Question : What do you see as the most important aspect of ourselves that needs awakening if we are to be a better human being?

Serge: Undoubtedly, it is the heart, for it is in our hearts that the divine can communicate most directly to us. It is in our hearts that we may receive grace and healing. It is in our hearts that we can experience joy, ecstasy, love, feel awe, and experience ourselves as an integral part of all that is. If we are open hearted, a space is there enabling us to be spontaneous, brave , warm, true and honourable and we will much more easily be able to accept and respect ourselves and so accept and respect others and, most importantly, our planet. Indeed, I see our hearts as containing the ‘spiritual fuel’ that will allow us to resolve conflicts, transform destructivity and generally enable us to be part of the solution, as opposed to being part of the problems, of our world. Teilhard de Chardin, that great theologian and visionary thinker, writing in the 1940’s, suggested that there was more power in an open heart than in the atom bomb. I recognise this and see our hearts as being our greatest weapon of mass construction and believe that if only more of us learned to open our hearts, that we would be able to have peace in the world and that all the insane, crazy, stupid activities which we heartless or small-hearted humans like to do like flying planes into large towers, fighting wars, creating dictatorships to rule us, spending billions on weaponry while millions starve, consuming more than we need, destroying our environment, and generally behaving in greedy, rapacious, selfish and narrow minded ways, would stop!

All these behaviours are symptomatic of a deficient heart life. I don’t think our world will transform as a result of a change of mind. I think it needs a change of heart. Or rather, an opening of heart. We cannot have the one without the other. However, for such an opening to take place, we need to work at it. It is not a ‘given.’ Indeed, one of the best ways to learn how not to be so egoic, is to put effort into opening our hearts. The subtler vibration of the heart space begins to evaporate the denser one of ego space.

If our spirituality manifests not in what we know (how many sacred texts we can quote), but in how we behave and in how compassionately we treat others, especially those who may be very different to us, this is all dependant upon the health of our hearts. To a healthy hearted person, no one is an enemy. If our hearts are open, we will feel free and vital and the most natural thing in the world will be for us to wish for that condition to manifest all around us. If our hearts are in ‘bad shape’ or closed, our perspective will radically alter and it is all too likely that we will see the world through a glass darkly, succumb to despair, bitterness and depression and so project all sorts of negatives onto it which do not in actuality exist. Thus to believe we can be authentically spiritual without being open-hearted is like believing we can play cricket without a bat and ball!

Because I feel so strongly on this matter, I have made several CDs on the topic of the Heart which can be ordered from my website. I also teach a one-year training group entitled Living from the Heart, where we learn to heal and purify and deepen as well as broaden, our heart life.