The Heart and the Brain

About these nine verses the Maharshi said, "When I was in Virupaksha Cave, Nayana came there once with a boy named Arunachala [N. S. Arunachalam Iyer]. He had studied up to the school's final class. While Nayana and I were talking, the boy sat in a bush nearby. He somehow listened to our conversation and composed nine verses in English, giving the gist of what we were talking about. The verses were good and so I translated them into Tamil verses in Ahaval metre. They read like the Telugu Dwipada metre.¹" The following is a prose rendering of Sri Bhagavan's Tamil translation of the nine verses.²

1. The heart of the world (Sri Bhagavan) and the brain of the world (Kavyakantha) began to converse between themselves in the beautiful sacred cave (Virupaksha). All who heard those words at that time remained speechless as pillars.

2. The light of the sun, which exists and shines as the heart of this earth, illumines the moon in the height, and the moon gives light to the earth;

3. Likewise, Upanishads came from the lips of the Muni (Sri Bhagavan), whose place (or abode) is the Heart, addressed to the Lord (Kavyakantha), whose place (or abode) is the brain, and were also heard by us as light is received by the earth.

¹Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, 13th February 1947 ² The boy's verses were published in the July, 1983 Mountain Path

4. I shall compose, though ungrammatically, the truth of every precious word of the pure sacred sayings I heard. If asked, `Why is it the Truth?' it is merely because it is the Truth.

5. I, the ignorant one, shall prattle that which Sri Ramana, the Maha-mauni, lovingly told about the Heart and brain, which is more secret than the meaning of any scripture.

6. "Just as the pictures in the film, which is placed inside the machine (the cinema projector) are expanded through the magnifying lens and move as very big pictures on the wall,

7. So the atom-like vasanas ^[?]in the Heart are made gross by the lens of the brain, go out through the eyes, mouth and nose and so on (that is, through the five senses) and appear in space as wonderful pictures of many kinds.

8. I spent all these days in the Heart, and when I came from the Heart into the world I found my way to get back into the Heart through the brain, and thereby I also discovered my system (or method)."

9. Thus they finished speaking these pure words, which the Lord (Kavyakantha) then noted in his mind, which all of us understood well, and which I have now quoted.