self-enquiry #30 & last from Be As You Are

[Guest guest]

Question: There are said to be six organs of different colours in the

chest, of which the Heart is said to be two finger-breaths 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?

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi: 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.

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