Do you feel you act from your heart or from your mind?
Experiencing the consciousness of oneself as a part of the innumerable lenses in “the kaleidoscope” allows each passing circumstance and interaction to serve as a teacher.
Challenged with the question: Do you act from your heart or from your mind?
The responses of peers: all Vedic Consciousness scholars is curious. The perspective most shared amongst them was that “balance between the two is necessary.” While the language used is understandable, as it is easy and socially accepted to be vague in matters of the heart, we are also operating from the teachings of Consciousness as Pure and Unbounded. This is the consciousness that abounds throughout the collective, the mass current of animate, natural expression throughout the physical world.
Maharishi describes the statuses of consciousness existing outside of waking, sleeping, and dreaming as “higher” states. It could be reasonable to flip these states as “deeper” states of consciousness. This would allow for less hierarchical misconception and correlate more clearly to the many examples of dynamism on the surface, and that more deeply transcending these active experiences of thought allows for deeper silence through wakeful rest, and more subtle, refined experiences of consciousness. These transcendental experiences, where Consciousness becomes more established throughout one’s life, lead to the observation of synchronicities and connections. This is because, as we realize the Consciousness within us, or our Self (as opposed to our self), by simply being present, our identity with this natural force gains stability. Natural law is timeless; it promotes and supports our learning and progress because nature delights in growth.
With this forming the functioning of dynamic activity, “the balance” between heart and mind is maintained by the Laws of Nature. Our experiences offer the opportunity to lead with the heart of collective connection or allow the mind to separate, categorize, label and certify some justifiable action that protects and maintains the individual ego.
The heart is one electrical frequency, slightly varied amongst physiologies and demographics, but ultimately a single, unified rhythm.
The funny thing about rhythm is the gap. Maharishi speaks extensively on the significance and power of the gap in Sanskrit language and recitation. Sanskrit, likely directly correlated to the self-referral technique of Transcending, relies on expression as a mode of change from the former representation. This sets the stage for the expression of sound (or written character), to undergo differentiation in the gap between one expression, or shape, and the next.
With regard to the rhythm of the heart, both individually and collectively, each sequence of its flowing is guided by the information previously gained. As oxygen-deprived blood returns, the heart receives information back through the heart from the extremities of the body. Though new information from the environment is incorporated via our inhaled breath, turned oxygen/nitrogen, and the blood is bringing the status report, integrating the vitality of air, and sustaining the function of the body.
In relation to social and cultural circumstances, should we be able to consider our internal, personal, subjective experiences as the blood, we may then consider that our external, social, and objective experiences are the breath. Blood can exist alone, but alone it cannot support the body. The breath is the action of taking in infinite information; it must pass through the heart. The body requires cohesion and cooperation of these two for the mind even to exist. One’s mind is an individual culmination of internal and external experiences that then directs the body’s actions and behaviors. It cannot be without its heart.
