Ananda Sangha of Portland--The Art of Superconscious Living by Swami Kriyananda

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By Thinking Can We Arrive at Understanding?
by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)

The subject of intellect versus heart is a very important one. The heart has its own kind of understanding. In fact, they’ve found that there’s a certain amount of gray matter in the heart. But the ability of the heart to understand is vital to true understanding. Unfortunately, Western culture has been almost entirely one-sided in the direction of the intellect.

Now everybody knows that Socrates was a great philosopher. OK. But when I was in college I simply could not accept that you could arrive at a universal truth by reason alone. Socrates’ method of seeking truth involved asking a series of questions. But by the time you’ve come to the third or fourth question based on that first answer, you may well find yourself saying, “Now wait a minute. I don’t know that I gave that first answer the way I really meant to.” Socrates of course was a wise man. He understood the truth that there is goodness in all, that the divine exists in all, and that everybody will reach the right understanding — eventually.

“Eventually,” however, does not mean in one little discussion. It can take a few incarnations to arrive at that “eventually!” The definition of good and evil is not such an easy one to arrive at. Philosophers have spent centuries batting it back and forth. But not the teachers of India. There are certain things that are understandable, but they can only be understood with the heart. Paramhansa Yogananda gave the best definition that I have ever read.

He said the entire motivation of human beings is simply two-fold. One to avoid suffering and the other is to attain happiness. So simple, it sounds almost childish. And yet isn’t that really what everybody is trying to do in one way or another? Money doesn’t make you happy. Power doesn’t make you happy. Human love doesn’t make you happy. In all of these people think, “Well, I’ve got it made,” but in the end, it’s nothing, really. The only thing that we all want is a kind of happiness that was defined by Shankaracharya of India, in ancient times, in the Sanskrit word satchidanandam.

Yogananda describes satchidanandam (loosely) as: “Ever existing, ever conscious, ever new bliss.” We want a joy that won’t diminish. We want a joy that can’t be destroyed. We want a joy that we’re conscious of. It’s not enough to think abstractly “I’m happy”. Or, to be only happy in the sense of “Well, gosh, I’m not in the hospital, I don’t have the flu, I’m not hungry. I guess, yeah, I’m happy.” The joy of God, the joy of the soul is something that’s always there.

And what keeps us from it? Many things. One of them is laziness. Somebody said to me not long ago, “I don’t know if I want to advance spiritually. I don’t know if I could take it!” Every growth in understanding brings with it the power to accept and absorb that understanding. Every depth of happiness brings with it the power to live in that happiness. The saints have never complained about it! We never read of any saint who says, “Listen. Forget it. I’ve had it. It’s just not where it’s at!” They all are so convinced that it’s the goal of life that they’re perfectly willing to give up their lives to help other people to find it. It’s something that’s always new. You never get tired of it. This is what God-consciousness is. There’s no pain at all. There’s complete forgetfulness of pain in absorption in that joy. This is the goal of life, and if people don’t seek it consciously, it’s because they haven’t yet overcome various delusions.

Another delusion is that misery is also pleasant. It’s sort of like scratching a mosquito bite. It feels good, but it hurts at the same time. The same thing with the pleasures and the satisfactions of this world. It’s hard to give them up because although they disappoint or hurt us, at the same time we’re used to them, we kind of like them. St. Francis put it beautifully in that story from the Little Flowers of St. Francis. Francis calls ahead to Brother Leo and talks about the nature of true joy. He says ”Brother Leo, do you know what the nature of true joy is?” St. Francis continues, “Well if we at the end of this long walk arrive at the monastery and the brother porter there opens the door lovingly and welcomes us that isn’t true joy. Francis goes on to say true joy is ours if our inner joy remains with us even if the porter, after seeing us, slams the door in our faces; even if the other monks come out and throw us in a snowdrift and curse us and tell us to be gone — and yet our joy remains. You don’t have to be afraid. To be able to know that no matter how people insult you, it’s their problem, it’s not yours.

Now, that’s wisdom. Wisdom is not “knowing things.” We don’t reach wisdom by just thinking. It’s like a piano tuner, who is always referring every note back to C, to “Do.” No matter how far he goes, up the scale, he knows he has to keep referring it back to that anchor note. Otherwise, by the time you’ve reached the end of several notes, you’ll find that upper note will be dissonant with the first note. It has to be that you keep checking back to that first note. We have to remember that we have an anchor note, and that anchor is the heart. It’s not the mind. The mind can take pleasure in itself, and boy was the 20th Century full of that kind of pleasure: imagining that if you could think your way through to something, however preposterous a philosophy it might be, it would have to be true nonetheless!
We need to have that anchor in the heart. I have found that this is practical, too. When I write books or music, for example, I offer it up and [ask] does my heart resonate with it? And if that feeling is there, fine, then I know, yes, this is right.

How do you know if it feels right? Well, there are two directions the heart’s energy can go. One is upward. The other is downward. When it goes downward, it’s emotion. Emotion is like somebody at a football game who tries to feel as if his own shouting and willpower is going to push his team over the goal line. Emotion is wanting something to be so or not to be so. Intuition is knowing what it will be.

Calm feeling rises upward to the point between the eyebrows. With this, you really don’t go wrong. I’ve been amazed through the years to see how often it was right. You could have given me a thousand reasons why it would be wrong, but it was right. It proved itself right. This you can have. And I’m certain that every one of you at one time or another, at least, has had that experience of knowing whether a thing would be so. You have to keep referring your feelings, your actions, your decisions, indeed, everything, back to the feeling in the heart. This “anchor note” is what Paramhansa Yogananda referred to in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, in the chapter on Cosmic Consciousness, when he wrote: “I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart.”

Now it’s curious because Yogananda also taught that the ego is centered in the medulla oblongata while the center of intuitive understanding is in the heart. Ramana Maharshi (a yogi in south India in the last century) said this also. He said that the center of real self is the heart. That self has to be directed up through and past the (medulla oblongata), the seat of ego, to the point between the eyebrows. Here (at the spiritual eye) we achieve oneness and at last really understand.

It’s a sense of recognition, a sense of approval. And it won’t come quickly. After all, we’ve got to develop these things in the way we develop our muscles. But bit by bit, you’ll learn to recognize the certain feeling here in the heart that, when it comes, its right. If it isn’t there, be suspicious. Even great scientists have referred back to the heart. Einstein said that real scientific discovery comes from a sense of mystical awe. Astonishing for somebody like him to make such a statement! True scientists are very close to being like saints in the sense that they experience this deep intuitive recognition of what is so.

So, love God. [That’s] much more important than knowing God intellectually. You can’t know him except with the heart, because God is love. You have to love him to understand him. Very often the simplest people are the ones who are closest to him and the parchment-faced professors are the ones who are farthest from him. Don’t go to those books that give you lots of philosophy. Go to those simple books that talk of the heart, of the need of the heart for love and joy. Then you will know God.”