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Is our heart on the right side?Ramchandra GandhiPublished online: 19 Aug 2010.

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InterjectionIs our Heart on the Right Side?

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Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 57–64, 2003

Is our heart on the right side?

RAMCHANDRA GANDHI

Preface

Srı Raman�a Maharshi tells the story (I have taken the storyteller’s liberty ofembellishing it) of a king who had conquered the world, but who was terrifiedof his own shadow. Whenever he stepped out of the safety of his palace into thereal world, his shadow would fall across his path, coiled around his feet like asnake, as he thought. He hated his shadow, it slighted him, mocked his majesty.

So great was this king’s hatred of his shadow, Raman�a tells us, that he orderedhis security guards to throw it into the palace moat to be devoured by alligators.When they failed to carry out this order, the king had the guards thrown into themoat! The king now rarely stirred out of his palace.

One day, however, Raman�a says, the king walked out of his palace in the hotsun and was inevitably stopped in his tracks by his shadow. But the emperor hada smile on his face as he encountered his dread enemy; he had found a way ofgetting rid of his shadow, or so he thought.

‘Shadow!’, he thundered, ‘say your last prayers. I shall soon be free of youforever’. ‘Give me a spade!’, he commanded, and his prime minister gave hima spade. And the conqueror of the world worked like a common labourer atmidday under a merciless sun, digging and digging, digging a grave for hisshadow, a pit to bury it in. As the pit deepened, the king’s shadow went downand down and was soon at the bottom of a very deep pit indeed, trapped like ahunted animal.

‘Shadow!’, the tyrant roared, ‘I shall now fill up this pit and you will sleepin your grave till eternity. May your soul rest in peace, and may I rule mykingdom in peace!’ The king started filling up the pit and his shadow came upand up and up and was soon staring at the king again.

Raman�a does not tell us what the king did next, but he tells us something tothink about. ‘If you are afraid of your shadow falling across your path, and thinkof it as a curse, take your mind off it. Turn towards the sun, and your shadowwill be behind you, ready to follow you like a friend, not confront you like andenemy’, says Raman�a Maharshi.

We try to bury our unallayed anxieties and unappeased hatreds and unfulfilleddesires into our unconscious minds, hoping, like the king, to give them a decentburial. But they do not go away. They surface in our dreams to torment us, theyintervene in the events of our waking life like bad omens, and they rob us of oursleep. So we become obsessed with them and never stop thinking about them.If only we do neither, i.e. neither repress nor revive them, but turn all the energyof our consciousness towards the depth of its own centre, self, and the limitlessvastness of its reach, symbolised powerfully by the sun and the sky, our fears

ISSN 1368-8790 print/ISSN 1466-1888 online/03/010057–08 2003 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies

DOI: 10.1080/1368879032000080429

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RAMCHANDRA GANDHI

and hatreds and desires will become transformed into energies of work, play andrest; and we will see and treat the world as ourselves and be at peace with it.

However, this miracle of transformation is not possible if we remain attachedto the idea of ourselves as being exclusively our bodies, driven by the biologicalheart on the left side of our chest. Our true heart, Srı Raman�a teaches, is on theright side, where there is nothing, only a depth and vastness which holdseverything in its embrace of compassion, including our bodies!

I

The austerely advaitan teaching of Srı Raman�a Maharshi is enlivened by whatlooks like a quaint insistence on his part that Atman’s seat in the human bodyis on the right side of the chest, corresponding almost exactly to the biologicalheart of the left side. Of course, Srı Raman�a makes it clear again and again thatthis anatomical identification of Atman is only for the benefit of those who areunable to be rid of the false identification of themselves with their body andmind, body for short; that in truth Atman had no physical location at all.

Yet, reading through all of the master’s conversation and writings, one getsthe impression that this relegation of his doctrine of the spiritual heart on theright side to secondary importance is also a concession to those who, imperfectadvaitins, shun physical analogies even as they fear the world. Again and againthe Master reverts to the doctrine of the heart on the right side, refers to anobscure Ayurveda text and also to the Sıta Upanishad in support of it, and alsosometimes impatiently dismisses requests for authoritative support of his noveldoctrine on the ground that his experience confirms it and that he is not in needof any external authority for his doctrine.

Experientially, it is on the right side of the centre of the chest that SrıRaman�a’s Koham (Who am I?) sadhana yields a powerful current of awarenessas is testified by a number of sadhakas, and indeed the metaphor of the hearton the right side is a profound one. The biological heart on the left is the seatof all our anxieties and partial fleeting arrogant pleasures connected withdehatmabuddhi, the I-am-this-body orientation of ajnana, ignorance.

Ruthlessly corrective of this delusion, this tragic investment of all worth in thebiological heart, is the heart on the right side of which the Master speaks, theheart which is biologically non-existent and yet the power of which is felt insadhana and even the contemplation of the very idea of which at least weakensconsiderably the hold of dehatmabuddhi. There appears in thought and imagin-ation the idea of an alternative centre of our being, a non-corporeal realitymysteriously lodged within our body which rivals in power and benevolence thefickle pump on the left, a very simple and secure foundation for faith. (Needlessto say, in those rare cases where the biological heart is on the right, the spiritualheart will have to be and will be able to be imagined as being on the left side,although Srı Raman�a has not said so; but in our reflections on his teaching wecan continue to think of the spiritual heart as being on the right withoutqualification.) But is there any other kind of support for Srı Raman�a’s doctrinebesides the corrective role of it and the authority of his declaration?

Raman�a Maharshi often used to say that everybody knew that he or she was

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IS OUR HEART ON THE RIGHT SIDE?

most fundamentally centred on the right side of the chest, because whenever wewish to point to ourselves we touch the right side of our chest with our forefinger.Why do we do this?

There is of course the convention of pointing to people with our forefingerwhen we wish to refer to them ostensively, and the ritual of pointing to oneselfby touching our chest with our forefinger or pointing the forefinger in thedirection of our chest is an obvious imitation of ostensive reference to others, butthis cannot be the whole story.

That this cannot be the whole story is shown by the fact that when I point tomyself in this way and ask you if you really mean me, which is the standardoccasion of employment of this ritual, I simply do not need physically to pointto myself at all. I could merely utter the words ‘Who, me?’ and omit the pointinggesture and still be perfectly understood. It cannot even be the case that apparentostensive pointing to oneself takes place when speaking is for some contingentreason difficult, as when you are too far away to hear me or when I have lostmy voice or do not wish to be heard, etc. I apparently ostensively point to myself,point my forefinger towards the right side of my chest, normally when you arewell within hearing distance from me, and when my vocal chords are quiteunimpaired and I wish to underscore in a special way the force of my clearlyuttered words, ‘Who, me?’, i.e., by way of pointing my forefinger towards mychest.

What is then the real communicative thrust of this ritual of the invertedforefinger? It wordlessly explicates the words, ‘Who, me?’ as follows: ‘I ampretending that my forefinger is the forefinger of a third person who is answeringa fourth person’s question about you, the second person, the question “Who doeshe mean?” and the third person physically points to me in answer to this question,indicating that you mean me. Do you?’ This explication is put across to you notin some uncheckable irredeemably private occult way, but by means of thevisible, although imaginative, employment of all the paraphernalia of multipleendorsement which the hinted third and fourth persons of the ritual represent.

Thus far the ritual is a tribute to the power of ostensive reference, the hold ofdehabhava, the physicalist orientation of our ordinary consciousness. Yet it isprecisely dehatmavada, the ‘I am this body’ illusion, which the ritual repudiatesat a deeper level. For as a manifest fantasy of ostensive self-reference, theinverted forefinger dramatises the impossibility of such self-reference, somethingwhich should not be impossible if I were merely a body. What a pity Wittgensteinnever met Raman�a!

Suppose by atmavicara (self-inquiry), by sravan�a, manana, and nididhyasana(hearing, reflecting and meditating on the teaching), and by the grace of a guru,I reach intellectually the conclusion that I alone am real, that all else whichappears to be not-I is really I, myself, the appearance of not-I being illusion andnot reality. Suppose further that this conclusion although strong is neverthelessquite definitely this side of advaita siddhi, so that at the most I regard theconclusion as only the intellectually and somewhat insecurely understood state-ment of my guru that I alone am reality. Would I not in imagination then turnto my guru and address to him the words ‘Who, me?’? Would I not be drivenin imagination even physically to point to myself as I utter those words?

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RAMCHANDRA GANDHI

Indeed there remains always about self-consciousness this wondering aboutitself, not wondering that it is this or that, but wondering just that it is, whetheror not one is deliberately engaged in atmavicara. This self-wonder, this combi-nation of amazement and certainty that one is, is just what is more grossly alsoinvolved in what occurs communicatively when I physically point to myself andask you ‘Who, me?’ in connection with some possibly quite trivial matterrelating to you and me and our world.

The foundation of all human communication is addressing, the vocativeidentification of one another by human beings, i.e. their identification of oneanother not as being of this or that kind, possessing this or that characteristic, butas themselves, nirgun�a centres of self-consciousness. It is in consequence ofvocative identification, of addressing one another, and subsequent to it, that wego on to communicate to one another a variety of things about ourselves and theworld, but in vocative identification we essentially merely stir one another to anirgun�a conception of ourselves.

We do not of course easily always or even much or at all notice this, but ina variety of situations, and not merely through philosophical analysis, this isbrought home to us in the thick of our worldly communicative life as theessential truth of ourselves and as the essential message of that life when all thathas to be said is said and there remains a bare nirgun�a indication of ourselvesas that, that we are. Love, aloneness, joy and peace also bring this insight.

At a deep level, therefore, we may regard everyone who addresses us as aguru, like the innumerable gurus of Dattatreya, drawing our attention to ournirgun�a absolutist mode of self-consciousness. Because our wonder at our ownreal status remains always, we would wish to ask anyone at all who inaddressing us necessarily restores us to our Atmic status, the rhetorical question‘Who, me?’, and we might cause these words to be accompanied by the magicritual of pointing with our forefinger to our heart on the right side of our chest.

Thus the act of pointing to the right side of our chest with our forefinger towhich Srı Raman�a draws our attention to remind us of the fact that we do reallytake ourselves to be centred there, is indeed full of mystery, is the oldest ritualof human communicative Veda. It is the aboriginal ritual of ascaryam (wonder)of Atman-Brahman, its eternal wonder at being all that is, one and only reality.Interestingly, advaitin uttaramımamsa teaching becomes involved in this magicpurvamımamamsa ritual, witnessing to the unity of Vedanta.

Our self-wonder is never a doubting, except in a mysteriously fallen condition.It is play and it is in play that Atman-Brahman unfurls itself as an apparentplurality of subjects and objects, subjects pointing to one another and the worldor aspects of the world in ascaryam and, as it were, deeply always to say ‘He,me, you, this, that and that other, are all one, all me’, sarvam khalu idambrahma’.

II

It has been recorded that in a dream or vision a devotee received sparsa dıks�a(initiation by touch) from Srı Raman�a which consisted in the Master pressingwith his forefinger the right side of the devotee’s chest. (Wittgenstein was struck

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by Luther’s remark that faith is under the right nipple.) Could it not be that intouching ourselves with our forefinger on the right side of our chest in mockostensive reference to ourselves we imagine ourselves to be recipients of suchdıks�a? Do we not indeed in and through that ritual proclaim, however disguis-edly, that we are dıks�ita, even that we are self-realised Atman-Brahman?

All are jnanıs, and each human being who speaks to another is a secret guruinitiating the other into advaita sadhana. But for an unshakable realisation of thatwe need the grade of Ramana Maharshi who had until as recently as fifty threeyears ago physically pressed upon us the truth of ourselves. May we all at leastin dream receive his sparsa dıks�a, be touched on the right side of our chest by him.

The doctrine of the heart on the right also bears a tantric interpretation, tantricin the fundamental sense of involving a transformation of adversity or handicapinto supreme spiritual advantage. Symbolically one can regard the situation ofthe biological heart on the left as the original sin, a deviation leftwards from thecentre of our being, in consequence of which all our attention is fixed onquestions of bare physical survival and well-being, important though these are,although exclusive concentration on physical survival and well-being is not eventhe wisest way of ensuring these things.

Avidya or primal ignorance and obscurity can also be seen as symbolised bythis leftward shift and centering of our concerns. So powerful is this shift thata mere concentration of our attention upon the centre of our being, i.e. assymbolised by the centre of our chest, the anahata centre, does not suffice tocorrect it, to bring us back to the centre of things, the truth of incorruptiblesaccidananda. Only the powerful symbolism of the spiritual heart on the rightcan redeem us, annul the error of our samsaric leftward shift. In view of thesamsaric naturalness of the leftward shift, the dehatma obsession, the idolatrousexclusive nursing of our physical individuality, the violence of the correctiverightward shift to which Srı Raman�a calls us is properly describable as a tantrictapasya, a reversal of the inverted order of our fallenness, a putting right and asetting upright of ourselves.

Tantra is not in its essentiality offensive rebelliousness and disregard ofnormality in shocking ritual, perversely important though even such abhorrencecan symbolically be as a corrective to our more fundamentally unnaturalworldliness. A shifting of attention from the biological heart on the left to thespiritual heart on the right is sahaja tantra, a general and yet supremely powerfulatonement of our imagination, our attention.

What a marvellous upsetting of conventional samsaric anatomy this is! Itrivals the image of the asvattha tree in the Gıta, interpretable readily as theinverted tree whose roots reach out skywards and whose fruits transform theearth, the image of illumined life which draws its real sustenance from aboveand gives all in transformative power to what is below.

The heart on the right is the saving absurdity of which also Kierkegaard oughtto have spoken, the absurdity which alone can save us from the insanity anddelusion of avidya. Obsession with the biological heart on the left and theworldliness which such obsession fosters is the most deeply ingrainedvamamarga of our nature, more offensive in what it entails for the whole of ourlives than the most shocking irresponsibilities of deluded tantrikas.

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The doctrine of the heart on the right is the true foundation of all tantra of thedaks�in�amarga, lovely, auspicious, supremely powerful, mangalamaya. (Politicalleft and right are both spiritually left, biology-obsessed and life-denying.)

A human being is a tantrika, a converter of apparent handicap into supremeadvantage, if only and powerfully symbolically because (s)he is a biped andtransforms the apparent handicap and awkwardness of two-footedness into thesupreme advantage of a stance without which there would be no human love andcommunication as we know these things, no interface in human life, no lookingupwards, heavenwards, in prayer and aspiration, no fear of falling whichsymbolises our heightened awareness of possibilities and responsibilities towardsthese possibilities. Symbolically and substantially Srı Raman�a’s doctrine of theheart on the right is no less revolutionary and tantric a step forward in theevolution of human consciousness than bipedality, and if only we were to livethe doctrine fully, it could even transform human life in the way that bipedalityhas done.

It is characteristic of the absolute harmony with the most developed existentialand aesthetic sensibility of our age with which one associates Srı Raman�a, thathe should indicate quietly, unstridently, with the innocence of a Paul Kleedrawing, and yet with all the Shakti of Siva, the true way of sahaja tantra andfuture evolution represented by his doctrine of the heart on the right.

On the right side of our chest corresponding to the biological heart on the leftthere is nothing like a pump or any organ, sensory or motor, that we can identify,and yet there is there a nothingness, not the nothingness of despairing nihilismor absurdism, but the nothingness of cidakasa, ether of infinite consciousness.Can there be greater faith than this, that we should invest our all in a biologicallynon-existent heart whose mystical location on the right side of the chesttantalises and transforms the harried and fickle muscle on the left?

What a pity Simone Weil and Albert Camus did not visit Tiruvan�n� amalai!That the advaitin path of Srı Raman�a as a whole is tantra and not merely his

doctrine of the heart on the right, is even more important to discern. What is amore persistent obstacle and handicap and embarrassment not only in spirituallife but in all higher social and cultural life than the divided and limited anddivisive and limiting ego, ahamkara? Transforming this apparently insuperabledisadvantage into omnipotence by stirring it to a depth of self-consciousness,advancing it on a self-sacrificial journey of self-knowledge in search of the true‘I’ of which it is but a shadow, is supreme tantra, is the path of Srı Raman�a.

Srı Raman�a often said that Aham (‘I’) was even greater as a mantra than Aum,not separative shadowy ahamkara but the supreme I-am-that-I-am, Soham, thevery meaning of ‘Jehova’, the very Purus�a whose sacrifice as described in theR� gveda is the foundation of all that is.

If the ego is a heart-breaking obstacle in the way of all higher human life, theanswer is not to indulge it or stifle it, the answers of individualism andcollectivism, but to hold it to its own true form, Soham (I am That), which isthe form of the reality of all that is and can be and thus links all in communitywithout sacrificing the individuality of any, thus harmonising the truth inindividualism and collectivism, the twin impulses of our age. Can there beanything more satisfying to the tantric imagination than the discovery that

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salvation lies in the true form of that satanical non-starter and tyrant illusion,ego, in self-sacrificing atmavicara, self-inquiry?

The ego is not to be indulged or stifled, it demands unmasking, a task forwhich our age has a special genius but which refuses in its psychology andsociology and medicine to interrogate the ego, except as in panicky collectivismor despairing nihilism by drowning it or drugging it, whereas what we are meantto do in the light of Srı Raman�a’s teaching is to look it in the face and thussacrifice it and resurrect it at the same time, as Soham, I-am-that-I-am, unfetteredconsciousness.

In connection with tantra, true tantra, and not the self-advertising caricature ofit with which we are in these flaunting times so overburdened, we cannot fail tothink of Raman�a Maharshi’s contemporary Mahatma Gandhi. It may be regardedas unusual to think of Gandhiji as a tantrika, and yet there is no way other thanthe tantric of understanding his sadhana of Satya and Ahimsa.

Telling your adversary what you think of him and what you plan to do inrelation to him is foolishness, a supreme handicap, by ordinary non-tantricstandards of worldly battle. But the sadhana of truth which Gandhiji practisedand taught on an unprecedentedly massive scale holds the opposite to be thecase, it maintains that nothing disarms the adversary in a global moral andspiritual struggle involving exploiting masters and exploited slaves than tellingthe masters that you are going to cease to obey them in all the wrong-doingwhich they have so far compelled you and bribed you into participating in,provided a vital condition is observed, the condition of ahimsa which was theother arm of Gandhiji’s tantric sadhana.

Can anything on the face of it be more of an impediment in the struggle ofmillions of Indians for a dignified autonomous existence than their reluctance,springing possibly from malnutrition and centuries of servitude, to take violentphysical revenge upon their numerically weaker alien rulers or alienated rulingclass? Yet this very apparently cowardly reluctance can become transformed intoa species-saving spiritual weapon of our times as ahimsa, as courageous refusalto perpetuate the violence of exploitation as authors of it or participants in it andfacing faithfully all the consequences of this great refusal for the sake of thetruth that without sacrifice truth cannot spread, which is the very fundamentalteaching of the Vedas.

Thus we have in Raman�a Maharshi and Mahatma Gandhi two practitioners ofauthentic tantra. Srı Raman�a teaches the way of transforming the ego intoAtman-Brahman without destroying its true form, which is true ahimsa, andGandhiji demonstrates the large-scale possibility of transforming the cowardiceand selfishness of exploited humanity into the unbeatable spiritual power of lovewhich does not seek to harm but also does not obey bullies and cowards.

It is amazing that Maharshi and Mahatma never met, Srı Raman�a remainingrooted in Tiruvan�n� amalai and Gandhiji restlessly and yet always Godwardlymoving all over the place in the hectic first half of the twentieth century. Thetantric truth of the former and the courage of the latter must combine if there isto be not only Indian but even human survival in dignity.

The ritual of mock ostensive self-reference is rivalled in its power ofrepudiation of dehatmavada by another omnipresent everyday ritual—the

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unavoidable ‘looking at one another’s eyes’ which is our way of ‘looking at oneanother’. Why do we do this, and what does the ritual say? Why do we not lookat one another’s hands when we look at one another? Because we wouldself-defeatingly regard one another as objects, things, hands, merely, if we wereto look at one another’s hands to ‘look at one another’, to realise the utterreciprocity and unity of awareness—sambodhana—suggested by that phrase.

In looking at one another’s eyes, in the simultaneity of that magic extensionalrealisation of self-consciousness, we do not look at eyes as an opthalmologistmight; we simultaneously deflect objectivist looking back and forth between oneanother, causing its consumption in the sacred fire of self-consciousness,revealing the divinity of advaitin seeing, divya dr�s�t�i, however fleetingly andreversibly, but indubitably. What else are divya caks�u (divine eye) but our owneyes unburdened of the dross of objectivist delusion, hauntingly beautiful in thatawakening like Srı Raman�a’s eyes?

Terı ankhon ke siva duniya mein rakha kya hai!

In looking at one another’s eyes in this way we realisingly affirm our uttersimultaneity, our ananyatva, non-otherness, for perfect simultaneity is only ofself with itself in the spanda (vibrancy) of self-consciousness. Simultaneouslywith that realisation and affirmation we repudiate dehatmavada, the idea thatbodily separativeness is the essence of ourselves. Looking at one another’s eyesin that uncovetous glancing way of oneness is a complete upanishad, a recurrentVedic mantra in mauna of our everyday life.

Holding hands is an equivalent realisation of the unity and spanda ofself-consciousness, especially for the blind.

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