set into movement through hunger for breath or nourishment. The heart articulates the flow of the blood as the tongue articulates the breath. Articulation is a metamorphosed event of the heart.

The Heart as a Tongue

The heart listens to our deeds. It stores the moral value of our deeds within itself. Its contents flow into the world in the following earthly life. Then the contents of the heart from the past incarnation speak as the language of destiny.”

Functional Morphology, by Johannes Rohen

“The sinus node is one of the major elements in the cardiac conduction system, the system that controls the heart rate. This stunningly designed system generates electrical impulses and conducts them throughout the muscle of the heart, stimulating the heart to contract and pump blood. The sinus node is the heart’s natural pacemaker. It consists of a cluster of cells that are situated in the upper part of the wall of the right atrium. The electrical impulses are generated there.

The electrical signal generated by the sinus node moves from cell to cell down through the heart until it reaches the atrioventricular node (AV node), a cluster of cells situated in the center of the heart between the atria and ventricles. The AV node serves as a gate that slows the electrical current before the signal is permitted to pass down through to the ventricles. This delay ensures that the atria have a chance to fully contract before the ventricles are stimulated. After passing the AV node, the electrical current travels to the ventricles along special fibers embedded in the walls of the lower part of the heart.

The autonomic nervous system, the same part of the nervous system as controls the blood pressure, controls the firing of the sinus node to trigger the start of the cardiac cycle. The autonomic nervous system can transmit a message quickly to the sinus node so it in turn can increase the heart rate to twice normal within only 3 to 5 seconds. This quick response is important during exercise when the heart has to increase its beating speed to keep up with the body’s increased demand for oxygen.”

Life Processes in the Blood Organization, Hemsworth Brüder von Laue

“The gradual refinement of matter in the human being is always happening in the blood. With the aid of the blood, food units are taken hold of in the intestines and metamorphosed into living body substance sustaining the soul principle and responding to the I. This ascending metamorphosis is matched by descending, eliminatory activity producing excretions. Blood is thus the key organ for separation, holding the middle position among the life processes. It provides tools for acting outwards against the foreign nature of the environment and, on the other hand, tools for acting inwards in building up the body. It “potentizes” substances in the human being, taking them from their ponderable state to live quality, a state where they become vehicles for soul and spirit.

Considering the blood against this background, it is immediately apparent that the life processes active in the different blood functions are vastly different.

1. Breathing (taking in)

2. Warming (adapting)

3. Nutrition (repelling, analyzing, destroying)

4. Separation (separating)

5. Maintenance (maintaining)

6. Growth (growing)

7. Reproduction (renewing)

Let us take the transport/inhibitory function. The blood takes up substances in infinitely many sites. In the lung it is most open to the environment, taking in air. In the organism it takes up substances everywhere. This intake is only possible because all the different substances are immediately wrapped up, so that they will not react according to their inherent nature, which only comes into play again when the blood lets go of the substances, separating them out – oxygen in the tissues, transferrin iron in the bone marrow, carbohydrates in the liver, etc. The maintenance and growth function of the blood takes effect in liver and bone marrow, not in the blood itself. Nor do we find adaptation and repulsion processes in the blood that might affect the blood itself. The inhibitory/transport function involves only the first (intake) and fourth (separation) life processes.

The coagulation system serves to maintain the surface areas of the organism to keep inner and outer worlds apart. The system is activated when an injury has occurred. The adaptation process comes into play as viscosity changes, with fibrin hardened. It does not go against the environment but lets the vitality of the blood be frozen to a point where maintenance of the whole is assured. This, the second process, is activated so that the fifth (maintenance) may come into action.

The system of nonspecific inflammation in the organism becomes active when foreign life has entered into the organism or tissues and been destroyed. Pathogens enter without active involvement of the organism. As local inflammation develops, the blood slows down and grows denser, changing its pH (adaptation), granulocytes migrate to the site and provide tools for chemical destruction of the pathogens. Apart from the adaptation process, this also involves repulsion. The goal of the inflammatory process is once again maintenance of the organism’s integrity. No new ability (growth) is gained. The organism uses the second and third life processes (adaptation and repulsion) to safeguard the fifth (maintenance).

The physiological composition of the blood changes when one goes through inner schooling (macrocosmic or microcosmic). Steiner emphasized that the blood has a dual relationship to the environment. On one hand, the blood only enters into relationship with the outside world in such a way that anything it receives from it has been stripped of its own inherent laws; on the other hand, it enters into a relationship that enables it to approach the outside world directly. This happens when the blood flows through the lung and comes in contact with the outside air. It is then quickened by the oxygen from the outside air and configured in such a way that nothing comes up against this configuration to weaken it; the oxygen from the air does indeed approach the instrument of the human I in a way wholly in accord with the essential nature of the I.

Substances brought to the blood from below, through nutrition, must be carefully filtered so that nothing of their outside world character takes effect in the blood. In the lung, however, air from outside the human being comes to the blood directly (intake). The foreign nature of the air is only adapted to the organism by actively changing its humidity and temperature (adaptation). The foreign character of foods is changed in the upper gastrointestinal tract to remove all inherent laws from proteins, fats and carbohydrates. The inherent nature of metals needs to be specifically inhibited and covered over in the blood. The two ways of relating to the environment – openness to the environment in the Salt pole of the blood (red blood cells) and the shrouding of substance processes in the Sulfur pole (blue blood cells) – are polar opposites in the transport system of the blood, like positive and negative electricity.

If we ask ourselves in which area of the blood this process takes place, attention focuses on substances such as calcium and magnesium which are partly ionized and in solution and partly withdrawn from specific ionic function, which has outside world qualities, by being hidden in albumin or other inhibitory proteins. A specific amount of free calcium ions must be present in the serum to make normal consciousness possible. We cannot, of course, expect complete crystallization in the blood, but the ionic state is the precondition for and, hence, the first step towards crystallization. The free blood salts do, however, come closest to the process of crystallizing out in the blood.

In the same Steiner lecture (GA 128), substantial changes in the blood are also described for feeling:

“The thinking process involves solid, salt-like principles being withdrawn from a fluid principle and being deposited. Feeling has to do with some particles in the blood changing from a more fluid to a denser state. The substance itself assume a denser condition due to coagulation.”

“The process of thinking is like a process of depositing salts due to an activity of the blood and, in turn, causing irritation of the nervous system; an organic process, therefore, that occurs on the border of the blood and of the nervous system. We know now that everything we have called conscious thinking activity, brought about by the I (human ego), comes to expression in a kind of extremely subtle salt deposition in the blood.”

A kind of blood coagulation is given as an image for feeling, characterizing the processes at the substantial level. A bit later Steiner compared the effect feeling has on the blood with the coagulation of liquid protein. We are not in the habit of considering feeling in conjunction with the coagulation system, with the different viscosity of protein in the blood. It is remarkable that the coagulation system follows on from the inhibitory/transport system just as feeling follows thinking in the order of soul processes. Sentience (feeling) prior to birth is also a process of coagulation: blood coagulates into the mobile muscle. Will impulses as courage to act, courage before action is taken, create temperature differentiations and hence the form and configuration of internal organs. The will that performs the action reveals itself in temperature differentiations in bodily development that are connected with the functions of organs. The crystallizing and coagulating processes run parallel to thinking and feeling respectively – in organ development before birth (bone and muscle) and in the way the soul uses the body (crystallizing and coagulation in the blood).

In Occult Physiology (March 27, 1911), the influence of the will on the body is described in a uniform way:

“The physical process that corresponds to our will impulses is a kind of warming process causing a rise of temperature in the organism, letting it grow hot, as it were, in a certain respect. As this process is closely bound up with the whole pulsation of the blood, we may say that will impulses are connected with a rise in blood temperature.”

We see that, in the ordering system for blood proteins, thinking may be reflected in the forming of salts (Salt), feeling in the coagulation of proteins (Mercury), and will impulses in differentiated temperature processes (Sulphur). The balances created between shrouding and release of salts (Thinking), coagulation and fibrinolysis (Feeling), activators and inhibitors of inflammation (Willing) create the conditions under which the I can come to realization in thinking, feeling and taking action.

Steiner spoke of soul processes in Occult Physiology (March 27, 1911) in the following words:

“The conscious I organization influences the human being from one side, the unconscious I organization from the other. Whilst the blood, inwardly quick and mobile, follows the activity of the I as an adaptable tool, the other pole, the skeletal system, withdraws from the I’s active mobility to such effect that the I has no conscious awareness of everything that happens in the skeletal system, i.e. that all processes in the skeletal system are entirely beneath the surface of the I occurrences that are actually conscious. Those processes are in accord with our I activity, but they are as dead as our blood processes are live; they are therefore essentially part of the processes of which the I has no conscious awareness, and which only rise in stages from the unconscious to the conscious level. If we take a detailed look at the skeletal system in its overall function in the human organism, we have to note that it withdraws everywhere from conscious life, and most of all from all organ systems. With the dead skeletal system, special emphasis is put on the configuration of the whole organism. These unconscious soul processes, which also act on the blood, are not accessible to our intentions but depend on the macrocosm and are mainly active prior to birth.”

“Whereas these solid inclusions in conscious life, i.e. in thinking, come to expression in the blood in a kind of mobile, active salt deposition process, the principle preparing the I comes to expression in the skeletal system in such a way that the macrocosm creates our skeletal system so that it consists largely of deposited salts. These are the resting element in us, the other, opposite pole to the highly active processes in the salt deposition processes in the blood. As human beings we are thus made thinkers in processes coming from two sides – unconsciously on one side, as our skeletal system develops, and consciously on the other, going through the same processes in full consciousness that in the organism present as the deposition processes of which we are able to say that they are inwardly active. The salts produced as we think must immediately be dissolved again and removed through sleep.”

For conscious thinking, we use the kind of salt production processes that have their model in the release of calcium from albumin and are always reversible. Steiner relates salt deposition in the skeleton to the cosmic thinking in us of which we are not conscious. This greater polarity between blood and bone is reflected within the blood in the lesser polarity between inhibitory/transport proteins and red blood cells. The latter represent the Salt process in the blood just as the bones do in the greater system. Permanent deposition of salts in the bones metamorphoses into deposition of hemoglobin in the red cells. These cells are much more advanced towards death than bones are. Their shape is also a purer reflection of the spherical form of the macrocosm. The unconscious, macrocosmic thinking process, the world thinking in us, comes to expression in bone salts, and in metamorphosed form in the red blood cells.

The effect of a conscious inner life that is open to the surrounding world is reflected in the protein or Sulfur side of the blood. The action of the unconscious macrocosm’s soul processes, which are also called thinking, feeling and will, is in bodily terms reflected on the cellular, the Salt side. The side where the blood is open and alive to the environment is closed to the conscious soul processes and vice versa.

If we consider the blood, it will indeed be full of significance for us, presenting as a very special fluid for, on one hand, the blood shows its essential nature as turning to the lowest, humblest realm below us, showing itself to be a form of matter capable of external chemical processes (O2 uptake) so that it may be an instrument for the I. On the other hand, blood is the substance that is more protected, to enable it to achieve inward processes that cannot be achieved anywhere else for all other organ processes are necessary for this. The most subtle processes of the highest order that are stimulated from the depth of our organism combine in the blood with physical and chemical processes of the kind we see all around us in the world. In no other substance does the physical, material world we perceive through the senses come together so directly, demanding the presence, the activity of systems of forces that lie outside the sense-perceptible world – but only in our blood substance.

The cellular aspect opens the blood to the (unconscious) environment and is the instrument for an unconscious, macrocosmic inner life. The serum aspect shuts itself off from the processes of the material environment, enveloping the imponderables connected with the environment, which makes it the instrument for an independent, conscious inner life. At first sight, it may seem surprising to speak of the higher, conscious inner activity that uses the body as related to the lower blood processes which are open to metabolism and, conversely, see the body-creating, sleeping inner activity as the basis of the aspect in the blood that is open to the environment. It reflects the polarity of life processes and soul processes, a polarity we find again and again. We perceive the archetype of the I organization in the organism – processes going in opposite directions are held in balance, thus creating the conditions for further development. In the blood organ, we see this embryonic life in the immune system which is capable of development, remaining open to future organic development with its learning capacity.

Bloods function lies in its ability to flow, its buffering quality, and the ability to take up substances and release them. The coagulation system of the blood with its surface-preserving function and its sequential processes may thus be seen as a reflection of the ether body in the blood.

The function of the nonspecific inflammatory system is to kill foreign life in the organism and remove it through pus. Increased mobility, phagocytosis, elimination of inorganic and organic poisons point to activities under the control of the human astral body. This, then, is where the astral body is reflected in the blood.

In the coagulation system the tools for activation and inhibition are clearly distinct. In the concerted effort of immunization there are no separate “helper” and “suppressor” cells, but every individual process is both at the same time. Every new infection results in a new imprint, new immunization. This learning process is based in the embryonic part of the blood. Our I organization brings order into the concerted effort.

We thus discover the threefold order of the blood, which reveals the Salt – Mercury – Sulfur forces with their configuring and process-ordering activities. The twofold order of the blood between the more embryonic, live lymph system and the image organs which develop through a sequence of metamorphoses, shows the relationship to past and future. There is also the sevenfold activity of life processes in the blood. The unbelievably differentiated nature of the blood, which as a whole is an organ of the I, is remarkable.”

The Birth of Christ in the Human Heart – Rudolf Steiner

Formation of a New Etheric Heart Organ in the Light of the Michaelic Mystery Culture by Ruth Haertl, Michaelmas, 2000

“Before birth etheric forces are drawn together to create the individual etheric body. These ether forces harbor substances which are taken from the entire cosmos. Rudolf Steiner tells us in GA 212 (May 26, 1922): “It is important to know that when we descend into the earthly world we draw into ourselves a kind of image from the cosmos.” This first etheric heart configuration regarded as provisional or as inherited. It remains with the child only until he loses his teeth as they ‘decay.’ It is cast off just as the teeth are discarded at age seven. The wonderful cosmic configuration of the starry images fades more and more as the seventh birthday approaches. This happens at the time when the child’s own etheric body is born.

Rays of ether configurations begin to form anew and strive from the periphery to the center. Here they accumulate around the physical heart and as they grow together, the new second etheric heart is born. It is the individualized etheric heart of the growing young person who matures from age seven to fourteen.

It happens through a process whereby bit by bit the new etheric heart replaces whatever dies off from the inherited heart. The new heart is condensed from the entire world sphere.

The astral body is restructured in a new configuration. In the same area of the body in which the second etheric heart was formed as a reflection of the stars, sun and moon, the forces of the astral body establish an additional central organ. These two organs weave in and out of each other as one central organ and in it are inscribed all deeds, all moral motivations, human intentions and ideas. Rudolf Steiner speaks of a small box in which everything concerning our life is recorded.

In the above-mentioned restructured astral body is a picture of all that which man has experienced in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. Great secrets are being inscribed into the astral body at that time. During youth they merge bit by bit with the physical and etheric organs, which harbor our deepest cosmic secrets as if imprisoned. Out of the Ego which sympathetically connects with our astral body, these secrets as positive and less positive intentions and motivations are being engraved into the etheric heart organ. A joining together takes place of the ego with the etheric and the astral hearts. This means complete adjustment of individual karma with universal cosmic laws.

The Logos in the human heart becomes an organ of destiny creatively working in harmony with the etheric and astral sheaths as well as with the ego of man. It is the creation of our awe-inspiring heart organ. We may stand in awe and wonder when we fully realize the extent of the possibilities that are laid into our own hands. In complete freedom we can work on the structural configuration of our own etheric heart; the new heart which began a process of separating from the physical heart in 172l.

Rudolf Steiner tells us in GA 190 (April 5th, 1919) that the physical heart swims in the sac of the surrounding separated etheric heart. The physical organization has no part in the essence of thought because it withdraws and creates a space for thought. Man’s thought is free and requires a “free space” to live. The will can be freed if the activity of thinking can be so strengthened that the ego is released slowly from the depth of the will. The majestic process of creating in freedom is deeply connected with the miraculous and creative work of the individual human being as he frees himself from that which hinders the rightful unfolding of the etheric heart. We are talking about the etheric heart as an organ for future lives, an organ with an eye for karmic cognition.

According to Rudolf Steiner, it is important that mankind creates a spiritual compensation, a counterweight to the past, when the heart was a God-given, a God-protected organ. Human beings must connect the separated etheric heart to the spiritual world through a transformed thinking and feeling life. In our age they need to find a new Michaelic (Archangel Michael) path on which they search for the truth, then they will find the right way to this cosmically created third etheric heart. This new spiritual and dynamic path gives man the possibility to structure his etheric heart organ as a sense organ ever more in the greatest possible diversity. As the third heart is created by the Logos in Michaelic freedom in conjunction with man, it grows in size as large as the entire blood organism. It is an invisible sense organ, an inner cognitive eye of the heart revealing the karmic chain of events throughout incarnations.

Rudolf Steiner has indicated how the spirit-pupil can learn to think with such a spiritual heart and how he can protect and care for such knowledge. When Michaelic thinking has truly been activated, spirit knowledge is gathered through the separated heart, not through the noble head which disregards the subjective as well as man’s feelings; yes, Michael will open the path of thought from the head to the heart, and hearts not heads begin to have thoughts. All of this follows naturally the great revelation of the creating of the third heart after the loosening of the newly formed etheric heart.

It is Michael’s intention that in the future, intelligence will stream through the hearts of human beings and that it will be connected to the same divine spiritual forces that helped to create man in the beginning of time.

It has become possible for souls connected to Michael to be engaged in a goal-oriented schooling for initiation and thus to enter into closer connection with the hierarchies and the etheric Christ, who reveals Himself today as an angel. It is Michael’s aim that the spiritual schooling will lead to heart-knowledge and that the etheric eye of the heart will become an organ of cognition.

We read the following in Rudolf Steiner’s Michael-Letters:

“Hearts begin to have thoughts, that is the new way of thinking with the heart.”

“The newly developed heart-organ slowly transforms into an eye or better a sensing-heart-eye-organ.”

“Everyone who strives in the light of spiritual science and connects himself with the creative World-Logos through heartfelt thoughts, sooner or later will learn to read karma. By doing so he adds to the substance of the etheric-youth or angel-being through which the etheric Christ reveals Himself today.”

For spiritually active pupils in the Michaelic stream, the third etheric heart becomes:

an eye for self-cognition, the realization of the true self as the eternal being of man,

it becomes the eye of the ego-sense, which perceives the other in his true being,

an eye of cognition for supersensible beings and for the etheric Christ Himself, protected and cherished in the Michaelic mystery-culture of will as it is destined for our epoch,

it will also become possible to perceive the karma of others as well as one’s own karmic chain.

When Dr. Kaelin, a medical doctor and research scientist, asked Rudolf Steiner why there was such a rapid increase of heart problems he explained it with the fact that the etheric heart is loosening from the physical.

It can be seen from Rudolf Steiner’s answer that we at the beginning of the 21st century stand at the focal point regarding the developmental process of the etheric heart. All the more we should work on unfolding our heart organ which allows us to ascend to imagination and inspiration and to forms of cognition where we may experience our own, cognitive eye of the etheric heart in the Sun-Logos.

Illnesses of the heart can predominantly be traced to a lack of spiritual activity. Moral characteristics affect the contraction and expansion of the capillary vessels, and our moral soul-life also influences the make-up of our blood. The powerful rays of the Spirit-Sun live in the new etheric heart organ. (GA 212)

Our blood, seen from a spiritual perspective, undergoes a constant process of etherization, creating a foundation for health and life. If enough spiritual activity is unfolded, it has a positive effect on the blood because used substance [perception/nutrition] can be etherized. This ether substance has its occult source in the etherized blood of the Logos. It is the heart-blood of the crucified and subsequently risen Logos. He is united with the Sun ether. If man inwardly connects with the Christ Being, there lives in him indeed in the etherized substance of his etheric heart and in his etheric blood stream the blood stream of the crucified. If a human being cannot connect inwardly with the Christ, if he rejects Him, the etheric blood of the Christ does not connect to the etheric blood stream of such a man. This is a profound occult truth, a prerequisite to the stupendous unfolding of the developmental process of the new etheric heart. These ideas arise from Steiner’s lecture, The Etherization of the Blood, a lecture given in Basle, October 1st, 1911.

With each heartbeat, a certain amount of material substance is absorbed, taken away from physical pressure and added to the etheric substance. This etheric substance begins to radiate outward so that we can become aware of the process in a picture. To begin with there is the human being on the physical cross of his body. Etheric rays stream out from the center of his heart. From the heart of the Christ pinned to the cross of the Tree of Life flows His blood into the dying earth and into men’s dying bodies. As etheric sunrays they stream far into the cosmos. We too can take into ourselves these rays so that out of a small etheric Sun in our new etheric heart organ likewise streams can flow far into the cosmos. We harbor in our ether heart a creatively active inner sun that radiates warmth and light into the surrounding, into the far reaches of the cosmos. It is the warmth ether that is predominantly active in the etheric heart.

The Formation of the Etheric and the Astral Heart By Rudolf Steiner

From: Rudolf Steiner’s lecture given July 2nd, 1921 in GA 205:

“When we look into the inner heart, we find that there are forces collecting from the metabolic and limb system. We know that that which is connected to the etheric heart-forces has been spiritualized, it follows that that which has to do with our outer life and our actions is also spiritualized and woven into it. That which is being prepared in the heart as forces turns into karmic predispositions and karmic tendencies. It is simply outrageous to speak of a heart pump.

“There is another important nuance where morality plays a part. This moral nuance is indeed stored in the heart and carried over into the next incarnation. To study the total human being means to find in him the forces which reach beyond the earthly life.”

In GA 205 (July 2, 1921) Rudolf Steiner says:

“You can imagine what a tremendous difference there is, between that which lives in our heart during this incarnation and the condition in which we find ourselves in a new life after having gone through a long development in the time between death and a new birth. And yet when you look into your innermost heart you can assess quite well, of course in a hidden way only, not in a fully developed imagination, what you will do in your next life. One can, you see, not only say in an abstract way, my next life is being prepared today in all karmic detail, but one can point to the ‘little box’ in which the karma rests, awaiting the future.”

On May 1, 1915 (GA 161) Rudolf Steiner speaks about the etheric heart in relation to its new position in the back of the head outside the physical body.

“It is quite important that this is taken into account. It arises as a mighty net of etherized blood which creates an individual thin little skin separating it from the cosmic ether. With this we have made another step in understanding the size and position of the etheric heart.”

This new etheric heart organ, as sense organ or Sun-eye, will be able to develop for the future. When we look into ourselves, we can experience our etheric eye as a cognitive eye. It can become the organ for going into one’s own depth. Here we experience the flaming, scorching and burning emotions, desires, passions and drives on the one hand, on the other that in us which does not connect with them, because it is our eternal being. It lives alongside of it. Therefore we can say that the new etheric organ becomes cognitive for our eternal being in the depth of the metabolism and will organization. While our head holds our soul as if buried within, we comprehend ourselves, our eternal being, in the dark depth of will purified from emotions and drives.

Rudolf Steiner tells us in GA 212 (May 6, 1922):

“Now we enter the realm where the soul and spirit become one. In the head or brain man is physical. That which is soul-like has been buried there, it is like a corpse. This corpse is the area to which presently all natural scientific research regarding the soul is directed. But in reality the soul is true to itself and connected to the spirit below the heart. The new and wonderful sense organ which is as large as the blood organism finds the eternal being of man next to all that which arises from the depth of will as drives and emotions.”

That which we see as a vision through our heart, which has become a sense organ, that is our own eternal being. We experience our own self in our eternal being. When we continue to press forward into our own being, the Sun-like quality changes. We come to a definite point where we meet inspired knowledge and where we weave with inspired cognition in a real picture-world. Now in complete consciousness through a sudden inner jolt in our spirit soul it feels as if we fuse with the Sun itself. But at the same moment when we come to inspired cognition, when our heart-sense becomes a cognitive organ, we suddenly feel as if our very heart is being transplanted into the sun, we feel as if we go with the sun, the sun is in us, belonging to us.

The Sun becomes our eye, our ear as well as our warmth organ. We are jolted into the Sun-like. Steiner puts it this way: “We stand within the light, we touch spirit-beings with our light-organs.” Here supersensible knowledge reaches another stage, a little step further. Then we not only feel ourselves within the Sun but we perceive ourselves “on the other side of the Sun” as well. We have now moved fully into the Sun, we feel part of the Sun with our innermost being and we experience the world within our being, previously it was outside of ourselves, around us.

All this is the crowning of that which can one day be perceived and spiritually known by the new etheric heart organ as a Sun-eye, when the Sun as spiritual Super-Sun becomes the cognitive eye of the etheric heart.

It is the powerful esoteric call to each pupil of Michael, to help in the creation of a new Sun-Earth. This co-working can be undertaken when the etheric body and the etheric heart become increasingly Christianized out of the new faculties of the etheric heart-sun-eye, while the heart learns to interpret karmic events by reading within the actively creating Logos.

Sooner or later, the new etheric heart of man will become an active organ which through karmic insight can become increasingly helpful and healing in the social sphere. To the pillar of cognition the pillar of will must be added as a column of Christianized blood.

In this way, the secret of the Grail lives in the magnificent occult soul spiritual unfolding of the etheric heart. The new etheric heart as cognitive spirit-eye of man’s eternal being is the place where the Grail-Cup, the etheric organ, lights up as the real force, as the blood of the Redeemer.

Science of the Holy Grail with Douglas Gabriel

Douglas Gabriel has written a book about the heart, entitled The Human Heart is a Supersensible Organ of Perception, and is being released section by section until complete. You can also access the chapters by typing “The Human Heart” in our search bar and all of the posts will be displayed.

Introduction

Chapter One: The World Changes When Our Hearts Do

Chapter Two: Physiological Aspects of the Human Heart

. . . . . Secrets of the Heart

. . . . .Chambers of the Heart

. . . . .A Thumb of Fire

Chapter Three: Three Fields of Force

Chapter Four: Great Thoughts About the Heart (you are here)

Chapter Five: Rudolf Steiner on the Human Heart