Ramana Maharshi says The real Heart is not located anywhere

In describing the origin of the ‘I’-thought Bhagavan sometimes said that it rose to the brain through a channel which started from a centre in the right-hand side of the chest. He called this centre the Heart-centre and said that when the ‘I’-thought subsided into the Self it went back into the centre and disappeared. He also said that when the Self is consciously experienced, there is a tangible awareness that this centre is the source of both the mind and the world. However, these statements are not strictly true and Sri Ramana sometimes qualified them by saying that they were only schematic representations which were given to those people who persisted in identifying with their bodies. He said that the Heart is not really located in the body and that from the highest standpoint it is equally untrue to say that the ‘I’-thought arises and subsides into this centre on the right of the chest.

Because Sri Ramana often said ‘Find the place where the “I” arises’ or ‘Find the source of the mind’, many people interpreted these statements to mean that they should concentrate on this particular centre while doing self-enquiry. Sri Ramana rejected this interpretation many times by saying that the source of the mind or the ‘I’ could only be discovered through attention to the ‘I’-thought and not through concentration on a particular part of the body. He did sometimes say that putting attention on this centre is a good concentration practice, but he never associated it with self-enquiry. He also occasionally said that meditation on the Heart was an effective way of reaching the Self, but again, he never said that this should be done by concentrating on the Heart-centre. Instead he said that one should meditate on the Heart ‘as it is’. The Heart ‘as it is’ is not a location, it is the immanent Self and one can only be aware of its real nature by being it. It cannot be reached by concentration.

Note: The real spiritual Heart is not a place in the limited body, but is only the timeless, placeless and unlimited Self,whose form is the pure consciousness ‘ I am’. Though this real Heart is said to exist both inside and outside, it is in truth that which exists devoid of all such distinctions as ‘inside’ or ‘outside’, because these distinctions exist only with reference to the body, which is itself unreal. The
following simile will illustrate this point.

Let us suppose that a pot made of ice is immersed deep in the water of a lake. Now where is the water? Is it not wrong to say that the water is either only inside the pot or only outside the pot? Is it not both inside and outside? In actual fact, the pot itself is truly nothing but water. Therefore,when water alone exists, where is the room for the notions ‘inside’ and ‘outside’? Likewise, when the Heart of Self alone exists, there is truly no room for the notions that it exists either inside or outside the body, for the body itself does not exist apart from Self.

Question: You have said that the Heart is the centre of the Self.

Bhagavan: Yes, it is the one supreme centre of the Self. You need have no doubt about it. The real Self is there in the Heart behind the jiva or ego-self.

Question: Now be pleased to tell me where it is in the body.

Bhagavan: You cannot know it with your mind. You cannot realise it by imagination when I tell you here is the centre [pointing to the right side of the chest]. The only direct way to realise it is to cease to fantasise and try to be yourself. When you realise, you automatically feel that the centre is there. This is the centre, the Heart, spoken of in the scriptures as hrit-guhaarul [grace], ullam [the Heart].

Question: In no book have I found it stated that it is there.

Bhagavan: Long after I came here I chanced upon a verse in the Malayalam version of Ashtangahridayam, the standard work on ayurveda [Hindu medicine], wherein the ojas sthana [source of bodily vitality or place of light] is mentioned as being located in the right side of the chest and called the seat of consciousness [samvit]. But I know of no other work which refers to it as being located there.

Question: Can I be sure that the ancients meant this centre by the term ‘Heart’?

Bhagavan: Yes, that is so. But you should try to have rather than to locate the experience. A man need not find out where his eyes are situated when he wants to see. The Heart is there ever open to you if you care to enter it, ever supporting all your movements even when you are unaware. It is perhaps more proper to say that the Self is the Heart itself than to say that it is in the Heart. Really, the Self is the centre itself. It is everywhere, aware of itself as ‘Heart’, the Self-awareness.

Question: In that case, how can it be localised 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.

Bhagavan: 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 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 ‘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.

Question: How then shall I understand Sri Bhagavan’s statement that the experience of the Heart-centre is at the particular place in the chest?

Bhagavan: 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.

Question: The Heart is said to be on the right, on the left, or in the centre. With such differences of opinion how are we to meditate on it?

Bhagavan: You are and it is a fact. Dhyana [meditation] is by you, of you, and in you. It must go on where you are. It cannot be outside you. So you are the centre of dhyana and that is the Heart. Doubts arise only when you identify it with something tangible and physical. Heart is no conception, no object for meditation. But it is the seat of meditation. The Self remains all alone. You see the body in the Heart, the world is also in it. There is nothing separate from it. So all kinds of effort are located there only.

Question: You say the ‘I’-thought rises from the Heart-centre. Should we seek its source there?

Bhagavan: I ask you to see where the ‘I’ arises in your body, but it is really not quite correct to say that the ‘I’ rises from and merges in the Heart in the right side of the chest. The Heart is another name for the reality and it is neither inside nor outside the body. There can be no in or out for it, since it alone is.

Question: 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. Meditation should be on the Self. Everyone knows ‘I am’. Who is the ‘I’? It will be neither within nor without, neither on the right nor on the left. ‘I am’ - that is all. Leave alone the idea of right and left. They pertain to the body. The Heart is the Self. Realise it and then you will see for yourself. There is no need to know where and what the Heart is. It will do its work if you engage in the quest for the Self.

Question:Upadesa Saram where it is said, ‘Abiding in the Heart is the best karma, yoga, bhakti and jnana?’

Bhagavan: That which is the source of all, that in which all live, and that into which all finally merge, is the Heart referred to.

Question: How can we conceive of such a Heart?

Bhagavan: Why should you conceive of anything? You have only to see from where the ‘I’ springs. That from which all thoughts of embodied beings issue forth is called the Heart. All descriptions of it are only mental concepts.

Question: There are said to be six organs of different colours in the chest, of which the Heart is said to be two finger-breadths to the right of the middle line. But the Heart is also formless. Should we then imagine it to have a shape and meditate on it?

Bhagavan: No. Only the quest ‘Who am I?’ is necessary. What remains all through deep sleep and waking is the same. But in waking there is unhappiness and the effort to remove it. Asked who wakes up from sleep you say ‘I’. Now you are told to hold fast to this ‘I’. If it is done the eternal being will reveal itself. Investigation of ‘I’ is the point and not meditation on the Heart-centre. There is nothing like within or without. Both mean either the same thing or nothing. Of course there is also the practice of meditation on the Heart-centre. It is only a practice and not investigation. Only the one who meditates on the Heart can remain aware when the mind ceases to be active and remains still, whereas those who meditate on other centres cannot be so aware but infer that the mind was still only after it becomes again active. In whatever place in the body one thinks Self to be residing, due to the power of that thinking it will appear to the one who thinks thus as if Self is residing in that place. However, the beloved Heart alone is the refuge for the rising and subsiding of that ‘I’. Know that though it is said that the Heart exists both inside and outside, in absolute truth it does not exist both inside and outside, because the body, which appears as the base of the differences ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, is an imagination of the thinking mind. Heart, the source, is the beginning, the middle and the end of all. Heart, the supreme space, is never a form. It is the light of truth.

The following incident, narrated by Annamalai Swami in Living by the Words of Bhagavan, also has Bhagavan giving out similar advice:

In the beginning, when I first came to Bhagavan, I had asked him for a mantra. In response he told me to repeat ‘Siva Siva’ continuously. Later, Bhagavan advised me to keep my attention in the Heart while I was working. I had read that Bhagavan had spoken of a place called ‘the Heart-centre’, which he located on the right side of the chest. I had assumed that Bhagavan wanted me to concentrate on this particular centre. However, when I started to practise in this way, Bhagavan stopped me and corrected me.

‘This right-side Heart-centre is not the true Heart,’ he said. ‘The real Heart is not located anywhere. It is all-pervasive.’

‘Stop meditating on the Heart-centre,’ he continued. ‘Find the source. That is the true Heart. Just as electricity comes not from the individual meter boxes in people’s houses but from a single source, so too the whole world has a single source, which is the Self or the Heart. Seek and enquire into this source of limitless energy. If the centre of the Self were really located in the body, the Self would die when the body dies.’

I understood from these remarks that just as one cannot experience the nature and source of electricity by staring at the meter box in one’s house, one cannot gain a direct experience of the current of the Self by concentrating on the Heart-centre. I gave up concentrating on this centre and tried to follow Bhagavan’s advice.

Sources:

1) http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2008/07/meditation-on-heart-centre.html
2) Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai Translation In English By Michael James

Readers interested are requested to read below article

http://prashantaboutindia.blogspot.com/2010/01/ramana-maharshi-about-enquiry-and.html

http://prashantaboutindia.blogspot.com/2010/01/some-teachings-of-bhagavan-ramana.html

http://prashantaboutindia.blogspot.com/2009/12/ramana-maharshi-says-self-is-in-heart.html

http://prashantaboutindia.blogspot.com/2009/12/ramana-maharshi-says-self-is-in-heart.html