The Heart is Brahman

Nidagha approached his master with a question that had long troubled him: "Revered Ribhu, the scriptures speak of the heart as the seat of the Self. Where exactly is this heart, and how do I enter it?"

Ribhu smiled at the question that revealed the last subtle trap. "Dear Nidagha, you ask where the heart is located. But tell me - where would you look for space within space? The heart spoken of in the scriptures is not a place within your body."

"Then what is this heart, Master? Is it not the spiritual center from which consciousness emanates?"

"Listen carefully, for this is the supreme secret," Ribhu spoke with great tenderness. "The heart IS Brahman. It is not a doorway to Brahman, not a seat of Brahman, not a location where Brahman dwells. The heart itself is the infinite, undivided Brahman. When the sages say 'the Self resides in the heart,' they mean the Self IS the heart - limitless awareness without center or circumference."

Nidagha's mind struggled with this. "But I experience consciousness as if emanating from somewhere within me..."

"That experience itself is Brahman experiencing. There is no 'within' in that which has no outside. You are looking for the heart as if you were separate from it, as if you could find it and enter it. But you ARE the heart. The seeker is the sought. The one looking for the heart IS the heart looking for itself - and finding only itself everywhere."

"If the heart is Brahman, and Brahman is infinite, then why speak of the heart at all?"

Ribhu nodded approvingly. "Excellent question! The word 'heart' is used as a concession to those who still feel they are bodies seeking liberation. It redirects attention from the outer to the inner. But at the final understanding, even 'inner' dissolves. There is no inner and outer in Brahman. The heart is spoken of as the cave of the heart only to lead seekers away from external pursuits. Once you recognize your nature, you see there never was a cave, never a heart as a location, never anything but this infinite awareness."

"So when I meditate on the heart..."

"You are Brahman pretending to meditate on Brahman, imagining there is a special place called 'heart' to focus on. It is a beautiful game, but eventually, the game ends. The meditator dissolves into that which never needed to meditate. The heart you seek is seeking itself through you. And when seeking ends, what remains is the heart - not as something found, but as that which was never lost, the eternal fullness that you always are."

Nidagha sat in silence as the search collapsed. There was nowhere to go, nothing to enter, no heart to find - only this, only Brahman, only the heart that was never elsewhere.

Ribhu concluded: "Rest as the heart. You need not locate it, enter it, or know it. Simply BE - and that being is the heart, is Brahman, is all that is. This is the final teaching on the heart: you cannot find it because you cannot lose it. You ARE it."

The teaching complete, nothing remained but the heart knowing itself as all.