The Heart’s Code

(Broadway Books)

By Paul Pearsall

Book Summary By Clayton Montez

Some doctors may no longer ask, “How do you feel?” when checking your health. Instead, the question “How do you make others feel?” reveals more about you. Recent studies have shown that patients’ responses to self-reports of well-being are one-sided and often wrong because they listen more to their brains than to their hearts. One Psychoneuroimmunologist found that a smart heart helped him and many others recover from chronic illness.

“Using only the words from my brain”, says Paul Pearsall, “I am not able to completely tell you how, but your heart will understand how my heart and other hearts saved my life.”

Diagnosed with Stage IV lymphoma and close to dying after years of illness, chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, and near suffocation, Pearsall credits the wisdom of his heart for his new lease on life. He explains in his book, “The Heart’s Code” (Broadway, 1998), that the heart holds unlimited potential for healthy living beyond its perfunctory role as a pump. “It thinks, remembers, communicates with other hearts, helps regulate immunity and contains stored information that continually pulses through the body.”

Heart’s Code illustrates revolutionary discoveries about the heart’s role in the scope of human healing and consciousness and that an application of the heart’s code will lead to better health, happiness and self-knowledge.

For centuries a brain-run world dismissed the heart as a mere pump to flush the body with oxygenated blood. The brain’s primary mission was to keep us alive and make our lives as physically pleasurable as possible. But in the business of staying alive, Pearsall claims that the brain abuses its own life support system by depriving the heart of its contribution toward a humanely healthier lifestyle.

Heart’s Code summarizes the cardio-energetic portrait of the heart as:

1) It is the most powerful organ – the largest generator of electro-magnetic energy in our body. It produces, sends, and receives a broad spectrum of other types and frequencies of energy occurring over time.

2) It responds directly to the environment. It reacts to electro-magnetic energy outside of its body. It also reacts neurohormonally to the outside world, not only in response to the brain, but sometimes without the brain’s awareness.

3) The heart is a conductor of the energy of the body’s cells. The subtle form of energy emitted, conducted, and received by the heart is sufficient to cause significant changes in the cells of the body that may be described as info-energetic cellular memories.

4) The heart is dynamic; an open, fluctuating, interactive system.

5) The heart is the body’s primary organizing force. It works in coordination with the brain but is not directed by it. It serves its natural role as the major organizer, integrator, and balancer of the body’s vital energy. It coordinates our cell’s memories towards what it means to be healthy.

6) The heart resonates with information-containing energy. Each heartbeat sends information that affects the “matter” within and outside of us. Energy going into matter is the information that becomes memory. No matter how subtle and as yet immeasurable memory exists within matter in the form of energy, the heart may be able to communicate that memory.

7) The heart is the body systems core. Its central location and extensive connection makes its energy transmission highly influential for our body and all of the bodies around us. The heart is continually pumping energy and information to, from, and within every cell in our body.

8) The heart “speaks” and sends information. Its wisdom differs from the rational brain for living, loving, working and healing and its memories come through more clearly by quiet reflection.

9) All hearts exchange information with other hearts and brains. When one heart sends energy to another, the two hearts build upon a reciprocating vibration that continues infinitely, in Pearsall’s words, “Continues to create the info-energetic vibrations that become our collective soul.”

10) Transplanted hearts come with their own info-energetic cellular memories. Heart transplant recipients literally experience a “change of heart” when their new heart brings with it subtle personality and memories of the heart’s donor.

Pearsall shows the wisdom and power of the heart’s energy in four different ways:

1) His recounts of personal and professional experiences about how the heart influences our daily lives; 2) The lessons of indigenous people who accept the heart’s role as part of everyday life; 3) The stories of heart transplant people who provide unique insights into the transformative power of heart energy; and, 4) Scientific theories that demonstrate the quantum notion that energy and information are one and the same and show a corresponding application to energy cardiology and cardio-energetics.

One afternoon while being drenched with lethal radiation for cancer treatment, a staff nurse commented to Pearsall about his stoic struggle for survival, “You’re breaking my heart. You’re smiling and yet you’re crying such big tears. What’s wrong?” Seeing that Pearsall was too weak to explain, she smiled, gently tapped her chest, tears came to her eyes, and she said, “It’s OK. I understand. I felt it right here. You don’t have to say a word.”

Throughout the daily experiences of chronic pain borne by him and other patients undergoing chemotherapy, Pearsall explored the possibility of an unknown and immeasurable force that gave hope and relief from suffering – a “magical, invisible force that seems to offer unlimited strength and healing and transcends all other forms of energy.” The force that Pearsall calls “L” energy recognizes the heart as the seat of the soul and the animating principle or actuating cause of life.

“L” energy lies at the”heart” of quantum physics. Scientists describe this energy as a non-local phenomenon, meaning that it exists not just in one place at one time but every where all the time. Quantum studies also show that objects on the opposite sides of the universe seem energetically connected with one another. A change in one particle instantaneously attracts its info-energy sharing partner. The tenets of “L” energy affirms that within the minuscule quantum world where our bodies are a part, there are no barriers, time is relative, that mass, energy, and information are one and the same, and that objects once connected forever retain the life-energetic memory of that connection.

Quantum physics posits that we are all part of a timeless connection without limit. We are part of an energetic intelligence field of which all that is or has ever been or will be is forever a part.

To illustrate a practical application of “L” energy, Pearsall cites the results of a 1993 experiment by the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM):

White blood cells (leukocytes) scraped from the mouth of a volunteer were centrifuged and placed in a test tube. A probe from a recording polygraph – a lie (or emotion) detector – was inserted in the tube. The donor of the cheek cells was seated in a room separated from his donated cells and shown a television program with many violent scenes. When the volunteer watched scenes of fighting and killing, the probe from the polygraph detected extreme excitation in the mouth cells even though they were in a room down the hall.

Subsequent reports of this experiment with donors and their cells separated up to fifty miles and up to two days later showed the same results. The donated cells remained energetically and non-locally connected with their donor and seemed to “remember” where they came from.

From the above studies, Pearsall reasons that what we call “paranormal” events are “normal”. However, our brains short-circuit this intuitive connection with pragmatic, rational, and often self-centered interpretation of events that often undermine the cardio-sensitive approach to a vitally energetic connection to life.

The existence of “L” energy is further supported by demonstrations from the Princeton Engineering Aeronautics Research at Princeton University (PEAR). Experiments where human intervention would influence the output of machines showed statistically significant results when “operators” consciously altered the output of randomly generated numbers. PEAR also showed that observers could accurately describe remote scenes that they had never been to or seen themselves.

One of the most significant discoveries from the PEAR studies underscores the cumulative effects that two persons in a loving bond have on an experiment. They do not simply combine what the PEAR researchers call “individual subtle energy signatures.” Instead, there is a “coupled” subtle energy effect that is a unique blend of each co-operator’s own energy signature. The strongest energy connection effects were achieved by male/female pairs who reported that they were “bonded”, connected heart-to-heart in a love bond.

These experiments in Pearsall’s opinion raise more questions than answers. Yet, the tenets of quantum science, namely, the principles of complementarity (meaning the action in one system can affect the actions of another system on a quantum energetic level, free of the limits of time and space) and wave mechanical resonance (matter and energy exchanging manifestations as vibrating waves and particles) may possibly explain the workings of info-energy within human consciousness.

Looking at the heart in the context of “L” energy, Pearsall concludes that we should not think of cellular memories as the only source for what makes the heart think. Rather, a closer look at the way the heart functions offers another perspective for looking at life, perhaps more wholesomely than the traditional dependency on brain power.

When we are able to distinguish the brain’s propensity as a reactive health maintenance system from the heart’s contemplative, feeling system, we may recognize which part of our lives reflect the objectives of each system. Pearsall draws upon the parable of Pinocchio to illustrate the contrast between the seat of reason (brain) with the center of compassion (heart). The brain built the physical world that sustains us. However, like Pinocchio, Pearsall writes, “it seemed to be the energy of my heart that gave my spirit and soul back and made me human again.”

Consider the following commonplace scenarios that show which code of thinking predominates. In one hypothetical setting a grandmother is remembered by her grandson: “My grandmother is ninety-two-years-old, but whenever I’m around her, I feel younger, happier, and more energetic. Nothing gets going when the family gets together until grandma comes. When she arrives, the family lightens up right away.”

On the other hand, the wife of a forty-seven-year-old accountant describes a different kind of energy for her husband. “He’s always angry and thinks he has to control everything, and when he can’t, he just brings all of us down. Even the dog can feel him coming and hides.”

Pearsall suggests that we ask ourselves what type of energy directs our lives and attune our perceptions accordingly. One simple way is to answer the questions on a teaching tool he devised to help detect the disparate influences between the two types of energies. Called the “Heart Energy Amplitude Recognition Test” (HEART), Pearsall hopes that we will recognize the nature of the heart’s energy and help our brain sense its distress and pain.

Based on a numeric scoring scale from 0 to 5, each of the twenty-five questions will ask the participant to reflect upon the degree of impatience, level of physical or mental energy, attitude, and so on. Questions such as, “Do you eat quickly?”, or “Do you react emotionally, defensively, and negatively to criticism?” may guide you to realize whether your heart energy is in healthy balance or you are harming your body and other people’s bodies and hearts.

Pearsall’s sample of 1,000 heart patients that took the above test averaged a total score of 66. A score of 11 or above indicates “very agitated energy.” A score of 21 is considered toxic. By contrast, a 200 person sample of Polynesians averaged a score of 8 – slightly above “balanced energy” and at the low end of “overly agitated energy.” Pearsall attributes the lower score attained by the Polynesians to their oceanic way of life and a close attraction with the energy of nature, a reliance on ancient healing energy models, a high degree of emphasis on family, and a view of the heart and not the brain as the center of a very relaxed state of consciousness.

The higher test scores reflect what Pearsall calls the five brain fallacies. The higher the score on HEART, the more the brain/body lethal covenant is intact and the less the heart’s energy is available to cool a hot-headed brain that is busily beating up on its own body.

The first brain fallacy: The outside world is working against us. The brain sees the world as a problem to be dealt with and the high scores show the brain’s perception that we are victims of a cruel, often unfair world. “In the ultimate mental paradox”, Pearsall writes, “the brain often abuses and exploits its own heart to the point that it kills itself by trying so hard to save its own life. In a form of a cerebral-coronary suicide pact in which the heart is an innocent bystander, the brain becomes its own executioner.”

The second brain fallacy: Victimization. The brain is a chronic critic. It seeks justice for its own gratification. “Unfair”, “why you”, “why not me”, and “how could you” are its reflex responses.

The third brain fallacy: Hard work always pays off. In order to avoid being victimized, the brain maneuvers to take advantage of others and sacrifices values that the heart strives for to stay alive. It works to win – no matter that every victory requires another person’s loss.

Whereas traditional self-help books are actually self-destructive, Pearsall recommends the following creeds:

1) Don’t allow your brain to physically harm your body by exposing it to constant stress and straining toward self-fulfillment.

2) Don’t allow your brain to exploit your heart for selfish purposes.

3) Don’t allow your brain’s selfishness distance you from the hearts of others.

4) Don’t allow your brain to be so busily and reactively consumed with trying to stay alive that it prevents your heart from participating in your life’s goals.

The fourth brain fallacy: I can change people. The brain thinks itself a very powerful and clever controller of other brains to follow its will. It responds angrily to resistance.

The fifth brain fallacy: Frustration means aggression. For the impatient brain, frustration leads to anger. The challenge for self-control often leads to displaced aggression due to the brain’s refusal to cooperate with the circumstances that led to the frustration.

According to Pearsall’s discoveries, the number of years of education a person has is more important in determining risk of heart disease than all the other factors combined. Higher educated people tend to be more informed about health issues and how social forces affect their lives. By learning to tap into their heart’s code, they may be able to prolong their own lives as well as those of others. Pearsall advises that the most important health warning of all is to “have a heart.”

Cardio-energetics posits that the heart and not the brain is where our most basic thoughts feelings, fears, and dreams are gently and profoundly mediated. Accordingly, Neurocardiologists have recently discovered that the network of neuron transmitters between the heart and the brain form a stronger neuro-chemical and electro-chemical communication link beyond the purely neurological connections known to exist.

The heart seems to exert at least as much control over the brain as the brain exerts over the heart. The heart also produces a hormone called Atrial Naturetic Factor (ANF) that directly affects the immune system, the hypothalamus, and the pineal gland. ANF also influences the thalamus and pituitary gland, an important center of our memory, learning and emotions.

In Pearsall’s mind, the tone and rhythm of every heartbeat oscillates with information from the soul for the entire body. “If the heart thinks, feels, and communicates, and if we can tap into its code and recover its wisdom and the memories it helps to store within our cells, we have an entirely new way to view health and healing”, says Pearsall.

Perhaps the most profound illustration of the mysteries of the heart code is how heart transplant patients adopt familiar lifestyle characteristics of the heart’s previous owner. Pearsall explains that the donor’s cellular memories are intrinsic to the “L” energy at the seat of the heart. The donor heart sends its life-formed energy into the new body and consequently infuses the cellular memories of its new owner with those of its former owner.

Heart transplant patients admit that they either dreamed of the experiences had by the donor or they adopted new unexplainable lifestyle changes. Both the dreams and the new habits would be later verified by friends and relatives as behaviors or experiences they knew belonged to the original host.

Pearsall recounts the following examples of the energy connection experienced by transplant patients. In each case the reports by the patients could be confirmed by someone connected to the deceased donor.

1) One forty-one-year-old male who received his heart from a nineteen-year-old girl struck by a train testified, “When I wake up I feel as if I had been struck by lightening. There is new energy in me. I feel like nineteen again.”

His wife adds, “He used to struggle to breathe and had no stamina, but now he’s like a teenager. The transplant changed him completely. He keeps talking about power and energy all the time. He said he had several dreams that he is driving a truck or is the engineer of a large steam engine. He is sure that his donor was driving a big truck that hit a bigger truck.”

2) A thirty-six-year-old female heart and lung transplant recipient received the heart and lungs of a twenty-two-old girl who was killed while running across the street to show her fiancé a picture of her new wedding dress. She remarks, “Almost every night, I have this dream about her. I know she was young and pretty and very happy. I’ve always been sort of a down type of person yet, somehow, I have this new happiness in me I never experienced before. It feels like, no matter how down I get, a little joy keeps bubbling inside me.”

“The one thing about her that we noticed right away was that she smiles a lot more,” says the woman’s sister. “She was always a frowner, but now she smiles and laughs even when we don’t expect it. She was lucky and seemed to get a very warm heart.”

3) “What I have is a sex kitten,” remarks the husband of his thirty-five-old wife who received her heart from a twenty-four-year-old prostitute killed in a stabbing. “Not that I’m complaining mind you, but when we have sex, it is different. She uses words I never heard her use before, but it kind of turns me on, so who’s complaining? Our worst argument came a few months after her transplant and well before she knew who her donor was. I was joking and at a passionate moment said that she must have gotten the heart of a whore. She didn’t talk to me for weeks.”

“I was never all that interested in sex,” his wife adds. “Sex was not a big part of our life. Before my surgery I hated x-rated videos. Now I love them and even strip for my husband when I’m in the mood. I found out later that my donor was a young college girl who worked as a topless dancer and in an out-call service. I think I got her sexual drive, and my husband agrees. He says I’m not the woman he married, but he wants to marry me again.”

4) The daughter of a fifty-two-year-old male transplant recipient laments, “It is really embarrassing sometimes. When my friends come over they ask if my dad is going through his second childhood. He’s addicted to loud music and my mom says the little boy in him is coming out.”

The woman’s father received his heart from a seventeen-year-old victim of a hit-and-run accident. He remarks, “I loved quiet classical music before my new heart. Now, I put on earphones, crank up the stereo, and play loud rock-and roll music. I love my wife, but I keep fantasizing about teenage girls. My daughter says I have regressed since my new heart and that I act like a sixteen-year-old.”

Although these stories seem to show a common thread between the heart donor and the recipient through shared memories transmitted by the heart’s “L” energy, Pearsall considers a more profound possibility. He points to recent discoveries by cardiologists that drugs are often a futile and wasted effort when trying to force the body’s immune system into accepting the donor organ. One doctor claims, “The mystery was not about the body’s rejection, and more about the intermingling of cells and the achievement of a peaceful truce between the patient and the donated organ.” Pearsall concludes that future transplant paradigms must assume that the infusion of the heart into a new home is more than a biochemical process. The new cardiology point of view is that the heart’s energy is the center for the entire harmonious organ concert.

The “L” energy in the heart code is not necessarily limited to the scope of a cellular structure that stores memories. Since the subtle energy mediated by the heart is considered non-local and infinite, each one of us is a force within a force, contributing our energy to a quantum energy field without limits.

Accordingly, Pearsall considers the heart code to go beyond life-giving energy. It may likely store memories that represent all of the experiences of the transpersonal mind, or what some refer to as the Akasha – that is, a collective intelligence belonging to other minds in the present existence as well as ancestrally. “Within our cells may linger the memories of the info-energy of the Big Bang. Just as the sun’s gravitation harnesses the planets around it, so the heart is the center of the body’s solar-system huddling our cells together for a brief cosmic moment before we merge again with quantum heaven – the non-local infinite energy field that is everything always.”

To reiterate Pearsall’s tenets in Heart’s Code, energy and information is ubiquitous in nature and inseparably tied to the existence of all objects, people and systems. We not only store words, images and events in our cellular memories, but also store the information contained in the energy of every person, place or thing. Our hearts’ “L” energy is thus considered by Pearsall the primary cellular memory maker and retriever of the sensations and feelings of all events and persons that has been historically connected to it.

Therefore, Pearsall encourages us to take advantage of the benefits of “L” energy by tuning in to the heart’s code to learn of our soul’s reason for, and needs within, its physical manifestation.

Accordingly, we ought to attend closely to the message of the heart’s code as if it were the very revelation of our life’s purpose. By becoming more cardiosensitive we are able to ‘tune in” to our collective cellular memory program – what Jung refers to as the collective unconscious – and apply information about the soul coming from the energy of the heart as a way of “being” more than a way of “doing.”

One way of connecting to the heart is through cardio-contemplation. It is a practice similar to meditation, but the focus is more on the resonating energy of the heart rather than the brain induced techniques for altered states of consciousness. Cardio-contemplation differs from meditation in three distinct ways: 1) It is more energetically rhythmic than mentally focused and static; 2) It involves less visualization and is more participatory; and, 3) Attunement with info-energetic sensations come from the heart rather than from a brain generated word, sound, breath or image.

The following are suggested steps in the cardio-energetic practice to tune in to the heart’s code:

1) Be still. Slow down, sit down, and quiet down.

2) Lighten up. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

3) Shut up. Still the brain chatter.

4) Resonate. Listen for the profound connection with the Creator.

5) Feel. Sharpen senses to connect with the environment.

6) Learn. Listen and remember what your heart is telling you about living, loving, and working.

7) Connect. Send your lessons and balanced “L” energy out to the world and become a more complete part and healer of the world.

Through cardio-contemplation we use “L” energy more appreciably when we realize that we are not just influenced by that energy but part of it. Having opened our hearts and being receptive to its cellular memories energy pours from our hearts to help us “be”, and energy from the non-local info-energy in which we are immersed will guide and nurture us into loving heart-to-heart bonds. If we can accept that God or the Absolute manifests as a divine, non-local, subtle energy that is everywhere and in everything, we may believe that the heart serves as a magnet attracting that energy.

Collaborative contemplation opens the heart to greater possibilities. It creates what Pearsall calls, “corporate prayer.” When individuals within a group combine their cardio-coherent energy, it becomes magnified in a form of divine “L” energy laser. Many examples can be found in rituals. A family may exemplify the presence of “L” energy when sharing a heart-to-heart connection during eating, playing or even arguing. Pearsall writes, “Through ritual we fall into a state of mutual cardiac coherence, a form of unstated, regular group prayer that helps all those taking part to recover their cell memories of their loving connection not only with those present but with ancestors whose pictures and stories may be part of the ritual.”

Cardio sensitivity and connecting heart-to-heart requires invitation instead of demand, being receptive instead of condescending, and being accepting and welcoming instead of manipulative. Listening to our hearts reminds us why we are, and energy from the omni-present, non-local info-energy field guides and nurtures us into binding love.

Oftentimes making a heart connection stirs notions of love. The process may be described somewhat matter-of-factly as a connection of one’s own heart falling into energetic synchronization with another heart. Pearsall eloquently compares the info-energetic explanation of enduring love with Matthew Fox’s reflection upon the heart’s spiritual significance through connection, nurture, and integration: “Loving seems like a sacred occurrence where two souls merge freed of obstacles to their energetic connection established by their selfishly defensive brains.”

Furthermore, whenever we “make love” we create a cardio-energetic power surge by exchanging large amounts of “L” energy with our partner. The sex act becomes an info-energetic transplantation between the two lovers, each serving as both donor and recipient of “L” energy. From the perspective that such an entanglement is a non-local energetic event that is permanently bound and forever connected to our cellular memories, there is no such thing as “casual sex.” Pearsall warns, “If we wish to avoid energetic commitment, no sex is “safe” sex.

Sometimes love seems to escape us in “heartbreaking” moments. Pearsall claims that the most recent ending to a relationship triggers our cellular memories to recycle through the ending of every relationship we ever experienced. Or, we may experience the pain of an illusory separation, since all our heart wants is to connect with others.

Cardio-energetics explains heartbreak as a spiritual shock. It is the direct experience of the negative aspects of love’s energy. Pearsall equates the force of love with the polar opposites of a magnet. When we experience the wrong polarities, we feel repelled. Once we grasp the cardio-energetic concepts of loving as an info-energetic spiritual event rather than romantic brain flatulence we learn that our lover’s energy is forever with us as a sacred cellular memory. “The very good news,” says Pearsall, “is that all endings, including death, are the brain’s illusions. The heart sees this as only a starting point of its info-energetic transition and transformation. Cellular imprints within us are not erased. By tapping into the heart’s energy and wisdom we can be energetically “with” our lover no matter where she or he may be.

Pearsall’s personal and professional experiences in Heart’s Code teaches us that life’s potentially greatest and healthy pleasures, e.g., a loving, personal connection, underscores the heart-to-heart connection as the ultimate health maintenance system.

Whereas the brain’s perceptual nuances do not necessarily contradict the goals of the heart, Pearsall emphasizes that the heart is an equal partner in the struggle for a balanced life mentally, physically, and spiritually. It is incumbent upon us to recognize their strengths as well as apparent weaknesses in order for us to consciously maximize the benefits of both. He illustrates their opposing, yet complimentary characteristics in the following summary:

Both the brain and heart are essential to incite the three components of loving – passion, commitment, and intimacy. Passion is primarily a neurochemical bodily reflex incited by feelings of romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation. The brain must reflect on it and the heart must give it meaning; or else, the relationship is doomed. Commitment is the rational decision to stay with a partner. The brain seeks companionship in its struggles through life. However, without the heart’s energetic connection, commitment alone leads to emptiness and what cardio-energetics calls an “energy-less” love. The final love component, intimacy, deals with closeness and bonding. This is the heart’s domain – to coordinate our love connection with others. Failing this connection, we are left with infatuation, emptiness, and unrealistic or romantic love.

Pearsall’s valuable insights show us that our historic dependency upon logical and rational thinking through brainpower has short-circuited our capacity to listen to another, equally valuable and perhaps life-extending memory system within our bodies. Our hearts are reputed to be the “spiritual recording chamber” that shapes the memories and influences immune systems within a greater global network of hearts in the outside world. At the seat of the heart lies the “L” energy, a code following the oldest wisdom of ancestral medicine. From this point of view, life is not a way of avoiding death, but a melding within the imperishable energy of all systems, and of all feelings both good and bad.

When we tune into the heart’s code, Pearsall says the energy of our cellular memories, glad and sad, old and new, will foster a healing hardiness. The way of a healing heart depends upon our capacity to give love. It is not so much as feeling loved. Rather, the cardio-energetic view of “giving love to others first” is the way to a physically and emotionally healthy self.

Ultimately, healing is a matter of the heart, not the head. Pearsall leaves us with this thought from his childhood: “When my grandfather died and we were all crying, I asked my mother if everyone had to get old. She said, ‘The body gets old, but never your mind. Even if the brain seems to fail and the body gets weak, the heart stays strong and its energy is forever. In the central place of every heart, there is a recording and sending chamber; so long as you see to it that your heart keeps sending loving signals to other hearts even when you are sad, your heart will get loving signals back. If what you sent was beautiful, cheerful, hopeful, and caring, that is what your heart will eventually receive, no matter what happens to your brain or your body, who you are and have been to others will make you forever young at heart’.”

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