The Yoga of the Heart in relation to Eastern practices of meditation.

In the West the artist’s inspiration is understood as something separate from the artist’s life. In Eastern Christianity inspiration is the fruit of the artist’s life. His art is not the product of his natural abilities (his natural talents give him only skill) but is the gift of the Divine Spirit to his understanding in prayer. The icon is the Word of God; that is why it is reverenced. The icon is part of Scripture, for Scripture is not limited to an historical canon of books which can never be added to. Scripture is growing: it is the perennial flowering of being into expression, of life into word. Hence the saints, from a life lived in prayer, are able to give expression to something of that state of being which they enyoy, and the artist who is in the process of reaching “purity of heart”, gives expression to this process in his paintings. Further, it must be understood that the very function of the icon is to lead the heart of the worshipper on the way to this inner purity. The icon, like all Scripture, is an aid, expressly permitted by God, to help the worshipper in his interior search. The image must help him, firstly, to turn his thoughts inwards, and secondly, to reveal the action of grace in his own heart, because the “Sat Guru” or Christ, when He takes His seat in the heart, desires the self to be aware of His presence in the heart, and to discover the Way or Tao which leads from the earthly heart towards that heavenly heart which has achieved ultimate realization.

Hindu Yoga of the heart begins with self-realization, that is realization of the personal self, and then leads on to realization of the Ultimate Self. We find this clearly expressed in the teaching of Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great modern Indian exponent of Advaita. A number of Christians in India have been very deeply influenced by the ideas of Sri Ramana Maharshi, as was for example the Christian monk Swami Abhishiktananda. In this way, there has emerged a Christian Advaita, rather in the same way that there has been an attempt to realize a Christian form of Yoga. In both these areas of spirituality, there is a tension between an experience of the One, and a realization of duality. For Christians in India an approach to that experience of One-ness that we find described as Advaita (literally non-duality) is through a spiritual understanding of Trinity, what in the Vedanta is spoken of as Sat Chit Ananda; Truth, consciousness and Bliss. It is this triune mystery that is discovered in the cave of the heart.

On one occasion Ramana Maharshi explained to his disciples the text from Ecclesiastes: “The wise man’s heart is at the right hand and a fool’s heart is at the left”. He said:
“So long as a man identifies himself with the body or thinks he is the body, he is advised to see where in the body the ‘I’ thought arises, and merges again. It must be in the heart at the right side of the chest since every man of whatever race or religion and in whatever language he may be speaking points to the right side of the chest to indicate himself when he says ‘I’….”
Ramana Maharshi refers to the heart as another name for Reality, and this is neither inside nor outside the body.
“When a room is dark you need a lamp to light it, but when the sun rises there is no need for a lamp; objects are seen without one. And to see the sun itself no lamp is needed because it is self-luminous. Similarly with the mind. The reflected light of the mind is necessary to perceive objects, but to see the heart it is enough for the mind to be turned towards it. Then the mind loses itself, and the heart shines forth”.
This is similar to the teaching of the Fathers of the Desert, who said we must begin by turning inwards and knowing ourselves, then only the heart begins to shine forth. Ramana Maharshi however holds that self realization cannot be changed to realization of the Redeemed Self without the help of the Guru through whom the seeker receives Grace.
“The Guru is both outer and inner; from outside he gives a push to the mind to turn inward, while from inside He pulls the mind towards the Self, and helps quieting it. That is the Grace of the Guru.”
The Guru leads the personal self towards the Self which is God in us through a process of introversion. (c.f. St Paul: “I live, but not I, Christ lives in me.) The “exterior push” mentioned above is given through Scripture and the Holy Images.
“The moment you get into the quest for the self, and begin to go deeper, the real Self is waiting there to receive you, and then whatever is to be done is done by something else and you as an individual have no hand in it.”

The artist’s work must be seen in the same light. If he is a man of prayer, out of his interior being his picture comes forth as expression, but ultimately it is not his personal expression, but is part of that creative force that is making him, as much as it is making through him the image he is working on. The icon of the religious artist who is truly a man of prayer, would be a crystallization of his contemplation of God, and for the worshipper it would be a window on to the Divine, and the focus of his contemplation.

In this understanding of the creative process, and the work of the artist as a maker of images, the image is something “given”, and in that sense, a grace. The image is not just a product, something that an artist achieves through personal skill. The image itself speaks—it is a manifestation of the Guru. The concept of the Sadguru, or true guru of the heart, is quite complex. The word “Guru” is related to the “guha” which is the mystery, and also the cave. The Guru, according to one idea carries the mystery, and also reveals the light. In fact another way of understanding the Guru, is the Person who is the light-bearer. Sri Ramana Maharshi is very clear that the individual, egotistical self can never be the Guru. The Guru is an inner archetypal Self, and the individual, rather like the image itself, is only a pointer, indicating a hidden Presence, that cannot be “seen” except through a mirror, darkly.

The function of the image then will be to lead the human being inwards and to help in the establishment of a quietness in his heart. When in the Renaissance the spirit of rationalism turned the mind of the individual person outwards, it was natural that artists should try and establish an exterior norm to explain the human vision of objects, as they appear in the phenomenal world. In other words, once vision was no longer directed inwards, ruled by the laws of inner necessity, some rule must be discovered relating the objective phenomenal world with subjective perception. Perception is always subjective; we do not know what the phenomenal world is in itself, but simply what it appears to be. The solution reached by the Renaissance artist was achieved by extroverting what was in fact an age-old inner reality. I am referring to the vanishing point of perspective, which is a projection, as it were onto exterior reality of the point that Yoga knows as existing between the two eyes. This point, well known to all yoga systems, is variously called the “Heavenly Heart”, the “Third Eye” or the “Bindu”.

Thus light is born in the darkness of what in India is called the “cave of the heart”. It is the light of Him who enlightens the whole world, the sun which rises in the hirdaya akasha, (i.e., the sky of the heart) At this stage, as St. Paul says, man follows “righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart”. How different are the fruits of the heart now, and in this is seen the great transformation worked by Christ in the heart.

The Icon as a way into meditation.

The artist, if he is a painter of religious themes, must himself be a man of prayer. That is why a majority of the icon painters were themselves monks. The Hesychast played a prominent part during the Iconoclastic controversy, as defenders of images. It might seem strange to the modern western mind that those who cultivated a purely spiritual and abstract view of both themselves and exterior reality, should be at such pains to preserve the tradition of icons. Mysticism, as often understood in the West, is the negation of images, even mental ones. This was a position that we find well expressed in the Apophatic tradition of Christian mysticism. But it is important to note that though the Advaitic philosophy that we find in India, says that the ultimate reality is beyond name and form, there has been nothing comparable to the Iconoclastic controversy in Eastern religions. Here the icon has a place, not as representing the ultimate Truth, but as a way of reaching towards that Truth. It is for that reason that images based on what is called the Mandala, or Yantra in Hindu and Buddhist meditational practices, have an important and vital role in the process of stilling the mind, and bringing it down to the seat of the heart.

The dark night of the soul, the cloud of unknowing, these are experiences beyond the province of what can be imagined. But essentially, I believe that in Eastern experience, (and by his I mean not only Eastern Christian, but Hindu and Buddhist experience too), there is no dark night of the soul, for the cloud is the light-bearing cloud in which the disciples witnessed the Transfiguration. Darkness, I feel, has a different significance in the Far East from the darkness that seems so world denying in European climes. Darkness in Indian thought, for example, is related to the womb, and it is from this darkness, that light emerges. Thus we find in the Isa Upanishad, a concept of darkness as another type of knowing, and seeing:

Into blind darkness enter they
That worship ignorance;
Into darkness greater than that, as it were, they
That delight in knowledge……

Into blind darkness enter they
Who worship non-becoming
Into darkness greater than that, as it were, they
Who delight in becoming……

With a golden vessel
The Real’s face is covered over.
That do thou, O Pushan, uncover
For one whose law is the Real to see…
What is thy fairest form—that of thee I see. He who is yonder, yonder Person (purusa)—I myself am he !
Isa Upanishad, 9,12,15 16(b)

Here darkness is related to formlessness, but it is not opposed to form, any more than it is opposed to light. Rather, it is the silence which lies behind the word, or within the very rhythm that characterizes music. It is that stillness, from which movement derives its force.

The ultimate climax of the spiritual ascent of the heart is for the Hesychast, a state of heightened sight, and the vision of God is the vision of light. Though the Godhead (Brahman, the ‘Ground of Being’) is beyond the imagination, transcendental, impossible to see; nevertheless He is seen in the transfigured Christ who has come forth from Him; “He who has seen me has seen the Father”

In a way, the image of the Trinity, as conceived of in the imagination of the Indian contemplative tradition, is this interplay between form and formlessness, light and darkness, movement and stillness. In the primal cave of the heart, the Creator is discovered as the ultimate depth, which cannot be seen, or heard, or touched, because, it is one with the seer, the hearer, and the Person who is conscious through the senses. It is like the power of consciousness which lies behind being conscious. But this energy becomes manifest, and embodied. This is the mystery of incarnation, of the sacramental sign. It is described as the golden vessel, the visible form of the invisible, and inexpressible mystery. It is this form that ultimately overflows with the joy of an experience that once again leads the worshipper to a Truth or Reality that cannot be put into words or images. That is the movement that leads us back to the nameless and formless Being who is also the Spirit.

Transforming the heart.

In eastern thought the psychosomatic presence of the heart is very important. I say psychosomatic because though it is thought of as lying within the body, it is nevertheless not that heart which is a physical organ. “A wise man’s heart is at his right hand, but a fools’s heart is at his left” (Ecclesiastes). It is with this “wise man’s heart” that Yoga is deeply concerned. But this concern is not confined to Eastern Yogic disciplines, nor is the literature related to the experience of this “heart” confined to Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist works on Yoga. The Yoga of the heart, if we can call it that, has a very central place in the practice of the Eastern Christian art of the icon, as will be explained later, and the inner experience out of which the practice is developed can be found described in the Bible. Both the Old and the New Testaments are full of references to the heart from the study of which we can find a completely scriptural basis for that Christian Yoga practiced by the Fathers of the Desert, and particularly that school of Christian contemplatives called the Hesychasts of which St. Gregory Palamas was the great doctor.

In the Old Testament the heart is generally understood as the centre of carnal man, the hub of his passions. Christ himself sums up the Old Testament teaching when he says “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” But we are told, this carnal man can be changed through repentance. “Rend your hearts, not your garments”. “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit”. This sorrow of the heart was much prized by the Desert Fathers who prayed for tears of the heart.

When the heart has been cleansed of its passions through tears of sorrow, it is invited by the Lord to turn towards Him. In Hindu thought this is the point when the Sat Guru, the divine teacher who is to lead the heart to rebirth, takes His position in the heart. The “Law of the Lord” of the Old Testament now becomes the ruler of the heart. At this point the heart is drawn up by Wisdom that instructs it to lift itself up, not through pride, but through joy. This done, the heart is sealed with the name of Christ. We have now already passed beyond the limits of the Old Testament teaching on the heart. St. Paul confidently affirms “the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not in the tables of stone” (i.e., not in the law of human pride) “but in fleshly tables of the heart” (i.e., in the heart softened by repentance).

Hesychasm appears to reverse the above process, making the prayer of the Word, i.e., the repetition of the prayer of Jesus, descend into the heart where it becomes independent of the conscious mind, becoming a deeper, interior awareness residing in the heart. These two apparently different process (the heart which is lifted up, and the word which descends) are, I think, simply two aspects of one and the same “heightened consciousness.” Directly after this a quietness is described which is the opposite of elation. St. Peter describes this state as the “hidden man”. (“Let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price.”) This is the new man who is born in us: “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” It is a state of internal stillness and pondering. Mary, we are told “Kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Her life was spent in prayerful contemplation of the Incarnation. The psalmist phrases it beautifully : “stand in awe and sin not, commune with your heart upon your bed and be still”, and then stirred by an exultation which can hardly be expressed he cries “Thou hast put gladness in my heart more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.”

At this stage the heart ascends to Mount Tabor to see there the Transfiguration: Christ suffused with uncreated light. Man does not see this light in itself but discovers the world in it, as St. Benedict saw it descend upon earth so that the whole world became, as it were, a point in it. It is the light described by St.. Gregory Palamas and the Hesychasts. St. Peter speaks of it when he says “Ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in the dark place until the day dawn and the daystar arise in your hearts.”

YOGA OF THE HEART IN RELATION TO ART

THE YOGA OF THE IMAGINATION.

There is a yoga of the heart. The heart is not just a physical organ, but is an imaginative concept, where the opposites that we relate to the human personality and self understanding, are integrated. It is in the heart that we find the coming together of the mind and the body, the intellectual or rational, and the psychic world of intuition and feeling. In the Biblical tradition, the heart is associated very much with the imagination.
The concept of the heart is found in many spiritual traditions. In India the heart, or Hirdaya, is the space within which consciousness is present.

The psycho-somatic concept of the heart, can be identified with the dimension of experience that the philosopher Henry Corbin called the imaginal. Corbin made a distinction between the imaginal and the imaginary. The imaginary belongs to what is often referred to as the fantasy, that is a virtual world that is essentially unreal. But the imaginal is a way of apprehending reality, through a faculty of image-making that is essentially evocative, and creative.

The poet and theoretician Coleridge conceived of an essential difference between the imagination and fantasy. For him, fantasy is concerned with the memory, and is a re-creation of impressions that have been received in the past. The imagination, is concerned with the future, and has a prophetic dimension.

The Ashram as a School for Dialogue

The Ashram as a School.

Jane and I have always been involved in one way or another, with Christian Ashrams. We met in Kurisumala Ashram, and Dom Bede married us in Shantivanam Ashram. We thought of living there, but it was difficult to combine what we understood as our Sadhana, and the life of what Dom Bede sometimes termed a “Benedictine Sarvodaya Ashram”. We all have our own particular way of understanding what an ashram is. And there are many different kinds of ashram.
The first modern Ashram was perhaps Shantiniketan, which was started by Devendranath Tagore, the father of Rabindranath, around the beginning of the 20th Cent. Later, Rabindranath Tagore gave it his own character, starting an experimental school there in about 1910, which later developed into a kind of art school, when his cousin Nandalal Bose joined him, and set up the Kala Bhavan at Shantiniketan. That was in 1919, the same year that the Bauhaus was started in Weimar. Later in the twenties Gandhi came and spent time in Shantiniketan with his group who had been at the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa. This led to him starting an Ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati river at Ahmedabad in Gujarat. And after that there were many Gandhian Ashrams. The Ramakrishna movement also called their centres Ashrams, and Aurobindo started his Ashram at Pondichery Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvanamalai also started an Ashram at the foot of the ancient hill of Arunachala. Influenced by these different forms of Ashram, Christians also started a number of Ashrams in different parts of India.
Because of our links with this Ashram movement, we have always tried to keep an open home. One definition of an Ashram was that it is a place where the doors are always left open. The attempt to set up an Art Ashram was initiated in 1983, at the suggestion of Mathew Lederle sj. He was himself running a dialogue centre, which he called Sneha Sadan, and he had become the Secretary at that time of the Ashram Aikya. Already in Bombay, Fr. Proksch had started an ashram for Dance and Music, which he called Gyan Ashram. The idea was that I should help run an Ashram for the visual arts. But our place which we called the “Indian School of Art for Peace”, or “INSCAPE”, was never an ashram in that way. It was more a loosely structured community of people interested in the relation of art to life, which meant also art and education. The way education can take place through art and the imagination, has been our “Sadhana”. Jane started a school on the piece of land that we bought in the village of Silvepura, in 1975, which combined ideas of Tagore realized at Shantiniketan, Basic Education (of Gandhi) and some of the concepts of the Waldhoff schools of Rudolph Steiner.
I think my intention when I started this website was to bring together reflections related to what I am calling an “Imaginal Ashram”. Perhaps this is a kind of virtual Ashram !! I am hoping that it will be the basis for a dialogue, and a kind of community who meet from time to time. The Imaginal Ashram could be a context, or forum, for thinking about how the Ashram Ideal relates to the creative imagination.
July 9 2007

An Ashram as a place for the Imagination

AN IMAGINAL ASHRAM

I have been wondering whether an Ashram is located in a particular place, or whether it belongs to a particular time in the life cycle of an individual. According to the ancient concept of the “Ashramas”, every person passes through four ashramas in their life. The first is the Ashram of the student, or Brahmacharya. Then comes the householder Ashram, called Grihastha. Then a person finds that they do not have a fixed abode, and the Ashram of the pilgrim of Vanaprastha begins. Finally everyone reaches the Ashram of the monk, or Sanyasa.
The psychologist Sudhir Kakar has suggested that these Ashramas remain in the subconscious of many Indians, as not necessarily situated in any particular place or time, but as imaginative concepts or ways of understanding a life as a whole. They are like the four quarters of a circle, and one ashrama does not necessarily follow on another, in some kind of sequential order. Rather, they are like the four directions of space, and can be understood as orientations that we take in life’s journey.
An ashram is perhaps a space, but an imaginal space (rather than an imaginary space), in the sense that it is a kind of construct of the imagination, a way of looking at oneself, and the path one is following.
Sri Aurobindo defined an Ashram as a community of people who are following a particular Sadhana, or spiritual path. “Sadhya” is a goal in life, and one who tries to make this goal the basis for action, follows a Sadhana. A friend of mine once suggested that an Indian way of understanding what in South America has been termed a “basic community” might be to think in terms of a community that chooses to follow a Sadhana, and becomes in that way an Ashram.

The Upside Down Tree

The image of the inverted tree is found in the Katha Upanishad, and also in the Bhagvad Gita. It must be a universal symbol, because a similar image is also found in Dante's Paradiso. I have represented this Cosmic Tree in the heart of the universe.