From a physiological point of view, the heart is simply an organ of the body—a pump so to speak—that carries blood, oxygen, and nutrition to all the cells as well as eliminating waste products. As such it is central to life. On the other hand, the heart is also a symbolic expression of that which is central to us not only as physical life but as psychological and spiritual life. In this sense the heart connects us to the life of the soul, that which brings us alive and enlivens us, even connects us to something beyond ourselves.

Dreams are the expressions of the soul, their images revealing not only what is living there but what also longs for life. Many cultures and ancient traditions have long held that the heart is the seat of the soul. Vibrating in the heart are not only feelings and emotions but memories and images of our past and, from my own experience, images of our future. This awareness opens to us another way of seeing, seeing with the heart, and seeing what is vibrating there.

James Hillman, in his discussion of the groundbreaking work of Henry Corbin —scholar, philosopher, theologian, and champion of the transformative power of the imagination and of transcendent reality in the individual—states quite clearly that the heart’s characteristic action is not feeling but sight.[1] Hillman, discussing Corbin, says the thought of the heart is the thought of images.[2] The heart is the seat of the imagination. Imagination is the authentic voice of the heart. So, if we speak from the heart we must speak imaginatively.[3] The heart is the place of true imagining. Hillman points out that when we personalize the heart as simply personal, confessional, subjective reflection, we drive the imagination into exile, into sexual fantasy or metaphysical conception or into objective data, none of which reside in the heart.[4]

Hillman goes on to say that the intention of the heart creates as real the figures of the imagination. The heart knows that the images we think we make up are actually presented to us as authentic creatures. Without the gift of the heart’s imaginal sight we misunderstand the meaning of the images in our dreams or the persons of our imaginings and fantasies. We think they are subjectively real, that we made them up, figments of our imagination, apparitions—when we mean that they are imaginatively real. Or we think they are externally real as hallucinations when we mean they are essentially real. We confuse the imaginal with the subjective and internal. We mistake the essential for external and objective.[5]

Yes, the heart is an organ of feeling. But it is also the seat of the soul’s imagination and our ability to see the imaginal realm. We have lost the imaginal and with it we have lost the aliveness of our own souls. Tom Cheetham in his book, Green Man, Earth Angel, suggests that “all dualism of the modern world stem from the loss of the mundus imaginales: matter is cut off from spirit, sensation from intellect, subject from object, inner from outer, myth from history, the individual from the divine.”[6]

The imaginal world is not imaginary or unreal. While the imaginary is the product of personal fantasy and is therefore subjective, the imaginal, on the other hand, gives us access to a transpersonal content.

Taken from my book, The Other Man in Me, Erotic Longing, Lust and Love: The Soul Calling. To download an excerpt from my book elsewhere on this site, or to explore more from inside my book go to https://www.amazon.com/Other-Man-Me-Longing-Calling-ebook/dp/B08N5LQ7NM/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=The+Other+Man+in+Me&qid=1610318245&sr=8-1.

[1] Hillman, Thought of the Heart, 4

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 29.

[5] Ibid., 6

[6] Cheetham, Green Man, Green Angel, 3