Gnostic Bishop,
I’ve done quite a lot of study on what “heart” seems to mean in the bible. I realize from what you say that you categorize the bible as a fairy tale – there are worse by far things than fairy tales, and containing far less of truth – but nevertheless that’s probably not what you mean by it. Okay – it’s your right (and duty if you think it correct) to believe that, but you’re on a Christian website and have come here of your own free will, and we will not agree on that. You will have to put up with people considering that which you believe to be of little merit (the bible) to be in fact of great value. If I were on an atheist website I would not offer the bible as a means of persuasion, nor opine regarding it overmuch, but I’m not on an atheist website.
Mostly in our society, “heart” refers to emotion and passion and sometimes intuition. But emotion and passion and intuition are at best a function of the mind, and are VERY much a function of the body in the interaction of hormones, general health, nutrition, exercise, quality of physical exposure to light, etc. Truly the heart has little or nothing to do with emotion except in the effect of our general health on our moods. In scripture, one thinks with the heart. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” Jesus says, and the word is not “mind” mistranslated. It’s heart. This is consistent for the usage of “heart” throughout scripture. I get the sense in studying the uses throughout the various passages that “heart” and “spirit” are very interconnected and perhaps synonymous.
God speaks to us in our hearts/spirits. This is not an organ discoverable by scientific means, and if science be god to a man, that man will not believe that a man can have a heart/spirit such as I’m describing. This is of little consequence to me. I would not expect the spiritual dimension to be detectable via scientific inquiry, and if such a thing WERE detected, I would say it was a part of the natural man that we had only just discovered, NOT an artifact of his spiritual aspect. The way I see it (and I am open to my opinions being corrected or modified by spiritual women and men, or even by natural, to a lesser degree (God speaks to all of us; we do not all recognize His voice as His own)) is as follows:
The “wrong tree” is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (the TOKOGE). It represents independence. Independence is inferior, imo, to the interdependence of a loving community. One may be forced to fall back on independence, absent community, absent Father God, but this is not a good situation. We were made for one another, and we were made for our Father, our Elder Brother, our dear Holy Spirit (who are also Community, intuitively enough.) Our relationship to our God is necessarily one of dependence. We depend on Him; He does not depend on us, and so will it always be.
Please let me be clear though – KNOWLEDGE is not bad. Knowledge is a good thing, gotten through the right channels and understood in truth. Ideally, knowledge of GOOD is sufficient. If we were to concentrate on the good, we would have no need of the knowledge of evil for it would never occur to us to do that which is NOT good. We would desire only to do the best we could to all those we loved and they would desire and do the same – and we would all love one another and be loved, and love our God and reflect the love He shines on us. This is the true light of which physical light is but a rather two-dimensional portrait. Maybe somewhere, in some other dimension or world or far-lying part of our own universe, there lives a tribe of beings who DID choose love and life over individuality and private, self-gotten knowledge. Alas that we are not that tribe of beings. But I digress. Knowledge in itself is a good thing. It is the desire to have one’s own knowledge, with its source in oneself and its promise of power over one’s fellow beings and independence from them and from God, that is an evil thing.
The tree of life (TOL) feeds the spirit/heart with all the knowledge of the universe and of all worlds, but mostly of our God and the love of our God toward us and all creation(s). This is knowledge beyond the prison of our senses – knowledge from the very heart/mind of God – knowledge that does not come from warfare or selfishness or even intellectual stimulation, but from pure love and light and life. This is the sort of knowledge that IS oneness, enlightenment, ecstasy. This is the goal of the mystics and the consummation of the journey we all make homeward. True knowledge, and not the poor faded, dull, threadbare, beggarly thing we call “fact.” That is only a superficial description of how a thing seems to our senses, lacking all the shiningness of it, all the true glory. Yet for all this, the partial knowledge is lovely, and a lovely thing in its place, so long as one does not mistake for the truth that which is but a shadow and a type of the truth. The true knowledge comes only through the heart/spirit of a person, from the Spirit/heart of God – it is only in this that we can know even as we are known.
That is what I mean by the heart and not the mind being the true organ of thought. I’m not talking about the pump (though the pump itself shows fascinating signs of scientifically being far more that we have suspected). I’m talking about the spirit/heart which SHOULD be the master and the brain its lord high chancellor. It is ill when a servant rules, for the servant was not made to rule, and does not know HOW to rule – that the ruler must be servant of all. Instead the servant rules for his own benefit, forgetting that it is his duty as ruler to serve his subjects. The servant (the brain) is more shining, more magnificent, more true to its own glory, in serving its true master (the heart/spirit) by far than in serving its own mistaken ends.
I hope that’s clear enough, and that you understand what I’m trying to say. Please do ask if you have questions – I may be assuming knowledge that you haven’t yet picked up.
Blessings, Cindy
