The Heart Lecture — by Dr. Mark Dyczkowski. Recorded at his home at Narad Ghat, Varanasi, in November 2012.
We are pleased to present a beautiful and moving lecture on the “Heart” by Dr. Dyczkowski. We hope you enjoy it.
In Kashmiri Śaiva texts the symbolism of the Heart is very rich. Another name for awareness, it represents the true nature of all things and the Self of consciousness as the undivided essence of its light and aesthetic rapture (camatkāra). In it resounds the eternally emergent sound of awareness. Active as the dynamics of the egoity of consciousness it is both knowledge and action and, passive, it is the ground or ‘great abode’ of the universe when it is manifest as the union of consciousness and bliss. It is the universal source of all three moments of creation, persistence and destruction, pervading them all without itself changing. Thus, it exists prior to cosmic manifestation as the pure energy which contains all things within itself, as does the banyan seed a tree. In the second moment, it is the ‘well-established abode’ (pratiṣṭhāsthāna) and ground (ādhāra) of the entire universe. It pervades and gives life to all the categories of existence with their respective world orders, Śiva and all the lesser gods and the powers of every being in bondage, each with their own individual existence, even though they all participate equally in the unity of the Heart’s essence. Conversely, it is in the Heart of the pure consciousness (caitanya) of the universal ego (aham) that the supreme and infinite light of all the categories of existence is established in all living beings.
As Abhinava explains:
“Just as one says that the Heart is the undivided light of consciousness and reflective awareness which is the plane of the abode of rest of the body consisting (collectively) of all the categories of existence and its individual parts such as the skin etc., so the body of Lord Bhairava, which is the universe made up of the individual categories and worlds as well as the fifty letters of the alphabet and is the essence of reality, has this same (reality as His) Heart which is the essence of undivided awareness.”
[From “The Aphorisms of Shiva” by Dr. Dyczkowski]
Watch
The Heart Lecture (1 hr 48 min)
Email support: If you have questions of a more personal or individualized nature, please email info@anuttaratrikakula.org, and we will respond to your question confidentially and appropriately. For more advanced intellectual or content-related matters, we will forward your question to Dr. Mark Dyczkowski to respond to you directly.
We hope you enjoy this lecture and that you will join us for more as we go forward.
OM SAUḤ PARĀYAI NAMAḤ