Something very unusual happened to me. It suddenly felt as if the area around my heart and solar plexus relaxed. It was as if a knot that I did not know was there suddenly unknotted. It felt as if something was flowing out so strongly I thought about asking the girl if she felt it. I didn't, though.
It felt as if something broke open and something was pouring out.
I cannot describe how profound that experience was. I felt, this is the way it should be. It was an immense sense of well-being, that verged on love. I suddenly understood why love is always located in the heart, and why people speak of a "broken heart."
Now here's a very interesting picture - and all of us have seen ones like it.
How did people come to the conclusion that love is located in the heart unless they had extensive experience with it?
Years later I ran across a picture similar to this:
I thought: what? What I had felt was located right at the heart and solar plexus area, and again I repeat, it was a truly profound experience. It was centered right at the space where the Sacred Heart of Jesus is centered.
I am not some sort of goof who falls for every idiotic philosophy. I've seen people bounce all over the place, going from Christianity to Buddhism to Islam. I took a Buddhism class in college, taught by one of the top Buddhist scholars in the nation, and some of the students in the class were fools who thought they knew more than the teacher.
I don't fall for anything easily - which is why I am such a critic of the Manosphere and the moronic concepts in it, that the young swallow hook, line and sinker.
I can't say anything else about the rest of those "chakras." But I certainly know what happened to me. And if they do exist, the heart appears to be the most powerful one.
I have no explanation for it - none. Which is just fine with me.
By the way, in Sanskrit, the word for the heart chakra means "unhurt, unstruck and unbeaten." Interesting, hm?
20 comments:
A surge of oxytocin and heartrate. Seeing it in such a way strips life of its 'magic', doesn't it?
If you were hooked to a heartbeat/blood pressure monitor, then merely being shown a series of pretty faces smiling at you would register on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEleNOsjQ-4
It has been done.
Oh no, not even close to what happened to me. Science is still clueless about these things.
Oh, I forgot a part of the 'cocktail'. Endorphins and exercise.
Of course 'not even close'. The threshold 'to be noticed without instruments' is much higher.
+JMJ+
Making everything about hormones is something that Helen Fisher would do.
Hormones are base things. There is a higher level over the things of this world.
Mindstorm wrote:
"A surge of oxytocin and heartrate. Seeing it in such a way strips life of its 'magic', doesn't it?"
It removes some of the mystery/magic of the event in that it allows you to point to a cause for the emotions that Bob experienced (i.e. the hormones and increased heart rate), but importantly it doesn't explain what caused the hormones to be secreted into the bloodstream or the heart rate to increase. If you can find a cause for those events then you will be on to something. But that takes you more into the realm of philosophy/religion than biology, because you'll end up looking at what things exist, why do they exist, what caused them to exist, and so on.
It was more than an emotion (btw, "emotion" means "to move outward." There was something moving outward from that area, like some sort of power. That's why I wondered if the girl could feel it.
"If you can find a cause for those events then you will be on to something."
Which one of four Aristotelian categories do you have in mind?
Propagating your genetic line is not enough for an ultimate cause?
Another example. If you were to ask what is the cause of brooding behavior in hens, what would be your answer? Is it any different in principle from breast-feeding? None of neurotransmitters or neurohormones involved are exclusive to humans. Are paeans to motherly love necessary? Is there any spiritual, mystical bond between a mother and child that transcends physical processes inside their bodies? All that I know that these processes are necessary. Any guess about them being sufficient or not remains what it is: a guess.
That sounds more like an experience you'd read about in a paranormal science journal rather than a conventional science journal. You know Out of Body Experiences, NDEs that type of thing. Vulture of Critique could probably point you in the right direction if he were around. But I think he's still in hospital. I don't know anyone else in the manosphere who has interests in that particular field. It's mostly mainstream science and religion in the 'sphere, rather than fringe fields.
Have you thought about whether it could have been a spirit being, like an angel or some such?
I can't speak for you, but it sounds like what the ancient Hindu mystics call the awakening of the kundalini, or the linear opening of the chakra's.
I only know from my own experience, and you never forget it, nor really explain it. The interesting thing is what's next, and is usually, according to holy people much more intune than me, is the throat Chakra, which is the truth in speech.
That sounds to me like what your doing on your blog.
The other interesting thing is, and again, I can only speak with authority from my own experience, is that after such an experience, you get "invited" into Buddhism, mysticism etc. I find that it's the experience that comes first.
Thank you also for the sacred heart picture, you are right, 20 years of reading and meditating, and that was very profound....but I suppose that's what happens when you work from the throat and heart chakra.
Thanks for posting this, I thought it was very profound. So much so that it's 6 am here in Australia and I am commenting to your post.
Well done and well said.
"Propagating your genetic line is not enough for an ultimate cause?"
If you're looking for further growth then genes are one half of the equation, memes being the other. Virile Genghis Khan may have had many children, but celibate Buddha also had many students. The former was successful in physical/genetic terms, the latter in mental/memetic terms. And we can see that they've both had an impact on the world. One without the other doesn't mean a whole lot.
With regards to brooding behavior and parental care for the young, it's just like any creature that is giving birth to a new organism, or even a new idea, in that it the newborn needs care and attention in order to survive the first stages of it's new existence in the existing world. Schopenhauer lamented about the constant banging that went on in Germany while he was alive, and that may have been something to do with new ideas that were still forming in his mind and that they needed protection from external intrusion (intrusion in the form of mental-stress/stimulation can destroy new ideas and can destroy minds just like excess physical stress can destroy the body). The creature that is engaging in the brooding behavior wants the newborn to survive until it is strong enough to stand up on it's own two feet. The biological mechanisms (hormonal production or whatever) are just an physical manifestation of the caring/parental intentions. That's the way it seems to me: Intention comes first, manifestation comes second.
Which one of four Aristotelian categories do you have in mind?
I haven't got a clue. I wasn't even aware of them until you mentioned them. I'll have to read up on it.
^
No problem. This would be a good start. Also related. Both are central issues in philosophy since its beginnings.
AAB, are you sure that Gautama Buddha was celibate all his life? :)
Ach, you know what I mean. Stop picking holes!
Why? It's fun. You do know that "paranormal science" is an oxymoron, don't you? Paranormal phenomena by definition are subjective experiences undetectable by any objective methods. In other words, from the scientific perspective, they are the results of one's brain activity.
Aristotle the famous Greek logician, mathematician, scientist, and philosopher thought that the brain was a cooling device and that the heart was where intelligence came from.
He correctly figured out a lot of things in his time, but his origin reason was wrong. Likewise Bob, you probably did experience what you experienced, but science will not have a full explanation until later.
Even before we had the giant periodic table of elements (118 in total), Artistotle thought everything in the world could be reduced to 4 elements. This doesn't mean Aristotle was stupid, and indeed he wasn't, just that he didn't have information or techniques available to his time.
Likewise there are somethings today we won't fully understand until we develop those techniques, and theories about the world that take hundreds of years to develop. Perhaps your heart feeling is one of them
From here: "Parapsychology, we might say, is a the [sic] science that looks for things it can't explain and then explains them as paranormal."
I might say 'pseudoscience' instead.
Pareidolia is a good example how it's possible for 'paranormal' and 'science' to clash.
Various legendary monsters and demons like yōkai in Japanese folklore, bigfoot, UFO sightings... the list is endless.
Even now some people claim that Philae comet is 'singing'. Comets are able to 'sing' as much as Aeolian harps are producing actual music.
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