When my memory returns and if I ever do another radio show with Michael, I think I’d like to call it The Open Heart. Why? Because Ascension is in reality a full and permanent heart opening.
There have been so many discussions among classical sages of the hridaym or heart aperture being closed. Let me see if I can find a good one.
Sri Ramana Maharshi called the closed hridayam the granthi or knot of ignorance.
“[The] Heart is the seat of Jnanam as well as of the granthi [knot of ignorance]. It is represented in the physical body by a hole smaller than the smallest pin-point, which is always shut [closed hridayam or heart aperture].
“When the mind drops down in Kevalya Nirvikalpa [samadhi or Brahmajnana], it opens but shuts again after it. When sahaja [nirvikalpa samadhi] is attained it opens for good.” (1)
This sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi is what we call Ascension and what he would call mukti, moksha, or liberation. In the footnotes, I’ll post a much fuller description of that event, as it manifested for him. (2)
The hridayam or granthi is always closed. But in a temporary or permanent heart opening, it opens and leaves the person awash in an inner tsunami of love. If or when that experience matures, it opens into an Ocean of Love.
If we go up Jacob’s Ladder of consciousness, and the Mother has said we may leapfrog over certain milestones, we should encounter this temporary heart opening when the kundalini reaches the fourth chakra.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see us skip the next classical level of enlightenment at the sixth chakra and go directly to the seventh. Enlightenment there is called Brahjmajnana, God-Realization, or kevalya nirvikalpa samadhi.
Then comes the culiminating event, sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, which makes the heart opening complete and permanent. From that moment on, we live our lives immersed in a sea, in an atmosphere of love.
If I were looking for a synonym for Ascension, that would be it for me: A full and permanent opening of the hridayam or heart aperture, also known as the granthi or knot of ignorance.
Footnotes
(1) Ramana Maharshi in S.S. Cohen, Guru Ramana. Memories and Notes. 6th edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1993, 96.
Brahmajnana is seventh-chakra enlightenment; sahaja is beyond the seven-chakra system.
(2) Here is Sri Ramana’s more-detailed description of Ascension:
“The nexus of the body and the Self is called the granthi [the knot of ignorance; also known as the hridayam or heart aperture]. It is only by this connection with the Self that one is aware of the body.
“This body is insentient. The Self is pure awareness. …
“Oh child, enveloped by the diffused light of pure awareness the body functions. …
“Even as subtle forces like the electric current pass through visible wires, the light of awareness flows through a nadi [nerve] in the body.
“When the effulgent light of awareness shines in atma nadi alone, nothing else shines except the Self.
“Anything that appears before (such a jnani) has no separate existence. He knows the Self clearly as the ignorant one his body.
“He for whom the atman [Self, Christ, soul] alone shines, within, without and everywhere, as (clearly as) objects to the ignorant, is called one who has cut the nexus. …
“As a heated iron-ball appears as a ball of fire, this (body) heated in the fire of Self-enquiry, shines as the Self.
“The old vasanas [core issues] pertaining to the body, (mind and so on) are destroyed. Being free from body-consciousness one never has the sense of doership.
“Since such a one has no sense of doership, his karma, it is said, is completely destroyed. As nothing but the Self exists, no doubts arise for him. Once the knot is cut, one is never bound again. This is considered the state of power supreme and peace supreme [i.e., Ascension].” (Sri Ramana Maharshi in Vasistha Ganapathi, ed., Sri Ramana Gita. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanashramam, 1977, 49-55.)