The New Role for the Heart

By Branko Furst, M.D.

The long-established, mechanistic dogma that the heart is a pressure-propulsion pump impelling the blood, an inert fluid, is beginning to lose ground.

In a recent article published by an acclaimed peerreviewed physiology journal, convincing evidence was presented that movement of the blood is primary, that is, ‘autonomous,’ whereas the heart ‘senses’ and directs its distribution to the organs and thus plays only a secondary role.1 As pointed out by Rudolf Steiner, the blood can be seen as ‘materialized’ warmth, a physical expression of the will whose very nature is activity, i.e., movement. This has been confirmed by observations on embryonic circulation where the blood circulates before the functional integrity of the heart is achieved. Not only does the blood move autonomously in response to metabolic demands of the tissues, it also possesses greater vitality than any other organ. For example, banked blood can be transfused up to 6 weeks as compared to a kidney or the heart which need to be implanted into a recipient within 48 and 5 hours, respectively, after the procurement. In as much as the blood in warm-blooded animals is an expression of the group-soul of a given species, human blood circulating in the vertical, upright direction is the expression of an individualized human spirit.

Nature’s water cycle is an apt image of an ‘autonomous’ circulation. Water rises as vapor, condenses into drops, and rains to the ground. This transition of water between the two aggregate states is caused by taking up and releasing of warmth. This is a fundamental process that plays a key role in the maintenance and renewal of the earth’s life body also known as the biosphere. Similarly, the sum of body water (blood, lymph, interstitial and intracellular fluid) is subject to incessant movements effected by metabolic warmth. Collectively, the ‘water organism,’ estimated to be about 75% of the body weight, is the carrier of the etheric body. 2 Blood, however, is a ‘very special fluid’ 3 consisting of proteinrich plasma and of the red blood cells (RBCs) which occupy between 35-45% of its volume. With 4-6 million RBCs per cubic millimeter, i.e., micro-liter, the RBCs outnumber all other types of cells in the body! RBCs are filled with hemoglobin, an iron containing molecule which binds life-giving oxygen in the lung and delivers it to the tissues for the support of cellular respiration.

The venous blood, on the other hand, transports carbon dioxide, a toxic byproduct of tissue metabolism, to be exhaled by the lung. Not unlike water in outer nature, the blood alternates between the life-filled ‘light’ condition striving towards the periphery, and the carbon dioxide-laden ‘heavy’ state seeking the center.

Conventional physiology, lacking the concept of ‘ether body’, loosely ascribes fluid movements to convective flows caused by thermal and osmotic effects and invokes an array of driving mechanisms ranging from molecular pumps to macroscopic propulsion organs such as cardiac and skeletal muscle pumps. Curiously, the directional movement of lymph, enterohepatic circulation of bile salts, movement of the cerebrospinal fluid, and of numerous substances ‘just happens.’

The origin of this blind spot in physiology is rooted in physics and can be traced to Galileo, Newton, Descartes, and their followers, who, with the advent of an intellectual conception of the world, lost the feeling for the cosmic dimensions of earthly phenomena. By way of experimental method, they reduced the four-element Aristotelian physics,4 of which the ethers were still an integral part, to three aggregate states of matter, namely, solid, liquid, and air. Warmth, the fourth state which permeates and transforms them all and forms the bridge between the physical and the etheric, was simply ascribed to atomic motion. The first inception of atomistic thinking, the bedrock of the materialistic world conception, originated with Greek philosophers, most notably, with Democritus and Epicurus. It resurfaced with the advent of the consciousness soul age in the 15th century and continues to this day (of note, in an effort to expose this trend in science, Rudolf Steiner wrote his first scientific essay on the refutation of atomism at the age of 21!). The inevitable result of such reductionist approach to nature was that only what can be ‘measured and weighed’ i.e., the ‘centric’ forces, such as gravity, pressure, electricity, magnetism, etc., were accepted by physics and physiology, whereas the activities, that is, their etheric counterparts, remain unrecognized. When released and potentized from substances by homeopathic method these can be used as remedies in medicine and agriculture.

All nature kingdoms including humans are subject to centric forces as well as to forces of the periphery, namely, to warmth, light, chemical or tone, and life ether. The ethers reach us through the skin and the senses as well as through our breath. In the process they activate our own life or etheric forces. Spiritual scientific research shows that the sum of etheric forces in our organism manifests as negative pressure or suction 5 . The existence of negative pressure in the pleural cavity, at the center of blood vortices in the heart, and in tissue spaces virtually throughout the entire body, is well-recognized in physiology, however, the fact that collectively it constitutes a ‘force-field’ is not acknowledged. The existence of this field has now been proposed as the actual cause of blood’s movement from the periphery to the heart. Its primary field of action are the smallest vessels, the capillaries. Thus, as in any circular motion, two opposing sets of forces are needed to effect blood’s movement, namely, the centrifugal and centripetal. The former is active in the arterial pressure maintained by the left ventricle, and the latter manifests as suction.

Physiology Of Freedom

The assertion that the blood circulates is not quite accurate, rather, the blood moves in lemniscates and in that sense imitates planetary movements as described by Steiner in the Astronomy course 6 . The heart is placed at the crossing point between the greater (systemic) and the lesser (lung) circulations, and, like the sun, can be seen as a dynamic pivot point ceaselessly balancing the two. In that sense the heart and principal vital organs distributed above and below the heart represent a microcosmic replica of the inner solar system. 7

The statement that “the heart is not a pump” is similarly incorrect because a hydraulic ram, by which the physical principle of heart’s action can be demonstrated, is a type of pump driven by the momentum of flowing water. The heart is therefore ‘activated’ by the blood and its rhythmic movement is the expression of the macrocosmic soul/spirit forces that reach us by way of the senses and of the ‘earthly’ forces streaming to the heart from the movement-metabolic system.

It is known that the heart expends only about 1520% of its high energetic demands on contraction and expansion, with the balance (some 80%!) converted into warmth. To date, no rational explanation has been advanced as to why the heart should generate so much heat. It has even been suggested that the heart simply is an ‘inefficient pump.’ For comparison, the efficiency 8 of an internal combustion engine is about 30-35%, significantly higher than that of the heart. The answer to this physiological riddle can only be given by occult physiology, namely, that the warmth of the heart serves as a bridge 9 between the soul-spiritual and the etheric-physical constitution of the human being. It is the gateway by which sense impressions from outer and inner world, memories, judgments, and karmic impulses are joined with our I, made ‘our own.’

At long last, the heart has been freed of a task it does not perform, burdened upon it by mechanistic thinking, and which, at any rate, is physically impossible. How could anyone imagine that an organ the size of a fist could push blood, a relatively viscous fluid (2-3 times greater than water) through an estimated length of 50,000 km of blood vessels, mostly consisting of the capillaries (1011), many of them with diameters that are smaller than the red blood cells! It may still take some time before physiologists discover that in addition to the numerous functions the heart is known to perform, it is the organ of the soul and the agent of destiny, but at the very least, the door has been opened towards a future, more human physiology.

1 Furst B., José González-Alonso, “The heart, a secondary organ in the control of blood circulation”; open access at: https://doi.org/10.1113/EP091387

2 A simple proof that fluids possess ‘etheric forces’ is the phenomenon of buoyancy. The upthrust of an object immersed in a liquid equals to the weight of displaced liquid (Archimedes’principle).

3 Goethe’s Faust, Part I

4 Aristotle maintained that circular movement is a primary type of motion in the cosmos and in living nature. It is caused by the ‘prime mover’ in the former, and by ‘entelechy’ in the self-moving organisms and mediated by ‘inner warmth’ (Physics, Books 7 and 8).

5 See, for example, Lecture of April 24, 1920, CW 201.

6 Lecture of January 17, 1921; CW 323

7 Lecture of March 23, 1911; CW 128

8 ‘efficiency’ refers to the fraction of consumed energy that can be converted into physical work.

9 Lectures of Dec. 17-20, 1920, CW 202