THE INHERENT TRUTH

Every one of us often say the words mind and heart. I am often confused with these terms, why there are two terms. As far as my school books taught me humans have an organ, something called brain which is the root of thoughts or the thing that make you think. As I grow I learned that this thing (brain) is responsible for memorizing and draw inferences from my experiences and created the way to achieve my goals. For the first time when I heard the words “please don’t mind”, I was told that means do not put what had happened in your brain. So this way I figured out people are using the term mind instead of using brain which is a bit boring (scientific) to say.

I thought its fine to use the word mind for brain. The actual trouble comes in when I have to use the word heart. Again my school books taught me heart is another organ which pumps blood throughout the body and is the utmost essential thing for a human to be alive. At that age I thought its ok. But when I heard people saying stuff like, “Do you have a heart? How can you do that? How can you say that?” I was more than confused, and my mind tempted to say “yes, he/she has a heart and is alive otherwise he/she can’t stand before you.” But later I was told that heart in that sentence is not used for literal meaning. Heart is something about how you feel about (feelings) a thing or a person like pity, sorry, love, fond, guilt, anger.

I don’t completely understand what heart means but the above answer made some sense at that time. But still questions haunted me. I have a mind which is helping me since my childhood in doing my homework, answering questions in class, submitting assignments, playing, and solving puzzles. This way my mind works in some logical way, from the things I saw, I heard, I read, I was told about what ever based on my knowledge base my mind calculates in a logical way and gives me the result and brain is the organ responsible for this. I am clear with that part.

Now the second part, Heart, What it is? How it is acting? And first of all my questions where it is? Is there any other organ that hides in our body which is not discovered by the early scholars of anatomy? I am sure that the organ heart which pumps the blood is not the place for these feelings and all because it is so busy circulating blood 24X7 and I can’t even think of it as a multi tasking organ. Because for the slightest time gap (even the latest processor have a time lag in microseconds during switch when they multi task) it stopped pumping blood I bet one can’t be alive. My doubt about anatomy scholars faded as I browsed through the websites and textbooks. I was again left alone with all my questions pounding my head.

No one answered my questions. To be precise I didn’t cared to ask anyone. May be it’s my fear of being looked like a stupid stopped that thought. Indulged in to a deep thought I had a break through. My mind was trained to ask questions others when I don’t understand something. But why am I now overriding that habit. Then one more word came to my mind INSTINCT. So what the hell is with this instinct, my brain is not responsible for this. It always gives definite answers that are logical and practical. My instinct told me not to ask others. So what the hell is this instinct and where does it come from. One more question. Finally I added the word instinct also to my list of things a heart does. One more question added to the cart in search of a solution which seemed to reveal for eternity.

One day, I was lost in my thoughts at my desk and suddenly interrupted loud sounds from TV. It’s my granny watching the daily serials. I hate those screenings the most, but more confused of my world I wanted to give it a try. The scene is to kidnap a small girl (might be hero’s daughter), some fat dumb fellows are planning for that, one of the rowdy says something and the boss (may be the dumbest among the group) comes in and says use a bit more brain. Those words stuck my mind very hard. Use a bit more brain.

What? Is he not using his complete brain? Only a portion of it? This line started to ring some bells….

 When I was in my college during a motivational speech, the speaker said “Even Einstein used only a fractional part of his brain. Every one of you has a potential that you don’t even think …..” later part of the speech faded as my mind fixed its gaze on “Einstein used only a fractional part of his brain”

Finally pounding that line for a hundred more times, my mind concluded that the unused part of the brain is responsible/root for the feelings, instincts or whatever you say, I say the “Heart” things. Concluding this I happily stood up and gave my granny a smile filled with lots of pride and went to my room to put this conclusion on paper.

But my happiness didn’t last long. Before completely landing on my conclusion, I just wanted to browse through net, just if someone had any thought crossing my path. Then the blocker appeared in my way. If you got time go through article “10% of brain myth” in Wikipedia

“If 90% of the brain is normally unused, then damage to these areas should not impair performance. Instead, there is almost no area of the brain that can be damaged without loss of abilities. Even slight damage to small areas of the brain can have profound effects.”

The above lines are the first among the points to disprove the myth (there are some other points, you can browse through). I was completely satisfied with the above reasoning and on the other hand I am again lost in the quest of finding answers for the questions banging my head.

            The next day I started my day freshly with a hope of finding the answer and I just right my thoughts I got irrespective of their feasibility and logic.  Then I remember my physics lecturer saying “whenever you find a tough problem, just come from the basics, there is nothing called a tough problem”. Even though I follow this rule all the time I just thought of giving it a try for this problem. I went out and got a ninth standard text book in which for the first time I heard the word brain and its functions. While I was reading about reflexes, there is a line saying “reflexes are quick responses/actions that doesn’t require the normal/complete processing through brain”.  It’s something like that is not controlled by brain completely. I thought I was landing on the answer. But the next line again drowned my hopes was “few reflexes like your withdraw your hand when you touch something hot are preprogrammed and your experiences (things you are habituated to do, read, write) will create more reflexes. Even though reflexes seem like uncontrollable, doesn’t depend on brain for their occurrence, they do depend on brain (pre programmed)”. I understand what reflexes are, but still I can feel some emptiness saying that I am missing something.

Finally the bloody textbook I bought also dint come to my rescue. Every move I make towards my answers new questions are being stacked.

INSTINCTS, REFLEXES (UNCONTROLLABLE ACTONS) are the new mates.

 I wrote these words on a board and continue to stare at them all the night. Finally after one more sleepless night I found a theory that answers all my questions. Here I am sharing what I feel and I am pretty sure I may not be right. Don’t hesitate to denyJ.

           

            Heart is nothing but the uncontrollable part of brain.

            Mind is the controllable part of brain.

            Mind and Heart together makes the Brain.

            So Mind and Brain are not the same. (Thus the assumption we made at the start slips off)

By saying uncontrollable, I mean something that does not follow logic. When a cool breeze hits you, you may tend to close your eyes and relish the feel that is carried by the wind. So no one told you to close your eyes, even your brain didn’t say that. The root cause of this action can be attributed to Heart.

When you try to remember something, why do you close your eyes?

If I say don’t think about “some x y z” you will start thinking about that xyz. Why do you do that?

When you hear some good news why do you shout?

These are only few things that are not logical/uncontrollable ones. Let me put a familiar name for these things, “Emotions”. Love, sorrow, guilty, like, fondness, ego, instincts whatever the feelings…

The emotional tasks are taken care by Heart the uncontrollable part.

I don’t think I need to say much about the Mind things. Whatever action you don’t find logical or you don’t find a reason for occurrence you can safely put it to the basket of Heart.

            You may get a doubt when you look at the words controllable and uncontrollable. You may ask who the controller is. Well again the Mind is the controller of itself and the Heart is something that is not under control.

Even though I refer Heart as the uncontrollable, it is controllable.

Suppose, you like junk food. And you are also health conscious.

Here like is the Heart thing, and consciousness is the Mind thing. Your controllable part (Mind) has still some control over the Heart saying “Hey you idiot, if you eat that you will be fat like a pig”. If your Mind is strong enough in imposing its logic, it can override the feelings of heart.

So this way you can make the Mind a master and Heart as its slave. – Being Practical.

Just take the other way possible.

Here Heart says “Come on, even if I eat it you can do exercise. It’s better to eat and exercise than to starve.”

So here the Heart wins over Mind. – Being Emotional.

One thing to be observed is Heart is no fool. Bear in mind that still it is also part of brain comprising of neurons, which are the able to think. So in order to win over Mind it will produce some sort of logic as I said above.

So as I said above, brain is a mixture of both and everyone have one.

Then what differs from person to person is the fractional part of emotional and practical thinking.

If you are emotional, that is Heart is the master, you will end up in doing things you want, saying things you wanted to, choosing all according to your wish. Most of the times these kind of people end up in a mess. But still if you ask them why?, the answer may be My life my wish and they proud to say I felt what is LIFE in being my way.

            If you are practical making Mind as master, you will look for logic in everything, don’t go by instincts in some situations where you need to go by, you will be following rules made by mind. Mostly these people don’t find any troubles on their way. What one will say about these people is they are machines, they don’t ever felt what LIFE is.

To conclude it’s an individual’s choice to be emotional or to be practical or to be both.

As we all know most of us are in the last category.