Wonders of the Heart
Recently I came across a very interesting and ground breaking discovery in regards to the heart introduced by Dr Thomas Cowan in his revolutionary book Human Heart, Cosmic Heart.
Dr Cowan expands the idea of the work of Rudolf Steiner that the heart is not just a pump. So, if it’s not a pump, what is it then? Let’s check the facts and the logic:
The diameters of capillaries in healthy young adult are about 3-4 micrometres.
The red blood cells that need to pass through these capillaries are about 6-7 micrometres.
That means there must me an enormous amount of energy pushing the blood through such tight capillaries not to create any clogging.
It is simply impossible for the heart to do it as it would need to develop a pressure that is approximately 1 million times the pressure it actually develops!
The amount of blood vessels and capillaries in the human body could encircle the globe three times. How is it even possible that a one pound organ is able to generate enough pressure to push highly viscous fluid this entire distance?!
On top of that, while travelling throughout the body, the blood stops at the halfway point and regains the flow after.
But let’s say it is possible:
The exit flow of the heart is called the aortic arch which goes up to the head and then it makes an arch and goes down to the rest of the body. It is like having a sphincter on the side of your house and a flexible arch shaped garden hose attached to it. Everyone knows that if you turn the water full blast what would happen to the aortic arch (water hose)? It would straighten up! However in the area where the heart is generating pressure not only doesn’t the aortic arch straightens out but it actually curves in, which makes no sense!?
Dr Cowan explains that “the heart is a muscle that holds back the blood like a dam and then converts the flow into a vortex. This creates a suction effect, which sucks the aortic arch—as one sees—and without generating pressure helps the blood on its way. The reason for the vortex creation is complex but that is the ‘generative’ shape in nature. When nature wants to create or enhance life it uses vortices. It is no surprise, then, that this vortex is what is created by the heart.”
He later on points out that the whole misconception of “the heart as a pump” initiated in the early seventeenth century with the publication of De Motu Cordis by William Harvey, a book that brought a shift in thinking—from a geocentric to a heliocentric understanding of the world.
“Before this time, and including all traditional people, the world was seen as a more alive place,” presents Cowan. “The plants and animals were alive, the streams, mountains, and soil were alive and this life animated everything big and small in the universe. Materialism as exemplified by Harvey came along and said, ‘No, this is alive, this is dead, and the same principles that govern dead things like chemistry govern living things so we’re not even sure what life is anyways.’ This led to our current abuse of nature and even each other. One wouldn’t poison a river if the spirit of your mother lived in the stream. We see only rocks and dirt with water flowing in it that is fine for dumping a bit of sewage. When Harvey claimed the heart was a simply and only a mechanical pump, not only was he incorrect from an engineering point of view, he disconnected our most spiritual organ from life. From that disconnection, we have still not recovered.”
Pretty eye opening concept, don’t you think?
If you’d like to explore more in this subject, reach out for Dr Cowan’s book Human Heart, Cosmic Heart