What Is The Heart (In The Spiritual Sense) ?
D: Sri Bhagavan speaks of the Heart as the seat of Consciousness and as identical with the Self. What does the Heart exactly signify?
M: The question about the Heart arises because you are interested in seeking the source of consciousness. To all deep thinking minds, the enquiry about the ‘I’ and its nature has an irresistible fascination.
Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart or the seat of Consciousness, it is all the same. The point to be grasped is this, that Heart means the very core of one’s being, the Centre, without which there is nothing whatever.
D: But Sri Bhagavan has specified a particular place for the Heart within the physical body, that it is in the chest, two digits to the right from the median.
M: Yes, that is the centre of spiritual experience according to the testimony of Sages. This spiritual Heart-centre is quite different from the blood- propelling, muscular organ known by the same name. The spiritual Heart-centre is not an organ of the body. All that you can say of the Heart is that it is the very core of your being. That with which you are really identical (as the word in Sanskrit literally means), whether you are awake, asleep or dreaming, whether you are engaged in work or immersed in samadhi.
D: In that case, how can it be localized in any part of the body? Fixing a place for the Heart would imply setting physiological limitations to That which is beyond space and time.
M: That is right. But the person who puts the question about the position of the Heart, considers himself as existing with or in the body. While putting the question now, would you say that your body alone is here but that you are speaking from somewhere else? No, you accept your bodily existence. It is from this point of view that any reference to a physical body comes to be made.
Truly speaking, Pure Consciousness is indivisible, it is without parts. It has no form and shape, no ‘within’ and ‘without’. There is no ‘right’ or ‘left’ for it. Pure Consciousness, which is the Heart, includes all; and nothing is outside or apart from it. That is the ultimate Truth.
From this absolute standpoint, the Heart, Self or Consciousness can have no particular place assigned to it in the physical body. What is the reason? The body is itself a mere projection of the mind, and the mind is but a poor reflection of the radiant Heart. How can That, in which everything is contained, be itself confined as a tiny part within the physical body which is but an infinitesimal, phenomenal manifestation of the one Reality?
But people do not understand this. They cannot help thinking in terms of the physical body and the world. For instance, you say, “I have come to this ashram all the way from my country beyond the Himalayas”. But that is not the truth. Where is a ‘coming’ or ‘going’ or any movement whatever, for the one, all-pervading Spirit which you really are? You are where you have always been. It is your body that moved or was conveyed from place to place till it reached this ashram.
This is the simple truth, but to a person who considers himself a subject living in an objective world, it appears as something altogether visionary!
It is by coming down to the level of ordinary understanding that a place is assigned to the Heart in the physical body.
D: How then shall I understand Sri Bhagavan’s statement that the experience of the Heart-centre is at the particular place in the chest?
M: Once you accept that from the true and absolute standpoint, the Heart as Pure Consciousness is beyond space and time, it will be easy for you to understand the rest in its correct perspective.
D: It is only on that basis that I have put the question about the position of the Heart. I am asking about Sri Bhagavan’s experience.
M: Pure Consciousness wholly unrelated to the physical body and transcending the mind is a matter of direct experience. Sages know their bodiless, eternal Existence just as the layman knows his bodily existence. But the experience of Consciousness can be with bodily awareness as well as without it. In the bodiless experience of Pure Consciousness the Sage is beyond time and space, and no question about the position of the Heart can then at all arise.
Since, however, the physical body cannot subsist (with life) apart from Consciousness, bodily awareness has to be sustained by Pure Consciousness. The former, by its nature, is limited to and can never be co-extensive with the latter which is infinite and eternal. Body-consciousness is merely a monad-like, miniature reflection of the Pure Consciousness with which the Sage has realised his identity. For him, therefore, body-consciousness is only a reflected ray, as it were, of the Self-effulgent, Infinite Consciousness which is himself. It is in this sense alone that the Sage is aware of his bodily existence.
Since, during the bodiless experience of the Heart as Pure Consciousness, the Sage is not at all aware of the body, that absolute experience is localized by him within the limits of the physical body by a sort of feeling-recollection made while he is with bodily awareness.
D: For men like me, who have neither the direct experience of the Heart nor the consequent recollection, the matter seems to be somewhat difficult to grasp. About the position of the Heart itself, perhaps, we must depend on some sort of guesswork.
M: If the determination of the position of the Heart is to depend on guesswork even in the case of the layman, the question is surely not worth much consideration. No, it is not on guesswork that you have to depend, it is on an unerring intuition.
D: For whom is the intuition?
M: For one and all.
D: Does Sri Bhagavan credit me with an intuitive knowledge of the Heart?
M: No, not of the Heart, but of the position of the Heart in relation to your identity.
D: Sri Bhagavan says that I intuitively know the position of the Heart in the physical body?
M: Why not ?
D: (Pointing to himself) It is to me personally — that Sri Bhagavan is referring?
M: Yes. That is the intuition! How did you refer to yourself by gesture just now? Did you not put yourfinger on the right side of the chest? That is exactly the place of the Heart-centre.
D: So then, in the absence of direct knowledge of the Heart-centre, I have to depend on this intuition?
M: What is wrong with it? When a schoolboy says “It is I that did the sum correctly”, or when he asks you, “Shall I run and get the book for you”, would he point out to the head that did the sum correctly, or to the legs that will carry him swiftly to get you the book? No, in both cases, his finger is pointed quite naturally towards the right side of the chest, thus giving innocent expression to the profound truth that the source of ‘I’-ness in him is there. It is an unerring intuition that makes him refer to himself, to the Heart which is the Self, in that way. The act is quite involuntary and universal, that is to say, it is the same in the case of every individual.
What stronger proof than this do you require about the position of the Heart-centre in the physical body?
Maharshi’s Gospel
The Place Of The Heart
