Reflections on the “HEART” or “REALITY”
Series-1
~ Praise be to the name of my Guru, Guide and Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi ~
Well, this is just to share a few thoughts with you all on the subject ‘Heart’. Some one asked way back frustrated by this word… “Mr. Krishnan, what’s all this hue and cry about the Heart, I read in poems, film songs, in your Blog http://www.blackandwhiteholes.blogspot.com, in Bhagavan’s literatures etc. The picture of Jesus Christ shows the picture of a Heart on his chest, the term Heart of Hearts, then heart attacks and heart surgeries and someone writing to me ‘you are in my heart’ etc. I said, I too have had this confusion way back and I thought it was a fancy word or a fashion or style to mention the word ‘Heart’.
“Don’t beat around the Bush Mr. Krishnan and don’t give me pointless lectures on The Heart. I am keen on going to the bottom of it for once. But I have no inkling as to where I should start. I feel like the dog which kept on circling the Turtle on the beach. My mind can’t fathom this subject and then my attention goes to other easy enjoyable matters.”
As far as I can perceive the modus operandi to reach the heart of the subject ‘Heart’ the first thing that happens in this quest, in chronological order, is the thought:
“I want to sincerely know about the Heart and have its experience since the scriptures as well as the learned ones from time immemorial say that the goal of life is to reach the Heart and abide as that.”
Contemporary thinking and experience along the line of evolution and ways of living of the present times clearly point out that it is possible for a sincere and curious human being to reach the Heart and abide as that wherever he is placed in the walks of his life for example for a king or a queen or their footman or a layman who has no time to resort to scriptural learning let alone the continuous graceful company of the learned ones who take births in the passage of time to guide the masses as per the divine will of the compassionate one, the Heart.
So here it is ‘I’ who wants knowledge of the Heart. It will be silly of one to say ‘please give me knowledge of the Heart as quick as possible because I have many other things in life to attend to’. Again it is the ‘I’ who wants knowledge of the Heart.
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi steps in here and asks the person ‘who are you?’ to which he says my name is Govind. Sri Maharshi again puts forth the question who is Govind to which the perplexed individual says it is ‘I’ only. Who is this ‘I’? He points out to his body and touches his chest on the right side.
Once to a stubborn person who was not satisfied by Sri Bhagavan’s words Bhagavan said “Go back the way you came” jocularly but the meaning implied was ‘go back to your source by any means if you are not satisfied with my answer’.
Sri Bhagavan said “Is it so that your name is written on your body? No. Your body can’t speak. Which part of your body says I AM Govind? It’s the mouth consisting of lips, tongue and the vocal chords which together make speech, that too, if and when the Lungs feel like blowing air through your mouth if and when they get enough supply of blood and oxygen depending upon other functions which is triggered by the neurons in your brain if it is in ‘no damage mode’ so forth and so on. The body leads us nowhere. It is just dead matter consisting of cells which derive energy from a subtlest external energy source outside the body. I say here that even the electrons of the micro matter ‘Atom’ depends on this external energy source with which science has come to a dead end as far as identifying it. The scientists just say “well, there is this external energy which comes into the Atoms but we are yet to explore into its structure”. One can imagine what will happen if they explore into ‘Self enquiry’ methods as a last resort and reach the HEART and abide as that. They will just be happy and throw away all the modern gadgetry into the space as they would have attained the last and the highest item one can ask god to give. Because Heart is the ultimate in Knowledge. You have everything there ever needed by humanity, the meaning, the purpose and the goal of life.
The HEART encompasses everything in the Universe. It forms the Macrocosm. It is beginningless and endless. The Rishis who created the scriptures call it in Sanskrit “HRIDAYAM”. ‘Hrid’ for center and ‘Ayam’ for I am. ‘I am the centre’. Thus the ‘I’ is also called the Heart. The centre of everything and from which center everything has sprung forth into the relative world.
In the relative world, the objective one, we can read and learn as to what is the Heart. But for having the knowledge of it as experience one has to reach the HEART. A relative can never be the reality because the Reality engulfs the relative which is a part of it. Hence the only way to know the Heart is by becoming the Heart or the Reality or Brahman (in Sanskrit) as can be called.
Here we are back in square one because we do not know who the ‘I’ is. Only the ‘I’ can lead us to the Heart or the Reality. Why? Because it is one’s original identity and not the body. The ‘I’ feeling or ‘I’ thought extends all the way from the Heart to the body. Between the Heart and the Body a false identity, as another ‘I’, also forms as one grows up which is mistaken for the original identity, the ‘I’, as ignorance veils the existence of the original ‘I’ in the body. Here is where a Guide or a Master or a Guru enters in one’s life naturally out of compassion to remove this veil of ignorance from him and help him to retrieve his original identity, the ‘I’. Let us call this ‘I’ as the ‘I’ thought because it is a feeling one has about oneself in his mind.
Since the ‘I ‘ thought extends all the way from the Heart to your body and mind and make you feel its ‘sphurana’ or ‘vibration’ on a close investigation, Sri Bhagavan insists one to hold on to this ‘I’ feeling or ‘I’ thought dearly which will automatically lead one inward to the core of one’s existence, the Self or the Heart.
But the difficult hurdle here is to hold on to this ‘I’ thought as one may be carried away forcefully from it by the innumerable other thoughts which circumambulate this ‘I’ thought. This happens to a week mind who can’t concentrate one pointedly. The indulgences, the extravaganzas in ones life makes one a slave to the force of habit. So it is necessary for one to limit oneself in activities to remove from the mind all the unnecessary luggage and make it light. Then the mind has all the power pointed at one quest undivided which helps it to travel a long way into one’s inwardness.
Once, another friend put forth a question during one of our satsanghs when ‘Forty verses on reality’ was being read out and discussed. He shot a question straight “what is Inwardness you have been talking about here?”
The answer was “get used to listening inward, sitting in a comfortable posture, with a free mind and just listening”. After a few sessions of satsanghs he talked again “ I have been listening with closed eyes and with a free mind in a comfortable posture in my house and I felt light minded as I heard many sounds of the nature to which hitherto I have never bothered to listen”. “But I am yet to know inwardness”.
“Who heard and where did you hear them?” “‘I’ heard them”. “Well, now you have the experience of hearing. Who had it? Close your mouth and eyes and say or think I am Govind.” He said “Yes I could hear it without sound in my mind.” “When I say ‘I’ without sound I hear it inside an empty space in me. I have the experience also now of ‘knowing’ that I heard it without sound in an empty space in me or in my mind. So now ‘I’ know what is meant by the “I THOUGHT” and also the meaning of ‘inwardness’ or looking inward.” “From this experience I arrive at the conclusion that my identity is the “I thought” in me or the “Sphurana” of the ‘I’ feeling in me and that ‘I’ am not the body.
To be continued….
