Heart Knowing designates a mode of cognition that the depth-psychological corpus consistently positions as prior to, and irreducible by, discursive intellect. The tradition draws on heterogeneous sources — Sufi metaphysics, archetypal psychology, Buddhist epistemology, and neuroscience — yet converges on a shared claim: that the heart is not merely an affective organ but an organ of perception, capable of registering truths that conceptual reasoning obscures. Hillman’s ‘thought of the heart,’ elaborated through Ficino, Harvey, and Corbin’s himma, locates this faculty in an imaginal, animal alertness to the ‘face of things’ — an aesthetic aisthesis irreducible to sentiment. Corbin’s rendering of Ibn ‘Arabi specifies the heart as the seat of hierophanic knowledge, a mirror in which Divine Reality is reflected when purified of admixture. Welwood draws on Mahayana Buddhism to argue that heart and mind share a single Sanskrit root, chitta, pointing to a ‘direct knowing of reality’ that is open and friendly rather than abstractly rational. Maté invokes the fox’s counsel in Saint-Exupéry to distinguish truth-that-heals — known by felt sense — from verifiable but soul-blind fact. Johnson identifies heart-level knowing with Jung’s feeling function as a valuing faculty, not a mere emotion. The central tension in the corpus lies between this valorization of cardiac epistemology and the danger of its romantic sentimentalization — a danger Hillman addresses by insisting on the heart’s inherent duplicity and by grounding it in perceptual, not merely emotional, life.
it is by means of the lion in the heart that we perceive and respond imaginally… this animal awareness… intimacy released from confession into immediacy, the courage of immediate intimacy
Hillman argues that Heart Knowing is a pre-reflective, imaginal, and animal mode of perception — an aesthetic attentiveness to the ‘face of things’ that operates through the lion archetype resident in the heart.
, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, 1992thesis
we must relate the imaginal heart of Corbin with the heart of depth psychology, of Freud… Corbin can save Freud from the Fall, from reduction downward… look at Freud always with the imaginal eye of Corbin
Hillman positions Heart Knowing at the intersection of Corbin’s imaginal heart and Freudian depth psychology, arguing that Corbin’s framework rescues cardiac epistemology from reductive materialism.
, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, 1992thesis
the power of the heart is a secret force or energy (quwwat khafīya), which perceives divine realities by a pure hierophanic knowledge (idrāk wāḍiḥ jalī) without mixture of any kind
Corbin establishes that in Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics the heart’s himma is an organ of unmediated divine knowing — a hierophanic perception that functions without rational admixture.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
The intellect becomes a far more intelligent tool when it allows the heart to speak… The kind of truth that heals is known by its felt sense, not only by how much ‘sense’ it makes.
Maté contends that healing requires a mode of knowing accessed through the heart’s felt sense rather than intellectual reasoning alone, aligning Heart Knowing with therapeutic truth.
, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, 2022thesis
in Buddhism heart and mind can both be referred to by the same term (chitta in Sanskrit)… Mind in this sense is not thinking mind but rather big mind—a direct knowing of reality that is basically open and friendly toward what is.
Welwood grounds Heart Knowing in the Buddhist chitta, demonstrating that the contemplative tradition treats heart and mind as a unified faculty of direct, non-conceptual knowing.
, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000thesis
If you can be absolutely quiet then the heavenly heart will spontaneously manifest itself… the spiritual intelligence reaches the origin unaided.
The Secret of the Golden Flower presents the ‘heavenly heart’ as the seat of an autonomous spiritual intelligence that emerges through stillness, constituting a Taoist analogue to Heart Knowing.
, The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, 1931thesis
Harvey affirmed an archetypal idea, that the heart is not simple, not one, but is inherently divided against itself… The immediacy of action became doubled into complicated reflection.
Hillman uses Harvey’s discovery of cardiac circulation to argue that Heart Knowing is inherently duplex — its very structure generates reflective complexity rather than naive immediacy.
, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, 1992supporting
Heart values are feeling values. The heart level is the feeling level. In Jung’s model, the feeling function is not connected with emotions… When people feel, they are actually assigning value.
Johnson maps Heart Knowing onto Jung’s feeling function as a rational, value-assigning faculty, carefully distinguishing it from mere emotion.
, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, 1986supporting
the movement of my money away from that level and up to the heart level tells me that I have to move… away from collective expressions of emotion or sentimentality and invest myself in real feeling relatedness
Johnson distinguishes authentic Heart Knowing from sentimental imitation of feeling, arguing that it requires genuine investment in individual value rather than collective emotional performance.
, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, 1986supporting
only in the pure, unblemished mirror of the heart can the Beloved see His own face… Spiritual poverty is the state of inner emptiness or purity of heart that is necessary for the Beloved to experience Himself undistorted
Vaughan-Lee conveys the Sufi understanding that the heart as knowing-organ must be emptied of self to become a transparent mirror for divine self-recognition.
, Catching the Thread: Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology, 1992supporting
when a researcher has let himself or herself be drawn into the work through his or her own wounds, the truth of the work for others is, if not guaranteed, at least on the way to being established
Romanyshyn applies Heart Knowing methodologically, arguing that deep attunement between researcher and work — a bond of cardiac sympathy — constitutes the ground of research validity.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007supporting
long before the subjects were conscious that there was a difference, the polygraph registered that they were more anxious when their hands hovered over the red cards… Long before the conscious mind reached its conclusions the body had perceived what was happening
McGilchrist offers neuroscientific evidence that somatic-affective knowing precedes conscious cognition, providing empirical grounding for the claim that Heart Knowing operates prior to rational deliberation.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
attending to his or her feeling response to the work, a researcher can further discover who is doing the work and how the sources for the work are being evaluated
Romanyshyn treats the feeling function as an epistemic instrument in research, positioning Heart Knowing as a hermeneutic tool that reveals both the researcher’s complex and the work’s deeper sources.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007supporting
The heart is as big as the universe; everything is contained within it. In the words of the Prophet, ‘My earth and My heaven containeth Me not, but the heart of My faithful servant containeth Me.’
Vaughan-Lee invokes prophetic hadith to assert that the heart’s capacity for knowing is cosmically unlimited — a vessel that contains what the entire created order cannot.
, Catching the Thread: Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology, 1992supporting
One can understand this question only through a personal mystical sense (dhawq)… we know that the material bodies of the universe undergo the himma of souls when they maintain themselves in a state of mystic concentration
Corbin shows that Ibn ‘Arabi grounds Heart Knowing in dhawq — direct mystical tasting — and in himma’s capacity to act upon matter through concentrated cardiac intention.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969supporting
Through embodiment we gain a unique way to touch into our darkest primitive instincts… it is here that mind and body, thought and feeling, psyche and spirit, are held together, welded in an undifferentiated unity of experience.
Levine situates Heart Knowing within the broader category of embodied knowing, where somatic-affective and cognitive dimensions fuse into an integrated mode of self-understanding.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting
Knowledge Is a Barrier to Understanding… Knowing in the Blue Sky… The Known Is Not Separate from the Knower
Thich Nhat Hanh’s chapter headings signal a contemplative epistemology in which knowing and knower are non-dual, positioning Heart Knowing as inseparable from awareness itself.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988aside
the issue of self and knowing, which I consider to be at the heart of consciousness… it is also possible that the aforementioned electrophysiological patterns may also be correlates of the processes of self and knowing
Damasio places self and knowing ‘at the heart of consciousness,’ a phrasing that converges neurologically with the depth-psychological claim that genuine knowing is a cardiac — not merely cortical — event.
, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, 1999aside
we might find a way into the mystery of this emptiness of the heart… depression has its own angel, a guiding spirit whose job it is to carry the soul away to its remote places where it finds unique insight and enjoys a special vision.
Moore implies that the heart’s emptiness — its apophatic dimension — is itself a portal to a distinctive kind of soul-knowing, linking cardiac epistemology to Saturnine depth.
, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992aside