The River and the Whirlpool
1. Introduction: Challenging the Mechanical Heart
The heart is a muscular pump, yet “pump” is only one word for its living activity. There is contraction and release, twisting and filling. The name does not contain the movement.
The developing heart grows and loops as its chambers and other structures take shape. This does not literally replay a billion years of adult animal forms in fifty days. The developmental account offers its own intricate story.
“Om written in flesh” is my contemplative image for this living rhythm. It invites us to encounter the heart as activity—a “helical space-time event”—and to explore how that encounter finds expression in listening, care and love.
2. Love is a Verb: The Power of Active Choice
In the esoteric philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the mission of the Earth is the development of Love.
It is the “spiritual force” that allows the divine world to “awake in the physical.”
This awakening is not a passive event but an active initiative.
Cosmologically, this is the “Mighty Eros”—the divine desire that first stirred in Chaos to initiate manifestation.
This cosmic impulse finds its practical human complement in the work of Dr. Gary Chapman, who famously defines love as a “verb.”
Love is not a static feeling to be possessed; it is an active choice demonstrated through consistent support and daily sacrifice.
When we choose to love, we enter the “current of time” to transform a space of “dead things” into a living world.
As the source of this creative impulse reminds us:
“It is the nature of Love to Love.”
This is the Law of Love: an ascending journey and a “search for the good” that aligns our individual will with the fundamental structure of the universe.
3. The Living Helical Heart: Twisting and Receiving
The heart’s muscle has a complex three-dimensional architecture, including helical fibre orientations. Torrent-Guasp’s myocardial ventricular band is one influential model; whether the muscle forms one discrete, continuous band remains debated.
Twisting contributes to ejection, while relaxation and recoil help the heart untwist and fill. Its function cannot be reduced to one universal crossing angle or a claim that 90% of filling comes from suction.
“Twist-and-suck” invites a felt correspondence between expressing and receiving. Cardiac illness is not a loss of spiritual worth or connection. For the fuller anatomical account and research references, see The Helical Heart and the Cosmic Om.
4. Om Written in Flesh: A Contemplative Map
In my teaching, the rhythms of the heart and breathing can be contemplated through Oṃ. A, U and M point to waking, dreaming and deep sleep. Expressing, continuing and resolving offer a felt correspondence, without assigning each state to a fixed phase of the cardiac cycle.
A heartbeat can invite attention to immediacy; the dot, or bindu, is a symbolic pointer. Neither the pulse nor the written mark produces or locates Awareness.
Turīya is called “the fourth” when viewed from the standpoint of the three changing statuses. But from the standpoint of Ātman or Brahman, it is not a separate fourth state or object; it is the ever-present Awareness that illumines waking, dream and deep sleep.
The curves, crescent and dot are themselves known by Awareness. The difference between Ātman and Brahman is in the teaching standpoint, not in Awareness itself. For the fuller interpretation, see The Universe is Sounded Om.
To understand the heart is to understand the relationship between the River and the Whirlpool.
While a whirlpool has a distinct shape, its substance is entirely the water of the River.
In the Qabalah, the origin of this form is Chesed (Mercy/Love), the “foundation stone” and the first equilibration of Spirit into a manifest pattern.
This manifestation functions through the tension of “complementary whirlpools” known as lokas (spiritually positive/clockwise) and talas (spiritually negative/counter-clockwise). They are as inseparable as the two poles of a magnet, creating the “twice curved line” of Buddhist symbolism.
Love acts as the Central Neutral Current—the Tiphareth or Middle Pillar—that balances these polarities.
It is the equilibrium that prevents these “spinning rings” from flying apart, allowing the spiritual world to remain grounded in the physical.
6. Transmuting the Four Loves: C.S. Lewis and Spiritual Growth
Spiritual evolution is the process of transmuting finite human impulses into divine-aligned action.
C.S. Lewis’s “Four Loves” (Storge, Philia, Eros, Agape) provide the roadmap.
While natural loves like friendship or romantic passion are the “school of virtue,” they are not self-sufficient.
Lewis warns that natural loves must be subordinated to Agape (Charity) to prevent them from becoming “demonic” or self-serving.
Agape is the unconditional “God-love” that allows the soul to escape the “illusion of separateness.”
“Agape (Charity) is the greatest love, which exists regardless of changing circumstances.
This unconditional ‘God-love’ is selfless and must subordinate the other ‘natural loves’ to prevent them from becoming ‘demonic’ or self-aggrandizing.”
7. Conclusion: The Aware Stillness
As a contemplative metaphor, the heart can be understood as participation in the “aware stillness” of the universe. Physiologically, the heart is a muscular pump that circulates blood; this metaphor does not replace that established function. See How Blood Flows through the Heart, from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Feeling the heart’s activity can invite inquiry into the boundary we assume between the individual and Source. Movement belongs to appearance; Ātman, which is Brahman, is the Awareness in which it is known.
Your heart is indeed “Om written in flesh,” every beat is a renewal of your connection to the Divine.
How does perceiving your pulse as a localized expression of a cosmic flow change the way you choose to love today?
We are not merely inhabitants of the universe; we are the points where the universe has chosen to feel its own rhythm.
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