The Source of All Things

by Reinhard Friedl

  THE BIG PICTURE

  In the philosophical sense, everything that exists is true—and real. This may be considerably more than what we can objectively perceive in a physiologically measurable way. And it can far exceed our imagination. Actuality is significantly different, in terminology and content, from reality, which is derived from the Latin word res, meaning “the thing” or “the matter.” Thus, reality is material. We call “real” those things we can perceive with the classical five senses. Objects that we can touch with hands and skin and see with our eyes. Food we can smell with our nose and taste with our tongue. And of course noises, which we hear with our ears. The sensory organ that is the eye allows us to see certain wavelengths of light, which manifest themselves as colors in our inner representation of reality. What we can perceive with our senses is not truth but reality—which is only a highly selective excerpt of the truth (which is the existence of everything).

  There are considerably more wavelengths of light that we cannot see: for example, X-rays or radio waves. We can hear certain soundwaves, but some animals see, hear, or smell much more or in an entirely different way than us human beings. Migratory birds are guided to Africa by the Earth’s magnetic field, which is inaccessible to our senses. Whales, mammals like us, are guided through the vast oceans by it. Bats possess an echo system: radar signals are their reality, and a black image with lots of white spots (reflections of mosquitos) means a well-fed night for them. Dogs smell those sausages long before we take them out of our shopping bag. Their highly sensitive sense of smell shapes their reality differently as they live predominantly in a world of odors.

  * * *

  We know all that, and in our scientific search for truth we expand reality to include phenomena we can find proof of, even though we can’t perceive them with our five senses. For example, for a long time there was scientific consensus that we are made up of small particles, namely atoms. The model of atoms and their interactions and connections to form molecules allows us to explain our real world quite well, even though nobody has ever seen a singular atom. “When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth,” wrote Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.1

  The model of atomic reality was replaced nearly 100 years ago by quantum mechanics, which asserts that everything is made up from elementary particles. However, one cannot imagine elementary particles to be like mini LEGO bricks or atoms. They are much smaller and lead a hybrid existence, as they can be both particles and light waves. Elementary particles can be in different places, millions of light-years apart, at the same time, and in many ways they behave “spookily,” as Albert Einstein called it. They like to synchronize themselves like pendulum clocks do, but curiously they seem to notice when they are being watched. Then they determine if they are a particle or a wave. How macroscopic matter, including human beings, is created from this strange mix—that remains the topic of many models of reality, theories, and discussions.

  The Higgs boson of the heart

  What is needed, in any case, is the Higgs boson. In July 2012, the existence of the Higgs boson, also called the “God particle,” was confirmed in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. British physicist Peter Higgs had already suspected in 1964 that the particle had to exist, as otherwise quantum mechanics would have a hole. This was met with a lot of skepticism, and at first no one wanted to publish this theory. In 2013, Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. For physicists, the Higgs boson is a heavyweight as it is the particle, or rather a field, which had been missing from the modular design of particle physics and which gives mass to all other elementary particles.

  * * *

  In quantum physics, everything that exists is connected and in constant interaction, constant exchange. That is why quantum physicist and winner of the 1987 Right Livelihood Award (also called the Alternative Nobel Prize), Hans-Peter Dürr argues: “Basically, there is no matter. At least not in the familiar sense. There is only a structure of relationships, constant change, aliveness. We find this hard to imagine. Primarily, only correlation exists, connections not based on matter. We could also call it spirit. Something which we can only experience spontaneously but not seize. Matter and energy are secondary features—as congealed, solidified spirit, so to speak. According to Albert Einstein, matter is merely a diluted form of energy. Matter’s basis, however, is not some refined kind of energy, but something else completely, namely aliveness.”2

  Are these insights really completely outside our faculties of imagination and perception? Or do we feel intuitively that they could be right? One day I had the thought that the heart, too, is a Higgs boson. It gives all other particles life. Or could there be more Higgs-like entities in the heart? A field that gives love and truthfulness and all the other qualities we intuitively ascribe to the heart? The Higgs boson of the heart could be an elementary module of the particle physics of humanity.

  The Big Bang of the heart

  At the other end of the scale from the particles that are even smaller than atoms (quanta) sits the universe—and we accept as reality that it was created with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, and that we are in a wider sense made of stardust, of elementary particles.

  Before the Big Bang, everything was one, all existence compressed in a tiny spot. This state is also known as the singularity. Ever since the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding. The most well-known theory in this regard is Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which deals with space, time, and gravitation. There are also theories according to which the Big Bang was not the beginning of everything and there had been a universe already before the Big Bang which had contracted to a singular point and is now expanding again. For example, the theory of “loop quantum gravity” by German physicist Martin Bojowald views the Big Bang as merely an expansion phase of the universe, between periods of contraction.3 In his theory there are not only the smallest particles of which matter consists, but also the smallest indivisible space-time atoms. In summary, and very simplified, they form a space-time mesh which expands and contracts again. Like an eternal heartbeat of the universe. Our small human heart, which does its ba-boom for a lifetime, would thus have a big brother: the Big Bang. All that exists follows an eternally oscillating rhythm of exertion and relaxation, the beat of the heart and of life.

  Soap bubbles?

  In the world of the smallest of the small, of elementary particles and quantum physics, gravitation does not feature. In the two theories of the Big Bang (the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics), it either plays a very prominent role or no role at all. That is to say, they “are known to be inconsistent with each other—they cannot both be correct,” as Stephen Hawking explained in his book A Brief History of Time.4

  If we calculate back to the time of the Big Bang, we reach a point where the theory of relativity and all physical laws lose their validity. In other words, we have two models or theories of actuality which explain a lot of things very well but in the end contradict each other. And thus current physics applies a lot of energy to the development of a theory which conciliates the theory of relativity and the laws of quantum mechanics and might also be valid when discussing the Big Bang or the time before it.

  * * *

  The best-known attempt to bring together the theory of relativity and quantum physics is string theory. According to it, elementary particles are no longer particles but one-dimensional strings of energy that can also form matter. Based on this, an infinite number of universes can exist. This model is called multiverse theory (M-theory). If the universe is already infinite, the multiverse has to be even more infinite. We are unable to imagine this. It is theoretically possible that our universe exists not only beside but also within other universes—like a soap bubble within another. Or it might be that other universes are located within our own, and that parallel worlds exist. The whole thing—or the truth, we just don’t kno
w—would unfold (according to the M-theory) in an eleven-dimensional space.5

  * * *

  Biology and medicine are concerned with matter and the nature of all living things. Their models of objective truths are still based on atoms and molecules. With them one can explain many so-called metabolic processes which relate to what is substantial, material, tangible inside us. But the heart poses riddles here, too, especially concerning the cells from which it is made. The growth behavior of these cardinal stem cells generates different results in different laboratories. The idea of uniting such discrepant findings in a theory, a string theory for heart cells—analogous to the string theory for the universe—was introduced in 2015 in Circulation Research, a renowned scientific heart journal.6

  Molecular biology and genetics are viewed as the postmodern ultima ratio of medical research. This is enormously complicated, and our human minds would hardly be able to grasp the complexity of a quantum-physical consideration of the human organism and its connections with everything that exists—even though such an account could possibly get close to reality. Hans-Peter Dürr put it concisely in one of his lectures: “The new reality is completely different from what we imagined it to be.”7

  The clock of life

  Even though we are not material in our innermost being, the elementary particles our body is made up of join to form the material substances that constitute our body. The body is that which we are, that which breathes, speaks, feels, thinks, and loves. Similar to us humans, Earth, too, consists in its innermost regions of glowing energy which at the surface becomes a living organ of earth, fire, water, and air. Bacteria and plants live on it and work the magic of using the light quanta of sunlight to put biological matter and oxygen into the air. This process is called photosynthesis; many of us learned about it at school. Today we know that both photosynthesis and the transformation of sun energy into the salad we eat work according to quantum mechanics. Like our Earth, every red blood cell has inside it a core of iron, only it is no longer glowing. This single iron atom binds oxygen, and then the blood in our lungs changes its color from dark red to light-red, and that means life. As far as we know, Earth is the only place in the universe where such things are happening. However, we do not know where exactly it is located. In a space that is infinite in all directions, we cannot calculate our absolute position. We only know the distance to our neighboring planets and the orbits on which these planets move. What we call time came about in the same way. The Earth revolves around itself, the Moon revolves around the Earth, and both together revolve around the Sun. The side of the Earth that faces the Sun changes with the revolution. If you stand in one spot on the Earth, there is a moment when the sun rises and one when it sets in the evening. We call this phenomenon—the sum of the moments (one could also say heartbeats) between sunrise and sunset, the alternation of light and darkness—the “day.” Scholars of astronomy and physics broke it down into units of time. Time, however, is not an existing, measurable quality like amperage, magnetism, gravity, or temperature. Its existence is therefore deemed an illusion by many physicists and philosophers. When we observe how things change, we say that it is happening within a certain time. In physics, time was introduced as a quality that served to describe the duration, speed, and sequence of events. For example: it becomes day and then night, a flower blooms and withers, we are born and die. However, day and night are relative concepts of time and a question of location. When I was in New Zealand, my son Josef was having breakfast when I went to bed. It became morning for him when evening was approaching for me.

  * * *

  What do we learn from this? We do not know our absolute coordinates within the universe. We are located somewhere in infinity. Our navigation device shows us merely the neighboring stars and galaxies. In other words: we do not know where we are, or what time it is.

  But you can put your hand on your heart and feel your heartbeat and your breath. The heart is beating its lifelong rhythm of the moment. You can feel it with every heartbeat: now … now … now. Every now is the present. Your present. The heartbeat is the clock of life, your clock of the universe, from moment to moment. You can only experience the present. The past is past, and the future not yet here. You cannot deliberately stop this clock. You can only calm down, breathe, and let your heartbeat and thereby your life become slower, thus creating your very own experience of relativity.

  * * *

  The universe contracts and expands, there is inhalation and exhalation, day and night, life and death. Every heartbeat is a process of creation and creates life immediately. Every time the heart relaxes, it fills with blood, and every time it contracts this blood is pumped through the body. This is a vital process, and if it is interrupted for only a few minutes, biological death will be the consequence.

  Then our heart and our time will stand still.

  The only real time is the heartbeat. When my ba-boom ceases, my time has elapsed, at least for me as an organic being.

  HEART CONSCIOUSNESS

  Some people are able to feel their heartbeat consciously and even count it precisely inside themselves. Scientists have a keen interest in them, because the heart rate is a measurable, verifiable number, not an intangible feeling. From studying those who can intimately feel their heart rate, researchers hope to gain new insights about the consciousness of the heart—and they report interesting findings. In one study, healthy students were shown different movie scenes. Good “heartbeat counters” felt emotions such as fear and anger (but also joy) considerably more intensely than those who were less well able to feel their heartbeat.1

  But the conscious perception of our heart intensifies not only our emotions but also our empathy with others. Students who were more able to feel the frequency of their heartbeat could also more accurately distinguish if faces in pictures were happy or sad.2 A study published in 2017 describes that those who can feel their heartbeat more accurately behave less selfishly in money affairs and don’t only consider their own interests.3 Even though the financial generosity was only measured in a game, the data shows that the good heartbeat counters display heightened sensitivity toward themselves and others. On the other hand, the sensitive heart perceivers also become stressed more easily. In exam situations they performed worse and were plagued by negative emotions.

  Should you not feel your heartbeat at the moment, you have no reason to be alarmed. You just belong to the majority (65 percent) of people who do not feel their heartbeat when at rest, and I assume you are reading in a relaxed state, not while you are jogging. Numerous factors can play a role in heart perception when one is at rest; it depends on one’s physique as well. A common mechanism of heart perception is the beating of the heart against the left inside of the chest. This so-called apex beat is felt more frequently by slim people, men, and athletes with large hearts. The pulsing of our arteries inside us—in the head, stomach, or throat—are other possible ways through which we can perceive our heart’s rhythm. However, some people manage to do it just like that, without any pulsation, merely via nerve signals or because they have a very pronounced sense of their bodies.4 I don’t believe that this perception makes them better people. But I recognize in the work of current consciousness research an increasing interest in the heart as a place where more may be found than was so far assumed.

  Panic because of the pump

  Not all people are glad about being able to feel their heartbeat. Many suffer when they frequently feel their heart intensely, because it worries them a great deal. Especially when they not only strongly feel the rhythm of their heart in general, but sometimes feel it to be irregular and connected with pain, chest tightness, or shortness of breath. Often the diagnostic apparatuses will not show any abnormal results. If the panic because of the pump continues, doctors speak of cardiophobia attacks or cardiac neurosis. The causes are often deeply hidden. As a surgeon I know that wounds heal better when they are looked after. Daily dressing changes and wound examinations are compulsory in every s
urgery department. Wounds of the soul, too, have to be seen in order to heal. If we continuously ignore them, the heart will make itself felt at some stage.

  * * *

  I find that the voice of the heart is really loud in our childhood. It knows what makes us happy, it knows what makes us sad, it knows what makes us strong. The hearts of young people are still very sensitive and malleable. This voice becomes quieter the more we think, the more we are educated and shaped, the more our heart is hurt. Then one day some of us do not hear the voice at all anymore. The mere memory of the injuries to our heart continues to hurt a lot, and many of us therefore do not want to feel their hearts anymore—after all, feeling always means feeling pain, doesn’t it? Thus, they become ever more insensitive in matters of the heart. I have met more than a few patients who were even ashamed of the injuries to their heart and did not want to disclose them under any circumstances. Over the years they lose access to themselves, and the formerly protective armor becomes hard and tight and rigid. But the voice of the heart is still there. It lives as long as we do. However, if it is continuously ignored, our heart will one day start to beat and race in a way that will greatly worry us. And we become afraid because we have long forgotten the cause. The time of injury is not always as recent as with Kordula, whose husband cheated on her. Sedatives and beta blockers are no long-term solution, but make us heart-deaf. It is better to lend an ear to this voice finally and start at the heart to retrace the path to the root of the wound. This is best done in the company of an experienced doctor who not only knows the soul very well but also the heart. Such patients need courage to engage with their almost-forgotten heart, trust to follow its voice, and finally compassion and love for themselves.