Late Night Chat with Jeff: Anatomy of the heart, Feb 2, 2025, live on Baba Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

Dear folks of Baba,

Darwin Shaw, one of Baba’s early Western mandali, used to encourage us to scan our interior heart space to discern our reactions and responses to life. To use an analogy, this is like lifting up the hood of a car to study the internal workings of the engine. What was so invaluable that I gathered from Darwin is we can be pro-active about our inner life. We don’t have to be passive observers. Examining the deeper aspects of the heart can contribute greatly to creating inner harmony within ourselves. This focus on being conscious of our interior is one of the major approaches to Baba, but it is not the only one; there are other equally valid approaches.

The heart is one of our most prized possessions, but have you noticed that it has distinct and subtle layers? One layer of the heart is more superficial, it reacts to life from the standpoint of our conditioning, and the other responds lovingly to life from the deeper realm of the heart. Our reactions come from two sources: our beliefs based on such standards as good and bad, right and wrong, spiritual and unspiritual, loving and unloving, and reactions also come directly from our cravings and from our negative emotions such as greed, anger, fear, vengeance, jealously, hatred, etc. Our loving responses, on the other hand, have their origin in the Soul that is beyond the heart, but which uses the heart as its vehicle. Examples of loving responses are generosity, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, empathy, humor, purity, understanding, enthusiasm and courage. Have you been able to discern the qualitative differences between reactions as opposed to loving responses to life? Can you tune into the differences in vibration and the atmosphere that is created around you when responding to life? Have you noticed that emotion, desires and feelings tend to be excitement-based, and love is more tranquil-based even though it often generates enthusiasm? Have you noticed that reactions often bring you up into your head, sometimes accompanied by unpleasant sensations and an influx of thoughts, whereas in loving responses we tend to remain at the heart level?

Baba has said, “Feelings and emotions are the creation of mind and energy. Love is the creation of the Soul.” Their origins are completely different! As Darwin would say, feelings, desires and emotions come from our conditioning, our sanskaras, whereas love is “impression-less”; it comes into us from the Soul, which is beyond time and space. Our good and bad reactions come from the heart, whereas our loving responses come through the heart from our Soul itself, which is Baba. What makes it so difficult to discern good from love is that they both first make their appearance in the heart, and for this reason, we tend to think that love comes from the heart. However, the heart is like the moon that only reflects the light of the sun. It is not the source of light. That is why Baba says that love comes always as His gift to us.

Victor Hugo, the French novelist, once wrote, “Virtue as in the case of vice [good as in the case of bad], is a calculated action, but love is not calculated. It wells up in the heart and expresses itself spontaneously.” Have you found that good always has some strings attached (a subtle ulterior motive); it is connected with time and usually strives to make an impression, but love expresses itself in the moment and tends to leave the giver and the receiver free from obligation and ideally leaves no residue. You might say, it evaporates as soon as it is expressed.

Given all of this, it is important to keep the heart clear of “strangers” as Baba has said so that it can be a pure vehicle for His love. The trajectory of our life, in Baba’s words, goes “from bad to good to God” (Love). “Love has to spring spontaneously from within and is in no way amenable to any inner or outer force.”

In His love, Jeff

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