CONCENTRATION

By Sri Aurobindo and Mother

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CONCENTRATION-
INDISPENSABLE IN LIFE
Whatever one does in life, one thing is
absolutely indispensable and basic i.e. the
capacity to concentrate the attention
You can gather together the rays of

attention and consciousness and maintain it

with persistent will
Then nothing can resist from the most

material physical development to the

highest spiritual one
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 But then this discipline must be constantly
followed
It doesn’t mean be concentrated on the same

thing all the time, but learning to concentrate

The value of the individual is proportionate to

the value of his attention

Power of concentration is the key to every

human activity
Everyone has in itself a tiny little beginning of

it, but we don’t cultivate it

MOTHER
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Practical Examples: one
 When one is in hurry, he can’t do his best,
he can’t do completely what he has to do or
does it badly
 A third way is to intensify one’s
concentration, think only of what one is
doing, make the exact movement in the
most exact way,
 It will save half your time, because to do
your best you don’t need to have plenty of
time but power to concentrate your
attention and energies
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 It creates tension in the beginning
but as you are used to it, the tension
diminishes
 Then a moment comes when what
fatigues you is to be not thus
concentrated
 Thus one can succeed in doing things
even better and more quickly with the
power of concentration
 Without it you do the work
disinterestedly to manage completing
it with lesser time in hand
 This disinterest can be confused with
indifference 5
Practical Examples: Two
 Solving a mathematical problem,
sometimes it comes quickly,
sometimes takes too long even if one
has already solved it
 The reason is lack of concentrated
attention, a kind of haziness in the
brain, something cloudy making it
difficult to see clearly and you remain
in that state for hours

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 Concentration helps in removing the
cloud
 Gather together all the elements of
your intelligence and mental
energies, fix them on one point
 And you stay there, fixed, as though
you were about to drill a hole in the
wall, all of a sudden it will come
 And then you don’t even try actively
to find the thing
 You see only the problem, but not
only its surface, rather seeing it in its
depth, what it conceals
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 Although half of what you learn will
vanish, disappear with time, but will
leave behind one thing, capacity to
crystallize your thought, making
something clear out of it.

MOTHER

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YOGIC CONCENTRATION
 Gathering together of the
consciousness and either centralizing
at one point or object or on the whole
being is concentration
 Ordinarily the consciousness is
dispersed and is not static
 before starting doing something one
has to draw back all this dispersed
consciousness and concentrate at one
place
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 The place is usually somewhere in the
brain, if it is a thought or in the heart
if it is the feeling in which one needs
to be concentrated
 Yogic concentration is the extension
and intensification of the same thing
 It may be on an object9light source
as in TRATAK), an idea, the word ‘OM’
or a combination of the idea and word
or a name

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 In Yoga, one concentrates in a
particular place, between the
eyebrows- the centre of the inner
mind, of occult vision
 From there you think firmly on your
object of concentration, if you
succeed you feel your consciousness
is centered there in that place
 One can also concentrate anywhere in
the head or at the centre of the chest
i.e. the cardiac centre

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 When there is local concentration, the
rest of the concentration either falls
silent, if it doesn’t, then other
thoughts may move about, but the
concentrated part will not attend to
them or notice.

SRI AUROBINDO

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PURPOSES OF CONCENTRATION
 To turn the whole will and mind from
discursive divagation natural to them
 Secondly, to break down the veil
erected by our ordinary mentality
between ourselves and the truth,
because the outer knowledge can be
picked up by ordinary attention and
reception, but the inner, hidden and
higher truth can only be seized by the
absolute concentration of the mind 13
PURITY AND CONCENTRATION

 The object of purification is to make

the whole mental being , a clear
mirror in which the divine reality can
be reflected.
 These are two aspects, feminine and
masculine; passive and active
 Purity is the condition in which
concentration becomes effective,
omnipotent 14
 By concentration, purity does its
works and without it would only lead
to a state of peaceful quiescence and
eternal repose
 Without purity and complete, equal
and flexible concentration of the
being in right thought, right will, right
feeling or secure status of spiritual
experience is not possible
 Therefore, the two must move
together, each helping the victory of
the other SRI AUROBINDO

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 CONCENTRATION & MEDITATION-
A DIFFERENCE
 Concentration means fixing the
consciousness in one place or on one object
and in a single condition
 Meditation can be diffusive, e.g. thinking
about the Divine, watching what goes on in
the nature and acting upon it etc.
 In meditation, one has to remain with a
quiet mind thinking of one subject or
observing what comes in the consciousness
and dealing with it 16
 In concentration, your consciousness
is fixed in a particular state (e.g.
peace) or movement (e.g. aspiration,
will, coming into contact with the
Mother
 Meditation is when the inner mind is
looking at things to get the right
knowledge
 It’s a process leading towards
knowledge and through that
knowledge, it’s a thing of the head
and not of the heart
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 Concentration in the heart is not
meditation, it is a call on the Divine,
on the Beloved
 Meditation is purely a mental activity,
it interests only the mental being
 One can concentrate while meditating
, but this is mental concentration
 Meditation is a purely mental silence,
and the other parts of the being are
kept immobile and inactive so as not
to disturb the meditation

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 You may be in meditation for 20
hours in a day, but rest 4 hours you
are the ordinary man, because only
the mind was occupied and the rest
of the being, the vital and the
physical is kept under pressure not to
disturb
 In meditation, nothing is done for the
other parts of the being
 It has been seen that people with
remarkable capacity for meditation
are very ordinary people when not in
meditation,
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 At times they are ill- natures, become
furious if disturbed in meditation, because
they have learnt only to master their mind
not the rest of the being
 Concentration is more active state
 You may concentrate mentally, vitally,
psychically, physically or integrally
 Concentration is more difficult
 If you have the capacity to concentrate,
your meditation will be more interesting
and easier
 But one can meditate without concentrating
 Many follow a chain of idea in their
meditation, it is meditation not
concentration THE MOTHER
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Concentration in the heart
 It means to concentrate the energy,
the consciousness, the will and
concentrate the aspiration
 One can have an extremely intense
concentration without a single
thought and in fact, it is usually much
more intense when one doesn’t think

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HOW TO CULTIVATE
CONCENTRATION
 It can be developed just like the
muscles in the body
 One may follow different methods
 With discipline the most pitiful
weakling can be made as strong as
anyone else
 One needs to be strong willed
 The will and concentration need to be
cultivated through regular exercise. If
you will , you can
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How to increase concentration
 Fix a time when you can be quiet
everyday
 Take one of the books of your choice.
 Read a sentence or two
 Then remain silent and concentrated
to understand the deeper meaning
 Try to concentrate deep enough to
obtain mental silence and begin again
daily until you obtain a result
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 The sentence you read is the
expression of the mental formation
 Active meditation on the sentence is
an ordinary external method of
reflecting and trying to understand
what these words mean, understand
intellectually what the sentence
means exactly
 You concentrate on these words and
take the thought they express and try
through reasoning, deduction,
analysis to understand what it means
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 Another method, more direct and deep is to
tale this mental formation or combination
of words with the thought they represent
 Gather all your attention on it,
 Compelling yourself to concentrate all your
strength and energies on it
 Then you can concentrate the thought
sufficiently and stop it from vacillating
 You pass quite naturally fro the thought
expressed by the words to the idea which is
behind and that gives you a light and an
understanding in the mind which enables
you to express the idea in any form.
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A METHOD OF LEARNING
IDENTIFICATION
 All knowledge is knowledge by identification
i.e. one must become that which one wants
to know.
 E.g. you have a problem preoccupying you,
you don’t know the solution. You objectify
your problem in your mind, put it in the
most exact terms possible and then
concentrate…
 You concentrate only on the words and if
possible on the idea represented…
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 …you concentrate, concentrate ,
concentrate until nothing else exists
but that
 And it is true that all of a sudden you
have the feeling of something
opening and one is on the other side.
The other side of what?
 It means you have opened a door of
your consciousness, and instantly you
have the solution of the problem
 This is an excellent method of
learning ”how” to identify oneself
The Mother
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WHERE TO CONCENTRATE?
 One can concentrate in the heart by the
power of aspiration, love, bhakti,
surrender, which is called the Psychic
Transformation in Yoga
 IT means concentration in the emotional
centre
 It opens the psychic being and brings
bhakti, love and union with the Mother
 Open the way for the lower consciousness
(mental, vital, physical) to rise up to meet
the higher consciousness and for the power
of the higher consciousness (spiritual
nature) to descend into the mind, life and
body 28
 Concentrating above the head is to bring peace,
silence, liberation from the body sense, identification
with mind and it is called spiritual transformation
 It brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens
up an inner, larger, deeper……..
 it opens the mind to self realization, to the
consciousness of what is above mind
 Concentrating in the eyebrows is to open the centre
there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner
consciousness and its experiences and powers
 If one concentrates on a thought or a word, one has
to dwell on the essential idea contained in the word
with the aspiration to feel the thing which it expresses
SRI AUROBINDO
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