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Why is the heart given much importance in spirituality?

an anarchist

an anarchist

Your local anarchist.
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
 
PoetPhilosopher

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...

I think it is true that some emotions feel like they're in your chest. My best guess is that since the original religious texts were from an earlier time, they may not have known that a lot of things occur in the brain.
 
Rival

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
In Kemetic understanding, the heart is the seat of the intelligence. The stomach is associated with base needs and is not treated with nearly as much respect.
 
9-10ths_Penguin

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...
That, along with the fact that the function of blood vessels was way more apparent to prescientific people than the function of nerves and the brain.

It was clear that the heart was circulating something around the body - and when it stops circulating it, we die - so presuming that the heart distributes some sort of spiritual "life force" to the body was plausible enough in the absence of better information.

That assumption would have certainly been a good fit with their experience (kind of like the joke about how old British cars run on smoke, and when the smoke escapes, they stop working).
 
paradox

paradox

(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...
In ancient times people believed the hearth is the center of human body, such that emotions, will, love, thinking etc. comes from heart rather than brain.

What we think about brain today is what people believed of hearth before, since religions arose in those times that's why hearth is so spiritual.
 
Nakosis

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...

On one level this suggests a wonderfully simple and elegant solution, albeit a New Agey one, to physical or emotional pain: All you need is love. And it bolsters the notion, faulty though it may be for some of us, that if you’re suffering from a broken heart, moving on fast can bring relief.


There’s a point, however, where this trend in fMRI research starts to enter a prickly realm: Because physical pain and emotional pain—like heartbreak—travel along the same pathways in the brain, as covered earlier, this means that theoretically they can be medically treated in the same way. In fact, researchers recently showed that acetaminophen—yep, regular old Tylenol—reduces the experience of social pain. “We have shown for the first time that acetaminophen, an over-the-counter medication commonly used to reduce physical pain, also reduces the pain of social rejection, at both neural and behavioral levels,” they write in their paper in the journal Psychological Science.


But some experts argue that the moment you put a toe on the slippery slope of popping pills to make you feel better emotionally, you have to wonder if doing so circumvents nature’s plan. You’re supposed to feel bad, to sit with it, to review what went wrong, even to the point of obsession, so that you learn your lesson and don’t make the same mistake again.
This Is Your Brain on Heartbreak
 
Altfish

Altfish

Veteran Member
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...
It is because there is little or no evidence; so the 'heart' is used to explain irrational beliefs.
 
It Aint Necessarily So

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this? I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...

My thoughts are that it is related to the autonomic nervous system, which has plexuses up and down the central axis of the body, and which we feel when activated by an emotional reaction. Hence, my heart is full, I have butterflies in my stomach, and looking down made me weak at the knees:

article-Autonomic-Plexuses---a7Z.jpg
 
ajay0

ajay0

Well-Known Member
The heart is synonymous with consciousness, as per the Hindu scripture of Yoga Vasistha. The purification of consciousness of its cravings and aversions results in attainment of Nirvikalpa samadhi where nondual perception is possible.


So purification of heart (consciousness) is what is taught in the Bible as well for the perception of God.


What is Heart? It is the Reality. - Sri Ramana Maharshi
 
PearlSeeker

PearlSeeker

Well-Known Member
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...
Jesus (the gospels) gave much importance to heart. For example: "Blessed are the pure in heart..." He taught inner watchfulness because this is where good (or bad) and fruitful life springs from. Sometimes he talked about the eye in the same way - "The eye is the lamp of the body."

I don't how the heart came to mean the center of thoughts and emotions.

From the glossary of the Philokalia:

HEART - (καρδιά - kardia): not simply the physical organ but the spiritual centre of man’s being, man as made in the image of God, his deepest and truest self, or the inner shrine, to be entered only through sacrifice and death, in which the mystery of the union between the divine and the human is consummated. ' “I called with my whole heart”, says the psalmist - that is, with body, soul and spirit' (John Klimakos, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 28, translated by Archimandrite Lazarus [London, 1959], pp. 257-8). ‘Heart’ has thus an all-embracing significance: ‘prayer of the heart’ means prayer not just of the emotions and affections, but of the whole person, including the body.
Glossary of the Philokalia· Orthodox River​
 
Truth in love

Truth in love

Well-Known Member
Xavier Graham said:
One thing I noticed in my study of religion is that the heart is given much importance. It is linked to our spirituality supposedly. Why is this?
I have a theory. It's because some emotions we feel in our heart. Like great sadness will make your chest heavy. So the creators of religion must've felt this too, and linked emotion to spirituality. Idk.
Click to expand...
I think your core notion is accurate.

The head/mind/brain/logic are useful, but far from the whole human equation.

The heart/emotion/spiritual area also matters.

Often our actions have more to do with hearts than minds.
 
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