Heart and Mind

Note:
The following explanation of the ‘Talks’ is from S.S. Cohen from his book Reflections on Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi.
The Talks are a record in the form of diary of some of the conversations which the visitors and disciples have had with the Master on Spiritual matters for almost exactly four years – April 1935 to May 1939. In those years it used to called “The Journal”. Roughly half of this period it used to be written in the Darshan Hall itself by the diarist, or recorder, Sri M. Venkataramiah, the late Swami Ramanananda Saraswati at the end of each particular conversation at which he was present. Sri Bhagavan scarcely ever answered in English, but invariable in Tamil, which very often the diarist himself translated into English to the questioner in the hearing of the whole audience. But questions in Telugu and Malaayalam, Bhagavan answered in the same languages, and the answers in the latter language may be said to have been lost to the diarist, who did not understand Malayalam.
Therefore the language of this diary is of the recorder, more often it is a paraphrase of the Master’s answers, occasionally His very words, rendered into English, for it is impossible to write down afterwards all He had said, or to kep pace with Him even if the answers were to be taken down vertabium on the spot.

Ramana: “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 hthe 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, dor it. So this Heart is pointed out as the seat of the Self. But in truh we are everywhere; we are all that is, and there is nothing else”.

Cohen: 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 (Amrita Nadi) from which they run down to all parts of the body through various nadis. …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 state for the complete and absolute Emancipation. The 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.

Cohen: “Thoughts are (the products as well as) the contents of the mind” is significant; it make 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 wiith the Heart or Brahman.

“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 the vacuity (Heart)”. Chandogya Upanishad, IX, i.3)

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 neight within nor without, neither on the right nor the left: “I am” – that is all”.

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 comprehands space itself space (akasha)? The space is physcial ether (bhootakasha). The mind is mental ether (manakasha) which is contained in transcendental ether (chidakasha). The mind is thur the ether principle (akashatattva) Being the principle of knowledge (jnana tatva), it is identified with ether (akasha) by metaphysics. Considering it to be ether, there will be no difficulty in reconciling the apparent contradiction in the question. Pure mind (Suddha manas) is ether (akasa). Rajas and tamas operate as gross objects, etc. Thus the whole universe is only mental”.