Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharshi: Pure Consciousness wholly unrelated to the physical body and transcending the mind is a matter of direct experience. Sages know their bodiless, eternal Existence just as the layman knows his bodily existence. But the experience of Consciousness can be with bodily awareness as well as without it. In the bodiless experience of Pure Consciousness the Sage is beyond time and space, and no question about the position of the heart can then at all arise. Since, however, the physical body cannot subsist (with life) apart from Consciousness, bodily awareness has to be sustained by Pure Consciousness. The former, by its nature, is limited to and can never be co-extensive with the latter which is infinite and eternal. Body-consciousness is merely a monad-like, miniature reflection of the Pure Consciousness with which the Sage has realised his identity. For him, therefore, body-consciousness is only a reflected ray, as it were, of the Self-effulgent, Infinite Consciousness which is himself. It is in this sense alone that the Sage is aware of his bodily existence. Since, during the bodiless experience of the heart as Pure Consciousness, the Sage is not at all aware of the body, that absolute experience is localized by him within the limits of the physical body by a sort of feeling-recollection made while he is with bodily awareness.
Devotee: For men like me, who have neither the direct experience of the heart nor the consequent recollection, the matter seems to be somewhat difficult to grasp. About the position of the heart itself, perhaps, we must depend on some sort of guesswork.
Bhagwan Sri Ramana: If the determination of the position of the heart is to depend on guesswork even in the case of the layman, the question is surely not worth much consideration. No, it is not on guesswork that you have to depend, it is on an unerring intuition.
Devotee: For whom is the intuition?
Bhagwan Sri Ramana: For one and all.
Devotee: Does Sri Bhagavan credit me with an intuitive knowledge of the heart?
Bhagwan Sri Ramana: No, not of the heart, but of the position of the heart in relation to your identity.
Devotee: Sri Bhagavan says that I intuitively know the position of the heart in the physical body?
Bhagwan Sri Ramana: Why not ?
Devotee: (Pointing to himself) It is to me personally--that Sri Bhagavan is referring?
Bhagwan Sri Ramana: Yes. That is the intuition! How did you refer to yourself by gesture just now? Did you not put your finger on the right side of the chest? That is exactly the place of the heart-centre.
Devotee: So then, in the absence of direct knowledge of the heart-centre, I have to depend on this intuition?
Bhagwan Sri Ramana: What is wrong with it? When a schoolboy says 'It is I that did the sum correctly', or when he asks you, 'Shall I run and get the book for you', would he point out to the head that did the sum correctly, or to the legs that will carry him swiftly to get you the book? No, in both cases, his finger is pointed quite naturally towards the right side of the chest, thus giving innocent expression to the profound truth that the source of 'I'-ness in him is there. It is an unerring intuition that makes him refer to himself, to the heart which is the Self, in that way. The act is quite involuntary and universal, that is to say, it is the same in the case of every individual. What stronger proof than this do you require about the position of the heart-centre in the physical body?
Source: Maharshi's Gospel