The Gateway to the Heart Temple

But if you say Ram wholeheartedly, the intensity and the velocity of the deepening is far greater, because you have offered more of yourself in the process. This is the key. Whether it is God’s name, whether it is inquiry, whether it is selfless service, whether it is devotional singing, walk the road to be empty of yourself.

Yes. It brings us to the feet of the Atma within, which is the true Satguru (the teacher within). Which is such a gift. The sages realized that we have no way to go out of ourselves, and yet they found that the way to go beyond ourselves is the same way we do even a worldly exploration. The starting point is the same. But in a worldly exploration, you settle for a worldly answer, which is in the mind or in perception. In a godly exploration, we do not settle till we come to the darshan of God. We accept the gifts that are received in the process, and those gifts undo whatever is here to be undone. The ego gets undone in the process of moving inwards towards God. These are very worthy gifts, but we do not take them as a finality.

The Ram starts clearing up the Antahkarana. It just starts cleaning, emptying it. Even before we come to the darshan of God, we come to the darshan of the Atma. Even before that, we start to live in His days. We start to live in His light. We start to live in His love.

And the more of ourselves we can offer in that, the deeper we go and the quicker we go. In the sense that we arrive more swiftly at the deepest part of what is possible in our soul. It does not guarantee any quickness in the final revelation, because that is completely up to God’s wisdom. But even if it is just pure lip service, God’s name will do something. Yet why settle for lip service? My intention is to push you beyond that.

Now what would happen if your words are about Ram but you are actually asking for mango? You are saying “God, God, God,” but you want money, money, money. That would create a duality. We may struggle with that duality for a long time, but there is power in God’s name to keep eating up that duality, to keep diminishing it. So in His mercy, God has made this process one of such simplicity, such ease.

When we say “Ram” and we do not settle for any thought or any image as the finality of Ram, something remarkable begins to happen. Whatever the practice may be, the same thing happens when you ask “Who am I?” You are contemplating the nature of “I,” the reality of “I,” and the soul does not leave you empty-handed. It brings you to its deepest capacity, to the point where the “I” can truly be met. This is the point we have been calling the gateway to the heart temple. The door to the heart temple is right there.

The only problem can be that we settle for a mental idea, or we settle for an imaginary visual, as the completeness of it. Even if we recognize that a particular image or experience is helpful, we can say, “I want to meet the wholeness,” and it will take us deeper. But if you settle for an image or a thought as the completion of it, it can seem like mission accomplished when actually you have left the journey midway.

When we are contemplating God, when we are contemplating the nature of our reality, which is the same thing, then the sincere question “Who am I?” or the invocation of God’s name brings us to the deepest point in our soul. That point is at the cusp of the birth of phenomenality and the non-phenomenal. Think of Michelangelo’s painting, the hand where the human finger and the divine finger meet, and there is a spark of light between them. That is where the Atma will reveal itself. That is going to be the point of revelation.

Accept all the tastes as prasad (a sacred offering), but till you know in your heart that you have come to atma darshan, you do not settle for anything as the final taste.

If you find that you are not able to turn inward, repeat. If you are getting distracted, repeat. If you see you are settling for an image or getting very enamoured with some experience, repeat. Unless that experience is taking you deeper into your heart, deeper into a deeper love. Spiritual experiences are real, and they are gifts. But many times they can also be growing our pride without us knowing. “See what is happening to me. See, I am seeing this now.” We have to be vigilant with ourselves and ask: am I deepening in this?

And thank God that we cannot meet God fully in our mind. How small would God have to be to fit fully into our imagination? If you can imagine the most glorious image of God and He fits into that image, how small would He be? Wouldn’t it be disappointing that that image is fully God, that the fullness of God is captured in one image? So whatever imagery we come across, we accept it as a gift and say, “Show me your fullness, Lord. Thank you for this gift, but I want to fall into a deeper love.”

What may we use for this contemplation? We may use the words of scripture. We may use God’s name. We may use the self-inquiry. We may use spiritual imagery. We may use any practice. We may even use a Zen koan. But the key is that the question or the practice must not be one that can be fully satisfied in the outer layers of our insides.

If you look at the path of contemplation, some have contemplated words, some have contemplated scriptural passages. That is using one layer of the Antahkarana. Others have done leela chintan (contemplation of divine play) or contemplating scenes from the Bible. Saint Teresa of Avila said that she was hardly ever able to contemplate big words. But she would just imagine herself to be in a biblical scene, where Jesus is saying something and she was participating in that. In the taste of that participation, she would be taken deeply inward to the same point.

Now if your path is to find out what is the sound of one hand clapping, what will happen? The Zen tradition may not use the word “heart” or “soul,” but the movement is the same. The same thing will happen. It will take you to the point where the answer can reveal itself. “How does the goose escape the bottle?” It will take you to the same point, where the answer, which is not possible to be revealed in the mind or intellect, can emerge. The master has said no, no, no, not accepted, to any answer from the mind and intellect. Then we allow ourselves to fall to a deeper layer where a higher answer can be revealed.

It is so beautiful that now we are able to say that whatever may be your spiritual path, it brings us to this point in this way. All the fighting should stop. Not that my voice will be heard through the world and everybody will stop fighting because of it, but at least in ourselves there must not be a fighting about paths anymore. “I am a jnani, I am a bhakta, I am a yogi, I am this, I am that.” These labels need not be so strongly held. You may say, “This is what I have been practising recently,” and if that describes your practice for the moment, that is fine. But let there be no specialness about any of it. We are doing nothing original in this process. All of this, the sages have told us.

The Antahkarana, the soul, helps us come to this point. Without that wisdom, nothing would happen. And we did not produce that wisdom. That compass was left by God only within our soul. That compass to turn towards Him was left by God only in our soul. We did not know how to design that compass. We would not have been able to design it so that whether I say Ram, whether I say Krishna, whether I say Hari, whether I say Jesus, whether I say Allah, it all comes to the same point. We could not have done it.

Is there distance between us and God at the doorway of revelation? There is no distance. This is the simplicity of it.