I realised the other day how weird it is that JW's are taught that the heart and mind are seperate. By enlarge the mind is Satans world, its influence, your questions, doubts and unreliable thinking... all this takes place there, the heart is your seat of motivation, its what interacts with God when he opens it up, its where you talk to him from and where your good and bad motives arise (contradictory) but your heart cant be trusted (contradictory.)
Either way, the JW's potray a seperation of heart and mind. As much as they talk about figuritive hearts, they try to play the heart as a seperate entity.
In real terms the heart is a pump, though the society in the past have used some pseudo-science to try to make claims that it may be involved in the construct of who you are based on odd accounts of personality changes with heart transplants. Lets put this aside and back to reality, people can have swine hearts, mechanical/electronic hearts and neither do they become piggy or robotic. Its just a pump, hence you can simply replace it with a pump... no more complex than you will find in a water fountain, jacuzzi or swimming pool etc
We know everything from the amino acids (building blocks of everything) up to the cells, tissues and chemical interactions of the heart. There is no hidden mind or thought processes going on. No mechanism for memory or personality. It is a lump of muscle that squeezes blood out of its inner csvities after being sucked in from the body, following nothing more than a nerve impulse to trigger the muscle. Similar to your bicep, only the heart has a natural pacemaker providing the constant muscle contraction (Sino atrial node > Atrial Ventricular node) and your heart rate.
I only say all this, to demistify the heart, It is just a lump of fat, muscle and tubing. Thats it. The Jw's would have you believe it was sacred. So if its not the yucky organ itself, what is it ?
Ok so now we go to the mind. Is your mind split in half? The mind AND a figurative heart? Of course it is not! I think this is a psychological ploy for control. For every doubt, fear, bad feeling, questioning, apostate website that passes through your thought process, they make you treat that as the worldly independant thinking in your "mind". The feeling of comradrie you get singing in an assembly (when you are a sucker for the sales pitch) , the feeling you get from placing a magazine, the love you have for your friends, the other JW's.. the prayers to god, the talks, your answers... these all come from "your heart." Whenever they refer to information as seeds, apostate seeds will 'plant in your mind' but the ministry work plants seeds in peoples 'hearts'.
What utter bullshit. I really dont think this is a small matter. The heart and mind is obviously the same entity, its YOU. They are just associating negative thoughts with the "mind" and positive with the made up "heart". I think this is intentional, a deep psychological tactic. It is also very, very damaging. YOu begin to have an inner dialogue, an inner turmoil. The heart v the mind. I remember it as a JW.
You end up not trusting your own mind, infact you are told to not lean upon your own understanding! But they know this doesnt really add up, so just to make sure and cover all the bases (been as its one entity) they reaffirm the heart is also treacherous... leaving people totally convinced they cant trust themselves, either in mind or heart and therefore hand over their minds to....... the financial discreet shareholders.
There is no scriptural basis for this heart/mind crap, but its initiation into philosophy is well known. Its early origin is ignorance, from when people actually used to believe the heart was the brain. (Do not be swayed by ignorant articles that refer to the heart as having a brain, its just a neural network, not made of the same cells as the cognitive brain. If you dont accept this, help yourself to 'Neuroanatomy' by Cross and Neary. Also the GI system has a far more complex and larger 'brain' (the enteric system) but nobody talks about thinking from their poop tubes.)
So yes, I am interested in your thoughts. Do you still think of the heart and mind as being two entities ? Do you see my concern at their possible intentional psychological tactic? This may be a good approach to JW family and believers. Just to get them thinking.
Snare x