EWS #89 On Role of Mind & Concentration - Q&A (30) - on Spiritual Life - 10
Oct 23, 2021
Topics:
Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste and good evening all. Welcome back to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. My name is Alina and together with Joel from Auroville, Namaste.
Joel (0:00:24):
Namaste Alina.
Alina (0:00:26):
Happy to be back and continue our series. We continue part 10 on Spiritual life and we will cover questions received from our viewers on topics on growth of consciousness, experiences about imagination and concentration. I'm happy to welcome Sradhhalu. Namaste.
Sraddhalu (0:00:52):
Namaste.
Alina (0:00:54):
We have a question from Rajarshi: “Where does the role of the mind end? And what is its role in calling down higher forces?”. And another related question from Harward: “The Mother revealed herself to me one year ago when I was 26 years old. Now I am 27. I am hers completely. What is the power of imagination, especially with the body, the effects of intense concentrating imagination”..
Sraddhalu (0:01:39):
Both of these questions relate to the power of the mind and its role in the yoga. We frequently hear from many of the yoga traditions that mind is your problem, thoughts are your problem. Don't think too much. Don't try to understand with the mind. Try to feel with your heart or feel with something deeper, inner, higher. Ignoring the mind, suppressing the mind or even in certain extreme ascetic traditions, killing the mind is highly valued because it gets rid of the thing which is creating the problems. After all, it's because you have a mind which can think that you have a choice. Should I do this? Should I do that? Is this better? Is this worse? And the result is you have confusion. In the old traditions, some of this was symbolised as the transition from the age of some great harmony, some kind of even of a Satya Yuga or a paradise on earth to the current chaos created by the mind. In the Biblical tradition, it is the snake that offers and tempts Eve, that is Nature, by the power of knowledge, the apple of knowledge, the fruit of knowledge. When having eaten the fruit, suddenly the difference between good and bad becomes obvious and with it the problems start and the state of paradise, which is almost like a simplistic animal harmony, is broken. And the fall from paradise, which is actually evolutionarily a rise into thought, power and choice of mind, that's the phase of confusion that now awakens.
The method of the Integral yoga is fundamentally different from many of these ascetic paths. As I said, in some of the ascetic paths, even stilling mind is necessary, of course, which is common with the integral yoga. But killing the mind becomes the goal because mind is creator of all the illusions of the world or the problems of the world. Whereas in the integral yoga, stilling the mind is a base for the opening of the mind to a still higher faculty and a slow process of divinisation of the mind to an intuitive and then even a further higher grade. So this difference is extremely important to understand. Otherwise I will say this in a vocabulary which is a little harsh. Most of us are heavily tainted with the ascetic ideas from ascetic traditions simply because they surround us everywhere. You enter the Spiritual domain, you look for Spiritual literature, you listen to speakers from various traditions, some of them brilliant speakers and inspiring. But if the underlying framework is ascetic, then there is an implicit twist which is contrary to the approach of the Integral Yoga. And I am going to highlight this perhaps repeatedly over many sessions, simply because it is something to be worked upon, needs to be worked upon consciously, if you don't want to fall into the trap and the distortions that come with the ascetic paths.
Sraddhalu (0:05:08):
So first we recognize, mind is not our problem. Mind is our starting point and our means. It is the highest station we have reached in our evolution. To abandon that for something inferior is silly. But it is reasonable for an ascetic approach that wants to withdraw from life, where the goal would be to kill everything that binds you in Nature. Here the goal is transformation. The goal therefore is transformation. Liberation from limitations both in mind, in vital and the physical consciousness. Liberation from limitation and transformation and divinisation is the means and not the suppression and the killing. So mind is your starting point because you are first and foremost a mental being. As a result now, perfection of the mind's capacities becomes a necessary phase of our evolution. So all that you do, for example, in study, to try to understand, to develop your power of reason, to develop the faculties of the mind, including imagination, including analysis and synthesis and memory, and all other powers of the intellect, such as induction and deduction and so on, the power to comprehend, to seize knowledge widely and embrace knowledge, the power to penetrate incisively, all of these must be developed. To neglect them is a dangerous possibility because as you see very often in people, following an emotional, sentimental heart, as they will say, is precarious. Your emotions deceive, your desires conceal behind sweet emotions and push you to do things that they want. And if you have not developed sufficiently the discriminating intelligence, if you have not developed sufficiently self-awareness both in mind and of your emotions, you can easily fall into those deceptions.
In my personal experience, and limited to my personal experience, most of the people that I have met who have severe problems in managing situations in life, most of them trace back to sentimental emotional impulsiveness, which they take to be either an intuition or a psychic guidance or some other, my feeling, my inner whatever. If you have not developed this power of the intellect that can look at your own emotions or your own even a deeper intimation and recognize and distinguish or rise above the impulsiveness of your moment's desire or impulse and choose freely, not bound by these, you get into great trouble. And so it is a necessary part, it is a necessary part of evolution that we develop the power of the mind and free it sufficiently from emotions that it can act with a greater understanding and knowledge and even an opening to higher truth. There is the example I am reminded of. My teacher’s, both mother and sister, my teacher MP Pandit's both mother and sister had come to the ashram even a few years before he joined. So that would be before 1939 and they were living in a house which was different one from where he lived when he came and they had the occasion therefore to not only have Sri Aurobindo's darshan and Mother's darshan for years together. But my teacher commented once he said their biggest problem is that they have not developed their mind sufficiently so they tend to live in the emotional space and consider that or even find that the highest that they are able to live by. And it was interesting to see that one of them in the next incarnation, which was confirmed by the Mother, took up a very different life and went into a whole training of computers and information technology and things like that. And I would say the soul's choice to develop the powers of the mind before it can now re-engage with the yoga on the basis of a higher consciousness. All this is to highlight the importance of the mind.
And again to warn you, in the Integral yoga tradition itself, and I'm using this term in a very general way, people who represent or speak about the Integral yoga, it's not really a formal tradition, even in this you will find people repeatedly saying, don't think with the mind, don't try to understand with the mind. For example, reading a text like Savitri, people say I don't understand. So the first advice you're given, don't try to understand, try to feel and let the words lead you to an experience. Yes, this is true because mystic poetry, inspired poetry is supra-rational. But it is a separate exercise to try to understand with the mind also, because it does contain knowledge, it does contain profound insights which the mind is capable of grasping. And this advice is most applicable to people who have not sufficiently developed the mind, where even with the attempt to try to understand, they wouldn't, or they need some body to elucidate sufficiently that they can catch something of it. But I would say consider both exercises differently, separately. Try to understand with the mind. Perhaps you don't understand, you may need to read some background material of Sri Aurobindo, where he actually explains those experiences or those insights or those philosophical ideas behind that terminology and that description. Use it also to develop the mind. Of course Savitri may not be the best to begin to develop the mind. For that, books like the Life Divine would be far better because they challenge the power of the intellect with the complexity and comprehensiveness of the ideas, logic and the presentation. Even there, you can develop the intuitive field which you might develop in Savitri. So, both have potential to train the intellect as well as the intuition, but with a different emphasis.
Sraddhalu (0:11:41):
My point in saying all this is, do not deprecate the importance of the mind. In fact, mind is your starting point. But what you need to do is to train your mind. And as a first step, train it to become quiet. It does not have to be perfect silence, but a quietness. That you should be able to stand back from your own thoughts, when necessary at least. Redirect your thoughts when you need to. And second, separate the mind’s working from the emotional influence. That your mind should not be a victim of the emotional state. Perhaps you are upset, perhaps you are agitated, perhaps at the moment your mind is clouded, but you take a few minutes, maybe you take a few hours, your mind should be able to clear from the emotional state. And then with clarity, choose. And then later, if possible, with clarity, turn upon the emotions and change them. Choose what emotions you wish to feel. And this must be done. This is like a basic necessity for any kind of self-culturing which is affirmative of life, that is, which accepts life, which accepts mind, which accepts this as a domain of our evolution rather than a domain from which you have to escape. So this is as a first background.
And so, Rajarshi's question, where does the role of the mind end and what is its role in calling down higher forces? I would say its role never really ends. In fact, you would start with your mind because it is with your mind's awareness that you will even turn towards a concentration towards the psychic. The opening towards the psychic is not done by a subconscious inward turn in a sentimental state. It has to come from a clarity which is not mixed with turbidity of emotions. Now, it can happen that you have already a spontaneous opening in the heart for love and devotion to the Divine Mother. Yes, that is your starting point, certainly. But how easily that is mixed with other emotions. How easily it gets covered when you are agitated or upset. And that is where the mind will come to separate, to sift, to distinguish between the deeper psychic influence and the clutter of emotions which play on the surface or which even sees that influence and twist them in a different direction. So your mind is still your starting point and is needed even for the purifying of emotions and the deepening to the psychic presence. For some, the entry to the psychic also can take place directly through the mind's awareness turning inward, as if towards its own source. Second, the same mind can also turn upward to call down higher states of consciousness or powers of your being. And so again the mind plays a crucial role here. But just to complete the big picture before we dwell on this power of calling down: Subsequently when the higher consciousness is descending, it will also fill the mind and increasingly increase it, increasingly fill with light, increase its powers, widen it, until the mental consciousness itself can become almost as if opening to infinity. Through it, therefore, the higher ranges and influences will penetrate through the mind into the vital and through the vital into the physical. And again there, it will be the mind which will play a critical role in guiding this downward movement, in assisting in actively opening the vital and physical consciousness. Because it is your mind's awareness infusing into the vital which awakens into it the capacity to become aware or to open or even into the physical as when you do consciously if you do like this in the asanas to make the body conscious and you awaken in that conscious awareness of the body the turning and the aspiration. It is the mind which is playing that critical role. Of course the psychic filling it will complete it but mind prepares the ground in any case.
And finally, when the mind is fully filled and lit up by the descending powers, the same mind will become capable of a complete, transparent, light-filled action for the higher intuition or eventually the Supramental consciousness. And it will be the vehicle through which the higher knowledge or will will act in the material world. So where does the role of the mind end? Well, it doesn't really. It is our starting point in a way. Its training is necessary. Its perfection is the culmination of its development. And it will continue to play a critical role, except later the critical role will be as a subsidiary power to the higher ranges of consciousness, but still needed for those higher ranges to be able to act in the material world or to be able to articulate themselves in the domain of forms and words and so on. Because mind is the vehicle not for knowledge in evolution, but it is a vehicle for expression of knowledge, not for finding knowledge. For example, as an intermediate stage, our intuition will find the knowledge and the mind now, intuitivised, will turn to articulate with clarity, with precision what is known by the intuition. So all this is to highlight importance of mind. Do not duplicate, do not make the error which is relevant for the ascetic path but an error for us in the Integral yoga.
Sraddhalu (0:17:36):
Then comes the second part of the question, what is its role in calling down higher forces? Yes, again there it plays a critical role. Ultimately, we may say the call is from the psychic aspiration, that a call is made and a response felt. But as we are now, we are not so conscious of the psychic being, or even its influence is still fine, not yet sufficiently strong. At best we can say the psychic influence in the mind awakens in the mind the aspiration. Fine, but after that the mind can play a crucial role in this upward opening because unless the mind accepts to open itself, the action from above can only be indirect. This is a basic principle of the yoga of transformation that a transformation of a part of consciousness cannot take place unless that part willingly opens itself. Any compulsion from outside pressing on it will only tighten the resistance or eventually cause it to crush and break down and you will have lost what would be a potential instrument for manifestation. So the higher consciousness waits, works, percolates slowly behind the scenes to prepare, to change, to open. But only when that part willingly opens, that its action can be direct and therefore rapid after that. So the mind, when it opens, invokes, and you can use words or you can use just the state of opening and the state of call and receptivity, without any words, in silence, in stillness, an opening to that which is wide above, that you begin to feel the presence and then gradually it begins to settle in you and the mind itself now begins to be infused with what settles. The mind itself opens out now as if to embrace the wideness of what comes. And when that settles, when that infuses, it is felt literally like a substance that then begins to awake in the mind a clarity, even a stillness and silence, a peace that descends. And then the mind allows it to go further down or guides it even or redirects it to different parts or if there is a place where there is a resistance it can infuse slowly the peace. So its role in calling down in higher forces is also crucial. In a sense the psychic being needs this active participation of the mind for the process to begin to sufficiently purify your entire personality to prepare for the full emergence of the psychic. So, its role in calling down higher forces is crucial. I will say even now, you cannot proceed too far without its active participation. But in the process, it changes. It changes radically in its working and begins to get more and more wide as well as intuitivised.
So I think this broadly covers Rajarishi's question and prepares us now for the second question from Harvard which is the power of imagination, especially with the body, and the effect of intense concentrating imagination. So this is a very specific aspect of the mind, the power of imagination. I will deal with it but also then broaden to other aspects which follow in the same line of thought. Imagination, the Mother explains, is the power to create that which is not yet. You see a possibility and it is your imagination that conceives. If you were in the mental body or in the mental world, the moment your mind turns and starts forming an idea, you would see the mind forming, actually in substance of mind, a shape, an idea form. And to certain kind of clairvoyant sight, you see it in form, in colours and sometimes in the aura you can see the thought form emerging from the forehead and drifting out like an independent bundle that goes out to do its thing. Yes, thought forms are real, but you can also visualise and create an object in the mental world. I heard a very interesting story. This was one of the... somebody I had met when he was 92 in Switzerland. He was an extraordinary spiritual master. I've spoken about him before. His name was Paul Baumann and one of the very interesting stories I heard from one of his disciples is that when she first met him, she was a child almost, he asked her, how do you conceive of an angel? Can you visualise an angel? And so the child is thinking and she forms this picture and then he comments, oh your angel has very beautiful wings. So he was able to see as she was conceiving and forming the image, he was able to see the form it was taking in the mental substance in her consciousness or generally in the mental space.
Sraddhalu (0:23:10):
All this is to say that the creative power of imagination actually has an objective value. In certain occult practices, this power of imagination is greatly developed for the purpose of materialising or actualizing an outcome. So if you put enough concentration to create a complete imagination, imaging in substance of mind and then infuse into it enough life force, it acquires a power of activation of manifestation which goes out to do its thing. One among many forces trying to accomplish itself. But if you have the skill, from that point on you can also as if take that material and densify it and when it becomes sufficiently dense it acquires a near material gradation accumulating around its subtle physical substance until you can begin to see it physically with physical sight and eventually further densified, you can begin to touch it. So these are further gradations of materialisation and so you create a form and it is materialised, you can hold it and then when you release the force that holds it, it pops back, it dematerializes, it cannot stay for too long. Mother says about this, it's a very interesting observation that no materialisation so far, it's a purely materialisation, has ever stayed permanently and it is only the Supramental power which can complete the materialisation in a way that it will stay permanently as material. This is very different from a lot of saints or miracle men who materialise objects. They are not really materialising, they are teleporting. So somebody materialises a watch or a fruit. The object was placed, let's say, in the room somewhere. There it is dematerialized, brought into the hand and rematerialized. And so it was always a material object, which was from a physical plane taken to a finer grade of the physical domain, into the subtle physical, where, of course, distance can be easily managed, brought into the hand and then rematerialized. So in a sense, it was never a true materialisation. A true pure materialisation starts with the mind idea forming, densifying into matter and that can't stay because the force holding it down is not strong enough, is not permanent enough. The force itself is mind created and therefore limited by mind's capacity. A Supramentally initiated materialisation would have the creative power of the Divine and therefore it could materialise in permanence.
But all this is only to highlight the power of imagination and her question then goes specifically with the body. What is the power of imagination on the body? Again it is huge, because in your biology or in the physical body, the physical body, vital body, mental body are superimposed and even bound into each other. So the fibres of the mental body penetrate the vital and the physical. And from the physical consciousness and the physical body, it's as if there's a turning up to the vital and the mental. And in the vital body there's an influence going into the mental and physical and all three are tightly bound together and that's why we have the impression that you are thinking in your brain or inside your physical head and that's why if you get a knock on the physical body or you inject some chemical into the bloodstream your ability to think gets clouded or enhanced or whatever because the three are tightly bound. And therefore imagination in the mental body immediately affects, instantly, things in the vital body, energy flows in the vital body which then affect the physical body. But the physical body is much more resistant to small nudges and it takes time for small nudges to by persistence change patterns. But if persisted with a certain will and intention, the mental imagination can percolate and even change physical processes. But as a first step they can immediately change your vital energy flows.
I give an example and you can try this as a simple experiment. Most of us, who have practised any form of pranayama are inherently biassed by our biology training of school days to think that well the prana is going in through the nose, goes inside, goes down the throat and goes into the lungs. So what do you do when you do pranayama? You breathe in, you visualise or you feel your lungs filling up. Or even you are taught, fill your lungs fully, expand your stomach, expand your chest. So automatically the attention goes to the air flow in the lungs. And often you have the erroneous idea that it's the air flow and the oxygen which is doing it. No. The air flow and oxygen are only the physical basis for prana. If you are conscious, you can take in far more prana than the quantum of oxygen or air, with the same breath. And this is what happens, you will see, in some of the more violent practices of pranayama. I don't recommend that, they are dangerous. You go, with a great force you pull, and the result is a tremendous, dramatic increase of vitality and often destabilising the personality, not healthy at all. So start with something very quiet, very stable, but observe the innate bias is to take it to the chest and lungs. Wonderful, but it's not all. Try again a second time. This time when you breathe in, very slowly, not hard, take the air into your brain or forehead. So you go [imitates soft deep breath in]. You feel it here. You actually feel the air, or actually the prana energy, going up and filling your brain. Try it out. Do this two or three times and suddenly you'll feel a little giddy. The quantum of air you took is exactly the same but when you directed it to the lungs it had a different effect. When you directed attention, because it's not the physical air, when you directed attention the prana went to the head.
Sraddhalu (0:30:01):
So I have not used the word imagination, but attention. But this attention is really the basis of imagination. So you could use an imagining, so you breathe in clear, bright, fresh prana, fill it into your brain and visualise the brain growing fresh and bright. The imagination guides the prana. Do this a few times. You will find a dramatic shift in just three breaths. All this is to highlight with a simple experiment how your mind's attention and then its power of imagination therefore can redirect life energy flows. If you can further develop this, that you direct energy flows with an intention placed, you can modify biological processes. So for example, you have a tendency, let's say for a loose stomach, you just ate food which was a bit makes you feel queasy and if you do nothing it feels as if the body might have a loose stomach. You put a strong will, feel the energy in the stomach, hold, consolidate and put an intention of firming and you'll find the thing comes in control. Maybe it takes a few hours but if you put the intention it continues. If you have the skill and capacity you sustain the intention for a few hours even while you're doing other work and then you'll find very quickly the biology follows. This power now persisting, you can actually change the physical form. I give an example here. It's an example I've used very often.
It's an experiment done with muscle development. So you have as usual three groups. The first group is the control group. Second group is asked to exercise for one hour every day for a month or so. And the third group is asked to sit down and visualise itself doing the exercise for one hour every day. The result is after a month or so, first group has no change, second group has put on a certain muscle mass, but the third group has put one-third of the muscle mass of the second group. Now one-third is a lot. Let's say somebody has put on one kilo of muscle, your third group person has put on 300 grams, one-third of a kilo of muscles, just sitting, visualising, imagining themselves doing exercise. And this is to show you how imagination as applied to the body can actually change biological processes and even change form. Now consider if you had in the second group, put a strong mind intention and even visualisation or imagination in the physical exercise they did. Instead of that one kg they put on, they would have put maybe one and a half kgs. In other words, any action you do in the physical body through exercise or any other way, even in eating, if you combine with a certain intentionality, and for you, imagination is the way to infuse the intentionality, you can produce far greater results. And if you have developed the yoga, let's say skill, where you can directly direct, directly place your intention, then even without an imagination, just the intention placed, you can shape the body or change it or change its capacities even, amplify its capacities.
If then you use your intentionality to invoke a higher power, a higher Peace or Light or Force of the Mother's consciousness into that particular functioning, the amplification can be even more dramatic and sometimes can be even magical. Sometimes within a few minutes you can fill yourself with the capacity to do something which you could never have done otherwise. And it's as if a miraculous change, but acquired like this almost effortlessly. So I have gone beyond just imagination and I'm using more and more, you will notice the word intentionality. What intention you place is the basis for the power of the imagination. Imagining only gives a form to the intention, but sometimes what you want is not the specificity of form but a general activity or change in activity and there the intentionality is more essential. So for example you can visualise your tissues growing, yes it will help, but if you infuse in the tissue substance the feeling of the intention and growth sometimes the result will be far greater. So recognise the value of imagination, but recognise also its limitation. And especially when it comes to higher or deeper experiences which are essentially supra-rational.
Sraddhalu (0:35:00):
The mind's conceptualising power is finite and its forms are limited. Whereas you are opening to an experience of consciousness which is itself infinite or free of limitation. And so if you try to imagine an intuitive consciousness, not so useful, in fact you will bind the experience into the framework of your imagination. This is the problem with a lot of visualised meditations. They are good for the mind's influence on the vital and physical and they are not very useful for opening to deeper and higher things. So for example, one of the methods they will use for relaxation, imagine you are floating on a boat, now your boat is drifting towards the sun, you have the ocean all around, everything is becoming bright, clear. You can go through a whole visualised meditation, maybe you come out very relaxed, maybe even it has a good effect on your body, but it stops with what the imagination can cast in the shapes and the forms. A movement to open to something above the mind may produce spontaneously associated images, but it's not the imagination, it is the opening of the consciousness and the experience of something wide, even vast, even infinite. And to it there may be associated memory, oh it feels like an ocean, and therefore a picture may come, but that is secondary. The experience is first. And in the content of the experience there is a vividness which is far greater than any imagination could produce. This is at the core of all Spiritual development and experience. So, not to confuse it with imagination, because imaging may happen, but it's not imagination which creates the experience. The difference is this, what you imagine you can instantly visualise, what you experience you cannot reproduce just by trying to visualise it. And that's how you know the difference between the two.
There is a last part of her question, which is the effect of intense concentrating imagination. Well, the effect of intense concentrating imagination is to make more concrete what is imagined. And that is what is used generally for some kind of healing purposes or materialisations or redirecting a thought form, etc. The intense concentration will be far more useful if it is not bound to imagination but it is tied to an aspiration and then Spiritually it will have greater value. In the way the question was placed, I think it was put in the discussion box, in the chat box, there was a comment by one of the viewers named Kuldeep who said intense concentration is dangerous, you might bring down vital forces, very destabilising, be careful. Yes, the comment is valid, but it's valid only if your intense concentrating imagination was directed to a vital outcome. As I said in the example of certain kinds of occult practices, you are asked to visualise certain things to produce certain results and the whole nature of the focus is in the vital energy to produce a physical outcome. And yes, it can be dangerous because then you are creating a vehicle in which vital energies now are required to manifest and they may produce an intense vital concentration or effect, of course destabilising and so on. So, yes, it's valid if the turn is downward. But if the intense concentration is upward, the same thing can be very useful and in fact can help to make a breakthrough in your experiences or evolution. So for example, the same intense concentration turned inward to become conscious of the Divine presence within, of the psychic presence within you. And so the concentration is placed on the part deep within you where you feel the love and devotion for the Divine Mother. And you turn to that and plunge yourself deeper and deeper into that. It's a state of intense concentration. The concentration itself can become so intense that you forget everything else. You are entirely focused in, the world itself fades out. And that's when you will have a deep experience of closeness with the psychic presence. Similarly, the same intense concentration turned upward to the Presence above the head and opening to the wideness of the Presence. If the concentration is sufficiently complete, well, you have the experience because you identify.
Sraddhalu (0:39:55):
Remember our discussion we had a few weeks ago on the power of concentration concentration and Sri Aurobindo's observation that concentration has three powers. First, to acquire knowledge of something on which you concentrate. Second, acquire capacity for something which you don't have, again by concentrating on the capacity itself. And third, which is the most important for our yoga, the power to identify and become one with higher or deeper states of consciousness or any identity in experience and it is through this that one acquires the knowledge of deeper and higher ranges of consciousness and it requires concentration. So this same question of... so remember I'm changing the phrasing here. It's not intense concentrating imagination, because that will produce an imagined form in the mental world. I'm setting that aside. I'm only focusing on intense concentration of your aspiration or attention, no imagination here. And that can break through to higher or deeper states. And most important, I give this example, which is from one of Mother's talks. She was asked, how long does it take to attain to Self-realization? Her reply is very interesting because she does not give her own reply. She quotes Ramakrishna Paramahansa and there's a reason for that because her reply would have been perhaps so different that people would get confused. So she quotes Ramakrishna Paramhansa and she says, “Ramakrishna says that if you have a weak power of concentration, then you can attain to Self-realisation in three days. And if you have a reasonably developed power of concentration, then you can attain to Self-realisation in three hours. And if you have a very developed power of concentration, then you can attain to Self-realization in three minutes”. Think about what that means.
The key to all entry into deeper or higher experience or for that matter even lower experiences is the power of concentration and that is why it was so practically all ancient systems of self-development and I don't mean just yoga, any kind of self-development including occult development or intellectual development. The power of concentration is your means but when turned to Self you see what it can lead to and three days for anybody with a weak power of concentration. Of course you need to have a sustained power. You need to sustain for three days. And as you know Ramana Maharshi himself attained to Self-realisation in three days. But he said it took him ten years to slowly establish that state of Self-realisation in all activities of life. Until he could do anything and stay sustained in that state of Self-Realisation without losing it. And it is a huge achievement. It is a huge achievement, but the point is the attaining to the experience itself took only three days with a weak power of concentration. That is what we are told. Now, all this is to highlight the need to develop our power of concentration. And yes, there are dangers if you direct it to lesser or lower outcomes, but it is the same power which turned higher or deeper, opens you to spiritual possibilities.
So this is now I think broadly covering the two questions. There are further implications which we would want to discuss normally. I will just take a moment to see. We are almost completing one hour. I will keep the broader discussion of the framework of how this concentration is directed for our next session. But for now, simply to take this a little deeper into the discussion, even for a very mundane activity in life, let's say you are going to wash vessels. How do you do it? You can switch on the radio or television and your mind is turning to the screen every three or four seconds while your hands are doing mechanically, it's not multiple concentration. Actually it is no concentration, it is dissipation of attention. Multiple concentration is when you direct focus on more than one thing. But here there is no focus, there is only dispersal. But you could do for example multiple concentration. You are paying full attention to the washing of the vessels and at the same time, for example you may be focused on an aspiration deep within you or you may be concentrated on the centre at the top of the head. And then you have a multiple concentration, two things being done at the same time. You could also do another thing at the same time, for example, as an exercise you could do something else with your feet or one hand doing one thing, another hand doing another thing. That would be an example of multiple concentration.
Sraddhalu (0:45:53):
But the point I'm getting at is you can use any activity of the day as a means to develop your power of concentration and then the same power turned inward would be your means for Spiritual development. So let's say you are washing vessels and wiping them. What are all the things that you can become aware of? Can you gather all your attention fully on that activity at that moment until literally the whole universe fades away from you? And then do it with full attention. Initially you slow down, so that you can do with full attention, with full awareness even of your hands, so that your hands can also become more conscious as you do this. Gradually you will find you can slowly speed up, increasingly, until you can do the same work very rapidly, but without loss of focus and concentration. It doesn't become mechanical, but it is still done with attention. In this way, through various simple activities in life, you can intensify your power of concentration. You can take up another activity, for example, you're walking or you're climbing stairs. Mother suggests this in fact as an exercise. While climbing stairs, you put your attention on your feet, on the muscles of your feet, on the sensations in the muscles and then try to move your feet as consciously as possible. Each step, each movement, each muscle, try to feel in it and intensify your awareness and do it as intentionally, consciously as possible. Now this is a concentration directed in the body in movement. You read Sri Aurobindo's writings, put your full attention until everything else is forgotten and you concentrate on the meaning of each word and the nuance of each word and you have a total immersion. I am showing a gamut of options. Any activity in principle taken with full attention would be a means to develop the power of concentration.
The problem though is when you turn the same power inward, now to become aware, let's say of your thoughts or of your emotions or turning upward or inward to inner or higher states, you tend to lose focus because you are so used to attaching to an object externally. Inside there's no object, where do you put your attention and the mind wanders. The attention flags. You can't hold attention. So the trick is then to turn your senses within. Let's say your concentration is inward, towards the presence of the Divine Mother or the psychic being deep within. So you turn attention now inward as if turning your sight in. So there will be a tendency for imaging but you don't focus on the image but the sensation to which the image points. Your love for the Divine Mother or the sense of a quiet deep felt aspiration or the feeling of the gratitude or just a deep calm core of stillness and purity. Whatever the form in which you first connect, hold that and at that point the imagination will try to give a form. Don't focus on the form but feel rather as if the core of the centre. Feel in awareness. Now with it the visual sight centre so to say, turns in. And then feel the stillness and the silence as if drawing the auditory centre inward. But the key is the sensation as if point of contact. You feel somewhere inside the touch, the presence. Sometimes it may represent in a kind of a warmth or a glow. Whatever happens, don't struggle with it. Rather keep attention there, hold attention there, and stay with your attention. And if you have consciously turned your senses in this way and are holding the centre of experience of contact with something, it's easy to hold attention and stay like this as long as you can. So the inward turn of the power of concentration will become a crucial skill for your practices of meditation, which we will discuss in the following sessions. But for now, it is just recognizing the value of concentration, the turn of the mind and its participation. And we have understood imagination, but here imagination will not be our prime focus, but the awareness and the holding of attention, which will be the most important thing. I think broadly this covers the questions.
Shall we then pause for today and take up the successive questions later?
Alina (0:51:08):
Okay, I think it was a great session and maybe we can further develop more about practices
in our next session and we invite all our viewers to write beforehand emails on this topic of practices of growth of consciousness and experiences at our email integralstudies.in[at] gmail.com. Thank you very much, Sraddhalu and Joel for hosting a beautiful introductory talk. Thank you also.
Sraddhalu (0:51:51):
I would like to also maybe conclude with a short concentration and perhaps to put value to what we have discussed so far, we can do this as a short practice and either you turn inward with your attention on the love, gratitude, devotion for the Divine Mother felt or her presence felt within or if you find it more natural, you turn your mind's awareness to the presence above the head as if your head opens out and becomes aware of Her presence above and we can concentrate on this for a brief while.
Sraddhalu (0:52:33):
Thank you.
[Alina] Thank you. Namaste.
[Joel] Thank you.