I hope readers find this useful. I’d suggest reading it when feeling contemplative and you have some time.
Great writeup. Do you think there can be synergy between the technique you describe and the AYP “heart breathing” pranayama method?
See – http://www.aypsite.org/220.html and http://www.aypsite.org/221.html
It doesn’t speak to me in the same way, but it’s certainly pointing in that direction.
I love and adore the stripped down, no-nonsense scientific quality of AYP, and how, in spite of its clean clarity it’s nonetheless a vehicle crying out to be driven via bhakti, love, and devotion. That’s what yoga is truly supposed to be: a formidable set of tools for “doing” religion (religion is such a loaded word…I mean it in the hippest sense, obviously; please don’t visualize heavy church organ music!). It’s hard to strip down the tools to their essence and present them in a way that does NOT lose their interface with God, but it’s also a mistake to go the other way and inject religiousity into the tools…because the clearer the tools are, the better they work. The way AYP handles this is its single most important contribution in my opinion.
However, there comes a time I believe (I can see it, but am not there yet) when, as the jazz musicians say, you’ve got to forget what you’ve practiced and just go do it. When the time comes for me to live solely in my heart, I won’t be doing practices. I won’t be doing any sort of predetermined “breathing”. I won’t even be doing mantra. I won’t turn it into a “practice”, I’ll be surrendered to the flow, and will let that guide me.
And I’ll thank AYP for helping me get there. Actually, the flow certainly brought me to AYP…and I also believe the flow created AYP. It’s my belief that it was created through and not “by” Yogani, the man. I hope he doesn’t find that offensive, I certainly don’t mean it as such!
In my experience there is the heart chakra which is in the middle of the chest and then another chakra to the right and slightly above this. It is not so large but extraordinarily blissful. I have yet to find much written about this. On a discussion site of Ramana Maharshi I once read that although he said what you quoted he never made a big thing out of it. I suspect he left it for students to discover how big it was. For me it came all on its own so I wonder if it is a secret that is discovered by diligent practice. I mean if it werent secret why is not more said of it?(www.esotericarts.org)
love,
David
[/quote]
Regarding the time when you live solely from your heart – are you sure you won’t be doing practices then Jim? What if the practices will be merely part of what you do from your heart then?
A duck who is a duck, who knows he is a duck, who will never strive again to be a duck, and who knows he will never drown again, may still preen himself to keep his feathers dry from the water – and may do it from the heart.
I’m not sure you really get there by going there. In fact, Maharshi was very ambivalent in how he taught this. i believe at the link I gave above he first instructs the physical location, then admits that non-duality can’t be pinpointed to one location. And then he sort of gets testy and says to just seek the self, nothing more. And that last is what he stuck with.
One can meditate till the cows come home on the spot to the right of the heart with nothing happening. Like everything else, from dance to kissing to prayer, it’s about the feeling.
I’m not “sure” of anything! 
I guess that is the point I meant. The spot came blissfully to me in meditation and everything followed from there. Afterwards I remembered reading what you quoted in your post from Ramana Maharshi plus one other book which had a drawing of a centre to the right of the heart chakra but said nothing whatsoever about its significance. I have never heard it discussed or read anything of this spot. Nor am I sure that this is what Ramana Maharshi meant when he said meditate on Who am I there?
Later I decided on reflection that I was not exceptional and no one spoke of the matter not because they didnt know but precisely students had to do some work on their own.
In my School of Tai Chi & Esoteric Arts I have talked about this and naturally someone asked where it was. I said it was a secret and they needed more experience first.
Any way none of this is really a big deal, all advancement is still within the orbit of the dream. Awakening from the dream is quite another matter.
Love,
David
Originally posted by Jim and His Karma[/i]
One can meditate till the cows come home on the spot to the right of the heart with nothing happening. Like everything else, from dance to kissing to prayer, it’s about the feeling.
[/quote]
David wrote:
“In my experience there is the heart chakra which is in the middle of the chest and then another chakra to the right and slightly above this. It is not so large but extraordinarily blissful.”
I suggest checking Adi Da’s teaching regarding the amrita nadi, which he claims connects from
the sinoatrial node on the right side of the heart to the sahasrara (crown)chakra.
For more on Adi DA’s explanation, see http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/EWB/EWB_pp396-414.html
[ I suggest checking Adi Da’s teaching regarding the amrita nadi, which he claims connects from
the sinoatrial node on the right side of the heart to the sahasrara (crown)chakra.
That was interesting Rabar. Are you a follower of Adi Da? I have read disturbing reports of his strange behaviour with women and alcohol.
A Nadi is a channel for energy. Therefore it goes from one plexus of energy to another. He says from the heart to the Sahasrara. This was not my experience of a bliss centre in its own right. But in the realm of the esoteric there is much mystery; one of them being how a teacher can apparently behave so aberrantly.
Thanks for the link.
David asked: “That was interesting Rabar. Are you a follower of Adi Da? I have read disturbing reports of his strange behaviour with women and alcohol.”
No, David, I have serious reservations about Adi Da. Because of his behavior, I consider him a ‘flawed’ arhant, brilliant in many of his insights but, like others, for example Chogyam Trungpa, his personal life is less than admirable. So often it seems the case with genius in any field that the person tends to be lacking in other aspects of their life. ‘Crazy wisdom’ I believe is the term applied.
I also believe it’s the fault of the guru system in which the teacher is surrounded by worshipful followers who ‘mirror’ the teacher in such a way that he/she loses any objectivity and begins to merge their various levels of dream and awake states. It can happen in politics also (see our current White House occupant) when only those followers who do not disagree are allowed access.
That is why I appreciate so much the way Yogani has been able to set up a very valuable teaching in a manner that side-steps any possibility of collecting a cult following.
Hari Om
Hello Jim ( et.al)
This write-up and discussion on the heart is a wonderful conversation I cannot tell you how many times I read of this most important location in the Upanishads and the Gita.
Example: Chapt 6 sutra 13-14 , Hrsikesa ( master of the senses) a.k.a. Krsna (the Absolute made manifest) says one should meditate upon me within the heart. Now fast forward to sutra 21, chapt 7 - " I am in everyone’s heart"
Chapt 10 sutra “Aham atma ” I am the Self Gudakesa ( another name for Arjuna, which means he who as conquered the darkness of sleep i.e. ignorance) , seated in the hearts of all creatures".
These are just a few of the audit trails back to the heart and how important this area is for ones spiritual advancement.
Last one " sarvasya caham hrdi sanniivistah" of all living beings I am in the heart" Chapt 15, sutra 15.
I guess this location is to be known by those looking for Brahman.
Om Shanti Shanti Shantye
Frank in SD
I guess this topic has been languishing, but it caught my eye again because of the way that my tracheal resonance exercise has been ‘softening my heart.’ And if I pinpoint the center of the feeling, it definitely is slightly to the right of center.
Inasmuch as I don’t believe in a duality between the physical and spiritual, I take physical anatomy seriously and would suggest, as I’ve said elsewhere regarding the purr/snarl exercise, that one ponder the aorta as a ‘center’ where this main artery enters to the right of the heart proper. “As above, so below.”
Jim 
Thank you!
I did as you said - I clicked on the link in your post above before reading on. When THE REAL HEART - SOURCE OF LIFE popped up, I immediately found myself crying. I read it…I cried and cried.
This clarifies several issues for me. Also - the feeling I have of “something meeting in my heart”. I have always focused on the left side…I think I have been attatched there because of the scar I have from the loss of my left breast. When I now look (from inside) at the right side of my chest, I don’t have to calculate where the point is that you are talking about - I immediately feel it. The pull there is enormous. However, I don’t feel the usual hesitancy that always accompany the pull in my crown. (I am still crying…why don’t we have a “crying smily” 
)
I wonder…
In another post here, I told about the tone F that I hear (the OM sound) and how I feel it originates in my heart. It is here:
http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=527&whichpage=2
One of the people coming to my meditation class at my clinic yesterday told me (and I have never told them about the sound I hear)that scientists have now found that the sound a supernova emits when it becomes a black hole (or was it the other way around?)is the tone F. (It made me click…)
Anyone heard of this data?
Jim
I understand why you say that practises will be reduntant when you live from the heart. A part of me is inclined to feel the same. But I also think that by then, your whole life is one continuous practise; considering the constant outpouring of silence. Then I will come back to the start: meditation will be all that is left of the practise. Is it like that for Yogani?
May all your Nows be Here
Hi Katrine - I read Jim’s link too, last year, and printed it out so that I could refer to it every now and again. It was moving for me as well—not in a crying-smiley-face kind of way, but it touched on something familiar. Like, I think I may know what this guy’s talking about. There seems to be no disagreement that the heart is the epicenter of all internal activity, in every tradition. That in itself is amazing - that we all agree on something. And then within the heart, there are many chambers, each with its own activity. I agree with Jim, or Sri Ramana (don’t know who stated it) that the heart is the seat of the Self.
I just reread my own posting. It was at a transitional time. It was one of the 500,000 times when I felt certain I was on to something. And I was, in a way, but I’ve dropped almost all of this. I’m now doing less and less. I’m not thinking about my heart. Not thinking about anything, just feeling incredible joy and relief at ceding control (a misnomer, as we never really had control to begin with), and getting more and more accustomed to letting my ego be flushed (the vacuum is filled by bliss…one heckuva barter). Of course the heartwork may have helped me get here. But that, like all my posts, is just scribblings in my notebook. That’s all any of us are doing.
The heart’s like an onion; opening is like unpeeling. And removing even just the thinnest layer of peel feels like (and indeed is) a profound event. But you never know how much further opening is possible except in hindsight.
Yogani doesn’t hold himself up as an exemplar, and my understanding is that he’d prefer we didn’t put him in that position. He’s practicing, like the rest of us, only he’s been doing it longer and has (incidentally!) integrated and communicated this tremendous system. So it might be useful (and make Yogani more comfortable) if we don’t think of him as exemplifying the Ultimate Result of All This. For one thing, he’d feel obliged to get all serious and stop making silly Elvis references
Can’t take credit for that one
The reason Maharshi got testy about the demands to be super specific about locating this spot in the heart (which he grudgingly did, before disavowing it) is because the self is everything, and everything is the self. All is God (or sub in your favorite word), one with no second. Unity. In light of this powerful and enduring truth (which cuts across all spiritual traditions), it’s absurd to say that the seat of self is ANYWHERE.
It’s equally absurd, though, to say or think ANYTHING about the heart. There is no logic or truth in the heart. It is a realm of sublime paradox and contradiction. If you try to approach it with your mind, you will have done nothing but travel within your mind (and the single greatest trap of the spiritual path is for the entire practice to take place, unbeknownst to you, within the frame of mind. The mind will happily provide you with a very entertaining trip, make you feel enlightened, everything! Attempting to intellectualize about the heart is an on ramp for this detour. Danger!)
One thing I still agree with re: my posting is that intimate experience with the heart realm is critical. There are many ways of getting it. ONe perfectly good way is to just keep saying “I am” a bunch of times each day
It’s probably absurd to think or talk about much of anything to do with our practices, but we do anyway, and we all just agree that it’s an approximation of what’s going on within us. Our internal experiences are remarkably similar, which is remarkably interesting, so why not remark on it? I’ve done more absurd things than that. Better than a forum on, oh, baseball.
Thank you, Jim
I agree that doing less and less is what this is all about.
You wrote:
Yes. Especially since even the ultimate result constantly evolves. I can be very childish in my questions sometimes… 
I see your point, Jim. I’ll take it to heart 
(Could you please explain about the Elvis references, though? I of course know of Elvis…but what is the connection with Yogani?)
May all your Nows be Here
(Could you please explain about the Elvis references, though? I of course know of Elvis…but what is the connection with Yogani?)
Separated at birth. 