THE HEART IS THAT WHICH IS CLOSEST TO DIVINITY AND IS FOREVER RADIATING AN ENERGY
The core of the human personality is what is called the heart, the sum-totality of all your feelings, your emotions, and not only those that you feel with the mind. All the feelings and emotions that we experience are not necessarily of the heart. A lot of it is mixed up with the mind. The heart is a quality or a form of existence that could exist without the mind and without feeling, without emotion, without the thinking process. It could exist independently, yet the various mechanisms of the mind are necessary to be able to appreciate what is happening in the heart.
The heart is forever radiating an energy, a force. When I said that the heart is the core of the human personality, it means that the heart is that which is closest to Divinity. Divinity is encompassed, trapped, so to speak, in the heart. The heart has a universal quality. Therefore, we call a good man a big-hearted man. Little do we realise how big that bigness is. Its extent is the entire universe, but because humans have minds, they persist in limiting the heart. By limiting the heart to its individual self and its individuality, they close the heart. Therefore, the question arises: “How can we open the heart?”
THE RADIATION OF THE HEART IS FOREVER PURE
How do we begin by opening the heart? If a man says, “Oh, I must be kinder, I must be more generous, I must be more loving.” Does the heart say that? The heart does not say that. The mind says that it feels the closeness of the heart. Yet the heart is pulsating so powerfully all the time that the mind starts to feel those pulses or impulses, and it begins to wonder. Why is my heart closed? Why can I not feel?
Feeling is thought to be measured in terms of one’s emotions, because emotions could be good or bad, could be positive or negative, but the radiation of the heart is forever pure. When we study the Scriptures and where it is said that “Jesus’ heart bled for us.” What bled? What shot forth the pulsating flow of blood? When we talk of blood, we mean lifeblood, lifeblood coming from the heart, empowered, generated by the force of the heart that is universal.
THE HEART DOES NOT REQUIRE OPENING, BUT THE MIND DOES
Here, we have to be very careful in understanding this principle. Opening the heart is not necessary in opening the mind. We start with the mind in trying to open the heart. We gather to ourselves or affirm to ourselves positive qualities that affect the opening process. But the proper way to open the heart, and here is the secret, is to go beyond the mind and not let the mind interfere.
Man says to woman, woman to man, “I love you.” The love that is spoken there is not the love of the heart, although it is generated by the heart. It is empowered by the heart, but it is the mind that is speaking. The mind appreciates the shape of her nose, her ears, or her toes and says, “I love you.” The heart has no eyes. It has no ears. It has no feeling. Yet we say the heart feels.
The mind feels, not the heart. The heart is a pulsating, radiating power, and when the heart is opened, that means that the mind is opened. The heart does not require opening. Like our usual old analogy, the heart can be likened to the petrol in the tank of the car, and the carburetor is the mind. So, when the mind is expanded, the heart, the petrol automatically flows through.
WHEN YOU STIMULATE THE HEART, THE MIND AUTOMATICALLY OPENS UP
In our practices, we leave the mind aside and we are in touch with the source that could override the discrepancies of the mind. It is tough to start with the mind in opening up the mind, so that the heart could shine through. But it is so much easier for the heart to shine through in its own “isness” through the mind and all the crevices of the mind. All the dirt in the mind is automatically washed away in this force, this torrent of heart energy.
People who follow Jnana Yoga would start by trying to expand the mind, which is a challenging path. People who would want to start with the heart would find it much, much easier, because they do not take the mind into account, because when they stimulate the heart, the mind automatically opens up, and the power flows through.
IT IS THE NATURE OF THE HEART TO LOVE AND TO SEND FORTH THAT LOVE
The question is, how does one stimulate the heart? How does one reach the core of one’s personality? How does one take the individual feeling that is within oneself and infuse it into that universal oneness which is the heart? The process is facilitated through our meditational practices, where we systematically delve deeper into levels beyond the mind, and there, in the realm of the heart, lies the Kingdom of Heaven. You see how the heart has been so misinterpreted, because the core of human personality is the spirit, and the spirit is the heart. What loves, really loves? The heart loves. Not because the heart wants to love, but because it is the nature of the heart to love and send forth that love.
LOVE FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE
So, we bluff ourselves into thinking that we love, because the moment you believe that you love, you have stopped loving. Take this to mind very carefully. The moment you think I love, I have stopped loving, because the mind interprets it, and the mind is too imperfect to analyze that which is so infinite, so forceful, so powerful. How could it be captured in the narrow confines of the mind? That is why we say, “Love for the sake of Love.” Not love because you are beautiful or you are rich, or you have something that I need. The mind knows of needs, not the heart. The mind recognizes the need. It could be a need for dependency. It could be emotional dependency. It could be physical dependency. We do find people who are together for years because of physical dependencies, which is nothing but the mind involved with the senses or the sensual self of man. That is not love, and that is not opening the heart. That is playing tricks with the mind. The mind plays tricks on itself, and then we start believing that we love. You cannot think you love. Love just is. It requires no believing.
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN WITHIN IS THE HEART
With the meditational practices, we bypass the various crevices of the mind and feel that force within. We think that force within is felt with the mind. But yet the mind at its finer level cognizes and recognizes that force, and therefore it appreciates it. People say, “Love is blind.” That is very true, because love does not see, does not hear, and does not think.
When you love someone, you fail to see the faults of that person because that force overwhelms you so much that all the flaws and frailties are not seen at all. Then there is a certain measure of love. However, when you do not love someone, all the person’s faults seem magnified. It gets magnified out of proportion, not by the heart but by the mind. You see the tricks we play upon ourselves?
The idea is not to think about love. The idea is to feel love. One feels love when we bring ourselves to that state of innocence. Be innocent as a child, and the Kingdom of Heaven is forever open. That is the heart. That Kingdom is the heart. Not the individualized heart that has been so distorted by us by the processes of the mind, where the mind very unsuccessfully tries to limit the heart. In this failure of attempting to limit the heart, conflicts arise, and one conflict breeds more conflicts, and it goes on in a vicious circle.
IN TRUE LOVEMAKING, ONLY THE ONENESS IS FELT
Many of you might have experienced that when a man loves a woman or a woman loves a man, in the presence or the closeness of each other, the mind does not function, you become oblivious of the body, and something else takes over, where you are transported away. You are lost in love there. You are transported away where the thinking mind is gone, and you become oblivious of the body, and there is just this “isness.”
I think I might have mentioned before that people do not even know how to make love. They do not know how to make love. They make love with their bodies only, and the mind stimulates the body. More physical people have physical stimulation, while some others require psychological stimulation, and then, of course, most of the time, the body and mind function together, and that they call lovemaking. It is blasphemy. That is not lovemaking. That is lust-making.
Actual lovemaking comes only when the inner self, the spirit or the heart, the mind, and the body become totally infused, and in that infusion, the greater power takes over. The body is not felt, and the mind is not felt; only the oneness is felt. And that comes from the heart, that is, the opening up of the heart. I am only using this instance of lovemaking, but the same principle applies to every facet of life, and when man can really love in that way, then he loves through Divinity. He is expressing Divinity, and that very lovemaking becomes a meditation.
The purpose of meditation is to integrate mind, body, and spirit. In this instance, mind, body, and spirit are portrayed or experienced as a oneness, as an integrated wholeness where lover, the beloved, and love become one. That is love. The rest is but a preparation to love.
This is the supreme experience. That is the supreme joy of love, and that is why we say “God is love; Love is God.”
WE CAN ONLY PROGRESS FURTHER WHEN WE RECOGNIZE THE FUTILITY OF OUR PRESENT SITUATION
When we talk of opening the heart, we acknowledge the closeness of the heart, and it seems pinched. When I say the heart seems pinched, it means your entire personality is pinched, is going through a contraction without the expansion, and in this contraction, in this pinchedness, all kinds of pains are felt, all kinds of disappointments are felt. In that contractedness, one goes through so many different types of disillusionment, and life deludes us, and we say, “What is the use of this life.”
It is good to say, “What is the use of this life?” Because it is only by recognizing the futility of our present situation that we can progress further. Some people remain self-satisfied, and they think they have gained the whole world, that they have gained the entire universe. That too is a self-delusion. For it is only when the heart is expanded to its most whole self that we really know ourselves, as the injunction says, “Man know Thyself.” Thyself is the core of thy personality. The core of thy personality is Divine. That is how true love, real love, is experienced. The rest is playing games. We play games with ourselves, and we play games with others. But that is the way, for life itself is a game. Life itself is a play, like the actors on the stage, and all these roles are necessary. All these roles are required so that we can experience that expansion.
WITH EFFORTFUL LIVING, ONE CAN CHANGE ONE’S WHOLE MENTAL ATTITUDE BY ACCEPTING AND SURRENDERING
Do not try to excite the heart to open itself because you cannot. But in the beginning stages you can create a frame of mind, that can make it more conducive to experience what the real heart is by living Yama and Niyama, or by positive living, living according to the injunctions in the Scriptures of whatever religion you follow, because none of them tell you to be bad, they always show you how to be good. This frame you will later have to discard, as all the frames are to be discarded. But that comes at a later stage.
The immediate experience within a few months of effortful living, by discriminative living, by disciplined living, will be that we create an aura around ourselves. We make a magnetic force around ourselves, a magnetic pull that will bring to us what we need for that moment. This is very interesting because people only attract to themselves what they deserve. That is all. Nothing more. Nothing less. We have said before that “Nothing for nothing and very little for sixpence.” You remember that.
So, with effortful living and disciplined living, a person can change their entire mental attitude and perspective on life. To change one’s perspective on life, one must think and live positively. And the easiest way to live and believe positively is by doing two things that people do not want to do. The easiest, but they do not want to do it – number one, acceptance, and number two, self-surrender.
ACCEPTANCE AND SELF-SURRENDER ARE REQUIRED IN THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE
There you have it in a nutshell, in a walnut. Walnut, because it has a hard shell, is hard to crack. It has two parts to it. When you open the walnut, the nut itself has the crevices inside; it looks like a brain. You see how brainy we are. The two things required in this discipline of life are self-surrender and acceptance. I feel with my mind that my heart is pinched. I understand that the heart has a universal free quality, and I am narrowing it down through my thinking processes. And all the thinking that narrows down that force within oneself necessarily has to be limiting, and all that limits is negative. Because positivity has a quality of expansion. Negativity has the quality of contraction.
When we have the principle of acceptance, what do we accept? Firstly, we take the fact that my heart feels pinched. That means facing reality. These two words contain every bit of practical living that you could ever think of, and we can write volumes and volumes on them. One accepts oneself as one is – my heart is pinched. If it is pinched, if it is contracted, and the desire within me is to expand it, what do I do?
Step number two. I try to develop a perspective towards life within the framework of admitting what it is at the moment. Perspective varies from individual to individual, and the method differs. Therefore, teachers are necessary. So, when we recognize that these are my faults and these are the blockages, we take action to overcome those blockages. And when we do something to overcome the blockages, we are surrendering without realizing it. We are surrendering ourselves to our present condition. That is where we start.
When we surrender ourselves to our present condition, then a force from within wells up, and in that force, you feel its effect, and you recognize that this is a higher force, something which is greater than me. You recognize that.
So, in acceptance, you surrender first to yourself by accepting the blockages and the weaknesses. When one does that and when one is honest with oneself, immediately the other force takes over and faces us. It hits us right between the eyes. You see, it is there, seen and tangible, and then we surrender to that force. That is what is meant by “Thy will be done.”
THE EVIL NOT TO BE RESISTED IS THE NEGATIVE FORCES WE HAVE CREATED WITHIN OURSELVES
Resist not evil, they say. What evil do you want to resist? If a man comes and takes your home away, you do not say, “Sit back and take away.” No, no. If a man comes and destroys that which is most close to you, you do not say, “Oh well, that is evil, I must not resist it,” and let things go on as they are. No. The evil that is not to be resisted is the opposing forces that we have created within ourselves, and the best way not to resist that evil is to accept it within ourselves, to recognize it within ourselves, and say, “This is it.” And once you accept that, it is like a ball game.
When they play baseball like these Americans do, and the ball is thrown hard by the pitcher, the catcher on the other end does not try to catch the ball rigidly, because it will hurt his hands. Or when we English people play cricket, we give a bit of leeway to the hand, pull the hand a bit back so the impact, the speed of the ball, the force of the ball is not felt so much. The ball comes to you; you just do that. It becomes easy. You are not resisting the force. You are accepting the force, not resisting it. See how beautiful it is?
So, the evil that is to be resisted is the recognition of our shortcomings, and what are we going to do about them? That is, as I said, step number two.
ALL OF US ARE RADIATING A SUBTLE ENERGY, AN AURA
To repeat, by doing these things, we create an aura. Do remember one thing for sure, that everything you see, everything around us, this table, these flowers, you, I, this chair, everything, everyone, even Savita, Gita, Amrit, and Robert, all of us are radiating something all the time. We are radiating. And the human mechanism, not the grosser physical mechanism, but the subtle body that we spoke about, radiates this force, this emanation. All your positivity colors that emanation and all your negativities, and the other person can very easily feel that. It does not require the mind to feel that or the intellect to feel that. You just automatically feel it. You meet someone, and immediately you like the person. You meet another person, and that person repels you. Why? It is not because he has got a brown suit on or a black suit on, or his face is not pleasant, or his face is pretty and handsome and good looking. He had a haircut today, and you know, things like that. Everything and all of us are radiating an aura. We are emanating this subtle energy. An aura is nothing but energy, and that energy attracts a similar kind of energy.
I know a young lady, a beautiful and intelligent girl, one of our meditators. Every time she met a man, she used to like the man, the man used to like her, but something just happened where it just ended, all the time. One, two, three, four, five, I do not know how many beautiful friendships, but they could just not lead to anything or towards anything. I spoke to her, and we started analyzing the situation, and we asked the question, Why? This girl lost the battle even before she started it. That was her whole mental attitude all the time. That force emanating from her did not cause attraction and a firm bond, but rather repulsion.
THE SPIRITUAL PATH IS THE PATH OF LOVE
So, to open the heart, to get away that pinchedness, one has to formulate one’s thinking, and one’s thinking naturally formulates one’s action. So, therefore, if we want to open up the heart, we have to go through disciplines. Never say that he does not love me, or she does not love me. Always say, “What am I doing to be loved?” Always say that, and when you say that, you are setting into motion a Divine law, a universal law. Therefore, extraversion in communication begins with introversion, which involves self-examination. However, self-examination alone is not enough; one must act according to the solutions found. If our minds are incapable of finding solutions, the Scriptures provide guidance. Wise men are there; Sages who are forever ready to assist are there.
So, to recap, the heart is forever open. It is the core of the human personality. The core of human personality is Divine. It does not require opening, shutting, or closing. It will forever be there. It exists because it exists. “I am that I am.”
What requires remodeling, reframing, and repatterning is our mind and our thinking processes. We may have lived many lifetimes, having been shaped into this form, but remember, whatever is molded can be remolded. That is what we have to do in the path of spiritual growth or in the path of love, because the spiritual path is the path of love. None else. None else. That is why the greatest Masters in the world taught nothing else but love. That is what is required, and we must go through disciplines. Even sitting down to meditate in the beginning is a discipline because everyone is too busy. They are not too busy to read the comics, and they are not too busy to go to the cinema or the theatre.
WE PAY SUCH A HIGH PRICE WITH ALL OUR SUFFERING, AND WE STILL FIND DARKNESS
Did I tell you the story of cinemas? That is how some people live their lives. You go to the cinema. The first thing they do is take your money, and then you go inside. You do not know what the film is going to be like, but first, they take your money. And not only that, but after putting you inside, they even switch off the lights. And then you will see what they put on the screen for you because the title is advertised. But how can you go by a title? So, we similarly live our lives. We pay such a high price with all our sufferings, and that suffering leads us into darkness.
That is the tragedy. That is the stage of man’s evolution that we are going through—suffering, suffering, suffering, and still finding darkness. I would rather not go to the cinema and pay good money and sit in the darkness. I would go to sit in the light, beautiful garden, beautiful park, where I can see and enjoy the flowers and the beautiful trees and the birds singing in all their glory, and the wind whistling and praising every moment the glory of Divinity. That is my cinema. It comes for nothing; you do not need to pay and be thrown into darkness. It is so beautiful. Really beautiful. And funny enough, I was in the film business, so I know.
WE HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO REPATTERN OUR MINDS
Even if our hearts feel pinched, even if it feels closed, we are forever hopeful, for hope is eternal in the human breast and chest. Yes, it is always there. It is always there. The only thing is that we make a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn; instead of facing the darkness, we face the light, that is all. And the way of facing the light is not to resist evil by accepting our faults and frailties and doing something about them. The best way to do it is to surrender to ourselves, which naturally leads us to surrender to a higher power. And that is how Grace is invoked, and that is how one learns to love, which is another misnomer. You do not know how to love. Love just is; you just reach it. You do not need to learn it. It is there, always there. What we have to know is how to repattern our minds. That is all. The biggest stumbling block in our path to joy is the mind, which I have always called a very cunning animal. It is true. It is true.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1978 – 34
