Maharshi's Gospel - [89]

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D. For men like me, who have neither the direct experience

of the Heart nor the consequent recollection, the matter

seems somewhat difficult to grasp. About the position of

the Heart itself, perhaps, we must depend on some sort

of guesswork.

Maharshi:

If the determination of the position of the Heart is to depend

on guesswork even in the case of 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?

 

 

Maharshi:

For one and all.

 

D. Does Sri Bhagavan credit me with an intuitive knowledge

of the Heart?

 

Maharshi:

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?

 

 

Maharshi:

Why not?

 

D. (Pointing to himself) It is to me personally that Sri Bhagavan is referring?

 

 

Maharshi:

 

Yes. That is the intuition! How did you refer to yourself by gesture

just now? Did you not put your finger 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 center, I have

to depend on this intuition?

 

Maharshi:

 

What is wrong with it? When a schoolboy says, "It is I who did the sum correctly",

or when he asks you, "Shall I run and get the book for you?", would he point 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 toward 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 center

in the physical body?

 

 

 

D. But I have heard it said by a saint that his spiritual experience

is felt at the place between the eyebrows.

 

Maharshi:

As I said previously, that is the ultimate and perfect Realization

which transcends subject-object relation. When that is achieved,

it does not matter where the the spiritual experience is felt.

D. But the question is which is the correct view of the two, namely,

(1) that the center of spiritual experience is the place between

the eyebrows, (2) that it is the Heart.

 

Maharshi:

For purposes of practice you may concentrate between the eyebrows.

It would then be bhavana or imaginative contemplation of the mind;

whereas the supreme state of anubhava or Realization, with which

you become wholly identified and in which your individuality is completely

dissolved, transcends the mind. Then there can be no objectified

center to be experienced by you as a subject distinct and separate from it.

 

 

D. I would like to put my question in slightly different words.

Can the place between the eyebrows be said to be the seat of the Self?

 

 

Maharshi:

You accept that the Self is the ultimate source of consciousness and that it subsists

equally during all the three states of the mind. But see what happens when a person

in meditation is overcome by sleep. As the first symptom of sleep his head begins to

nod, which however could not happen if the Self were situated between the eyebrows

or at any other place in the head.

 

If during sleep the experience of the Self is not felt between the eyebrows, that center

cannot be called its seat without implying that the Self often forsakes its own place,

which is absurd.

 

The fact is the sadhaka may have this experience at any center or chakra on which he

concentrates his mind. But for that reason that particular place of his experience does

not become ipso facto the seat of the Self.