The Heart
is More than Just a Pump ...
"The truth, however, seems to be that the intellectual function starts at the heart, then finds its elaboration and fruitation in the head." 8
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FOR
CENTURIES, religious scriptures, poets, physicians and philosophers have
regarded the heart as the centre of our personality, the core of our being. In
every language and tradition throughout the world, there are numerous phrases
expressed in terms of the heart. A lover may 'steal your heart'; an unfeeling
person is 'hard-hearted'; a generous person is 'warm-hearted'; while someone
who works with full devotion is said to be working 'whole-heartedly'. When
people are asked to point to themselves, they usually point to the region of
their bodies where the heart resides. This chapter is a brief introduction to
this important organ in the light of the Qur'an, Hadith, Muslim theologians and
modern science.
The Heart according to the Qur'an
and the Hadith
The
Arabic word for heart is qalb (from the verb qalaba meaning 'to turn about or upside down') and
it appears some 130 times in the Qur'an. It is referred to as the seat of
affection and emotion, a quality that we all readily associate with the heart:
And He has
united their (i.e. believers') hearts. (Surah AI-Anfal: 63)
However,
the Qur'an also clearly specifies the human heart as the centre of intellect3 and wisdom:
... They
have
hearts
wherewith they
understand not ...
(Surah
AI-A'raf: 179)
Have they
not travelled through the land, and have they hearts wherewith to understand
and ears wherewith to hear? Verily, it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it
is the hearts which are in the breasts that grow blind. (Surah AI-Hajj: 46)
Verily,
therein is indeed a reminder for him who has a
heart or gives ear while he is heedful. (Surah Qaf: 37)
These ayat reveal that the heart is a sensory organ
that possesses the faculties of insight and understanding and, if perceptive,
is capable of recognising truth. Such a heart is described in the Quran as
being satisfied (13:28), wide awake (50:37) and strong (18:14). Conversely, the
heart that refuses to recognise the Divine Truth is described in the Qur'an as
hard (6:43), sealed (9:87), tainted (2:283) and diseased (8:49).
While it
is true that when the Qur'an speaks of al-qalb, it encompasses more than the physical heart,
it is important to remember that it is within the physical heart that the
spiritual heart resides. Therefore, the physical heart can be regarded as the point
of interaction between the human body and the spiritual qalb.4 The physical heart acts like a gateway to
the human soul. The implication of this is that the physical heart is not just
a pumping organ, but that it must have the qualities of intelligence that are
mentioned in the Qur'an.
The word fuád has been used in the Qur'an to describe the faculties
of the heart. It literally means 'a place of benefit' but carries the meaning
of both feeling and rational thinking and is often mentioned in conjunction
with the faculties of hearing (sama') and
seeing (basar):
And Allah has brought you out from
the wombs of your mothers while you know nothing. And He gave youhearing, sight and hearts
that you might give thanks to (to Allah). (Surah An-Nahl: 78)
And follow not that of which you have no
knowledge. Verily, the hearing, and the sight, and the heart, of each of those you
will be questioned (by Allah). (Surah
AI-Isra: 36)
In these ayat, the words sama', basar and fu’ad are used for the three faculties of
hearing, seeing and thinking/feeling, which are associated with the ears, eyes
and the heart respectively. These are not as unrelated as they first appear to
be. The ears and eyes provide information from one's environment, but it is the
heart that compiles, analyses and interprets the raw information that has been
supplied to it through the ears and eyes. The processed information then
governs our actions. The faculty of hearing is mentioned before sight because
at birth the sense of hearing is fully functional whereas it takes some weeks
for the sense of sight to fully develop so that a baby can recognise distant
objects and faces. The heart is mentioned last of all because the faculty of
understanding takes many years to develop.
The
importance of the heart is re-iterated in the Hadith as an-Nu'man bin Bashir reported
that the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said:
..
.Indeed there is in the body a piece of flesh which if it is sound then the
whole body is sound, and if it is corrupt then the whole body is corrupt.
Indeed it is the heart. (Bukhari
and Muslim)
In the commentary
of this tradition, Ibn Rajab Hanbali stated that we can regard the heart as the
ruler of all the organs of the body and all the organs are its obedient
soldiers. If the king is pious, all the soldiers will remain pious and if the
king becomes corrupt, all the soldiers will also become corrupt.5 The corruption of the
body by the defective heart refers to both physical diseases as well as
spiritual diseases as will be shown later in this book.
Another
hadith reported by Wabisa bin Mabad ~ elucidates the role of the heart:
I went to the Messenger of Allah (SAW) and
he asked me, "Have you come to enquire about piety?" I replied in the
affirmative.
Then he said, "Ask your heart regarding
it. Piety is that which contents the soul and comforts the heart, and sin is
that which causes doubts and perturbs the heart, even if people pronounce it
lawful and give you verdicts on such matters again and again." (Ahmad and Ad-Darimi)
This
hadith reveals that the heart is the organ that leads one to piety. The pious
man has a contented heart, is firm in his action and collected in mind. The
sinful man, however, has doubt in his heart, which takes away all stability of
action and causes the self to be restless as the Qur'an states:
... And
whose hearts are in doubt that ask your leave. So in their doubts they waver. (Surah At- Tawbah: 45)
The Heart according to
Muslim Theologians
The role
of the heart in the human body has been acknowledged and well understood for
centuries by Islamic theologians and mystics.
Imam
Ghazali, in his intellectual masterpiece, Ihya Ulum ad- Din (Revival of the Islamic Sciences), wrote in
detail about the human heart:
"Although
the spiritual heart (qalb), which
is the controlling centre of the soul, is different from the physical human
heart, its functioning is related and directed by it .... Every quality that
appears in the heart will have its influence flowing to the organs so they act
only in accordance with that quality. In the same manner, the effect of every
action that is committed from the organs may reach the heart. And this keeps on
occurring in a circular fashion."6
Abdur
Rahman Ibn al-Jawzee, in his book, Minhajul Qasideen, expressed the following views about the
human heart:
"We
should understand that the heart holds the supreme position in the human body.
It is this organ that recognises Allah and works to get close to Allah. Other
organs are its subordinates. The heart by its nature quests for the path of
righteousness. It is true that whoever has recognised his heart has recognised
Allah."7
Ibn
al-Qayyim al-Jawziya, while discussing the relationship between the human heart
and mind stated:
"The truth, however, seems to be that the intellectual function starts at the heart, then finds its elaboration and fruitation in the head." 8
Maulana
Jalaluddin Rumi, the Islamic theologian and poet, mentioned the intelligence of
the human heart in his famous Mathnawi in the following poetic verses:
"There
are two kinds of intelligence.
One is
like that acquired by a child at school,
From
books and teachers, new ideas and rnemorisation.
Your
intelligence may become superior to others,
But
retaining all that knowledge is a heavy load.
You who
are occupied in searching for knowledge
are a
preserving tablet,
But the
preserved tablet is the one who has gone beyond all this.
For the
other kind of intelligence is the gift of God:
Its
fountain is in the midst of the soul.
When the
water of God-given knowledge gushes from the breast,
It
doesn't become fetid or impure.
And if
its way to the outside is blocked, what harm is there?
For it
gushes continually from the house of the heart.
The
acquired intelligence is like the conduits
which run
into the house from the streets:
If those
pipes become blocked, the house is bereft of water.
Seek the
fountain from within yourself" 9
(Mathnawi
Vol. IV, 1960-68)
I t is
worthwhile noting that these scholars wrote about the function of the human
heart and its faculty of intellect with such clarity at a time when no
sophisticated biomedical engineering instruments were available, yet their
insights into the workings of the heart appear to be those of a modern
scientist.
The Heart
according to Modern Science
The
analogy of the heart to a pump was first made in the nineteenth century. The
steam engine had just been invented and the pumping movements of its pistons
impressed physiologists to the extent that they likened this motion to that of
the heart. 10
Even if
we look at the pumping efficiency alone of the heart, it is remarkable. The
heart beats about 100,000 times a day, forty million times a year and it beats
non-stop throughout a lifetime. It pumps two gallons of blood per minute and
over 100 gallons per hour. The vascular system that is transporting this
life-giving blood around the body is over 60,000 miles long, which is more than
twice the circumference of the earth. 11 From the
moment it begins beating (around week twelve of gestation) until the moment it
stops, the human heart works tirelessly. In an average lifetime, the heart
beats more than two and a half billion times without ever pausing to rest.
However,
science has now conceded that which the Qur' an stated fourteen centuries ago -
that the heart is not just a pumping organ. Recently, a new medical field known
as neurocardiology has emerged, which studies the science of the nervous system
in the heart. J. Andrew Armour, M.D., Ph.D., is a pioneer in the field of
neurocardiology for his groundbreaking research in the area of anatomy and
function of the heart's intrinsic nervous system. He has uncovered the presence
of neurons in the heart; the same type of cells that are also present in the
human brain. There are over 40,000 of these neurons in a human heart - a
quantity comparable to a small centre of the human brain. Furthermore, the
nervous system of the heart is made up of these neurons, which are capable of
processing information without the help of neurons from the brain. The neurons
of the heart obtain information from the rest of the body and make appropriate
adjustments and send back this information from the heart to the rest of the
body including the brain. In addition to this, these neurons possess a kind of
short- term memory, which allows them to function independently of the central
nervous system. These findings prompted Armour to refer to the nervous system
of the heart as the "little brain in the heart"12 and he draws the
following conclusions about the functions of the heart as a result of his
research:
"The
heart possesses its own little brain, capable of complex computational analysis
on its own. Data clearly indicate that the intrinsic cardiac nervous system
acts as much more than a simple relay station for the extrinsic autonomic
projections to the heart...
An
understanding of the complex anatomy and function of the heart's nervous system
contributes an additional dimension to the newly emerging view of the heart as
a sophisticated information processing centre, functioning not only in concert
with the brain but also independent of it." 13
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
3 The word intellect derives from
the Latin 'intellectus' which means the faculty that can perceive the
transcendent – a quality of the heart.
4 Haq, Manzurul. 'Heart': The Locus of Human Psyche in Ansari, Z. A., Ed. (1981). Qur'anic Concepts of Human Psyche. Islamabad, International Institute of
Islamic Thought.
5. Ibn
Rajab, Hanbali (1995). Jami
al-Uloom wal Hukam (Commentary on An-Nawawi's Forty Ahadith) (Urdu language). Lahore, Al-Faisal
Publishers & Booksellers
6. G.
Ghazali, Imam Abu Hamid (1978). lhya UiUIIl ad-Din. Karachi, Darn] Isha'at Publishers.
7. Ibn
al-Jawzee, Imam Abdur Rahman (1992). Minhajul Qasideen. Lahore, Idara Marif Islami Publishers.
8.AI-Qoz,
Arias Abdul-Hameed (Capt.) (2000). Men & Tile
Universe: Reflections of Ibn
Al-Qayyim. Riyadh,
Darussalam.
9.
Helminski, Kabir (1999), The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation. Boston, Shambhala publications
10.
Pearce, Joseph Chilton (2002). The
Biology of Transcendence. Rochester,
Vermont, Park Street Press.
11.
Schiefelbein, S. The Powerful River. In: Poole, R. ed. (1986). The Incredible Machine. Washington, D.C., The National Geographic
Society.
12.
Armour,J. Andrew, M.D., Ph.D. & Ardell,Jeffry L., Ph.D. ed. (1994). Neurocardiotogv. New York, Oxford University Press.
13. Armour, J. Andrew, M.D., Ph.D. (2003). Neurocardiology:
Anatomical and Functional Principles.
Boulder
Creek, California, Institute of HeartMath.
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