Since ancient times the human heart has been called the sanctuary of love. By this was not meant the seat of passing emotions, but a heart prepared for a higher life force, a life possibility that truly deserves the name love.

Everything in this causal nature that falls below this higher norm is not love, but desire, self-centeredness, and longing colored by the ego. What we call “love” in ordinary life is often a mixture of attachment, need, and projection. The love we speak of here, the love that is worthy of the name, cannot be found in this world.

This Love belongs to a higher order. It belongs to True Life, to the New Life. It is Spirit, it is God.

Therefore, Pymander in the Corpus Hermeticum says:
“Direct now your heart toward the Light,
and know it.”

The Battle in the Natural Heart

The natural-born human heart is no longer a sanctuary of love. Its state is shaped by karmic influences and sets the course of our life-path. Our hearts are restless, impure, often a battlefield of conflicting feelings. Real love cannot flourish there.

As long as the heart remains fixed on this world, it remains bound to the world of opposites, with its cycles of growth, blossoming, and decay.

So the question comes to each of us:

Is the goal of our life mainly to preserve our existence here? Is it our goal to cling to the temporary? Or do we seek something that surpasses it? Something that has eternal value?

If the latter is true, then the heart of the spiritual seeker can change. It can be transformed from a heart bound to the pendulum of dialectics into a heart open to Gnosis.

A heart like this can be cleansed, stilled, and made receptive. If that happens then the heart becomes transparent to the radiance of the spirit spark at the center of the microcosm. Through this opening, a new soul-breathing begins.

The Natural Soul

The soul can be understood as the electromagnetic life-stream of the human being, the principle of animation and inner vitality. 

The natural soul is a body of subtle matter, composed of astral and etheric forces. These forces permeate the blood, the endocrine system, the nervous system, the spinal fire, the consciousness and the subconscious.

The natural soul expresses itself in thinking, feeling, willing, and in action. How we react to outer impressions depends on our needs, our problems, and what we regard as the purpose of our lives.

Here we can ask again: is our consciousness directed entirely toward the natural, or is there in us an openness to the eternal?

The New Soul

Goethe expressed this human dilemma in his Faust:

“Alas, two souls dwell within my breast. One longs to separate from the other.”

Goethe points here precisely to the inner duality. One soul belongs to the earth and its cycles, the other is the new soul, belonging to the divine world.

The new soul can only develop out of the spirit-spark in the heart. It waits for the moment when the personality is sufficiently prepared to allow its growth.

The foundation for this new soul is the silent cry that penetrates into the heart that has become still and open. 

This new ensouling forms the bridge that reconnects the microcosm to the divine world. The new soul becomes the mediator, linking the mortal body to the eternal Spirit.

The Heart’s Breath

The heart breathes in two ways. On the physical level it breathes through the lungs. But there is also a more subtle breathing, through the sternum. The sternum acts as a magnetic gateway. Every longing radiates outward from it, and every response to those longings returns through it. These impulses affect the blood and set the vibrational tone of our entire being.

As long as the nervous system is still caught in the restless waves of ordinary emotions, real stillness, real soul-peace, will not unfold.

But when the heart becomes quiet, when its breath is harmonized with the Spirit, then a new possibility opens: a new soul, born of the eternal, can arise.

From the Depth of the Heart

Kahlil Gibran captured this mystery poetically:

“Out of my deeper heart a bird rose
and flew skyward.

Higher and higher did it rise,
yet larger and larger did it grow.

At first it was but like a swallow,
then a lark,
then an eagle,

then as vast as a spring cloud,
and then it filled the starry heavens.

Out of my heart a bird flew skyward.
And it waxed larger as it flew.
Yet it left not my heart.”

This is the image of the soul that takes flight from an opened heart. Though it soars toward infinity, it remains rooted in the sanctuary within, despite life’s storms.

The Hidden Key

An old story tells us how, when creation first began, the archangels asked where the key to heaven should be hidden, so that humanity would not prematurely return before completing its journey.

They thought of placing it in the depths of the ocean, or on the highest mountain, or at the edge of the universe. But God said: “They will find it there.”

Finally, Gabriel proposed:
“Let us hide it in the human heart.”

And God replied:
“Yes, let it be so. Humanity will search everywhere before they think to look within. But when they finally discover it there, they will indeed be ready to use it.”

The Heart as the Next Step

Thus, after understanding the vast ecology of the microcosm, we see where its true gateway lies. The heart is the door. The heart is the sanctuary.

When it is cleansed, stilled, and opened to the Spirit, the eternal key is found.

The natural soul gives way to the new soul, and the broken connection between microcosm and divine world is restored.

The heart, once battlefield, becomes sanctuary once more. And from that sanctuary, the soul can take wing, beginning the homeward journey to the eternal Sun Being.