The Organ of Intuition

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows naught. [Blaise Pascal, Pensées, §277]

We all have hearts, guts, and brains—also “heart,” will, and reason. I put that “heart” in quotes to signal what Pascal had in mind—which was not the cardiac muscle. In the modernist view only physical organs exist. Heart, will, and reason are epiphenomena, thus lacking hard reality. Epi- here means secondary or derivative. The heart is linked to love because lovers’ hearts beat faster as they think of one another or embrace; guts means will because our stomachs tense when we’re determined. The intellect is linked to brains by locational proximity: the eyes and ears that feed the brain—and the mouth that expresses the brain’s productions—are located in the head—which is mostly brains beneath a skull.

Human tradition knows better, it seems. We have spiritual powers already present before the fleshly organs even form. The organs are the means by which such powers manifest in a physical reality.

It pleased me to discover today that in Chinese traditional medicine refers to zàng-fǔ organs, thus functionalities of a transcending sort. Zàng being yin, fǔ being yang, shadow and light, the receptive and the creative. In that scheme the heart belongs to zàng and is associated with the soul. In Matthew 13, which begins with the parable of the sower, Jesus, explaining seeds that fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them, elaborates that case by saying (13:19): “When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path.”

Sown in his heart. Which has its own reasons. And is the first organ of communication with the divine. For me the heart is the organ of intuition—and has a privileged role. To be sure, our attempts to isolate the innate powers of the soul are always dangerous—unless very carefully conducted to gain understanding. They cannot be really disentangled unless they become disarranged. Intuition, will, and intellect must be in harmony and well developed; then the seed lands in “good soil” and bears much fruit; and here too, the results will vary—hundredfold, sixty, and in another thirty.

When we discussed the parable this morning, Brigitte hoped for thirty; I said I hoped for a thirteen-fold gain—competing in humility. She said, always ready to defend: “But that’s not an option Jesus presented, Arsen. I just go with the choices I have.”