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On
my visits to Sri Ramanasramam I would sit in the hall with the Maharshi,
listening to him deal with all the questions and doubts that devotees
brought to him. Occasionally, if some answer was not clear, or if it
did not tally with my own experience, I would ask a question myself. My
army training had taught me that I should keep on questioning until I
fully understood what was being explained to me. I applied the same
principles to the Maharshi’s philosophical teachings.
On one occasion, for example, I heard him tell a visitor that the
spiritual Heart-centre was located on the right side of the chest, and
that the ‘I’-thought arose from that place and subsided there. This
did not tally with my own experience of the Heart. On my first visit
to the Maharshi, when my Heart opened and flowered, I knew that it was
neither inside nor outside the body. And when the experience of the Self
became permanent during my second visit, I knew that it was not possible
to say that the Heart could be limited to or located in the body.
So I joined in the conversation and asked, ‘Why do you place the
spiritual Heart on the right side of the chest and limit it to that
location? There can be no right or left for the Heart because it does
not abide inside or outside the body. Why not say it is everywhere? How
can you limit the truth to a location inside the body? Would it not be
more correct to say that the body is situated in the Heart, rather than
the Heart in the body?’ I was quite vigorous and fearless in my
questioning because that was the method I had been taught in the army.
The Maharshi gave me an answer which fully satisfied me. Turning to me,
he explained that he only spoke in this way to people who still
identified themselves with their bodies. ‘When I speak of the “I”
rising from the right side of the body, from a location on the right
side of the chest, the information is for those people who still think
that they are the body. To these people I say that the Heart is located
there. But it is really not quite correct to say that the “I” rises from and merges in the Heart on 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. I do not mean by “Heart”
any physiological organ or any plexus or anything like that, but so long
as one identifies oneself with the body and thinks that one is the body,
one is advised to see where in the body the “I”-thought rises and merges again. It must be the Heart at the
right side of the chest since every man, of whatever race and religion,
and in whatever language he may be saying “I”,
points to the right side of the chest to indicate himself. This is so
all over the world, so that must be the place. And by keenly watching
the daily emergence of the “I”-thought on waking, and its subsiding in sleep, one can see
that it is in this Heart on the right side.’
I liked to talk to the Maharshi when he was alone or when there were
very few people around, but this was not often possible. For most of the
day he was surrounded by people. Even when I did approach him with a
question, I had to have an interpreter on hand because my Tamil wasn’t
good enough to sustain a philosophical conversation.
The summer months were the best time to catch him in a quiet
environment. The climate was so unpleasant at that time, few visitors
came. One time in May, at the height of the summer, there were only
about five of us with the Maharshi. Chadwick, one of the five, made a
joke about it: ‘We are your poor devotees, Bhagavan. Everyone who can
afford to go to the hills to cool off has left. Only we paupers have
been left behind.’
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