CHAPTER TEN

HEART AND MIND

1.   "That the physical heart is on the left it cannot be denied.
But the heart of which I speak is not physical and is only on the right side. It is my experience, no authority is required by me. Still you can find confirmation of it in a
Malayali Ayurvedic book and in Sita Upanishad."
Talk 4

Note: This is an authoritative statement on Bhagavan's own experience, which in its practical aspect is of no help to the meditator. The locus of the Heart, whether to the right or to the left, need not worry us (see text 9 below), because when one is in it, that is, in samadhi, not only the chest but the body and the whole world disappear. When dhyana matures, the Heart automatically reveals itself without any special effort to seek its corresponding place in the physical body.

2.   "The jiva is said to remain in the Heart in deep sleep, and in the brain in the waking state. Heart is not the muscular cavity which propels blood. It denotes in the
Vedas and the scriptures the centre whence the notion `I' springs. Does it spring from the ball of flesh? It does not, but from somewhere within us, from the centre of our being. The `I' has no location. Everything is the
Self. There is nothing but the Self. So the Heart must be said to be the entire body as well as the universe, conceived as `I'. But to help the abhyasi ^[?] we have to indicate a definite place in the universe, or the body, for it. So this Heart is pointed out as the seat of the Self.

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But in truth we are everywhere; we are all that is, and there is nothing else."
Talk 29

Note: Heart therefore has no locus at all. Its other names
are Self, `I', being, pure mind, etc. It is called Heart due to its being the source from which the universe rises. In the last note we observed that in samadhi Heart reveals itself as completely independent of any place. Then why does
Bhagavan locate it in the right chest? He does not locate it in the flesh and bones of the right chest, but only in consciousness at the level of that region, much as we locate the levels of certain objects in space as corresponding to those of certain parts of our body. Nevertheless, because this consciousness has direct relations with the body, it must have a point of contact with it, a switchboard, so to say, in the subtle counterpart of the body, from which it switches the body off and on. This switchboard is felt in samadhi in the subtle counterpart of the right chest.

To the highly critical mind there appears a contradiction in the statements of Bhagavan, who, on the one hand makes
Heart to be everywhere and nowhere, and on the other fixes it in the right chest, from which (as in the next text) the sushumna nadi rises, and where the jiva retires in sleep, etc.
The apparent contradiction is due to the perception of the body, which has to be related to the mind, or the intelligent principle which acts and perceives through it. The mind has thus to be shown in a dual aspect, the one as the pervader of the body, and thus hypothetically limited to its shape, and the other as limitless and free. More of this in the next item.

3.   "Atma is the Heart itself. Its manifestation is in the brain.
The passage from the Heart to the brain might be considered to be through the sushumna, or a nerve (nadi) with some other name. The Upanishads speak of pare
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leena, meaning that the sushumna or such nadis are all comprised in Para, i.e., the Atma nadi. The Yogis say that the current rising up to sahasrara (brain) ends there.
That experience is not complete. For jnana they must come to the Heart. Hridaya (Heart) is the Alpha and
Omega."
Talk 57

Note: From the Heart the body sprouts. The energy, life and consciousness — the only prime elements of the body and likewise of the universe — stream out of the Heart by the first channel, or nadi, straight to the head, from which they run down to all parts of the body through various nadis. We need not give names to the nadis to avoid conflicts between the locations and names given by one authority and those given by another. Names and forms are the cause of the world illusion, so they are also in metaphysics. Bhagavan simply wishes to indicate these facts about the distribution of life and consciousness to the remotest points in the body through nadis, beginning with the Para nadi, so that the student may know the function of this nadi in the attainment of jnana. Because all the nadis from the body end in the sahasrara, the Kundalini yogi, the Hatha yogi, and in fact all yogis who practise pranayama take the sahasrara to be the terminal point of their sadhana; whereas the Dhyana ^[?] yogi, also called Raja yogi, Vichara ^[?] yogi, etc. adds one more stage for the complete and absolute Emancipation. This last stage runs through the Para nadi, also called Amrita nadi, because, being of the purest sattva, it is extremely blissful and leads straight to the Heart.

"Its manifestation in the brain" needs some explanation.

It is common experience that when people speak of the mind, they always imagine it to be the brain itself, and scientists, who are so sure of themselves, make matters worse when they declare the brain to be the thinker, which is of course
wrong, because the brain is as insentient and as incapable of thinking as any other part of the body. If the whole is insentient, so are the parts. This error is due to the manifestation of the jiva's activities through the cerebral tissue, which is as it were its telegraph office, which transmits to it all the signals received from the various sense organs and the nervous system, etc. But the home of the jiva is the
Heart, which is the cosmic storehouse of all the creative impulses. To this home the jiva returns with the senses when it retires from the body in sleep, in what is known as "death" and, finally, for good in mukti.

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4.   "The Heart is not physical; it is spiritual Hridaya = hrit + ayam, which means `that is the Centre'. It is that from which thoughts arise, on which they subsist and where they are resolved. Thoughts are the content of the mind and they shape the universe. The Heart is thus the centre of all. It is said by the Upanishads to be Brahman. Brahman is the
Heart."
Talk 97

Note: This text is the quintessence of the Vedas. Thoughts rise from, subsist in, and dissolve into the Heart: "they shape the universe." This is a pregnant statement. It makes the substance of the universe to be nothing but thoughts, a mere mental vapour. This surpasses even the subjective idealism of the Western philosophers.

"Thoughts are (the products as well as) the content of
the mind" is significant, inasmuch as it makes the mind not simply manas, as it is usually wrongly translated in Indian metaphysics, but the consciousness which produces, contains, and perceives the thoughts, synonymous with the Heart or
Brahman. Bhagavan often equates the pure mind with
Brahman, which is as it should be. Manas may be rendered as intellect or as a bundle of thoughts and sensations, or
perhaps the processes of thought. Sometimes mind is also used in the sense of manas. At all events the student will do well to remember this dual meaning of MIND and avoid confusion.

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That "the Heart is the centre of All" does not mean that it is not also the circumference. Bhagavan makes it in this text the container of all thoughts, that is, of the universe — centre, circumference, as well as all that comes in between them:

"Verily as space is boundless, so is the ether within
the Heart. Both heaven and earth, fire and air, the sun and the moon, also the lightning and the stars, and whatever is, as well as whatever is not in the universe — all are within this vacuity (Heart)."

(Chandogya Upanishad, IX, i. 3)

5.   "How to realise the Heart? There is no one who even for a trice fails to experience the Self. He is the Self. The Self is the Heart. When asked who you are, you place your hand on the right side of the chest and say `I am', thereby you unknowingly point out the Self. The Self is thus known."
Talk 97

Note: Here we have a pointer to the locus of the Heart in the body, rather in the subtle ambience of the body. It is instinctive in us to use the right hand rather than the left in pointing to our own person. Why do we not for the purpose place the hand on the head, cheeks, or, say, the spinal chord — or, for the matter of that, the legs or feet — instead of the right chest alone? Unless there is an immediate relation between this part of the chest and the `I', we would not straightaway and as a matter of course, drive direct to it when we wish to stress our identity. When we want to
indicate the mind or the thinking agency we point to the head, but for the `I' we point to the chest. Isn't that a clear admission of the superiority of the heart over the brain?
The Heart is the `I', the totality of Being, whereas the brain is the seat of its thoughts only.

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Pointing exclusively to the chest to indicate one's person has yet another weighty significance. It automatically excludes the other parts of the body from being the `I', as witness the fact that we resent a reference to the nails, hair, the bodily secretions and excretions, etc., as being our `I', in fact we instinctively know that even the ribs and flesh of the chest are not the `I', notwithstanding our demonstrating them as such. We take the body as a whole for `I', yet in detail we deny it. This anomalous behaviour of our mind in this respect is so glaringly obvious that nothing but wrong habits keep us blind to it. Anomalies multiply as we probe deeper into the relation of the body to the consciousness. That is why vichara or enquiry is insisted on in this path to expose the ridiculous inconsistencies of our beliefs and attitudes, so that by correcting them we may attain to the truth of ourselves and of the world around us.

6.   "The Cosmic Mind, being not limited by the ego, has nothing separate from itself and is therefore only aware.
This is what the Bible means by `I am that I Am'."
Talk 187

Note: The Cosmic Mind is equated in Advaita and by
Bhagavan with Brahman, since it is "only aware". It will be readily observed that this Mind has nothing to do with the
Cosmic Mind of the Western mystics, which has its own significance — whatever that may be — different from that of the Advaitic Brahman. Biblical Jehovah is written in
Hebrew YHWH, which is derived from the verb HAYA (to
be), and means EVER IS, `I AM THAT I AM,' or BEING, exactly as Advaita means by Brahman or SAT.

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7.   "The mind now sees itself diversified as the universe. If the diversity is not manifest, it remains in its own essence, that is, the Heart. The Heart is the only reality. The mind is only a transient phase. To remain as one's Self is to enter the Heart. Entering the Heart means remaining without distractions."
Talk 252

Note: The mind turns into the universe. When it perceives the universe, or diversity, the latter impresses itself on its pure surface, so that its attention is constantly centred on the diversity and not on itself. If the diversity is eliminated, the mind will perceive itself in its essence, its own naked purity. Then it is said to have entered the Heart — in fact it is itself the Heart. This is its undisturbed state, the reposeful state of samadhi.

The covering of the mind by thoughts is evidently "a transient phase", because the thoughts themselves are transient, very unstable, and can thus be wiped out by practice.
The mind itself cannot be wiped out, because the wiper will be the mind itself. If the mind wipes out the mind, the residue will still be the mind. Thus the mind is indestructible.

8.   "There is the peaceful mind which is the supreme. When the same becomes restless, it is afflicted by thoughts.
Mind is only the dynamic power (shakti) of the Self. There is no difference between matter and spirit. Modern science admits that all matter is energy. Energy is power or force (shakti). Therefore all are resolved in Siva and
Shakti, i.e., the Self and the Mind."
Talk 268

Note: After explaining the identity of Self and Mind, this text ends by making them Siva and Shakti, which may
impress the dualists with the wrong notion of their being separate principles, as Spirit and Matter respectively, which is far from Bhagavan's intentions. In the beginning of the text the "peaceful mind" has been identified as the Supreme, that is, the Self itself. So Self and peaceful mind are convertible terms. But when, for some reason, the mind becomes "restless" or active, it manifests energy: the energy which is inherent in it turns into perceptions, thoughts, sensations, which are the phenomena, the universe. This is interpreted by the Shaktas as the creation of the "dynamic"
Shakti, as distinguished from Siva, the "static" peaceful mind which is experienced in samadhi. This is the whole truth about
Spirit and Matter. They are one and the same consciousness.
The knower (or mind) develops activity inside himself, the sensations of seeing, smelling, hearing, thinking, etc., and starts enjoying the show, as if it occurs outside him. Then he is bewildered about a world and its creator — God and His
Shakti, and so on. This then is the nature of the energy which science proclaims to be the constituent of the "physical" universe, the atoms. The Self is thus not only the source of all cosmic energy, but the Cosmic Energy itself. Siva is then Shakti itself.

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9.   "Should I meditate on the right chest in order to meditate on the Heart?"
Bhagavan: "The Heart is not physical. Meditation should not be on the right or the left. It should be on the Self.
Everyone knows "I am". It is neither within nor without, neither on the right nor the left: `I am' — that is all."
Talk 273

Note: The noteworthy point in this text, apart from what we have already discussed, is that meditation should not be made on the physical chest, whether right or left, for that is
not the Heart at all. The `I' is spaceless, completely free from the association of direction or laterality. It is simply `my being' or `I am', and nothing else. This sense of pure being should be our direction in meditation and if we are unable to catch it in the beginning we have to try again and again till we succeed. Being present all the time in us, the intuition for it grows rapidly, like a once-known-but-forgotten language. We will catch up with it after some initial hesitation, which is unavoidable. This is one of the best-cues the Master has given us on how to recognise once again our long-forgotten essence.

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10.    "How can the world be an imagination or a thought?

Thought is a function of the mind. The mind is located in the brain. The brain is within the skull of a human being, who is an infinitesimal part of the universe. How then can the universe be contained in the cells of the brain?"
Bhagavan: "So long as the mind is considered to be an entity of the kind described, the doubt will persist. But what is mind? Let us consider. What is the world? It is objects spread out in space (akasha). Who comprehends it? The mind. Is not the mind which comprehends space itself space (akasha)? Considering it to be ether of knowledge (akasha or jnana tattva), there will be no difficulty in reconciling the apparent contradiction. Rajas ^[?] and tamas operate as gross objects, etc. Thus the whole universe is only mental."
Talk 451

Note: The question comes from a teacher of philosophy who seems to be at sea — greatly confused even in the formulation of the question. On the one hand he identifies man with his body, as "an infinitesimal part of the universe", that is, the mind with the brain; and on the other he "locates" the mind in the brain, making the one different from the other. In
that case, Bhagavan asserts, "the doubt will persist," the problem will remain insoluble. If the brain is the mind then there will be no end to ignorance and no end to arguments.
How, for example, can the insentient brain think, create, understand, smell, taste, etc.? How can Shakespeare, Gandhi and Ramana Maharshi be pieces of corruptible flesh? How do immaterial thoughts emanate from the material brain cells, and what is the relation between them? and so on. But if the mind is located in the brain, as the question puts it, then there is much hope for a solution. It will then conform to the yogic experience that the mind or the individual consciousness resides in the brain, as it has already been explained in Note 3 of this chapter. The individual is not the cerebral tissue, but the intelligent being, the consciousness which dwells in it and uses it as its instrument. Consciousness itself is pure akasha (ether), in which the world spreads as it appears to do in space, which itself is ether. Thus the world is nothing but consciousness or mind. That the objects appear soft or hard, hot or cold, small or big, yellow or green, sour or sweet is due to the senses which are functions of the same mind; and the world consists of nothing but what the senses give out of themselves. "Thus the whole universe is only mental." The variety of qualities which the senses inflict on our perceptions as objects are the gunas of which Bhagavan speaks. Thus in the manifested universe there exist nothing but qualities superimposed on the Consciousness.

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