THE HEART

How does the divine communicate? We have temples and other places of worship for devotees to congregate and offer their prayers to the divine. Then we have apostles and saints, men and women who sacrificed their lives to contemplate on the divine and carry out its wishes, while the common folk lived to fulfill their personal likes and desires. So the saints stood out among the people for their surrender of their soul and their sacrifice of their lives which otherwise would be echoing the normal lifestyle just like others.

We then look towards them to channel our desires, needs and wants to the divine. Do we need a channel then? Initially yes if we have no idea to go about it. But as we start the journey gurus and upagurus fill us up with knowledge about the divine and the means to attain what we seek of the divine. But a true guru will know when to let go of our hands and watch us walk by ourself. He would stand aside and watch us take a step, fall, get up, try again, take another step, fall, and it shall go on for a short while before he sees his student take leaps and runs. He will watch with a sense of pride and joy at having accomplished his work and take leave or work on another soul that comes along.

I had two such gurus Supramania Swami and Tavayogi. Today even if they are both not around physically I cherish and carry them in my heart. I carry Agathiyar in my heart. And I carry all the good souls I have met since my journey started in my heart too. 

If the heart is a "muscular organ in most animals, which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system", the "Atman, the Spiritual Heart, has no physical or mental dimensions as such and does not express itself other than as a mere transfiguring tremor" states https://hridaya-yoga.com/hridaya-yoga-articles/what-is-hridaya-the-spiritual-heart/

We learn further the difference, as stated in the above blog.

According to Tantric tradition, anahata chakra, the heart chakra, is just a level or dimension of our being and of the entire manifestation. The Spiritual Heart is more than this. Hridaya: The Spiritual Heart is not just a spark of God; the Spiritual Heart is God. So the Spiritual Heart is not just a reflection of everything. It is the Supreme Consciousness, the essence of everything, the background of existence. The Heart of man and the Heart of the world are a single Heart.

Ramana is quoted as saying,

According to Ramana Maharshi, the great Advaita master, “The godly atom of the Self is to be found in the right chamber of the heart, about one finger-width’s distance from the body’s midline. “Here lies the Heart, the dynamic Spiritual Heart. It is called hridaya, is located on the right side of the chest, and is clearly visible to the inner eye of an adept on the Spiritual Path. Through meditation you can learn to find the Self in the cave of this Heart. What is essential in any sadhana (spiritual practice) is to try to bring back the running mind and fix it on one thing only. Why then should it not be brought back and fixed in Self-attention (to this feeling of ‘I’)? That alone is Self-enquiry (atma vichara). That is all that is to be done!”

To find the Self in the cave is to find Kuga (Lord Muruga). After conducting puja at the home of a devotee, Lord Muruga who came through a devotee told us that he was giving us something that day asking us to open our hearts and let him in so that he could deliver what he had come to give. To those who held on, he asked them to let go. He strictly told us that only those who had surrendered should step up and hold his hands to receive his initiation. As we all stood in line to receive initiation from Lord Muruga again he asked of us if we had surrender completely. Only after getting us to drop all fears and doubts and after we committed wholeheartedly, opening up our hearts, did he come within to take his dwelling. There was no mantra nor practice given, for henceforth it was not a matter of our effort in scaling and climbing but the divine lifting us. We just need to sit in silence and all else shall take place.

We "understand clearly that the essential awareness of our own being is not a function of reason. It is not the mind or a product of the mind, nor is it ordinary thoughts, but it is a radiance emanating from the region of the chest." We just need to watch this radiance. We are reminded in the blog that,

It is important to note that the rapport of something infinite, atman , the Divine Self, to something finite, such as the physical body or a point on or within the physical body, can only be a relative undertaking. Sages like Ramana Maharshi affirm that the awareness of the Supreme Infinite cannot be localized at a certain place in the body and that in the state of divine expansion, of diving into the divine ocean of Consciousness, we can no longer speak of a head, arms, body, and other areas. However, Ramana says that in the moment of returning to the consciousness of the physical body, when we regain awareness of our physical body, a memory endures of that state and it appears to be connected to the area of the physical heart, in the middle of the chest, slightly to the right. That Divine Infinity can easily be found again by centering in the region of the heart. 

Centering our attention on the region of the heart rather than the mind is one way to settle the thoughts. 

Placing the seat of witness consciousness in the brain is a sterile attitude. The ultimate witness is not the mind or a particular thought. We can imagine in our mind a witness of our thoughts and then we can easily imagine another witness of that first witness of the thoughts, and then a witness of the witness of the witness and so on….

Generally, the activity of the mind is governed by intentionality and implicitly is a movement governed by ego; it is activity that wants to grab information and to “conquer,” to keep control over the objects of activity and the process of self-knowing. When we withdraw the senses (pratyahara) and center ourselves in the chest area, looking for the deepest aspects of our being, we start to search “the interior” to the detriment of “the exterior.” In this way, we pass from the usual “conquering” attitude of the mind to a receptive, contemplative disposition. It is a kind of surrender, which implies lucidity, discernment, vigilance.

We could also observe the breath for a start. Agathiyar taught me to do so. It works for me. Letting the thoughts come and go without grabbing it, listening to it, or stopping it, just by watching it, it loses its grip on us and we shall not be aware of them after some time. The mind soon settles. So I suppose that is the reason Lord Muruga, as I took my place in line before him to receive the initiation, he told me off in the face that he had nothing to give me, for Agathiyar was already guiding me. I stepped back. Some received the initiation that day while the initiation for others was deferred to another day, as they were not ready.

I remember why Yogi Ramsuratkumar refused to bless an American who had met Anandamayi Ma before dropping on the Yogi. The Yogi turned round to address his aids after the man left that he had already received her blessings and that the Yogi did not want to interfere. I remember why Rengaraja Desigar did not bless me as I stood before him in private back then in 2003. I suppose he knew I was to meet my guru Supramania Swami in Tiruvannamalai four days later. 

If we had searched high and low for the abode of the divine thinking that it is secretly lodged away in the wilderness, today we come to realize that his abode is so close to us, just a step away. If we open up our doors, open up our hearts, he would come in to reside. Invite him in.

“God is born in the Heart and the Heart is born in God,” as the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said. This vision leads us to understand that there is nothing to be searched in the interior or exterior. God is already there. 

As Agathiyar says, we need to build Atma Balam, we are told again that "The Bliss of Pure Existence, sat, is expanding the soul and the understanding. The Divine Reality is unveiling a mystery of love-awareness."

True to what has been held to, 

In Christian spirituality, and for the Fathers of the Desert, the Heart is not simply a physical organ, but is the spiritual center of the human’s being, his deepest and truest self, or the inner shrine, to be entered only through the sacrifice of individuality, in which the mystery of the union between the divine and the human is consummated,

Lord Muruga asked for the sacrifice of one's individuality too.

“The intellect of the Heart” does not function by formulating abstract concepts and does not reach conclusion through deductive reason. It understands Divine Truth by means of immediate experience or intuition. In the domain of the Heart, most of us are somewhat or entirely illiterate. The Heart knows through surrender, trust, and joy.

As Nakirar pleads of Lord Ganesh in his Thiruagaval to bring the guru within where both the guru and disciple shall spend hours in silence, connecting with each other in silence, receiving the direct knowledge and illumination in that sacred moment of silent discourse, 

மோனா ஞான முழுதும் அளித்து

சிற்பரிப் பூரண சிவத்தைக் காண

நற்சிவ நிட்கள நாட்டமுந் தந்து

குருவுஞ் சீடனுங் கூடிக் கலந்து

இருவரும் ஒரு தனியிடந் தனிற் சேர்ந்து

தானந்தமாகித் தற்பர வெளியில்

ஆனந்த போத அறிவைக் கலந்து

ஈசனிைணயடியிருத்தி

மனத்தே நீயே நானாய்

நானே நீயாய்க்

காயா புரியைக் கனவெனவுணா்ந்து

எல்லாமுன் செயலென்ேற உணர

நல்லா உன்னருள் நாட்டந் தருவாய்

காரண குருவே கற்பகத் களிேற

வாரணமுகத்து வள்ளலே போற்றி

the blog summarizes these moments beautifully.

Coming back to the Heart, all the vain noise of the world is quieted….The Heart is a sanctuary of silence. There, in the most sacred intimacy and solitude of the “cave of the Heart”, the moods of individuality fade away and the consciousness of unity is revealed. There, the world and man are one. So, in a paradoxical way, the solitude and intimacy of the Heart reveals the essential Unity of all existence.

If before we depended on the Nadi and the Guru for guidance and blessings, these days the divine comes in other forms too to continue the tradition of the Guru-Disciple. The Divine Sheppard has come to lead his lost children back to his kingdom. Amazing.