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from: SPIRITUAL HEART AND DIRECT KNOWING IN THE PRAYER OF THE HEART, O. LOUCHAKOVA, INSTITUTE OF TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY, PALO ALTO, CA; accessed on 5/17/2009 at http://www.hridayamyoga.org/pdf/PHE...article1.pdf

Prayer of the Heart (PH) grew out of the spiritual exercises of the Pythagorean Greeks,
Alexandrian Gnostics, and the ancient Jews. Corresponding spiritual exercises are in the
Upanishads and commentaries, in Tibetan Tantra, and may also be reconstructed through Mayan
artifacts (author’s unpublished research). Hesychasm (from Greek hesychia, inner stillness), the
mystical tradition of the Christian East, fully articulated PH as a formal spiritual discipline,
which was later detailed in the Sufi practice of dhikr (remembrance) of Divine Names in the
heart. Individual contemplatives still use the PH in England, the United States, France, Germany,
Romania and Russia, and the various forms of dhikr are spread among different communities of
Islam. In India and in the India-influenced West, one finds the atma-vichara (Sanskrit) or self enquiry,
which is the other contemplative form close to the PH. The history of Hesychasm
contains many disputes concerning the safety and validity of this practice (Pelikan, 1974). As a
rule, the seekers consider the PH to be esoteric, complex, and requiring caution. Over years, it
turns into a journey of profound inner transformation, affecting all the levels of the self, from
perception, to character structure, to the affective sphere and foundational identity (Louchakova
and Warner, 2003; The Way of a Pilgrim, 1952; Ware, 1974).

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from: http://www.hridayamyoga.org/pdf/PHE...article1.pdf
As a scientist researching the effects of various
spiritual disciplines, I marveled at how fast this practice brings to conscious awareness the
interior structure-contents of the self. Formally, PH consists of an uninterrupted repetition of the Name of the Deity paced with the breath, and accompanied by focusing attention on the sense of self in the chest. As practice matures over the years, there are shifts in the interior state such as
a) progression from the verbal prayer to the internal silent prayer,
b) movement of the focus of the internal prayer deeper into the chest,
c) progression from the volitional repetition of the name to the state where the name spontaneously emerges from within,
d) dissolution of the name into wordless prayer of sustained presence, and lastly,
e) degrees of Union.
Encompassed within these roughly defined steps is a structured phenomenological introspection into the human
person. As the embodied sense of the self gets taken back to its phenomenological origins in pure subjectivity, a series of spontaneously rising reductions leads to an explication of the essential structures of the self.

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The esoteric, interior part of the practice consists of these spontaneous reductions.
Eventually, attention self-absorbs into the Spiritual Heart, a psychospiritual center of embodied
consciousness in the interior space of the chest (Louchakova and Warner, 2003; Spidlík, 1986).
The focus in the Spiritual Heart is associated with the mystical experience of I-Thou, and the
transcendence of the sense of separate ego, which is followed by the state of Union. As this is
happening, the hidden and latent content of the psyche becomes available to awareness,
including the traces of past trauma, and early forms of the psychological self as well as any
adaptive mechanisms. The transformational surfacing of this content challenges the seeker with
Direct Knowing 5
the need for posterior integration, and gives the PH a reputation of a complicated spiritual
discipline (The Way of a Pilgrim, 1952; St. Simeon the New Theologian, 1995; Ware, 1974).

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from: http://www.hridayamyoga.org/pdf/PHE...article1.pdf
The key motion of attention in the PH brings focus into the embodied sense of self in the
chest. Situated for the majority of people slightly to the right side of the chest, near the third rib,
this sense serves as a gateway to the interior zones of the phenomenological self. Focus in the
right side, as contrasted to the left side or the center of the chest, provides for faster development
of direct intuition, as well as easier integration of the psychological contents of experience.

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In our study, egological experiences always involved the
elements of a body schema, and a particular distribution of attention highlighting the areas of the
latter. Some zones of the body sponsor the entrance into the “inner being” more than others. Both
in the Prayer of the Heart, and in the self-enquiry of Sri Ramana Maharshi (Bhagavan Sri
Ramana Maharshi, 1996), focusing on the right side of the chest aids practitioners in sorting the
sense-thought of self out of the general flow of intentional consciousness. The internal structure
of egological experience associated with the right side of the chest is different from the one
associated with the head and other areas of the body. It is only in the chest that the sustained selfsense
becomes the subject to spontaneously rising reductions. In that sense, one may speak about
ontologically primary egological experience, as it is associated with a focus in the chest, and
ontologically secondary experience, as it is associated with a focus in the head and possibly other
body zones.

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from http://www.realization.org/page/top..._inquiry.htm
According to H.W.L Poonja, Ramana Maharshi told him:
When I speak of the 'I' rising from the right side of the body, from a location on the right side of the chest, the information is for those people who still think that they are the body. To these people I say that the Heart is located there. But it is really not quite correct to say that the 'I' rises from and merges in the Heart on the right side of the chest. The Heart is another name for the Reality and it is neither inside nor outside the body; there can be no in or out for it, since it alone is. I do not mean by 'Heart' any physiological organ or any plexus or anything like that…

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