‘The Heart’s Code’: The Power of Heart-to-Heart Connections

Scott Mayhew had been working on his family’s SUV when it slipped off the jack and crushed him. “I was kind of on my side, reaching for a wrench when the car started to come down. I couldn’t move at all,” Scott recalled in an interview with ABC News in 2015. 

He felt the car crushing him as he lay trapped, with six broken ribs and internal injuries, crying out for help for over an hour. He prayed for his wife, who was at work that Monday morning, to come home immediately.

Meanwhile, his wife, Nicole Mayhew, said, “I had this feeling come over me that I needed to go home and check on my husband.” Fortunately, she came home just in time to lift the car off her husband’s chest, with the help of her neighbor, and call 911.

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“I consider him extremely lucky,” said paramedic Chad Pate. “I really think with her coming home as fast as she did in the time that she did, he could have lost his life had he been under the car much longer than that.”

But was it luck that made Nicole intuitively know to come home? Or was it their heart-to-heart connection? Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, wrote:

…the nightingale of the heart hath other songs and secrets, which make the heart to leap and the soul to cry out, but this mystery of inner meaning may be whispered only from heart to heart…

What Is a Heart-to-Heart?

In a talk given to Laura Barney that was recorded in “Star of the West,” Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, said:

…we should speak in the language of heaven—in the language of the spirit—for there is a language of the spirit and heart. It is as different from our language as our own language is different from that of the animals, who express themselves only by cries and sounds. When we pray to God, a feeling fills our hearts. This is the language of the spirit which speaks to God.

During my prayers and meditations, I have felt that warm feeling spread throughout my heart, illumine my countenance, and invigorate my spirit. It’s a beautiful sensation that makes you place your hand on your heart and smile to yourself, gratefully basking in it all. Have you ever felt that heartfelt glow, not just from prayer and meditation, but also from connecting with another soul? Abdu’l-Baha wrote:

The beloved of God must, like the roses of the rose-garden, send fragrant messages from one to another, receive strength from one another, and co-operate together, by the strength of the Kingdom. There is no greater means than communion and communication. ‘Communication is half a meeting.’

While communication is the exchange of information and messages, communion is the sharing of intimate thoughts and feelings. It’s that heart-to-heart that bonds two people at such a profound level.

The Lasting Effect and Power of Heart-to-Heart Connections

“Research shows that, by comparing electrocardiograms, one person’s heartbeat can be measured in another person,” wrote Dr. Paul Pearsall, a psychoneuroimmunologist and author of the book “The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy.” 

“The impact of heart energy connection seems most measurable and noticeable when we are closest together, particularly when we physically touch. When we hold hands, we are on some level acting like two ECGs connecting,” exchanging energy and “creating cellular memories.”

Our hearts can spiritually influence other hearts as well. Abdu’l-Baha wrote:

By God, the True One, verily pure hearts are as clear and brilliant mirrors which imprint the one on the other, and hearts discover the secrets of hearts.

This connection with and imprint on a heart can last even after a person has passed away. In “The Heart’s Code,” Dr. Paul Pearsall shared his recount of a meeting he arranged with a widow, Glenda, and the young man who received her husband’s heart. The donor recipient was late, and Paul was about to ask Glenda to leave, thinking the man had changed his mind about coming.

When Paul stood up, Glenda said, “Oh no, we have to wait. He’s here in the hospital. I felt him come about thirty minutes ago. I felt my husband’s presence. Please wait with me.”

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At that moment, the donor recipient and his mother arrived. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “We got here a half hour ago but we couldn’t find the chapel.” 

After introductions, Glenda asked if she could feel his heart. Glenda’s husband, David, passed away after a car crashed through their windshield. Before the car crash, they weren’t speaking because they just had an argument. Unfortunately, that time, they didn’t have the opportunity to apologize because those headlights headed straight for their car moments later.

Glenda’s hand trembled as she touched the young man’s heart, crying softly, she whispered, “I love you David. Everything is copacetic.”

The young man’s mother said, “My son uses that word ‘copacetic’ all the time now. He never used it before he got his new heart, but after his surgery, it was the first thing he said to me when he could talk. I didn’t know what it means. He said ‘everything was copacetic.’ It is not a word I know in Spanish.”

Glenda’s eyes widened, and she said, “That word was our signal that everything was OK. Every time we argued and made up, we would both say that everything was copacetic.”

How We Can Create Powerful Heart-to-Heart Connections

Of course, you don’t have to be married or related to someone to have a heart-to-heart connection with them. Abdu’l-Baha explained that we can create these spiritual bonds of love and unity from meetings that are “very different in character.” He explained:

It is a universal gathering; it is heavenly and divine in purpose because it serves the oneness of the world of humanity and promotes international peace. It is devoted to the solidarity and brotherhood of the human race, the spiritual welfare of mankind, unity of religious belief through knowledge of God and the reconciliation of religious teaching with the principles of science and reason.

It promotes love and fraternity among all humankind, seeks to abolish and destroy barriers which separate the human family, proclaims the equality of man and woman, instills divine precepts and morals, illumines and quickens minds with heavenly perception, attracts the infinite bestowals of God, removes racial, national and religious prejudices and establishes the foundation of the heavenly Kingdom in the hearts of all nations and peoples. 

The effect of such an assembly as this is conducive to divine fellowship and strengthening of the bond which cements and unifies hearts.