The number of Masons who have traditionally entered the Lodge on an impulse must be few, as impulses are generally not long lasting and the Initiation, Passing, and Raising is necessarily protracted according to the Lunar Cycle and among other things, serve to offset any impulsive petitions that are not heartfelt. Occasionally, despite our best effort and the impediments of design, there are a few who pass the West Gate that should not, but the true Mason could not avoid finding his way to the door of the Lodge. In some ways it may, for many, seem pre-destined.
Although most have given considerable thought to knocking at the door of Masonry it is more than linear thought that drives a Brother to find his way.
Where was he first prepared? Long before he submitted a petition he felt moved in his heart. He was there, first prepared! A variety of different prods may have stimulated his cognitive awareness of Masonry, but it was a positive heart-felt feeling that led to his linear good opinion of the Craft. It’s his heart-felt fidelity that keeps him returning and progressing in moral science.
Too often since the Age of Reason we are propelled to cerebral analysis in the perpetual gathering of material goods, status, and acclaim, while anything resembling feelings has been dismissed as “soft”, “fuzzy”, “high risk”, “sentimental”, and “unreliable”. Feelings are not “cool”. They portray vulnerability and weakness. So, we think and fail to feel, yet in our first preparation it seems we both thought and felt something about Masonry. And, on that basis did we choose to petition, and on that basis have we each progressed in the art and science of Freemasonry.
“The heart has long been considered the seat of our emotions. The Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Grecian culture all recognized the heart as the organ directing emotions, morality, and decision making.” Proverbs 23:7 tells us that, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” In Luke 5:22 he asks “what reason you in your hearts?” In mystical Judaism the heart energy center is responsible for “Beauty, Harmony, and Balance,” all qualities well known to Freemasons. The “Judaic heart” is the key to health and well being. Many Yogic systems recognize the heart as the core of human consciousness. Chinese medicine has for many centuries held that the connecting pathway between the body and the mind is the heart and through its pulsations are read the pathologies affecting a patient’s wellness and balance. In
Amongst all these notions is the common thread that the heart is a center of an independent intelligence capable of independent decision yet working in coordinated communication with the linear decision making brain. (1)
Our deepest secrets are safely deposited within our breast. We vow to keep a Brother’s secrets as safe and inviolable within our breast as within his own and we might then construe that within our hearts are kept our inmost thoughts and feelings. We use phrases such as “with all our heart”, or “having our heart set on …” as common idioms today.(2) Linear science has for the most part dismissed such references as folksy wisdom without much in the way of empirical value and defiant of measurement parameters. Science has had little interest in the reservoir of knowledge contained within the Masonic corpus yet it would now seem that a body of scientific experimentation and reported findings lend support to being first prepared in one’s heart. The ancient wisdom known across time and cultures now seems to find common ground in the marriage of the heart as an anatomical/physiological organ and the heart as a source of decision making intelligence.
The Institute of HeartMath (IHM) in
By measuring the electrical activity of the heart IHM has shown that the heart is the largest waveform generator of the human body. It’s capable of entraining the electrical waveforms of the brain, the immune system and other systems of the body. Entrainment is best understood as a physics phenomenon of resonance that was first observed in 1665 by Dutch Scientist Christian Huygens while working on the design of the pendulum clock. Huygen noticed that two pendulum clocks with the pendulums swinging at different rates eventually ended up swinging in unison at the same rate due to their mutual influence on one another. From his observation entrainment is defined as the tendency for two oscillating bodies to lock into phase so that they vibrate in harmony, or simply the synchronizing of two or more rhythmic cycles. With respect to heart muscle cells, when two or more are brought into close proximity the cells will pulsate in synchrony. (3)
IHM has also recorded the effect of heart pulsation in the electrical recording of the brain. Even further, they have recorded the heart beat of one person in the brain waves of another while both subjects were simultaneously shaking hands with each other (4) yielding yet a whole new meaning to the modes of recognition amongst Brothers.
Additionally, IHM has recorded an electromagnetic field generated specifically by the heart that is in addition to that electromagnetic field previously shown as the human aura, also known as prana in the ancient Sanskrit. This field of electromagnetic energy exists in a configuration known as a torus and has been measured extending eight feet out from the body itself (5).
According to Childre the heart has its own intelligence and consciousness. “It has unusual perceptual and intuitive information-processing capabilities; its frequency range of intelligence is not controlled by the brain nor by the autonomic nervous system; it is auto-rhythmic, beating on its own without requiring input from the brain or nervous system although both communicate with each other through neural and hormonal pathways directly affecting perception, reaction times, intuition, and decision making ability.” Feelings and emotions experienced by the heart are communicated directly to the brain via neurotransmitters and hormones which create chemical changes throughout the organ systems of the entire body (6).
Moreover, the heart has an effect on the immune system, DHEA production, DNA, cell growth, and tumor inhibition when coherent emotion is intentionally created by using “specially designed mental and emotion self management techniques which involve intentionally quieting the mind, shifting one’s awareness to the heart area, and focusing on positive emotions” (7)
Harris cites Vincent Giampapa, M.D. who has found that subjects in a relaxed state (coherent) can directly access their own DNA and effectively reverse the signs of ageing. Coupling a relaxed state with binaural beat technology, Giampapa reported a 46 % decrease in blood Cortisol levels, a 97% Melatonin increase and a 43% increase in blood DHEA levels. It is of some significance that Giampapa found that by increasing DHEA levels by 100 micrograms/deciliter of blood, mortality from cardiovascular disease decreased by 48%. (8) It may then be possible for nearly half of the brethren to eliminate some degree of cardiovascular risk simply by renewing coherent core emotions in their heart that were the basis of the first preparation, albeit unknown at the time.
Adding to the body of new science in understanding the heart is the work done in quantum biology where research findings suggest that our DNA has a phantom effect with that which it has ever had contact. Poponin and Gariaev demonstrated the effect of human DNA on the arrangement of photons (light particles) contained within a glass vacuum. In a glass vacuum without the presence of human DNA, photons were observed in scattered random array. Following the introduction of human DNA into the vacuum environment the photons arranged themselves in an organized way. When the DNA was removed the photons retained their ordered arrangement suggesting that the stuff of which we’re made has a direct affect on the quantum building blocks that make up our world (9).
Other research scientists working with U.S. Army personnel sought to determine the effect of human feelings on human DNA when the DNA was separated from the subject. Traditionally, we would readily recognize that no such effect could exist once the DNA tissue was separated from its donor. In fact, human DNA responded by relaxing and contracting its helix according to the kind of emotion evoked in the donor. The effect was observed even at a distance of 500 miles in separation between the DNA tissue samples and the donors, and the key to the DNA responsiveness was genuine feelings of emotion (10) (11).
When we put the scientific findings into a practical perspective it seems that there is indeed something to the idea of heart intelligence beyond just the mushy sentimentality that would have been used to explain the answer to the question; “Where were you first prepared”. It seems evident that our DNA has a direct effect on the quanta, the photon particles of light that make up our world. Whether our DNA is still attached to our bodies or separated by mere walls or hundreds of miles there remains some manner of molecular connection where the effect remains the same. The
Now, can a case be made for a cause and effect relationship between the new discoveries of quantum physics, quantum biology, neuraltechnologies, neurotransmitter blood levels and a core heart feeling that leads one to contemplate Freemasonry, become a Freemason, and actually put into practice the tenets of a moral science? If Masonry is based on brotherly love, relief, and truth it would seem possible. If the Masonic principles are based on pure morality; if its sentiments are those of an exalted benevolence; if it supports all that is good, and kind, and charitable it would then seem that Masonry provides an inexhaustible supply of opportunity for positive core heart feelings that could prompt any petitioner to proceed forward. But, was the question posed in the catechetical lecture with purposeful intent in the first place? If so, it suggests that those who composed the rituals had some level of insight into quantum theory way back there in the middle Ages. That seems unlikely!
A. E. Waite, in discussing Masonic links to the chivalric Order of the
In their text The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion (to be released July 2009), Jawer and Micozzi contend that emotion is the greatest influence on personality and that further, emotion plays a key role in immunity, stress, cognition, sensation, and emotional expression even with regard to psychosomatic illness (13).
Daniels and Daniels in Matrix Meditations (to be released in August 2009), offer a sixteen week program for the development of a heart-mind connection using various meditative techniques from both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions where concentration, contemplation, mindfulness, and awareness are the key forms to achieving mental clarity, expanding creative thought, and modifying behavior (14).
In conclusion it seems that there is a universal and time enduring notion that is now better defined as a scientific paradigm, that we are able to achieve more than dry, mundane, purely objective decision making by accessing the emotional feeling centers within the heart, and coupling those emotions with our ability to think in linear terms. This has been long known in Freemasonry, but probably little understood and taken simply as a matter of sentimental form, if even that. And so, the question and answer of where a Mason is first prepared to be a Mason gains support from new science and ongoing research that even further suggests that our DNA is the “software” through which we can renew not only our bodies but actuate, with coupled core heart emotions including love, compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude, all that is good, and kind, and charitable as we go about erecting that “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” and while simultaneously pursuing our own super-longevity (15).
Bibliography:
- Childre, D., Martin, H., with Beech, D., The HeartMath Solution, p.8, HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.
- Website; Soundfeelings@http://www.soundfeelings.com “The Entrainment Principle”
- Childre, D., Martin, H., with Beech, D. The Heartmath Solution, pp.38-41, HarperSanFrancisco, 1999
- Braden, G., The Divine Matrix, Hay House, Inc., p.51,
- Childre, D., IHM, “A White Paper: Women Lead with Their Hearts” quoted by Brandon, D. in “Heart Centeredness”, 1997.
- Rein, G., McCraty, R., “Structural Changes in Water and DNA Associated with New Physiologically Measurable States”, Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 8, # 3, pp. 438-439, 1994.
- Harris, B. “The Science Behind Holosync and Other Neuraltechnologies Using Binaural Beats”, Centerpointe Research Institute, Beaverton, OR. www.Holosync.com 2008.
- Poponin, V., “The DNA Phantom Effect: Direct Measurement of a New Field in Vacuum Substructure”, www.twm.co.nz/DNAphantom.htm 2002.
- Motz, J., “Everyone an Energy Healer: The Treat V Conference”,
- Rein, G., et al, “The Physiological and Psychological Effects of Compassion and Anger”, Journal of Advancement in Medicine, vol. 8, #2, pp. 87-103, 1995.
- Waite, A.E., The Secret Traditions of Freemasonry, Rebmon, London, England, 1911, as part of a discussion in The Secrets of Freemasonry, Lomas, R., pp 253-255, Magpie Books, London, England, 2006.
