Do All The Species Have A Heart?

[suchandra]

Modern thinkers claim that some insects, monads, etc don't have a heart.

In Bhagavad-gita Krsna says, I am seated in everyone's heart.

Could be that there're different types of hearts which we humans can't perceive?

 

 

Insect anatomy

A- Head B- Thorax C- Abdomen

1. antenna – 2. ocelli (lower) – 3. ocelli (upper) – 4. compound eye – 5. brain (cerebral ganglia) – 6. prothorax – 7. dorsal artery – 8. tracheal tubes (trunk with spiracle) – 9. mesothorax – 10. metathorax – 11. first wing – 12. second wing – 13. mid-gut (stomach) – 14. heart – 15. ovary – 16. hind-gut (intestine, rectum & anus) – 17. anus – 18. vagina – 19. nerve chord (abdominal ganglia) – 20. Malpighian tubes – 21. pillow – 22. claws – 23. tarsus – 24. tibia – 25. femur – 26. trochanter – 27. fore-gut (crop, gizzard) – 28. thoracic ganglion – 29. coxa – 30. salivary gland – 31. subesophageal ganglion – 32. mouthparts

 

Pusta Krsna: Some of the insects don’t even have hearts.

Prabhupada: And how do you say? They have everything. You have no intelligence to understand. Everything, all anatomic physiology is there, even the small full stop. You cannot see even, microbe. That is God’s creation.

Pusta Krsna: You mean to say…

Prabhupada: I have seen very minute, walking very…, exactly like a big…

Guru-krpa: In Vṛndāvana, when we were staying at Bon’s place, there was big colony of ants. Ants, thousands of them.

Prabhupada: Yes, they have got all the sense, all the sympathy. For eating, sleeping, mating, they have got all intelligence.

Pusta Krsna: What I mean to say is, physiologically speaking, at least from biological viewpoint, some of these creatures don’t even have hearts. They’re much easier to manufacture, the parts of their bodies.

Prabhupada: You say there is no heart just like you say no soul. That is your vers…. I say that “When he is doing everything like a human being he has got everything.” It is your insufficient knowledge that you say that…. Just like you say there is no soul. But that is your insufficient knowledge. That’s not the fact. Kṛṣṇa says, īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe ’rjuna [Bg. 18.61]. When Īśvara is in everyone’s heart, how you can…. Hṛd-deśe. How you say there is no heart? That is nonsense, another nonsense.

Pusta Krsna: So this is speaking of the material heart.

Prabhupada: Material, spiritual, you do not know anything. You don’t talk. Better you become silent.

Pusta Krsna: (laughs) Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupada: Kṛṣṇa said, sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe, specifically said, “within the heart.” The…. Even a germlike, what is called, atom, less than atom, there is heart. Otherwise how Kṛṣṇa says, hṛd-deśe?

Pusta Krsna: Sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe. Every living entity.

Prabhupada: Eh? And you say there is no…. You are our student. You are saying there is no heart. That means you do not carefully read.

Pusta Krsna: No, that’s there, but is that the heart of the soul or the heart of the gross material body?

Prabhupada: Then…. Heart there is, as you have got heart. What you are? The same constitution.

Harisauri: In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad it describes how they’re sitting side by side.

Prabhupada: The same constitution of the body. Otherwise there is no question of heart.

Pusta Krsna: You’ve just challenged the whole field of biology also.

Prabhupada: Then what is the…. I say they’re nonsense, rascals. They say that there is no…. And what is their knowledge? We don’t give any value to their knowledge. Kṛṣṇa says clearly, hṛd-deśe ’rjuna. And this body is just like a yantra, machine. So as machine means, moving machine means it must have wheel, it must have sitting place…. Everything is there, machine.

Pusta Krsna: That would mean that even the plants and trees also have a heart.

Prabhupada: Everything. That is proved scientifically. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose has proved. There is a part(?). What is that? Spi…? Begins the word, the machine, the record?

Devotee (2): Spirograph.

Prabhupada: Yes, the word begins with s. Spirograph or like that. You do not know? They smear with black, what is called, carbon, and the fine…

Devotee 2: Cardiograph.

Prabhupada: Cardiograph, like that.

Pusta Krsna: Cardiograph.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Pusta Krsna: Sensation.

Prabhupada: No, no, the machine is called some special name.

Harisauri: The same idea as cardiograph.

Pusta Krsna: Spectograph?

Prabhupada: Spectograph, yes.

Pusta Krsna: Has to do with light?

Prabhupada: Whatever it may be, it records how it is moving, how it is going up and down. So that has been proved. The machine is hanged in the tree, and the tree is cut, and immediately makes a mark. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose has discovered the machine.

 

 

Room Conversation

with His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda

April 20, 1976, Melbourne

[realist]

I know a squid has three hearts. Actually in Sanskrit the heart can sometimes also be symbolic for the soul, 10,000th the size of a tip of hair.

 

Although one could argue there are viruses and bacteria bodies smaller than that, actually todays scientists say they are way smaller than 10, 000th the size of a tip of hair.

Any comments?

 

I'm playing devils advocate

[Kulapavana]

The soul is situated in the heart because in the mechanical sense the bodily consciousness extends out with the flow of the blood, through the means of 'airs of life'.

For trees it is probably the flow of sap, with it's center in the root crown system (part just below the soil level) - I would see that as a location of the soul in a tree.

[bija]

In Srila Prabhupada's introduction to Srimad Bhagavatam he discusses rasa. He says man cannot experience rasa with another species such as animal. When I first read that I thought he was wrong, I thought he had bias - I love my pets and feel deeply, which they reciprocate also back to me.

 

Then I gradually realized I did not know what rasa was! That heart is in all, but only man seems to have faculty to undertand the working of the heart to such a degree.

 

Infact the animal may live in closer accord with mother nature (and super-soul), more so than conditioned man in terms of harmony. But liberated man has a potential for a much greater faculty - the heart realm -soul. Maybe that is why the old catholic scholars concluded animals have no soul. Where as us eastern path people instead saw the animal soul faculty as simply latent, in due course awakening through the process of transmigration.

[RadheyRadhey108]

 

Modern thinkers claim that some insects, monads, etc don't have a heart.

In Bhagavad-gita Krsna says, I am seated in everyone's heart.

Could be that there're different types of hearts which we humans can't perceive?

 

 

 

Pusta Krsna: Some of the insects don’t even have hearts.

Prabhupada: And how do you say? They have everything. You have no intelligence to understand. Everything, all anatomic physiology is there, even the small full stop. You cannot see even, microbe. That is God’s creation.

Pusta Krsna: You mean to say…

Prabhupada: I have seen very minute, walking very…, exactly like a big…

Guru-krpa: In Vṛndāvana, when we were staying at Bon’s place, there was big colony of ants. Ants, thousands of them.

Prabhupada: Yes, they have got all the sense, all the sympathy. For eating, sleeping, mating, they have got all intelligence.

Pusta Krsna: What I mean to say is, physiologically speaking, at least from biological viewpoint, some of these creatures don’t even have hearts. They’re much easier to manufacture, the parts of their bodies.

Prabhupada: You say there is no heart just like you say no soul. That is your vers…. I say that “When he is doing everything like a human being he has got everything.” It is your insufficient knowledge that you say that…. Just like you say there is no soul. But that is your insufficient knowledge. That’s not the fact. Kṛṣṇa says, īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe ’rjuna [Bg. 18.61]. When Īśvara is in everyone’s heart, how you can…. Hṛd-deśe. How you say there is no heart? That is nonsense, another nonsense.

Pusta Krsna: So this is speaking of the material heart.

Prabhupada: Material, spiritual, you do not know anything. You don’t talk. Better you become silent.

Pusta Krsna: (laughs) Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupada: Kṛṣṇa said, sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe, specifically said, “within the heart.” The…. Even a germlike, what is called, atom, less than atom, there is heart. Otherwise how Kṛṣṇa says, hṛd-deśe?

Pusta Krsna: Sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe. Every living entity.

Prabhupada: Eh? And you say there is no…. You are our student. You are saying there is no heart. That means you do not carefully read.

Pusta Krsna: No, that’s there, but is that the heart of the soul or the heart of the gross material body?

Prabhupada: Then…. Heart there is, as you have got heart. What you are? The same constitution.

Harisauri: In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad it describes how they’re sitting side by side.

Prabhupada: The same constitution of the body. Otherwise there is no question of heart.

Pusta Krsna: You’ve just challenged the whole field of biology also.

Prabhupada: Then what is the…. I say they’re nonsense, rascals. They say that there is no…. And what is their knowledge? We don’t give any value to their knowledge. Kṛṣṇa says clearly, hṛd-deśe ’rjuna. And this body is just like a yantra, machine. So as machine means, moving machine means it must have wheel, it must have sitting place…. Everything is there, machine.

Pusta Krsna: That would mean that even the plants and trees also have a heart.

Prabhupada: Everything. That is proved scientifically. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose has proved. There is a part(?). What is that? Spi…? Begins the word, the machine, the record?

Devotee (2): Spirograph.

Prabhupada: Yes, the word begins with s. Spirograph or like that. You do not know? They smear with black, what is called, carbon, and the fine…

Devotee 2: Cardiograph.

Prabhupada: Cardiograph, like that.

Pusta Krsna: Cardiograph.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Pusta Krsna: Sensation.

Prabhupada: No, no, the machine is called some special name.

Harisauri: The same idea as cardiograph.

Pusta Krsna: Spectograph?

Prabhupada: Spectograph, yes.

Pusta Krsna: Has to do with light?

Prabhupada: Whatever it may be, it records how it is moving, how it is going up and down. So that has been proved. The machine is hanged in the tree, and the tree is cut, and immediately makes a mark. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose has discovered the machine.

 

 

Room Conversation

with His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda

April 20, 1976, Melbourne

This is silly. When Krishna says He is seated in everyone's heart, He means that He is seated in everyone's soul. In the place where love and compassion come from. He doesn't mean, "There's a little incarnation of me with a little condo living inside of your heart which is located toward the left-side of your chest." Please

[srikanthdk71]

 

This is silly. When Krishna says He is seated in everyone's heart, He means that He is seated in everyone's soul. In the place where love and compassion come from. He doesn't mean, "There's a little incarnation of me with a little condo living inside of your heart which is located toward the left-side of your chest." Please

 

Mahajan,Accolades to you. You got it right. The heart of Maharashtra, Mumbai. The heart of India, New Delhi. Since science has told that heart is the place where the blood is supplied through auricles and ventricles we start searching concioueness in the heart. But conciousness is not in one place of the Body. It is within and without. The central focus of creation is the heart. The experiencer is the heart.

[suchandra]

 

This is silly. When Krishna says He is seated in everyone's heart, He means that He is seated in everyone's soul. In the place where love and compassion come from. He doesn't mean, "There's a little incarnation of me with a little condo living inside of your heart which is located toward the left-side of your chest." Please

When Krsna says heart of every living being, hrdi, He means instead no, not hrdi, but atma, soul of every living being?

He actually wanted to say, I'm seated within the atma of every living being. Good point, nice explanation. So one could also quote verse below by saying, sarvasya cāhaḿ atma sanniviṣṭo? Not within the heart but within the atma?

 

sarvasya cāhaḿ hṛdi sanniviṣṭo

mattaḥ smṛtir jñānam apohanaḿ ca

vedaiś ca sarvair aham eva vedyo

vedānta-kṛd veda-vid eva cāham

 

SYNONYMS

 

sarvasya — of all living beings; ca — and; aham — I; hṛdi — in the heart; sanniviṣṭaḥ — situated; mattaḥ — from Me; smṛtiḥ — remembrance; jñānam — knowledge; apohanam — forgetfulness; ca — and; vedaiḥ — by the Vedas; ca — also; sarvaiḥ — all; aham — I am; eva — certainly; vedyaḥ — knowable; vedānta-kṛt — the compiler of the Vedānta; veda-vit — the knower of the Vedas; eva — certainly; ca — and; aham — I.

 

TRANSLATION

 

I am seated in everyone's heart, and from Me come remembrance, knowledge and forgetfulness. By all the Vedas, I am to be known. Indeed, I am the compiler of Vedānta, and I am the knower of the Vedas.

 

PURPORT

 

The Supreme Lord is situated as Paramātmā in everyone's heart, and it is from Him that all activities are initiated. The living entity forgets everything of his past life, but he has to act according to the direction of the Supreme Lord, who is witness to all his work. Therefore he begins his work according to his past deeds. Required knowledge is supplied to him, and remembrance is given to him, and he forgets, also, about his past life. Thus, the Lord is not only all-pervading; He is also localized in every individual heart. He awards the different fruitive results. He is worshipable not only as the impersonal Brahman, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and the localized Paramātmā, but as the form of the incarnation of the Vedas as well. The Vedas give the right direction to people so that they can properly mold their lives and come back to Godhead, back to home. The Vedas offer knowledge of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa in His incarnation as Vyāsadeva is the compiler of the Vedānta-sūtra. The commentation on the Vedānta-sūtra by Vyāsadeva in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam gives the real understanding of Vedānta-sūtra. The Supreme Lord is so full that for the deliverance of the conditioned soul He is the supplier and digester of foodstuff, the witness of his activity, and the giver of knowledge in the form of Vedas and as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the teacher of the Bhagavad-gītā. He is worshipable by the conditioned soul. Thus God is all-good; God is all-merciful.

 

Antaḥ-praviṣṭaḥ śāstā janānām. The living entity forgets as soon as he quits his present body, but he begins his work again, initiated by the Supreme Lord. Although he forgets, the Lord gives him the intelligence to renew his work where he ended his last life. So not only does a living entity enjoy or suffer in this world according to the dictation from the Supreme Lord situated locally in the heart, but he receives the opportunity to understand the Vedas from Him. If one is serious about understanding the Vedic knowledge, then Kṛṣṇa gives the required intelligence. Why does He present the Vedic knowledge for understanding? Because a living entity individually needs to understand Kṛṣṇa. Vedic literature confirms this: yo 'sau sarvair vedair gīyate. In all Vedic literature, beginning from the four Vedas, Vedānta-sūtra and the Upaniṣads and Purāṇas, the glories of the Supreme Lord are celebrated. By performance of Vedic rituals, discussion of the Vedic philosophy and worship of the Lord in devotional service, He is attained. Therefore the purpose of the Vedas is to understand Kṛṣṇa. The Vedas give us direction by which to understand Kṛṣṇa and the process of realizing Him. The ultimate goal is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Vedānta-sūtra (1.1.4) confirms this in the following words: tat tu samanvayāt. One can attain perfection in three stages. By understanding Vedic literature one can understand his relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, by performing the different processes one can approach Him, and at the end one can attain the supreme goal, who is no other than the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In this verse the purpose of the Vedas, the understanding of the Vedas, and the goal of the Vedas are clearly defined.

BG 15.15

[Ravindran Kesavan]

What is Heart?

Sanskrit language does have distinct words for heart (Hrdi) and soul (Athma) . The question of using one word when it means another doesn’t arise in such a case. We don’t interpret metaphorically when direct meaning is clear in Vedic verses.

Hrdi is to be taken literally not in any other sense. For this I have I have two supporting claims.

One is the Veda Bhashya (Vedic hermeneutics) rule that texts need to be interpreted literally where ever literal words are employed. We interpret metaphorically only when the construction itself is symbolic and direct reading leads to absurdity. (For example a guest (Atiti) being sky, father, mother and child. We cannot make any direct sense of an atiti being sky. We cannot also make sense of how the same person could be a father mother and child simultaneously. Here the words are metaphorical)

Second of course very personal experiential validation of the claim that lord resides in every heart. People could of course reject this as some hallucination. However I am sharing this to the forum so that a true Visnavite will see that gods words are not any nonsense.

From very early in my childhood days onwards – from earliest time I could recall – which in my case is from my crawling stage – I experienced a very very tiny blue light in my heart ( in my physical heart) . The light was so subtle and small – many times smaller than hair – but not fainter. This light was always there and I continued to experience it till I grew up to my high school days. When I was a child it was continuously there when I grew up and learned many things – as my mind became extraverted, the light dispersed, during my day time, and returned back when my mind became restful just before sleep. By this I infer it was always there but my mind busily occupied with external world missed to notice it.

When I started talking and able to understand language, my grandmother used to tell me religious stories. I liked Krishna’s stories instantly and I liked <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comKrishna</st1:place> among all gods. I found him very charming. And ever since I formed a clear Image of Child Krishna, Another development started happening to the minute blue light. When I am about to sleep , every day , in the hypno-gogic state, ( the restful state just before one falls asleep) the blue light transformed in to a full fledged baby Krishna – much more beautiful than any of the pictures of Krishna of that we see in the real world. No one could paint the <st1:place w:st="on">Krishna</st1:place> of my heart any where near perfection. And the whole night I dreamed of <st1:place w:st="on">Krishna</st1:place>. In my early childhood I had no other dream.

Of course the experience disappeared as my mind became more and more external oriented as I learned more and more of all sorts of things in the process of physically growing, and only returned occasionally when I took up meditation practices when my mind turned inwards. Now I don’t see that blue light any more. (But I assume it is there).

There is reason to believe this is not my imagination (though it could be still hallucination) My reason that it is not My imagination is that I experienced this blue light in my heart smaller than the smallest much before I read Bhagavad-Gita or any other material to this effect. My grand mother who introduced me to puranic stories dint know anything about this Upanishadic conception of the tiny blue light in the heart. I discovered that the Upanishad describes what I have naturally experienced from my child hood much latter – in my college days- with much of my surprise and delight. Scriptures, especially Upanishads describes truth. Even if I reject the Krishna’s form that sprang in to existence from the abstract blue light as the result of my imagination due to hearing of my grandma’s stories, I have no reason to reject the tiny blue light it self, which I saw from much before any acquired knowledge of it.

Hence I conclude that the claim that Lord resides in the heart of creatures is a literally true claim.

Of course some of you who are hell-bent on rejecting the literal interpretation on this because it does not accord with science or your own notion or whatever purpose, can still reject this as any evidence and conclude this is all sign of my childhood madness. On that I will have no defense, but to assume whoever wrote exactly that stuff in scriptures were equally mad like me.

Regards,

K.Ravindran

[suchandra]

 

What is Heart?

Sanskrit language does have distinct words for heart (Hrdi) and soul (Athma) . The question of using one word when it means another doesn’t arise in such a case. We don’t interpret metaphorically when direct meaning is clear in Vedic verses.

 

Thanks Ravindran Kesavan, good points and clear conclusion. When Krsna says, hrdi, He means hrdi. Everything else that heart means atma and Lord Paramatma resides within the atma is not stated by Krsna and according vedic etiquette such speculations have to be rejected. So every living being has a heart, and when modern scientists cannot see a heart within some insects/plants/jellyfish etc. they have to be told that there's still a heart on vedic evidence although they can't see it. Just like some years ago a computer was as big as a house. Meanwhile it has become smaller and smaller although nothing became of minor value. Or take Intel's smallest chip,

 

 

Newly designed from the ground up, 45nm Intel® Atom™ processors pack an astounding 47 million transistors on a single chip measuring less than 26mm², making them Intel's smallest and lowest power processors.¹ All this while delivering the power and performance you need for full Internet capabilities.+

source: http://www.intel.com/technology/atom/index.htm

 

If scientists are able to make such small pc chips, why the original Creator and source of all intelligence cannot create hearts that are almost invisible or even invisble for human eyes?

[Ravindran Kesavan]

Dear Suchandra,

 

By the by science need not be wrong.I personally dont reject science. When scientists find no heart, in some creatures it may still be right. Because , I believe that, while I take literal meaning to vedic term Hrdi, Vedic Hrdi still does not mean a blood pump of the physical scientist. I believe it means the spiritual center of Anahada. which insidently coincides with the spacial location of blood pump, in the case of human beings. If we cut open the physical blood pump we cannot see any blue light in it. To see it you need a psychic /spiritual vision. If one sees with that spiritual eye one can see every creature has this light in their spiritual hearts - Hrdi - even if they dont have a physical pump. Creatures which does not have a blood pump, still have ther souls, and soul resides in the Hrdi.

 

The problem arises , I believe, by our transalation of old sanscrit Hrdi which is a spiritual organ in to the modern scientific 'Heart' - which is just a physical pump.

 

Regards,

K.Ravindran