Ramana...The Heart is on the Right Side

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Ramana ... from The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi.. edited by Osborne

 

Q: Why do you say that the heart is on the right when biologists have found it

to be on the left?

Bhagavan: No one denies that the physical organ is on the left; but the heart

of which I speak is on the right. That is my experience and I require no

authority for it; still, you can find confirmation of it in a Malayali book on

Ayurveda and in the Sita Upanishad.

 

Saying this, Bhagavan showed the quotation from the latter and quoted the text

from the former

Sometimes, when asked , he referred also to the Biblical text from Ecclesiastes:

'The wise man's heart is at the right hand and a fool's heart is at the left.'

 

'I ask you to observe where the "I" arises in the body, but it is not really

quite correct to say that the "I" arises from and merges in the chest at the

right side. The Heart is another name for the Reality and this 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 nerves or

anything like that; but so long as a man identifies himself with the body or

thinks he is in the body, he is advised to see where in the body the "I" thought

arises and merges again. It must be the heart at the right side of the chest

since every man of what even race and religion and in whatever language he may

be speaking. points to the right side of the chest to indicate himself when he

says "I". This is so all over the world, so that must be the place. And by

keenly watching the emergence of the "I" thought on waking and its subsidence on

going to sleep, on can see that it is in the heart on the right side.