The Ib - The Spiritual Heart
“Strive to see with the inner eye—the heart. It sees reality untouched by personal distortion or emotional confusion; it perceives the essence. Intuition, then, becomes the most important faculty to develop.”
— Egyptian Book of the Dead
The Ib—or Ab—is One of the Nine sacred bodies in Ancient Egyptian belief.
It is the Spiritual Heart: the voice of Ma’at, the compass of Truth, and the equilibrium point within the chakra system—bridging the lower centers with the higher realms.
In Ancient Egypt, when an individual passed from this life, the heart remained in the body after mummification. Over it, the sacred amulet of Khepera—the winged scarab, symbol of transformation and rebirth—was placed for protection.
The Ib is the record-keeper of the soul.
In the Hall of the Two Truths, the Ib, the spiritual heart is weighed against the feather of Ma’at— the feather of Truth.
Osiris, the benevolent judge, presided over this sacred rite. This weighing did not determine punishment—it reveals your evolutionary readiness.
Will your soul return to Earth to continue its refinement?
Or will you pass on to the Field of Reeds, the luminous realm of peace and reunion?
Did you know the heart has its own brain?
It’s called the intrinsic-cardiac nervous system—a network of neurons embedded within the heart that play a vital role in regulating heart rhythms and even protecting against certain types of heart disease.
The Ancient Egyptians believed that the mind resided in the heart—not in the brain. And now, millennia later, science is beginning to echo what they once understood so deeply.
Last month at Harvard Medical School, I presented original clinical research on Medical Qigong — a system of medicine 4,000 years old — alongside three fellow Doctors of Chinese Energetic Medicine.
Included in our poster, were some of my remarkable case studies, including a 12-year-old boy. 14 months in a wheelchair. Walking within 48 hours of my treatment. What made this research distinct was my focus on the intrinsic cardiac nervous system in my clinical work — the 40,000 neurons that live in the heart itself, operating with a degree of autonomy from the brain. In Medical Qigong, we call this the Shen — The Spirit - the Heart-Mind connection.