QUOTES
grades of Samadhi ::: But in the Rajayogic Samadhi there are different grades of status, - that in which the mind, though lost to outward objects, still muses, thinks, perceives in the world of thought, that in which the mind is still capable of primary thought-formations and that in which, all out-darting of the mind even within itself having ceased, the soul rises beyond thought into the silence of the Incommunicable and Ineffable.
by concentrate we can know ::: By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself.
on the ideal ::: Concentrate more upon what you are to be, on the ideal, with the faith that, since it is the goal before you, it must and will come.
by essence ::: This is the process of concentrated meditation; but a more strenuous method is the fixing of the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea only, so as to reach not the thought-knowledge or the psychological experience of the subject, but the very essence of the thing behind the idea. In this process thought ceases and passes into the absorbed or ecstatic contemplation of the object or by a merging into it in an inner Samadhi. If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness. For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the contacts of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.
third process of concentration - by stilling the mind ::: A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altoge ther. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altoge ther not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
all receiving concentration ::: Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga. A separate strong fixing of the thought, of the emotions or of the will on a single idea, object, state, inner movement or principle is no doubt a frequent need here also; but this is only a subsidiary helpful process. A wide massive opening, a harmonised concentration of the whole being in all its parts and through all its powers upon the One who is the All is the larger action of this Yoga without which it cannot achieve its purpose. For it is the consciousness that rests in the One and that acts in the All to which we aspire; it is this that we seek to impose on every element of our being and on every movement of our nature. This wide and concentrated totality is the essential character of the sadhana and its character must determine its practice.
Concentration on a precise goal is helpful to development.
The more we concentrate on the goal, the more it blossoms forth and becomes precise.
"Knowledge can only come by conscious identity, for that is the only true knowledge,-existence aware of itself."
There is always some kind of unconscious identification with the surrounding people and things; but by will and practice one can learn to concentrate on somebody or something and to get consciously identified with this person or this thing, and through this identification you know the nature of the person or the thing.
Nothing is impossible for one who is attentive.
It is said that the faculty of concentrated attention is at the source of all successful activity. Indeed the capacity and value of a man can be measured by his capacity of concentrated attention.2
In order to obtain this concentration, it is generally recommended to reduce one's activities, to make a choice and confine oneself to this choice alone, so as not to disperse one's energy and attention. For the normal man, this method is good, sometimes even indispensable. But one can imagine something better.
At times I try to silence the mind, at times to surrender and at times to find my psychic being.
Thus I cannot fix my attention on a single thing. Which one should I try first?
All should be done and each one when it comes spontaneously.
--- BLACKBOARD
One can learn how to identify oneself. One must learn. It is indispensable if one wants to get out of one's ego. For so long as one is shut up in one's ego, one can't make any progress.
How can it be done?:There are many ways. I'll tell you one.
When I was in Paris, I used to go to many places where there were gatherings of all kinds, people making all sorts of researches, spiritual (so-called spiritual), occult researches, etc. And once I was invited to meet a young lady (I believe she was Swedish) who had found a method of knowledge, exactly a method for learning. And so she explained it to us. We were three or four (her French was not very good but she was quite sure about what she was saying!); she said: "It's like this, you take an object or make a sign on a blackboard or take a drawing - that is not important - take whatever is most convenient for you. Suppose, for instance, that I draw for you... (she had a blackboard) I draw a design." She drew a kind of half-geometric design. "Now, you sit in front of the design and concentrate all your attention upon it - upon that design which is there. You concentrate, concentrate without letting anything else enter your consciousness - except that. Your eyes are fixed on the drawing and don't move at all. You are as it were hypnotised by the drawing. You look (and so she sat there, looking), you look, look, look.... I don't know, it takes more or less time, but still for one who is used to it, it goes pretty fast. You look, look, look, you become that drawing you are looking at. Nothing else exists in the world any longer except the drawing, and then, suddenly, you pass to the other side; and when you pass to the other side you enter a new consciousness, and you know."
We had a good laugh, for it was amusing. But it is quite true, it is an excellent method to practise. Naturally, instead of taking a drawing or any object, you may take, for instance, an idea, a few words. You have a problem preoccupying you, you don't know the solution of the problem; well, you objectify your problem in your mind, put it in the most precise, exact, succinct terms possible, and then concentrate, make an effort; you concentrate only on the words, and if possible on the idea they represent, that is, upon your problem - 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 that you have opened a door of your consciousness, and instantaneously you have the solution of your problem. It is an excellent method of learning "how" to identify oneself. TM, QA 1953,
why develop concentration?:
--- CONC AND WILL
"From the point of view of action (physical action), it is the will: you must work and build up an unshakable will. From the intellectual point of view, you must work and build up a power of concentration which nothing can shake. And if you have both, concentration and will, you will be a genius and nothing will resist you." - The Mother
concentrate on the Divine ::: "By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fear, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object. - Sri Aurobindo"
--- CAN BE DEVELOPED BY TRAINING
def and utility of concentration ::: It is to bring back all the scattered threads of consciousness to a single point, a single idea. Those who can attain a perfect attention succeed in everything they undertake; they will always make rapid progress. And this kind of concentration can be developed exactly like the muscles; one may follow different systems, different methods of training. Today we know that the most pitiful weakling, for example, can with discipline become as strong as anyone else. One should not have a will that flickers out like a candle.
must be cultivated ::: The will, the concentration must be cultivated; it is a question of method, of regular exercise. If you will, you can.
But the thought "What's the use?" must not come in to weaken the will. The idea that one is born with a certain character and can do nothing about it is a stupidity.
--- ON WHAT TO CONCENTRATE ON
"It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, -in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together,- and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal -and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga." - Sri Aurobindo, Synthesis of Yoga, The Divine Works, Self-Consecration
--- THE GIFTS OF CONCENTRATION
"By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fear, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object." - Sri Aurobindo,Synthesis of Yoga, The Integral Knowledge, Concentration
--- CONCENTRATING THE ATTENTION
no spiritual obstacle can resist concentration ::: Whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain the concentration with a presistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensble. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important. There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it.
--- THE KEY
There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key.
--- THE BEST
You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
The third way of concentration ::: "A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altoge ther. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altoge ther not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline."
--- CONCENTRATION IN THE CENTRE OF ASPIRATION
It is always better to try to concentrate in a centre, the centre of aspiration, one might say, the place where the flame of aspiration burns, to gather in all the energies there, at the solar plexus centre and, if possible, to obtain an attentive silence as though one wanted to listen to something extremely subtle, something that demands a complete attention, a complete concentration and a total silence. And then not to move at all. Not to think, not to stir, and make that movement of opening so as to receive all that can be received, but taking good care not to try to know what is happening while it is happening, for it one wants to understand or even to observe actively, it keeps up a sort of cerebral activity which is unfavourable to the fullness of the receptivity - to be silent, as totally silent as possible, in an attentive concentration, and then be still.
If one succeeds in this, then, when everything is over, when one comes out of meditation, some time later - usually not immediately - from within the being something new emerges in the consciousness: a new understanding, a new appreciation of things, a new attitude in life - in short, a new way of being.
--- CENTRES FOR CONCENTRATION
The nature of the meditation depends on the part of the being in which one is centred at the time. In the body (rather the subtle body than the physical, but connected with the corresponding parts in the gross physical body also) there are centres proper to each level of the being. There is a centre at the top of the head and above it which is that of the abovemind or higher consciousness; a centre in the forehead between the eyebrows which is that of the thinking mind, mental will, mental vision; a centre in the throat which is that of the expressive or externalising mind: these are the mental centres.
Below comes the vital-the heart (emotional), the navel (the dynamic life-centre), another below the navel in the abdomen which is the lower or sensational vital centre. Finally, at the bottom of the spine is the Muladhara or physical centre. Behind the heart is the psychic centre. If one concentrates in the head as many do it is a mental-spiritual meditation one seeks for, if in the heart it is a psychic meditation; these are the usual places where one concentrates. But what rises up first or opens first may not be the mental or psychic, but the emotional or the vital; that depends on the nature-for whatever is easiest to open in it, is likely to open first. If it is in the vital, then the meditation tends to project the consciousness into the vital plane and its experiences. But from that one can get to the psychic by drawing more and more inwards, not getting absorbed into the vital experiences but separating oneself and looking at them with detachment as if one were deep inside and observing things outside oneself. Similarly one can get the mental experiences by concentrating in the thought and by it bringing a corresponding experience, e.g. the thought of all being the Brahman, or one can draw back from the thought also and observe one's own thoughts as outside things until one enters into the silence and the pure spiritual experience.
One can concentrate in any of the three centres which is easiest to the sadhak or gives most result. The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open that centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life and body and turn and open them all-fully-to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening.
This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental vital- physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the psychic being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the psychic being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised.
The power of concentration in the eyebrows is to open the centre there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature.
I was very glad to get your letter and especially to know that you are more at peace. That is what is first needed, the settling down of a natural peace and quiet in the nature-the spiritual peace is a bigger thing that can come afterwards.
Then as to concentration. Ordinarily the consciousness is spread out everywhere, dispersed, running in this or that direction, after this subject and that object in multitude. When anything has to be done of a sustained nature, the first thing one does is to draw back all this dispersed consciousness and concentrate.
It is then, if one looks closely, found to be concentrated in one place and on one occupation, subject or object-as when you are composing a poem or a botanist is studying a flower.
--- YOGIC CONC
The place is usually somewhere in the brain, if it is the thought, in the heart if it is the feeling in which one is concentrated. The Yogic concentration is simply an extension and intensification of the same thing. It may be on an object as when one does tratak on a shining point-then one has to concentrate so that one sees only that point and has no other thought but that. It may be on an idea or a word or a name, the idea of the Divine, the word OM, the name Krishna, or a combination of idea and word or idea and name. But, farther, in Yoga one also concentrates in a particular place. There is the famous rule of concentrating between the eyebrows-the centre of the inner mind, of occult vision, of the will is there. What you do is to think firmly from there on whatever you make the object of your concentration or else try to see the image of it from there. If you succeed in this, then after a time you feel that your whole consciousness is centred there in that place-of course for the time being. After doing it for some time and often, it becomes easy and normal.
I hope this is clear. Well, in this Yoga, you do the same, not necessarily at that particular spot between the eyebrows, but anywhere in the head or at the centre of the chest where the physiologists have fixed the cardiac centre. Instead of concentrating on an object, you concentrate in the head in a will, a call for the descent of the peace from above or, as some do, an opening of the unseen lid and an ascent of the consciousness above. In the heart-centre one concentrates in an aspiration, for an opening, for the presence or living image of the Divine there or whatever else is the object. There may be japa of a name but, if so, there must also be a concentration on it and the name must repeat itself there in the heart-centre.
It may be asked what becomes of the rest of the consciousness when there is this local concentration? Well, it either falls silent as in any concentration or, if it does not, then thoughts or other things may move about, as if outside, but the concentrated part does not attend to them or notice. That is when the concentration is reasonably successful.
One has not to fatigue oneself at first by long concentration if one is not accustomed, for then in a jaded mind it loses its power or value. One can "relax" and meditate instead of concentrating. It is only as the concentration becomes normal that one can go on for a longer and longer time.
There is no harm in concentrating sometimes in the heart and sometimes above the head. But concentration in either place does not mean keeping the attention fixed on a particular spot; you have to take your station of consciousness in either place and concentrate there not on the place, but on the Divine. This can be done with eyes shut or with eyes open, according as it best suits you.
You can concentrate on the sun, but to concentrate on the Divine is better than to concentrate on the sun.
You can concentrate the consciousness anywhere in any centre. You have only to think of yourself as centrally there and try to fix and keep that. A strain or any effort to do so is not necessary but a quiet and steady dwelling in the idea.
Most people associate consciousness with the brain or mind because that is the centre for intellectual thought and mental vision, but consciousness is not limited to that kind of thought or vision. It is everywhere in the system and there are several centres of it, e.g., the centre for inner concentration is not in the brain but in the heart,-the originating centre of vital desire is still lower down.
The two main places where one can centre the consciousness for Yoga are in the head and in the heart-the mind-centre and the soul-centre.
One has to open through concentration in the heart centre or above the head, in the former case to the psychic, in the latter to the higher Truth. But without the psychic preparation or at least a thorough purification of the being, the latter course is not safe.
It may be better to concentrate in the heart rather than in the mind, offer yourself from there and call the Mother into the heart leaving the thoughts to fall silent of themselves. Otherwise with the present method you have simply to persevere till the present brief and imperfect stillings of the mind become longer and deeper.
The concentration in the heart is what brings about the opening of the psychic which is your principal need. If the concentration has brought about a feeling which makes you judge clearly all the other movements and see their nature, then the psychic is already in action. For this is the psychic feeling which brings with it a clear insight into the nature of all movements that come and makes it easy to reject what has to be rejected and keep the right attitude and perception. It does not matter about the image of the Mother It is her presence whether in form or not that has to be felt always and this the psychic opening will surely bring.
It [concentration in the heart] is the best to "start with"-but as you have already started with success on the two higher centres, there is no reason why you should discontinue that. The other you may try from time to time when you find a sufficient quietude. Concentration there leads-or should lead-to the psychic opening.
Concentration in the heart is best aided if possible by the power and light descending from above the head.
At the top of the head or above it is the right place for Yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
Brain concentration is always a tapasya and necessarily brings a strain. It is only if one is lifted out of the brain mind altoge ther that the strain of mental concentration disappears.
- Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II
TERMS STARTING WITH
Concentration ::: Concentration is necessary, first, to turn the whole will and mind from the discursive divagation natural to them, following a dispersed movement of the thoughts, running after many branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to phenomena: we have to fix the will and the thought on the eternal and real behind all, and this demands an immense effort, a one-pointed concentration. Secondly, it is necessary in order to break down the veil which is erected by our ordinary mentality between ourselves and the truth; for outer knowledge can be picked up by the way, by ordinary attention and reception, but the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind on its object, an absolute concentration of the will to attain it and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it. Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 515
Concentration Camps ::: Immediately upon their assumption of power on January 30, 1933, the Nazis established concentration camps for the imprisonment of all “enemies” of their regime: actual and potential political opponents (e.g., communists, socialists, monarchists), Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, and other “asocials.” Beginning in 1938, Jews were targeted for internment solely because they were Jews. Before then, only Jews who fit one of the earlier categories were interned in camps. The first three concentration camps established were Dachau (near Munich), Buchenwald (near Weimar) and Sachsenhausen (near Berlin).
Concentration Camp, such as Dachau, used for political prisoners.
Concentration has often been perverted to mean a kind of personal self-culture, having for its aim the attainment of personal power or self-satisfaction. If unsuccessful, the attempt upsets the balance of the constitution, and if successful, it sows a bitter harvest of aroused personality for future reaping; for when yearning for sympathetic fellowship with our fellowmen we shall find our faculties counterworking us. True meditative concentration actually applies more to the heart than to the mind, and is not a forcible mental practice but a general although very positive and impersonal attitude towards life. It means the centering of our wishes, thoughts, and acts on the ideal of self-identification with the spiritual and universal. See also DHYANA.
Concentration in the heart is the way to get rid of them, but there must also be a detachment of the consciousness so that it can stand back from the attack and feel separate from it.
Concentration Meditation ::: See Samatha Meditation.
Concentration of the will to get the results of sadhani and to conquer the lower nature.
Concentration ratio - The percentage of all sales contributed a small number (4,8) of the largest firms in an industry.
Concentration Ratio::: The ratio of the concentration of a compound or radionuclide in an organism or its tissues to the concentration in the surrounding media under equilibrium, or steady-state conditions.
Concentration: The act and state of focusing one’s entire attention and perception upon a certain object or idea, to the complete exclusion of all others, and under total inactivity of all the physical senses except the one used in this act (e.g., sight, hearing, etc.).
Concentration With meditation, an equivalent for certain parts of yoga, as found in samadhi, dharana; the removal or surmounting of distractions originating in the mind and centering the latter on the spiritual and intellectual objective to be attained, which in the best sense is union with the inner god, the divine monad — a conscious identification of oneself with the universal through the individual’s innate divinity. The method of meditative concentration prescribed in the Bhagavad-Gita is to perform all the duties of life without either attachment or avoidance. The hindrances to concentration which are to be removed are those arising from anger, lust, vanity, fear, sloth, etc. Such obstacles are removed by lifting the mind above them or by deliberately ignoring them, since directly fighting with them serves to concentrate the mind on them, thus defeating the object aimed at; and by cultivating the spirit of impersonal love and the light of wisdom which it evokes. Thus the blending of the personal self with the impersonal self is achieved by an orderly process of self-directed evolution, first by unselfish work in the cause of humanity, continued in the various degrees of chelaship, culminating in initiation.
concentration ::: “Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.” Letters on Yoga
concentration ::: "concentration means gathering of the consciousness into one centre and fixing it in one object or in one idea or in one condition." [S25:391]
CONCENTRATION ::: Fixing the consciousness in one place or on one object and in a single condition.
A gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g. the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point.
Concentration is necessary, first to turn the whole will and mind from the discursive divagation natural to them, following a dispersed movement of the thoughts, running after many-branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to phenomena; we have to fix the will and the thought on the eternal and real behind all, and this demands an immense effort, a one-pointed concentration. Secondly, it is necessary in order to break down the veil which is erected by our ordinary mentality between ourselves and the truth; for outer knowledge can be picked up by the way, by ordinary attention and reception, but the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind on its object, an absolute concentration of the will to attain it and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it.
Centre of Concentration: The two main places where one can centre the consciousness for yoga are in the head and in the heart - the mind-centre and the soul-centre.
Brain concentration is always a tapasyā and necessarily brings a strain. It is only if one is lifted out of the brain mind altogether that the strain of mental concentration disappears.
At the top of the head or above it is the right place for yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
In whatever centre the concentration takes place, the yoga force generated extends to the others and produces concentration or workings there.
Modes of Concentration: There is no harm in concentrating sometimes in the heart and sometimes above the head. But concentration in either place does not mean keeping the attention fixed on a particular spot; you have to take your station of consciousness in either place and concentrate there not on the place, but on the Divine. This can be done with eyes shut or with eyes open, according as it best suits.
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.
There is no method in this yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force to transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be.
Powers (three) of Concentration ::: By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself we can become whatever we choose ; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fears, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love ; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object.
Stages in Concentration (Rajayogic) ::: that in which the object is seized, that in which it is held, that in which the mind is lost in the status which the object represents or to which the concentration leads.
Concentration and Meditation ::: Concentration means fixing the consciousness in one place or one object and in a single condition Meditation can be diffusive,e.g. thinking about the Divine, receiving impressions and discriminating, watching what goes on in the nature and acting upon it etc. Meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
vide Dhyāna.
concentration ::: n. --> The act or process of concentrating; the process of becoming concentrated, or the state of being concentrated; concentration.
The act or process of reducing the volume of a liquid, as by evaporation.
The act or process of removing the dress of ore and of reducing the valuable part to smaller compass, as by currents of air or water.
CONCENTRATION See ACTIVATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS, SYSTEMATIC
concentration ("s) ::: exclusive attention to one object; close mental application.
TERMS ANYWHERE
(1) Regulatory requirements limiting the concentrations of designated organic compounds, particulate matter, and hydrogen chloride in emissions from incinerators.
AbhAsvarAloka. (P. Abhassaraloka; T. 'od gsal ba; C. jiguangjing tian/guangyintian; J. gokukojoten/koonten; K. kŭkkwangjong ch'on/kwangŭmch'on 極光淨天/光音天). In Sanskrit, the "heaven of radiant light" (in Chinese, the name is also parsed as the "heaven of radiant sound"), the highest of the three heavens associated with the second concentration (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU). As the BRAHMA divinities dwelling in this realm perpetually experience this profound state of meditation, they are described as subsisting on bliss (PRĪTI) and abiding in ease (SUKHA). Their bodies radiate light in all directions like lightning or like flames from a torch. While the bodies of the divinities of this realm are uniform, their perceptions are diverse, and there is no assurance that they will not be reborn in a lower realm of existence after their death. At the beginning of a world cycle, when the physical world (BHAJANALOKA) of the sensuous realm (KAMADHATU) has not yet been formed, and at the end of a world cycle when that physical world has been destroyed, many beings are reborn into the AbhAsvarAloka. A BODHISATTVA is never reborn in the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU) even if he has achieved meditative states consistent with that realm, but he may be reborn in the AbhAsvarAloka. The Buddha once disabused a BrahmA god dwelling in that realm of the mistaken view that he was eternal. This god, whose name was Baka, had been the first living being born in the AbhAsvarAloka after a period of world dissolution, and presumed that no one had existed before him. When the divinities (DEVA) of the AbhAsvarAloka are first reborn in the realm of human beings (MANUsYA), they may retain their divine attributes for a time, being spontaneously generated rather than born viviparously, and possessing bodies made from subtle materiality rather than gross matter. However, as time passes and they take on the physical and mental characteristics of ordinary human beings, they lose their luminosity, develop sexual characteristics, and come to subsist on solid foods.
AbhidhammAvatAra. In PAli, "Introduction to Abhidhamma"; a primer of PAli ABHIDHAMMA attributed to BUDDHADATTA (c. fifth century CE), who is said to have been contemporaneous with the premier PAli scholiast BUDDHAGHOSA; some legends go so far as to suggest that the two ABHIDHAMMIKAS might even have met. The book was written in south India and is the oldest of the noncanonical PAli works on abhidhamma. It offers a systematic scholastic outline of abhidhamma, divided into twenty-four chapters called niddesas (S. nirdesa; "expositions"), and displays many affinities with Buddhaghosa's VISUDDHIMAGGA. These chapters include coverage of the mind (CITTA) and mental concomitants (CETASIKA), the various types of concentration (SAMADHI), the types of knowledge (JNANA) associated with enlightenment, and the process of purification (visuddhi, S. VIsUDDHI). The work is written in a mixture of prose and verse.
*Abhidharmahṛdaya. (C. Apitan xin lun; J. Abidon shinron; K. Abidam sim non 阿毘曇心論). In Sanskrit, "Heart of ABHIDHARMA"; one of the first attempts at a systematic presentation of abhidharma according to the SARVASTIVADA school; the treatise is attributed to Dharmasresthin (Fasheng, c. 130 BCE), who hailed from the GANDHARA region of Central Asia. The text is no longer extant in Sanskrit but survives only in a Chinese translation made sometime during the fourth century (alt. 376, 391) by SaMghadeva and LUSHAN HUIYUAN. The treatise functions essentially as a handbook for meditative development, focusing on ways of overcoming the negative proclivities of mind (ANUsAYA) and developing correct knowledge (JNANA). The meditative training outlined in the treatise focuses on the four absorptions (DHYANA) and on two practical techniques for developing concentration: mindfulness of breathing (ANAPANASMṚTI) and the contemplation of impurity (AsUBHABHAVANA). The text is also one of the first to distinguish the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA), which involves the initial insight into the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, and the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA), which eliminates all the remaining proclivities so that the adept may experience the stage of the worthy one (ARHAT).
AbhidharmakosabhAsya. (T. Chos mngon pa'i mdzod kyi bshad pa; C. Apidamo jushe lun; J. Abidatsuma kusharon; K. Abidalma kusa non 阿毘達磨倶舎論). In Sanskrit, "A Treasury of ABHIDHARMA, with Commentary"; an influential scholastic treatise attributed to VASUBANDHU (c. fourth or fifth century CE). The AbhidharmakosabhAsya consists of two texts: the root text of the Abhidharmakosa, composed in verse (kArikA), and its prose autocommentary (bhAsya); this dual verse-prose structure comes to be emblematic of later SARVASTIVADA abhidharma literature. As the title suggests, the work is mainly concerned with abhidharma theory as it was explicated in the ABHIDHARMAMAHAVIBHAsA, the principal scholastic treatise of the VAIBHAsIKAABHIDHARMIKAs in the SarvAstivAda school. In comparison to the MahAvibhAsA, however, the AbhidharmakosabhAsya presents a more systematic overview of SarvAstivAda positions. At various points in his expositions, Vasubandhu criticizes the SarvAstivAda doctrine from the standpoint of the more progressive SAUTRANTIKA offshoot of the SarvAstivAda school, which elicited a spirited response from later SarvAstivAda-VaibhAsika scholars, such as SAMGHABHADRA in his *NYAYANUSARA. The AbhidharmakosabhAsya has thus served as an invaluable tool in the study of the history of the later MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS. The Sanskrit texts of both the kArikA and the bhAsya were lost for centuries before being rediscovered in Tibet in 1934 and 1936, respectively. Two Chinese translations, by XUANZANG and PARAMARTHA, and one Tibetan translation of the work are extant. The Kosa is primarily concerned with a detailed elucidation of the polysemous term DHARMA, the causes (HETU) and conditions (PRATYAYA) that lead to continued rebirth in SAMSARA, and the soteriological stages of the path (MARGA) leading to enlightenment. The treatise is divided into eight major chapters, called kosasthAnas. (1) DhAtunirdesa, "Exposition on the Elements," divides dharmas into various categories, such as tainted (SASRAVA) and untainted (ANASRAVA), or compounded (SAMSKṚTA) and uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA), and discusses the standard Buddhist classifications of the five aggregates (SKANDHA), twelve sense fields (AYATANA), and eighteen elements (DHATU). This chapter also includes extensive discussion of the theory of the four great elements (MAHABHuTA) that constitute materiality (RuPA) and the Buddhist theory of atoms or particles (PARAMAnU). (2) Indriyanirdesa, "Exposition on the Faculties," discusses a fivefold classification of dharmas into materiality (rupa), thought (CITTA), mental concomitants (CAITTA), forces dissociated from thought (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKARA), and the uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA). This chapter also has extensive discussions of the six causes (HETU), the four conditions (PRATYAYA), and the five effects or fruitions (PHALA). (3) Lokanirdesa, "Exposition on the Cosmos," describes the formation and structure of a world system (LOKA), the different types of sentient beings, the various levels of existence, and the principle of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) that governs the process of rebirth, which is discussed here in connection with the three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future. (4) Karmanirdesa, "Exposition on Action," discusses the different types of action (KARMAN), including the peculiar type of action associated with unmanifest materiality (AVIJNAPTIRuPA). The ten wholesome and unwholesome "paths of action" (KUsALA-KARMAPATHA and AKUsALA-KARMAPATHA) also receive a lengthy description. (5) Anusayanirdesa, "Exposition on the Proclivities," treats the ninety-eight types of ANUsAYA in relation to their sources and qualities and the relationship between the anusayas and other categories of unwholesome qualities, such as afflictions (KLEsA), contaminants (ASRAVA), floods (OGHA), and yokes (yoga). (6) MArgapudgalanirdesa, "Exposition on the Path and the [Noble] Persons," outlines how either insight into the four noble truths and carefully following a series of soteriological steps can remove defilements and transform the ordinary person into one of the noble persons (ARYAPUDGALA). (7) JNAnanirdesa, "Exposition on Knowledge," offers a detailed account of the ten types of knowledge and the distinctive attributes of noble persons and buddhas. (8) SamApattinirdesa, "Exposition on Attainment," discusses different categories of concentration (SAMADHI) and the attainments (SAMAPATTI) that result from their perfection. (9) Appended to this main body is a ninth section, an independent treatise titled the Pudgalanirdesa, "Exposition of the Notion of a Person." Here, Vasubandhu offers a detailed critique of the theory of the self, scrutinizing both the Buddhist PUDGALAVADA/VATSĪPUTRĪYA "heresy" of the inexpressible (avAcya) "person" (PUDGALA) being conventionally real and Brahmanical theories of a perduring soul (ATMAN). Numerous commentaries to the Kosa, such as those composed by VASUMITRA, YAsOMITRA, STHIRAMATI, and Purnavardhana, attest to its continuing influence in Indian Buddhist thought. The Kosa was also the object of vigorous study in the scholastic traditions of East Asia and Tibet, which produced many indigenous commentaries on the text and its doctrinal positions.
Abhyasa-yoga (Sanskrit) Abhyāsa-yoga [from abhi towards + the verbal root as to be, exist + yoga union from the verbal root yuj to join, yoke] Sometimes erroneously abhyasana. Repeated practice and application of yoga, meditation, or recollection; the effort of the mind to attain an unmodified condition of perfect serenity and quiet. One of the eight disciplines or requirements of yoga: persistent concentration of attention. When accompanied with physical postures, it is a form of hatha yoga, and practiced without the spiritual training of raja yoga, it has its dangers. As a system of mental concentration directed to impersonal, altruistic ends, it is beneficial. Krishna (BG 12:9-10) points out that abhyasa-yoga is not only useful for training in one life but, if performed for the sake of the Supreme, is likely to leave permanent helpful impulses in the soul which will aid it in future incarnations and lead it ultimately to union (yoga) with the divine.
Absorption Concentration ::: In concentration meditation, this refers to the various states found in the samatha jhanas whereby the locus of focus narrows solely on the object of observation. Attainment of absorption concentration is causally preceded by access concentration which is itself preceded by the monkey mind state of awareness associated with mundane consciousness.
Access Concentration ::: In concentration meditation, this refers to the state preceding access to the samatha jhanas whereby the locus of focus has narrowed considerably from the monkey mind state of awareness associated with mundane consciousness and has started to settle rather effortlessly on the object of concentration. Precedes access to absorption concentration.
Action Levels ::: Regulatory levels recommended by EPA for enforcement by Food and Drug Administration and United States Department of Agriculture when pesticide residues occur in food or feed commodities for reasons other than the direct application of the pesticide. As opposed to "tolerances" which are established for residues occurring as a direct result of proper usage, action levels are set for inadvertent residues resulting from previous legal use or accidental contamination. In the Superfund program, the existence of a contaminant concentration in the environment high enough to warrant action or trigger a response under SARA and the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Contingency Plan. The term is also used in other regulatory programs.
Acute ::: Diseases or responses with short and generally severe course (often due to high pollutant concentrations).
adhisamAdhisiksA. (T. lhag pa'i ting nge 'dzin gyi bslab pa; C. zengshangding xue; J. zojojogaku; K. chŭngsangjong hak 增上定學). In Sanskrit, "training in higher meditation"; the second of the three trainings (TRIsIKsA) required to achieve enlightenment, said to be set forth primarily in the SuTRA basket of the TRIPItAKA. AdhisamAdhisiksA is primarily associated with the last three constituents of the eightfold path (ARYAstAnGAMARGA), viz., right effort (SAMYAGVYAYAMA), right mindfulness (SAMYAKSMṚTI), and right concentration (SAMYAKSAMADHI).
Akankheyyasutta. (C. Yuan jing; J. Gangyo; K. Won kyong 願經). In PAli, "Discourse on What One May Wish," the sixth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension appears as SuTRA no. 105 in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA, and a recension of uncertain affiliation in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARAGAMA); preached by the Buddha to a group of disciples in the JETAVANA grove in the town of sRAVASTĪ. The Buddha describes how a monk who wishes for all good things to come to himself, his fellow monks, and his lay supporters should restrain his sense faculties by seeing danger (ADĪNAVA) in the slightest fault and by abiding by the dictates of the disciplinary codes (PRATIMOKsA). This restraint will allow him to develop morality (sĪLA), meditative concentration (SAMADHI), and liberating wisdom (PRAJNA), leading to the destruction of the contaminants (ASRAVAKsAYA).
"Along with purity and as a help to bring it about, concentration. Purity and concentration are indeed two aspects, feminine and masculine, passive and active, of the same status of being; purity is the condition in which concentration becomes entire, rightly effective, omnipotent; by concentration purity does its works and without it would only lead to a state of peaceful quiescence and eternal repose.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Along with purity and as a help to bring it about, concentration. Purity and concentration are indeed two aspects, feminine and masculine, passive and active, of the same status of being; purity is the condition in which concentration becomes entire, rightly effective, omnipotent; by concentration purity does its works and without it would only lead to a state of peaceful quiescence and eternal repose.” The Synthesis of Yoga
a ::: massed concentration of vijñana. vij ñana
anabhraka. (T. sprin med; C. wuyun tian; J. muunten; K. muun ch'on 無雲天). In Sanskrit, "cloudless," the lowest of the eight heavens of the fourth concentration (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU). As with all the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality, one is reborn as a divinity (DEVA) there through achieving the same level of concentration (dhyAna) as the gods of that heaven during one's practice of meditation in the preceding lifetime. This heaven has no analogue in PAli.
ACTIVATION OF
CONSCIOUSNESS, SYSTEMATIC Systematic activation of consciousness is done in four steps: concentration, meditation, contemplation and illumination.
Concentration is the keeping of attention on a certain thing. Meditation implies a concentrated analysis of all relations pertaining to this subject-matter. Contemplation entails the isolation of the problem until one begins to see the idea and can concentrate attention on that single point. If thereby activity ceases, there is a risk of falling asleep or into ordinary trance. If activity can be kept up long enough, illumination comes and the individual will find what he has been seeking. K 7.17.9
Anantaryakarman. (P. Anantariyakamma; T. mtshams med pa'i las; C. wujian ye; J. mukengo; K. mugan op 無間業). In Sanskrit, "act that brings immediate retribution" or "inexpiable transgressions." This term refers to particularly heinous deeds that after death result in the "immediate retribution" of rebirth in the AVĪCI hell, without an intervening rebirth in another realm. They are often enumerated as five: patricide, matricide, killing an ARHAT, spilling the blood of a buddha, and causing schism in the monastic order (SAMGHABHEDA). According to PAli sources, this type of act also serves as a karmic obstruction (KARMAVARAnA) to concentration meditation (specifically of the KASInA visualization devices).
AnantaryasamAdhi. (T. bar chad med pa'i ting nge 'dzin; C. wujian ding; J. mukenjo; K. mugan chong 無間定). In Sanskrit, "unimpeded concentration"; the culmination of the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMARGA), the second segment of the five-path schema outlined in the VAIBHAsIKA school system of SARVASTIVADAABHIDHARMA and treated similarly in YOGACARA soteriology. After mastering all four of the "aids to penetration" (NIRVEDHABHAGĪYA) that catalyze knowledge of the reality of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, the meditator acquires fully the highest worldly dharmas (LAUKIKAGRADHARMA), the last of these aids, an experience that is marked by the AnantaryasamAdhi. This distinctive type of SAMADHI receives its name from the fact that the adept then continues on without interruption to the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA), the third stage of the path, which provides access to sanctity (ARYA) as a stream-enterer (SROTAAPANNA).
anAsravadhAtu. (T. zag pa med pa'i dbyings; C. wulou jie; J. murokai; K. muru kye 無漏界). In Sanskrit, the "uncontaminated realm." According to those proponents of the MAHAYANA who assert that all beings will eventually become buddhas, ARHATs do not enter the NIRVAnA without remainder (ANUPADHIsEsANIRVAnA) at the time of death but instead enter the anAsravadhAtu. There, they abide in states of deep concentration until they are roused by the buddhas and exhorted to abandon their "unafflicted ignorance" (AKLIstAJNANA) by following the BODHISATTVA path to buddhahood.
And still we can recognise at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates with or combines or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as independent units joining to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own source and foundation in the Spirit or can only comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication,—the basic sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its divisions and, although they are the results of a certain conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral self-knowledge, nor a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter and reappears in the gross material universe which arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience. …
"An exclusive inner concentration on the Real, the Eternal is possible, even a self-immersion by which we can lose or put away the dissonances of the universe.” The Life Divine
“An exclusive inner concentration on the Real, the Eternal is possible, even a self-immersion by which we can lose or put away the dissonances of the universe.” The Life Divine
aniNjyakarman. [alt. aniNjanakarman] (P. aniNjitakamma; T. mi g.yo ba'i las; C. budong ye; J. fudogo; K. pudong op 不動業). In Sanskrit, "invariable" or "unwavering action"; usually appearing in conjunction with the dichotomies of wholesome (KUsALA) and unwholesome (AKUsALA) or meritorious (PUnYA) and demeritorious (APUnYA) in referring to types of action (KARMAN) or the states of existence resulting therefrom. Wholesome and unwholesome actions lead to rebirth, but other actions may intervene and produce their results first. In particular, according to the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA, when a meditator attains the fundamental state (maula) of a DHYANA (concentration) in the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU) or the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU), the force of the action is aniNjya and will definitely lead to rebirth as a deity in the corresponding heaven in the next life. It is said, however, that BODHISATTVAs are able to circumvent birth as a long-lived divinity in one of the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality or immaterial realm so that they can better offer assistance to sentient beings. Thus, aniNjyakarman indicates the "invariable" connection or continuity between the achievement of those states in this lifetime and the subsequent rebirth: for example, a person who achieves the fourth immaterial absorption in this lifetime will "invariably" be reborn as a BHAVAGRA deity in the fourth immaterial heaven in the next lifetime.
anta-manus.a (asamahita ashanta-manusha) ::: "unconcentrated unquiet man", the ordinary human being who lacks the power of spiritual concentration and quietude.
anupadhisesanirvAna. [alt. nirupadhisesanirvAna] (P. anupAdisesanibbAna; T. phung po'i lhag ma med par mya ngan las 'das ba / lhag med myang 'das; C. wuyu niepan; J. muyonehan; K. muyo yolban 無餘涅槃). In Sanskrit, "the nirvAna without remainder"; one of the two kinds of NIRVAnA, along with "the nirvAna with remainder" (SOPADHIsEsANIRVAnA). After a buddha or, in some interpretations, an ARHAT has achieved awakening (BODHI), some Buddhist schools distinguish between the experience of nirvAna while it is still accompanied by a substratum of existence (upadhi = SKANDHA) and the nirvAna that is completely freed from that substratum. According to this view, at the time of his enlightenment under the BODHI TREE, the Buddha achieved the nirvAna with remainder, because he had destroyed all causes for future rebirth, but the "remainder" of his mind and body persisted. The anupadhisesanirvAna subsequently occurred at the time of the Buddha's death. It was achieved through having brought an absolute end to any propensity toward defilement (KLEsA) and of the causes that would lead to any prospect of future rebirth; it is therefore the total extinction of all conventional physical and mental existence. The nirvAna that is experienced at death is thus "without remainder" because there are no physical or mental constituents remaining that were the products of previous KARMAN; anupadhisesanirvAna is therefore synonymous with PARINIRVAnA. Since this type of nirvAna results from the complete eradication of the afflictive destructions (KLEsAVARAnA), MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS typically claim that it is accessible by sRAVAKAs and PRATYEKABUDDHAs. However, according to those proponents of the MAHAYANA who assert that all beings will eventually become buddhas, arhats do not enter anupAdisesanirvAna upon death but instead enter the uncontaminated realm (ANASRAVADHATU), where they remain in states of deep concentration until they are roused by the buddhas and exhorted to abandon their "unafflicted ignorance" (AKLIstAJNANA). In the YOGACARA school, anupAdisesanirvAna is one of the four kinds of nirvAna, which entails the cessation of any tendency toward delusion through the transformation of the eighth consciousness, the storehouse consciousness (ALAYAVIJNANA), into the mirrorlike knowledge (ADARsAJNANA).
anusmṛti. (P. anussati; T. rjes su dran pa; C. nian; J. nen; K. yom 念). In Sanskrit, "recollection." The PAli form anussati is applied to a number of mental exercises enumerated in the PAli tradition under the category of KAMMAttHANA, or topics of meditation. The fifth-century VISUDDHIMAGGA lists ten such recollections conducive to the cultivation of concentration (SAMADHI): namely, recollection of (1) the BUDDHA, (2) the DHARMA, (3) the SAMGHA, (4) morality, (5) generosity, (6) the gods, (7) death, (8) the body, (9) the in-breath and out-breath, and (10) peace. Of these, recollection or mindfulness (P. sati; S. SMṚTI) of the in-breath and out-breath can produce all four meditative absorptions (DHYANA; P. JHANA), while recollection of the body can produce the first absorption. The remaining recollections can produce only "access concentration" (UPACARASAMADHI), which immediately precedes but does not quite reach the first absorption. In East Asia, the practice of recollection of the Buddha (BUDDHANUSMṚTI) evolved into the recitation of name of the buddha AMITABHA in the form of the Chinese phrase namo Amituo fo (Homage to the buddha AmitAbha; see NAMU AMIDABUTSU). See also BUDDHANUSMṚTI.
appanAsamAdhi. In PAli, "absorptive concentration"; the more advanced of the two broad types of concentration (SAMADHI) discussed in PAli commentarial literature. Both of these two types of samAdhi are used with reference to meditators who are specializing in calmness (samatha; S. sAMATHA) techniques. The preliminary "threshold concentration" (UPACARASAMADHI) helps to calm and focus the mind but is too discursive to lead to full meditative absorption (JHANA; S. DHYANA). In order to develop jhAna, meditators must proceed to cultivate less discursive topics of meditation (KAMMAttHANA) that will lead to "absorptive concentration" and thence jhAna: e.g., mindfulness of breathing (AnApAnasati, S. ANAPANASMṚTI); the four "divine abidings" (BRAHMAVIHARA; [alt. P. appamaNNa], S. APRAMAnA), namely, loving-kindness (P. mettA; S. MAITRĪ), compassion (KARUnA), altruistic or empathetic joy (MUDITA), and equanimity or impartiality (P. upekkhA; S. UPEKsA); and the ten "visual devices" (KASInA)-devices that are constructed from the elements earth, water, fire, and air; the colors blue, yellow, red, and white; and light and space. See also KHANIKASAMADHI.
Appell ::: (Ger. Roll Call) Within the concentration camps, inmates were forced to stand at attention for hours at least twice a day while they were counted. This was always carried out no matter what the weather and often lasted for hours. Often accompanied by beatings and punishments.
Appellplatz ::: (Ger. Place for Roll Call) Location within the concentration camps where the Appell was carried out
apramAnAbha. (P. appamAnAbha; T. tshad med 'od; C. wuliangguang tian; J. muryokoten; K. muryanggwang ch'on 無量光天). In Sanskrit, "immeasurable radiance"; the second of the three heavens of the second meditative absorption (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU). The divinities of this heaven are so-called because their bodies emanate limitless light. As with all the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality, one is reborn as a divinity in this realm through achieving the same level of concentration (dhyAna) as the gods of that heaven during one's practice of meditation in a previous lifetime.
apramAna. (P. appammaNNA; T. tshad med pa; C. wuliangxin; J. muryoshin; K. muryangsim 無量心). In Sanskrit, "the boundless states," "unlimiteds," or "limitless qualities." This list is identical to the four "divine abidings" (BRAHMAVIHARA) of loving-kindness (MAITRĪ), compassion (KARUnA), empathetic joy (MUDITA), and equanimity or impartiality (UPEKsA). When taken as objects of concentration and extended in meditation to all beings without limit, the divine abidings then become "boundless states" (apramAna). The meditator is taught to take up each of the boundless states in the same way: starting with the first apramAna, for example, filling his mind with loving-kindness, he pervades the world with it, first in one direction, then in a second direction, then a third and a fourth, then above, below, and all around, identifying himself with all beings and remaining free from hatred and ill will. In the same way, he takes up compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. These four factors are taken up as objects of meditation to counter the influence of specific unwholesome states of mind: viz., loving-kindness counteracts hostility (VYAPADA); compassion counters harmfulness (VIHIMSA); empathetic joy counters dissatisfaction or envy regarding others' achievements (arati); and equanimity counters both the desire and hostility arising from sensuality (KAMARAGA-VYAPADA) and the desire to win the approval of others (anunaya). Of these boundless states, the first three are capable of producing the first three of the four DHYANAs, or meditative absorptions; the fourth divine abiding is the only one capable of producing the fourth meditative absorption.
Aquastor: In occultism, a being created by the power of imagination and concentration of thought.
ArAda KAlAma. (P. AlAra KAlAma; T. Sgyu rtsal shes kyi bu ring du 'phur; C. Aluoluojialan; J. Ararakaran; K. Araragaran 阿羅邏迦蘭). The Sanskrit name of one of the Buddha's two teachers of meditation (the other being UDRAKA RAMAPUTRA) prior to his enlightenment. He was known as a meditation master who once sat in deep concentration without noticing that five hundred carts had passed by. He explained to GAUTAMA that the goal of his system was the attainment of the "state of nothing whatsoever" (AKINCANYAYATANA), which the BODHISATTVA quickly attained. ArAda KAlAma then regarded the bodhisattva as his equal. However, Gautama eventually recognized that this state was not NIRVAnA and left to begin the practice of austerities. Upon his eventual achievement of buddhahood, Gautama surveyed the world to identify the most worthy recipient of his first sermon. He thought first of ArAda KAlAma but determined that he had unfortunately died just seven days earlier.
Ariya Atthangika Magga (Pali) Ariya Aṭṭhaṅgika Magga [from ariya noble + aṭṭhaṅgika eight-limbed, eightfold from aṭṭha eight + aṇga limb, division + magga way, road from the verbal root mṛg to track, trace, investigate] Noble eightfold path; the fourth of the Four Noble Truths (chattari ariyasachchani) traditionally held to constitute the initial discourse of Gautama Buddha, comprising: 1) right insight (sammaditthi); 2) right resolve (sammasamkappa); 3) right speech (sammavacha); 4) right action (sammakammanta); 5) right living (sammajiva); 6) right effort (sammavayama); 7) right mindfulness, right recollection (sammasati); 8) right concentration (sammasamadhi). See also ARYASHTANGAMARGA (for Sanskrit equivalents).
AriyapariyesanAsutta. (C. Luomo jing; J. Ramakyo; K. Rama kyong 羅摩經). In PAli, "Discourse on the Noble Quest"; the twenty-sixth sutta (SuTRA) in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA, also known as the PAsarAsisutta (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension appears as the 204th SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA); preached by the Buddha to an assembly of monks at the hemitage of the brAhmana Rammaka in the town of sRAVASTĪ. The Buddha explains the difference between noble and ignoble quests and recounts his own life as an example of striving to distinguish between the two. Beginning with his renunciation of the householder's life, he tells of his training under two meditation masters, his rejection of this training in favor of austerities, and ultimately his rejection of austerities in order to discover for himself his own path to enlightenment. The Buddha also relates how he was initially hesitant to teach what he had discovered, but was convinced to do so by the god BRAHMA SAHAMPATI, and how he then converted the "group of five" ascetics (PANCAVARGIKA) who had been his companions while he practiced austerities. There is an understated tone of the narrative, devoid of the detail so familiar from the biographies. There is no mention of the opulence of his youth, no mention of his wife, no mention of the chariot rides, no description of the departure from the palace in the dead of night, no mention of MARA. Instead, the Buddha states, "Later, while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life, though my mother and father wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the home life into homelessness." Although the accounts of his study with other meditation masters assume a sophisticated system of states of concentration, the description of the enlightenment itself is both simple and sober, portrayed as the outcome of long reflection rather than as an ecstatic moment of revelation.
ArupyAvacaradhyAna. (P. arupAvacarajhAna; T. gzugs med na spyod pa'i bsam gtan; C. wusejie ding; J. mushikikaijo; K. musaekkye chong 無色界定). In Sanskrit, "meditative absorption associated with the immaterial realm"; equivalent to S. ArupyadhyAna (q.v. DHYANA) and synonymous with "immaterial attainment" (arupasamApatti). One of two broad varieties of DHYANA or meditative absorption; the other being RuPAVACARADHYANA (P. rupAvacarajhAna) or meditative absorption belonging to the realm of subtle materiality. In both cases, dhyAna refers to the attainment of single-pointed concentration of the mind on an ideational object of meditation. ArupyAvacaradhyAna is described as accessible only to those who have already mastered the fourth absorption of the realm of subtle materiality, and is itself merely a refinement of that state. In the immaterial absorptions, the "object" of meditation is gradually attenuated until the meditator abides in the sphere of infinite space (S. AKAsANANTYAYATANA; P. AkAsAnaNcAyatana). In the second immaterial absorption, the meditator sets aside infinite space and abides in the sphere of infinite consciousness (S. VIJNANANANTYAYATANA; P. viNNAnAnaNcAyatanta). In the third immaterial absorption, one sets aside the perception of infinite consciousness and abides in the sphere of nothingness (S. AKINCANYAYATANA; P. AkiNcaNNAyatana). In the fourth immaterial absorption, one sets aside the perception of nothingness and abides in the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception (S. NAIVASAMJNANASAMJNAYATANA; P. nevasaNNAnAsaNNAyatana). Mastery of any of the absorptions of the immaterial realm can result in rebirth as a divinity (DEVA) within the corresponding plane in the immaterial realm (ArupyAvacara or ARuPYADHATU); see ANINJYAKARMAN. See also KAMMAttHANA.
Aryashtangamarga (Sanskrit) Āryāṣṭāṅgamārga [from ārya holy, noble + aṣṭa eight + aṅga limb, division + mārga path, way from the verbal root mṛg to seek, strive to attain, investigate] Holy eight-limbed way; in Buddhism the Noble Eightfold Path enunciated by Gautama Buddha as the fourth of the Four Noble Truths (chattari aryasatyani). Consistent practice of aryashtangamarga leads the disciple ultimately to perfect wisdom, love, and liberation from samsara (the round of repetitive births and deaths). The Eightfold Path is enumerated as: 1) samyagdrishti (right insight); 2) samyaksamkalpa (right resolve); 3) samyagvach (right speech); 4) samyakkarmantra (right action); 5) samyagajiva (right living); 6) samyagvyayama (right exertion); 7) samyaksmriti (right recollection); and 8) samyaksamadhi (right concentration). See also ARIYA ATTHANGIKA MAGGA (for Pali equivalents)
AryAstAngamArga. (P. ariyAtthangikamagga; T. 'phags lam yan lag brgyad; C. bazhengdao; J. hasshodo; K. p'alchongdo 八正道). In Sanskrit, "noble eightfold path"; the path (MARGA) that brings an end to the causes of suffering (DUḤKHA); the fourth of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvAry AryasatyAni). This formulation of the Buddhist path to enlightenment appears in what is regarded as the Buddha's first sermon after his enlightenment, the "Setting Forth the Wheel of Dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA), in which he sets forth a middle way (MADHYAMAPRATIPAD) between the extremes of asceticism and sensual indulgence. That middle way, he says, is the eightfold path, which, like the four truths, he calls "noble" (ARYA); the term is therefore commonly rendered as "noble eightfold path." However, as in the case of the four noble truths, what is noble is not the path but those who follow it, so the compound might be more accurately translated as "eightfold path of the [spiritually] noble." Later in the same sermon, the Buddha sets forth the four noble truths and identifies the fourth truth, the truth of the path, with the eightfold path. The noble eightfold path is comprised of (1) right views (SAMYAGDṚstI; P. sammAditthi), which involve an accurate understanding of the true nature of things, specifically the four noble truths; (2) right intention (SAMYAKSAMKALPA; P. sammAsankappa), which means avoiding thoughts of attachment, hatred, and harmful intent and promoting loving-kindness and nonviolence; (3) right speech (SAMYAGVAC; P. sammAvAcA), which means refraining from verbal misdeeds, such as lying, backbiting and slander, harsh speech and abusive language, and frivolous speech and gossip; (4) right action or right conduct (SAMYAKKARMANTA; P. sammAkammanta), which is refraining from physical misdeeds, such as killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct; (5) right livelihood (SAMYAGAJĪVA; P. sammAjīva), which entails avoiding trades that directly or indirectly harm others, such as selling slaves, selling weapons, selling animals for slaughter, dealing in intoxicants or poisons, or engaging in fortune-telling and divination; (6) right effort (SAMYAGVYAYAMA; P. sammAvAyAma), which is defined as abandoning unwholesome states of mind that have already arisen, preventing unwholesome states that have yet to arise, sustaining wholesome states that have already arisen, and developing wholesome states that have yet to arise; (7) right mindfulness (SAMYAKSMṚTI; P. sammAsati), which means to maintain awareness of the four foundations of mindfulness (SMṚTYUPASTHANA), viz., body, physical sensations, the mind, and phenomena; and (8) right concentration (SAMYAKSAMADHI; P. sammAsamAdhi), which is one pointedness of mind. ¶ The noble eightfold path receives less discussion in Buddhist literature than do the four noble truths (of which they are, after all, a constituent). Indeed, in later formulations, the eight factors are presented not so much as a prescription for behavior but as eight qualities that are present in the mind of a person who has understood NIRVAnA. The eightfold path may be reduced to a simpler, and more widely used, threefold schema of the path that comprises the "three trainings" (TRIsIKsA) or "higher trainings" (adhisiksA) in morality (sĪLA; P. sīla; see ADHIsĪLAsIKsA), concentration (SAMADHI, see ADHISAMADHIsIKsA), and wisdom (PRAJNA; P. paNNA; see ADHIPRAJNAsIKsA). In this schema, (1) right views and (2) right intention are subsumed under the training in higher wisdom (adhiprajNAsiksA); (3) right speech, (4) right conduct, and (5) right livelihood are subsumed under higher morality (adhisīlasiksA); and (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness, and (8) right concentration are subsumed under higher concentration (adhisamAdhisiksA). According to the MADHYANTAVIBHAGA, a MAHAYANA work attributed to MAITREYANATHA, the eightfold noble path comprises the last set of eight of the thirty-seven constituents of enlightenment (BODHIPAKsIKADHARMA), where enlightenment (BODHI) is the complete, nonconceptual awakening achieved during the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA). After that vision, following the same pattern as the Buddha, right view is the perfect understanding of the vision, and right intention is the articulation of the vision that motivates the teaching of it. Right mindfulness, right effort, and right concentration correspond respectively to the four types of mindfulness (SMṚTYUPASTHANA), four efforts (PRAHAnA), and four ṚDDHIPADA ("legs of miraculous attainments," i.e., samAdhi) when they are perfect or right (samyak), after the vision of the four noble truths.
asaiksamArga. (T. mi slob lam; C. wuxuedao; J. mugakudo; K. muhakto 無學道). In Sanskrit, "the path of the adept" (lit. "the path where there is nothing more to learn" or "the path where no further training is necessary"); the fifth of the five-path schema (PANCAMARGA) used in both SARVASTIVADA ABHIDHARMA and the YOGACARA and MADHYAMAKA schools of MAHAYANA. It is the equivalent of the path of completion (NIstHAMARGA) and is synonymous with asaiksapatha. With the consummation of the "path of cultivation" (BHAVANAMARGA), the adept (whether following the sRAVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, or BODHISATTVA path) achieves the "adamantine-like concentration" (VAJROPAMASAMADHI), which leads to the permanent destruction of even the subtlest and most persistent of the ten fetters (SAMYOJANA), resulting in the "knowledge of cessation" (KsAYAJNANA) and in some presentations an accompanying "knowledge of nonproduction" (ANUTPADAJNANA), viz., the knowledge that the fetters are destroyed and can never again recur. Because the adept now has full knowledge of the eightfold path (ARYAstAnGAMARGA) and has achieved full liberation (VIMOKsA) as either an ARHAT or a buddha, he no longer needs any further instruction-thus he has completed the "path where there is nothing more to learn."
asaiksa. (P. asekha; T. mi slob pa; C. wuxue; J. mugaku; K. muhak 無學). In Sanskrit, lit. "one for whom no further training is necessary," an "adept"; a term for one who has completed the path (see AsAIKsAMARGA), used especially as an epithet of the ARHAT. The asaiksa has completed the three "higher trainings" (adhisiksA; P. adhisikkhA) in morality (ADHIsĪLAsIKsA), concentration (ADHISAMADHIsIKsA), and wisdom (ADHIPRAJNAsIKsA).
asamayavimukta. (T. dus dang mi sbyor bar rnam par grol ba; C. bushi jietuo; J. fujigedatsu; K. pulsi haet'al 時解). In Sanskrit, "one who is liberated regardless of occasion," in the sense that there is no occasion in which the meditative concentration of such an ARHAT will degenerate; one of the twenty members of the ARYASAMGHA (see VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA).
ASANA. ::: Fixed posture habituating the body to certain attitudes of immobility. The system of Asana has at its basis two profound ideas ::: control by physical immobility, power by immobility.
The sitting motionless posture is the natural posture for concentrated meditation - walking and standing are active conditions. It is only when one has gained the enduring rest and passivity of the consciousness that it is easy to concentrate and receive when walking or doing anything. A fundamental passive condition of the consciousness gathered into itself is the proper poise for concentration and a seated gathered immobility in the body is the best position for that. It can be done also lying down, but that position is too passive, tending to be inert rather than gathered. This is the reason why yogis always sit in an āsana. One can accustom oneself to meditate walking. standing, lying but sitting is the first natural position.
asubhabhAvanA. (P. asubhabhAvanA; T. mi sdug pa bsgom pa; C. bujing guan; J. fujokan; K. pujong kwan 不淨觀). In Sanskrit, the "contemplation on the impure" or "foul"; a set of traditional topics of meditation (see KAMMAttHANA) that were intended to counter the affliction of lust (RAGA), develop mindfulness (SMṚTI; P. SATI) regarding the body, and lead to full mental absorption (DHYANA). In this form of meditation, "impure" or "foul" is most often used to refer either to a standardized list of thirty-one or thirty-two foul parts of the body or to the various stages in the decay of a corpse. In the case of the latter, for example, the meditator is to observe nine or ten specific types of putrefaction, described in gruesome detail in the Buddhist commentarial literature: mottled discoloration of the corpse (vinīlakasaMjNA), discharges of pus (vipuyakasaMjNA), decaying of rotten flesh (vipadumakasaMjNA), bloating and tumefaction (vyAdhmAtakasaMjNA), the exuding of blood and the overflow of body fluids (vilohitakasaMjNA), infestation of worms and maggots (vikhAditakasaMjNA), the dissolution of flesh and exposure of bones and sinews (viksiptakasaMjNA), the cremated remains (vidagdhakasaMjNA), and the dispersed skeletal parts (asthisaMjNA). The KAyagatAsatisutta of the MAJJIHIMANIKAYA includes the contemplation of the impure within a larger explanation of the contemplation of one's body with mindfulness (KAYANUPAsYANA; see also SMṚTYUPASTHANA); before the stages in the decay of the corpse, it gives the standardized list of thirty-one (sometimes thirty-two) foul parts of the body: the head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, gorge, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin-oil, saliva, mucus, fluid in the joints, and urine. These parts are chosen specifically because they will be easily visualized, and may have been intended to be the foul opposites of the thirty-two salutary marks of the great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA). The Chinese tradition also uses a contemplation of seven kinds of foulness regarding the human body in order to counter lust and to facilitate detachment. (1) "Foulness in their seeds" (C. zhongzi bujing): human bodies derive from seminal ejaculate and, according to ancient medicine, mother's blood. (2) "Foulness in their conception" (C. shousheng bujing): human bodies are conceived through sexual intercourse. (3) "Foulness in their [gestational] residence" (C. zhuchu bujing): human bodies are conceived and nurtured inside the mother's womb. (4) "Foulness in their nutriments" (C. shidan bujing): human bodies in the prenatal stage live off and "feed on" the mother's blood. (5) "Foulness in their delivery" (C. chusheng bujing): it is amid the mess of delivery, with the discharge of placenta and placental water, that human bodies are born. (6) "Foulness in their entirety" (C. jüti bujing): human bodies are innately impure, comprising of innards, excrement, and other foul things underneath a flimsy skin. (7) "Foulness in their destiny" (C. jiujing bujing): human bodies are destined to die, followed by putrid infestation, decomposition, and utter dissolution. There is also a contemplation on the nine bodily orifices (C. QIAO), which are vividly described as constantly oozing pus, blood, secretions, etc. ¶ As contemplation on foulness deepens, first an eidetic image (S. udgrahanimitta, P. UGGAHANIMITTA), a perfect mental reproduction of the visualized corpse, is maintained steadily in mind; this is ultimately followed by the appearance of the representational image (S. pratibhAganimitta, P. PAtIBHAGANIMITTA), which the VISUDDHIMAGGA (VI.66) describes as a perfectly idealized image of, for example, a bloated corpse as "a man with big limbs lying down after eating his fill." Continued concentration on this representational image will enable the meditator to access up to the fourth stage of the subtle-materiality dhyAnas (ARuPYAVACARADHYANA). After perfecting dhyAna, this meditation may also be used to develop wisdom (PRAJNA) through developing increased awareness of the reality of impermanence (ANITYA). Foulness meditation is ritually included as part of the THERAVADA ordination procedure, during which monks are taught the list of the first five of the thirty-two foul parts of the body (viz., head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, and skin) in order to help them ward off lust.
at.aka (aishwaryamaya tratak) ::: trat.aka (concentration of the vision) brought about by aisvarya (exercise of will).
atapa. (P. atappa; T. mi gdung ba; C. wure; J. munetsu; K. muyol 無熱). In Sanskrit, "not burning" (viz., "cool"), or "without torment" (also seen spelled as atapas, anavatapta); the second of the five pure abodes (sUDDHAVASA), where those who have attained the rank of ANAGAMIN become ARHATs, and the highest level of the fourth meditative realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU); it is also the name of the divinities (DEVA) who reside there. As with all the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality, one is reborn as a god there through achieving the same level of concentration (DHYANA) during one's practice of meditation as the gods of that heaven. According to BUDDHAGHOSA, the heaven is called "without torment" because the gods born there torment no one.
A thought entertained by one person may pass inwardly through planes of consciousness until it reaches a point where minds are no longer separate, and from thence it may travel outwardly to the brain of another person. It may even be said that what we require is not so much an explanation of thought transference as an explanation of why thoughts are so seldom transferred — why our minds are so separate; and the explanation is the concentration of each individual’s normal daily consciousness upon affairs immediately concerning himself. This clothes the individual in a mental shell of interests, around which rush the radiatory influences emanating from the thinker. Universality of sympathy therefore is the key to successful telepathic communication.
Attention: (Lat. ad + tendere, to stretch) The concentration of the mind upon selected portions of the field of consciousness thereby conferring upon the selected items, a peculiar vividness and clarity. The field of attention may be divided into two parts: the focus of attention, where the degree of concentration of attention is maximal and the fringe of attention, where the degree of attention gradually diminishes to zero at the periphery. Attention considered with respect to its genesis, is of two types: involuntary, passive or spontaneous attention, which is governed by external stimulus or internal association of ideas and voluntary, controlled or directed attention which is guided by the subject's purpose or intention.
Attenuation ::: The process by which a compound is reduced in concentration over time, through absorption, adsorption, degradation, dilution, and/or transformation.
Auschwitz ::: Concentration and extermination camp in upper Silesia, Poland, 37 miles west of Krakow. Established in 1940 originally as a concentration camp, it became an extermination camp in early 1942. Later, it consisted of three sections: Auschwitz I, the main camp; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp; Auschwitz III (Monowitz), the I.G. Farben labor camp, also known as Buna. In addition, Auschwitz had numerous sub-camps.
Avenika[buddha]dharma. (T. chos ma 'dres pa/ma 'dres pa'i chos; C. bugong[fo]fa; J. fuguho/fugubuppo; K. pulgong[bul]bop 不共[佛]法). In Sanskrit and PAli, "unshared factors"; special qualities that are unique to the buddhas. They usually appear in a list of eighteen (astAdasa AvenikA buddhadharmAḥ): (1)-(2) the buddhas never make a physical or verbal mistake; (3) their mindfulness never diminishes; (4) they have no perception of difference; (5) they are free from discursiveness; (6) their equanimity is not due to a lack of discernment; (7)-(12) they do not regress in their devotion, perseverance, recollection, concentration, wisdom, or liberation; (13)-(15) all their physical, verbal, and mental actions are preceded and followed by gnosis; and (16)-(18) they enter into the perception of the gnosis that is unobstructed and unimpeded with respect to the past, future, and present. An expanded listing of 140 such unshared factors is given in the YOGACARABHuMIsASTRA.
avṛha. (P. aviha; T. mi che ba; C. wufan tian; J. mubonten; K. mubon ch'on 無煩天). In Sanskrit, "free from afflictions"; the name of the fifth highest of the eight heavens of the fourth concentration (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU), and one of the five heavens within the fourth dhyAna that constitute the sUDDHAVASA, the "pure abodes," where those who have attained the rank of ANAGAMIN become ARHATs. As with all the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality, one is reborn as a divinity there through achieving the same level of concentration (dhyAna) as the gods of that heaven during one's previous practice of meditation.
Babel (Hebrew) Bābāh The inner meaning of the Tower of Babel, by which it was hoped that divinity might be reached or attained, is a house of initiation, a gate, portal, opening, or entrance to the divine. The physical tower was both the building set aside to house and protect the initiation chambers, together with the ceremonies that take place in them, and an architectural emblem to signify a raising up towards heaven. The tower may have either a divine or evil significance, either haughty pride and self-sufficiency or spiritual aspiration. Similar is the lightning-struck tower of the Tarot cards, and the Arabian Nights story of the man who built a palace completely except only for a roc’s egg to hang in the dome, and when the egg is thus hung, the whole palace collapses. The work of the black magician, building from below upwards, is impermanent and, when it strikes the sky, is blasted. If such a tower and system be followed by adepts of the left-hand path for ultimate and foredestined confusion, it is one thing; but if the tower and its inner mysteries be in the charge of adepts of the right-hand path, it is another. The concentration of the narrator in the Bible concerning the Tower of Babel seems to have been entirely upon its aspect of left-hand magic.
Ba Khin, U. (1899-1971). Influential lay Burmese teacher of insight meditation (S. VIPAsYANA; P. VIPASSANA). Born to a working-class family in Rangoon, U Ba Khin was educated in Christian middle and high schools. Married with six children, he began his career as a government clerk during the British colonial period, later becoming accountant general of independent Burma. He began practicing vipassanA in 1937 under the guidance of Saya Thet Gyi, a lay meditation teacher and disciple of the Burmese monk LEDI SAYADAW. He explored several styles of tranquility (P. samatha, S. sAMATHA) and insight meditation and eventually developed his own technique of vipassanA by drawing on his own experiences. The method he devised focuses on physical sensations (VEDANA), beginning at the crown of the head and continuing throughout the body; his approach is considered to be especially effective in producing states of deep concentration (SAMADHI). In 1941, U Ba Khin met the famous meditation teacher Webu Sayadaw, who encouraged him to teach his meditation technique to others. He began teaching small groups informally and eventually, while accountant general, taught vipassanA to his staff. Under his influence, the government of Burma instituted a policy of encouraging civil servants to practice meditation as part of their daily routine. In 1952, U Ba Khin established the International Meditation Centre in Rangoon, where he taught meditation and began holding intensive ten-day vipassanA retreats on a regular basis. After his retirement from government service in 1953, he devoted all of his time to promoting vipassanA practice. He also played an active role in the sixth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, SIXTH), held in Rangoon from 1954-1956. His style of vipassanA is one of the most widely disseminated techniques internationally, and his disciples include such well-known meditation teachers as S. N. Goenka.
bala. (T. stobs; C. li; J. riki; K. yok 力). In Sanskrit and PAli, "power" or "strength"; used in a variety of lists, including the five powers (the eighteenth to twenty-second of the BODHIPAKsIKADHARMAs, or "thirty-seven factors pertaining to awakening"), the ten powers of a TATHAGATA, the ten powers of a BODHISATTVA, and the ninth of the ten perfections (PARAMITA). The five powers are the same as the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA)-faith (sRADDHA), perseverance (VĪRYA), mindfulness (SMṚTI), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA)-but now fully developed at the LAUKIKAGRADHARMA stage of the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMARGA), just prior to the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA). A tathAgata's ten powers are given in both PAli and Sanskrit sources as the power of the knowledge (jNAnabala) of: (1) what can be and cannot be (sthAnAsthAna), (2) karmic results (karmavipAka), (3) the various dispositions of different beings (nAnAdhimukti), (4) how the world has many and different elements (nAnAdhAtu), (5) the higher (or different) faculties people possess (indriyaparApara), (6) the ways that lead to all destinations (sarvatragAminīpratipad), (7) the defilement and purification of all meditative absorptions (DHYANA), liberations (VIMOKsA), samAdhis, and trances (SAMAPATTI) (sarvadhyAnavimoksasamAdhisamApatti-saMklesavyavadAnavyavasthAna), (8) recollecting previous births (PuRVANIVASANUSMṚTI), (9) decease and birth (cyutyupapatti), and (10) the extinction of the contaminants (ASRAVAKsAYA). Another list gives the Buddha's ten powers as the power of aspiration (Asaya), resolution (ADHYAsAYA), habit (abhyAsa), practice (PRATIPATTI), wisdom (prajNA), vow (PRAnIDHANA), vehicle (YANA), way of life (caryA), thaumaturgy (vikurvana), the power derived from his bodhisattva career, and the power to turn the wheel of dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA). When the MahAyAna six perfections (PARAMITA) are expanded and linked to the ten bodhisattva stages (DAsABHuMI), four perfections are added: the perfections of skillful means (UPAYA), vow, power, and knowledge (JNANA). Thus the perfection of power (BALAPARAMITA) is linked with the ninth bodhisattva stage (BHuMI). When the ten powers are listed as a bodhisattva's perfection of power, they are sometimes explained to be the powers of a tathAgata before they have reached full strength.
Concentration ::: Concentration is necessary, first, to turn the whole will and mind from the discursive divagation natural to them, following a dispersed movement of the thoughts, running after many branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to phenomena: we have to fix the will and the thought on the eternal and real behind all, and this demands an immense effort, a one-pointed concentration. Secondly, it is necessary in order to break down the veil which is erected by our ordinary mentality between ourselves and the truth; for outer knowledge can be picked up by the way, by ordinary attention and reception, but the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind on its object, an absolute concentration of the will to attain it and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it. Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 515
Concentration Camps ::: Immediately upon their assumption of power on January 30, 1933, the Nazis established concentration camps for the imprisonment of all “enemies” of their regime: actual and potential political opponents (e.g., communists, socialists, monarchists), Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, and other “asocials.” Beginning in 1938, Jews were targeted for internment solely because they were Jews. Before then, only Jews who fit one of the earlier categories were interned in camps. The first three concentration camps established were Dachau (near Munich), Buchenwald (near Weimar) and Sachsenhausen (near Berlin).
Concentration Camp, such as Dachau, used for political prisoners.
Concentration has often been perverted to mean a kind of personal self-culture, having for its aim the attainment of personal power or self-satisfaction. If unsuccessful, the attempt upsets the balance of the constitution, and if successful, it sows a bitter harvest of aroused personality for future reaping; for when yearning for sympathetic fellowship with our fellowmen we shall find our faculties counterworking us. True meditative concentration actually applies more to the heart than to the mind, and is not a forcible mental practice but a general although very positive and impersonal attitude towards life. It means the centering of our wishes, thoughts, and acts on the ideal of self-identification with the spiritual and universal. See also DHYANA.
Concentration in the heart is the way to get rid of them, but there must also be a detachment of the consciousness so that it can stand back from the attack and feel separate from it.
"Concentration means fixing the consciousness in one place or on one object and in a single condition.” Letters on Yoga
“Concentration means fixing the consciousness in one place or on one object and in a single condition.” Letters on Yoga
Concentration Meditation ::: See Samatha Meditation.
Concentration of the will to get the results of sadhani and to conquer the lower nature.
Concentration ratio - The percentage of all sales contributed a small number (4,8) of the largest firms in an industry.
Concentration Ratio::: The ratio of the concentration of a compound or radionuclide in an organism or its tissues to the concentration in the surrounding media under equilibrium, or steady-state conditions.
"Concentration simply means a fixing of consciousness on something.” Guidance from Sri Aurobindo by Nagin Doshi - Vol. 1
“Concentration simply means a fixing of consciousness on something.” Guidance from Sri Aurobindo by Nagin Doshi—Vol. 1
Concentration: The act and state of focusing one’s entire attention and perception upon a certain object or idea, to the complete exclusion of all others, and under total inactivity of all the physical senses except the one used in this act (e.g., sight, hearing, etc.).
Concentration With meditation, an equivalent for certain parts of yoga, as found in samadhi, dharana; the removal or surmounting of distractions originating in the mind and centering the latter on the spiritual and intellectual objective to be attained, which in the best sense is union with the inner god, the divine monad — a conscious identification of oneself with the universal through the individual’s innate divinity. The method of meditative concentration prescribed in the Bhagavad-Gita is to perform all the duties of life without either attachment or avoidance. The hindrances to concentration which are to be removed are those arising from anger, lust, vanity, fear, sloth, etc. Such obstacles are removed by lifting the mind above them or by deliberately ignoring them, since directly fighting with them serves to concentrate the mind on them, thus defeating the object aimed at; and by cultivating the spirit of impersonal love and the light of wisdom which it evokes. Thus the blending of the personal self with the impersonal self is achieved by an orderly process of self-directed evolution, first by unselfish work in the cause of humanity, continued in the various degrees of chelaship, culminating in initiation.
Bergen-Belsen ::: Nazi concentration camp in northwestern Germany. Erected in 1943. Thousands of Jews, political prisoners, and POWs were killed there. Liberated by British troops in April 1945, although many of the remaining prisoners died of typhus after liberation.
bhadrakalpa. (P. bhaddakappa; T. bskal pa bzang po; C. xianjie; J. kengo/gengo; K. hyon'gop 賢劫). In Sanskrit, "auspicious eon"; the current of the numerous "great eons" (MAHAKALPA), or cyclic periods in the existence of a universe, that are recognized in Buddhist cosmology. The "auspicious eon" along with the last and the next "great eons"-that is, the "glorious eon" (vyuhakalpa) and "the eon of the constellations" (naksatrakalpa)-are together termed the "three great eons." Each great eon is presumed to consist of four "intermediate eons" (antarakalpa), viz., an "eon of formation" (VIVARTAKALPA); "stability" or "abiding" (VIVARTASTHAYIKALPA); "decay" (SAMVARTAKALPA); and "dissolution" (SAMVARTASTHAYIKALPA). A bhadrakalpa refers specifically to an eon in which buddhas appear, the present eon being such an era. The bhadrakalpa occurs during an eon (KALPA) of stability, following a period when the lifespan of human beings has been gradually reduced from innumerable years to eighty thousand. The number of buddhas who take rebirth during a bhadrakalpa varies widely in the texts, some stating that five buddhas will appear during this era, others that upward of a thousand buddhas will appear. In many texts, sAKYAMUNI is presumed to have been preceded by six previous buddhas, bridging two different eons, who together are called the "seven buddhas of antiquity" (SAPTATATHAGATA). Elsewhere, it is presumed that a thousand buddhas appear during the "eon of stability" in each of the three preceding great eons. The full list of the thousand buddhas of the present bhadrakalpa is extolled in the BHADRAKALPIKASuTRA, a MAHAYANA scripture that lists the names of the buddhas, their entourages, and their places of residence and enjoins the practice of various concentrations (SAMADHI) and perfections (PARAMITA). In this sutra, the current buddha sAkyamuni is said to be the fourth buddha of the present kalpa, MAITREYA is to follow him, and another 995 buddhas will follow in succession, in order to continually renew Buddhism throughout the eon. A bhadrakalpa is presumed to last some 236 million years, of which over 151 million years have already elapsed in our current eon.
Bhadrakalpikasutra. (T. Bskal pa bzang po'i mdo/Mdo sde bskal bzang; C. Xianjie jing; J. Gengogyo; K. Hyon'gop kyong 賢劫經). In Sanskrit, "Auspicious Eon Scripture"; a MAHAYANA text in twenty-four chapters, written c. 200-250 CE and translated into Chinese by DHARMARAKsA in either 291 or 300 CE. In this scripture, the Buddha teaches a special concentration (SAMADHI) through the mastery of which bodhisattvas come to be equipped with 2,100 perfections (PARAMITA), 84,000 samAdhis and 84,000 codes (DHARAnĪ). He then lists the names of a thousand buddhas who will appear during the "auspicious eon" (BHADRAKALPA) due to the merit they obtained from practicing this samAdhi, as well as their residences, parents, disciples, spiritual powers, teachings, and so on. In the Tibetan BKA' 'GYUR the Bhadrakalpikasutra takes pride of place as the first in the sutra section (mdo sde); it is recited often, and it is not uncommon for the elaborate hagiographies (RNAM THAR) of important Tibetan religious figures or incarnations (SPRUL SKU) to identify their subject as an earlier rebirth of one of the thousand buddhas.
BhAvanAkrama. (T. Sgom rim). In Sanskrit, "Stages of Meditation," the title of three separate but related works by the late-eighth century Indian master KAMALAsĪLA. During the reign of the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN at the end of the eighth century, there were two Buddhist factions at court, a Chinese faction led by the Northern Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang Moheyan (MahAyAna) and an Indian faction of the recently deceased sANTARAKsITA, who with the king and PADMASAMBHAVA had founded the first Tibetan monastery at BSAM YAS (Samye). According to traditional accounts, sAntaraksita foretold of dangers and left instructions in his will that his student Kamalasīla should be summoned from India. A conflict seems to have developed between the Indian and Chinese partisans (and their allies in the Tibetan court) over the question of the nature of enlightenment, with the Indians holding that enlightenment takes place as the culmination of a gradual process of purification, the result of perfecting morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The Chinese spoke against this view, holding that enlightenment was the intrinsic nature of the mind rather than the goal of a protracted path, such that one need simply to recognize the presence of this innate nature of enlightenment by entering a state of awareness beyond distinctions; all other practices were superfluous. According to both Chinese and Tibetan records, a debate was held between Kamalasīla and Moheyan at Bsam yas, circa 797, with the king himself serving as judge (see BSAM YAS DEBATE). According to Tibetan reports (contradicted by the Chinese accounts), Kamalasīla was declared the winner and Moheyan and his party banished from Tibet, with the king proclaiming that thereafter the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian Buddhist philosophy (to which sAntaraksita and Kamalasīla belonged) would have pride of place in Tibet. ¶ According to Tibetan accounts, after the conclusion of the debate, the king requested that Kamalasīla compose works that presented his view, and in response, Kamalasīla composed the three BhAvanAkrama. There is considerable overlap among the three works. All three are germane to the issues raised in the debate, although whether all three were composed in Tibet is not established with certainty; only the third, and briefest of the three, directly considers, and refutes, the view of "no mental activity" (amanasikAra, cf. WUNIAN), which is associated with Moheyan. The three texts set forth the process for the potential BODHISATTVA to cultivate BODHICITTA and then develop sAMATHA and VIPAsYANA and progress through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to buddhahood. The cultivation of vipasyanA requires the use of both scripture (AGAMA) and reasoning (YUKTI) to understand emptiness (suNYATA); in the first BhAvanAkrama, Kamalasīla sets forth the three forms of wisdom (prajNA): the wisdom derived from learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA), the wisdom derived from reflection (CINTAMAYĪPRAJNA), and the wisdom derived from cultivation (BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA), explaining that the last of these gradually destroys the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and the obstructions to omniscience (JNEYAVARAnA). The second BhAvanAkrama considers many of these same topics, stressing that the achievement of the fruition of buddhahood requires the necessary causes, in the form of the collection of merit (PUnYASAMBHARA) and the collection of wisdom (JNANASAMBHARA). Both the first and second works espouse the doctrine of mind-only (CITTAMATRA); it is on the basis of these and other statements that Tibetan doxographers classified Kamalasīla as a YOGACARA-SVATANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA. The third and briefest of the BhAvanAkrama is devoted especially to the topics of samatha and vipasyanA, how each is cultivated, and how they are ultimately unified. Kamalasīla argues that analysis (VICARA) into the lack of self (ATMAN) in both persons (PUDGALA) and phenomena (DHARMA) is required to arrive at a nonconceptual state of awareness. The three texts are widely cited in later Tibetan Buddhist literature, especially on the process for developing samatha and vipasyanA.
bhAvanAmArga. (T. sgom lam; C. xiudao; J. shudo; K. sudo 修道). In Sanskrit, "the path of cultivation" or "path of meditation"; the fourth of the five stages of the path (MARGA) in the SARVASTIVADA soteriological system (also adopted in the MAHAYANA), which follows the path of vision or insight (DARsANAMARGA) and precedes the adept path where no further training is necessary (AsAIKsAMARGA). In the SarvAstivAda path schema, the path of vision consists of fifteen thought-moments, with a subsequent sixteenth moment marking the beginning of the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). This sixteenth moment, that of subsequent knowledge (ANVAYAJNANA) of the truth of the path (mArga), is, in effect, the knowledge that all of the afflictions (KLEsA) of both the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHATU) and the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU) that are associated with the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS have been abandoned. As a result, the meditator destroys all causes for future rebirth as an animal, ghost, or hell denizen, but is not liberated from rebirth altogether and may still be reborn as a human or divinity. The more deeply rooted afflictions are destroyed over the course of the path of cultivation. For each of the nine levels of the three realms of rebirth-the sensuous realm (with one level), the realm of subtle materiality (with four levels), and the immaterial realm (with four levels)-there are nine levels of afflictions (KLEsA), from the most coarse to the most insidious, making eighty-one levels of affliction to be destroyed. As was the case with the path of vision, these defilements must be destroyed in a two-step process: the actual destruction of the particular affliction and the knowledge that it has been destroyed. There are therefore 162 "moments" of the abandoning of afflictions. This process, which takes place over the course of the path of cultivation, may occur over several lifetimes. However, when the 162nd stage is reached, and the subtlest of the subtle afflictions associated with the ninth level-that is, the fourth absorption of the immaterial realm-has been abandoned, the adept is then liberated from rebirth. The bhAvanAmArga is one of the "paths of the nobles" (ARYAMARGA) and one on this stage is immune to any possibility of retrogression and is assured of eventually achieving NIRVAnA. Reference is also sometimes made to the mundane path of cultivation (LAUKIKA-bhAvanAmArga), which refers to the three trainings (TRIsIKsA) in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA) as they are developed before the first of the three fetters (SAMYOJANA) is eradicated and insight achieved. In the MahAyAna path system, with variations between YOGACARA and MADHYAMAKA, the bhAvanAmArga is the period in which the BODHISATTVA proceeds through the ten BHuMIs and destroys the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and the obstructions to omniscience (JNEYAVARAnA).
bhAvanAmayīprajNA. (P. bhAvanAmayapaA; T. bsgoms pa las byung ba'i shes rab; C. xiuhui; J. shue; K. suhye 修慧). In Sanskrit, lit. "wisdom generated by cultivation"; often translated as "wisdom derived from meditation"; the third of the three types of wisdom, together with sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA (wisdom derived from what is heard, viz., learning) and CINTAMAYĪPRAJNA (wisdom derived from reflection or analysis). Although the general understanding is that this third and final manifestation of wisdom comes after, and is largely dependent on, the previous two types, bhAvanAmayīprajNA is considered to be the highest of these three because it is the culmination of one's efforts to cultivate the path (MARGA) and the product of direct spiritual experience. This third type of wisdom is a form of VIPAsYANA, an understanding of reality at the level of sAMATHA-profound concentration coupled with tranquility.
bhavana. ::: spiritual cultivation; fixing the mind; firm conviction through steady concentration; mental attitude
bhAvanA. (T. sgom pa; C. xiuxi; J. shuju; K. susŭp 修習). In Sanskrit and PAli, "cultivation" (lit. "bringing into being"); a Sanskrit term commonly translated into English as "meditation." It is derived from the root √bhu, "to be" or "to become," and has a wide range of meanings including cultivating, producing, manifesting, imagining, suffusing, and reflecting. It is in the first sense, that of cultivation, that the term is used to mean the sustained development of particular states of mind. However, bhAvanA in Buddhism can include studying doctrine, memorizing sutras, and chanting verses to ward off evil spirits. The term thus refers broadly to the full range of Buddhist spiritual culture, embracing the "bringing into being" (viz., cultivating) of such generic aspects of training as the path (MARGA), specific spiritual exercises (e.g., loving-kindness, or MAITRĪ), or even a general mental attitude, such as virtuous (KUsALA) states of mind. The term is also used in the specific sense of a "path of cultivation" (BHAVANAMARGA), which "brings into being" the insights of the preceding path of vision (DARsANAMARGA). Hence, bhAvanA entails all the various sorts of cultivation that an adept must undertake in order to enhance meditation, improve its efficacy, and "bring it into being." More specifically as "meditation," two general types of meditation are sometimes distinguished in the commentarial literature: stabilizing meditation (sAMATHA) in which the mind focuses with one-pointedness on an object in an effort to expand the powers of concentration; and analytical meditation (VIPAsYANA), in which the meditator conceptually investigates a topic in order to develop insight into it.
Bodhisattvabhumi. (T. Byang chub sems dpa'i sa; C. Pusa dichi jing; J. Bosatsujijikyo; K. Posal chiji kyong 菩薩地持經). In Sanskrit, "The Bodhisattva Stages"; a treatise on the entire vocation and training of a BODHISATTVA, attributed to MAITREYA/MAITREYANATHA or ASAnGA (c. fourth century CE), the effective founder of the YOGACARA school. Sanskrit and Tibetan recensions are extant, as well as three different renderings in Chinese: (1) Pusa dichi jing, translated by DHARMAKsEMA between 414-421 CE, which is also abbreviated as the "Treatise on the Bodhisattva Stages" (C. Dichi lun; J. Jijiron; K. Chiji non); (2) Pusa shanjie jing, translated by GUnAVARMAN in 431 CE; and (3) a version incorporated as the fifteenth section of XUANZANG's Chinese translation of Asanga's YOGACARABHuMIsASTRA. In the Tibetan BSTAN 'GYUR, the Bodhisattvabhumi appears as the sixteenth and penultimate part of the fundamental section (sa'i dngos gzhi) of the YogAcArabhumi (which has a total of seventeen sections), but it is set apart as a separate work in 6,000 lines. The Bodhisattvabhumi explains in three major sections the career and practices of a bodhisattva. The chapters on the abodes (vihArapatala) in the second major division and the chapter on stages (bhumipatala) in the third section are considered especially important, because they provide a systematic outline of the soteriological process by which a bodhisattva attains enlightenment. ¶ In contrast to the ten stages (DAsABHuMI) of the bodhisattva path that are described in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, the Bodhisattvabhumi instead outlines a system of seven stages (BHuMI), which are then correlated with the thirteen abodes (VIHARA): (1) The stage of innate potentiality (gotrabhumi), which corresponds to the abode of innate potentiality (gotravihAra); (2) the stage of the practice of resolute faith (adhimukticaryAbhumi), corresponding to the abode of resolute faith (adhimukticaryAvihAra); (3) the stage of superior aspiration (suddhAdhyAsayabhumi), which corresponds to the abode of extreme bliss (pramuditavihAra); (4) the stage of carrying out correct practices (caryApratipattibhumi), which includes the abode of superior morality (adhisīlavihAra), the abode of superior concentration (adhicittavihAra), and the abode of the superior wisdom (adhiprajNavihAra), i.e., the abode of superior insight associated with the factors of enlightenment (bodhipaksyapratisaMyukto 'dhiprajNavihAra), the abode of superior insight associated with the truths (satyapratisaMyukto 'dhiprajNavihAra), the abode of superior insight associated with the cessation of dependently arisen transmigration (pratītyasamutpAdapravṛttinivṛttipratisaMyukto 'dhiprajNavihAra), and the signless abode of applied practices and exertion (sAbhisaMskArasAbhoganirnimittavihAra); (5) the stage of certainty (niyatabhumi), which is equivalent to the signless abode that is free from application and exertion (anAbhoganirnimittavihAra); (6) the stage of determined practice (niyatacaryAbhumi), which corresponds to the abode of analytical knowledge (pratisaMvidvihAra); (7) the stage of arriving at the ultimate (nisthAgamanabhumi), which correlates with the abode of ultimate consummation [viz., of bodhisattvahood] (paramavihAra) and the abode of the tathAgata (tathAgatavihAra). In this schema, the first two stages are conceived as preliminary stages of the bodhisattva path: the first stage, the stage of innate potentiality (gotrabhumi), is presumed to be a state in which the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTA) has yet to be generated; the second stage, the stage of the practice of resolute faith (adhimukticaryAbhumi), is referred to as the stage of preparation (saMbhArAvasthA) and applied practice (prayogAvasthA) in the case of the fivefold YOGACARA mArga schema, or alternatively to the ten faiths, ten abodes, ten practices, and ten dedications in the case of the comprehensive fifty-two stage bodhisattva path presented in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, PUSA YINGLUO BENYE JING, and RENWANG JING. The third stage, the stage of superior aspiration, is regarded as corresponding to the first of the ten bhumis in the Dasabhumikasutra; the fourth stage of carrying out correct practices corresponds to the second through seventh bhumis in that rival schema; the fifth stage of certainty pertains to the eighth bhumi; the stage of determined practice to the ninth bhumi; and the stage of arriving at the ultimate to the tenth bhumi. In fact, however, the seven-bhumi schema of the Bodhisattvabhumi and the ten-bhumi schema of the Dasabhumikasutra developed independently of each other and it requires consider exegetical aplomb to correlate them. ¶ The Bodhisattvabhumi also serves as an important source of information on another crucial feature of bodhisattva practice: the MahAyAna interpretation of a set of moral codes specific to bodhisattvas (BODHISATTVAsĪLA). The chapter on precepts (sīlapatala) in the first major section of the text provides an elaborate description of MahAyAna precepts, which constitute the bodhisattva's perfection of morality (sĪLAPARAMITA). These precepts are classified into the "three sets of pure precepts" (trividhAni sīlAni; C. sanju jingjie, see sĪLATRAYA; TRISAMVARA): (1) the saMvarasīla, or "restraining precepts," (cf. SAMVARA), which refers to the "HĪNAYANA" rules of discipline (PRATIMOKsA) that help adepts restrain themselves from all types of unsalutary conduct; (2) practicing all virtuous deeds (kusaladharmasaMgrAhakasīla), which accumulates all types of salutary conduct; and (3) sattvArthakriyAsīla, which involve giving aid and comfort to sentient beings. Here, the first group corresponds to the generic hīnayAna precepts, while the second and third groups are regarded as reflecting a specifically MahAyAna position on morality. Thus, the three sets of pure precepts are conceived as a comprehensive description of Buddhist views on precepts, which incorporates both hīnayAna and MahAyAna perspectives into an overarching system. A similar treatment of the three sets of pure precepts is also found in the Chinese apocryphal sutra FANWANG JING (see APOCRYPHA), thus providing a scriptural foundation in East Asia for an innovation originally appearing in an Indian treatise. ¶ In Tibet, the Bodhisattvabhumi was a core text of the BKA' GDAMS sect, and its chapter on sīla was the basis for a large body of literature elaborating a VINAYA-type ritual for taking bodhisattva precepts in a MahAyAna ordination ceremony. The SA SKYA PA master Grags pa rgyal mtshan's explanation of CANDRAGOMIN's synopsis of the morality chapter, and TSONG KHA PA's Byang chub gzhung lam are perhaps the best known works in this genre. In Tibet, the SDOM GSUM genre incorporates the Bodhisattvabhumi's three sets of pure precepts into a new scheme that reconciles hīnayAna and MahAyAna with TANTRA.
bodhyanga. (P. bojjhanga; T. byang chub kyi yan lag; C. juezhi/qijuezhi; J. kakushi/shichikakushi; K. kakchi/ch'ilgakchi 覺支/七覺支). In Sanskrit, "branches of enlightenment," or "limbs of awakening"; seven qualities attained at the point of realizing the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA): mindfulness (SMṚTI; P. sati), investigation of factors (dharmapravicaya; P. dhammavicaya), energy (VĪRYA; P. viriya), rapture (PRĪTI; pīti), tranquility (PRAsRABDHI; passaddhi), concentration (SAMADHI), and equanimity (UPEKsA; upekkhA). In their roles as "branches of enlightenment," mindfulness, first, refers to the "four foundations of mindfulness" (SMṚTYUPASTHANA; P. SATIPAttHANA), where the practitioner dwells contemplating four types of objects: namely, the body (KAYA), sensations (VEDANA), the mind (CITTA), and mental objects (DHARMA). Investigation of factors refers to investigating, examining, and reflecting on the teachings and numerical lists of factors taught by the Buddha. Energy refers to firm and unshaken energy that arises in the mind of the practitioner while investigating factors, etc. Rapture refers to the supersensuous bliss that arises as a consequence of contemplating with energy. Tranquility refers to the tranquility that arises as a consequence of the mind experiencing rapture. Concentration refers to the mental absorption that arises as a consequence of tranquility. Finally, equanimity refers to the sense of complete composure that arises as a consequence of the mind being well concentrated on an object. These are called factors of "enlightenment," because they lead to awakening (BODHI) or more specifically to the attainment of the "threefold knowledge" (TRIVIDYA; P. tevijjA): "recollection of former lives" (S. PuRVANIVASANUSMṚTI; P. pubbenivAsAnussati), the "divine eye" (DIVYACAKsUS; P. dibbacakkhu), which sees the death and rebirth of beings occurring according to their actions, and the "knowledge of the extinction of the contaminants" (ASRAVAKsAYA JNANA; P. AsavakhayaNAna).
brahmakAyika. (P. brahmapArisajjA; T. tshangs ris; C. fanzhong tian; J. bonshuten; K. pomjung ch'on 梵衆天). In Sanskrit, "brahmA's retainers"; the lowest of the three heavens that constitute the first concentration (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU) in the Buddhist cosmological system. In PAli, the term brahmakAyika seems to be used at times for a general term for all the inhabitants of the BRAHMALOKA; the inhabitants of the lowest of the three heavens are instead called brahmApArisajjA (the "assembly of BRAHMA"). However, brahmakAyika more commonly refers to the lowest of the three heavens, whose inhabitants are divinities (DEVA) who are subordinates of the god BrahmA. As with the other inhabitants of the realm of subtle materiality, the divinities there have only three sense organs: of sight, hearing, and touch. Also as with all the heavens of the subtle-materiality realm, one is reborn as a divinity there through mastering during one's meditative practice in a preceding lifetime the same level of dhyAna as those divinities.
brahmapurohita. (T. tshangs pa'i mdun na 'don; C. fanfu tian; J. bonhoten; K. pombo ch'on 梵輔天). In Sanskrit and PAli "brahmA's ministers"; the second of the three heavens that constitute the first concentration (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU) in the Buddhist cosmological system. The inhabitants of this heaven are divinities (DEVA) who serve as the attendants, ministers, and officials of the god BRAHMA. As with the other inhabitants of the realm of subtle materiality, the divinities there have only three physical sense organs: of sight, hearing, and touch. As with all the heavens of the subtle-materiality realm, one is reborn as a god there through mastering during one's meditative practice in a preceding lifetime the same level of dhyAna as those divinities.
brahmavihAra. (T. tshangs pa'i gnas; C. fanzhu; J. bonju; K. pomju 梵住). In Sanskrit and PAli, "divine abidings," or "highest religious state." This is a classification of four meditative topics used for the cultivation of tranquility meditation (sAMATHA): loving-kindness (MAITRĪ; P. mettA), compassion (KARUnA), empathetic joy (MUDITA), and equanimity or impartiality (UPEKsA; P. upekkhA). The meditator is taught to take up each of the divine abidings in the same way: starting with the first brahmavihAra, for example, filling his mind with loving-kindness, he pervades the world with it, first in one direction; then in a second direction; then a third and a fourth; then above, below, and all around; always identifying himself with all beings and keeping himself free from hatred and ill will. In the same way, he develops compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. These four factors are taken up as objects of meditation to counter the influence of specific unwholesome (AKUsALA) states of mind: viz., loving-kindness counteracts hostility (VYAPADA), compassion counters harmfulness (VIHIMSA), empathetic joy counters dissatisfaction or envy regarding others achievements (arati), and equanimity counters both the desire and hostility arising from sensuality (kAmarAgavyApAda) as well as the desire to win the approval of others (anunaya). Of these divine abidings, the first three are capable of producing the first three of the four meditative absorptions (DHYANA); the fourth divine abiding is the only one capable of producing the fourth meditative absorption. The four divine abidings are listed in the VISUDDHIMAGGA as four of the forty meditative topics (KAMMAttHANA) that may be pursued by the meditator. The Visuddhimagga notes they are useful only for the cultivation of tranquility (P. samatha; S. samatha), and not for the cultivation of insight (P. VIPASSANA; S. VIPAsYANA). Taken as objects of concentration and extended in meditation to all beings without limit, the divine abidings also come to be known as the "boundless states" (APRAMAnA).
bṛhatphala. (P. vehapphala; T. 'bras bu che; C. guangguo tian; J. kokaten; K. kwanggwa ch'on 廣果天). In Sanskrit, "great fruition," the third and lowest of the eight heavens of the fourth concentration (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU); in PAli sources, this is the lowest of the seven heavens of the fourth DHYANA of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU).The heaven is so called because it is the greatest fruition among all places of rebirth in SAMSARA for ordinary persons (PṚTHAGJANA) who have not achieved the state of ARYAPUDGALA or noble person. As with all the heavens of the subtle-materiality realm, one is reborn as a god there through mastering during one's meditative practice in a preceding lifetime the same level of dhyAna as those divinities.
Brunnlitz ::: Brunnlitz was the industrial town in German-occupied Czechoslovakia where Oskar Schindler relocated his Krakow factory in late 1944 as the Soviet Red Army advanced towards Krakow from the east. The weapons factory that Schindler established in Brunnlitz was a sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Labor camps exploiting Jewish and foreign labor like Brunnlitz were located throughout the Greater German Reich. Brunnlitz, under Schindler, was one of the few camps where Jews were not treated brutally.
Bruno, Giordano: (1548-1600) A Dominican monk, eventually burned at the stake because of his opinions, he was converted from Christianity to a naturalistic and mystical pantheism by the Renaissance and particularly by the new Copernican astronomy. For him God and the universe were two names for one and the same Reality considered now as the creative essence of all things, now as the manifold of realized possibilities in which that essence manifests itself. As God, natura naturans, the Real is the whole, the one transcendent and ineffable. As the Real is the infinity of worlds and objects and events into which the whole divides itself and in which the one displays the infinite potentialities latent within it. The world-process is an ever-lasting going forth from itself and return into itself of the divine nature. The culmination of the outgoing creative activity is reached in the human mind, whose rational, philosophic search for the one in the many, simplicity in variety, and the changeless and eternal in the changing and temporal, marks also the reverse movement of the divine nature re-entering itself and regaining its primordial unity, homogeneity, and changelessness. The human soul, being as it were a kind of boomerang partaking of the ingrowing as well as the outgrowing process, may hope at death, not to be dissolved with the body, which is borne wholly upon the outgoing stream, but to return to God whence it came and to be reabsorbed in him. Cf. Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers, selection from Bruno's On Cause, The Principle and the One. G. Bruno: De l'infinito, universo e mundo, 1584; Spaccio della bestia trionfante, 1584; La cena delta ceneri, 1584; Deglieroici furori, 1585; De Monade, 1591. Cf. R. Honigswald, Giordano Bruno; G. Gentile, Bruno nella storia della cultura, 1907. -- B.A.G.F. Brunschvicg, Leon: (1869-) Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Dismissed by the Nazis (1941). His philosophy is an idealistic synthesis of Spinoza, Kant and Schelling with special stress on the creative role of thought in cultural history as well as in sciences. Main works: Les etapes de la philosophie mathematique, 1913; L'experience humaine et la causalite physique, 1921; De la connaissance de soi, 1931. Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha (q.v.) have produced. They centre around the main doctrine of the catvari arya-satyani(q.v.), the four noble truths, the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In the absence of contemporary records of Buddha and Buddhistic teachings, much value was formerly attached to the palm leaf manuscripts in Pali, a Sanskrit dialect; but recently a good deal of weight has been given also the Buddhist tradition in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Buddhism split into Mahayanism and Hinayanism (q.v.), each of which, but particularly the former, blossomed into a variety of teachings and practices. The main philosophic schools are the Madhyamaka or Sunyavada, Yogacara, Sautrantika, and Vaibhasika (q.v.). The basic assumptions in philosophy are a causal nexus in nature and man, of which the law of karma (q.v.) is but a specific application; the impermanence of things, and the illusory notion of substance and soul. Man is viewed realistically as a conglomeration of bodily forms (rupa), sensations (vedana), ideas (sanjna), latent karma (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijnana). The basic assumptions in ethics are the universality of suffering and the belief in a remedy. There is no god; each one may become a Buddha, an enlightened one. Also in art and esthetics Buddhism has contributed much throughout the Far East. -- K.F.L.
Bsam gtan mig sgron. (Samten Mikdron). In Tibetan, literally "Lamp of the Eye of Concentration"; the title of a ninth-century treatise by GNUBS CHEN SANGS RGYAS YE SHES that discusses four main philosophical approaches prevalent during the early spread (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet. These include (1) the gradual path (rim gyis pa); (2) the sudden path (cig car ba); (3) the tradition of MAHAYOGA; and (4) the RDZOGS CHEN teachings. The text is an important source for understanding the range of meditative practice and theory in Tibet in the period after the BSAM YAS DEBATE and before the persecution of Buddhism under King GLANG DAR MA. The work makes clear reference to the teachings of the Chinese CHAN school in its discussion of the sudden teachings (see DUNJIAO).
Buchenwald ::: One of the largest concentration camps on German soil. It was constructed in 1937 in Weimar, Germany. Originally a camp for political prisoners, 10,000 Jews were imprisoned there after Kristallnacht.
buddhAnusmṛti. (P. buddhAnussati; T. sangs rgyas rjes su dran pa; C. nianfo; J. nenbutsu; K. yombul 念佛). In Sanskrit, "recollection of the Buddha"; one of the common practices designed to develop concentration, in which the meditator reflects on the meritorious qualities of the Buddha, often through contemplating a series of his epithets. The oldest list of epithets of the Buddha used in such recollection, which is found across all traditions, is worthy one (ARHAT), fully enlightened (SAMYAKSAMBUDDHA), perfect in both knowledge and conduct (vidyAcaranasampanna), well gone (SUGATA), knower of all worlds (lokavid), teacher of divinities (or kings) and human beings (sAstṛ devamanusyAnaM), buddha, and BHAGAVAT. BuddhAnusmṛti is listed among the forty meditative exercises (KAMMAttHANA) discussed in the VISUDDHIMAGGA and is said to be conducive to gaining access concentration (UPACARASAMADHI). In East Asia, this recollection practice evolved into the recitation of the name of the buddha AMITABHA (see NIANFO) in the form of the phrase namo Amituo fo ("homage to AmitAbha Buddha"; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU). This recitation was often performed in a ritual setting accompanied by the performance of prostrations, the burning of incense, and the recitation of scriptures, all directed toward gaining a vision of AmitAbha's PURE LAND (SUKHAVATĪ), which was considered proof that one would be reborn there. Nianfo practice was widely practiced across schools and social strata in China. In Japan, repetition of the phrase in its Japanese pronunciation of namu Amidabutsu (homage to AmitAbha Buddha) became a central practice of the Japanese Pure Land schools of Buddhism (see JoDOSHu, JoDO SHINSHu).
Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha have produced, and which form the religion of hundreds of millions in China, Japan, etc. They center around the main doctrine of the arya satyani, the four noble truths (q.v.), the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
"But in the larger universal consciousness there must be a power of carrying this movement to its absolute point, to the greatest extreme possible for any relative movement to reach, and this point is reached, not in human unconsciousness which is not abiding and always refers back to the awakened conscious being that man normally and characteristically is, but in the inconscience of material Nature. This inconscience is no more real than the ignorance of exclusive concentration in our temporary being which limits the waking consciousness of man; for as in us, so in the atom, the metal, the plant, in every form of material Nature, in every energy of material Nature, there is, we know, a secret soul, a secret will, a secret intelligence at work, other than the mute self-oblivious form, the Conscient, — conscient even in unconscious things, — of the Upanishad, without whose presence and informing Conscious-Force or Tapas no work of Nature could be done.” The Life Divine
“But in the larger universal consciousness there must be a power of carrying this movement to its absolute point, to the greatest extreme possible for any relative movement to reach, and this point is reached, not in human unconsciousness which is not abiding and always refers back to the awakened conscious being that man normally and characteristically is, but in the inconscience of material Nature. This inconscience is no more real than the ignorance of exclusive concentration in our temporary being which limits the waking consciousness of man; for as in us, so in the atom, the metal, the plant, in every form of material Nature, in every energy of material Nature, there is, we know, a secret soul, a secret will, a secret intelligence at work, other than the mute self-oblivious form, the Conscient,—conscient even in unconscious things,—of the Upanishad, without whose presence and informing Conscious-Force or Tapas no work of Nature could be done.” The Life Divine
"But in the path of knowledge as it is practised in India concentration is used in a special and more limited sense. It means that removal of the thought from all distracting activities of the mind and that concentration of it on the idea of the One by which the soul rises out of the phenomenal into the one reality.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“But in the path of knowledge as it is practised in India concentration is used in a special and more limited sense. It means that removal of the thought from all distracting activities of the mind and that concentration of it on the idea of the One by which the soul rises out of the phenomenal into the one reality.” The Synthesis of Yoga
caitta. [alt. caitasika] (P. cetasika; T. sems byung; C. xinsuo; J. shinjo; K. simso 心所). In Sanskrit, "mental concomitants" or "mental factors." In the ABHIDHARMA, the term encompasses those mental factors that accompany, in various combinations, the mind (CITTA) and its six sensory consciousnesses (VIJNANA), viz., visual (lit. eye), auditory (ear), olfactory (nose), gustatory (tongue), tactile (body), and mental. The VAIBHAsIKA school of SARVASTIVADA abhidharma lists forty-six caittas, the PAli ABHIDHAMMA lists fifty-two (called CETASIKA), while the mature YOGACARA system of MAHAYANA abhidharma gives a total of fifty-one specific mental concomitants, listed in six categories. The first, mental concomitants of universal application (SARVATRAGA), includes the five factors of sensory contact (SPARsA), sensations (VEDANA), intention or volition (CETANA), perception (SAMJNA), and attention (MANASKARA). The second category, five concomitants that are of specific application (VINIYATA) in spiritual progress, includes mindfulness (SMṚTI), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The third category, salutary (KUsALA) factors, includes nine positive mental states such as faith (sRADDHA), lack of greed (ALOBHA), lack of hatred (ADVEsA), and vigor (VĪRYA). The fourth category, the primary afflictions (KLEsA), includes six negative mental states such as sensuality (RAGA), aversion (PRATIGHA), pride (MANA), and doubt (VICIKITSA). The fifth category, secondary afflictions (UPAKLEsA), includes twenty lesser forms of negative mental states, such as envy (ĪRsYA), harmfulness (VIHIMSA), and carelessness (PRAMADA). The sixth and final category, mental concomitants of indeterminate (ANIYATA) quality, includes the four factors of remorse (KAUKṚTYA), torpor (MIDDHA), thought (VITARKA), and analysis (VICARA). See also CETASIKA.
cakra. (P. cakka; T. 'khor lo; C. lun; J. rin; K. yun 輪). In Sanskrit, "wheel," "disc," or "circle"; a frequent symbol used to represent various aspects of Buddhism, from the Buddha, to the DHARMA, to Buddhist notions of kingship. When the Buddha first taught his new religion, it is said that he "turned the wheel of dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) and the eight-spoked "wheel of dharma" (DHARMACAKRA) is subsequently used as a symbol for both the teachings as well as the person who rediscovered and enunciated those teachings. The ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA explains that the noble eightfold path (ARYAstAnGAMARGA) is like a wheel because it is similar in terms of the hub that is the support of the wheel, the spokes, and the containment rim. Right speech, action, and livelihood are like the hub, because they are the training in morality that provides support for concentration (DHYANA) and wisdom (PRAJNA). Right view, thought, and effort are like spokes, because they are the training in wisdom. Right mindfulness and concentration are like the rim because the spokes of right view and so forth provide the objective support (ALAMBANA) in a one-pointed manner in dependence on them. The dharmacakra appears in some of the earliest Buddhist art, often as an iconographic symbol standing in for the Buddha himself. The sign of a thousand-spoked wheel on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet is one of the thirty-two major marks of a great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA), which is said to adorn the body of both a Buddha and a "wheel-turning emperor" (CAKRAVARTIN), his secular counterpart. A cakravartin's power is said to derive from his wheel of divine attributes, which rolls across different realms of the earth, bringing them under his dominion. The realm of SAMSARA is sometimes depicted iconographically in the form of a wheel, known as the "wheel of existence" (BHAVACAKRA), with a large circle divided into the six realms of existence (sAdGATI), surrounded by an outer ring representing the twelve links of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA). ¶ The term cakra is also important in Buddhist TANTRA, especially in ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA. According to various systems of tantric physiognomy, a central channel (AVADHuTĪ) runs from either the tip of the genitals or the base of the spine to either the crown of the head or the point between the eyebrows, with a number of "wheels" (cakra) along its course. In one of the systems, these wheels are located at the point between the eyebrows, the crown of the head, the throat, the heart, the navel, the base of the spine, and the opening of the sexual organ. Running parallel to the central channel to the right and left are two channels, both smaller in diameter, the LALANA and the RASANA. It is said that the right and left channels wrap around the central channel, forming knots at the cakras. Much tantric practice is devoted to techniques for loosening these knots in order to allow the winds (PRAnA) or energies that course through the other channels to flow freely and enter into the central channel. The cakras themselves are essential elements in this practice and other tantric meditative practices, with seed syllables (BĪJA), spells (MANTRA), deities, and diagrams (MAndALA) visualized at their center. The cakras themselves are often described as open lotus blossoms, with varying numbers of petals in different colors.
Cazing on a dame or a bright spot b the traditional means used by yogins for concentration or for awakening of the inner consciousness and vision.
center ::: n. --> A point equally distant from the extremities of a line, figure, or body, or from all parts of the circumference of a circle; the middle point or place.
The middle or central portion of anything.
A principal or important point of concentration; the nucleus around which things are gathered or to which they tend; an object of attention, action, or force; as, a center of attaction.
The earth.
cetasika. In PAli, "mental concomitant" or "mental factor"; the PAli equivalent of the Sanskrit term caitasika (see CAITTA). Mental concomitants are factors associated with the arising of consciousness (CITTA or viNNAna; S. VIJNANA). According to the PAli ABHIDHAMMA, there are fifty-two mental concomitants, of which twenty-five are either karmically salutary or neutral, fourteen are karmically unsalutary, and thirteen are simply neutral. Out of the fifty-two types of cetasikas, seven are invariably associated with all moments of consciousness-viz., consciousness cannot arise without these seven all being present: (1) sensory contact or sense impression (phassa; S. SPARsA), (2) sensation or feeling (VEDANA), (3) perception or conception (saNNA; S. SAMJNA), (4) volition (CETANA), (5) concentration (SAMADHI), (6) vitality (JĪVITA), and (7) attention, viz., the advertence of the mind toward an object (manasikAra; S. MANASKARA). See also CAITTA; List of Lists.
Cetokhilasutta. (C. Xinhui jing; J. Shinnekyo; K. Simye kyong 心穢經). In PAli, "Discourse on Mental Obstructions"; the sixteenth sutta of the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a separate SarvAstivAda recension appears as the 206th sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA; a recension of unidentified affiliation also occurs in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARAGAMA), preached by the Buddha to a gathering of monks in the JETAVANA grove in the town of SAvatthi (sRAVASTĪ). The Buddha describes five mental obstructions and five fetters that constitute impediments to overcoming suffering. The five obstructions include (1) doubt about the teacher, the Buddha; (2) doubt about the dhamma (DHARMA); (3) doubt about the SAMGHA; (4) doubt about the value of morality (sīla; S. sĪLA), meditative concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (paNNA; S. PRAJNA); 5) ill will and animosity toward one's fellow monks. The five fetters include (1) attachment to sensual desires, (2) attachment to a sense of self, (3) attachment to material possessions, (4) excessive sleeping and eating, and (5) adopting the life of renunciation merely for the limited goal of a blissful existence in the heavens.
cetovimukti. (P. cetovimutti; T. sems rnam par grol ba; C. xin jietuo; J. shingedatsu; K. sim haet'al 心解). In Sanskrit, "liberation of mind"; a meditative concept associated with the mastery of any of the four meditative absorptions (P. JHANA; S. DHYANA). Cetovimukti results in the temporary suppression of the contaminants (P. Asava; S. ASRAVA) through the force of concentration (SAMADHI). It is also associated with the acquisition of the "superknowledges" (P. abhiNNA; S. ABHIJNA). Cetovimukti alone is insufficient to bring about the attainment of enlightenment (BODHI) or the cessation of rebirth and must therefore be complemented by the "liberation through wisdom" (P. paNNAvimutti; S. prajNAvimukti; see PRAJNAVIMUKTA).
Ching: Essence. "Essence and vital force (ch'i) constitute things." Purity; the pure nature. Spirit; intelligence. Concentration; unity of thought.
Chokmah (Heb.): The second Sephira of the Tree of Life. Chok mah means "Wisdom" and represents the Sphere of the Stars. It is the first concentration of the influence of Nuit
Chongjung Musang. (C. Jingzhong Wuxiang; J. Joshu Muso 淨衆無相) (680-756, alt. 684-762). Korean-Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty; because he was of Korean heritage, he is usually called Musang in the literature, following the Korean pronunciation of his dharma name, or Master Kim (K. Kim hwasang; C. Jin heshang), using his Korean surname. Musang is said to have been the third son of a Silla king and was ordained in Korea at the monastery of Kunnamsa. In 728, he arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) and had an audience with the Tang emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756), who appointed him to the monastery of Chandingsi. Musang subsequently traveled to Chu (in present-day Sichuan province) and became a disciple of the monk Chuji (alt. 648-734, 650-732, 669-736), who gave him dharma transmission at the monastery of Dechunsi in Zizhou (present-day Sichuan province). He later resided at the monastery of Jingzhongsi in Chengdu (present-day Sichuan province; later known as WANFOSI), which gave him his toponym Chongjung (C. Jingzhong). Musang became famous for his ascetic practices and meditative prowess. Musang also began conferring a unique set of precepts known as the three propositions (SANJU): "no recollection" (wuji), which was equated with morality (sĪLA); "no thought" (WUNIAN) with concentration (SAMADHI); and "no forgetting" (mowang) with wisdom (PRAJNA). He also taught a practice known as YINSHENG NIANFO, a method of reciting the name of the Buddha by extending the length of the intonation. Musang's prosperous lineage in Sichuan came to be known as the JINGZHONG ZONG line of Chan. Musang seems to have taught or influenced several renowned Chan monks, including HEZE SHENHUI (668-760), BAOTANG WUZHU (714-774), and MAZU DAOYI (707-786); he also played an important role in transmitting Chan to Tibet in the 750s and 760s.
cintAmayīprajNA. (P. cintAmayapaNNA; T. bsam pa las byung ba'i shes rab; C. sihui; J. shie; K. sahye 思慧). In Sanskrit, "wisdom derived from reflection [or analysis]"; the second of the three types of wisdom, together with sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA (wisdom derived from what is heard, viz., study) and BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA (wisdom generated by cultivation or meditation). Building upon what one has learned through srutamayīprajNA, the practitioner deepens that knowledge by reflecting upon its significance and its application in understanding the nature of this world and beyond. This reflection may involve a certain level of mental attention and concentration, but not yet full meditative calmness (sAMATHA). This level of understanding is therefore not as profound as the third and final stage of wisdom, bhAvanAmayīprajNA, where the knowledge first learned and subsequently developed over the preceding two stages of wisdom is now authenticated at the level of VIPAsYANA.
cittaikAgratA. (P. cittekaggatA; T. sems rtse gcig pa; C. xin yijing xing; J. shin ikkyo sho; K. sim ilgyong song 心一境性). In Sanskrit, "one-pointedness of mind"; a deep state of meditative equipoise in which the mind is thoroughly concentrated on the object of meditation. In the progression of the four meditative absorptions associated with the subtle-materiality realm (RuPAVACARADHYANA), the first absorption (DHYANA) still involves the first two of the five constituents of dhyAna (DHYANAnGA): i.e., the application of thought to the meditative object (VITARKA) and sustained attention to that object (VICARA). As concentration deepens from the second dhyAna onward, applied and sustained thought vanish and the meditator moves from the mental "isolation" or "solitude" (VIVEKA) that characterizes the first dhyAna, to the true one-pointedness of mind (cittaikAgratA) that characterizes all higher stages of dhyAna; in this state of one-pointedness, the mind is so completely absorbed in the meditative object that even these most subtle varieties of thinking have disappeared.
citta. (T. sems; C. xin; J. shin; K. sim 心). In Sanskrit and PAli, "mind," "mentality," or "thought"; used broadly to refer to general mentality, citta is the factor (DHARMA) that is present during any type of conscious activity. Citta is contrasted with the physical body or materiality (RuPA), and is synonymous in this context with "name" (NAMA), as in the term NAMARuPA. In this sense, citta corresponds to the last four of the five aggregates (SKANDHA), excluding only the first aggregate, of materiality (RuPA), i.e., sensation (VEDANA), perception (SAMJNA), conditioning factors (SAMSKARA), and consciousness (VIJNANA). (Where the correspondences on this list are further refined, the first three of these mentality aggregates correspond to the mental concomitants, viz., CAITTA, while citta is restricted to the last aggregate, that of consciousness, or vijNAna.) Citta in this broad sense is synonymous with both mentality (MANAS) and consciousness (vijNAna): mind is designated as citta because it "builds up" (cinoti) virtuous and nonvirtuous states; as manas, because it calculates and examines; and as vijNAna, because it discriminates among sensory stimuli. Mind as "consciousness" refers to the six consciousnesses (sadvijNAna): the five sensory consciousnesses of the visual (CAKsURVIJNANA), auditory (sROTRAVIJNANA), olfactory (GHRAnAVIJNANA), gustatory (JIHVAVIJNANA), and tactile (KAYAVIJNANA), along with the mental consciousness (MANOVIJNANA). In some strands of MAHAYANA thought, such as YOGACARA, mind is instead considered to encompass not only mentality but all dharmas, and the distinction between mentality and materiality is presumed to be merely nominal; YogAcAra is thus sometimes called the school of CITTAMATRA, or "mind-only." Citta as mentality serves as one of the four foundations of mindfulness (SMṚTYUPASTHANA) in Buddhist meditative training, and refers to various general states of mind, e.g., a mind (citta) that is depressed, distracted, developed, concentrated, or freed. Citta is also used to signify mind itself in distinction to various sets of mental concomitants (caitta) that accompany the basic sensory consciousnesses. The DHAMMASAnGAnI, the first of the seven books of the PAli ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA, classifies citta as the first of a fourfold division of factors into mind (citta), mental concomitants (P. CETASIKA), materiality or form (rupa), and NIRVAnA (P. nibbAna). In this text's treatment, a moment of consciousness (citta) will always arise in association with a variety of associated mental factors (P. cetasika), seven of which are always present during every moment of consciousness: (1) sensory contact or sense impression (P. phassa; S. SPARsA), (2) feeling or sensation (VEDANA), (3) perception or conception (P. saNNA; S. SAMJNA), (4) volition (CETANA), (5) concentration (SAMADHI), (6) vitality (JĪVITA), and (7) attention, viz., the advertence of the mind toward an object (P. manasikAra; S. MANASKARA). The SARVASTIVADA ABHIDHARMA instead divides all dharmas into five groups: mind (citta), mental concomitants (caitta), materiality (rupa), forces dissociated from thought (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKARA), and the unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA). In this system, ten specific factors are said universally to accompany all conscious activity and are therefore called "factors of wide extent" or "omnipresent mental factors" (MAHABHuMIKA): (1) sensation (vedanA); (2) volition (cetanA); (3) perception (saMjNA); (4) zeal or "desire-to-act" (CHANDA) (5) sensory contact (sparsa); (6) discernment (mati); (7) mindfulness (SMṚTI); (8) attention (manaskAra); (9) determination (ADHIMOKsA); (10) concentration (samAdhi). According to the system set forth by ASAnGA in his ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, this list is divided into two sets of five: the five omnipresent (SARVATRAGA) mental factors (vedanA, saMjNA, cetanA, sparsa, and manaskAra) and the five determining (pratiniyama) mental factors (chanda, adhimoksa, smṛti, samAdhi, and prajNA). ¶ In the experience of enlightenment (BODHI), the citta is said to be "freed" from the "point of view" that is the self (ATMAN). The citta is then no longer subject to the limitations perpetuated by ignorance (AVIDYA) and craving (TṚsnA) and thus becomes nonmanifesting (because there is no longer any projection of ego into the perceptual process), infinite (because the mind is no longer subject to the limitations of conceptualization), and lustrous (because the ignorance that dulls the mind has been vanquished forever). Scriptural statements attest to this inherent luminosity of the citta, which may be revealed through practice and manifested in enlightenment. For example, in the PAli AnGUTTARANIKAYA, the Buddha says, "the mind, O monks, is luminous" (P. pabhassaraM idaM bhikkhave cittaM). Such statements are the strands from which the MahAyAna subsequently derives such concepts as the inherent quality of buddhahood (BUDDHADHATU; C. FOXING) or the embryo of the TATHAGATAs (TATHAGATAGARBHA) that is said to be innate in the mind.
cittavisuddhi. (S. cittavisuddhi). In PAli, "purity of mind"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the second of seven "purities" (VISUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. Purity of mind refers to the eight meditative absorptions (P. JHANA; S. DHYANA) or attainments (SAMAPATTI) belonging to the subtle-materiality realm (rupAvacara) and the immaterial realm (ArupyAvacara). Meditative absorption belonging to the subtle-materiality realm (P. rupAvacarajhAna; S. RuPAVACARADHYANA) is subdivided into four stages, each of which is characterized by an increasing attenuation of consciousness as the meditator progresses from one stage to the next. Meditative absorption belonging to the immaterial realm (P. arupAvacarajhAna; S. ARuPYAVACARADHYANA) is likewise subdivided into four stages, but in this case it is the object of meditation that becomes attenuated from one stage to the next. In the first immaterial absorption, the meditator sets aside the perception of materiality and abides in the sphere of infinite space (P. AkAsAnaNcAyatana; S. AKAsANANTYAYATANA). In the second immaterial absorption, the meditator sets aside the perception of infinite space and abides in the sphere of infinite consciousness (P. viNNanaNcAyatana; S. VIJNANANANTYAYATANA). In the third immaterial absorption, the meditator sets aside the perception of infinite consciousness and abides in the sphere of nothingness (P. AkiNcaNNAyatana; S. AKINCANYAYATANA). In the fourth immaterial absorption, the meditator sets aside the perception of nothingness and abides in the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception (P. nevasaNNAnAsaNNAyatana; S. NAIVASAMJNANASAMJNAYATANA). To this list of eight absorptions is added "access" or "neighborhood" "concentration" (P. UPACARASAMADHI), which is the degree of concentration present in the mind of the meditator just prior to entering any of the four jhAnas.
Compliance Monitoring ::: Collection and evaluation of data, including self monitoring reports, and verification to show whether pollutant concentrations and loads contained in permitted discharges are in compliance with the limits and conditions specified in the permit.
concentration ::: “Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.” Letters on Yoga
concentration ::: "concentration means gathering of the consciousness into one centre and fixing it in one object or in one idea or in one condition." [S25:391]
CONCENTRATION ::: Fixing the consciousness in one place or on one object and in a single condition.
A gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g. the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point.
Concentration is necessary, first to turn the whole will and mind from the discursive divagation natural to them, following a dispersed movement of the thoughts, running after many-branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to phenomena; we have to fix the will and the thought on the eternal and real behind all, and this demands an immense effort, a one-pointed concentration. Secondly, it is necessary in order to break down the veil which is erected by our ordinary mentality between ourselves and the truth; for outer knowledge can be picked up by the way, by ordinary attention and reception, but the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind on its object, an absolute concentration of the will to attain it and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it.
Centre of Concentration: The two main places where one can centre the consciousness for yoga are in the head and in the heart - the mind-centre and the soul-centre.
Brain concentration is always a tapasyā and necessarily brings a strain. It is only if one is lifted out of the brain mind altogether that the strain of mental concentration disappears.
At the top of the head or above it is the right place for yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
In whatever centre the concentration takes place, the yoga force generated extends to the others and produces concentration or workings there.
Modes of Concentration: There is no harm in concentrating sometimes in the heart and sometimes above the head. But concentration in either place does not mean keeping the attention fixed on a particular spot; you have to take your station of consciousness in either place and concentrate there not on the place, but on the Divine. This can be done with eyes shut or with eyes open, according as it best suits.
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.
There is no method in this yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force to transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be.
Powers (three) of Concentration ::: By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself we can become whatever we choose ; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fears, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love ; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object.
Stages in Concentration (Rajayogic) ::: that in which the object is seized, that in which it is held, that in which the mind is lost in the status which the object represents or to which the concentration leads.
Concentration and Meditation ::: Concentration means fixing the consciousness in one place or one object and in a single condition Meditation can be diffusive,e.g. thinking about the Divine, receiving impressions and discriminating, watching what goes on in the nature and acting upon it etc. Meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
vide Dhyāna.
concentration ::: n. --> The act or process of concentrating; the process of becoming concentrated, or the state of being concentrated; concentration.
The act or process of reducing the volume of a liquid, as by evaporation.
The act or process of removing the dress of ore and of reducing the valuable part to smaller compass, as by currents of air or water.
CONCENTRATION See ACTIVATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS, SYSTEMATIC
concentration ("s) ::: exclusive attention to one object; close mental application.
concentrative ::: a. --> Serving or tending to concentrate; characterized by concentration.
condensation ::: n. --> The act or process of condensing or of being condensed; the state of being condensed.
The act or process of reducing, by depression of temperature or increase of pressure, etc., to another and denser form, as gas to the condition of a liquid or steam to water.
A rearrangement or concentration of the different constituents of one or more substances into a distinct and definite compound of greater complexity and molecular weight, often resulting in
Conditions essfntitd for meditation ::: There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seclusion at the time of meditation as as stillness of the body arc helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginner. Bui one should not bound b' external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be mads possible to do it in all circumstances, l.ving. sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silettce or in the midst of noise etc. The first imeroal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation. i.e. wandermg of the mind, forgetfulness, sfeep, phjsieal and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. The second is an increasing purity and calm of the inner consciousness (citia) out of which thought and emotion arise, i.e. a freedom frona all disturb i ng reactions, such as anger, grief, depression, anxiet>' about w-orldly happenings etc. Mental perfection and moral are always closely allied to each other.
Consciousness, Field of: The sum-total of items embraced within an individual's consciousness at any given moment. The total field consists of (a) the focus, where the concentration of attention is maximal and (b) a margin, periphery or fringe of a diminishing degree of attention which gradually fades to zero. -- L.W.
Contemplation ::: Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 293
corradiation ::: n. --> A conjunction or concentration of rays in one point.
correct concentration. See SAMYAKSAMADHI.
Criteria ::: Descriptive factors taken into account by EPA in setting standards for various pollutants. These factors are used to determine limits on allowable concentration levels, and to limit the number of violations per year. When issued by EPA, the criteria provide guidance to the states on how to establish their standards.
Cudapanthaka. (P. Culapanthaka/Cullapantha; T. Lam phran bstan; C. Zhutubantuojia; J. Chudahantaka; K. Chudobant'akka 注荼半托迦). An eminent ARHAT declared in PAli sources as foremost among the Buddha's disciples in his ability to create mind-made bodies (MANOMAYAKAYA) and to manipulate mind (cittavivatta). Cudapanthaka was the younger of two brothers born to a merchant's daughter from RAJAGṚHA who had eloped with a slave. Each time she became pregnant, she wanted to return home to give birth to her children, but both were born during her journey home. For this reason, the brothers were named "Greater" Roadside (MahApanthaka; see PANTHAKA) and "Lesser" Roadside. The boys were eventually taken to RAjagṛha and raised by their grandparents, who were devoted to the Buddha. The elder brother Panthaka often accompanied his grandfather to listen to the Buddha's sermons and was inspired to be ordained. He proved to be an able monk, skilled in doctrine, and eventually attained arhatship. He later ordained his younger brother Cudapanthaka but was gravely disappointed in his brother's inability to memorize even a single verse of the dharma. Panthaka was so disappointed that he advised his brother to leave the order, much to the latter's distress. Once, the Buddha's physician JĪVAKA invited the Buddha and his monks to a morning meal. Panthaka gathered the monks together on the appointed day to attend the meal but intentionally omitted Cudapanthaka. So hurt was Cudapanthaka by his brother's contempt that he decided to return to lay life. The Buddha, knowing his mental state, comforted the young monk and taught him a simple exercise: he instructed him to sit facing east and, while repeating the phrase "rajoharanaM" ("cleaning off the dirt"), continue to wipe his face with a clean cloth. As Cudapanthaka noticed the cloth getting dirty from wiping off his sweat, he gained insight into the reality of impermanence (ANITYA) and immediately attained arhatship and was equipped with the four analytical knowledges (PRATISAMVID), including knowledge of the entire canon (TRIPItAKA). (According to other versions of the story, he came to a similar realization through sweeping.) Thereafter Cudapanthaka became renowned for his vast learning, as well as for his supranormal powers. He was a master of meditative concentration (SAMADHI) and of the subtle-materiality absorptions (RuPAVACARADHYANA). He could simultaneously create a thousand unique mind-made bodies (MANOMAYAKAYA), while other meditative specialists in the order could at best produce only two or three. ¶ Cudapanthaka is also traditionally listed as the last of the sixteen arhat elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Cudapanthaka sits among withered trees, his left hand raised with fingers slightly bent, and his right hand resting on his right thigh, holding a fan.
Culavedallasutta. (C. Fale biqiuni jing; J. Horaku bikunikyo; K. Pomnak piguni kyong 法樂比丘尼經). In PAli, "Shorter Discourse on Points of Doctrine"; the forty-fourth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension appears as the 210th sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA; the entire discourse is also subsumed in the Tibetan translation of samathadeva's commentary to the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA), expounded by the nun DhammadinnA (S. DHARMADINNA) to her former husband, the householder VisAkha, at the Veluvana (S. VEnUVANAVIHARA) bamboo grove in RAjagaha (S. RAJAGṚHA). VisAkha approached DhammadinnA and questioned her concerning a number of points of doctrine preached by the Buddha. These questions included: what is the nature of this existing body (P. sakkAya; S. satkAya); what is its origin (SAMUDAYA), its cessation (NIRODHA), and the path (P. magga; S. MARGA) leading to its cessation; how does wrong view concerning this body (P. sakkAyaditthi; S. SATKAYADṚstI) arise and how is it removed; what is the noble eightfold path; what is concentration (SAMADHI); what are bodily, verbal, and mental formations; what is the attainment of cessation (nirodha); what is sensation (VEDANA); what are the underlying tendencies with regard to pleasant, painful, and neutral sensations and how should these be overcome; and what are the counterparts of pleasant, painful, and neutral sensations. DhammadinnA answered all of the questions put to her to the satisfaction of the householder VisAkha-proving why the Buddha considered her foremost among his nun disciples in the gift of preaching.
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dasabhumi. (T. sa bcu; C. shidi; J. juji; K. sipchi 十地). In Sanskrit, lit., "ten grounds," "ten stages"; the ten highest reaches of the bodhisattva path (MARGA) leading to buddhahood. The most systematic and methodical presentation of the ten BHuMIs appears in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA ("Ten Bhumis Sutra"), where each of the ten stages is correlated with seminal doctrines of mainstream Buddhism-such as the four means of conversion (SAMGRAHAVASTU) on the first four bhumis, the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (CATVARY ARYASATYANI) on the fifth bhumi, and the chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) on the sixth bhumi, etc.-as well as with mastery of one of a list of ten perfections (PARAMITA) completed in the course of training as a bodhisattva. The list of the ten bhumis of the Dasabhumikasutra, which becomes standard in most MahAyAna traditions, is as follows: (1) PRAMUDITA (joyful) corresponds to the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA) and the bodhisattva's first direct realization of emptiness (suNYATA). The bodhisattva masters on this bhumi the perfection of giving (DANAPARAMITA), learning to give away those things most precious to him, including his wealth, his wife and family, and even his body (see DEHADANA); (2) VIMALA (immaculate, stainless) marks the inception of the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA), where the bodhisattva develops all the superlative traits of character incumbent on a buddha through mastering the perfection of morality (sĪLAPARAMITA); (3) PRABHAKARĪ (luminous, splendrous), where the bodhisattva masters all the various types of meditative experiences, such as DHYANA, SAMAPATTI, and the BRAHMAVIHARA; despite the emphasis on meditation in this bhumi, it comes to be identified instead with the perfection of patience (KsANTIPARAMITA), ostensibly because the bodhisattva is willing to endure any and all suffering in order to master his practices; (4) ARCIsMATĪ (radiance, effulgence), where the flaming radiance of the thirty-seven factors pertaining to enlightenment (BODHIPAKsIKADHARMA) becomes so intense that it incinerates obstructions (AVARAnA) and afflictions (KLEsA), giving the bodhisattva inexhaustible energy in his quest for enlightenment and thus mastering the perfection of vigor or energy (VĪRYAPARAMITA); (5) SUDURJAYA (invincibility, hard-to-conquer), where the bodhisattva comprehends the various permutations of truth (SATYA), including the four noble truths, the two truths (SATYADVAYA) of provisional (NEYARTHA) and absolute (NĪTARTHA), and masters the perfection of meditative absorption (DHYANAPARAMITA); (6) ABHIMUKHĪ (immediacy, face-to-face), where, as the name implies, the bodhisattva stands at the intersection between SAMSARA and NIRVAnA, turning away from the compounded dharmas of saMsAra and turning to face the profound wisdom of the buddhas, thus placing him "face-to-face" with both the compounded (SAMSKṚTA) and uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA) realms; this bhumi is correlated with mastery of the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNAPARAMITA); (7) DuRAnGAMA (far-reaching, transcendent), which marks the bodhisattva's freedom from the four perverted views (VIPARYASA) and his mastery of the perfection of expedients (UPAYAPARAMITA), which he uses to help infinite numbers of sentient beings; (8) ACALA (immovable, steadfast), which is marked by the bodhisattva's acquiescence or receptivity to the nonproduction of dharmas (ANUTPATTIKADHARMAKsANTI); because he is now able to project transformation bodies (NIRMAnAKAYA) anywhere in the universe to help sentient beings, this bhumi is correlated with mastery of the perfection of aspiration or resolve (PRAnIDHANAPARAMITA); (9) SADHUMATĪ (eminence, auspicious intellect), where the bodhisattva acquires the four analytical knowledges (PRATISAMVID), removing any remaining delusions regarding the use of the supernatural knowledges or powers (ABHIJNA), and giving the bodhisattva complete autonomy in manipulating all dharmas through the perfection of power (BALAPARAMITA); and (10) DHARMAMEGHA (cloud of dharma), the final bhumi, where the bodhisattva becomes autonomous in interacting with all material and mental factors, and gains all-pervasive knowledge that is like a cloud producing a rain of dharma that nurtures the entire world; this stage is also described as being pervaded by meditative absorption (DHYANA) and mastery of the use of codes (DHARAnĪ), just as the sky is filled by clouds; here the bodhisattva achieves the perfection of knowledge (JNANAPARAMITA). As the bodhisattva ascends through the ten bhumis, he acquires extraordinary powers, which CANDRAKĪRTI describes in the eleventh chapter of his MADHYAMAKAVATARA. On the first bhumi, the bodhisattva can, in a single instant (1) see one hundred buddhas, (2) be blessed by one hundred buddhas and understand their blessings, (3) live for one hundred eons, (4) see the past and future in those one hundred eons, (5) enter into and rise from one hundred SAMADHIs, (6) vibrate one hundred worlds, (7) illuminate one hundred worlds, (8) bring one hundred beings to spiritual maturity using emanations, (9) go to one hundred BUDDHAKsETRA, (10), open one hundred doors of the doctrine (DHARMAPARYAYA), (11) display one hundred versions of his body, and (12) surround each of those bodies with one hundred bodhisattvas. The number one hundred increases exponentially as the bodhisattva proceeds; on the second bhumi it becomes one thousand, on the third one hundred thousand, and so on; on the tenth, it is a number equal to the particles of an inexpressible number of buddhaksetra. As the bodhisattva moves from stage to stage, he is reborn as the king of greater and greater realms, ascending through the Buddhist cosmos. Thus, on the first bhumi he is born as king of JAMBUDVĪPA, on the second of the four continents, on the third as the king of TRAYATRIMsA, and so on, such that on the tenth he is born as the lord of AKANIstHA. ¶ According to the rather more elaborate account in chapter eleven of the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimAtratAsiddhi), each of the ten bhumis is correlated with the attainment of one of the ten types of suchness (TATHATA); these are accomplished by discarding one of the ten kinds of obstructions (Avarana) by mastering one of the ten perfections (pAramitA). The suchnesses achieved on each of the ten bhumis are, respectively: (1) universal suchness (sarvatragatathatA; C. bianxing zhenru), (2) supreme suchness (paramatathatA; C. zuisheng zhenru), (3) ubiquitous, or "supreme outflow" suchness (paramanisyandatathatA; C. shengliu zhenru), (4) unappropriated suchness (aparigrahatathatA; C. wusheshou zhenru), (5) undifferentiated suchness (abhinnajAtīyatathatA; C. wubie zhenru), (6) the suchness that is devoid of maculations and contaminants (asaMklistAvyavadAtatathatA; C. wuranjing zhenru), (7) the suchness of the undifferentiated dharma (abhinnatathatA; C. fawubie zhenru), (8) the suchness that neither increases nor decreases (anupacayApacayatathatA; C. buzengjian), (9) the suchness that serves as the support of the mastery of wisdom (jNAnavasitAsaMnisrayatathatA; C. zhizizai suoyi zhenru), and (10) the suchness that serves as the support for mastery over actions (kriyAdivasitAsaMnisrayatathatA; C. yezizai dengsuoyi). These ten suchnessses are obtained by discarding, respectively: (1) the obstruction of the common illusions of the unenlightened (pṛthagjanatvAvarana; C. yishengxing zhang), (2) the obstruction of the deluded (mithyApratipattyAvarana; C. xiexing zhang), (3) the obstruction of dullness (dhandhatvAvarana; C. andun zhang), (4) the obstruction of the manifestation of subtle afflictions (suksmaklesasamudAcArAvarana; C. xihuo xianxing zhang), (5) the obstruction of the lesser HĪNAYANA ideal of parinirvAna (hīnayAnaparinirvAnAvarana; C. xiasheng niepan zhang), (6) the obstruction of the manifestation of coarse characteristics (sthulanimittasamudAcArAvarana; C. cuxiang xianxing zhang), (7) the obstruction of the manifestation of subtle characteristics (suksmanimittasamudAcArAvarana; C. xixiang xianxing zhang), (8) the obstruction of the continuance of activity even in the immaterial realm that is free from characteristics (nirnimittAbhisaMskArAvarana; C. wuxiang jiaxing zhang), (9) the obstruction of not desiring to act on behalf of others' salvation (parahitacaryAkAmanAvarana; C. buyuxing zhang), and (10) the obstruction of not yet acquiring mastery over all things (fa weizizai zhang). These ten obstructions are overcome by practicing, respectively: (1) the perfection of giving (dAnapAramitA), (2) the perfection of morality (sīlapAramitA), (3) the perfection of forbearance (ksAntipAramitA), (4) the perfection of energetic effort (vīryapAramitA), (5) the perfection of meditation (dhyAnapAramitA), (6) the perfection of wisdom (prajNApAramitA), (7) the perfection of expedient means (upAyapAramitA), (8) the perfection of the vow (to attain enlightenment) (pranidhAnapAramitA), (9) the perfection of power (balapAramitA), and (10) the perfection of knowledge (jNAnapAramitA). ¶ The eighth, ninth, and tenth bhumis are sometimes called "pure bhumis," because, according to some commentators, upon reaching the eighth bhumi, the bodhisattva has abandoned all of the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and is thus liberated from any further rebirth. It appears that there were originally only seven bhumis, as is found in the BODHISATTVABHuMI, where the seven bhumis overlap with an elaborate system of thirteen abidings or stations (vihAra), some of the names of which (such as pramuditA) appear also in the standard bhumi schema of the Dasabhumikasutra. Similarly, though a listing of ten bhumis appears in the MAHAVASTU, a text associated with the LOKOTTARAVADA subsect of the MAHASAMGHIKA school, only seven are actually discussed there, and the names given to the stages are completely different from those found in the later Dasabhumikasutra; the stages there are also a retrospective account of how past buddhas have achieved enlightenment, rather than a prescription for future practice. ¶ The dasabhumi schema is sometimes correlated with other systems of classifying the bodhisattva path. In the five levels of the YogAcAra school's outline of the bodhisattva path (PANCAMARGA; C. wuwei), the first bhumi (pramuditA) is presumed to be equivalent to the level of proficiency (*prativedhAvasthA; C. tongdawei), the third of the five levels; while the second bhumi onward corresponds to the level of cultivation (C. xiuxiwei), the fourth of the five levels. The first bhumi is also correlated with the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA), while the second and higher bhumis correlate with the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). In terms of the doctrine of the five acquiescences (C. ren; S. ksAnti) listed in the RENWANG JING, the first through the third bhumis are equivalent to the second acquiescence, the acquiescence of belief (C. xinren; J. shinnin; K. sinin); the fourth through the sixth stages to the third, the acquiescence of obedience (C. shunren; J. junnin; K. sunin); the seventh through the ninth stages to the fourth, the acquiescence to the nonproduction of dharmas (anutpattikadharmaksAnti; C. wushengren; J. mushonin; K. musaengin); the tenth stage to the fifth and final acquiescence, to extinction (jimieren; J. jakumetsunin; K. chongmyorin). FAZANG's HUAYANJING TANXUAN JI ("Notes Plumbing the Profundities of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA") classifies the ten bhumis in terms of practice by correlating the first bhumi to the practice of faith (sRADDHA), the second bhumi to the practice of morality (sĪLA), the third bhumi to the practice of concentration (SAMADHI), and the fourth bhumi and higher to the practice of wisdom (PRAJNA). In the same text, Fazang also classifies the bhumis in terms of vehicle (YANA) by correlating the first through third bhumis with the vehicle of humans and gods (rentiansheng), the fourth through the seventh stage to the three vehicles (TRIYANA), and the eighth through tenth bhumis to the one vehicle (EKAYANA). ¶ Besides the list of the dasabhumi outlined in the Dasabhumikasutra, the MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA and the DAZHIDU LUN (*MahAprajNApAramitAsAstra) list a set of ten bhumis, called the "bhumis in common" (gongdi), which are shared between all the three vehicles of sRAVAKAs, PRATYEKABUDDHAs, and bodhisattvas. These are the bhumis of: (1) dry wisdom (suklavidarsanAbhumi; C. ganhuidi), which corresponds to the level of three worthies (sanxianwei, viz., ten abidings, ten practices, ten transferences) in the srAvaka vehicle and the initial arousal of the thought of enlightenment (prathamacittotpAda) in the bodhisattva vehicle; (2) lineage (gotrabhumi; C. xingdi, zhongxingdi), which corresponds to the stage of the "aids to penetration" (NIRVEDHABHAGĪYA) in the srAvaka vehicle, and the final stage of the ten transferences in the fifty-two bodhisattva stages; (3) eight acquiescences (astamakabhumi; C. barendi), the causal incipiency of stream-enterer (SROTAAPANNA) in the case of the srAvaka vehicle and the acquiescence to the nonproduction of dharmas (anutpattikadharmaksAnti) in the bodhisattva path (usually corresponding to the first or the seventh through ninth bhumis of the bodhisattva path); (4) vision (darsanabhumi; C. jiandi), corresponding to the fruition or fulfillment (PHALA) level of the stream-enterer in the srAvaka vehicle and the stage of nonretrogression (AVAIVARTIKA), in the bodhisattva path (usually corresponding to the completion of the first or the eighth bhumi); (5) diminishment (tanubhumi; C. baodi), corresponding to the fulfillment level (phala) of stream-enterer or the causal incipiency of the once-returner (sakṛdAgAmin) in the srAvaka vehicle, or to the stage following nonretrogression before the attainment of buddhahood in the bodhisattva path; (6) freedom from desire (vītarAgabhumi; C. liyudi), equivalent to the fulfillment level of the nonreturner in the srAvaka vehicle, or to the stage where a bodhisattva attains the five supernatural powers (ABHIJNA); (7) complete discrimination (kṛtAvibhumi), equivalent to the fulfillment level of the ARHAT in the srAvaka vehicle, or to the stage of buddhahood (buddhabhumi) in the bodhisattva path (buddhabhumi) here refers not to the fruition of buddhahood but merely to the state in which a bodhisattva has the ability to exhibit the eighteen qualities distinctive to the buddhas (AVEnIKA[BUDDHA]DHARMA); (8) pratyekabuddha (pratyekabuddhabhumi); (9) bodhisattva (bodhisattvabhumi), the whole bodhisattva career prior to the fruition of buddhahood; (10) buddhahood (buddhabhumi), the stage of the fruition of buddhahood, when the buddha is completely equipped with all the buddhadharmas, such as omniscience (SARVAKARAJNATĀ). As is obvious in this schema, despite being called the bhumis "common" to all three vehicles, the shared stages continue only up to the seventh stage; the eighth through tenth stages are exclusive to the bodhisattva vehicle. This anomaly suggests that the last three bhumis of the bodhisattvayāna were added to an earlier srāvakayāna seven-bhumi scheme. ¶ The presentation of the bhumis in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ commentarial tradition following the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA uses the names found in the Dasabhumikasutra for the bhumis and understands them all as bodhisattva levels; it introduces the names of the ten bhumis found in the Dazhidu lun as levels that bodhisattvas have to pass beyond (S. atikrama) on the tenth bodhisattva level, which it calls the buddhabhumi. This tenth bodhisattva level is not the level of an actual buddha, but the level on which a bodhisattva has to transcend attachment (abhinivesa) to not only the levels reached by the four sets of noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA) but to the bodhisattvabhumis as well. See also BHuMI.
David-Néel, Alexandra. (1868-1969). A famous traveler to Tibet. Born Alexandra David to a bourgeois family in Paris, she was educated in a Calvinist convent before studying Indian and Chinese philosophy at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. In 1888, she traveled to London, where she became interested in Theosophy. In 1891, she journeyed to Ceylon and India (where she studied Vedānta) and traveled as far as Sikkim over eighteen months. Upon returning to France, she began a career as a singer and eventually was offered the position of female lead in the Hanoi Opera. Some years later, in Tunis, she met and married a railroad engineer, Philippe Néel, who insisted that she retire from the stage. She agreed to do so if he would finance a one-year trip to India for her. He ended up not seeing his wife again for another fourteen years. David-Néel became friends with THOMAS and CAROLINE RHYS DAVIDS in London, leading scholars of THERAVĀDA Buddhism, and corresponded with the ZEN scholar DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI, before publishing her first book on Buddhism in 1911, entitled, Le modernisme bouddhiste et le bouddhisme du Bouddha. She continued to Sikkim, where she met the thirteenth DALAI LAMA in Darjeeling in 1912, while he was briefly in residence there after fleeing a Chinese invasion of Tibet. David-Néel spent two years in retreat receiving instructions from a RNYING MA hermit-lama. In 1916, the British expelled her from Sikkim, so she traveled to Japan, where she was the guest of D. T. Suzuki. From there she went to China, traveling west in the company of a young Sikkimese monk named Yongden. Disguised as a pilgrim, she arrived in LHA SA in 1924, presumably the first European woman to reach the Tibetan capital. She returned to France as a celebrity the following year. She published the best-selling book My Journey to Lhasa, followed by a succession of books based on her travels in Tibet and her study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. She built a home in Digne, which she named Samten Dzong, "Fortress of Concentration." David-Néel made one final trip to Asia as World War II began, but spent the rest of her life writing in Digne, where she died at the age of one hundred.
decentralize ::: v. t. --> To prevent from centralizing; to cause to withdraw from the center or place of concentration; to divide and distribute (what has been united or concentrated); -- esp. said of authority, or the administration of public affairs.
deconcentrate ::: v. t. --> To withdraw from concentration; to decentralize.
deconcentration ::: n. --> Act of deconcentrating.
dephlegmation ::: n. --> The operation of separating water from spirits and acids, by evaporation or repeated distillation; -- called also concentration, especially when acids are the subject of it.
dharana. ::: concentration; one-pointedness of mind; the sixth of the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga
DHARANA. ::: Holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities.
Dharana (Sanskrit) Dhāraṇā [from the verbal root dhṛ to hold, carry, maintain, resolve] Intense concentration of the mind when directed to “some one interior object, accompanied by complete abstraction from everything pertaining to the external Universe, or the world of the Senses” (VS 73). It is the sixth stage of spiritual yoga, the effort to unite the human with the divine within, in which training “every sense as an individual faculty has to be ‘killed’ (or paralyzed) on this plane, passing into and merging with the Seventh sense, the most spiritual” (VS 78-9).
dharmameghā. (T. chos kyi sprin; C. fayun di; J. hounji; K. pobun chi 法雲地). In Sanskrit, "cloud of dharma," the tenth and final "ground" or stage (BHuMI) of the BODHISATTVA path, just prior to the attainment of buddhahood. On the dharmameghā bhumi, the bodhisattva is at the point of attaining the dharma-body (DHARMAKĀYA) that is as vast as the sky, becomes autonomous in interacting with all material and mental factors, and gains all-pervasive knowledge, which causes the excellent dharma to fall like rain from a cloud, nurturing the entire world and increasing the harvest of virtue for sentient beings. This stage is also described as being pervaded by meditative absorption (DHYĀNA) and mastery of the use of DHĀRAnĪ, just as the sky is filled with clouds. According to the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhisāstra; chap. 11), each of the ten stages of the bodhisattva path leads to the attainment of one of the ten types of suchness (TATHATĀ); these are accomplished by discarding one of the ten kinds of obstructions (ĀVARAnA) through practicing one of the ten perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). In the case of the dharmameghā bhumi, the obstruction of not yet acquiring mastery over all dharmas (fa wei zizai zhang) is removed through the perfection of knowledge (JNĀNAPĀRAMITĀ), leading to the suchness that serves as the support for mastery over action (ye zizai deng suoyi zhenru; *kriyādivasitāsaMnisrayatathatā) and the ability of the bodhisattva to ripen the minds of sentient beings. The tenth stage thus removes any remaining delusions regarding the use of the supernatural knowledges or powers (ABHIJNĀ) or the subtle mysteries, giving the bodhisattva complete autonomy in manipulating all dharmas. As the culminating stage of the "path of cultivation" (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), the dharmameghā bhumi still contains the last and most subtle remnants of the cognitive obstructions (JNEYĀVARAnA). These obstructions will be completely eradicated through the adamantine-like concentration (VAJROPAMASAMĀDHI), which marks the transition to the "ultimate path" (NIstHĀMĀRGA), or "path where no further training is necessary" (AsAIKsAMĀRGA), i.e., an eleventh stage of the buddhas (TATHĀGATABHuMI) that is sometimes also known as the "universally luminous" (samantaprabhā).
dharmānusārin. (P. dhammānusāri; T. chos kyi rjes su 'brang ba; C. suifaxing; J. zuihogyo; K. subophaeng 隨法行). In Sanskrit, "follower of the dharma," one who arrives at a realization of the dharma or truth through his or her own analysis of the teachings; contrasted with "follower of faith" (sRADDHĀNUSĀRIN) whose religious experience is grounded in the faith or confidence in what others tell him about the dharma. The SARVĀSTIVĀDA (e.g., as described in the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA) and THERAVĀDA (e.g., VISUDDHIMAGGA) schools of mainstream Buddhism both recognize seven types of noble ones (ĀRYA, P. ariya), listed in order of their intellectual superiority: (1) follower of faith (S. sraddhānusārin; P. saddhānusāri); (2) follower of the dharma (S. dharmānusārin; P. dhammānusāri); (3) one who is freed by faith (S. sRADDHĀVIMUKTA; P. saddhāvimutta); (4) one who has formed right view (S. DṚstIPRĀPTA; P. ditthippatta), by developing both faith and wisdom; (5) one who has bodily testimony (S. KĀYASĀKsIN; P. kāyasakkhi), viz., through the temporary suspension of mentality in the absorption of cessation (NIRODHASAMĀPATTI); (6) one who is freed by wisdom (S. PRAJNĀVIMUKTA; P. paNNāvimutta), by freeing oneself through analysis; and (7) one who is freed both ways (S. UBHAYATOBHĀGAVIMUKTA; P. ubhatobhāgavimutta), by freeing oneself through both meditative absorption and wisdom. According to the Sarvāstivāda VAIBHĀsIKA school of ABHIDHARMA, an ARHAT whose liberation is grounded in faith may be subject to backsliding from that state, whereas those who are dharmānusārin are unshakable (AKOPYA), because they have experienced the knowledge of nonproduction (ANUTPĀDAJNĀNA), viz., that the afflictions (klesa) can never occur again, the complement of the knowledge of extinction (KsAYAJNĀNA). ¶ The Theravāda school, which does not accept this dynamic interpretation of an arhat's spiritual experience, develops a rather different interpretation of these types of individuals. BUDDHAGHOSA explains in his VISUDDHIMAGGA that one who develops faith by contemplating the impermanent nature of things is a follower of faith at the moment of becoming a stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA) and is one who is freed by faith at the subsequent moments of the fruition of the path; one who is tranquil and develops concentration by contemplating the impermanent nature of things is one who has bodily testimony at all moments; one who develops the immaterial meditative absorptions (arupajhāna; S. ARuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) is one freed both ways; one who develops wisdom is one who follows the dharma (dhammānusāri) at the moment of entry into the rank of stream-enterer and is one who has formed right view at the subsequent moments of path entry. When one achieves highest spiritual attainment, one is called freed by wisdom. In another classification of six individuals found in the Pāli CulAGOPĀLAKASUTTA, dhammānusāri is given as the fifth type, the other five being the worthy one (arahant; S. ARHAT), nonreturner (anāgāmi; S. ANĀGĀMIN), once-returner (sakadāgāmi; S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. srotaāpanna), and follower of faith (saddhānusāri). The IndriyasaMyutta in the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA also mentions these same six individuals and explains their differences in terms of their development of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA): faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. An arahant has matured the five faculties; a nonreturner has all five faculties, but they are slightly less developed than in the arahant; a once-returner is slightly less developed than a nonreturner; a stream-enterer slightly less than a once-returner; a dhammānusāri slightly less than a stream-enterer; and a saddhānusāri slightly less than a dhammānusāri. The saddhāvimutta and dhammānusāri are also distinguished depending on when they reach higher spiritual attainment: one who is following faith at the moment of accessing the path (maggakkhana) is called saddhāvimutta, one liberated through faith; the other, who is following wisdom, is called dhammānusāri, one who is liberated by wisdom at the moment of attainment (phalakkhana). ¶ The dharmānusārin is also found in the list of the members of the saMgha when it is subdivided into twenty (VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA). Among the dharmānusārin there are candidates for the fruit of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNAPRATIPANNAKA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIPRATIPANNAKA), and nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIPRATIPANNAKA). The Mahāyāna carries over the division of dharmānusārin and sraddhānusārin into its discussion of the path to enlightenment. The PANCAVIMsATISĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ takes the seven types of noble ones (ārya) listed in order of intellectual superiority, and the eight noble beings (stream-enterer and so on) as examples for bodhisattvas at different stages of the path; the dharmānusārin more quickly reaches the AVAIVARTIKA (irreversible) stage, the sraddhānusārin more slowly, based on the development of wisdom (PRAJNĀ) that has forbearance for the absence of any ultimately existing goal to be reached, and skillful means (UPĀYA) that places pride of place on the welfare of others (PARĀRTHA).
dharmaprīti. (P. dhammapīti; T. chos la dga' ba; C. faxi; J. hoki; K. pophŭi 法喜). In Sanskrit, "joy of the dharma"; the uplifting feelings of joy or enthusiasm that derive from properly observing the precepts (i.e., to be morally "blameless" and thus harboring no regrets or shame) and from hearing, understanding, or practicing the dharma. Depending on its intensity, this joy may manifest itself in several different ways, ranging from a radiant complexion, horripilation (the body hair standing on end), and goose bumps, to ecstatic physical levitation. In the context of meditative training, such joy is said to be conducive to the development of concentration (SAMĀDHI) and serenity (PRAsRABDHI).
DHYAI^A . Meditation ; contemplation ; inner concentration of the consciousness ; going inside in samadhi ; prolonged absorp- tion of the mind in the object of concentration.
dhyana ::: concentration..Dieu sorti de l"école
dhyana ::: meditation, contemplation; mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge.
dhyānapāramitā. (P. jhānapāramī; T. bsam gtan gyi pha rol tu phyin pa; C. jinglü boluomiduo; J. joryoharamita; K. chongnyo paramilta 靜慮波羅蜜多). In Sanskrit, the "perfection of meditative absorption" or "concentration"; the fifth of the six [alt. ten] perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) cultivated on the BODHISATTVA path. It is perfected on the fifth of the ten stages (DAsABHuMI) of the bodhisattva path, SUDURJAYĀ (invincibility), where the bodhisattva comprehends the various permutations of truth (SATYA), including the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, the provisional (NEYĀRTHA) and definitive (NĪTĀRTHA), etc., and masters infinite numbers of samādhis.
dhyāna. (P. jhāna; T. bsam gtan; C. chan/chanding; J. zen/zenjo; K. son/sonjong 禪/禪定). In Sanskrit, "meditative absorption," specific meditative practices during which the mind temporarily withdraws from external sensory awareness and remains completely absorbed in an ideational object of meditation. The term can refer both to the practice that leads to full absorption and to the state of full absorption itself. Dhyāna involves the power to control the mind and does not, in itself, entail any enduring insight into the nature of reality; however, a certain level of absorption is generally said to be necessary in order to prepare the mind for direct realization of truth, the destruction of the afflictions (KLEsA), and the attainment of liberation (VIMUKTI). Dhyāna is classified into two broad types: (1) meditative absorption associated with the realm of subtle materiality (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) and (2) meditative absorption of the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). Each of these two types is subdivided into four stages or degrees of absorption, giving a total of eight stages of dhyāna. The four absorptions of the realm of subtle materiality are characterized by an increasing attenuation of consciousness as one progresses from one stage to the next. The deepening of concentration leads the meditator temporarily to allay the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA) and to put in place the five constituents of absorption (DHYĀNĀnGA). The five hindrances are: (1) sensuous desire (KĀMACCHANDA), which hinders the constituent of one-pointedness of mind (EKĀGRATĀ); (2) malice (VYĀPĀDA), hindering physical rapture (PRĪTI); (3) sloth and torpor (STYĀNA-MIDDHA), hindering applied thought (VITARKA); (4) restlessness and worry (AUDDHATYA-KAUKṚTYA), hindering mental ease (SUKHA); and (5) skeptical doubt (VICIKITSĀ), hindering sustained thought (VICĀRA). These hindrances thus specifically obstruct one of the specific factors of absorption and, once they are allayed, the first level of the subtle-materiality dhyānas will be achieved. In the first dhyāna, all five constituents of dhyāna are present; as concentration deepens, these gradually fall away, so that in the second dhyāna, both types of thought vanish and only prīti, sukha, and ekāgratā remain; in the third dhyāna, only sukha and ekāgratā remain; and in the fourth dhyāna, concentration is now so rarified that only ekāgratā is left. Detailed correlations appear in meditation manuals describing specifically which of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA) and seven constituents of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA) serves as the antidote to which hindrance. Mastery of the fourth absorption of the realm of subtle materiality is required for the cultivation of the supranormal powers (ABHIJNĀ) and for the cultivation of the four ārupyāvacaradhyānas, or meditative absorptions of the immaterial realm. The immaterial absorptions themselves represent refinements of the fourth rupāvacaradhyāna, in which the "object" of meditation is gradually attenuated. The four immaterial absorptions instead are named after their respective objects: (1) the sphere of infinite space (ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA), (2) the sphere of infinite consciousness (VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA), (3) the sphere of nothingness (ĀKINCANYĀYATANA), and (4) the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception (NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJYYATANA). Mastery of the subtle-materiality realm absorptions can also result in rebirth as a divinity (DEVA) in the subtle-materiality realm, and mastery of the immaterial absorptions can lead to rebirth as a divinity in the immaterial realm (see ANINJYAKARMAN). Dhyāna occurs in numerous lists of the constituents of the path, appearing, for example, as the fifth of the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). The term CHAN (J. zen), the name adopted by an important school of indigenous East Asian Buddhism, is the Chinese phonetic transcription of the Sanskrit term dhyāna. See also JHĀNA; SAMĀDHI; SAMĀPATTI.
dhyānasamāpatti. [alt. samāpattidhyāna] (P. jhānasamāpatti; T. bsam gtan snyoms 'jug; C. xiude ding; J. shutokujo; K. sudŭk chong 修得定). In Sanskrit, "meditative absorption attained through cultivation"; one of the two types of meditative absorption, along with "innate meditative absorption" (DHYĀNOPAPATTI). Whereas "innate meditative absorption" is attained once one is reborn into the "field of meditative concentration" (dhyānabhumi), i.e., the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) or the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU), this "meditative absorption attained by cultivation" is the meditative state attained in the "field of distraction" (asamāhitatva) of the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU) through meditative practice. Rebirth into the subtle-materiality or immaterial realms is presumed to occur as the reward for having performed in the preceding lifetime cultivation of the subtle-material absorptions (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) or immaterial absorptions (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). The ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA and related MAHĀYĀNA accounts parse the compound dhyānasamāpatti as a dual compound (dvandva) and construe dhyāna as referring to the four levels of the dhyānas of the subtle-materiality realm and samāpatti to the four levels of dhyāna of the immaterial realm.
Dhyana ::: There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of Dhyana, "meditation" and "contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana; for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. There are other forms of dhyana. There is a passage in which Vivekananda advises you to stand back from your thoughts, let them occur in your mind as they will and simply observe them & see what they are. This may be called concentration in self-observation. This form leads to another, the emptying of all thought out of the mind so as to leave it a sort of pure vigilant blank on which the divine knowledge may come and imprint itself, undisturbed by the inferior thoughts of the ordinary human mind and with the clearness of a writing in white chalk on a blackboard. You will find that the Gita speaks of this rejection of all mental thought as one of the methods of Yoga and even the method it seems to prefer. This may be called the dhyana of liberation, as it frees the mind from slavery to the mechanical process of thinking and allows it to think or not think as it pleases and when it pleases, or to choose its own thoughts or else to go beyond thought to the pure perception of Truth called in our philosophy Vijnana. Meditation is the easiest process for the human mind, but the narrowest in its results; contemplation more difficult, but greater; self-observation and liberation from the chains of Thought the most difficult of all, but the widest and greatest in its fruits. One can choose any of them according to one’s bent and capacity. The perfect method is to use them all, each in its own place and for its own object.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 293-294
dhyānopapatti. (C. shengde ding; J. shotokujo; K. saengdŭk chong 生得定). In Sanskrit, "innate meditative absorption"; one of the two types of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA), along with "meditative absorption attained through cultivation" (DHYĀNASAMĀPATTI). The innate type of meditative absorption refers to the state of deep concentration that is possessed congenitally by a being who is born into either the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) or the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU). For this reason, the subtle-materiality and the immaterial realms are termed "fields of meditative concentration" (dhyānabhumi), while the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU) is the "field of distraction" (asamāhitatva).
Dhyānottarapatala. (T. Bsam gtan phyi ma rim par phye ba). In Sanskrit, the "Chapter on the Subsequent Stages of Concentration"; a brief work in seventy-four verses regarded as a chapter of the lost Vajrosnīsatantra. It also is related to the fifth chapter of the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA. The work, preserved only in Tibetan, is classified as a KRIYĀTANTRA, and provides instruction on MANTRA recitation and yogic breath practice (PRĀnĀYĀMA), which are to be undertaken subsequent to the practice of DHYĀNA. There is a detailed commentary on the text by BUDDHAGUHYA.
DKine above is the second way of concentration. It is impor- tant however, to remember that the concentration of the conscious- ness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre
Doppelganger (German) Double-goer; usually, a species of real phantom, seen before, after, or at the time of the death of an individual, and serving as a notification or warning of the death. In some cases the double seen is that of the seer himself, though this is not the true doppelganger. The doppelganger is most often the mayavi-rupa which can be seen at even immense distances from the individual whose presentation it is, yet the term doppelganger can likewise incorrectly be applied to the very occasional projections of the astral body which, however, can at no time wander far from its physical frame. The true doppelganger or mayavi-rupa, whether seen or unseen, falls into two classes, without counting the rare cases involving the linga-sarira mentioned above: the mayavi-rupa projected by hpho-wa, by will and with the consciousness of the ego; and the occasional automatic or involuntary projections of the mayavi-rupa due to intense concentration of the mind upon something or someone.
Dreams of physical mind and yogic dreams ; The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind-faculties disconnected from the will and reason, the bttddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the bram-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co-ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, wnlh brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear pos- session of itself, though not of the physical world, works cohe- rently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelli- gence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of communication with material things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflec- tion, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the distractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have their after-consequences on the waking state subsequent to the cessa- tion of the trance.
ego ::: [Madhav: “Ego is the point of concentration that involves us in the rounds of life.” The Book of the Divine Mother]
Eicke, Theodor ::: (1928-1943) Eicke joined the Nazi party and the SA in 1928. He transferred to the SS in 1930. Appointed commandant of Dachau in 1933, Eicke later became the inspector of concentration camps. He was known for his cruel treatment of prisoners and in 1939 he was given command of the Death's Head division of the Waffen-SS. He was killed on the eastern front on February 16, 1943.
eightfold path. (S. astāngamārga; P. atthangikamagga; T. lam yan lag brgyad; C. bazhengdao; J. hasshodo; K. p'alchongdo 八正道). One of the basic formulations of the Buddhist path (MĀRGA) to enlightenment, comprised of the following: (1) right views (SAMYAGDṚstI; P. sammāditthi), (2) right intention (SAMYAKSAMKALPA; P. sammāsankappa), (3) right speech (SAMYAGVĀC; P. sammāvācā), (4) right conduct (SAMYAKKARMĀNTA; P. sammākammanta), (5) right livelihood (SAMYAGĀJĪVA; P. sammājīva), (6) right effort (SAMYAGVYĀYĀMA; P. sammāvāyāma), (7) right mindfulness (SAMYAKSMṚTI; P. sammāsati), and (8) right concentration (SAMYAKSAMĀDHI; P. sammāsamādhi). For a full treatment of this formulation, see ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA s.v..
Eisenhower, Dwight D. ::: (1890-1969) American general and 34th president of the United States between 1953-61. In 1942 he was named U.S. Commander of the European Theater of Operations. He commanded the American landings in North Africa and in February 1943 became chief of all the Allied forces in North Africa. After successfully directing the invasions of Sicily and Italy, he was called to England to become chief commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. He was largely responsible for the cooperation of the Allied armies in the battle for the liberation of the European continent and was present when Nazi concentration camps were first liberated.
ekagrata. ::: one-pointedness of the mind; concentration; close attention
Ekagrata or Ekagratva(Sanskrit) ::: A term signifying "onepointedness" or "absolute intentness" in the mental contemplation of anobject of meditation. The perfect concentration of the percipient mind on a single point of thought, andthe holding of it there.
Ekagrata or Ekagratva (Sanskrit) Ekāgratā, Ekāgratva One-pointedness, absolute intentness in the contemplation of an object of meditation, holding the mind in perfect concentration on a single point of thought.
electrochemical equilibrium ::: The condition in which no net ionic flux occurs across a membrane because ion concentration gradients and opposing transmembrane potentials are in exact balance.
ershiwu yuantong. (J. nijugoenzu; K. isibo wont'ong 二十五圓通). In Chinese, "twenty-five kinds of consummate interpenetration." According to the *suRAMGAMASuTRA (Shoulengyan jing), twenty-five of the Buddha's disciples and bodhisattvas have each mastered a concentration (SAMĀDHI) pertaining to one of the twenty-five objects of meditation. The latter include the six sensory objects (liu chen; S. ĀLAMBANA), the six sensory faculties (liu gen; S. INDRIYA), the six sensory consciousnesses (liu shi; S. VIJNĀNA), and the seven primary elements (qi da). It is said that enlightenment is possible by accessing any of the twenty-five masteries even though the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA's mastery over the "ear faculty," or auditory sense-base, has been singled out as a particularly efficacious method for practice.
Exposure Concentration ::: The concentration of a chemical or other pollutant representing a health threat in a given environment.
Exposure Level ::: The amount (concentration) of a chemical at the absorptive surfaces of an organism.
Exposure to an environmental pollutant whose concentration remains constant for a period of time.
Field of consciousness: The sum total of items embraced within an individual’s consciousness at any given moment. The total field consists of: (a) the focus, where the concentration of attention is maximal, and (b) a margin, periphery or fringe of a diminishing degree of attention which gradually fades to zero.
focus ::: n. --> A point in which the rays of light meet, after being reflected or refrcted, and at which the image is formed; as, the focus of a lens or mirror.
A point so related to a conic section and certain straight line called the directrix that the ratio of the distace between any point of the curve and the focus to the distance of the same point from the directrix is constant.
A central point; a point of concentration.
"For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.” Essays Divine and Human
“For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.” Essays Divine and Human
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
From time immemorial (some scholars say 8000 years before the Christian era) India has been the land of spiritual knowledge and practice, of the discovery of the Supreme Reality and union with it. It is the country that has practised concentration most and best. The methods, called Yoga in Sanskrit, that are taught and used in this country are countless. Some are merely material, others purely intellectual, others religious and devotional; lastly, some of them combine these various processes in order to achieve a more integral result.
Gefangenschaft ::: (Ger. Imprisonment) Term used to describe life in Nazi concentration camps and the Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust
gif: is not a freak or an abnormaiity ; it is a universal faculty present in all human beings, but latent in most, in some rarely or intermittently active, occurring as if by accident in others, frequent or normally active in a few. But just as anyone can, uith some training, learn science and do things which would have seemed miracles to his forefathers, so almost anyone, if he wants, can with a little concentration and training develop the faculty of supraphjsical vision. When one starts Yoga, this power is often, though not in\'ariably — for some find it difficult — one of the first to come out from its latent condition and manifest itself, most often without any efTori, Intention or previous know- ledge on the part of the sadhaka. It comes more easily with the eyes shut than with the eyes open, but it does come in both ways. Tlic first sign of its opening in the externalised way is very often that seeing of “sparkles’* or small luminous dots, shapes, etc. ; a second is, often enough, most easily, round lumi- nous objects like a star ; seeing of colours 1$ a third initial experi- cnee — but (hey do not alw'ay's come in that order.
gift is not a freak or an abnonnality ; it is a universal faculty present in all human beings, but latent In most, in some rarely or intermittently active, occurring as if by accident in others, frequent or normally active in a few. But just as aayoas can, with some training, learn sdence and do things which would have seemed miracles to his forefathers, so almost anyone, if he wants, can with a little concentration and training develop the faculty of supraphysical rision. When one starts Yoga, this power is often, though not invariably — for some find it diScult — one of the first to come out from its latent condition and manifest itself, most often without any effort, intention or previous know- ledge on the part of the sadbaka. It comes more easily with the eyes shut than with the eyes open, but it does come in both ways. The first sign of its opening in the externalised way is very often that seeing of “ sparkles ” or small luminous dots, shapes, etc. ; a second is, often enough, most easily, round lumi- nous objects like a star ; seeing of colours is a third initial experi- ence'— but they do not always come in that order.
Glücks, Richard (1889-1945) ::: In 1936 Glücks became chief aide to Theodor Eicke and eventually succeeded Eicke as the inspector of the Nazi concentration camps. Glücks was responsible for the construction of Auschwitz and the creation of the gas chambers. In 1942 he was made head of an SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltunghauptamt unit. He died in May 1945, presumably a suicide.
Goerlitz ::: One of about 60 sub-camps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp located in Lower Silesia.
gotra. (P. gotta; T. rigs; C. zhongxing; J. shusho; K. chongsong 種姓/種性). In Sanskrit, "family" or "lineage," used in a figurative sense. The VINAYA explains that those in a noble family or line are those monks who are content with their robes, with whatever they receive in their begging bowls, and with low-quality bedding, and who take pleasure in forsaking the unwholesome (AKUsALA) and cultivating the wholesome (KUsALA). In the Pāli ABHIDHAMMA, the moment when one's concentration or insight moves from one "family" to another is called "change of lineage" (GOTRABHu). In Mahāyāna literature (especially that associated with the YOGĀCĀRA), gotra refers to a destiny, almost in the sense of a spiritual disposition, that prompts one to follow a particular path to enlightenment. There is typically a list of five such spiritual destinies (paNcagotra) found in Yogācāra literature: (1) the TATHĀGATA lineage, for those destined to become buddhas; (2) the PRATYEKABUDDHA lineage, for those destined to become ARHATs via the PRATYEKABUDDHAYĀNA; (3) the sRĀVAKA lineage, for those who will become arhats via the sRĀVAKAYĀNA; (4) those of indefinite (ANIYATA) lineage, who may change from any of three vehicles to another; and (5) those without lineage (agotra), who are ineligible for liberation or who have lost the prospect of becoming enlightened by being "incorrigibles" (ICCHANTIKA). Another division of lineage is into PRAKṚTISTHAGOTRA (naturally present) and SAMUDĀNĪTAGOTRA (developed). According to the YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA, the former refers to one's innate potential for spiritual achievement; the latter refers to the specific individual habits one can develop that will help speed the mastery of that potential. See also FAXIANG ZONG; sRĀVAKABHuMI.
gradate ::: v. t. --> To grade or arrange (parts in a whole, colors in painting, etc.), so that they shall harmonize.
To bring to a certain strength or grade of concentration; as, to gradate a saline solution.
gradient ::: A systematic variation of the concentration of a molecule (or some other agent) that influences cell behavior.
Gross-Rosen ::: Nazi concentration camp located near a granite quarry of the same name in Lower Silesia. The working conditions involved backbreaking labor in the quarry and special work assignments during what were supposed to be hours of rest. The camp was expanded into a network of 60 sub-camps involved in armaments production. The main camp held 10,000 and the sub-camps 80,000 prisoners.
hack mode "jargon" Engaged in {hack}ing. A Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration at will correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes amplified as "deep hack mode". Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in hack mode is more than a little habituating. The intensity of this experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted out of positions where they can code. See also {cyberspace}. Some aspects of hackish etiquette will appear quite odd to an observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to avoid being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with the computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in {hack mode} with a lot of delicate state in your head, and you dare not {swap} that context out until you have reached a good point to pause. See also {juggling eggs}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-07-31)
Häftlingspersonalbogen ::: (Ger.) Prisoner registration forms at the Nazi concentration camps.
HASAG ::: (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft-Metalwarenfabrik, Leipzig), one of the privately owned German industrial companies that used concentration camp prisoners to manufacture armaments. HASAG was the third largest after I.G. Farben and the Hermann Goring Werke.
Heavy Metals::: Metallic elements like mercury, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, and lead, with high molecular weights. They can damage living things at low concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain.
Himmler, Heinrich (1900-1945) ::: As head of the SS and the secret police, Himmler had control over the vast network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, the Einsatzgruppen, and the Gestapo. Himmler committed suicide in 1945, after his arrest.
Holocaust Orchestras ::: Concentration camp orchestras established by the Nazis during WWII to greet incoming prisoners and entertain the officers. There existed six orchestras at Auschwitz including a women's orchestra at Birkenau and a male orchestra at Auschwitz, together there were approximately 100 musicians in total.
holocaust: The contemporary meaning of this term refers to the genocide of European Jews during the Second World War. This occurred in Nazi concentration camps. Classically the term also refers to the sacrifices offered to Greek gods through burning.
Human Equivalent Concentration ::: Exposure concentration for humans that has been adjusted for dosimetric differences between experimental animal species and humans to be equivalent to the exposure concentration associated with observed effects in the experimental animal species. If occupational human exposures are used for extrapolation, the human equivalent concentration represents the equivalent human exposure concentration adjusted to a continuous basis.
hyperfocus: is an intense form of mental concentration or visualisation that focuses consciousness on a narrow subject, or beyond objective reality and onto subjective mental planes, daydreams, concepts, fiction, the imagination, and other objects of the mind.
idea ::: Madhav: “Each form in Creation is governed by the Real-Idea which has impelled it into existence. Behind every object in manifestation, every formation that comes into being, there is a truth which demands fulfilment in and through it. It is a truth from the Being of the Divine that seeks expression. Each truth that so urges to manifest forms itself into a source-Idea, a concentration of the perception and the power to effectuate it. This Idea is always there in the depths of every manifestation ruling its forms and its movements according to its Will in execution. All formation and activities proceed according to the law of this indwelling Truth-Idea.” Readings in Savitri, Vol. I.
"If discipline of all the members of our being by purification and concentration may be described as the right arm of the body of Yoga, renunciation is its left arm. By discipline or positive practice we confirm in ourselves the truth of things, truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of love, truth of works and replace with these the falsehoods that have overgrown and perverted our nature; by renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“If discipline of all the members of our being by purification and concentration may be described as the right arm of the body of Yoga, renunciation is its left arm. By discipline or positive practice we confirm in ourselves the truth of things, truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of love, truth of works and replace with these the falsehoods that have overgrown and perverted our nature; by renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living.” The Synthesis of Yoga
indriyasaMvara. (T. dbang po sdom pa; C. genlüyi; J. konritsugi; K. kŭnyurŭi 根律儀). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "sensory restraint," or "guarding the sense organs"; an important factor in the development of mindfulness (SMṚTI, P. SATI) and eventually concentration (SAMĀDHI), in which the meditator trains to see things as they actually are, rather than only in terms of oneself-i.e., as things we like, dislike, or are indifferent toward. In addition to its role in formal meditative training, indriyasaMvara should also be maintained throughout the ordinary activities of everyday life, in order to control the inveterate tendency toward craving. Maintaining sensory restraint helps the meditator to control one's reaction to the generic signs (NIMITTA) or secondary characteristics (ANUVYANJANA) of an object; instead, one halts the perceptual process at the level of simple recognition, simply noting what is seen, heard, etc. By not seizing on these signs and characteristics, perception is maintained at a level prior to an object's conceptualization and the resulting proliferation of concepts (PRAPANCA) throughout the full range of one's sensory experience. As the frequent refrain in the sutras states, "In the seen, there is only the seen," and not the superimpositions created by the intrusion of ego (ĀTMAN) into the perceptual process. Mastery of this technique of sensory restraint provides access to the signless (ĀNIMITTA) gate to deliverance (VIMOKsAMUKHA).
indriya. (T. dbang po; C. gen; J. kon; K. kŭn 根). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "faculty," "dominant," or "predominant factor"; a polysemous term of wide import in Buddhist soteriological and epistemological literature. In the SuTRA literature, indriya typically refers to the five or six sense bases: e.g., the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile faculties associated with the physical sense organs and the mental base associated with the mind; in the case of the physical senses, the indriya are forms of subtle matter located within the organs of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body that enable the functioning of the senses. The mind (MANAS) is typically listed as a sixth, internal sensory faculty. The six sense faculties (sadindriya) are subsumed as well within the list of the twelve ĀYATANA (sense-fields) and eighteen DHĀTU (elements). ¶ Indriya is also used soteriologically to describe the five "dominants" or "spiritual faculties" that are crucial to development along the path: faith (sRADDHĀ), effort (VĪRYA), mindfulness (SMṚTI), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). These two denotations for indriya are subsumed by the VAIBHĀsIKA school of SARVĀSTIVĀDA abhidharma into a more extensive list of twenty-two faculties: (1-5) the five physical sense faculties, which are the predominant factors in the rise of the sensory consciousnesses, etc.; (6-7) the "female" (strīndriya) and "male" (purusendriya) faculties, which are the predominant factors in distinguishing sex organs and marking physical gender; (8) the "life force" (jīvitendriya; see JĪVITA), the predominant factor in birth and prolonging the physical continuum up through the "intermediate state" (ANTARĀBHAVA); (9) the mental faculty (MANENDRIYA), the predominant factor that governs both rebirth and the associations between an individual and the world at large; (10-14) the five faculties of sensation or feeling-viz., pleasure (SUKHA), suffering (DUḤKHA), satisfaction (saumanasya), dissatisfaction (daurmanasya), and indifference (UPEKsĀ)-the predominant factors with regard to contamination (SAMKLEsA), for passions such as attachment, hatred, conceit, delusion, etc., attach themselves to these five sensations, creating bondage to worldly objects; (15-22) the eight faculties-viz., the five moral faculties of faith (sraddhā), energy (vīrya), mindfulness (smṛti), concentration (samādhi), and wisdom (prajNā), and the three immaculate faculties of (1) anājNātam ājNāsyāmī 'ndriyam ("the faculty of resolving to understand that which is yet to be understood"), (2) ājNātendriya ("the faculty of having understood"), and (3) ājNātāvīndriya ("the faculty of perfecting one's understanding")-which are the predominant factors regarding purification (VIsUDDHI); this is because the five moral faculties are the predominant factors that purify beings of their bondage to worldly objects and offer access to NIRVĀnA, and the three immaculate faculties are the predominant factors in the origin, duration, and enjoyment of nirvāna. ¶ Indriya is also used to refer to "three capacities" (see TRĪNDRIYA) of the disciples of the Buddha or of a particular teaching, based on their level of aptitude or capacity for understanding: viz., those of dull faculties (MṚDVINDRIYA), those of intermediate faculties (MADHYENDRIYA), and those of sharp faculties (TĪKsnENDRIYA).
Inspektor der Konzentrationslager (IKL ::: (Ger.) Concentration camp inspector during the Holocaust.
"Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.” Letters on Yoga*
“Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.” Letters on Yoga
INSPIRATION. ::: It comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
In The Secret Doctrine (1:103), three great universal causes of manifestation are named in connection with intelligent cosmic motion, namely the breath, love or attraction, and hate or repulsion, the latter being merely polar antitheses of the same underlying cosmic energy. Through the interaction of these three, universes and worlds come into being, have their periods of manvantaric growth, and finally decay and disappear, only to reappear after a period of rest or pralaya. Herbert Spencer intuitively refers to manvantara and pralaya, and what takes place within each: “the universally co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes — produce now an immeasurable period during which the attracting forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces predominating, causes universal diffusion — alternate eras of Evolution and dissolution” (SD 1:12).
In this yoga heart should be the main centre of concentration until the consciousness rises above.
In this yoga there is no fixed Mantra, no stress is laid on Mantras although sadhakas can use one if they find it helpful or so long as they find it helpful. The stress is rather on an aspiration in the Consciousness and a concentration of the mind, heart, will, all the being. If a Mantra is found helpful for that, one uses if.
ion exchangers ::: Membrane transporters that translocate one or more ions against their concentration gradient by using the electrochemical gradient of other ions as an energy source.
It is here, when this foundation has been secured, that the practice of Asana and Pranayama come in and can then bear their perfect fruits. By itself the control of the mind and moral being only puts our normal consciousness into the right preliminary condition; it cannot bring about that evolution or manifestation of the higher psychic being which is necessary for the greater aims of Yoga. In order to bring about this manifestation the present nodus of the vital and physical body with the mental being has to be loosened and the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayama. Asana is used by the Rajayoga only in its easiest and most natural position, that naturally taken by the body when seated and gathered together, but with the back and head strictly erect and in a straight line, so that there may be no deflection of the spinal cord. The object of the latter rule is obviously connected with the theory of the six chakras and the circulation of the vital energy between the muladhara and the brahmarandhra. The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears the nervous system; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will according to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being; it gives us control of all the five habitual operations of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality are possible to the normal life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings into the waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Purusha on each of the ascending planes. Coupled with the use of the mantra it brings the divine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadhi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method. Rajayogic concentration is divided into four stages; it commences with the drawing both of the mind and senses from outward things, proceeds to the holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities, then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in the oneness of Samadhi. The real object of this mental discipline is to draw away the mind from the outward and the mental world into union with the divine Being. Th
refore in the first three stages use has to be made of some mental means or support by which the mind, accustomed to run about from object to object, shall fix on one alone, and that one must be something which represents the idea of the Divine. It is usually a name or a form or a mantra by which the thought can be fixed in the sole knowledge or adoration of the Lord. By this concentration on the idea the mind enters from the idea into its reality, into which it sinks silent, absorbed, unified. This is the traditional method. There are, however, others which are equally of a Rajayogic character, since they use the mental and psychical being as key. Some of them are directed rather to the quiescence of the mind than to its immediate absorption, as the discipline by which the mind is simply watched and allowed to exhaust its habit of vagrant thought in a purposeless running from which it feels all sanction, purpose and interest withdrawn, and that, more strenuous and rapidly effective, by which all outward-going thought is excluded and the mind forced to sink into itself where in its absolute quietude it can only
reflect the pure Being or pass away into its superconscient existence. The method differs, the object and the result are the same. Here, it might be supposed, the whole action and aim of Rajayoga must end. For its action is the stilling of the waves of consciousness, its manifold activities, cittavrtti, first, through a habitual replacing of the turbid rajasic activities by the quiet and luminous sattwic, then, by the stilling of all activities; and its object is to enter into silent communion of soul and unity with the Divine. As a matter of fact we find that the system of Rajayoga includes other objects,—such as the practice and use of occult powers,—some of which seem to be unconnected with and even inconsistent with its main purpose. These powers or siddhis are indeed frequently condemned as dangers and distractions which draw away the Yogin from his sole legitimate aim of divine union. On the way, th
refore, it would naturally seem as if they ought to be avoided; and once the goal is reached, it would seem that they are then frivolous and superfluous. But Rajayoga is a psychic science and it includes the attainment of all the higher states of consciousness and their powers by which the mental being rises towards the superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the Highest. Moreover, the Yogin, while in the body, is not always mentally inactive and sunk in Samadhi, and an account of the powers and states which are possible to him on the higher planes of his being is necessary to the completeness of the science. These powers and experiences belong, first, to the vital and mental planes above this physical in which we live, and are natural to the soul in the subtle body; as the dependence on the physical body decreases, these abnormal activities become possible and even manifest themselves without being sought for. They can be acquired and fixed by processes which the science gives, and their use then becomes subject to the will; or they can be allowed to develop of themselves and used only when they come, or when the Divine within moves us to use them; or else, even though thus naturally developing and acting, they may be rejected in a single-minded devotion to the one supreme goal of the Yoga. Secondly, there are fuller, greater powers belonging to the supramental planes which are the very powers of the Divine in his spiritual and supramentally ideative being. These cannot be acquired at all securely or integrally by personal effort, but can only come from above, or else can become natural to the man if and when he ascends beyond mind and lives in the spiritual being, power, consciousness and ideation. They then become, not abnormal and laboriously acquired siddhis, but simply the very nature and method of his action, if he still continues to be active in the world-existence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 539-40-41-42
“It is not necessary to have the mind quiet in order to see the lights—that depends only on the opening of the subtle vision in the centre which is in the forehead between the eyebrows. Many people get that as soon as they start sadhana. It can even be developed by effort and concentration without sadhana by some who have it to a small extent as an inborn faculty.” Letters on Yoga
It is only the ordinaiy vital emotions which waste the energy and disturb the concentration and peace that have to be dis- couraged. Emotion itself is not a bad thing ; it is a necessary part of nature and psychic emoiion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed ::: it is only a vital mixture that brings disturbance in the sadhana.
Its thoughts or run about among the objects it pursues, remaining at the back of the mind quiet and separate ; (2) to practise quietude and concentration in this separateness, until the habit of quiet takes hold of the physical mind and replaces the habit of these activities.
Jhana ::: A Pali term describing an advanced meditative state of awareness. There are both vipassana jhanas and samatha jhanas. The former describes states of meditative insight that are found through progressing through the stages of mindfulness meditation and the latter describes states of advanced concentration whereupon the object of observation becomes increasingly prounounced in the locus of one's awareness (at least in the early states, in later states that object can drop away entirely). The jhanic states are genuinely preternatural to the mundane mind and are somewhat advanced, so a discussion of them will need to await further research and experience.
jhāna. In Pāli, "meditative absorption," corresponding to the Sanskrit DHYĀNA (s.v.). Jhāna refers to the attainment of single-pointed concentration, whereby the mind is withdrawn from external sensory input and completely absorbed in an ideational object of meditation (see KAMMAttHĀNA). Jhāna involves the power to control the mind and does not, in itself, entail any enduring insight into the nature of reality; however, a certain level of concentration is generally said to be necessary in order to prepare the mind for direct realization of truth, the destruction of the afflictions, and the attainment of liberation. Jhāna is classified into two broad types: (1) meditative absorption of the subtle-materiality realm (P. rupāvacarajhāna; S. RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) and (2) meditative absorption of the immaterial realm (P. arupāvacarajhāna; S. ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). Each of these two types is subdivided into four stages or degrees of absorption, giving a total of eight stages of jhāna. These stages are sometimes called the eight "attainments" (SAMĀPATTI). The four absorptions of the subtle-materiality realm are characterized by an increasing attenuation of consciousness as one progresses from one stage to the next. By entering into any one of the jhānas, the meditator temporarily overcomes the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA) through the force of concentration. This is called "overcoming by repression" (P. vikkhambhanappahāna). The five hindrances are (1) "sensuous desire" (KĀMACCHANDA), which hinders one-pointedness of mind (P. cittekaggatā; S. CITTAIKĀGRATĀ); (2) "malice" (P. byāpāda; S. VYĀPĀDA), hindering rapture (P. pīti; S. PRĪTI); (3) "sloth and torpor" (P. thīnamiddha; S. STHYĀNA-MIDDHA), hindering applied thought (P. vitakka; S. VITARKA); (4) "restlessness and worry" (P. uddhaccakukkucca; S. AUDDHATYA-KAUKṚTYA), hindering joy (SUKHA); and (5) "skeptical doubt" (P. vicikicchā; S. VICIKITSĀ), which hinders sustained thought (VICĀRA). These hindrances thus specifically obstruct one of the factors of absorption (P. jhānanga; S. DHYĀNĀnGA), and once they are allayed the first level of the subtle-materiality jhānas will be achieved. In the first jhāna, all five constituents of jhāna are present; as concentration deepens, these gradually fall away, so that in the second jhāna, both types of thought vanish and only pīti, sukha, and ekaggatā remain; in the third jhāna, only sukha and ekaggatā remain; and in the fourth jhāna, concentration is now so rarified that only ekaggatā is left. Detailed correlations appear in meditation manuals describing specifically which of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA) and seven constituents of enlightenment (P. bojjhanga; S. BODHYAnGA) serve as the antidote to which hindrance. Mastery of the fourth absorption of the subtle-materiality realm is required for the cultivation of supranormal powers (P. abhiNNā; S. ABHIJNĀ) and for the cultivation of the four arupāvacarajhānas, or meditative absorptions of the immaterial realm. The immaterial absorptions themselves represent refinements of the fourth rupāvacarajhāna, in which the "object" of meditation is gradually attenuated. The four immaterial absorptions instead take as their objects: (1) the sphere of infinite space (P. ākāsānaNcāyatana; S. ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA), (2) the sphere of infinite consciousness (P. viNNānaNcāyatana; S. VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA), (3) the sphere of nothingness (P. ākiNcaNNāyatana; S. ĀKINCANYĀYATANA), and (4) the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception (P. nevasaNNānāsaNNāyatana; S. NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJNĀYATANA). Mastery of the absorptions of either the subtle-materiality or immaterial realms results in rebirth in the corresponding heaven of each respective absorption.
Jingzhong zong. (J. Joshushu; K. Chongjung chong 淨衆宗). A branch of the early CHAN ZONG that flourished at the monastery Jingzhongsi in Chengdu (present-day Sichuan province). The history of the Jingzhong line is documented in the LIDAI FABAO JI. According to this text, the Jingzhong line is derived from the Chan master Zhishen (609-702), a disciple of the fifth patriarch HONGREN. Zhishen is also said to have received the purple robe of the Chan founder BODHIDHARMA from Empress Dowager WU ZETIAN, which was ostensibly transmitted to Zhishen's disciple Chuji (648-734/650-732/669-736) and then to CHoNGJUNG MUSANG (C. Jingzhong Wuxiang) and BAOTANG WUZHU. The Lidai fabao ji, authored by a disciple of Wuzhu, claims that the Jingzhong lineage is eventually absorbed into the BAOTANG ZONG, though the two seem in fact to have been distinct lineages. The eminent Chan masters MAZU DAOYI and GUIFENG ZONGMI are also known to have once studied under teachers of the Jingzhong line of Chan. The school is most closely associated with the so-called three propositions (sanju), a unique set of Chan precepts that were equated with the traditional roster of the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ): "no recollection" (wuyi), which was equated with morality (sĪLA); "no thought" (WUNIAN) with concentration (SAMĀDHI); and "no forgetting" (mowang) with wisdom (PRAJNĀ). These three propositions are associated most closely with Musang, but other texts attribute them instead to Musang's putative successor, Wuzhu. The portrayal in the literature of the teachings of the Jingzhong school divides along the fault line of these two great teachers, with Musang's Chan adaptation of mainstream Buddhist teachings contrasting markedly with Wuzhu's more radical, even antinomian approach, deriving from HEZE SHENHUI. The Jingzhong masters are also said to have had some influence in Tibet (see BSAM YAS DEBATE), including on the development of MAHĀYOGA and RDZOGS CHEN.
jNānadarsana. (P. Nānadassana; T. ye shes mthong ba; C. zhijian; J. chiken; K. chigyon 知見). In Sanskrit, "knowledge and vision"; the direct insight into the reality of the three marks of existence (TRILAKsAnA)-impermanence (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself/insubstantiality (ANĀTMAN)-and one of the qualities perfected on the path leading to the stage of a worthy one (ARHAT). The term often appears in a stock description of the transition from the meditative absorption that is experienced during the four levels of DHYĀNA to the insight generated through wisdom (PRAJNĀ): after suffusing one's mind with concentration, purity, malleability, and imperturbability, the meditator directs his or her attention to "knowledge and vision." In this vision of truth, the meditator then recognizes that the self (ĀTMAN) is but the conjunction of a physical body constructed from the four great elements (MAHĀBHuTA) and a mentality (VIJNĀNA, CITTA) that is bound to and dependent upon that physical body (see NĀMARuPA). Letting go of attachment to body and mind, the meditator finally gains the knowledge that he is no longer subject to rebirth and becomes an arhat. The Pāli abhidhamma includes "knowledge and vision" within the last three types of purifications of practice (P. visuddhi; S. VIsUDDHI): the fifth "purification of the knowledge and vision of what constitutes the path" (P. MAGGĀMAGGANĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI), the sixth "purification of the knowledge and vision of the method of salvation" (P. PAtIPADĀNĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI), and finally the seventh "purification of knowledge and vision" itself (P. NĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI), which constitutes the pure wisdom that derives from the experience of enlightenment. In the MAHĀYĀNA, the perfection of knowledge and vision (jNānadarsanapāramitā) is also said to be an alternate name for the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ), one of the six or ten perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) of the BODHISATTVA path.
Kālacakratantra. (T. Dus kyi 'khor lo rgyud). A late ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA that was highly influential in Tibet. Although the title of the tantra is often translated as "Wheel of Time," this translation is not attested in the text itself. Kālacakra is the name of the central buddha of the tantra, and the tantra deals extensively with time (kāla) as well as various macrocosmic and microcosmic cycles or wheels (CAKRA). According to legend, King SUCANDRA came to India from his kingdom of sAMBHALA and asked that the Buddha set forth a teaching that would allow him to practice the dharma without renouncing the world. In response, the Buddha, while remaining at Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) in RĀJAGṚHA in the guise of a monk, set forth the Kālacakratantra at Dhānyakataka in southern India (near present-day Amarāvatī) in the guise of the buddha Kālacakra. The king returned to sambhala, where he transcribed the tantra in twelve thousand verses. This text is referred to as the root tantra (mulatantra) and is no longer extant. He also wrote a commentary in sixty thousand verses, also lost. He built a three-dimensional Kālacakra MAndALA at the center of the country, which was transformed into an ideal realm for Buddhist practice, with 960 million villages. The eighth king of sambhala, MaNjusrīkīrti, condensed the original version of the tantra into the abridged version (the Laghukālacakra). A later king of sambhala, Pundarīka, composed the VIMALAPRABHĀ commentary, considered crucial for understanding the tantra. These two texts were eventually transported from sambhala to India. Internal evidence in the text makes it possible to date the composition of the tantra rather precisely to between the dates 1025 and 1040 CE. This was the period of Muslim invasions of northern India under Mahmud of Ghazni, during which great destruction of Buddhist institutions occurred. The tantra, drawing on Hindu mythology, describes a coming apocalyptic war in which Buddhist armies will sweep out of sambhala, defeat the barbarians (mleccha), described as being followers of Madhumati (i.e., Muhammad), and restore the dharma in India. After its composition in northern India, the tantra was promulgated by such figures as Pindo and his disciple ATIsA, as well as NĀROPA. From India, it spread to Nepal and Tibet. The millennial quality of the tantra has manifested itself at particular moments in Tibetan history. Prior to World War II, the PAn CHEN LAMA bestowed the Kālacakra initiation in China in an effort to repel the Japanese invaders. The fourteenth DALAI LAMA has given the initiation many times around the world to promote world peace. ¶ The tantra is an anuttarayogatantra dedicated to the buddha Kālacakra and his consort Visvamātā. However, it differs from other tantras of this class in several ways, including its emphasis on the attainment of a body of "empty form" (sunyatābimba) and on its six-branched yoga (sadangayoga). The tantra itself, that is, the Laghukālacakra or "Abridged Kālacakra," has five chapters, which in the Tibetan commentarial tradition is divided into three sections: outer, inner, and other or alternative. The outer, corresponding to the first chapter, deals with the cosmos and treats such topics as cosmology, astrology, chronology, and eschatology (the story of the apocalyptic war against the barbarians is told there). For example, this section describes the days of the year; each of the days is represented in the full Kālacakra mandala as 360 golden (day/male) and dark (night/female) deities in union, with a single central Kālacakra and consort (YAB YUM) in the center. The universe is described as a four-tiered mandala, whose various parts are homologous to the cosmic body of a buddha. This section was highly influential in Tibetan astrology and calendrics. The new calendar of the Tibetans, used to this day, starts in the year 1027 and is based on the Kālacakra system. The inner Kālacakra, corresponding to the second chapter, deals with human embryology, tantric physiology, medicine, yoga, and alchemy. The human body is described as a microcosm of the universe. The other or alternative Kālacakra, corresponding to the third, fourth, and fifth chapters, sets forth the practice of Kālacakra, including initiation (ABHIsEKA), SĀDHANA, and knowledge (JNĀNA). Here, in the stage of generation (UTPATTIKRAMA), the initiate imagines oneself experiencing conception, gestation, and birth as the child of Kālacakra and Vismamātā. In the stage of completion (NIsPANNAKRAMA), one practices the six-branched yoga, which consists of retraction (pratyāhāra), concentration (DHYĀNA), breath control (PRĀnĀYĀMA), retention (dhāranā), recollection (ANUSMṚTI), and SAMĀDHI. In the last of these six branches, 21,600 moments of immutable bliss are created, which course through the system of channels and CAKRAS to eliminate the material aspects of the body, resulting in a body of "empty form" and the achievement of buddhahood as Kālacakra. The Sekoddesatīkā of Nadapāda (or Nāropa) sets forth this distinctive six-branched yoga, unique to the Kālacakra system. ¶ BU STON, the principal redactor of the canon in Tibetan translation, was a strong proponent of the tantra and wrote extensively about it. DOL PO PA SHES RAB RGYAL MTSHAN, a fourteenth-century JO NANG PA writer, championed the Kālacakra over all other Buddhist writings, assigning its composition to a golden age (kṛtayuga). Red mda' ba gzhon nu blo gros, an important scholar associated with SA SKYA sect, regarded the tantra as spurious. TSONG KHA PA, who was influenced by all of these writers, accepted the Kālacakratantra as an authentic ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA but put it in a category by itself.
Kalis ::: A small labor camp located outside of the Vilna ghetto. It housed about 1250 workers and their families. The camp resembled a ghetto more than a concentration camp in that families were not separated and the clothing was ordinary. The workers were engaged in making fur garments for the German army. This involved re-manufacturing confiscated civilian fur coats into winter uniforms.
kammatthāna. In Pāli, lit. "working ground," viz., "meditative topic"; a topic or object of meditation (BHĀVANĀ) used for training the mind and cultivating mental concentration (SAMĀDHI). The term originally referred to an occupation or vocation, such as farmer, merchant, or mendicant, but was adopted as a technical term to refer generically to various types of meditative exercises. The VISUDDHIMAGGA lists forty topics used for this purpose. First are ten "visualization devices" (KASInA)-devices that are constructed from the elements earth, water, fire, and air; the colors blue, yellow, red, and white, and light and space-to develop concentration. Kasina exercises can produce all four of the "meditative absorptions" (JHĀNA; DHYĀNA) associated with the realm of subtle materiality. Next are ten "loathsome topics" (asubha; see S. AsUBHABHĀVANĀ), such as the decaying of a corpse, which can lead only to the first meditative absorption (dhyāna). These are followed by ten "recollections" (P. anussati; S. ANUSMṚTI): viz., of (1) the Buddha, (2) the dhamma (DHARMA), (3) the sangha (SAMGHA), (4) morality, (5) generosity, (6) the divinities, (7) death, (8) the body, (9) the inbreath and outbreath (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI), and (10) peace. Of these, recollection or mindfulness (P. sati; S. SMṚTI) of the inbreath and outbreath can produce all four meditative absorptions, while recollection of the body can produce the first absorption; the remaining recollections only lead to "access concentration" (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI), which immediately precedes but does not reach the level of the first absorption. Next are four "immaterial spheres" (arupāyatana), viz., the "sphere of infinite space" (ākāsānaNcāyatana, S. ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA); of "infinite consciousness" (viNNānaNcāyatana, S. VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA); of "nothingness" (ākiNcaNNāyatana, S. ĀKINCANYĀYATANA); and of "neither perception nor nonperception" (nevasaNNānāsaNNāyatana, S. NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJNĀYATANA). Meditation on these objects involves the increasing refinement of the fourth absorption and leads to the acquisition of the "immaterial attainments" (ARuPASAMĀPATTI), also called "immaterial absorptions" (P. arupāvacarajhāna; S. ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA, see DHYĀNA, SAMĀPATTI). Four positive affective states or "divine abidings" (BRAHMAVIHĀRA; [alt. P. appamaNNa]; S. APRAMĀnA), are loving-kindness (mettā; MAITRĪ), compassion (KARUnĀ), altruistic or empathetic joy (MUDITĀ), and equanimity or impartiality (upekkhā; UPEKsĀ). Of these, loving-kindness, compassion, and altruistic joy can produce only the first three meditative absorptions, but equanimity can produce all four. There is one perception of the loathsomeness of food (āhāre patikkulasaNNā) and one analysis of the four elements (catudhātu vavatthāna), both of which can produce access concentration. Certain of these topics were said to be better suited to specific character types, such as the loathsome topics to persons with strong tendencies toward lust or the perception of the loathsomeness of food for gluttons; others, such as the meditation on the in- and outbreaths, were universally suitable to all character types. The Buddha was said to have had the ability to assess his disciples' character types and determine which topics of meditation would best suit them; as later generations lost this assessment ability, the number of kammatthānas in regular use dropped dramatically, with mindfulness of breathing being by far the most popular topic.
Kapo ::: Prisoner in charge of a group of inmates in Nazi concentration camps.
karmāvarana. (P. kammāvarana; T. las kyi sgrib pa; C. yezhang; J. gosho/gossho; K. opchang 業障). In Sanskrit, "karmic obstruction," or "hindered by KARMAN." The term is used in the VISUDDHIMAGGA with reference to meditators who are incapable of making any progress in concentration (SAMĀDHI) exercises, specifically involving the KASInA visualization devices. The text notes that a practitioner who has engaged in any of the five types of unwholesome "acts that are of immediate effect" (P. ānantariyakamma; S. ĀNANTARYAKARMAN), such as patricide or causing schism in the community of monks (SAMGHBHEDA), is "obstructed by his acts" and will therefore never be able to develop a viable meditation practice. ¶ The relation of karmāvarana to meditation practice continues in Korean Buddhism, where the term opchang is colloquially used to refer to any kind of persistent physical, mental, or emotional obstacle to meditation practice, whether that be, for example, constant pain in one's legs that makes it difficult to sit in meditation for long periods, an inability to concentrate, or emotional distress caused by being apart from one's family. Anything that continually inhibits one's ability to practice effectively may be termed an opchang (karmāvarana). In the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, obstacles to meditation practice are referred to as vimoksāvarana, obstruction to the production of the eight VIMOKsAs, that is, physical and mental inflexibility (akarmanyatā). The ARHAT who is free in both ways (ubhayatobhāgavimukta) is free from this as well as from the KLEsĀVARAnA.
Kasher, Kashrut ::: See kosher. ::: Kaupering ::: Complex of eleven sub-camps of the Dachau concentration camp existing from June 1944 to end of April 1945. .
kasina. (S. *kṛtsna/*kṛtsnāyatana; T. zad par gyi skye mched; C. bianchu; J. hensho; K. p'yonch'o 遍處). In Pāli, lit. "totality" or "universal" [alt. kasināyatana], a "visualization device" that serves as the meditative foundation for the "totality" of the mind's attention to an object of concentration. Ten kasina are generally enumerated: visualization devices that are constructed from the physical elements (MAHĀBHuTA) of earth, water, fire, and air; the colors blue, yellow, red, and white; and light and empty space. The earth device, for example, might be constructed from a circle of clay of even texture, the water device from a tub of water, and the red device from a piece of red cloth or a painted red disc. The meditation begins by looking at the physical object; the perception of the device is called the "beginning sign" or "preparatory sign" (P. PARIKAMMANIMITTA). Once the object is clearly perceived, the meditator then memorizes the object so that it is seen as clearly in his mind as with his eyes. This perfect mental image of the device is called the "eidetic sign," or "learning sign" (P. UGGAHANIMITTA) and serves subsequently as the object of concentration. As the internal visualization of this eidetic sign deepens and the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA) to mental absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA) are temporarily allayed, a "representational sign" or "counterpart sign" (P. PAtIBHĀGANIMITTA) will emerge from out of the eidetic image, as if, the texts say, a sword is being drawn from its scabbard or the moon is emerging from behind clouds. The representational sign is a mental representation of the visualized image, which does not duplicate what was seen with the eyes but represents its abstracted, essentialized quality. The earth disc may now appear like the moon, the water device like a mirror suspended in the sky, or the red device like a bright jewel. Whereas the eidetic sign was an exact mental copy of the visualized beginning sign, the representational sign has no fixed form but may be manipulated at will by the meditator. Continued attention to the representational sign will lead to all four of the meditative absorptions associated with the realm of subtle materiality. Perhaps because of the complexity of preparing the kasina devices, this type of meditation was superseded by techniques such as mindfulness of breathing (P. ānāpānasati; S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI) and is rarely practiced in the THERAVĀDA world today. But its notion of a purely mental object being somehow a purer "representation" of the external sense object viewed by the eyes has compelling connections to later YOGĀCĀRA notions of the world being a projection of mind.
Kavanah ::: (Heb. intention). A mystical instrument of the Jewish kabbalists; a meditation that accompanies a ritual act, devotion, inner concentration during prayer.
Kavvanah: A Hebrew mystical term, meaning intention or devotion. (Plural: Kavvanoth.) “The intention directed towards God while performing a (religious) deed. In the Kabbalah, kavvanoth denote the permutations of the divine name that aim at overcoming the separation of forces in the Upper World.” (M. Buber.) The word means also a devoted prayer delivered with great concentration.
Kether (Heb.): The first concentration of the Am (Void), repre sented by the first Sephira of The Tree of Life. Kether forms the apex of the Supernal Triad, above the Abyss, of which the two bases are Chokmah and Binah (q.v.).
khanikasamādhi. In Pāli, "momentary concentration"; a type of rudimentary concentration ancillary to UPACĀRASAMĀDHI and APPANĀSAMĀDHI, which is used with reference to meditators who are developing insight (vipassanā; S. VIPAsYANĀ) practice. Although a meditator specializing in insight techniques may not be developing advanced forms of meditative absorption (JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA), he still requires a modicum of concentration in order to maintain his intensive analysis of experience. Hence, the commentators posit that even insight practice requires "momentary concentration" in order to succeed.
Khóa Hư Lục. (課). In Vietnamese, "Instructions on Emptiness," composed by Tràn Thái Tông (1218-1277); the first prose work on Buddhism written in Vietnamese. It is a collection of sermons and essays, most of them fragmentary, on the philosophy and practice of Buddhism from the perspective of the three trainings in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). It also marks one of the earliest efforts to assimilate the worldview of the Southern school (NAN ZONG) of CHAN into Vietnamese Buddhism. The Khóa Hư Lu㈱c consists of two books. The first (lit. "upper") book includes twenty-one short essays, which can be classified as follows according to their literary styles: one "verse" on the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS; two "general discourses" on the contemplation of the body and the Buddhist path; six "essays" on generating the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTA), not taking life, not stealing, not indulging in sensual pleasures, not telling lies, and not using intoxicants; five "treatises" on the topics of morality, concentration, wisdom, receiving precepts, buddha-contemplation (NIANFO), sitting in meditation, and the mirror of wisdom; four "prefaces" to longer complete works (three of which are no longer extant), viz., "A Guide to the Chan School," "A Commentary on thE VAJRASAMĀDHISuTRA," "Liturgy of the Six-Period Repentance," and "An Essay on the Equality Repentance Liturgy"; "recorded encounter dialogues with disciples" that record dialogues between Tràn Thái Tông and his students; a "verse commentary" on the ancient public cases (GONG'AN) of Chan; and an "afterword." The second (lit. "lower") book includes a complete essay entitled "Liturgy of the Six-Period Repentance," which offers a detailed instruction on the performance of the repentance liturgy.
KL ::: (Ger. Konzentrationslager). Concentration camp.
Knowledge ::: A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 81
knowledge ::: “A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge.” The Synthesis of Yoga
knowledge ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Kosambiyasutta. (C. Changshou; J. Choju; K. Changsu 長壽). In Pāli, "Discourse to the Kosambians"; the forty-eighth sutta contained in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (scholars had presumed that an unidentified recension, perhaps MAHĀSĀMGHIKA or DHARMAGUPTAKA, appears in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA, but this putative affiliation seems to be in error); delivered by the Buddha to a gathering of monks in Ghosita's park at Kosambī (S. Kausambī). The monks living in Kosambī had fallen into dispute over trivial matters, and the Buddha admonishes them to make loving-kindness (mettā; S. MAITRĪ) the basis of their mutual relations. He describes six principles of cordiality that contribute to the cohesion, harmony, and unity of the SAMGHA; viz., (1) bodily acts of loving-kindness, (2) verbal acts of loving-kindness, (3) mental acts of loving-kindness, (4) sharing and cooperation, (5) public and private virtue conducive to meditative concentration, and (6) public and private virtue conducive to enlightenment and liberation. The Buddha then describes seven knowledges possessed by the stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA). The stream-enterer knows that (1) his mind is well prepared for awakening to the truth, and (2) his mind is serene; (3) the Buddha's teachings are not contained in the wrong views of other teachers, and (4) he confesses his misdeeds and makes amends for future restraint; and (5) he completes the work that is to be done for the holy life. Furthermore, he knows (6) the strength of one who adheres to right view and (7) that he possesses that strength.
Kugel ::: Baked pudding-like casserole. ::: Kugel [bullet] Decree ::: A decree that directed that every escaped officer and NCO prisoner of war who had not been put to work, with the exception of British and American prisoners of war, should on recapture be handed over to the SIP0 and SD. These escaped officers and NCOs were to be sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen, to be executed upon arrival, by means of a bullet shot in the neck.
Kyo. (C. jiao; J. kyo 敎). In Korean, "doctrine" or "teaching," generally referring to doctrinally oriented Buddhist schools and their tenets, as distinguished from meditation-oriented Buddhist schools and practices (SoN; C. CHAN). While the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist traditions appear to have used the term doctrine only to describe one of two generic approaches to Buddhism, in Korea Buddhist schools have often been categorized as belonging to either the Doctrine (Kyo) or the Meditation (Son) schools; indeed, during the period of Buddhist suppression under the Choson dynasty, Kyo and Son became the specific designations for the two officially sanctioned schools of the tradition. During the stable political environment of the Unified Silla period (668-935), five major Kyo schools are traditionally presumed to have developed in Korean Buddhism: NIRVĀnA (Yolban chong), VINAYA (Kyeyul chong), Dharma-nature (PoPSoNG CHONG), Hwaom [alt. Wonyung chong], and YOGĀCĀRA (Popsang chong). Toward the end of the Unified Silla period, however, the newly imported Son (C. Chan, Meditation) lineages, which were associated with local gentry on the frontier of the kingdom, began to criticize the main doctrinal school, Hwaom, that was supported by the old Silla aristocracy in the capital of KYoNGJU; these schools came to be called the "Nine Mountains School of Son" (KUSAN SoNMUN). These various doctrine and meditation schools were collectively referred to as the "Five Doctrinal [Schools] and Nine Mountains [Schools of Son]" (OGYO KUSAN). The Ogyo Kusan designation continued to be used into the succeeding Koryo dynasty (937-1392), which saw the first attempts to bring together these two distinct strands of the Korean Buddhist tradition. Attempts to find common ground between the Kyo and Son schools are seen, for example, in ŬICH'oN's "cultivation together of scriptural study and contemplation" (kyogwan kyomsu) and POJO CHINUL's "cultivation in tandem of concentration [viz., Son] and wisdom [viz., scripture]" (chonghye ssangsu). The Ch'ont'ae (C. TIANTAI) and CHOGYE schools that are associated respectively with these two monks were both classified as Son schools during the mid- to late-Koryo dynasty; together with the five previous Kyo schools, these schools were collectively called the "Five Kyo and Two [Son] Traditions" (OGYO YANGJONG). This designation continued to be used into the early Choson dynasty (1392-1910). The Confucian orientation of the new Choson dynasty led to an increasing suppression of these Buddhist traditions. In 1407, King T'aejong (r. 1400-1418) restructured the various schools then current in Korean Buddhism into three schools of Son and four of Kyo; subsequently, in 1424, King Sejong (r. 1418-1450) reduced all these remaining schools down to, simply, the "Two Traditions, Son and Kyo" (SoN KYO YANGJONG), a designation that continued to be used through the remainder of the dynasty. The modern Chogye order of Korean Buddhism claims to be a synthetic tradition that combines both strands of Son meditation practice and Kyo doctrinal study into a single denomination.
Lagerfuhrer ::: Kommandant (commander) of a concentration camp.
larval stage Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour {hacking run} in a given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more "normal" life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also {wannabee}. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new {OS} or programming language. [{Jargon File}]
larval stage ::: Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the perpetration of protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new OS or programming language.[Jargon File]
laukikamārga. (T. 'jig rten pa'i lam; C. shijiandao; J. sekendo; K. segando 世間道). In Sanskrit, lit. "mundane path," those practices that precede the moment of insight (DARsANAMĀRGA) and thus result in a salutary rebirth in SAMSĀRA rather than liberation (VIMUKTI); also called laukika-BHĀVANĀMĀRGA (the mundane path of cultivation). In the five-stage soteriology of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school, the mundane path corresponds to the first two stages, the path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA) and the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), because they do not involve the direct perception of reality that transforms an ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) into a noble one (ĀRYA). The mundane path is developed when a practitioner has begun to cultivate the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ) of morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ) but has yet to eradicate any of the ten fetters (SAMYOJANA) or to achieve insight (DARsANA). The eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA) is also formulated in terms of the spiritual ascension from mundane (LAUKIKA) to supramundane (LOKOTTARA). For example, mundane right view (SAMYAGDṚstI), the first stage of the eightfold path, refers to the belief in the efficacy of KARMAN and its effects and the reality of a next life after death, thus leading to better rebirths; wrong view (MITHYĀDṚstI), by contrast, denies such beliefs and leads to unsalutary rebirths. After continuing on to cultivate the moral trainings of right speech, action, and livelihood based on this right view, the practitioner next devotes himself to right concentration (SAMYAKSAMĀDHI). Concentration then leads in turn to supramundane right view, which results in direct insight into the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS and the removal of the initial fetters. ¶ In the MADHYĀNTAVIBHĀGA, a Mahāyāna work associated with the name of MAITREYA, the eightfold path is reformulated as a "worldly" path that a bodhisattva treads after the path of vision (darsanamārga), on the model of the Buddha's work for the world after his awakening beneath the BODHI TREE in BODHGAYĀ. The bodhisattva's supramundane vision, described by the seven factors of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA), is an equipoise (SAMĀHITA) in which knowledge is beyond all proliferation (PRAPANCA) and conceptualization (VIKALPA); the states subsequent (pṛsthalabdha) to that equipoise are characterized as the practice of skillful means (UPĀYA) to lead others to liberation, on the model of the Buddha's compassionate activities for the sake of others. The practice serves to accumulate the bodhisattva's merit collection (PUnYASAMBHĀRA); there is no further vision to be gained, only a return to the vision in the supramundane stages characterized as the fundamental (maula) stages of the ten bodhisattva stages (BODHISATTVABHuMI) or a supramundane cultivation (lokottarabhāvanā). All other acts are laukika ("worldly") skillful means.
LC50 ::: Lethal concentration fifty. A calculated concentration [in air] which when administered by the respiratory route is expected to kill 50% of a population of experimental animals during an exposure of four hours. Ambient concentration is expressed in milligrams per liter. A calculated concentration in water which is expected to kill 50% of a population of aquatic organisms after a specified time of exposure.
Level of Concern ::: The concentration in air of an extremely hazardous substance above which there may be serious immediate health effects to anyone exposed to it for short periods.
Lidice ::: Czech mining village (pop. 700). In reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis “liquidated” the village in 1942. They shot the men, deported the women and children to concentration camps, razed the village to the ground, and struck its name from the maps. After World War II, a new village was built near the site of the old Lidice, which is now a national park and memorial. (see Heydrich, Reinhard).
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
Liuzu tan jing. (J. Rokuso dangyo; K. Yukcho tan kyong 六祖壇經). In Chinese, "Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch," the written transcription of the sermons of the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713); the composition is attributed to the monk FAHAI; also known as the Nan zong dunjiao zuishang dasheng mohe bore boluomi jing, Liuzu dashi fabao tan jing, Fabao tan jing, or simply Tan jing ("Platform Sutra"). The Liuzu tan jing is one of the most influential texts of the CHAN tradition. The text is ostensibly a record of the lectures delivered by the reputed sixth patriarch Huineng at the monastery of Dafansi in Shaozhou (present-day Guangdong province). The lectures contain the famous story of Huineng's verse competition with his rival SHENXIU, which wins Huineng the Chan patriarchy (see ZUSHI), in which Huineng distinguished his own "sudden teachings" (DUNJIAO) of a so-called Southern school (NAN ZONG) of Chan from the "gradual teachings" (jianjiao) of Shenxiu's Northern school (BEI ZONG). As Huineng defines the term later in this sermon, the "sudden teaching" involves an approach to Buddhist training that is free from all dualistic forms of practice (see ADVAYA) and that correspondingly rejects any and all expedient means (UPĀYA) of realizing truth. This sudden teaching comes to be considered emblematic of the so-called Southern school (Nan zong) of Chan, which retrospectively comes to be considered the mainstream of the Chan tradition. The teachings of the text also focus on the unity of concentration (SAMĀDHI) and wisdom (PRAJNĀ), in which concentration is conceived to be the essence (TI) of wisdom and wisdom the functioning (YONG) of concentration; "no-thought" (WUNIAN), which the text defines as "not to think even when involved in thought"; seeing one's own nature (JIANXING); and the conferral of the formless precepts (WUXIANG JIE). Indeed, the "platform" in the title refers to the ordination platform (jietan; cf. SĪMĀ) where Huineng conferred these formless precepts. Although the Liuzu tan jing has been traditionally heralded as the central scripture of the Nan zong, and certainly is beholden to the teachings of the Southern-school champion HEZE SHENHUI, the text seems to have been influenced as well by the teachings of both the Northern and Oxhead schools (NIUTOU ZONG). Within the Chan tradition, a Yuan-dynasty edition of the Liuzu tan jing, which included an important preface by FORI QISONG, was most widely disseminated. SIR MARC AUREL STEIN's rediscovery in the DUNHUANG manuscript cache of a previously unknown, and quite different, recension of the text, dating to the mid-ninth century, did much to launch the modern scholarly reappraisal of the received history of the Chan school. See also DUNWU.
Loading ::: Using awareness, concentration, and even breath to charge an object of focus with a particular archetype, current, idea, or intent. The object can be tangible (specific materia or a talisman for instance) or intangible (e.g. a sigil). See also Patterning.
Locus of Focus ::: Refers to the field and breadth of one's awareness. Most find in mundane consciousness that the mind is constantly jumping around and very broadly focused, but through practicing meditation (especially concentration meditation in this case) the locus of focus narrows so that some deeper mysteries of reality can be revealed and so that sense of self can be shaken off more easily.
lokiyasamādhi. (S. laukikasamādhi; T. 'jig rten pa'i ting nge 'dzin; C. shunshi sanmei; J. junse sanmai; K. sunse sammae 順世三昧). In Pāli, "mundane concentration," or "worldly concentration"; any type of mental concentration that is disassociated from the four paths (P. magga; S. MĀRGA) and four fruits (PHALA) of liberation. The term denotes all moments of concentration that are involved in ordinary mundane consciousness, whether virtuous or nonvirtuous, and states of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA) cultivated through tranquillity meditation (P. samathabhāvanā; S. sAMATHA), which do not as yet involve insight or wisdom (P. paNNā; S. PRAJNĀ). See also LOKUTTARASAMĀDHI.
lokuttarasamādhi. (S. lokottarasamādhi; T. 'jig rten las 'das pa'i ting nge 'dzin; C. chushi sanmei; J. shusse sanmai; K. ch'ulse sammae 出世三昧). In Pāli, "supramundane concentration"; concentration associated with the attainment of any of the four paths (magga, S. MĀRGA) and/or four fruitions (PHALA) of enlightenment, which constitute collectively eight moments along the path to complete liberation from SAMSĀRA. The eight moments in order of their occurrence are the (1) path and (2) fruition of a stream-enterer (S. SROTAĀPANNA), the (3) path and (4) fruition of a once-returner (S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), the (5) path and (6) fruition of a nonreturner (S. ANĀGĀMIN), and the (7) path and (8) fruition of a worthy one (S. ARHAT). All other forms of concentration not associated with the paths and fruits of enlightenment are deemed of this world or "mundane concentrations" (LOKIYASAMĀDHI). Supramundane concentration is also characterized by its singular object, NIRVĀnA.
Ludwigsdorf ::: One of about 60 sub-camps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp located in Lower Silesia.
Madhav: “All around is space, infinite space and in it is the Divine consciousness, the Divine concentration of consciousness, which is the ‘mystic heart’ of the world. The earth [She] is in communion with that ‘mystic heart’.” The Book of the Divine Mother`
Madhav: “There is an eternal light in every one of us. But it is as if guarded, protected from the profane, vulgar sight by a cave of darkness. Cave signifies a narrowing, dimming enclosure. This blanket of darkness guards that Light. Where there is such a concentration of thick darkness in yourself, you can be sure that deep inside there is the ‘Light Eternal’. This is the light of the Self of which the Rishi’s speak. It stands veiled by layers and layers of the darkness of Ignorance.” The Book of the Divine Mother
mahābhumika. (T. sa chen po pa; C. dadi fa; J. daijiho; K. taeji pop 大地法). In Sanskrit, lit. "factors of wide extent"; "omnipresent mental factors" (DHARMA) that ground all conscious activity; also known as CITTAMAHĀBHuMIKA. In the SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA system, ten specific factors are said universally to accompany all consciousness activity and are therefore known as "omnipresent mental factors." The ten are: (1) "sensation" or "feeling" (VEDANĀ), (2) "volition" or "intention" (CETANĀ), (3) "perception" (SAMJNĀ), (4) "zest" or "desire to act" (CHANDA), (5) "sensory contact" (SPARsA), (6) "discernment" (MATI), (7) "mindfulness" (SMṚTI), (8) "attention" (MANASIKĀRA), (9) "determination" (ADHIMOKsA), (10) "concentration" (SAMĀDHI). To give but one example of how these factors are viewed as ubiquitous, even such mental states as distraction are still characterized by a relative "lack" of concentration, not a complete absence thereof; hence, "concentration" remains an omnipresent mental factor even amid distraction. There is also a list of six "fundamental afflictions" or "defiled factors of wide extent" (KLEsA-mahābhumika) that are associated with all defiled thoughts: delusion (MOHA), heedlessness (pramāda; see APRAMĀDA), lassitude (KAUSĪDYA), lack of faith (ĀsRADDHYA), sloth (STYĀNA), and restlessness (AUDDHATYA). Finally, there are also two "unwholesome factors of wide extent" (AKUsALA-mahābhumika): lack of shame (ahrī; cf. HRĪ) and lack of dread (anapatrāpya; cf. APATRĀPYA).
mahābrahmā. (T. Tshang pa chen po; C. Dafan tian; J. Daibonten; K. Taebom ch'on 大梵天). In Sanskrit and Pāli, the "great BRAHMĀ"; the highest of the three heavens that constitute the first absorption (DHYĀNA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHĀTU) in the Buddhist cosmological system. The term often appears in plural, as mahābrahmānaḥ (P. mahābrahmāno), suggesting that this heaven is not the domain of a single brahmā, of whom the divinities of the two lower heavens are his subjects and ministers, but rather that a number of mahābrahmā gods inhabit this heaven. However, it is typically a single Brahmā, often called Brahmā SAHĀMPATI, who appears in the sutras. In the BRAHMAJĀLASUTTA, the false belief in a creator god derives from the fact that the first mahābrahmā divinity to be reborn in this heaven at the beginning of world cycle falsely imagined himself to be the creator of the beings who were reborn after him in the brahmā heavens, with those beings in turn believing his claim and professing it on earth after they were reborn as humans. As with all the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality, one is reborn as a divinity there through achieving the same level of concentration (dhyāna) as the gods of that heaven during one's practice of meditation in a previous lifetime. See also BRAHMALOKA.
Mahānāman. (P. Mahānāma; T. Ming chen; C. Mohenan; J. Makanan; K. Mahanam 摩訶男). The Sanskrit proper name of two significant disciples of the buddha. ¶ Mahānāman was one of the five ascetics (S. PANCAVARGIKA; P. paNcavaggiyā; alt. S. bhadravargīya) who was a companion of Prince SIDDHĀRTHA during his practice of austerities and hence one of the first disciples converted by the Buddha at the Deer Park (MṚGADĀVA) in ṚsIPATANA following his enlightenment. Together with his companions, Mahānāman heard the Buddha's first sermon, the "Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dharma" (S. DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA; P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA), and he attained the state of a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA) three days later. He and the others became ARHATs while listening to the buddha preach the ANATTALAKKHAnASUTTA. Mahānāman later traveled to the town of Macchikāsanda, and, while he was out on alms rounds, the householder CITTA saw him. Citta was greatly impressed by Mahānāman's dignified deportment, and invited him to his house for an meal offering. Having served Mahānāman the morning meal and listened to his sermon, Citta was inspired to offer his pleasure garden Ambātakavana to Mahānāman as a gift to the SAMGHA, and built a monastery there. ¶ Another Mahānāman was also an eminent lay disciple, whom the Buddha declared to be foremost among laymen who offer choice alms food. According to the Pāli account, Mahānāman was Anuruddha's (S. ANIRUDDHA) elder brother and the Buddha's cousin. It was with Mahānāman's permission that Anuruddha joined the order with other Sākiyan (S. sĀKYA) kinsmen of the Buddha. Mahānāman was very generous in his support of the order. During a period of scarcity when the Buddha was dwelling at VeraNja, he supplied the monks with medicines for three periods of four months each. Mahānāman was keenly interested in the Buddha's doctrine and there are several accounts in the scriptures of his conversations with the Buddha. Once while the Buddha lay ill in the Nigrodhārāma, ĀNANDA took Mahānāman aside to answer his questions on whether concentration (SAMĀDHI) preceded or followed upon knowledge. Mahānāman attained the state of a once-returner (sakadāgāmi; S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), but his deception toward Pasenadi (S. PRASENAJIT), the king of Kosala (S. KOsALA), precipitated the eventual destruction of the Sākiya (S. sĀKYA) clan. Pasenadi had asked Mahānāman for the hand of a true Sākiyan daughter in marriage, but the latter, out of pride, instead sent Vāsabhakkhattiyā, a daughter born to him by a slave girl. To conceal the treachery, Mahānāman feigned to eat from the same dish as his daughter, thus convincing Pasenadi of her pure lineage. The ruse was not discovered until years later when Vidudabha, the son of Pasenadi and Vāsabhakkhattiyā, was insulted by his Sākiyan kinsmen who refused to treat him with dignity because of his mother's status as the offspring of a slave. Vidudabha vowed revenge and later marched against Kapilavatthu (S. KAPILAVASTU) and slaughtered all who claimed Sākiyan descent. ¶ Another Mahānāma was the c. fifth century author of the Pāli MAHĀVAMSA.
Mahāparinibbānasuttanta. (S. MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA; C. Youxing jing/Da banniepan jing; J. Yugyokyo/Daihatsunehangyo; K. Yuhaeng kyong/Tae panyolban kyong 遊行經/大般涅槃經). In Pāli, the "Discourse on the Great Decease" or the "Great Discourse on the Final Nirvāna"; the sixteenth sutta of the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA and longest discourse in the Pāli canon. (There were also either Sanskrit or Middle Indic recensions of this mainstream Buddhist version of the scripture, which should be distinguished from the longer MAHĀYĀNA recension of the scripture that bears the same title; see MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA.) There are six different Chinese translations of this mainstream version of the text, including a DHARMAGUPTAKA recension in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA and an independent translation in three rolls by FAXIAN. This scripture recounts in six chapters the last year of Buddha's life, his passage into PARINIRVĀnA, and his cremation. In the text, the Buddha and ĀNANDA travel from Rājagaha (S. RĀJAGṚHA) to Kusināra (S. KUsINAGARĪ) in fourteen stages, meeting with different audiences to whom the Buddha gives a variety of teachings. The narrative contains numerous sermons on such subjects as statecraft, the unity of the SAMGHA, morality, the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, and the four great authorities (MAHĀPADEsA) for determining the authenticity of Buddhist doctrines following the Buddha's demise. The Buddha crosses a river using his magical powers and describes to the distraught where their deceased loved ones have been reborn. Becoming progressively more ill, the Buddha decides to spend his final rains retreat (P. vassa; S. VARsĀ) with Ānanda meditating in the forest near VEnUGRĀMAKA, using his powers of deep concentration to hold his disease in check. He is eighty years old and describes his body as being like an old cart held together by straps. When the Buddha expresses his wish to address the saMgha, Ānanda assumes that there is a teaching that the Buddha has not yet taught. The Buddha replies that he was not one who taught with a "teacher's fist" (P. ācariyamutthi) or "closed fist," holding back some secret teaching, but that he has in fact already revealed everything. The Buddha also says that he is not the head of the saMgha and that after his death each monk should "be an island unto himself" with the DHARMA as his island (P. dīpa; S. dvīpa) and his refuge. ¶ While meditating at the CĀPĀLACAITYA, the Buddha mentions to Ānanda three times that a TATHĀGATA has the power to live for an eon or until the end of an eon. (The Pāli commentaries take "eon" here to mean "his full allotted lifespan," not a cosmological period.) Ānanda, however, misses the hint and does not ask him to do so. MĀRA then appears to remind the Buddha of what he told him at the time of his enlightenment: that he would not enter nibbāna (NIRVĀnA) until he had trained monks and disciples who were able to teach the dhamma (S. DHARMA). Māra tells the Buddha that that task has now been accomplished, and the Buddha eventually agrees, "consciously and deliberately" renouncing his remaining lifespan and informing Māra that he will pass away in three months' time. The earth then quakes, causing the Buddha to explain to Ānanda the eight reasons for an earthquake, one of which is that a tathāgata has renounced his life force. It is only at that point that Ānanda implores the Buddha to remain until the end of the eon, but the Buddha tells him that the appropriate time for his request has passed, and recalls fifteen occasions on which he had told Ānanda of this remarkable power and how each time Ānanda had failed to ask him to exercise it. The Buddha then explains to a group of monks the four great authorities (MAHĀPADEsA), the means of determining the authenticity of a particular doctrine after the Buddha has died and is no longer available to arbitrate. He then receives his last meal from the smith CUNDA. The dish that the Buddha requests is called SuKARAMADDAVA, lit., "pig's delight." There has been a great deal of scholarly discussion on the meaning of this term, centering upon whether it is a pork dish, such as mincemeat, or something eaten by pigs, such as truffles or mushrooms. At the meal, the Buddha announces that he alone should be served the dish and what was left over should be buried, for none but a buddha could survive eating it. Shortly after finishing the dish, the Buddha is afflicted with the dysentery from which he would eventually die. The Buddha then converts a layman named Pukkusa, who offers him gold robes. Ānanda notices that the color of the robes pales next to the Buddha's skin, and the Buddha informs him that the skin of the Buddha is particularly bright on two occasions, the night when he achieves enlightenment and the night that he passes away. Proceeding to the outskirts of the town of Kusinagarī, the Buddha lies down on his right side between twin sāla (S. sĀLA) trees, which immediately bloom out of season. Shortly before dying, the Buddha instructs Ānanda to visit Cunda and reassure him that no blame has accrued to him; rather, he should rejoice at the great merit he has earned for having given the Buddha his last meal. Monks and divinities assemble to pay their last respects to the Buddha. When Ānanda asks how monks can pay respect to the Buddha after he has passed away, the Buddha explains that monks, nuns, and laypeople should visit four major places (MAHĀSTHĀNA) of pilgrimage: the site of his birth at LUMBINĪ, his enlightenment at BODHGAYĀ, his first teaching at ṚsIPATANA (SĀRNĀTH), and his PARINIRVĀnA at Kusinagarī. Anyone who dies while on pilgrimage to one of these four places, the Buddha says, will be reborn in the heavens. Scholars have taken these instructions as a sign of the relatively late date of this sutta (or at least this portion of it), arguing that this admonition by the Buddha is added to promote pilgrimage to four already well-established shrines. The Buddha instructs the monks to cremate his body in the fashion of a CAKRAVARTIN. He says that his remains (sARĪRA) should be enshrined in a STuPA to which the faithful should offer flowers and perfumes in order to gain happiness in the future. The Buddha then comforts Ānanda, telling him that all things must pass away and praising him for his devotion, predicting that he will soon become an ARHAT. When Ānanda laments the fact that the Buddha will pass away at such a "little mud-walled town, a backwoods town, a branch township," rather than a great city, the Buddha disabuses him of this notion, telling him that Kusinagarī had previously been the magnificent capital of an earlier cakravartin king named Sudarsana (P. Sudassana). The wanderer SUBHADRA (P. Subhadda) then becomes the last person to be ordained by the Buddha. When Ānanda laments that the monks will soon have no teacher, the Buddha explains that henceforth the dharma and the VINAYA will be their teacher. As his last disciplinary act before he dies, the Buddha orders that the penalty of brahmadanda (lit. the "holy rod") be passed on CHANDAKA (P. Channa), his former charioteer, which requires that he be completely shunned by his fellow monks. Then, asking three times whether any of the five hundred monks present has a final question, and hearing none, the Buddha speaks his last words, "All conditioned things are subject to decay. Strive with diligence." The Buddha's mind then passed into the first stage of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA) and then in succession through the other three levels of the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) and then through the four levels of the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU). He then passed back down through the same eight levels to the first absorption, then back up to the fourth absorption, and then passed away, at which point the earth quaked. Seven days later, his body was prepared for cremation. However, the funeral pyre could not be ignited until the arrival of MAHĀKĀsYAPA (P. Mahākassapa), who had been away at the time of the Buddha's death. After he arrived and paid his respects, the funeral pyre ignited spontaneously. The relics (sARĪRA) of the Buddha remaining after the cremation were taken by the Mallas of Kusinagarī, but seven other groups of the Buddha's former patrons also came to claim the relics. The brāhmana DROnA (P. Dona) was called upon to decide the proper procedure for apportioning the relics. Drona divided the relics into eight parts that the disputing kings could carry back to their home kingdoms for veneration. Drona kept for himself the urn he used to apportion the relics; a ninth person was given the ashes from the funeral pyre. These ten (the eight portions of relics, the urn, and the ashes) were each then enshrined in stupas. At this point the scripture's narrative ends. A similar account, although with significant variations, appears in Sanskrit recensions of the Mahāparinirvānasutra.
Mahāsāropamasutta. In Pāli, "Great Discourse on the Simile of the Heartwood"; the twenty-ninth sutta contained in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate recension appears, but without title, in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA); preached by the Buddha to an assembly of monks at Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) outside the town of Rājagaha (RĀJAGṚHA) to address DEVADATTA's secession from the Buddha's dispensation. Devadatta left because he was infatuated with the personal fame and profit he earned through his mastery of supernormal powers. The Buddha explained that the teachings were not spoken for the purpose of acquiring gain or profit, which were like the twigs and leaves of a tree, nor were they for mere morality (sĪLA), meditative concentration (SAMĀDHI), or supranormal powers (ABHIJNĀ), which are like the inner and outer bark of a tree. Rather, the teachings were elucidated for the attainment of becoming a worthy one (ARHAT), which is like the heartwood of a tree.
manaskāra. [alt. manasikāra] (P. manasikāra; T. yid la byed pa; C. zuoyi; J. sai; K. chagŭi 作意). In Sanskrit, "mental engagement," or "attention"; a general term for mental activity, concentration, or attention, with at least two technical senses: as one of the five omnipresent (SARVATRAGA) or seven universal (P. sabbacittasādhārana) mental concomitants (CAITTA), it is the factor that directs the mind to a specific object; in the process of developing calmness or serenity (sAMATHA), there are four levels of increasingly powerful and continuous mental engagement with the object of concentration. See also AYONIsOMANASKĀRA.
manas. ::: mind; reason; mentality; the middle levels of mind which exist as or include the mental body &
Manas-samyama (Sanskrit) Manas-saṃyama [from manas mind + saṃyama concentration] Concentration of the mind; the perfect control and concentration of the mind during yoga practices. See also SANNYASA
Manduka Yoga (Sanskrit) Maṇḍūka-yoga [from maṇḍūka frog] A “particular kind of abstract meditation in which an ascetic sits motionless like a frog” (Monier-Williams). However, all true yoga practice involves complete mental abstraction from exterior concerns and the outer environment, so that all yogis, while practicing yoga sit motionless “like a frog.” It is not a particularly high kind of yoga, in any case, for true spiritual yoga is the yoga of the inner man, implying intense intellectual and spiritual concentration on affairs and subjects of spiritual character, and need not necessarily involve any sitting in yoga whatsoever. The true disciple may be doing his master’s business and going about in pursuit of his duties from day to day, and yet be practicing this spiritual yoga without a moment’s intermission. All forms of yoga practice which involve postures, sittings or similar things in which the physical body is active or inactive, technically belong to one of the various kinds of hatha yoga and are to be discouraged.
maranānusmṛti. (P. maranānussati; T. 'chi ba rjes su dran pa; C. niansi; J. nenshi; K. yomsa 念死). In Sanskrit, "recollection of death"; one of the most widely described forms of Buddhist meditation. This practice occurs as one of the forty objects of meditation (KAMMAttHĀNA) for the development of concentration. One of the most detailed descriptions of the practice is found in the VISUDDHIMAGGA of BUDDHAGHOSA. Among six generic personality types (greedy, hateful, ignorant, faithful, intelligent, and speculative), Buddhaghosa states that mindfulness of death is a suitable object for persons of intelligent temperament. Elsewhere, however, Buddhaghosa says that among the two types of objects of concentration, the generically useful objects and specific objects, only two among the forty are generically useful: the cultivation of loving-kindness (P. mettā; S. MAITRĪ) and the recollection of death. In describing the actual practice, Buddhaghosa explains that the meditator who wishes to take death as his object of concentration should go to a remote place and repeatedly think, "Death will take place" or "Death, death." Should that not result in the development of concentration, Buddhaghosa provides eight ways of contemplating death. The first of the eight is contemplation of death as a murderer, where one imagines that death will appear to deprive one of life. Death is certain from the moment of birth; beings move progressively toward their demise without ever turning back, just as the sun never reverses its course through the sky. The second contemplation is to think of death as the ruin of all the accomplishments and fortune acquired in life. The third contemplation is to compare oneself to others who have suffered death, yet who are greater than oneself in fame, merit, strength, supranormal powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI), or wisdom. Death will come to oneself just as it has come to these beings. The fourth contemplation is that the body is shared with many other creatures. Here one contemplates that the body is inhabited by the eighty families of worms, who may easily cause one's death, as may a variety of accidents. The fifth contemplation is of the tenuous nature of life, that life requires both inhalation and exhalation of breath, requires a balanced alternation of the four postures (ĪRYĀPATHA) of standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. It requires moderation of hot and cold, a balance of the four physical constituents, and nourishment at the proper time. The sixth contemplation is that there is no certainty about death; that is, there is no certainty as to the length of one's life, the type of illness of which one will die, when one will die, nor where, and there is no certainty as to where one will then be reborn. The seventh contemplation is that life is limited in length. In general, human life is short; beyond that, there is no certainty that one will live as long as it takes "to chew and swallow four or five mouthfuls." The final contemplation is of the shortness of the moment, that is, that life is in fact just a series of moments of consciousness. Buddhaghosa also describes the benefits of cultivating mindfulness of death. A monk devoted to the mindfulness of death is diligent and disenchanted with the things of the world. He is neither acquisitive nor avaricious and is increasingly aware of impermanence (S. ANITYA), the first of the three marks of mundane existence. From this develops an awareness of the other two marks, suffering and nonself. He dies without confusion or fear. If he does not attain the deathless state of NIRVĀnA in this lifetime, he will at least be reborn in an auspicious realm. Similar instructions are found in the literatures of many other Buddhist traditions.
mārga. (P. magga; T. lam; C. dao; J. do; K. to 道). In Sanskrit, "path"; a polysemous term in Sanskrit, whose root denotation is a road, track, way, or course. As one of the most important terms in Buddhism, it refers to the metaphorical route from one state to another, typically from suffering to liberation, from SAMSĀRA to NIRVĀnA. The term derives in part from the view that the means of achieving liberation from suffering have been identified by the Buddha, and he himself has successfully followed the route to that goal, leaving behind tracks or footprints that others can follow. Indeed, it is the Buddhist view that each of the buddhas of the past has followed the same path to enlightenment. However, in the interval between buddhas, that path becomes forgotten, and the purpose of the next buddha's advent in the world is to rediscover and reopen that same path. The term mārga occurs in the Buddha's first sermon (S. DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA; P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA) as the fourth constituent of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (CATVĀRY ĀRYASATYĀNI), where it is identified as the eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA) between the two extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. Elsewhere, the path is associated with the threefold training (TRIsIKsĀ) in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). However, there are numerous delineations of the path to enlightenment. For example, both the mainstream Buddhist schools and the MAHĀYĀNA describe three paths: (1) the path of the sRĀVAKA, culminating in attainment of NIRVĀnA as an ARHAT; (2) the path of the PRATYEKABUDDHA, also culminating in the nirvāna of an arhat; and (3) the path of the BODHISATTVA, culminating in the attainment of buddhahood. Each of these paths has its own stages, with a common system describing five (PANCAMĀRGA): (1) the path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA), (2) the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), (3) the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA), (4) the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), and (5) the adept path, "where there is nothing more to learn" (AsAIKsAMĀRGA). In more technical descriptions, the path to enlightenment is described as a series of moments of consciousness in a process of purification, in which increasingly subtle states of contaminants (ĀSRAVA) and afflictions (KLEsA) are permanently cleansed from the mind. The term "path" figures in the title of a number of highly important Buddhist works, such as the VISUDDHIMAGGA ("Path of Purification") by the Pāli commentator BUDDHAGHOSA. The Tibetan exegete TSONG KHA PA wrote of the "three principal aspects of the path" (lam rtso rnam gsum): renunciation, BODHICITTA, and correct view. See also DAO.
mārgasatya. (P. maggasacca; T. lam gyi bden pa; C. daodi; J. dotai; K. toje 道諦). In Sanskrit, "the truth of the path"; the fourth of the so-called FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni) set forth by the Buddha in his first sermon (S. DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA; P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA) in the Deer Park (MṚGADĀVA) at SĀRNĀTH. In that sermon, the Buddha identified the truth of the path to the cessation of suffering to be the eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA). In later literature, the truth of the path is also described in terms of the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ) in morality (SĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). Like the three other truths, the truth of the path has four aspects. They are: (1) path (mārga), because the path leads to liberation from suffering and rebirth; stated more technically, it leads from the state of the ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) to the state of the noble one (ĀRYA); (2) suitability (nyāya), because the path contains the antidotes suitable to destroy suffering and the origin of suffering; (3) achievement (PRATIPATTI) because the path brings about liberation; and (4) deliverance (nairyānika), because wisdom destroys the afflictions (KLEsA) and delivers one to a state of liberation.
Mauthausen ::: A camp for men, opened in August 1938, near Linz in northern Austria, Mauthausen was classified by the SS as a camp of utmost severity. Conditions there were brutal, even by concentration camp standards. Nearly 125,000 prisoners of various nationalities were either worked or tortured to death at the camp before liberating American troops arrived in May 1945.
Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG) ::: Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, a non-enforceable concentration of a drinking water contaminant, set at the level at which no known or anticipated adverse effects on human health occur and which allows an adequate safety margin. The MCLG is usually the starting point for determining the regulated Maximum Contaminant Level.
::: "Meditation, by the way, is a process leading towards knowledge and through knowledge, it is a thing of the head and not of the heart, so if you want dhyana , you can"t have an aversion to knowledge. Concentration in the heart is not meditation, it is a call on the Divine, on the Beloved.” Letters on Yoga
“Meditation, by the way, is a process leading towards knowledge and through knowledge, it is a thing of the head and not of the heart, so if you want dhyana , you can’t have an aversion to knowledge. Concentration in the heart is not meditation, it is a call on the Divine, on the Beloved.” Letters on Yoga
meditation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana , ‘meditation" and ‘contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana , for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. *Letters on Yoga
meditation ::: “There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana , ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’. Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana , for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. Letters on Yoga
Meditation ::: What meditation exactly means. There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of Dhyana, "meditation" and "contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana; for the principle of dhyanais mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 293-294
Mixed Waste::: Any radioactive waste that meets the requirements of LLW that contains a RCRA hazardous component. Also, mixed waste is waste that contains both hazardous waste and radioactive material (source, special nuclear, or by-product material as regulated by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 [42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.]). Mixed waste is classified by DOE according to the type of radioactive waste that it contains as either mixed low-level waste (MLLW), or mixed transuranic waste (MTRU). DOE's high-level waste (HLW) is assumed to be mixed waste because it contains hazardous components or exhibits the characteristic of corrosivity. If the radionuclides are those that have an atomic number greater than 92, have a half life longer than 20 years, and are present in concentrations greater than 100 nanocuries/gram the waste is termed Mixed TRU waste. The waste in Oak Ridge is predominantly Mixed Low Level Waste.
Mohe zhiguan. (J. Makashikan; K. Maha chigwan 摩訶止觀). In Chinese, "The Great Calming and Contemplation"; a comprehensive treatise on soteriological theory and meditation according to the TIANTAI ZONG; attributed to TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597). The Mohe zhiguan is based on a series of lectures Zhiyi delivered in 594, which were transcribed and edited by his disciple GUANDING. Zhi (lit. "stopping") is the Chinese translation for sAMATHA (calmness, serenity) and guan (lit. "observation") is the Chinese for VIPAsYANĀ (insight); the work as a whole seeks to establish a proper balance between meditative practice and philosophical insight. Zhi and guan practice are treated in three different ways in this treatise. Zhi in its denotation of "stopping" means calming the mind so that it is not buffeted by distracting thoughts; fixing the mind so that it stays focused on the present; and recognizing that distraction and concentration are both manifestations of a unitary, nondual reality. Guan in its denotation of "observation" means to illuminate the illusory nature of thought so that distractions are brought to an end; to have insight into the suchness (TATHATĀ) that is the ultimate nature of all phenomena in the universe; and to recognize that in suchness both insight and noninsight ultimately are identical. The original text of the Mohe zhiguan consists of ten chapters, but only the titles of the last three chapters survive. The last extant chapter, Chapter 7 on "Proper Contemplation," comprises approximately half of the entire treatise and, as the title suggests, provides a detailed description of the ten modes of contemplation and the ten spheres of contemplation. The first of the ten spheres of contemplation is called "the realm of the inconceivable" (S. ACINTYA). In his discussion of this realm in the first part of the fifth roll, Zhiyi covers one of the most famous of Tiantai doctrines: "the TRICHILIOCOSM in a single instant of thought" (YINIAN SANQIAN), which Zhiyi frames here as the "the trichiliocosm contained in the mind during an instant of thought" (sanqian zai yinian xin), viz., that any given thought-moment perfectly encompasses all reality, both temporally and spatially. By emphatically noting the "inconceivable" ability of the mind to contain the trichiliocosm, Zhiyi sought to emphasize the importance and mystery of the mind during the practice of meditation. This chapter, however, remains incomplete. The work also offers an influential presentation of the "four SAMĀDHIs," that is, the samādhis of constant sitting, constant walking, both sitting and walking, and neither sitting nor walking. Along with Zhiyi's FAHUA XUANYI and FAHUA WENJU, the Mohe zhiguan is considered to be one of the three most important treatises in the Tiantai tradition and is regarded as Zhiyi's magnum opus. The Tiantai monk ZHANRAN's MOHE ZHIGUAN FUXING ZHUANHONG JUE is considered to be the most authoritative commentary on the Mohe zhiguan.
moksabhāgīya. (T. thar pa cha mthun; C. shunjietuofen; J. jungedatsubun; K. sunhaet'albun 順解分). In Sanskrit, "aids to liberation"; abbreviation for the moksabhāgīya-kusalamula (wholesome faculties associated with liberation), the second of the three types of wholesome faculties (literally, "virtuous root") (KUsALAMuLA) recognized in the VAIBHĀsIKA school of SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA, along with the punyabhāgīya (aids to creating merit) and NIRVEDHABHĀGĪYA (aids to penetration). This type of wholesome faculty involves the intent to listen to (sruta) and reflect upon (cintā) the Buddhist teachings and then make the resolution (PRAnIDHĀNA) to follow the DHARMAVINAYA to such an extent that all one's physical and verbal actions (KARMAN) will come into conformity with the prospect of liberation. The moksabhāgīyas are constituents of the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), the second segment of the five-path schema outlined in the Vaibhāsika ABHIDHARMA system, which mark the transition from the mundane sphere of cultivation (LAUKIKA-BHĀVANĀMĀRGA) to the supramundane vision (viz., DARsANAMĀRGA) of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni). In distinction to the nirvedhabhāgīyas, however, which are the proximate path of preparation, the moksabhāgīyas constitute instead the remote path of preparation and are associated only with the types of wisdom developed from learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNĀ) and reflection (CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), not meditative practice (BHĀVANĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ). The moksabhāgīyas are generally concerned with the temporary allayment of the influence of the three major afflictions (KLEsA)-viz., greed (LOBHA), hatred (DVEsA), and ignorance (MOHA)-by cultivating the three kusalamulas of nongreed (ALOBHA), nonhatred (ADVEsA), and nondelusion (AMOHA). These factors are "conducive to liberation" by encouraging such salutary actions as giving (DĀNA), keeping precepts (sĪLA), and learning the dharma. The moksabhāgīya are associated with the development of the first twelve of the BODHIPĀKsIKADHARMAs, or "thirty-seven factors pertaining to awakening." Among them, the first set of four develop SMṚTI (mindfulness) as described in the four SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA (applications of mindfulness), the second set of four develop VĪRYA (effort) as described in the four PRAHĀnA (efforts or abandonments), and the third set of four develop SAMĀDHI (concentration) as described in the four ṚDDHIPĀDA (bases of psychic powers). According to a different enumeration, there are five moksabhāgīya: (1) faith (sRADDHĀ), (2) effort (VĪRYA), (3) mindfulness (SMṚTI), (4) concentration (SAMĀDHI), and (5) wisdom (PRAJNĀ).
monomania ::: n. --> Derangement of the mind in regard of a single subject only; also, such a concentration of interest upon one particular subject or train of ideas to show mental derangement.
Municipal camps for the confinement of German Roma and Sinti, established post-1935. Roma and Sinti who were stateless, or held other nationalities, had already mostly been expelled from German soil: "These gypsy camps were in essence SS-Sonderlager: special internment camps combining elements of protective custody, concentration camps and embryonic ghettoes. Usually located on the outskirts of cities, these Zigeunerlager were guarded by the SS, the gendarmerie, or the uniformed city police. After 1935 these camps became reserve depots for forced labor, genealogical registration, and compulsory sterilization. Between 1933 and 1939, Zigeunerlager were created in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and other German cities. These camps evolved from municipal internment camps into assembly centres for systematic deportation to concentration camps after 1939." [Source: "Holocaust: The Gypsies." Sybil Milton. In S Totten, W S Parsons, I W Charny (eds.) Century of Genocide. Eyewitness Accounts and
mystical concentration—a gift of grace, a charisma? I left that an open question, for the time being.
Nacht und Nebel ::: (Ger.) “Night and Fog,” the code name given to the decree of December 12, 1941, by the German High Command of the Armed Forces which directed that persons in occupied territories guilty of activities against Germany's armed forces were to be deported to Germany for trial by special courts and held in concentration camps.
naiskramya. (P. nekkhamma; T. nges 'byung; C. chuyaozhi/chuli; J. shutsuyoshi/shutsuri; K. ch'uryoji/ch'ulli 出要志/出離). In Sanskrit, "renunciation" (see also NIḤSARAnA; NIRVEDA) especially in the sense of leaving mundane life and embarking on a religious vocation. The Buddha repeatedly exhorts monks to develop renunciation as a means of eliminating attachment to the pleasures of the senses. As such, in the cultivation of the path (MĀRGA), renunciation is associated with right intention (SAMYAKSAMKALPA) and is essential for all three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ) in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). In the Pāli tradition, renunciation constitutes the third perfection (P. pāramī; S. PĀRAMITĀ) mastered by the bodhisatta (S. BODHISATTVA) on the path leading to buddhahood. In the MAHĀYĀNA traditions, renunciation is lauded as a prerequisite to developing the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTA), since it is impossible to develop a wish to liberate all beings from SAMSĀRA unless one is dissatisfied with saMsāra oneself. In order to develop renunciation, the adept is advised to contemplate the rarity of human birth (KsAnASAMPAD), the suffering inherent in the realms of saMsāra, the cause and effect of actions (KARMAN), and the inevitability and unpredictability of death.
nānādhimuktijNānabala. (P. nānādhimuttikaNāna; T. mos pa sna tshogs mkhyen pa'i stobs; C. zhongzhong shengjie zhili; J. shujushoge chiriki; K. chongjong sŭnghae chiryok 種種勝解智力). In Sanskrit, "power of knowing diverse aspirations," one of the ten special powers (BALA) of a buddha (S. tathāgatabala). One of the keys to the Buddha's extraordinary pedagogical skill was said to be his telepathic ability to understand the predilections or interests of each member of his audience, so that he could tailor his message to the aspirations of each individual. Thus, it is said that when the Buddha taught the practice of SAMĀDHI, he set forth forty different objects of concentration, each appropriate for a different personality. For those who were lustful, he taught meditation on the foulness of the human body; for those who were hateful, he taught meditation on loving-kindness; for those who were proud, he taught meditation on the twelve links of dependent origination; for those who were distracted, he taught meditation on the breath. Whereas the NĀNĀDHĀTUJNĀNABALA reflects a buddha's ability to discern the level of intelligence of a disciple in a particular lifetime, the nānādhimuktijNānabala reflects a buddha's ability to discern the interests or personality of a disciple in a particular lifetime.
Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM)::: NORM is a subset of NARM and refers to materials not covered under the Atomic Energy Act whose radioactivity has been enhanced (radionuclide concentrations are either increased or redistributed where they are more likely to cause exposure to man) usually by mineral extraction or processing activities. Examples are exploration and production wastes from the oil and natural gas industry and phosphate slag piles from the phosphate mining industry. This term is not used to describe or discuss the natural radioactivity of rocks and soils, or background radiation, but instead refers to materials whose radioactivity is technologically enhanced by controllable practices.
Ngal gso skor gsum. (Ngalso khorsum). In Tibetan, "Trilogy on Rest"; one of the major works by the Tibetan master KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS. It is composed of three cycles of teachings, each of which contains a root text, summary, autocommentary, and essential instruction (don khrid), as well as additional texts, for a total of fifteen works. The three cycles of teachings are (1) Sems nyid ngal gso ("Resting in Mind Itself'); (2) Sgyu ma ngal gso ("Resting in Illusion"); and (3) Bsam gtan ngal so ("Resting in Concentration [DHYĀNA]").
nianfo. (J. nenbutsu; K. yombul 念佛). In Chinese, "recollection, invocation, or chanting of [the name of] the Buddha." The term nianfo has a long history of usage across the Buddhist tradition and has been used to refer to a variety of practices. The Chinese term nianfo is a translation of the Sanskrit term BUDDHĀNUSMṚTI (recollection of [the qualities of] the Buddha), one of the common practices designed to help develop meditative absorption (DHYĀNA) in the mainstream traditions. Buddhānusmṛti is listed as the first of six fundamental contemplative practices, along with recollection of the DHARMA, SAMGHA, giving (DĀNA), morality (sĪLA), and the divinities (DEVA). Buddhānusmṛti (P. buddhānussati) is also the first in the Pāli list of ten "recollections" (P. anussati; S. ANUSMṚTI), which are included among the forty meditative exercises (see KAMMAttHĀNA) discussed in the VISUDDHIMAGGA. The meditator is instructed to reflect on the good qualities of the Buddha, often through contemplating a series of his epithets, contemplation that is said to lead specifically to "access concentration" (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI). In early Mahāyāna texts, the term seems to refer to the meditative practice of recollecting, invoking, or visualizing an image of a buddha or advanced BODHISATTVA, such as sĀKYAMUNI, MAITREYA, or AMITĀBHA. In East Asia, the term nianfo came to be used primarily in the sense of reciting the name of the Buddha, referring especially to recitation of the Chinese phrase namo Amituo fo (K. namu Amit'abul; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU; Homage to the buddha Amitābha). This recitation was often performed in a ritual setting and accompanied by the performance of prostrations, the burning of incense, and the intonation of scriptures, all directed toward gaining a vision of Amitābha's PURE LAND of SUKHĀVATĪ, a vision that was considered proof that one would be reborn there in the next lifetime. New forms of chanting Amitābha's name developed in China, such as WUHUI NIANFO (five-tempo intonation of [the name of] the Buddha), which used leisurely and increasingly rapid tempos, and YINSHENG NIANFO (intoning [the name of] the Buddha by drawing out the sound). Nianfo practice was often portrayed as a relatively easy means of guaranteeing rebirth in Amitābha's pure land. Many exegetes referred to the vows of the bodhisattva DHARMĀKARA (the bodhisattva who became Amitābha) as set forth in the SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, as evidence of the efficacy of nianfo practice in the degenerate age of the dharma (MOFA). In China, these various forms of nianfo were advocated by such famous monks as TANLUAN, DAOCHUO, and SHANDAO; these monks later came to be retroactively regarded as patriarchs of a so-called pure land school (JINGTU ZONG). In fact, however, nianfo was widely practiced across schools and social strata in both China and Korea and was not exclusively associated with a putative pure land tradition. In Japan, nenbutsu, or repetition of the phrase "namu Amidabutsu" (homage to Amitābha Buddha) became a central practice of the Japanese PURE LAND schools of Buddhism, such as JoDOSHu, JoDO SHINSHu, and JISHu. The practice spread rapidly among common people largely through the efforts of such itinerant holy men (HIJIRI) as KuYA and IPPEN. Influential pure land teachers, such as HoNEN and his disciple SHINRAN, also promoted the exclusive practice of chanting the phrase NAMU AMIDABUTSU and debated whether multiple recitations of the Buddha's name (TANENGI) were expected of pure land adherents or whether a single recitation (ICHINENGI) would be enough to ensure rebirth. Despite periodic suppressions of this movement, Honen and Shinran's schools, known as the Jodoshu and Jodo Shinshu, became the largest Buddhist communities in Japan.
Niemoller, Martin ::: Former W.W.I Submarine Commander & war hero turned Evangelical Priest. Active member in the Confessing Church. Pastor Niemoller spent the duration of the war in various concentration camps as "personal prisoner of the Fuhrer".
nimitta. (T. mtshan ma; C. xiang/ruixiang; J. so/zuiso; K. sang/sosang 相/瑞相). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "mark" or "sign," in the sense of a distinguishing characteristic, or a meditative "image." Among its several denotations, three especially deserve attention. (1) In Buddhist epistemology, nimitta refers to the generic appearance of an object, in distinction to its secondary characteristics, or ANUVYANJANA. Advertence toward the generic sign and secondary characteristics of an object produces a recognition or perception (SAMJNĀ) of that object, which may in turn lead to clinging or rejection and ultimately suffering. Thus nimitta often carries the negative sense of false or deceptive marks that are imagined to inhere in an object, resulting in the misperception of that object as real, intrinsically existent, or endowed with self. Thus, the apprehension of signs (nimittagrāha) is considered a form of ignorance (AVIDYĀ), and the perception of phenomena as signless (ĀNIMITTA) is a form of wisdom that constitutes one of three "gates to deliverance" (VIMOKsAMUKHA), along with emptiness (suNYATĀ) and wishlessness (APRAnIHITA). (2) In the context of THERAVĀDA meditation practice (BHĀVANĀ), as set forth in such works as the VISUDDHIMAGGA, nimitta refers to an image that appears to the mind after developing a certain degree of mental concentration (SAMĀDHI). At the beginning of a meditation exercise that relies, e.g., on an external visual support (KASInA), such as a blue circle, the initial mental image one recalls is termed the "preparatory image" (PARIKAMMANIMITTA). With the deepening of concentration, the image becomes more refined but is still unsteady; at that stage, it is called the "acquired image" or "eidetic image" (UGGAHANIMITTA). When one reaches access or neighborhood concentration (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI), a clear, luminous image appears to the mind, which is called the "counterpart image" or "representational image" (PAtIBHĀGANIMITTA). It is through further concentration on this stable "representational image" that the mind finally attains "full concentration" (APPANĀSAMĀDHI), i.e, meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA). (3) The term also appears in CATURNIMITTA, the "four signs," "sights," or "portents," which were the catalysts that led the future buddha SIDDHĀRTHA GAUTAMA to renounce the world (see PRAVRAJITA) and pursue liberation from the cycle of birth and death (SAMSĀRA): specifically, the sight of an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a religious mendicant (sRAMAnA).
nirvedhabhāgīya. (T. nges par 'byed pa'i cha dang mthun pa; C. shunjuezefen; J. junketchakubun; K. sun'gyolt'aekpum 順決擇分). In Sanskrit, "aids to penetration," the constituent stages developed during the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), the second segment of the five-path schema outlined in the VAIBHĀsIKA ABHIDHARMA system, which mark the transition from the mundane sphere of cultivation (LAUKIKA[BHĀVANĀ]MĀRGA) to the supramundane vision (DARsANA) of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni); also called the "virtuous faculties associated with penetration" (nirvedhabhāgīya-KUsALAMuLA) or the "four virtuous faculties" (CATUsKUsALAMuLA). The nirvedhabhāgīya are the third of the three types of virtuous faculties (KUsALAMuLA) recognized in the VAIBHĀsIKA school, along with the punyabhāgīya and MOKsABHĀGĪYA kusalamulas. In distinction to the moksabhāgīyas, however, which are the remote path of preparation, the nirvedhabhāgīyas constitute instead the proximate path of preparation and are associated specifically with the type of wisdom that is generated through one's own meditative experience (BHĀVANĀMĀYĪPRAJNĀ). The four aids to penetration are (1) heat (usMAN [alt. usmagata]), (2) summit (MuRDHAN), (3) acquiescence or receptivity (KSĀnTI), (4) and highest worldly dharmas (LAUKIKĀGRADHARMA). After accumulating the preliminary skills necessary for religious cultivation on the preceding path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA), the practitioner continues on to develop the mindfulness of mental constituents (dharma-SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA) on the path of preparation. This path involves the four aids to penetration, which mark successive stages in understanding the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths and are each subdivided into various categories, such as weak, medium, and strong experiences. While the first two of these NIRVEDHABHĀGĪYAs are subject to retrogression and thus belong to the worldly path of cultivation (laukikabhāvanāmārga), the latter two are nonretrogressive (AVAIVARTIKA) and lead inevitably to insight (DARsANA). Mastery of the four aids to penetration culminates in the "unimpeded concentration" (ĀNANTARYASAMĀDHI), in which the meditator acquires fully all the highest worldly dharmas; this distinctive concentration provides access to the third stage of the path, the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA), which marks the entrance into sanctity (ĀRYA) as a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). Thus the nirvedhabhāgīyas are the pivotal point in the progression of an ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) to the status of a noble one (ĀRYA). According to the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, disciples (sRĀVAKA) and solitary buddhas (PRATYEKABUDDHA) may develop the nirvedhabhāgīyas either before or during any of the four stages of the meditative absorptions (DHYĀNA), while bodhisattvas develop all four in one sitting during their final lifetimes.
nisthah ::: fixed and steady concentration; concentrated will of devotion; faith.
nisthāmārga. (T. mthar phyin pa'i lam; C. jiujingdao/wei; J. kukyodo/i; K. kugyongdo/wi 究竟道/位). In Sanskrit, "path of completion," the fifth of the "five-path" (PANCAMĀRGA) schema described in both SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA and the YOGĀCĀRA school of MAHĀYĀNA. With the consummation of the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), the adept achieves the "adamantine-like concentration" (VAJROPAMASAMĀDHI), which leads to the permanent destruction of even the subtlest and most persistent of the ten fetters (SAMYOJANA), resulting in the "knowledge of cessation" (KsAYAJNĀNA) and in some presentations an accompanying "knowledge of nonproduction" (ANUTPĀDAJNĀNA), viz., the knowledges that the fetters are destroyed and can never again recur. Because the adept now has full knowledge of the eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA) and has achieved liberation (VIMOKsA), he no longer needs any further instruction; for this reason, this path is also described as the "path where there is nothing more to learn" (AsAIKsAMĀRGA). With the attainment of this path, the practitioner is freed from the possibility of any further rebirth due to the causal force of KARMAN.
nīvarana. [alt. nivarana] (T. sgrib pa; C. gai; J. gai; K. kae 蓋). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "hindrance" or "obstruction," referring specifically to five hindrances to the attainment of the first meditative absorption of the subtle-materiality realm (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA). Each of these five hindrances specifically obstructs one of the five constituents of absorption (DHYĀNĀnGA) and must therefore be at least temporarily allayed in order for absorption (DHYĀNA) to occur. The five are: (1) "sensual desire" (KĀMACCHANDA), which hinders one-pointedness of mind (EKĀGRATĀ); (2) "malice" or "ill will" (VYĀPĀDA), hindering physical rapture (PRĪTI); (3) "sloth and torpor" (STYĀNA-MIDDHA), hindering the initial application of thought (VITARKA); (4) "restlessness and worry" (AUDDHATYA-KAUKṚTYA), hindering mental ease (SUKHA); and (5) "skeptical doubt" (VICIKITSĀ), hindering sustained consideration (VICĀRA). Buddhist sutras and meditation manuals, such as the VISUDDHIMAGGA, provide extensive discussion of various antidotes or counteragents (PRATIPAKsA, see also KAMMAttHĀNA) to these hindrances, such as the contemplation on the decomposition of a corpse (AsUBHABHĀVANĀ) to counter sensual desire; the meditation on loving-kindness (MAITRĪ) to counter malice; the recollection of death to counter sloth and torpor; quietude of mind to counter restlessness and worry; and studying the scriptures to counter skeptical doubt. In addition, the five faculties or dominants (INDRIYA) are also specifically designed to allay the five hindrances: faith (sRADDHĀ) counters malice; effort (VĪRYA) counters sloth and torpor; mindfulness (SMṚTI) counters sensual desire; concentration (SAMĀDHI) counters restlessness and worry; and wisdom (PRAJNĀ) counters skeptical doubt. A similar correlation is made between the seven factors of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA) and the hindrances. These five hindrances are permanently eliminated at various stages of the noble path (ĀRYAMĀRGA): worry (kaukṛtya) and skeptical doubt are permanently overcome at the point of becoming a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA); sensual desire and malice on becoming a nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN); and sloth and torpor and restlessness (auddhatya) on becoming a worthy one (ARHAT).
NIYAMA. ::: Control ; ducipUoe of the mind by regular prac- tices of which the highest is meditation on the Divine Being, and their object is to create a sattwic calm, purity and preparation for concentration upon which the scoire permanence of the rest of the yoga can te founded.
NJDIDHYASANA. ::: Fixing in concentration.
One can go forward even if there is not peace — quietude and concentration are necessary. Peace is necessary for the higher states to develop.
Originally members of these units guarded the concentration camps. In 1938 they participated, alongside the Verfügunstruppen, in the occupation of Austria, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. In 1939, 6,500 of their most experienced members, under the command of the former commandant of the concentration camp Dachau, and Inspector of Concentration Camps 1933-1939, Theodore Eicke, formed the first Waffen SS unit, the Totenkopfdivision. Until mid-1941 its units were employed in policing occupied territories, and the supervision and implementation of deportations and executions. Immediately prior to the assault on the USSR, the Totenkopfverbände were incorporated in units of the Waffen SS.
Oswiecim ::: City in southern Poland that translates to Auschwitz in German. It was 80 percent Jewish in 1939, with 11 synagogues. Also refers to the forced-labor camp that became a concentration camp in the suburbs of Cracow. Established in 1942, it was destroyed by departing Nazis on January 14, 1944, when the last of its prisoners went to Auschwitz.
Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision's limited range. For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere. God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 188
Our subliminal self is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature,—and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being’s direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind’s documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience. It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities whether by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance. Our waking state is unaware of its connection with the subliminal being, although it receives from it—but without any knowledge of the place of origin—the inspirations, intuitions, ideas, will-suggestions, sense-suggestions, urges to action that rise from below or from behind our limited surface existence. Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the subliminal has its existence. But we receive the records of our sleep experience through dream and in dream figures and not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state, nor through the supernormal clarities of vision and other more luminous and concrete ways of communication developed by the inner subliminal cognition when it gets into habitual or occasional conscious connection with our waking self. The subliminal, with the subconscious as an annexe of itself,—for the subconscious is also part of the behind-the-veil entity,—is the seer of inner things and of supraphysical experiences; the surface subconscious is only a transcriber. It is for this reason that the Upanishad describes the subliminal being as the Dream Self because it is normally in dreams, visions, absorbed states of inner experience that we enter into and are part of its experiences...
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 236
paccavekkhanaNāna. In Pāli, "reviewing knowledge"; the recollection of any meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA, S. DHYĀNA) or object of concentration, the attainment of any of the four noble paths (P. magga, S. MĀRGA), or the fruition (PHALA) of a noble path. In the case of a noble attainment, reviewing knowledge arises in the following manner. According to the Pāli ABHIDHAMMA analysis, first, path consciousness (MAGGACITTA) gives rise to two or three moments of fruition consciousness (PHALACITTA), after which the mind subsides into the subconscious mental continuum or life stream (BHAVAnGASOTA). The subconscious life stream continues until the mind adverts to the previous path moment for the purpose of reviewing it. This is followed by seven moments of mental excitation, called impulsion or advertence (javana), that take as their object the past path moment. Thereafter the mind again subsides into the subconscious life stream. The mind then adverts to previous moments of fruition for the purpose of reviewing them. This is followed by seven moments of mental excitation that take as their object the past fruition moments. In the same way that the practitioner reviews the path and fruition, he also reviews the afflictions (P. kilesa; S. KLEsA) eradicated from his mind, those remaining to be eradicated, nibbāna (S. NIRVĀnA) as an object, etc. He knows thereby what he has attained, what remains to be attained, and what he has experienced.
Padmasana (Sanskrit) Padmāsana [from padma lotus + āsana seat, posture] The posture of a lotus; a yoga posture taken to develop concentration and religious meditation.
pasu-asura (pashu-asura; pashu asura) ::: the pasu stage of the asura pasu-asura .... with which the first manvantara of the sixth pratikalpa begins, when mind having evolved to the buddhi returns temporarily to a concentration on the bodily life.
flux density - The concentration of magnetic lines of force. Determines strength of the magnetic field.
Sunspot - A temporary disturbed area in the solar photosphere that appears dark because it is cooler than the surrounding areas. Sunspots consist of concentrations of strong magnetic flux. They usually occur in pairs or groups of opposite polarity that move in unison across the face of the Sun as it rotates.
Performance Data (for incinerators)::: Information collected, during a trial burn, on concentrations of designated organic compounds and pollutants found in incinerator emissions. Data analysis must show that the incinerator meets performance standards under operating conditions specified in the RCRA permit.
Pranayama ::: Sanskrit, roughly, for "breath control". Refers to practices that utilize control of the breath for spiritual advancement and general wellness. Can also refer to a specific type of samatha (concentration) or insight (mindfulness) meditation where the practitioner follows the breath or uses awareness of the breath to dissect the moment.
Raja yoga ::: This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts th
refore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalinı, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 36-37
Rajayogic concentration is divided into four stages ; h com- mences with the drawing both of the mind and senses from out- ward things, proceeds to the bolding of the one object of con- centration to the exclusion of all tjther ideas and mental activi- ties, then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in the oneness of Samadhi.
Reference Concentration (RfC) ::: An estimate (with uncertainty spanning perhaps an order of magnitude) of a continuous inhalation exposure to the human population (including sensitive subgroups) that is likely to be without an appreciable risk of deleterious noncancer effects during a lifetime.
reflection ::: 1. Mental concentration; careful and deep consideration. 2. An image; representation. reflections.
sadhana chatushtaya. ::: the four-fold aids to spiritual practice &
samadhana. ::: perfect concentration of the mind on the one Reality; concentration and contemplation upon the vedantic texts and the words of the Guru
Samadhi and norma! sleep, between the dream*state of Yoga and the physical state of dream. The latter belongs to the physical mind ; in the former the mind proper and subtle is at work liberated from the immixture of the physical mentality. The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind*faculttes disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain>memory, partly of refieclions from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflec- tions which arc, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co- ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the Yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear possession of itself, though not of the physical world, works coherently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelligence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of conununicatinn with maJerJal things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflection, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the dis- tractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have
samadhi ::: concentration; trance; the last member of the vijñana samadhi catus.t.aya: the placing of the consciousness in particular conditions that give it access to larger fields of experience, so that "one can become aware of things in this world outside our ordinary range or go into other worlds or other planes of existence". The term samadhi includes three principal states corresponding to those of waking (jagrat), dream (svapna) and deep sleep (sus.upti), but it is applied especially to states of consciousness "in which the mind is withdrawn from outward things" and is often equivalent to svapnasamadhi
Samadhi(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word formed of sam, meaning "with" or "together"; a, meaning "towards"; andthe verbal root dha, signifying "to place," or "to bring"; hence samadhi, meaning "to direct towards,"generally signifies to combine the faculties of the mind with a direction towards an object. Hence, intensecontemplation or profound meditation, with the consciousness directed to the spiritual. It is the highestform of self-possession, in the sense of collecting all the faculties of the constitution towards reachingunion or quasi-union, long or short in time as the case may be, with the divine-spiritual. One whopossesses and is accustomed to use this power has complete, absolute control over all his faculties, andis, therefore, said to be "completely self- possessed." It is the highest state of yoga or "union."Samadhi, therefore, is a word of exceedingly mystical and profound significance implying the completeabstraction of the percipient consciousness from all worldly or exterior or even mental concerns orattributes, and its absorption into or, perhaps better, its becoming the pure unadulterate, undilutesuperconsciousness of the god within. In other words, samadhi is self-conscious union with the spiritualmonad of the human constitution. Samadhi is the eighth or final stage of genuine occult yoga, and can beattained at any time by the initiate without conscious recourse to the other phases or practices of yogaenumerated in Oriental works, and which other and inferior practices are often misleading, in some casesdistinctly injurious, and at the best mere props or aids in the attaining of complete mental abstractionfrom worldly concerns.The eight stages of yoga usually enumerated are the following: (1) yama, signifying "restraint" or"forbearance"; (2) niyama, religious observances of various kinds, such as watchings or fastings,prayings, penances, etc.; (3) asana (q.v.), postures of various kinds; (4) pranayama, various methods ofregulating the breath; (5) pratyahara, a word signifying "withdrawal," but technically and esoterically the"withdrawal" of the consciousness from sensual or sensuous concerns, or from external objects; (6)dharana (q.v.), firmness or steadiness or resolution in holding the mind set or concentrated on a topic orobject of thought, mental concentration; (7) dhyana (q.v.), abstract contemplation or meditation whenfreed from exterior distractions; and finally, (8) samadhi, complete collection of the consciousness and ofits faculties into oneness or union with the monadic essence.It may be observed, and should be carefully taken note of by the student, that when the initiate hasattained samadhi he becomes practically omniscient for the solar universe in which he dwells, becausehis consciousness is functioning at the time in the spiritual-causal worlds. All knowledge is then to himlike an open page because he is self-consciously conscious, to use a rather awkward phrase, of nature'sinner and spiritual realms, the reason being that his consciousness has become kosmic in its reaches.
Samadhi ::: See Absorption Concentration.
Samapatti (Sanskrit) Samāpatti [from sam-ā-pad to progress to perfect fulfillment from the verbal root pad to go, progress] In Buddhism, a subdivision of the fourth stage of abstract meditation (there being eight samapattis); “perfect concentration” in the raja yoga system of occult training, a state of intellectual, spiritual, and psychic unfolding in which meditation becomes vision, and there ensues perfect indifference to things of this world. Said to be the final degree of development, upon reaching which the possibility of entering into samadhi is attained.
Samatha Meditation ::: One of the two general categories of meditative practice described on this site. Refers to concentration meditation where an object of focus is chosen and held onto with the mind. The object of focus can vary considerably, but enough attention consistently leads to the emergence and development of states called the samatha jhanas. Also Concentration Meditation.
Samyak-Samadhi (Sanskrit) Samyaksamādhi Perfect or complete meditation. As “Right Concentration,” one Path of the Holy Eightfold Path of Buddhism.
samyama ::: 1. self-control, rejection or self-dissociation. ::: 2. concentration, directing or dwelling of the consciousness (by which one becomes aware of all that is in an object).
saṁyama (sanyama; samyama) ::: self-control; concentration; identisamyama fication; dwelling of the consciousness on an object until the mind of the observer becomes one with the observed and the contents of the object, including its past, present and future, are known from within.
scatter-brain ::: n. --> A giddy or thoughtless person; one incapable of concentration or attention.
Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger, deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of concentration. Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The con- centration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psy- chic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the conscious- ness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and
selfism ::: n. --> Concentration of one&
Sex-dreams ::: What is rejected in the waking often attacks in sleep — especially the sexual suggestions. You have to con- centrate before sleeping with a strong will that nothing of the kind should happen. After some time this concentration is usually successful.
shatkasampatti &
Shiva is the Eternal"s Personality of Force; through him all is created, through his passion, through his rhythm, through his concentration.
Shiva is the Eternal’s Personality of Force; through him all is created, through his passion, through his rhythm, through his concentration.
SIVA. ::: The Eternal’s Personality of Force ; through him all is created, through bis passion, through his rhythm, through his concentration.
&
Sortilegium (Latin) [from sors lot + lego choose] Divination by drawing lots; a practice of wide diffusion in antiquity, and constantly mentioned in literature of classical Greek and Latin as well as of other countries, and still practiced in some places. One form of it consisted in picking at random in the pages of a book, after due concentration of the mind on the object to be obtained. This was done by the Romans in their sortes Virgilianae, and the early Christians practiced it with the Bible, as a means of ascertaining the divine will or obtaining guidance. Augustine even sanctioned this practice, provided it was not done for worldly ends, and indulged in it himself. The word sorcery is also derived from sors through late Latin and French, and sortilege was often regarded as a form of sorcery — as indeed it was when the knowledge sought was desired for the purposes of evil. It is the motive in these matters which distinguishes the good from the bad. See also DIVINATION
Spiritual effort by concentration of the energies in a spiritual discipline or process.
Sri Aurobindo: "Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.” *Letters on Yoga
SS ::: (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad), originally Adolf Hitler's bodyguard, it became the elite guard of the Nazi state and its main tool of terror. The SS maintained control over the concentration camp system and was instrumental in the mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen. Led by Heinrich Himmler, its members had to submit with complete obedience to the authority of the supreme master, Hitler and himself. SS officers had to prove their own and their wives' racial purity back to the year 1700, and membership was conditional on Aryan appearance.
stria vascularis ::: Specialized epithelium lining the cochlear duct that maintains the high potassium concentration of the endolymph.
Sub-camp ::: Auxiliary forced labor camp linked administratively to one of the major concentration camps. There were thousands of sub-camps in the concentration camp system, which numbered nearly 3,000 camps.
subtle vision ("s) ::: Sri Aurobindo: " This power of vision is sometimes inborn and habitual even without any effort of development, sometimes it wakes up of itself and becomes abundant or needs only a little practice to develop; it is not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment, but usually when by practice of yoga one begins to go inside or live within, the power of subtle vision awakes to a greater or less extent; . . . .”*Letters on Yoga
"It is not necessary to have the mind quiet in order to see the lights — that depends only on the opening of the subtle vision in the centre which is in the forehead between the eyebrows. Many people get that as soon as they start sadhana. It can even be developed by effort and concentration without sadhana by some who have it to a small extent as an inborn faculty.” Letters on Yoga
"When the centres begin to open, inner experiences such as the seeing of light or images through the subtle vision in the forehead centre or psychic experiences and perceptions in the heart, become frequent — gradually one becomes aware of one"s inner being as separate from the outer, and what can be called a yogic consciousness with all its deeper movements develops in the place of the ordinary superficial mental and vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
Sun is the concentration of the Light.
Suppression of the needed sleep makes (he body tamasic and unfit for the necessary concentration during the waking hours.
T’ai hsu: Chinese for the Ultimate Vacuity, the course, the basis and the being of the material principle or the universal vital force (ch’i), the concentration and extension of which is to the Ultimate Vacuity as ice is to water.
T'ai Hsu: The Ultimate Vacuity, the course, the basis and the being of the material principle, ch'i, or the universal vital force the concentration and extension of which is to the Ultimate Vacuity as ice is to water. (Chang: Heng-ch'u, 1020-1077). -- W.T.C.
TANSTAAFL /tan'stah-fl/ (From Robert Heinlein's classic "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using an unpleasantly {heavyweight} technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of {free software}, or at the {signal-to-noise ratio} of unmoderated {Usenet} newsgroups. "What? Don't tell me I have to implement a {database} back end to get my address book program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you know." This phrase owes some of its popularity to the high concentration of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in hackerdom. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-28)
TANSTAAFL ::: /tan'stah-fl/ (From Robert Heinlein's classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.Often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using an unpleasantly heavyweight technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of free software, or the high concentration of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in hackerdom.[Jargon File] (1995-02-28)
tapas ::: "concentration of power of consciousness"; will-power; the force that acts through aisvarya, isita and vasita, or the combination of these siddhis of power themselves, sometimes listed as the fourth of five members of the vijñana catus.t.aya; the divine force of action into which rajas is transformed in the liberation (mukti) of the nature from the trigun.a of the lower prakr.ti, a power "which has no desire because it exercises a universal possession and a spontaneous Ananda .. of its movements"; the force manifested by an aspect of daivi prakr.ti (see Mahakali tapas, Mahasarasvati tapas); (also called cit-tapas)"infinite conscious energy", the principle that is the basis of tapoloka; limited mental will and power. Tapas is "the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. . . . But the moment the individual soul leans away from the universal and transcendent truth of its being, . . . that will changes its character: it becomes an effort, a straining". tapas ananda
TAPAS. ::: Energisni and concentration of capacities ; tranquilly intense divine force ; austerity of conscious force acting upon itself or its object ; the principle of spiritual power and force in the highest or divine Nature.
tapasya ::: concentration of will and energy to control the nature; tapasya rigorous discipline; physical austerity.
tapasya ::: effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, ascetic force, askesis; concentration of the will and energy to control the mind, vital and physical and to change them or to bring down the higher consciousness or for any other yogic purpose or high purpose.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge
The bases for the acquirement of the iddhis rested upon four completed steps in training (iddhipada): determination in respect of concentration on purpose, on will, on thoughts, and on investigation.
The four heavenly kings of the first and lowest of the six heavens are DHṚTARĀstRA in the east, VIRudHAKA in the south, VIRuPĀKsA in the west, and VAIsRAVAnA in the north. There are many devas inhabiting this heaven: GANDHARVAs in the east, KUMBHĀndAs in the south, NĀGAs in the west, and YAKsAs in the north. As vassals of sAKRO DEVĀNĀM INDRAḤ (lit. "sakra, the lord of the gods"; see INDRA; sAKRA; DEVARĀJAN), the four heavenly kings serve as protectors of the dharma (DHARMAPĀLA) and of sentient beings who are devoted to the dharma. They dwell at the four gates in each direction at the midslope of the world's central axis, Mt. Sumeru. The thirty-three gods of the second heaven are the eight vāsava, two asvina, eleven rudra, and twelve āditya. They live on the summit of Mt. Sumeru and are arrayed around the city of Sudarsana, the capital of their lord sakra. sakra is also known as Indra, the war god of the Āryans, who became a devotee of the Buddha as well as a protector of the dharma. The remaining four heavens are located in the sky above Mt. Sumeru. At the highest level of the sensuous realm, the paranirmitavasavartin heaven, dwells MĀRA, the Evil One. The four heavenly kings and the thirty-three gods are called the "divinities residing on the ground" (bhumyavacaradeva) because they dwell on Mt. Sumeru, while the gods from the Yāma heaven up to the gods of the realm of subtle materiality are known as "divinities residing in the air" (antariksavāsin, antarīksadeva), because they reside in the sky above the mountain. The higher one ascends into the heavens of both the sensuous realm and the subsequent realm of subtle materiality, the larger and more splendid the bodies of those gods become and the longer their life spans. Related to the devas of the sensuous realm are the demigods or titans (S. ASURA), jealous gods whom Indra drove out of the heaven of the thirty-three; they now live in exile in the shadows of Mt. Sumeru. ¶ The heavens of the realm of subtle materiality (rupadhātu) consist of sixteen (according to the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school), seventeen (the SAUTRĀNTIKA school), or eighteen (the THERAVĀDA/STHAVIRANIKĀYA school) levels of devas. These levels, which are collectively called the BRAHMALOKA (world of the Brahmā gods), are subdivided into the four classes of the dhyāna or "concentration" heavens, and rebirth there is dependent on specific meditative attainments in previous lives. One of the most extensive accounts on these heavens appears in the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, which presents seventeen levels of the subtle-materiality devas. Whereas rebirth in the heavens of the sensuous realm are the result of a variety of virtuous deeds done in a previous life, rebirth in the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality or in the immaterial realm is the result of what is called a "nonfluctuating" or "unwavering" action (ANINJYAKARMAN). Here, the only cause that will produce rebirth in one of these heavens is the achievement of the level of meditative concentration or absorption of that particular heaven in the immediately preceding lifetime. Such meditation is called a "nonfluctuating deed" because it always produces the effect of that particular type of rebirth. The first set of dhyāna heavens, where those who practiced the first meditative absorption in the previous lifetime are born, is comprised of three levels:
The function of a mantra is to create vibrations in the inner consciousness that will prepare it for the realisation of what the mantra symbolises and is supposed indeed to carry within itself. As a rule the only mantra used in this sadhana is that of the Mother or of my name and the Mother.In this Yoga there is no fixed mantra, no stress is laid on mantras, although sadhaks can use one if they find it helpful or so long as they find it helpful. The stress is rather on an aspiration in the consciousness and a concentration of the mind, heart, will, all the being. If a mantra is found helpful for that, one uses it.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 745
The Lights one secs in concentration are the lights of various powers or forces and often lights that come down from the higher consciousness.
The niyamas are equally a discipline of the mind by regular practices of which the highest -is meditation on the divine Being, and their object is to create a sattwic calm, purity and prepa- ration for concentration upon which the secure pursuance of the rest of the Yoga can be founded.
The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears- theaiervous system ; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will nccarding to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being ; it gives us control of all the five habitual opera- tions of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality arc possible (o the norma! life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings Into (he waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Furusba on each of the as^nding planes. Cbupled with (be use of the mantra it brings the ^vine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadbi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method.
The real object of this mental discipline is to draw away the mind from ic outward and the mental world into union with the divine Being. Therefore in the first three stages use has to be made of some mental means or support by which the mind accustomed to run about from object to object, shall fix on one alone, and that one must be something which represents the idea of the Divine. It is usually a name or a form or a mantra by which the thought can be feed io the sole knowledge or adora- tion of the Lord. By this concentration on the idea (he mind enters from the idea into its reality, into which h sinks silent, absorbed, unified. This is the traditional method. There are,
There are several states leading to spiritual powers and perception. The eight stages of yoga usually enumerated are: 1) yama (restraint, forbearance); 2) niyama, religious observances such as fastings, prayer, penances; 3) asana, postures of various kinds; 4) pranayama, methods of regulating the breath; 5) pratyahara (withdrawal), withdrawal of the consciousness from external objects; 6) dharana (firmness, steadiness, resolution) mental concentration, holding the mind on an object of thought; 7) dhyana, abstract contemplation or meditation freed from exterior distractions; and 8) samadhi, complete collection of the consciousness and its faculties into union with the monadic essence.
There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana, * meditation ’ and ‘ contemplation ’. Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the know- ledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana, for the principle of dh)ona is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. There are other forms of dhyana. You stand back from your thoughts, let them occur in your mind as they will and simply observe them and see what they are. This may be called concentration in self-observation.
There should be full concentration in the work if it is to take the place of meditation.
These heavens are said to be equal in size to a medium chiliocosm; its inhabitants also possess only the mind organ and experience great joy. The fourth set of dhyāna heavens, where those who practiced the fourth meditative concentration in the previous lifetime are reborn, is comprised of eight levels:
These heavens are said to be equal in size to a small chiliocosm. The third set of dhyāna heavens, where those who practiced the third meditative concentration in the previous lifetime are reborn, is also comprised of three levels:
These means are quite unnecessary and besides, they may lead to a passive concentration in which one is open to all sorts of things and cannot choose the nght ones.
These were the units of the SS which guarded the concentration camps during the war, whose members were drawn from the Allgemeine SS. As the military situation worsened in 1942/43, their more able-bodied members were transferred to the Waffen SS. The place of these was taken by older members of the SA, soldiers from the armed services who had been wounded and were no longer fit for active duty, and members of the Waffen SS who were not fit for field duties.
“The Unknown Absolute, above all number, manifested Itself through an emanation in which it was immanent yet as to which it was transcendental. It first withdrew Itself into Itself, to form an infinite Space, the Abyss; which It then filled with a modified and gradually diminishing Light or Vitalization, first appearing in the Abyss, as the centre of a mathematical point which gradually spread Its Life-giving energy or force throughout all Space. This concentration or contraction and its expansion, being the centripetal and centrifugal energies of creation and existence, the Qabbalists called Tzimtzum. The Will of Ain Soph then manifests Itself through the Ideal Perfect Model or Vitalizing Form, first principle and perfect prototype in idea, of all the to be created, whether spiritual or material. This is the Mikrokosm to the Ain Soph, the Makrokosm as to all the created. It is called the Son of Elohim, i.e., God, and the Adam Illa-ah or Adam Qadmon, the Man of the East or Heavenly Adam” (Myer, Qabbalah p. 231).
Threshold ::: A pollutant concentration [or dose] below which no deleterious effect occurs.
Threshold Level ::: Time-weighted average pollutant concentration values, exposure beyond which is likely to adversely affect human health.
Threshold Limit Value (TLV)::: Refers to airborne concentrations of substances and represents conditions under which it is believed that nearly all workers are protected while repeatedly exposed for an 8-hr day, 5 days a week (expressed as parts per million (ppm) for gases and vapors and as milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) for fumes, mists, and dusts).
To arrive at full possession of the powers of the dream-state, it is necessary first to exclude the attack of the sights, sounds etc. of the outer world upon the physical organs. It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body ; one may be aware of them just so far as one chooses and on a much wider scale than In the waking condition ; for the subtle senses have a far more powerful range than the gross physical organs, a range which may be made practically unlimited. But this awareness of the phj-sical world through the subtle senses is something quite different from our normal awareness of it through the physical organs ; the latter is incompatible with the settled state of trance, for the pressure of the physical senses breaks the Samadhi and calls back the mind to live in their normal field where alone they have power. But the subtle senses have power both upon their own planes and upon the physical world, though this is to them more remote than their own world of being. In Yoga various devices are used to seal up the doors of the physical sense, some of them physical devices ; but the one all-sufficient means is a force of concentration by which the mind is drawn inward to depths where the call of physical things can no longer easily attain to it. A second necessity is to get rid of the intervention of physical sleep. The ordinary habit of the mind when it goes in away from contact with physical things is to fall into the torpor of sleep or its dreams, and therefore when called in for the purposes of Samadhi, it gives or lends to give, at the first chance, by sheer force of habit, not the response demanded, but its usual response of ph)sical slumber. This habit of the mind has to be got rid of ; the mind has to Icam to be awake in the dream-stale, in possession of itself, not with the outgoing, but with an ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers.
Trace ::: A very small amount of a material. Usually used in reference to concentrations which are on the order of or less than 1-10 parts per million.
transporters (active transporters) ::: Cell membrane molecules that consume energy to move ions up their concentration gradients, thus restoring and/or maintaining normal concentration gradients across cell membranes.
trat.aka (trataka; tratak) ::: concentration of the vision on a single trataka point.
trataka (Tratak) ::: concentration of the vision on a single point or object, preferably a luminous object.
Triangle ::: A color badge worn on the clothes of a concentration camp inmate that disclosed the reason for his incarceration. Green triangles were for criminals; yellow triangles were for Jews; red triangles for political prisoners; purple triangles for Jehovah's Witnesses; pink triangles for homosexuals; black triangles for Roma (Gypsies) and "asocials"; and blue triangles for emigrants.
"Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time.” The Life Divine
“Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time.” The Life Divine
::: "Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning.” *The Life Divine
“Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning.” The Life Divine
vasita (vashita) ::: concentration of the will on a person or object so vasita as to control it, one of the three siddhis of power; an instance of such a concentration of the will.
' Vide Concentration ; Dhyana.
vikshepa. ::: distractions; dispersion; scattering; illusory projection; the tossing of the mind which obstructs concentration; consequent bewilderment or perplexity bringing agitation; the mental activity which brings upon the screen of the Self enveloping illusions producing the apparently real appearance of an external world
vyavasaya ::: resolution; settled concentration and perseverance.
Water Pollution ::: The addition of sewage, industrial wastes, or other harmful or objectionable material to water in concentrations or in sufficient quantities to result in measurable degradation of water quality.
weenie 1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of {luser} resembling a less amusing version of {BIFF} that infests many {BBS}es. The typical weenie is a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a grandiose {handle} derived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics. Among {sysops}, "the weenie problem" refers to the marginally literate and profanity-laden {flamage} weenies tend to spew all over a newly-discovered BBS. Compare {spod}, {computer geek}, {terminal junkie}. 2. Among hackers, when used with a qualifier (for example, as in {Unix weenie}, {VMS} weenie, {IBM} weenie) this can be either an insult or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it is applied by a person who considers him or herself to be the same sort of weenie. It implies that the weenie has put a major investment of time, effort and concentration into the area indicated; whether this is good or bad depends on the hearer's judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. See also {bigot}. 3. The {semicolon} character, ";" ({ASCII} 59). (1995-01-18)
What is here called selfishness corresponds in the minds of Buddhist philosophers and scholars to the ideas they disputed grouped about the word atman. They never intended to deny the fundamental meaning of atman or selfhood, and yet this misconception of ancient Buddhist teaching has brought about the false idea that Gautama Buddha and his followers taught that man has no essential self or selfhood. Because selfishness was popularly considered the permanent soulhood in man, the doctrine of anatma (in Pali, anatta) was strongly and continuously taught. The deduction shows clearly that even in India at the time of the Buddha, selfhood in its popular sense of concentration on the lower self and its interests was as popular and widespread as today. It is a paradox that in selflessness is found the noblest and highest emanation of self-expression of the atman or spiritual self in man.
Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungshauptamt ::: The Economic and Administrative Office of the SS. Created in 1942 it controlled the vast economic interests of the SS. These were tied up with concentration camp and extermination programs through the administration of slave labor and the saleable outputs from the Jewish ghettoes and concentration and extermination camps. The SS official in charge was Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl.
Work for the Mother done with the right concentration on her is as much a sadhana as meditation and inner experiences.
Yama (Sanskrit) Yama [from the verbal root yam to subdue, control] A curb, rein, bridle; hence the act of curbing, suppression, self-control. Especially prominent in yoga as self-restraint: it is the first of the eight angas or means of attaining mental concentration.
Yoga: Sanskrit for union. The development of the powers latent in man for achieving union with the Divine Spirit. It is defined as “the restraint of mental modifications.” Eight stages are enumerated, viz. moral restraint (yama), self-culture (niyama), posture (asana) breath-control (pranayama), control of the senses (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and a state of superconsciousness (samadhi). The techniques of Yoga are recognized and applied by all schools of occultism.
Yoga: (Skr. "yoking") Restraining of the mind (see Manas), or, in Patanjali's (q.v.) phrase: citta vrtti nirodha, disciplining the activity of consciousness. The object of this universally recommended practice in India is the gaining of peace of mind and a deeper insight into the nature of reality. On psycho-physical assumptions, several aids are outlined in all works on Yoga, including moral preparation, breath-control, posture, and general toning up of the system. Karma or kriya Yoga is the attainment of Yoga ends primarily by doing, bhakti Yoga by devotion, jnana Yoga by mental or spiritual means. The Yogasutras (q.v.) teach eight paths: Moral restraint (see yama), self-culture (see niyama), posture (see asana), breath-control (see prandyama), control of the senses (see pratyahara), concentration (see dharana), meditation or complete surrender to the object of meditation (see samadhi). See Hathayoga. -- K.F.L.
KEYS (10k)
72 Sri Aurobindo
30 The Mother
6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
5 Sri Ramakrishna
3 Ramakrishna
2 Vivekananda
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Peter J Carroll
2 Mouni Sadhu
2 Bruce Lee
2 Aleister Crowley
1 Viktor E Frankl
1 SWAMI RAMA TIRTHA
1 Sri Sarada Devi
1 Shunryu Suzuki
1 Satprem
1 SATM?
1 Robert Anton Wilson
1 Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 9
1 Patanjali : Aphroisms III. 38
1 Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 34
1 Patanjali : Aphroisms I. 30
1 Katha Upanishad II.24
1 Howard Gardner
1 Haruki Murakami
1 Dion Fortune
1 Chamtrul Rinpoche
1 Bhagavad Gita.XII. 12
1 Bhagavad Gita 11. 53
1 Anonymous
1 Albert Einstein
1 Swami Vivekananda
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
32 Cal Newport
31 Sri Aurobindo
28 Viktor E Frankl
28 Thich Nhat Hanh
27 Anonymous
18 Frederick Lenz
17 Kevin Horsley
16 The Mother
16 Henepola Gunaratana
15 Noam Chomsky
15 Haruki Murakami
12 Sri Ramana Maharshi
11 Swami Vivekananda
11 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
10 Nhat Hanh
9 Sri Ramakrishna
8 Israelmore Ayivor
7 Timothy Snyder
7 Sharon Salzberg
7 Ralph Waldo Emerson
1:One great cause of failure is lack of concentration. ~ Bruce Lee, #KEYS
2:Concentration is the root of all the higher abilities in man. ~ Bruce Lee, #KEYS
3:Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.
~ Haruki Murakami,#KEYS
4:Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self criticism.
~ Albert Einstein,#KEYS
5:Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine." ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #KEYS
6:Concentration has to be made in the heart, which is cool and refreshing. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi #KEYS
7:The greater his aspiration and concentration, the more he finds the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
8:Concentration of the powers of the mind is our only instrument to help us see God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
9:The greater his aspiration and concentration, the more he finds the Eternal. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
10:The mind is a thing that dwells in diffusion, in succession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
11:It is by the thought that we dissipate ourselves in the phenomenal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
12:You must persevere in your concentration till you come to the point when you no longer lose the inner contact. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
13:Being dwelling in consciousness upon itself for bliss, this is the divine Tapas. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
14:An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which we must labour
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5],#KEYS
15:The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
16:Go on practicing. Your concentration will be as easy as breathing. That will be the crown of your achievements. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
17:At the top of the head or above it is the right place for yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
18:In concentration and silence we must gather strength for the right action. With my blessings.
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, November 8th,#KEYS
19:Prakriti is the action of the All-conscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance, #KEYS
20:The power of the human intelligence is without bounds; it increases by concentration: that is the secret. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
21:What is the good in doing Japa for a whole day if there is no concentration of mind? Collectedness of one's mind is essential, then only His grace descends. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
22:Go on practicing. Your concentration will be as easy as breathing. That will be the crown of your achievements.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, [T5],#KEYS
23:The cause of mediocre work is neither the variety nor the number of activities, but lack of the power of concentration.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T5],#KEYS
24:When one is able to effect mental concentration in any environment, the mind will always rise above the environment and rest in God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
25:The cure from all difficulties can come only when the egoistic concentration upon one's desires and conveniences ceases.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
26:Concentration should be all on the immediate step—whatever is being done at the time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Experiences on the Higher Planes, #KEYS
27:Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work, #KEYS
28:When thy understanding shall stand immovable and unshakeable in concentration, then thou shalt attain to the divine Union. ~ Bhagavad Gita 11. 53, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
29:Purity and concentration are indeed two aspects, feminine and masculine, passive and active, of the same status of being . ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
30:We must aim indeed at the Highest, the Source of all, the Transcendent but not to the exclusion of that which it transcends. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
31:Not only in your inward concentration, but in your outward acts and movements you must take the right attitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Wrong Movements of the Vital, #KEYS
32:To control the mind the best and easiest method is to repeat constantly God's Name. Concentration is attained by fixing the attention on the sound of the Name. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
33:What is the best method to find the Divine who is in each of us and in all things?
Aspiration. Silence. Concentration in the solar plexus region.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
34:So we should acquire the power of concentration by fixing the mind first on forms and when we have obtained in this a full success, we can easily fix it on the formless. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
35:Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #KEYS
36:Concentration upon oneself means decay and death. Concentration on the Divine alone brings life and growth and realisation.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Divine Is with You,#KEYS
37:Concentration on the Divine is the only truly valid thing. To do what the Divine wants us to do is the only thing valid.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life, [T0],#KEYS
38:And the statement made nearly 2,000 years ago came to my mind:
'Not even a hair dares to fall from your head without My Father's will . . .'
To realize this means to reach the inner peace. ~ Mouni Sadhu, Concentration,#KEYS
39:The fault of our nature is first an inert subjection to the impacts of things as they come in upon the mind pell-mell without order or control. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
40:Knowledge is better than practice, concentration excels knowledge, the renunciation of fruits concentration; peace is the immediate result of renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita.XII. 12, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
41:One has to keep a certain balance by which the fundamental consciousness remains able to turn from one concentration to another with ease. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Becoming Conscious in Work, #KEYS
42:So we should acquire the power of concentration by fixing the mind first on forms and when we have obtained in this a full success, we can easily fix it on the formless. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
43:Attachment with worldly objects and pleasures is the greatest obstacle in the path of Realization, while worldly detachment with full concentration on the one Truth, the Divinity within, gives immediate Self-realization. ~ SWAMI RAMA TIRTHA, #KEYS
44:When by a constant practice a man is capable of effecting mental concentration, then wherever he may be, his mind will always lift itself above his surroundings and will repose in the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
45:One who has not ceased from evil living or is without peace or without concentration or whose mind has not been tranquillised, cannot attain to Him by the intelligence. ~ Katha Upanishad II.24, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
46:In whatever centre the concentration takes place the Yoga force generated extends to the others and produces concentration or workings there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Descent and Other Kinds of Experience, #KEYS
47:And when no subject is given, is it enough to concentrate on your Presence in the heart-centre? Should we avoid a formulated prayer?
Yes, concentration on the Presence is enough.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
48:The powers developed are liable to become obstacles to a perfect concentration by reason of the possibility of wonder and admiration which results from their exercise. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms III. 38, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
49: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, Letters on Yoga - II, Concentration and Meditation, #KEYS
50:When by a constant practice a man is capable of effecting mental concentration, then wherever he may be, his mind will always lift itself above his surroundings and will repose in the Eternal. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
51:Just as light destroys darkness,
Generosity destroys miserliness,
Discipline destroys harmfulness.
Patience destroys intolerance,
Perseverance destroys laziness,
Concentration destroys distraction,
Wisdom destroys ignorance. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS
52:When we render natural and easy to us perfect concentration (or the operation which consists in fixing attention, contemplation and meditation), a power of exact discernment develops. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 9, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
53:Thinking-mind
There throned on concentration's native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen's eye that looks at the unseen, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
54:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
55:After long practice one who is master of himself can dispense with diverse aids to concentration...and he will be able to make himself master of any result whatsoever simply by desiring it. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 34, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
56:Studies strengthen the mind and turn its concentration away from the impulses and desires of the vital. Concentrating on study is one of the most powerful ways of controlling the mind and the vital; that is why it is so important to study.
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
57:The obstacles met by the seeker after concentration are illness, langour, doubt, negligence, idleness, the domination of the senses, false perception, impotence to attain and instability in a state of meditation once attained. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms I. 30, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
58:We must not be bewildered by appearances. Sri Aurobindo has not left us. Sri Aurobindo is here, as living and as present as ever and it is left to us to realise his work with all the sincerity, eagerness and concentration necessary. 15 December 1950 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, #KEYS
59:An intensive and concentrated sadhana once begun has to be persistently continued in the right atmosphere. If it is kept up only for a short time and then dropped for another kind of life in which the concentration is diffused and weakened, there is no likelihood of fruition ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
60:When you want to think and find a solution, instead of following the deductions of thought, you stop everything and try to concentrate and concentrate, intensify the point of the problem. You stop everything and wait until, by the intensity of the concentration, you obtain an answer. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
61:the centre in her brow
Where the mind's Lord in his control-room sits;
There throned on concentration's native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen's eye that looks at the unseen. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
62:In each case it is Tapas that is effective, but it acts in a different manner according to the thing that has to be done, according to the predetermined process, dynamism, self-deploying of the Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance,#KEYS
63:A highest Godward tension liberates the mind through an absolute seeing of knowledge, liberates the heart through an absolute love and delight, liberates the whole existence through an absolute concentration of will towards a greater existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Theory of the Vibhuti, #KEYS
64:Everything must be given to the Divine within us, to the universal All and to the transcendent Supreme. An absolute concentration of our will, our heart and our thought on that one and manifold Divine, an unreserved self-consecration of our whole being to the Divine alone
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 89,#KEYS
65:There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #KEYS
66:Concentration, for our Yoga, means when the consciousness is fixed in a particular state (e.g. peace) or movement (e.g. aspiration, will, coming into contact with the Mother, taking the Mother's name); meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [concentration is:],#KEYS
67:D.: In the practice of meditation are there any signs of the nature of subjective experience or otherwise, which will indicate the aspirant's progress towards Self-Realisation
M.: The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measure to gauge the progress.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 427,#KEYS
68:Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. ~ Anonymous, The Upanishads, #KEYS
69:If concentration is made with the brain, sensations of heat and even headache ensue.
Concentration has to be made in the heart, which is cool and refreshing.
Relax and your meditation will be easy.
Keep your mind steady by gently warding off all intruding thoughts, but without strain - soon you will succeed. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Ramana II. XI,#KEYS
70:From the point of view of action (physical action), it is the will: you must work and build up an unshakable will. From the intellectual point of view, you must work and build up a power of concentration which nothing can shake. And if you have both, concentration and will, you will be a genius and nothing will resist you.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, [T4],#KEYS
71:For concentration does indeed unlock all doors; it lies at the heart of every practice as it is of the essence of all theory; and almost all the various rules and regulations are aimed at securing adeptship in this matter. All the subsidiary work—awareness, one-pointedness, mindfulness and the rest—is intended to train you to this. ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, #KEYS
72:Addicts of drunkenness or other habit-forming vices cannot possibly hope to be students of concentration for the simple reason that their real will-power is too close to zero. If they cannot stop their bad habits, which they know perfectly well are harmful for them, where then would they find enough inner strength to overcome their mental apathy and laziness? ~ Mouni Sadhu, Concentration, Obstacles and Aids, #KEYS
73:When you give us a subject for meditation, what should we do about it? Keep thinking of it?
Keep your thought focused upon it in a concentrated way.
And when no subject is given, is it enough to concentrate on your Presence in the heart-centre? Should we avoid a formulated prayer?
Yes, concentration on the Presence is enough.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
74:The force of attention properly guided and directed towards the inner life allows us to analyse our soul and will shed light on many things. The forces of the mind resemble scattered rays; concentrate them and they illumine everything. That is the sole source of knowledge we possess. To conquer this knowledge there is only one method, concentration. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
75:There is no harm in concentrating sometimes in the heart and sometimes above the head. But concentration in either place does not mean keeping the attention fixed on a particular spot; you have to take your station of consciousness in either place and concentrate there not on the place, but on the Divine. This can be done with eyes shut or with eyes open, according as it best suits you. [how to concentrate?]
~ SATM?,#KEYS
76:Man carries within himself perfect power, perfect wisdom, and perfect knowledge, and if he wants to possess them, he must discover them in the depth of his being, by introspection and concentration. These divine qualities are identical at the centre, at the heart of all beings; this implies the essential unity of all, and all the consequences of solidarity and fraternity that follow from it.
~ The Mother,#KEYS
77:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
78:to become conscious of the psychic :::
The psychic being always has an influence on the thoughts and actions, but one is rarely conscious of it. To become conscious of the psychic being, one must want to do so, make one's mind as silent as possible, and enter deep into the heart of one's being, beyond sensations and thoughts. One must form the habit of silent concentration and descent into the depths of one's being.
~ The Mother,#KEYS
79:Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g. the Divine-there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
80:Sadhana is the practice of Yoga.
Tapasya is the concentration of the will to get the results of sadhana and to conquer the lower nature.
Aradhana is worship of the Divine, love, self-surrender, aspiration to the Divine, calling the name, prayer.
Dhyana is inner concentration of the consciousness, meditation, going inside in Samadhi.
Dhyana, tapasya and aradhana are all parts of sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, 215 [sadhana is:],#KEYS
81:Meditation means thinking on one subject in a concentrated way. In concentration proper there is not a series of thoughts, but the mind is silently fixed on one object, name, idea, place etc. There are other kinds of concentration, e.g. concentrating the whole consciousness in one place, as between the eyebrows, in the heart, etc. One can also concentrate to get rid of thought altogether and remain in a complete silence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
82:... The sadhana of inner concentration consists in:
(1) Fixing the consciousness in the heart and concentrating there on the idea, image or name of the Divine Mother, whichever comes easiest to you.
(2) A gradual and progressive quieting of the mind by this concentration in the heart.
(3) An aspiration for the Mother's presence in the heart and the control by her of mind, life and action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti,#KEYS
83:The sadhana of this Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T3],#KEYS
84:way of the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. ... An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 78,#KEYS
85:As a rule the only mantra used in this sadhana is that of the Mother or of my name and the Mother. The concentration in the heart and the concentration in the head can both be used - each has its own result. The first opens up the psychic being and brings bhakti, love and union with the Mother, her presence within the heart and the action of her Force in the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
86:That status of knowledge is then the aim of this path and indeed of all paths when pursued to their end, to which intellectual discrimination and conception and all concentration and psychological self-knowledge and all seeking by the heart through love and by the senses through beauty and by the will through power and works and by the soul through peace and joy are only keys, avenues, first approaches and beginnings of the ascent which we have to use and to follow till the wide and infinite levels are attained and the divine doors swing open into the infinite Light.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
87:The Yoga must start with an effort or at least a settled turn towards this total concentration. A constant and unfailing will of consecration of all ourselves to the Supreme is demanded of us, an offering of our whole being and our many-chambered nature to the Eternal who is the All. The effective fullness of our concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all else will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude nothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will's ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5], #KEYS
88:It is said that the faculty of concentrated attention is at the source of all successful activity. Indeed the capacity and value of a man can be measured by his capacity of concentrated attention.[2]
In order to obtain this concentration, it is generally recommended to reduce one's activities, to make a choice and confine oneself to this choice alone, so as not to disperse one's energy and attention. For the normal man, this method is good, sometimes even indispensable. But one can imagine something better.
[2] Generally it comes through interest and a special attraction for a subject - Mother's note.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T4],#KEYS
89:Einstein was remarkable for his powers of concentration; he could work uninterruptedly for hours and even days on the same problem. Some of the topics that interested him remained on his mind for decades. For relaxation he turned to music and to sailing, but often his work would continue during these moments as well; he usually had a notebook in his pocket so that he could jot down any idea that came to him. Once, after the theory of relativity had been put forth, he confessed to his colleague Wolfgang Pauli, "For the rest of my life I want to reflect on what light is." It is perhaps not entirely an accident that a focus on light is also the first visual act of the newborn child. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
90:conditions of the psychic opening :::
For the opening of the psychic being, concentration on the Mother and self-offering to her are the direct way. The growth of Bhakti which you feel is the first sign of the psychic development. A sense of the Mother's presence or force or the remembrance of her supporting and strengthening you is the next sign. Eventually, the soul within begins to be active in aspiration and psychic perception guiding the mind to the right thoughts, the vital to the right movements and feelings, showing and rejecting all that has to be put away and turning the whole being in all its movements to the Divine alone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
91:There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one's own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother's Power and Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
92:Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will. The will can only become magically effective when the mind is focused and not interfering with the will The mind must first discipline itself to focus its entire attention on some meaningless phenomenon. If an attempt is made to focus on some form of desire, the effect is short circuited by lust of result. Egotistical identification, fear of failure, and the reciprocal desire not to achieve desire, arising from our dual nature, destroy the result.
Therefore, when selecting topics for concentration, choose subjects of no spiritual, egotistical, intellectual, emotional, or useful significance - meaningless things.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, Liber MMM, The Magical Trances [15],#KEYS
93:My child, if you can concentrate deeply into my eyes, then you will get all that you want to know, all that you want to comprehend, all that you want to realise, just by an intense concentration, just by the power of your will which expresses itself through your eyes.
You can have all that you aspire for, all that you need. You can see the whole world in my eyes: the whole universe unfolds in my eyes, all that is beautiful in nature as well as in the heavens. And you will not need to go here and there looking for the so-called attractions and revelations of this world. All is in me, and all expresses itself through me. Take the trouble to find me there (Mother points to the heart) and you will see everything, everything through my eyes. Voilà! ~ The Mother,#KEYS
94:It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [305],#KEYS
95:Therefore there is only one solution: to unite ourselves by aspiration, concentration, interiorisation and identification with the supreme Will. And that is both omnipotence and perfect freedom at the same time. And that is the only omnipotence and the only freedom; everything else is an approximation. You may be on the way, but it is not the entire thing. So if you experience this, you realise that with this supreme freedom and supreme power there is also a total peace and a serenity that never fails.
Therefore, if you feel something which is not that, a revolt, a disgust, something which you cannot accept, it means that in you there is a part which has not been touched by the transformation, something which has kept the old consciousness, something which is still on the path - that is all.
~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS
96:It is to bring back all the scattered threads of consciousness to a single point, a single idea. Those who can attain a perfect attention succeed in everything they undertake; they will always make rapid progress. And this kind of concentration can be developed exactly like the muscles; one may follow different systems, different methods of training. Today we know that the most pitiful weakling, for example, can with discipline become as strong as anyone else. One should not have a will that flickers out like a candle. The will, the concentration must be cultivated; it is a question of method, of regular exercise. If you will, you can. But the thought Whats the use? must not come in to weaken the will. The idea that one is born with a certain character and can do nothing about it is a stupidity.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
97:The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life must be its central purpose. The means towards this supreme end is a self-giving of all our nature to the Divine. Everything must be given to the Divine within us, to the universal All and to the transcendent Supreme. An absolute concentration of our will, our heart and our thought on that one and manifold Divine, an unreserved self-consecration of our whole being to the Divine alone - this is the decisive movement, the turning of the ego to That which is infinitely greater than itself, its self-giving and indispensable surrender
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, 89,#KEYS
98:The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual Prakriti turns back to perceive Purusha, World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, 50, [T9], #KEYS
99:Please initiate me into a tangible form of Yoga. I make this assurance that I shall follow your instructions to the very letter and refer to you my doubts and difficulties on the way.
There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one's own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother's Power and Presence. 30 November 1934 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
100:an all-inclusive concentration is required for an Integral Yoga :::
Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga. A separate strong fixing of the thought, of the emotions or of the will on a single idea, object, state, inner movement or principle is no doubt a frequent need here also; but this is only a subsidiary helpful process. A wide massive opening, a harmonised concentration of the whole being in all its parts and through all its powers upon the One who is the All is the larger action of this Yoga without which it cannot achieve its purpose. For it is the consciousness that rests in the One and that acts in the All to which we aspire; it is this that we seek to impose on every element of our being and on every movement of our nature. This wide and concentrated totality is the essential character of the sadhana and its character must determine its practice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
101:There are two Paths to the Innermost: the Way of the Mystic, which is the way of devotion and meditation, a solitary and subjective path; and the way of the occultist, which is the way of the intellect, of concentration, and of trained will; upon this path the co-operation of fellow workers is required, firstly for the exchange of knowledge, and secondly because ritual magic plays an important part in this work, and for this the assistance of several is needed in most of the greater operations. The mystic derives his knowledge through the direct communion of his higher self with the Higher Powers; to him the wisdom of the occultist is foolishness, for his mind does not work in that way; but, on the other hand, to a more intellectual and extrovert type, the method of the mystic is impossible until long training has enabled him to transcend the planes of form. We must therefore recognize these two distinct types among those who seek the Way of Initiation, and remember that there is a path for each. ~ Dion Fortune, Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate, #KEYS
102:This concentration proceeds by the Idea, using thought, form and name as keys which yield up to the concentrating mind the Truth that lies concealed behind all thought, form and name; for it is through the Idea that the mental being rises beyond all expression to that which is expressed, to that of which the Idea itself is only the instrument. By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks open the barrier of our mentality and arrives at the state of consciousness, the state of being, the state of power of conscious-being and bliss of conscious-being to which the Idea corresponds and of which it is the symbol, movement and rhythm. Concentration by the Idea is, then, only a means, a key to open to us the superconscient planes of our existence; a certain self-gathered state of our whole existence lifted into that superconscient truth, unity and infinity of self-aware, self-blissful existence is the aim and culmination; and that is the meaning we shall give to the term Samadhi.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Integral Knowledge, Concentration [321],#KEYS
103:The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 610 [T3],#KEYS
104:In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS
105:It is always better to try to concentrate in a centre, the centre of aspiration, one might say, the place where the flame of aspiration burns, to gather in all the energies there, at the solar plexus centre and, if possible, to obtain an attentive silence as though one wanted to listen to something extremely subtle, something that demands a complete attention, a complete concentration and a total silence. And then not to move at all. Not to think, not to stir, and make that movement of opening so as to receive all that can be received, but taking good care not to try to know what is happening while it is happening, for it one wants to understand or even to observe actively, it keeps up a sort of cerebral activity which is unfavourable to the fullness of the receptivity - to be silent, as totally silent as possible, in an attentive concentration, and then be still. If one succeeds in this, then, when everything is over, when one comes out of meditation, some time later - usually not immediately - from within the being something new emerges in the consciousness: a new understanding, a new appreciation of things, a new attitude in life - in short, a new way of being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, [where to concentrate?],#KEYS
106:all is the method of God's workings; all life is Yoga :::
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognize in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of the might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and there for right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Conditions of the Synthesis [47] [T1],#KEYS
107:For our concentration on the Eternal will be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine in all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the Divine, - of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms in the Universe. It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as our sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic nature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things. This is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.
It is nothing less that is meant in the end when we speak of the absolute consecration of the individual to the Divine. But this total fullness of consecration can only come by a constant progression when the long and difficult process of transforming desire out of existence is completed in an ungrudging measure. Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 85-86, [T1],#KEYS
108:Equally must the sense-mind be stilled and taught to leave the function of thought to the mind that judges and understands. When the understanding in us stands back from the action of the sense-mind and repels its intermiscence, the latter detaches itself from the understanding and can be watched in its separate action. It then reveals itself as a constantly swirling and eddying undercurrent of habitual concepts, associations, perceptions, desires without any real sequence, order or principle of light. It is a constant repetition in a circle unintelligent and unfruitful. Ordinarily the human understanding accepts this undercurrent and tries to reduce it to a partial order and sequence; but by so doing it becomes itself subject to it and partakes of that disorder, restlessness, unintelligent subjection to habit and blind purposeless repetition which makes the ordinary human reason a misleading, limited and even frivolous and futile instrument. There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing element.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding,#KEYS
109:In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS
110:It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, -in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together,- and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the souls realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal -and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Consecration, 80 [where to concentrate?],#KEYS
111:challenge for the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other, -- integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. All exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 78, [T9],#KEYS
112:the powers of concentration :::
By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fear, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, [318],#KEYS
113:Concentrating the Attention:
Whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain the concentration with a presistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - thats not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate. And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensble. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention. And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important. There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS
114:37 - Some say Krishna never lived, he is a myth. They mean on earth; for if Brindavan existed nowhere, the Bhagavat (6) could not have been written. - Sri Aurobindo
Does Brindavan exist anywhere else than on earth?
The whole earth and everything it contains is a kind of concentration, a condensation of something which exists in other worlds invisible to the material eye. Each thing manifested here has its principle, idea or essence somewhere in the subtler regions. This is an indispensable condition for the manifestation. And the importance of the manifestation will always depend on the origin of the thing manifested.
In the world of the gods there is an ideal and harmonious Brindavan of which the earthly Brindavan is but a deformation and a caricature.
Those who are developed inwardly, either in their senses or in their minds, perceive these realities which are invisible (to the ordinary man) and receive their inspiration from them.
So the writer or writers of the Bhagavat were certainly in contact with a whole inner world that is well and truly real and existent, where they saw and experienced everything they have described or revealed.
Whether Krishna existed or not in a human form, living on earth, is only of very secondary importance (except perhaps from an exclusively historical point of view), for Krishna is a real, living and active being; and his influence has been one of the great factors in the progress and transformation of the earth.
8 June 1960
(6 The story of Krishna, as related in the Bhagavat Purana.) ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.60-61),#KEYS
115:the second aid, the need for effort and aspiration, utsaha :::
The development of the experience in its rapidity, its amplitude, the intensity and power of its results, depends primarily, in the beginning of the path and long after, on the aspiration and personal effort of the sadhaka. The process of Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state in which the Transcendent and Universal can pour itself into the individiual mould and transform it. The first determining element in the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied energy are the measure of that intensity. The ideal sadhaka should be able to say in the Biblical phrase, 'My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up.' It is this zeal for the Lord, -utsaha, the zeal of the whole nature for its divine results, vyakulata, the heart's eagerness for the attainment of the Divine, - that devours the ego and breaks up the petty limitations ...
So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
116:One can concentrate in any of the three centres which is easiest to the sadhak or gives most result. The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open that centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life and body and turn and open them all-fully-to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening.
This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental vital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the psychic being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the psychic being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised. The power of concentration in the eyebrows is to open the centre there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [where to concentrate?],#KEYS
117:mastering the lower self and leverage for the march towards the Divine :::
In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is man and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards tile superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine.
It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, -- in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together, -- and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 80-81,#KEYS
118:What is the most useful idea to spread and what is the best example to set?
The question can be considered in two ways, a very general one applicable to the whole earth, and another specific one which concerns our present social environment.
From the general point of view, it seems to me that the most useful idea to spread is twofold:
1) Man carries within himself perfect power, perfect wisdom and perfect knowledge, and if he wants to possess them, he must discover them in the depth of his being, by introspection and concentration.
2) These divine qualities are identical at the centre, at the heart of all beings; this implies the essential unity of all, and all the consequences of solidarity and fraternity that follow from it.
The best example to give would be the unalloyed serenity and immutably peaceful happiness which belong to one who knows how to live integrally this thought of the One God in all.
From the point of view of our present environment, here is the idea which, it seems to me, it is most useful to spread:
True progressive evolution, an evolution which can lead man to his rightful happiness, does not lie in any external means, material improvement or social change. Only a deep and inner process of individual self-perfection can make for real progress and completely transform the present state of things, and change suffering and misery into a serene and lasting contentment.
Consequently, the best example is one that shows the first stage of individual self-perfection which makes possible all the rest, the first victory to be won over the egoistic personality: disinterestedness.
At a time when all rush upon money as the means to sat- isfy their innumerable cravings, one who remains indifferent to wealth and acts, not for the sake of gain, but solely to follow a disinterested ideal, is probably setting the example which is most useful at present.
~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, Volume-2, 22-06-1912, page no.66-67,#KEYS
119:It must also be kept in mind that the supramental change is difficult, distant, an ultimate stage; it must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista; it cannot be and must not be turned into a first aim, a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. For it can only come into the view of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding, at the end of many long and trying stages of a difficult self-evolution of the nature. One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul. Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the cosmic consciousness, realise the self, acquire a spiritualised and universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness. Then only the passage into the supramental consciousness begins to become possible, and even then there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement. Yoga is a rapid and concentrated conscious evolution of the being, but however rapid, even though it may effect in a single life what in an instrumental Nature might take centuries and millenniums or many hundreds of lives, still all evolution must move by stages; even the greatest rapidity and concentration of the movement cannot swallow up all the stages or reverse natural process and bring the end near to the beginning.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, 281,#KEYS
120:The capacity for visions, when it is sincere and spontaneous, can put you in touch with events which you are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness.... There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the subtle physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic recording of everything that happens. It is the most formidable memory one could imagine, which misses nothing, forgets nothing, records all. And if you are able to enter into it, you can go backward, you can go forward, and in all directions, and you will have the "memory" of all things - not only of things of the past, but of things to come. For everything is recorded there.
In the mental world, for instance, there is a domain of the physical mind which is related to physical things and keeps the memory of physical happenings upon earth. It is as though you were entering into innumerable vaults, one following another indefinitely, and these vaults are filled with small pigeon-holes, one above another, one above another, with tiny doors. Then if you want to know something and if you are conscious, you look, and you see something like a small point - a shining point; you find that this is what you wish to know and you have only to concentrate there and it opens; and when it opens, there is a sort of an unrolling of something like extremely subtle manuscripts, but if your concentration is sufficiently strong you begin to read as though from a book. And you have the whole story in all its details. There are thousands of these little holes, you know; when you go for a walk there, it is as though you were walking in infinity. And in this way you can find the exact facts about whatever you want to know. But I must tell you that what you find is never what has been reported in history - histories are always planned out; I have never come across a single "historical" fact which is like history.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951, 109 [T7],#KEYS
121:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.
The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
122:outward appearances..." I did not quite understand "the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward People are occupied with outward things. That means that the consciousness is turned towards external things - that is, all the things of life which one sees, knows, does - instead of being turned inwards in order to find the deeper truth, the divine Presence. This is the first movement. You are busy with all that you do, with the people around you, the things you use; and then with life: sleeping, eating, talking, working a little, having a little fun also; and then beginning over again: sleeping, eating, etc., etc., and then it begins again. And then what this one has said, what that one has done, what one ought to do, the lesson one ought to learn, the exercise one ought to prepare; and then again whether one is keeping well, whether one is feeling fit, etc.
This is what one usually thinks about.
So the first movement - and it is not so easy - is to make all that pass to the background, and let one thing come inside and in front of the consciousness as the important thing: the discovery of the very purpose of existence and life, to learn what one is, why one lives, and what there is behind all this. This is the first step: to be interested more in the cause and goal than in the manifestation. That is, the first movement is a withdrawal of the consciousness from this total identification with outward and apparent things, and a kind of inward concentration on what one wants to discover, the Truth one wants to discover.
This is the first movement.
Many people who are here forget one thing. They want to begin by the end. They think that they are ready to express in their life what they call the supramental Force or Consciousness, and they want to infuse this in their actions, their movements, their daily life. But the trouble is that they don't at all know what the supramental Force or Consciousness is and that first of all it is necessary to take the reverse path, the way of interiorisation and of withdrawal from life, in order to find within oneself this Truth which has to be expressed.
For as long as one has not found it, there is nothing to ~ The Mother,#KEYS
123:the ways of the Bhakta and man of Knowledge :::
In the ordinary paths of Yoga the method used for dealing with these conflicting materials is direct and simple. One or another of the principal psychological forces in us is selected as our single means for attaining to the Divine; the rest is quieted into inertia or left to starve in its smallness. The Bhakta, seizing on the emotional forces of the being, the intense activities of the heart, abides concentrated in the love of God, gathered up as into a single one-pointed tongue of fire; he is indifferent to the activities of thought, throws behind him the importunities of the reason, cares nothing for the mind's thirst for knowledge. All the knowledge he needs is his faith and the inspirations that well up from a heart in communion with the Divine. He has no use for any will to works that is not turned to the direct worship of the Beloved or the service of the temple. The man of Knowledge, self-confined by a deliberate choice to the force and activities of discriminative thought, finds release in the mind's inward-drawn endeavour. He concentrates on the idea of the self, succeeds by a subtle inner discernment in distinguishing its silent presence amid the veiling activities of Nature, and through the perceptive idea arrives at the concrete spiritual experience. He is indifferent to the play of the emotions, deaf to the hunger-call of passion, closed to the activities of Life, -- the more blessed he, the sooner they fall away from him and leave him free, still and mute, the eternal non-doer. The body is his stumbling-block, the vital functions are his enemies; if their demands can be reduced to a minimum, that is his great good fortune. The endless difficulties that arise from the environing world are dismissed by erecting firmly against them a defence of outer physical and inner spiritual solitude; safe behind a wall of inner silence, he remains impassive and untouched by the world and by others. To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the only chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration. 76-77,#KEYS
124:Who could have thought that this tanned young man with gentle, dreamy eyes, long wavy hair parted in the middle and falling to the neck, clad in a common coarse Ahmedabad dhoti, a close-fitting Indian jacket, and old-fashioned slippers with upturned toes, and whose face was slightly marked with smallpox, was no other than Mister Aurobindo Ghose, living treasure of French, Latin and Greek?" Actually, Sri Aurobindo was not yet through with books; the Western momentum was still there; he devoured books ordered from Bombay and Calcutta by the case. "Aurobindo would sit at his desk," his Bengali teacher continues, "and read by the light of an oil lamp till one in the morning, oblivious of the intolerable mosquito bites. I would see him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on his book, like a yogi lost in the contemplation of the Divine, unaware of all that went on around him. Even if the house had caught fire, it would not have broken this concentration." He read English, Russian, German, and French novels, but also, in ever larger numbers, the sacred books of India, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, although he had never been in a temple except as an observer. "Once, having returned from the College," one of his friends recalls, "Sri Aurobindo sat down, picked up a book at random and started to read, while Z and some friends began a noisy game of chess. After half an hour, he put the book down and took a cup of tea. We had already seen him do this many times and were waiting eagerly for a chance to verify whether he read the books from cover to cover or only scanned a few pages here and there. Soon the test began. Z opened the book, read a line aloud and asked Sri Aurobindo to recite what followed. Sri Aurobindo concentrated for a moment, and then repeated the entire page without a single mistake. If he could read a hundred pages in half an hour, no wonder he could go through a case of books in such an incredibly short time." But Sri Aurobindo did not stop at the translations of the sacred texts; he began to study Sanskrit, which, typically, he learned by himself. When a subject was known to be difficult or impossible, he would refuse to take anyone's word for it, whether he were a grammarian, pandit, or clergyman, and would insist upon trying it himself. The method seemed to have some merit, for not only did he learn Sanskrit, but a few years later he discovered the lost meaning of the Veda. ~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure of Consciousness, #KEYS
125: There is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine. In its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration, -for naturally the restless human mind is occupied with other objects and, even when it is directed upwards, constantly drawn away by the world, -- so that in the end it habitually thinks of him and all else is only secondary and thought of only in relation to him. This is done often with the aid of a physical image or, more intimately and characteristically, of a Mantra or a divine name through which the divine being is realised. There are supposed by those who systematise, to be three stages of the seeking through the devotion of the mind, first, the constant hearing of the divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking on them or on the divine being or personality, thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full realisation. And by these, too, there comes when the accompanying feeling or the concentration is very intense, the Samadhi, the ecstatic trance in which the consciousness passes away from outer objects. But all this is really incidental; the one thing essential is the intense devotion of the thought in the mind to the object of adoration. Although it seems akin to the contemplation of the way of knowledge, it differs from that in its spirit. It is in its real nature not a still, but an ecstatic contemplation; it seeks not to pass into the being of the Divine, but to bring the Divine into ourselves and to lose ourselves in the deep ecstasy of his presence or of his possession; and its bliss is not the peace of unity, but the ecstasy of union. Here, too, there may be the separative self-consecration, which ends in the giving up of all other thought of life for the possession of this ecstasy, eternal afterwards in planes beyond, or the comprehensive consecration in which all the thoughts are full of the Divine and even in the occupations of life every thought remembers him. As in the other Yogas, so in this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all ones inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion [T2],#KEYS
126:What is the difference between meditation and concentration?
Meditation is a purely mental activity, it interests only the mental being. One can concentrate while meditating but this is a mental concentration; one can get a silence but it is a purely mental silence, and the other parts of the being are kept immobile and inactive so as not to disturb the meditation. You may pass twenty hours of the day in meditation and for the remaining four hours you will be an altogether ordinary man because only the mind has been occupied-the rest of the being, the vital and the physical, is kept under pressure so that it may not disturb. In meditation nothing is directly done for the other parts of the being.
Certainly this indirect action can have an effect, but... I have known in my life people whose capacity for meditation was remarkable but who, when not in meditation, were quite ordinary men, even at times ill-natured people, who would become furious if their meditation was disturbed. For they had learnt to master only their mind, not the rest of their being.
Concentration is a more active state. You may concentrate mentally, you may concentrate vitally, psychically, physically, and you may concentrate integrally. Concentration or the capacity to gather oneself at one point is more difficult than meditation. You may gather together one portion of your being or consciousness or you may gather together the whole of your consciousness or even fragments of it, that is, the concentration may be partial, total or integral, and in each case the result will be different.
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 ideas in their meditation - it is meditation, not concentration.
Is it possible to distinguish the moment when one attains perfect concentration from the moment when, starting from this concentration, one opens oneself to the universal Energy?
Yes. You concentrate on something or simply you gather yourself together as much as is possible for you and when you attain a kind of perfection in concentration, if you can sustain this perfection for a sufficiently long time, then a door opens and you pass beyond the limit of your ordinary consciousness-you enter into a deeper and higher knowledge. Or you go within. Then you may experience a kind of dazzling light, an inner wonder, a beatitude, a complete knowledge, a total silence. There are, of course, many possibilities but the phenomenon is always the same.
To have this experience all depends upon your capacity to maintain your concentration sufficiently long at its highest point of perfection. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
127:The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 36,#KEYS
128:the process of unification, the perfecting our one's instrumental being, the help one needs to reach the goal :::
If we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavor.
As you pursue this labor of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. ... It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us [the psychic being], to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perfection and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realize. This discovery and realization should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T1],#KEYS
129:Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can be also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it. ... Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other ways.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward and in the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it begins to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head in only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental concentration is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternatively - but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the most desirable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
130:3. Conditions internal and external that are most essential for meditation. There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seculsion at the time of meditation as well as stillness of the body are helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginning. But one should not be bound by external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be made possible to do it in all circumstances, lying, sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
The first internal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation, i.e. wandering of the mind, forgetfulness, sleep, physical and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several was of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after the time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence. It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out all mental-vital activities. It is easier to let the Silence descend into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of efforts to pull down the Power or the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. if it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,#KEYS
131:An integral Yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. But mans present nature is limited, divided, unequal, -- it is easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part of his being and follow a definite line of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into the sea of the Divine Infinity. Some therefore must choose as a starting-point a concentration in thought or contemplation or the minds one-pointedness to find the eternal reality of the Self in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these it is best to centre themselves in the will and enlarge their being through works. United with the Self and source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinity, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling, act, becoming by this enlargement of being selfless and universal, they can reach by works some first fullness of a spiritual status. But the path, whatever its point of starting, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed in the end through a totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the being and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the self and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself and all to their perfect harmony and fusion with each other, to a divine integrality, a divine perfection. For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to that height but brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of the Divine Truth, an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and descent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Supermind and the Yoga of Works [279-280],#KEYS
132:Talk 26
...
D.: Taking the first part first, how is the mind to be eliminated or relative consciousness transcended?
M.: The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.
D.: How is restlessness removed from the mind?
M.: External contacts - contacts with objects other than itself - make the mind restless. Loss of interest in non-Self, (vairagya) is the first step. Then the habits of introspection and concentration follow. They are characterised by control of external senses, internal faculties, etc. (sama, dama, etc.) ending in samadhi (undistracted mind).
Talk 27.
D.: How are they practised?
M.: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The 'I' thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of 'I' is the Heart - the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to Vichara Marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.
In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as Yoga Marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. Paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor's edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the Karma Marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS
133:[desire and its divine form:]
Into all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered, what the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited, craves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all other desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be aught to desire, not for its own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual gain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming manifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and enthroned for eveR But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the right manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as the strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right and the desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance. Thus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be transformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul's seeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes.
When once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will,-a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law,-the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For that work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action,-and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true spiritual Person can still remain and God's will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind and life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves,- all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, Strength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the Spirit's terrestrial adventure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration [83] [T1],#KEYS
134:The Teachings of Some Modern Indian Yogis
Ramana Maharshi
According to Brunton's description of the sadhana he (Brunton) practised under the Maharshi's instructions,1 it is the Overself one has to seek within, but he describes the Overself in a way that is at once the Psychic Being, the Atman and the Ishwara. So it is a little difficult to know what is the exact reading.
*
The methods described in the account [of Ramana Maharshi's technique of self-realisation] are the well-established methods of Jnanayoga - (1) one-pointed concentration followed by thought-suspension, (2) the method of distinguishing or finding out the true self by separating it from mind, life, body (this I have seen described by him [Brunton] more at length in another book) and coming to the pure I behind; this also can disappear into the Impersonal Self. The usual result is a merging in the Atman or Brahman - which is what one would suppose is meant by the Overself, for it is that which is the real Overself. This Brahman or Atman is everywhere, all is in it, it is in all, but it is in all not as an individual being in each but is the same in all - as the Ether is in all. When the merging into the Overself is complete, there is no ego, no distinguishable I, or any formed separative person or personality. All is ekakara - an indivisible and undistinguishable Oneness either free from all formations or carrying all formations in it without being affected - for one can realise it in either way. There is a realisation in which all beings are moving in the one Self and this Self is there stable in all beings; there is another more complete and thoroughgoing in which not only is it so but all are vividly realised as the Self, the Brahman, the Divine. In the former, it is possible to dismiss all beings as creations of Maya, leaving the one Self alone as true - in the other it is easier to regard them as real manifestations of the Self, not as illusions. But one can also regard all beings as souls, independent realities in an eternal Nature dependent upon the One Divine. These are the characteristic realisations of the Overself familiar to the Vedanta. But on the other hand you say that this Overself is realised by the Maharshi as lodged in the heart-centre, and it is described by Brunton as something concealed which when it manifests appears as the real Thinker, source of all action, but now guiding thought and action in the Truth. Now the first description applies to the Purusha in the heart, described by the Gita as the Ishwara situated in the heart and by the Upanishads as the Purusha Antaratma; the second could apply also to the mental Purusha, manomayah. pran.asarı̄ra neta of the Upanishads, the mental Being or Purusha who leads the life and the body. So your question is one which on the data I cannot easily answer. His Overself may be a combination of all these experiences, without any distinction being made or thought necessary between the various aspects. There are a thousand ways of approaching and realising the Divine and each way has its own experiences which have their own truth and stand really on a basis, one in essence but complex in aspects, common to all, but not expressed in the same way by all. There is not much use in discussing these variations; the important thing is to follow one's own way well and thoroughly. In this Yoga, one can realise the psychic being as a portion of the Divine seated in the heart with the Divine supporting it there - this psychic being takes charge of the sadhana and turns the ......
1 The correspondent sent to Sri Aurobindo two paragraphs from Paul Brunton's book A Message from Arunachala (London: Rider & Co., n.d. [1936], pp. 205 - 7). - Ed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
135:The true Mantra must come from within OR it must be given by a Guru
Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given; it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
I saw, in my case, that my mantra has the power of immortality; whatever happens, if it is uttered, it's the Supreme that has the upper hand, it's no longer the lower law. And the words are irrelevant, they may not have any meaning - to someone else, my mantra is meaningless, but to me it's full, packed with meaning. And effective, because it's my cry, the intense aspiration of my whole being.
A mantra given by a guru is only the power to realize the experience of the discoverer of the mantra. The power is automatically there, because the sound contains the experience. I saw that once in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing of India, absolutely nothing, only the usual nonsense. I didn't even know what a mantra was. I had gone to a lecture given by some fellow who was supposed to have practiced "yoga" for a year in the Himalayas and recounted his experience (none too interesting, either). All at once, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the sound OM. And I saw the entire room suddenly fill with light, a golden, vibrating light.... I was probably the only one to notice it. I said to myself, "Well!" Then I didn't give it any more thought, I forgot about the story. But as it happened, the experience recurred in two or three different countries, with different people, and every time there was the sound OM, I would suddenly see the place fill with that same light. So I understood. That sound contains the vibration of thousands and thousands of years of spiritual aspiration - there is in it the entire aspiration of men towards the Supreme. And the power is automatically there, because the experience is there.
It's the same with my mantra. When I wanted to translate the end of my mantra, "Glory to You, O Lord," into Sanskrit, I asked for Nolini's help. He brought his Sanskrit translation, and when he read it to me, I immediately saw that the power was there - not because Nolini put his power into it (!), God knows he had no intention of "giving" me a mantra! But the power was there because my experience was there. We made a few adjustments and modifications, and that's the japa I do now - I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.[[Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to it - my mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of enthusiasm rises, and with that enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantra - it came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
And that's how a mantra has life: when it wells up all the time, spontaneously, like the cry of your being - there is no need of effort or concentration: it's your natural cry. Then it has full power, it is alive. It must well up from within.... No guru can give you that. ~ The Mother, Agenda, May 11 1963,#KEYS
136:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS
137:To arrive then at this settled divine status must be the object of our concentration. The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect. Nor must it be merely the consecutive thought of the intellectual thinker, whose only object is to conceive and intellectually link together his conceptions. It is not, except perhaps at first, a process of reasoning that is wanted so much as a dwelling so far as possible on the fruitful essence of the idea which by the insistence of the soul's will upon it must yield up all the facets of its truth. Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestation of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the Sadhaka. The thought may come first and the experience afterwards, but equally the experience may come first and the knowledge arise out of the experience. Afterwards the thing attained has to be dwelt on and more and more held till it becomes a constant experience and finally the Dharma or law of the being.
This is the process of concentrated meditation; but a more strenuous method is the fixing of the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea only, so as to reach not the thought-knowledge or the psychological experience of the subject, but the very essence of the thing behind the idea. In this process thought ceases and passes into the absorbed or ecstatic contemplation of the object or by a merging into it m an inner Samadhi. If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness. For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the contacts of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.
A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altogether. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altogether not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Concentration,#KEYS
138:AUGOEIDES:
The magicians most important invocation is that of his Genius, Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of Kia on the plane of duality. As the avatar of Kia on earth, the Augoeides represents the true will, the raison detre of the magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of ones true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness. The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of completion.
The key to this puzzle is in the phenomena of the plane of duality in which we find ourselves. We are, as it were, trapped in a labyrinth or maze. The only thing to do is move about and keep a close watch on the way the walls turn. In a completely chaotic universe such as this one, there are no accidents. Everything is signifcant. Move a single grain of sand on a distant shore and the entire future history of the world will eventually be changed. A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.
To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness.
Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that being born anew each day brings with it the chance of greater rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image of the Angel into his minds eye. It may be considered as a luminous duplicate of ones own form standing in front of or behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above ones head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. As the magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation. Having communicated with the invoked form, the magician should draw it into himself and go forth to live in the way he hath willed.
The ritual may be concluded with an aspiration to the wisdom of silence by a brief concentration on the sigil of the Augoeides, but never by banishing. Periodically more elaborate forms of ritual, using more powerful forms of gnosis, may be employed. At the end of the day, there should be an accounting and fresh resolution made. Though every day be a catalog of failure, there should be no sense of sin or guilt. Magic is the raising of the whole individual in perfect balance to the power of Infinity, and such feelings are symptomatic of imbalance. If any unnecessary or imbalanced scraps of ego become identified with the genius by mistake, then disaster awaits. The life force flows directly into these complexes and bloats them into grotesque monsters variously known as the demon Choronzon. Some magicians attempting to go too fast with this invocation have failed to banish this demon, and have gone spectacularly insane as a result.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
139:CHAPTER XIII
OF THE BANISHINGS: AND OF THE PURIFICATIONS.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and had better come first. Purity means singleness. God is one. The wand is not a wand if it has something sticking to it which is not an essential part of itself. If you wish to invoke Venus, you do not succeed if there are traces of Saturn mixed up with it.
That is a mere logical commonplace: in magick one must go much farther than this. One finds one's analogy in electricity. If insulation is imperfect, the whole current goes back to earth. It is useless to plead that in all those miles of wire there is only one-hundredth of an inch unprotected. It is no good building a ship if the water can enter, through however small a hole.
That first task of the Magician in every ceremony is therefore to render his Circle absolutely impregnable.
If one littlest thought intrude upon the mind of the Mystic, his concentration is absolutely destroyed; and his consciousness remains on exactly the same level as the Stockbroker's. Even the smallest baby is incompatible with the virginity of its mother. If you leave even a single spirit within the circle, the effect of the conjuration will be entirely absorbed by it.> {101}
The Magician must therefore take the utmost care in the matter of purification, "firstly", of himself, "secondly", of his instruments, "thirdly", of the place of working. Ancient Magicians recommended a preliminary purification of from three days to many months. During this period of training they took the utmost pains with diet. They avoided animal food, lest the elemental spirit of the animal should get into their atmosphere. They practised sexual abstinence, lest they should be influenced in any way by the spirit of the wife. Even in regard to the excrements of the body they were equally careful; in trimming the hair and nails, they ceremonially destroyed> the severed portion. They fasted, so that the body itself might destroy anything extraneous to the bare necessity of its existence. They purified the mind by special prayers and conservations. They avoided the contamination of social intercourse, especially the conjugal kind; and their servitors were disciples specially chosen and consecrated for the work.
In modern times our superior understanding of the essentials of this process enables us to dispense to some extent with its external rigours; but the internal purification must be even more carefully performed. We may eat meat, provided that in doing so we affirm that we eat it in order to strengthen us for the special purpose of our proposed invocation.> {102}
By thus avoiding those actions which might excite the comment of our neighbours we avoid the graver dangers of falling into spiritual pride.
We have understood the saying: "To the pure all things are pure", and we have learnt how to act up to it. We can analyse the mind far more acutely than could the ancients, and we can therefore distinguish the real and right feeling from its imitations. A man may eat meat from self-indulgence, or in order to avoid the dangers of asceticism. We must constantly examine ourselves, and assure ourselves that every action is really subservient to the One Purpose.
It is ceremonially desirable to seal and affirm this mental purity by Ritual, and accordingly the first operation in any actual ceremony is bathing and robing, with appropriate words. The bath signifies the removal of all things extraneous to antagonistic to the one thought. The putting on of the robe is the positive side of the same operation. It is the assumption of the fame of mind suitable to that one thought.
A similar operation takes place in the preparation of every instrument, as has been seen in the Chapter devoted to that subject. In the preparation of theplace of working, the same considerations apply. We first remove from that place all objects; and we then put into it those objects, and only those {103} objects, which are necessary. During many days we occupy ourselves in this process of cleansing and consecration; and this again is confirmed in the actual ceremony.
The cleansed and consecrated Magician takes his cleansed and consecrated instruments into that cleansed and consecrated place, and there proceeds to repeat that double ceremony in the ceremony itself, which has these same two main parts. The first part of every ceremony is the banishing; the second, the invoking. The same formula is repeated even in the ceremony of banishing itself, for in the banishing ritual of the pentagram we not only command the demons to depart, but invoke the Archangels and their hosts to act as guardians of the Circle during our pre-occupation with the ceremony proper.
In more elaborate ceremonies it is usual to banish everything by name. Each element, each planet, and each sign, perhaps even the Sephiroth themselves; all are removed, including the very one which we wished to invoke, for that force ... ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
140:Mother, how to change one's consciousness?
Naturally, there are many ways, but each person must do it by the means accessible to him; and the indication of the way usually comes spontaneously, through something like an unexpected experience. And for each one, it appears a little differently.
For instance, one may have the perception of the ordinary consciousness which is extended on the surface, horizontally, and works on a plane which is simultaneously the surface of things and has a contact with the superficial outer side of things, people, circumstances; and then, suddenly, for some reason or other - as I say for each one it is different - there is a shifting upwards, and instead of seeing things horizontally, of being at the same level as they are, you suddenly dominate them and see them from above, in their totality, instead of seeing a small number of things immediately next to yourself; it is as though something were drawing you above and making you see as from a mountain-top or an aeroplane. And instead of seeing each detail and seeing it on its own level, you see the whole as one unity, and from far above.
There are many ways of having this experience, but it usually comes to you as if by chance, one fine day.
Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances.
Or else, suddenly also, the sense of limitation disappears and one enters the perception of a kind of indefinite duration beginningless and endless, of something which has always been and always will be.
These experiences come to you suddenly in a flash, for a second, a moment in your life, you don't know why or how.... There are other ways, other experiences - they are innumerable, they vary according to people; but with this, with one minute, one second of such an existence, one catches the tail of the thing. So one must remember that, try to relive it, go to the depths of the experience, recall it, aspire, concentrate. This is the startingpoint, the end of the guiding thread, the clue. For all those who are destined to find their inner being, the truth of their being, there is always at least one moment in life when they were no longer the same, perhaps just like a lightning-flash - but that is enough. It indicates the road one should take, it is the door that opens on this path. And so you must pass through the door, and with perseverance and an unfailing steadfastness seek to renew the state which will lead you to something more real and more total.
Many ways have always been given, but a way you have been taught, a way you have read about in books or heard from a teacher, does not have the effective value of a spontaneous experience which has come without any apparent reason, and which is simply the blossoming of the soul's awakening, one second of contact with your psychic being which shows you the best way for you, the one most within your reach, which you will then have to follow with perseverance to reach the goal - one second which shows you how to start, the beginning.... Some have this in dreams at night; some have it at any odd time: something one sees which awakens in one this new consciousness, something one hears, a beautiful landscape, beautiful music, or else simply a few words one reads, or else the intensity of concentration in some effort - anything at all, there are a thousand reasons and thousands of ways of having it. But, I repeat, all those who are destined to realise have had this at least once in their life. It may be very fleeting, it may have come when they were very young, but always at least once in one's life one has the experience of what true consciousness is. Well, that is the best indication of the path to be followed.
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
Indeed, the starting-point is to observe oneself, not to live in a perpetual nonchalance, a perpetual apathy; one must be attentive.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, [T6],#KEYS
141:What are these operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and effectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the real Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction.We can look into the inward of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because there, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or a powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult. (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming and follow the process by which it draws back into self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being.
The status of knowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discrimination of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psychological experience of the modes of our being. It is a "realisation", in the full sense of the word; it is the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent and universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility of viewing the modes of being except in the light of that Self and in their true aspect as its flux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions of our world-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements, internal vision, complete internal experience and identity.
This internal vision, dr.s.t.i, the power so highly valued by the ancient sages, the power which made a man a Rishi or Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it-to the soul and not merely to the intellect-as do things seen to the physical eye. In the physical world there are always two forms of knowledge, the direct and the indirect, pratyaks.a, of that which is present to the eyes, and paroks.a, of that which is remote from and beyond our vision. When the object is beyond our vision, we are necessarily obliged to arrive at an idea of it by inference, imagination, analogy, by hearing the descriptions of others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of it if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed arrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but we do not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but only our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with the eyes,-for no other sense is adequate,-we possess, we realise; it is there secure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely the same rule holds good of psychical things and of he Self. We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration;3 but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.
(2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the 2 In one respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not so much hampered by the sense of the limited ego as in ourselves; one obstacle to the realisation of God is therefore removed.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,#KEYS
142:summary of the entire process of psychic awakening :::
You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has an activity on the surface which veils the real Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of this concentration. Of this true consciousness other then the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it an d all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and it the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it behind to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental consciousness is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternatively - but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the more desirable.
The other side of the discipline is with regard to the activities of the nature, of the mind, of the life-self or vital, of the physical being. Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible. One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty - there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, bring the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us - inner mental, inner vital, inner physical - silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature. It can also open mind, life and body to the inmost psychic entity and its guiding influence or its direct guidance. In most cases these two methods emerge and work together and finally fuse into one. But one can being with either, the one that one feels most natural and easy to follow.
Finally, in all difficulties where personal effort is hampered, the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring above what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, 6, {871},#KEYS
143:For instance, a popular game with California occultists-I do not know its inventor-involves a Magic Room, much like the Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room contains an Omniscient Computer.
To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy. You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.) So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the correct answer.
There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So, the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher. (Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade teacher-imprint vulnerability again-but that of the second grade teacher tends to get lost.)
When the computer has dug out the name of your second grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how well it can be made to perform.
It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination and visualization on your first trial runs.
After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment, feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer. Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you seem to them.
This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for some shocks which might be disagreeable at first. This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are functionally identical."
This computer is much more powerful and scientifically advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions as: 1. I am at cause over my body. 2. I am at cause over my imagination. 3.1 am at cause over my future. 4. My mind abounds with beauty and power. 5.1 like people, and people like me.
Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform. Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformations of your past reality-tunnels.
This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer, etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the metaprogrammer. "Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist, repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent; that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our revisions, meta-selves of our selves. "Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is. Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity. Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of your mind as mind 1 , and the mind which contemplates that mind as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating mind 1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon all students of yoga. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising,#KEYS
144:[an Integral conception of the Divine :::
But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.
But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 82-83 [T1],#KEYS
145:Intuition And The Value Of Concentration :::
Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?
... There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don't notice them because we don't pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists - I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still - indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason - not by impulse but by reason - to reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don't think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form - at the top of the head and a little further above if possible - a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can - perhaps not immediately - but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.
It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study - indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent - that one succeeds in developing one's intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed - as one can also succeed in developing one's personal will and making it into a very considerable power - but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.
Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster - but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence) Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important.
There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS
146:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
,#KEYS
147:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
148:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
149:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Concentration is at the root of mental mastery. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 2:Prayer is a concentration of positive thoughts. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 3:One great cause of failure is lack of concentration. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 4:The only prudence in life is concentration. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 5:True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 6:Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 7:Concentration is the root of all the higher abilities in man. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 8:A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 9:The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 10:Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 11:High achievements in art, music, etc., are the results of concentration. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 12:Concentration is my motto - first honesty, then industry, then concentration. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 13:One great cause of failure of young men in business is lack of concentration. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 14:The power of concentration is the only key to the treasure-house of knowledge. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 15:Concentration is a part of life. It is not the consequence of a method of education. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 16:Concentration is the key that opens up to the child the latent treasures within him. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 17:If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 18:Study: concentration of the mind on whatever will ultimately put something in your pocket. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 19:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 20:Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 21:Willpower is a concentration of force. You gather up all your energy and make a massive thrust forward. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove 22:I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 23:Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 24:The first essential for the child‚Äôs development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 25:Single-minded concentration in the direction of your dreams intensifies your desires and increases your self-confidence. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 26:Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 27:Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all management of human affairs. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 28:Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 29:No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else. ~ quentin-crisp, @wisdomtrove 30:I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 31:A person who undertakes the study of Zen and learns concentration and meditation is like a gymnast. You become a gymnast of the mind. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 32:I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 33:probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 34:What is the difference between attention and inattention? What is attention and what is concentration? ... Attention has no centre. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 35:If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 36:In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 37:The Law of Concentration states that whatever you dwell upon, grows. The more you think about something, the more it becomes part of your reality. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 38:Built on the foundation of concentration is the third aspect of the Buddha’s path of awakening: clarity of vision and the development of wisdom. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 39:The conjunction of effort, concentration and balance in asana forces us to live intensely in the present moment, a rare experience in modern life. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 40:Perseverance does not always mean sticking to the same thing forever. It means giving full concentration and effort to whatever you are doing right now. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 41:Mindfulness is the energy that sheds light on all things and all activities, producing the power of concentration, bringing forth deep insight and awakening. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 42:You gain power through practicing meditation and concentration. You gain power by doing anything you like that makes you feel good. You gain power by being happy. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 43:In God's vision, no inside or outside exists. Still, in the beginning, Mother is asking all to meditate on Him in the heart, in order to achieve concentration. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 44:Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 45:If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 46:You couldn’t have established a communist regime in sixteenth-century Russia, because communism necessitates the concentration of information and resources in one hub. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 47:From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 48:The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 49:By repeatedly bringing your attention back to the breath each time it wanders off, concentration builds and deepens, much as muscles develop by repetitively lifting weights. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 50:Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator, I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 51:People can insert thoughts into your mind. This is more dangerous for psychic people. Use concentration exercises and read to combat this; boredom is an easy way to be drained. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 52:Persistence means giving full concentration to whatever you are doing right now. ... Persistence is success through trial, error, resetting your goals, and moving toward the target. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 53:Atkinson, William Walker. The Complete Works of (Unabridged): The Key To Mental Power Development & Efficiency, The Power of Concentration, Thought-Force ... Raja Yoga ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 54:The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured. It's uncontroversial. It's going up. We know that has a tendency to warm the atmosphere and we should be worried about that. ~ martin-rees, @wisdomtrove 55:Practice mediation and concentration exercises, and begin to think more about regaining your sensitivity by avoiding draining situations. Not because of fear but because of intelligence. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 56:Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 57:You must direct your full, intense concentration on the heart. You must feel that you are not the mind. You have to feel that you are growing into the heart. You are only the heart and nothing else. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 58:An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 59:Focus on one point and hold your attention there. The mind will waiver, you'll think a million thoughts, but each time you do, bring your mind back to the point of concentration, seeing it visually. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 60:If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 61:During the time of Atlantis, members of the Mystery Schools discovered and developed specific concentration exercises that they found would radically increase and sharpen their innate psychic abilities. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 62:a poet is someone who is abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. Which is to say the highest form of concentration possible: fascination; to report on the electrifying experience of being ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 63:We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell. ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 64:Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 65:virtue, mindfulness (also called concentration), and wisdom. These are the three pillars of Buddhist practice, as well as the wellsprings of everyday well-being, psychological growth, and spiritual realization. ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 66:Proper visualization by the exercise of concentration and willpower enables us to materialize thoughts, not only as dreams or visions in the mental realm, but also as experiences in the material realm. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 67:An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 68:The difference in men does not lie in the size of their hands, nor in the perfection of their bodies, but in this one sublime ability of concentration: to throw the weight in one blow, to live eternity in an hour. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 69:Materialism has cast man into such depths that a mighty concentration of forces is necessary to raise him again. He is subject to illnesses of the nervous system which are veritable epidemics of the life of the soul. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 70:Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration... . Our motto seems to be, "Let's do a little bit of everything." ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 71:If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 72:He who knows even how to prepare a smoke properly, knows also how to meditate. And he who cannot cook well cannot be a perfect sannyasin. Unless cooking is performed with a pure mind and concentration, the food is not palatable. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 73:We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 74:In Buddhism, mindfulness is the key. Mindfulness is the energy that sheds light on all things and all activities, producing the power of concentration, bringing forth deep insight and awakening. Mindfulness is the base of Buddhist practice. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 75:If you focus the rays of the sun through a lens, they can burn cotton or a piece of paper; but, the scattered rays cannot do this act. If you collect the dissipated rays of the mind and focus them at a point, you will have wonderful concentration. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 76:Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God; it is a sincere seeking for a good thing; and it is a concentration on the thing sought, with faith that it is obtainable. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 77:As a boy begins to learn writing by drawing big scrawls, before he can master the small-hand, so we must learn concentration of the mind by fixing it first on forms; and when we have attained success therein, we can easily fix it upon the formless. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 78:Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 79:The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck sledge-hammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 80:The whole Christ seeks after each sinner, and when the Lord finds it, he gives himself to that one soul as if he had but that one soul to bless. How my heart admires the concentration of all the Godhead and humanity of Christ in his search after each sheep of his flock. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 81:To achieve that state of lasting happiness and absolute peace, we must first know how to calm the mind, to concentrate and go beyond the mind. By turning the mind's concentration inward, upon the self, we can deepen that experience of perfect concentration. This is the state of Meditation. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 82:To concentrate implies bringing all your energy to focus on a certain point; but thought wanders away... Whereas attention has no control, no concentration. It is complete attention, which means giving all your energy, the energy of the brain, your heart, everything, to attending. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 83:Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 84:Children, in the present dark age of materialism, chanting the mantra is the easiest way for us to obtain inner purification and concentration. Japa can be done at any time, anywhere, without observing any rule regarding the purity of mind and body. Japa can be done while engaged in any task. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 85:There are no parallels to the life of the concentration camps. All seeming parallels create confusion and distract attention from what is essential. Forced labor in prisons and penal colonies, banishment, slavery, all seem for a moment to offer helpful comparisons, but on closer examination lead nowhere. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 86:[Speaking of his experience in a concentration camp:] As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal... Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 87:Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 88:I want to emphasize in the great concentration which we now place upon scientists and engineers how much we still need the men and women educated in the liberal tradition, willing to take the long look, undisturbed by prejudices and slogans of the moment, who attempt to make an honest judgment on difficult events. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 89:I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 90:If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 91:Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 92:To say "I accept" in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration-camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murder. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 93:My secret for writing is going back to clarity. I'm very clear about what I want to accomplish-the goal-and then the next two are focus and concentration. And I've probably spent my whole life both practicing those two and teaching them. Focus. Focus on a single point and concentration. And concentrating on a single thing till it's done. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 94:By my monastic life and vows I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 95:It is difficult for young players to learn - because of the great emphasis on records - but, ideally, the joy and frustration of sport should come from the performance itself, not the score. While he is playing, the worst thing a player can think about in terms of concentration - and therefore of success - is losing. The next worst is winning. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 96:When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 97:To concentrate is not to meditate, even though that is what most of you do, calling it meditation. And if concentration is not meditation, then what is? Surely, meditation is to understand every thought that comes into being, and not to dwell upon one particular thought; it is to invite all thoughts so that you understand the whole process of thinking. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 98:An archer competing for a clay vessel shoots effortlessly, his or her skill and concentration unimpeded. If the prize is changed to a brass ornament, the hands begin to shake. If it is changed to gold, he or she squints as if going blind. The abilities do not deteriorate, but belief in them does, as he or she allows the supposed value of an external reward to cloud the vision. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 99:The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual's own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 100:We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 101:It is a good practice to write at least on page of mantra daily. Many people get better concentration by writing than by chanting. Try also to inculcate in children the habit of chanting and neatly writing the mantra. This will help to improve their handwriting, too. The book in which the mantra is written should not be thrown around; it should be carefully kept in our meditation or shrine room. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 102:How has all the knowledge in the world been gained but by the concentration of the powers of the mind? The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration. There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point; that is the secret. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 103:The Noble Eight-Fold Path is the path of living in awareness. Mindfulness is the foundation. By practicing mindfulness, you can develop concentration, which enables you to attain understanding. Thanks to right concentration, you realize right awareness, thoughts, speech, action, livelihood and effort. The understanding which develops can liberate you from every shackle of suffering and give birth to true peace and joy. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 104:As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 105:I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 106:Take for instance the study of Vedanta. Some seekers become completely drowned in it. Just as others may so lose themselves in kirtan as to fall into a trance, a student of Vedanta may become wholly absorbed in his texts, even more so than the one who gets carried away by kirtan. According to one’s specific line of approach, one will be able to achieve full concentration through the study of a particular Scripture, or by some other means. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 107:There is no greater block to world peace or inner peace than fear. What we fear we tend to develop an unreasoning hatred for, so we come to hate and fear. This not only injures us psychologically and aggravates world tension, but through such negative concentration we tend to attract the things we fear. If we fear nothing and radiate love, we can expect good things to come. How much this world needs the message and example of love and of faith! ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 108:Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 109:Difficulties with material things often come to remind us that our concentration should be on spiritual things instead of material things. Sometimes difficulties of the body come to show that the body is just a transient garment, and that the reality is the indestructible essence which activates the body. But when we can say, & 110:To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 111:The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 112:So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 113:Apply the blacksmith's homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 114:While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 115:Just as Stalin’s gulags do not automatically nullify every socialist idea and argument, so too the horrors of Nazism should not blind us to whatever insights evolutionary humanism might offer. Nazism was born from the pairing of evolutionary humanism with particular racial theories and ultra-nationalist emotions. Not all evolutionary humanists are racists, and not every belief in humankind’s potential for further evolution necessarily calls for setting up police states and concentration camps. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 116:There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex behavioural patterns can be triggered by a tiny concentration of moleculas coursing through the bloodstream, and that different animals of the same species generate different amounts of these hormones, is something worth thinking about when it's time to judge such matters as free will, individual responsibility, and law and order. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 117:Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it’s about letting go of control. This is meditation. Anything else is actually a form of concentration. Meditation and concentration are two different things. Concentration is a discipline; concentration is a way in which we are actually directing or guiding or controlling our experience. Meditation is letting go of control, letting go of guiding our experience in any way whatsoever. The foundation of True Meditation is that we are letting go of control. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 118:A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 119:This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 120:Praise, help, or even a look, may be enough to interrupt him, or destroy the activity. It seems a strange thing to say, but this can happen even if the child merely becomes aware of being watched. After all, we too sometimes feel unable to go on working if someone comes to see what we are doing. The great principle which brings success to the teacher is this: as soon as concentration has begun, act as if the child does not exist. Naturally, one can see what he is doing with a quick glance, but without his being aware of it. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 121:It should be for satsang that we go to spiritual centers. By going there, people who are involved in the world can attain peace and concentration. The concentration gained when one goes there cannot be achieved if one sits at home. Even though the breeze blows everywhere, coolness will be felt more if we sit in the shade of a tree. In the same way, although God is all-pervading, this presence will clearly shine in certain places more than others. That is the greatness of satsang. Satsang is the best thing for spiritual advancement. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 122:Through concentration we become one-pointed and through meditation we expand our consciousness into the Vast. But in contemplation we grow into the Vast itself. We have seen the Truth. We have felt the Truth. But the most important thing is to grow into the Truth and become totally one with the Truth. If we are concentrating on God, we may feel God right in front of us or besides us. When we are meditating, we are bound to feel Infinity, Eternity, Immortality within us. But when we are contemplating, we will see that we ourselves are Infinity, Eternity, Immortality. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 123:We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character& 124:Mindfulness makes our eyes, our heart, our non-toothache, the moon, and the trees deep and beautiful. And when we touch our suffering with mindfulness, we begin to transform it. Mindfulness is like a mother holding her baby in her arms and caring for her baby’s pain. When our pain is held by mindfulness it loses some of its strength. . . . Mindfulness recognizes what is there, and concentration allows you to be deeply present with whatever it is. Concentration is the ground of happiness. If you live twenty-four hours a day in mindfulness and concentration, one day is a lot. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 125:The greatest guilt of today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting; the people who support plans specifically designed to achieve serfdom, but hide behind the empty assertion that they are lovers of freedom, with no concrete meaning attached to the word; the people who believe that the content of ideas need not be examined, that principles need not be defined, and that facts can be eliminated by keeping one's eyes shut. They expect, when they find themselves in a world of bloody ruins and concentration camps, to escape moral responsibility by wailing: "But I didn't mean this! ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 126:The autobiographical self (D’Amasio 2000) incorporates the reflective self and some of the emotional self, and it provides the sense of I having a unique past and future. The core self involves an underlying and largely nonverbal feeling of I that has little sense of the past or the future. If the PFC—which provides most of the neural substrate of the autobiographical self—were to be damaged, the core self would remain, though with little sense of continuity with the past or future. On the other hand, if the subcortical and brain stem structures which the core self relies upon were damaged, then both the core and autobiographical selves would disappear, which suggests that the core self is the neural and mental foundation of the autobiographical self (D’Amasio 2000). When your mind is very quiet, the autobiographical self seems largely absent, which presumably corresponds to a relative deactivation of its neural substrate. Meditations that still the mind, such as the concentration practices we explored in the previous chapter, improve conscious control over that deactivation process. ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Concentration attracts luck factor. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
2:Chess demands total concentration ~ Bobby Fischer, #NFDB
3:concentration. “This time I kill you. ~ G L Breedon, #NFDB
4:Conflict is the opposite of concentration. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
5:Music for me, it demands full concentration. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
6:Concentration is the secret of srength. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
7:Concentration is at the root of mental mastery. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
8:Concentration is the secret of strength. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
9:Your carbon dioxide is breaking my concentration. ~ Emma Lesko, #NFDB
10:There is no happiness. There is only concentration. ~ Al Pacino, #NFDB
11:One great cause of failure is lack of concentration. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
12:One great cause of failure is lack of concentration. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
13:The only prudence in life is concentration. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
14:Reduce the light, increase the concentration! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
15:I didn't equate a POW camp with a concentration camp. ~ Larry Hovis, #NFDB
16:Concentration is the other name of the success! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
17:So intense was Kennedy’s concentration that she hadn’t ~ Vince Flynn, #NFDB
18:Concentration is sometimes mistaken for grumpiness. ~ Michael Atherton, #NFDB
19:concentration, the suspension of time, an unobtrusive wit. ~ Teju Cole, #NFDB
20:True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
21:Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
22:Concentration is the root of all the higher abilities in man. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
23:I have a writer’s concentration: intense, but flickering. ~ Donald McCaig, #NFDB
24:...it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world. ~ Elizabeth Moon, #NFDB
25:The secret of concentration is to shut down the other windows. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
26:Concentration is the root of all the higher abilities in man. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
27:Distraction wastes our energy, concentration restores it. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
28:Facing a wall when you write really aids your concentration. ~ Peter Straub, #NFDB
29:It's all about concentration and repetition. That's all it is. ~ Chris Bosh, #NFDB
30:...we are all voluntary members of a concentration camp. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
31:Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.
~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
32:There were ten concentration camps in France from 1939 on. ~ Martha Gellhorn, #NFDB
33:Concentration of the mind is the source of all knowledge. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
34:Concentration Attention Multitasking Boredom Procrastination ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
35:Mental attitude and concentration are the keys to pitching. ~ Ferguson Jenkins, #NFDB
36:The Internet encourages superficial browsing, not concentration. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
37:A strong memory, concentration, imagination, and a strong will. ~ Bobby Fischer, #NFDB
38:A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
39:The key to tipping point leadership is concentration, not diffusion ~ W Chan Kim, #NFDB
40:This galloping concentration in broadcast ownership is unhealthy. ~ Byron Dorgan, #NFDB
41:a concentration of young people who wanted to open their minds, ~ Jennifer Weiner, #NFDB
42:Life is like a concentration camp... you can't leave without dying. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
43:The creation of a thousand forests is in a single acorn. Concentration ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
44:There are times when not thinking requires all of one's concentration. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
45:Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps. ~ Stanley Milgram, #NFDB
46:But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
47:Concentration is the magic key that opens the door to accomplishment. ~ Michael Korda, #NFDB
48:Resistance hates two qualities above all others: concentration and depth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
49:Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
50:Lack of concentration makes one tired, while concentration wakes one up. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
51:No doubt concentration camps were a means, a menace used to keep order. ~ Albert Speer, #NFDB
52:The stillness of the mind is prepared by the process of concentration. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
53:In concentration and silence we must gather strength for the right action. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
54:In the Gita continuous concentration on God is the king of sacrifices. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
55:We would work side by side for hours, in a state of mutual concentration. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
56:With the Ethical Rules and a little concentration, anything is possible. ~ Dharma Mittra, #NFDB
57:Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
58:Exceptional work is always associated with periods of deep concentration. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
59:It isn’t me,” Rand said, adopting a look of concentration. “Ah. I am shielded. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
60:without concentration, a complex activity breaks down into chaos. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
61:High achievements in art, music, etc., are the results of concentration. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
62:In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil. ~ Patanjali, #NFDB
63:Meditation utilises concentration in its highest form. Concentration ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
64:He moves smoothly and slowly, carrying his concentration like a brimming cup. ~ Thomas Harris, #NFDB
65:Practice is not a matter of years and months. It is a matter of concentration. ~ Koichi Tohei, #NFDB
66:The greater his aspiration and concentration, the more he finds the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
67:Concentration is my motto - first honesty, then industry, then concentration. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
68:Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
69:One great cause of failure of young men in business is lack of concentration. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
70:Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self criticism. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
71:The greater his aspiration and concentration, the more he finds the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
72:Fasting: Improves mental clarity and concentration Induces weight and body fat loss ~ Jason Fung, #NFDB
73:...I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp. ~ Imre Kert sz, #NFDB
74:This special green is the result of high copper concentration in the soil. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
75:Every soul is born with concentration; it loses this faculty as it grows up. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
76:If dictatorship is the concentration of power, freedom consists in its diffusion. ~ Lord Hailsham, #NFDB
77:Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self criticism.
~ Albert Einstein,#NFDB
78:The power of concentration is the only key to the treasure-house of knowledge. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
79:The vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust never saw a concentration camp. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
80:Being fit helps me improve my concentration, my will power and even my determination. ~ Arjun Rampal, #NFDB
81:No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
82:Difficulties will assail you only when you lack in concentration and persistence. ~ Walter J Phillips, #NFDB
83:In science, as in love, a concentration on technique is likely to lead to impotence. ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
84:Ninety percent of my game is mental. It's my concentration that has gotten me this far. ~ Chris Evert, #NFDB
85:Pain was a form of art, after all: a concentration of the soul, an extension of time. ~ Max Gladstone, #NFDB
86:The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one object. ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
87:When I play, I become entirely absorbed in the game. It may be a form of concentration. ~ Helen Wills, #NFDB
88:Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
89:But belligerence was a poor aid to concentration, as were three gins and a bottle of wine ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
90:Concentration of the powers of the mind is our only instrument to help us see God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
91:She reads with great concentration. Her eyes rarely move from the pages of the book. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
92:single-minded, wholehearted, free and glad concentration on the business of pleasing God. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
93:Concentration is a part of life. It is not the consequence of a method of education. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
94:Concentration is the key that opens up to the child the latent treasures within him. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
95:Concentration of the powers of the mind is our only instrument to help us see God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
96:Without reason, there is no concentration. Without concentration, there is no reason. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
97:Along with the development of concentration we must develop the power of detachment. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
98:The concentration of the elite athlete is akin perhaps to the concentration of the writer. ~ Julia Leigh, #NFDB
99:concentration breeds efficiency while division brings inefficiency, error, and tension. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
100:Your level of your concentration decides the extent of the realization of your dreams. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
101:After a war, after a concentration camp, I find it's not too difficult to be happy. ~ Loudon Wainwright III, #NFDB
102:Study: concentration of the mind on whatever will ultimately put something in your pocket. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
103:Success in any endeavor requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration. ~ Willie Sutton, #NFDB
104:If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
105:It [concentration of wealth and power] has been a menace to . . . American democracy. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
106:Learning to focus attention and concentration is very useful; meditation can help you do that. ~ Andrew Weil, #NFDB
107:Concentration on impermanence and nonself leads to the insight of impermanence and nonself. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
108:Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
109:My training was based on concentration, and it's impossible to cheat when you are concentrated ~ Serge Nubret, #NFDB
110:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
111:Concentration, as a foundation for mindfulness, is a key step on the path to greater sanity. ~ Ronald D Siegel, #NFDB
112:In few places is there such a high concentration of hypocrisy as at a writer’s funeral. ~ Juan Gabriel V squez, #NFDB
113:In the second Boer war 26,000 Boer women and children perished in British concentration camps. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
114:The degree of concentration you give to your dream will determine your success percentage! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
115:The essence of the stage is concentration and penetration. Of the screen action, movement, sweep. ~ Elia Kazan, #NFDB
116:Music taught me how to always be patient and focused, and to train the little concentration in myself. ~ Hiromi, #NFDB
117:Nothing erases unpleasant thoughts more effectively than conscious concentration on pleasant ones. ~ Hans Selye, #NFDB
118:The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught. ~ Lucian Freud, #NFDB
119:Any word spoken with clear realization and deep concentration has a materialising value. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
120:Concentration, Full Confidence, Pure Will. With these 3, what cannot be accomplished? ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
121:Concentration is a form of exclusion, and where there is exclusion, there is a thinker who excludes. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
122:Don't attribute mishaps to a lapse in concentration - if you missed the note you don't know it. ~ William Westney, #NFDB
123:One makes their own luck, good or ill... and there are no guesses, merely faulty concentration. ~ Richard A Knaak, #NFDB
124:To focus our mind on the task at hand-with fierce concentration-m akes for a productive use of time. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
125:The mind is a thing that dwells in diffusion, in succession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #NFDB
126:We destroy our concentration by multitasking the moment and our peace away. Multitasking is a myth! ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
127:When we are most scared is the time to summon our clearest concentration and move forward, not back. ~ Peter Heller, #NFDB
128:Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
129:The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
130:When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
131:Concentration camps were entirely a matter for the police and had nothing to do with the administration. ~ Hans Frank, #NFDB
132:I find that when I am actually writing, I enter a zone of concentration too small to admit my troubles. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
133:If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you. ~ Levon Helm, #NFDB
134:I like swordwork. It's like riding, that way - it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world. ~ Elizabeth Moon, #NFDB
135:Cleave believed the concentration of carbohydrates in the refining process did its damage in three ways. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
136:Evaluate every performance on: stage presence, concentration, delivery, material and lessons learned. ~ Franklyn Ajaye, #NFDB
137:Ability is the result of mental and physical toughness, resourcefulness, and powerful concentration. ~ Howard A Tullman, #NFDB
138:Concentration has to be made in the heart, which is cool and refreshing. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi #Meditation #SelfInquiry, #NFDB
139:The power of the human intelligence is without bounds; it increases by concentration: that is the secret. ~ Vivekananda, #NFDB
140:There are different kinds of concentration required to make a painting, different kinds of being present. ~ Joe Bradley, #NFDB
141:To be an actor you need four things: energy, concentration, a lot of luck and, of course, good roles. ~ Charlton Heston, #NFDB
142:With a great concentration, you shall become successful in eliminating the possibility of failure! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
143:By dedicating so much concentration to the issue of security, bilateral matters pass to a secondary level. ~ Vicente Fox, #NFDB
144:Dignity and quiet joy in all that we do are the expression of perfect concentration and perfect wisdom. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
145:Intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out resources in people that they didn't know they had. ~ Edwin Land, #NFDB
146:A strong memory, concentration, imagination, and a strong will is required to become a great Chess player ~ Bobby Fischer, #NFDB
147:Concentration is the act of building focus and meditation is the art of retaining it without losing awareness. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
148:I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
149:...all perception is but a change in the concentration of hydrogen ions on the surface of the brain cells. ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
150:Anyone who has achieved excellence in any form knows that it comes as a result of ceaseless concentration. ~ Louise Brooks, #NFDB
151:It is by the thought that we dissipate ourselves in the phenomenal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #NFDB
152:Specialization, concentration and consistency is the key to outstanding performance... Love your zone! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
153:Narrow all your interests until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
154:When your concentration reaches it's highest point of being, then, and only then can there be a transformation. ~ Hs an Hua, #NFDB
155:Elegance is achieved when, having discarded all superfluous things, we discover simplicity and concentration. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
156:For reasons no one has yet explained, the Internet is at once riveting and a great killer of concentration. ~ Joseph Epstein, #NFDB
157:When we keep our silence we gather our power; when we speak we let loose the concentration of quiet reverie. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
158:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.” ~ Jim Rohn ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
159:You must persevere in your concentration till you come to the point when you no longer lose the inner contact. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
160:Concentration is about learning how to stay centered. When you concentrate your power, you can achieve anything. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
161:Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
162:I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks, #NFDB
163:An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop or the concentration camp and the death march. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
164:As an actor, you deal in fantasy, imagination, and concentration. Those are your three weapons. Those are your bullets. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
165:Building concentration is primarily a matter of removing certain mental factors that hinder its application. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
166:I can only reply that the secret to success in every human endeavor is total concentration. Ask any great athlete. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
167:It is easier to remove tyrants and destroy concentration camps than to kill the ideas that gave them birth. ~ Madeleine K Albright, #NFDB
168:the deeper meaning of focus—a concentration and coordination of action and resources that creates an advantage. ~ Richard P Rumelt, #NFDB
169:This was somehow a day on which concentration would not be possible, a day on which words must give way to images ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
170:Flow neatly separates the two forms of effort: concentration on the task and the deliberate control of attention. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
171:I majored in political science, and my concentration was U.S. involvement in Latin America in the 20th century. ~ Sebastian Arcelus, #NFDB
172:Meditation helps concentration of the mind. Then the mind is free from thoughts and is in the meditated form. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
173:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.” ~ Kevin Horsley ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
174:The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
175:Golf is a search for perfection, for balance. It's about meditation and concentration. You have to use hand and brain. ~ Celine Dion, #NFDB
176:I'm too passionate about my work...Acting takes not only concentration, it takes creativity; it takes... your soul. ~ Farrah Fawcett, #NFDB
177:Concentration, focus, long-term thinking—those are the qualities that separate a warrior from a mere flailing fighter. ~ Timothy Zahn, #NFDB
178:Go on practicing. Your concentration will be as easy as breathing. That will be the crown of your achievements. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
179:I never work with an audience - I can't do this. The process depends on the highest degree of nervous concentration. ~ Frank Auerbach, #NFDB
180:Jews in concentration camps had shaved heads and tattoos. You’d think the anti-Semites would go for a different look. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
181:The cure from all difficulties can come only when the egoistic concentration upon one's desires and conveniences ceases. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
182:Are we facing a new Dark Age, Angus? Possibly, Lou. A dark age in which our concentration spell is this long. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
183:Concentration is the creation of the instrument; meditation is the right use of it; contemplation transcends it. ~ Christmas Humphreys, #NFDB
184:IF MENTAL EMOTIONAL CONCENTRATION FELT FLARED UP WELL MADLY BY TIME INFLUENCE ? MUTUAL SOUL ENJOYMENT IS PLEASINGLY ENSURED. ~ Various, #NFDB
185:In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages. ~ John Berger, #NFDB
186:Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
187:Being dwelling in consciousness upon itself for bliss, this is the divine Tapas. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #NFDB
188:I don't think more concentration is required for Robert De Niro to do what he does as for Jim Carrey to do what he does. ~ Eddie Murphy, #NFDB
189:I feel like, in a way, after doing it for so many years, you learn a certain concentration and how to turn it on and off. ~ Maria Bello, #NFDB
190:The cure from all difficulties can come only when the egoistic concentration upon one's desires and conveniences ceases. ~ ~ The Mother, #NFDB
191:This thirst for personal success, and this continual concentration of the mind in one direction, makes people cold, and ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
192:An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which we must labour
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5],#NFDB
193:It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
194:Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
195:Then I asked, “Do you lose concentration when a woman you want is in the room?”
“I hope not or tonight we’re fucked. ~ Kristen Ashley,#NFDB
196:The opposing tendencies of concentration and spread are of little consequence in the liberal model of political economy. ~ Robert Gilpin, #NFDB
197:Bee exhibits extraordinary concentration when working alone; when working in a group, she is a quiet and confident leader. ~ Maria Semple, #NFDB
198:Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
199:Whatever you focus on, you become. That is the key line, you know. Meditation is the bow and concentration is the arrow. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
200:No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else. ~ Quentin Crisp, #NFDB
201:Think about the brain as the densest concentration of youness. It's the peak of the mountain, but not the whole mountain. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
202:think about the brain as the densest concentration of youness. It’s the peak of the mountain, but not the whole mountain. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
203:When I came to power, I did not want the concentration camps to become old age pensioners homes, but instruments of terror. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
204:While I am rehearsing a play, I try to read nothing that might distract my concentration from the work in progress. ~ Mercedes McCambridge, #NFDB
205:It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had. *Milkman* ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
206:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.” ~ Kevin Horsley Jim Rohn ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
207:The Seven Factors of Awakening are mindfulness, investigation of phenomena, diligence, joy, ease, concentration, and letting go. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
208:Concentration comes not from trying hard to focus on something, but from keeping your mind open and directing it at nothing. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
209:You get involved with a character after spending a long time waiting, and this demands a lot of energy and concentration. ~ Catherine Deneuve, #NFDB
210:At the top of the head or above it is the right place for yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
211:Go on practicing. Your concentration will be as easy as breathing. That will be the crown of your achievements.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, [T5],#NFDB
212:Exceptional work is always associated with periods of deep concentration. Nothing excellent ever comes from a scattered effort. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
213:In a concentration camp Pinot Noir, amateur piano performances, and sparkling conversational skills would be totally useless. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
214:Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
215:People getting their mercury fillings removed report immediate and dramatic changes in focus, attention, memory, concentration. ~ David Goodman, #NFDB
216:The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
217:...the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
218:Toutes nos créations originales et puissantes sont le fruit
d'une concentration, d'une monomanie sublime, proche de la folie. ~ Stefan Zweig,#NFDB
219:Prakriti is the action of the All-conscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance, #NFDB
220:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.”
~ Kevin Horsley Jim Rohn ~ Kevin Horsley,#NFDB
221:The repetition of the name of the Lord must be accompanied by concentration. Then alone one gets the grace of God. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
222:Concentration is another name for what we have called activity in reading. The good reader reads actively, with concentration. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #NFDB
223:higher concentration of dopamine appears to lower skepticism and result in greater vulnerability to pattern detection; an ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
224:To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
225:When thy understanding shall stand immovable and unshakeable in concentration, then thou shalt attain to the divine Union. ~ Bhagavad Gita 11. 53, #NFDB
226:In concentration and silence we must gather strength for the right action. With my blessings.
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, November 8th,#NFDB
227:So, this guy entered my store, browsed my crap in his suit, sandals, and stickered sombrero, and completely broke my concentration. ~ Graham Parke, #NFDB
228:The 7 factors of enlightenment: mindfullness, investigation of mental objects, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
229:The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster. ~ Lucian Freud, #NFDB
230:The Supreme Court of the United States has validated the Nazi method of execution in concentration camps, starving them to death. ~ Jack Kevorkian, #NFDB
231:Dwarfs can often do the work of giants when they are transformed by the almost magic power of great mental concentration. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
232:Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. ~ James Dean, #NFDB
233:I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
234:Michael Caine is a movie star, but he's also a great actor. I can't say that about every movie star. It's the concentration he has. ~ Norman Jewison, #NFDB
235:The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
236:The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication. ~ Harold Geneen, #NFDB
237:I always train and prepare with highest concentration and focus on my next opponent. To me, it does not matter what his name is. ~ Wladimir Klitschko, #NFDB
238:There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him anymore. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
239:A person who undertakes the study of Zen and learns concentration and meditation is like a gymnast. You become a gymnast of the mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
240:Art is the opposite of dissipation, in the physical and spiritual sense of the word: it is concentration, desire that seeks incarnation. ~ Octavio Paz, #NFDB
241:I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
242:Every great religion is, in truth, a concentration of great ideas, capable, as all ideas are, of infinite expansion and adaptation. ~ Mary Augusta Ward, #NFDB
243:probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
244:there is clearly a kind of anger that is healthy. It is the concentration of one's whole being in the determination: this must change. ~ Barbara Deming, #NFDB
245:The United Nations is nothing but a trap-door to the Red World's immense concentration camp. We pretty much control the U.N. ~ Harold Wallace Rosenthal, #NFDB
246:What is the difference between attention and inattention? What is attention and what is concentration? ...Attention has no centre. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
247:I never found that love, either when it prospered or when it did not, interfered in the slightest with my intellectual concentration. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
248:You have a goofy grin on your face,” Cade says, breaking my concentration. “And your phone is vibrating more than my wife’s bedside drawer. ~ B J Harvey, #NFDB
249:Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
250:When your mind is at peace, you can enjoy the moment and your mind becomes like a laser beam. Peace and concentration are the same thing. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
251:cultivating “concentration so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.”) ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
252:Acting is like racing, you need the same concentration. You have to reach inside you and bring forth a lot of broken glass. That's painful. ~ Steve McQueen, #NFDB
253:Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
254:I tried to avoid it coming to that, but it was bound to happen...My attraction to you has tested my self-control and my concentration. ~ Allison van Diepen, #NFDB
255:My companion, with that look of concentration which comes over French faces when a meal is in the offing, did not wait to hear any of this. ~ Nancy Mitford, #NFDB
256:No matter how different the forms we choose, our concentration during the Trying Twenties is on mastering what we feel we are supposed to do. ~ Gail Sheehy, #NFDB
257:The cause of mediocre work is neither the variety nor the number of activities, but lack of the power of concentration.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T5],#NFDB
258:The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded. ~ Franklin Pierce, #NFDB
259:Everything that you do is a challenge. And acting is just building up your concentration and being able to listen and to do the ridiculous. ~ Clint Eastwood, #NFDB
260:Large corporations are amassing so much power in our economy. Sometimes it's called market concentration or even old-fashioned monopolies. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
261:Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe. ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
262:What further concentration is needed, what added intensity must one's gaze attain, for the brain to enslave the visual image of a person? ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
263:drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat. ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
264:If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
265:network tools are distracting us from work that requires unbroken concentration, while simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
266:To be a scholar of mathematics you must be born with talent, insight, concentration, taste, luck, drive and the ability to visualize and guess. ~ Paul Halmos, #NFDB
267:Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too. And the light came on. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
268:But anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provieds requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
269:Focused, directed thoughts reach the subjective levels; they must be of a certain degree of intensity. Intensity is acquired by concentration. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
270:To practice with an end in view is to have one eye on the practice and the other on the end, which is lack of concentration, lack of sincerity. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
271:When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp? ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
272:Concentration is not the approach towards God. Concentration is a mind approach. God is everywhere, so you have to relax, you have to be meditative. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
273:Concentration should be all on the immediate step—whatever is being done at the time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Experiences on the Higher Planes, #NFDB
274:Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh - over fear...Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
275:In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
276:Light infantry operations often follow a cycle that can be divided into four steps: Dispersion, Orientation, Concentration, and Action (DOCA). ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
277:Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
278:Teens think listening to music helps them concentrate. It doesn't. It relieves them of the boredom that concentration on homework induces. ~ Marilyn vos Savant, #NFDB
279:You can't keep your mind on fighting when you're thinking about a woman. You can't keep your concentration. You feel like sleeping all the time. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
280:According to the World Bank, the concentration of wealth and the structures of corporate economic power have no bearing on woman's rights. ~ Michel Chossudovsky, #NFDB
281:A contemplative should pay equal attention to concentration, energetic effort and equanimity, and not exclusively to one of these factors only. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
282:forty-nine thousand Jews in Italy at the time of the Nazi invasion, some forty-one thousand evaded arrest or survived the concentration camps. ~ Mark T Sullivan, #NFDB
283:Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
284:Looking deeply" means observing something or someone with so much concentration that the distinction between observer and observed disappears. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
285:Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
286:Massive concentration of financial power, accompanied by the machinations of finance capital, can as easily de-stabilize as stabilize capitalism. ~ David Harvey, #NFDB
287:No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
288:Sow the seeds of hard work and you will reap the fruits of success. Find something to do, do it with all your concentration. You will excel. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
289:The cure from all difficulties can come only when the egoistic concentration upon one's desires and conveniences ceases.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
290:When you hold your cup and drink your tea in mindfulness and concentration, it’s like you’re performing a sacred ritual, and that is a prayer. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
291:Built on the foundation of concentration is the third aspect of the Buddha’s path of awakening: clarity of vision and the development of wisdom. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
292:If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
293:Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work, #NFDB
294:Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy. ~ Robert Reich, #NFDB
295:Meditation is not an escape. It is the courage to look at reality with mindfulness and concentration. Meditation is essential for our survival. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
296:When we mediate, we are raising the kundalini through focus, through concentration. There is a metaphysical astral process that's taking place. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
297:I think the most important thing for you to do in the meantime is live. It is a very involving job, which takes much concentration and practice. ~ Jewelle L G mez, #NFDB
298:simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
299:The conjunction of effort, concentration and balance in asana forces us to live intensely in the present moment, a rare experience in modern life. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
300:Actually the adrenaline of the game will probably help me out a little bit to regain command and concentration about the things that I have to do. ~ Pedro Martinez, #NFDB
301:Around 300 survivors from Auschwitz attended a ceremony at the former Nazi concentration camp in Poland to mark the 70th anniversary of its liberation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
302:Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of surviving movie palaces in the United States, yet most residents have never been inside one of them. ~ Leonard Maltin, #NFDB
303:For me drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat. ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
304:Men have prayed in prison, men have prayed in slums and concentration camps. It's only the middle class who demand to pray in suitable surroundings. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
305:The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
306:Today’s mainstream political and economic theories deny a positive role for government policy to constrain the large-scale concentration of wealth. ~ Michael Hudson, #NFDB
307:A man will be effective to the degree that he is able to concentrate! Concentration is not basically a mode of doing but above all a mode of Being. ~ Lawrence LeShan, #NFDB
308:How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think! ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
309:In a society that has very high concentration of capital in a narrow sector of the population, that's going to influence everything in different ways. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
310:Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
311:To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
312:Feeling is one of the seven universal mental factors. The other six are contact, perception, attention, concentration, life force, and volition. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
313:My mother had a horrific life. At fourteen, she was in the Nazi concentration camps. Her sense about life now is, every day above ground is a good day. ~ Gene Simmons, #NFDB
314:Each day when you meditate, you should devote the first few minutes of your meditation to concentration. This will develop the power of the intellect. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
315:energy and concentration. For most people with ADD, the right diet is a higher-protein, higher-healthy-fat, lower-simple-carbohydrate diet.” I was able ~ Daniel G Amen, #NFDB
316:For me drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat. At ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
317:If you fail at the large things it means you have not large ambitions. Concentration, focus - that is all. The aptitudes come, the tools forge themselves. ~ Ian Fleming, #NFDB
318:Many countries persecute their own citizens and intern them in prisons or concentration camps. Oppression is becoming more and more a part of the systems. ~ Alva Myrdal, #NFDB
319:So she leapt without hesitation toward it trailing a silken thread behind her as they fell, she a model of concentration, he singing about sausages. ~ Jonathan L Howard, #NFDB
320:There are five stages of meditation, each one leading gradually into the next: concentration, meditation, contemplation, illumination, and inspiration. ~ Benjamin Creme, #NFDB
321:do you want to improve your concentration or don’t you? It is always up to you. Therefore, eliminate your excuses, clean up your beliefs, and be here now! ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
322:most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
323:Concentration of executive power, unless it's very temporary and for specific circumstances, let's say fighting world war two, it's an assault on democracy. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
324:I was 16 and did a play at school. I was a rather good student... And then I did a play when I was 16 and completely lost all my concentration for academics. ~ Hank Azaria, #NFDB
325:Listening is the key to total concentration. You listen as the character would listen, closing the door on everything else. Then you are ready to respond. ~ Jean Stapleton, #NFDB
326:Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps... Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
327:There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
328:...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets. ~ Azar Nafisi, #NFDB
329:The West is concentration of the mind: the East is meditation of the mind. The West is thinking: the East is non-thinking. The West is mind: the East is no-mind. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
330:He was as nervous as a praying mantis at an atheists' picnic, but he bore down gently, intensifying his concentration, letting go of his attachment to gravity. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
331:I am happy everywhere except in places where I see glitz and rich farts. I am happiest in Brooklyn, where the concentration of rich farts is minimal. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
332:If you put on more garments, the cold cannot reach you. Similarly, increase your patience and concentration and even great injuries cannot vex your mind. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
333:I had a lot of it in my day, but I don't like it. It's a dumb drug. Your whole concentration goes on getting the next fix. I find caffeine easier to deal with. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
334:We can condition our bodies and minds to happiness with the five practices of letting go, inviting positive seeds, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
335:Each of us has his own inner concentration camp... We must deal with, with forgiveness and patience-as full human beings, as we are and what we will become. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
336:I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way ~ Steve Wozniak, #NFDB
337:Then, with instantly one-pointed concentration, as if only he and the notebook existed- no sunshine, no fellow passengers, no ship- he began to turn the pages. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
338:What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration. ~ Elizabeth Bishop, #NFDB
339:And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
340:Dragoons arrested Jesuits in even the remotest parts of the frontier. Many Jesuits were marched to concentration camps at ports and then put on ships ~ David Hatcher Childress, #NFDB
341:His brows were lowered in concentration. Thick, sooty lashes hid his eyes.
They lifted and his lips spread into a grin.
I was in so much trouble. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
342:In life we listen to other people. Listen with varying degrees of concentration and attention, right? Actors must learn to listen in a different way. ~ Constantin Stanislavski, #NFDB
343:Nothing was ever created by a human being that was not first created in the imagination through desire and then transformed into reality through concentration. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
344:I'm an old git now, so I would say this, but television was better when there were less channels. There was more concentration and selection in terms of the output. ~ Ross Kemp, #NFDB
345:Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart. ~ Patanjali, #NFDB
346:He main retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevsky said once, 'There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings'. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
347:Meditation or religion is a totally different world: it is relaxation, it is let-go - it is not concentration at all. It is not one-pointedness, it is no-pointedness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
348:Purity and concentration are indeed two aspects, feminine and masculine, passive and active, of the same status of being . ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #NFDB
349:To control the mind the best and easiest method is to repeat constantly God's Name. Concentration is attained by fixing the attention on the sound of the Name. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
350:What I call innocence is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
351:Dachau-the significance of this name will never be erased from German history. It stands for all concentration camps which the Nazis established in their territory. ~ Eugen Kogon, #NFDB
352:I hate to try to be that person in my own skin, in my own way, in my own head, not through exercises or anything else, just by, I guess, belief, concentration. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
353:Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
354:Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
355:Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration. ~ Igor Stravinsky, #NFDB
356:The focus and the concentration and the attention to detail that flying takes is a kind of meditation. I find it restful and engaging, and other things slip away. ~ Harrison Ford, #NFDB
357:To control the mind the best and easiest method is to repeat constantly God's Name. Concentration is attained by fixing the attention on the sound of the Name. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
358:When an experiment was to begin, all women were excluded for fear their irrational natures would influence the result, and an air of fervent concentration descended. ~ Iain Pears, #NFDB
359:In summary, all great work is the fruit of patience and perseverance, combined with tenacious concentration on a subject over a period of months or years. ~ Santiago Ramon y Cajal, #NFDB
360:Knowledge is better than practice, concentration excels knowledge, the renunciation of fruits concentration; peace is the immediate result of renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita.XII. 12, #NFDB
361:The key to writing is concentration, not inspiration. It requires deep attention to your characters, to the world they live in, and to the story you have to tell. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
362:We must aim indeed at the Highest, the Source of all, the Transcendent but not to the exclusion of that which it transcends. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #NFDB
363:You gain power through practicing meditation and concentration. You gain power by doing anything you like that makes you feel good. You gain power by being happy. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
364:Concentration is inspiration. You must be completely overtaken by your work and your subject. Only then do all your influences and experience come up to the surface. ~ Cesar Chavez, #NFDB
365:Life is illuminated by right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
366:Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
367:Not only in your inward concentration, but in your outward acts and movements you must take the right attitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Wrong Movements of the Vital, #NFDB
368:To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
369:VIPASSANA MEDITATION is something of a mental balancing act. You are going to be cultivating two separate qualities of the mind—mindfulness and concentration. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
370:With concentration on nonself—the reality that we do not have a separate self—we become aware that suffering is there not only in us but also in the other person. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
371:Do the dynamics of private capital accumulation inevitably lead to the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands, as Karl Marx believed in the nineteenth century? ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
372:That there should be so great a concentration of vitality, so large a world contained within the mind of a single man, must in the end have been fatal to civilisation. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
373:I find that everything I do is demanding, like Jack Bristow is a complicated man and I do a lot of explaining in the show, it takes a lot of energy and concentration. ~ Victor Garber, #NFDB
374:In God's vision, no inside or outside exists. Still, in the beginning, Mother is asking all to meditate on Him in the heart, in order to achieve concentration. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
375:regret the choices I made that brought us here. I regret putting my family in danger. I breathe the sorrow in the wind, and its breaks my concentration. “Alejandra— ~ Zoraida C rdova, #NFDB
376:Socialism and federalism are necessarily political opposites, because the former demands that centralized concentration of power which the latter by definition denies. ~ Felix Morley, #NFDB
377:The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France! ~ Antonia Fraser, #NFDB
378:Concentration is about learning how to stay centered. When you concentrate your power, you can achieve anything. Imagine your mind was a torch. Most people allow their ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
379:I was planning to eat that," April says as Henry discovers a pudding and spoons it into his mouth with such intense concentration that I think his eyes have crossed. ~ Bethany Griffin, #NFDB
380:Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
381:The two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
382:Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
383:It didn’t just boost your concentration. It made you enjoy work. You couldn’t wait to get back to the keyboard, the breadboard, the gesture table, the lab, the fabber. ~ Annalee Newitz, #NFDB
384:I thought you had to give up a lot for art, and you did. It required complete concentration. It also required that whatever money you had had to be put into art materials. ~ Alice Neel, #NFDB
385:So we should acquire the power of concentration by fixing the mind first on forms and when we have obtained in this a full success, we can easily fix it on the formless. ~ Ramakrishna, #NFDB
386:The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in copyright, produces. ~ Lawrence Lessig, #NFDB
387:The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer. ~ Dana Spiotta, #NFDB
388:Full concentration brings relaxation and joy. It is the struggle of divided attention that brings a great deal of the misery that we associate with jobs we don’t like. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
389:Of course, not all slow thinking requires that form of intense concentration and effortful computation—I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
390:Thought control is the ability to direct mind and attention anywhere. Your ability to win is dependent upon the power of your concentration. Winning is a state of mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
391:What you need to learn are basic types of concentration, bringing more energy into your life, plugging up the holes where you lose energy, the basics of self-discovery. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
392:A corporation is a state created institution, state supported institution, its concentration of private power, there is no reason why it should have the rights of persons. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
393:a pathological concentration of wealth, leading to class wars, disruptive revolutions, and financial exhaustion: these are some of the ways in which a civilization may die. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
394:Many of the cognitive enhancement drugs serve to increase focus and concentration. But 'letting your mind wander' is very often an important part of the creative process. ~ Jamais Cascio, #NFDB
395:One cannot listen to different pieces of music at the same time, a real comprehension of the beautiful being possible only through concentration upon some central motive. ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
396:What is the good in doing Japa for a whole day if there is no concentration of mind? Collectedness of one's mind is essential, then only His grace descends. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
397:All forms of meditation strengthen & direct our attention through the cultivation of three key skills: concentration, mindfulness & compassion or lovingkindness. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
398:A monster, in comparison, can be no more than a guide -- unless it fuses (like Yog Sothoth) into the enveloping extracosmic fabric, as a super-sentient concentration of doors. ~ Nick Land, #NFDB
399:Any concentration of the will displaces life and gives it bias in motion. Reality, he believed, was always trying to copy the imagination of man, from which it derived. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
400:Cancer is not a concentration camp, but it shares the quality of annihilation: it negates the possibility of life outside and beyond itself; it subsumes all living. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
401:During the Nuremberg trials, Oswald Pohl, an SS Lieutenant General,...is shown here explaining how Farben operated such concentration camps as Auschwitz and Buchenwald. ~ G Edward Griffin, #NFDB
402:If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
403:In my study, there are stacks of papers to grade, books I should have read & reviewed months ago, but I have no concentration: the time slips through my fingers like water. ~ Jess Row, #NFDB
404:So we should acquire the power of concentration by fixing the mind first on forms and when we have obtained in this a full success, we can easily fix it on the formless. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
405:They were handsome, proper and normal family fathers who built the concentration camps and whipped the prisoners to death. And who was Nietzsche? A narcotized syphilitic. ~ Jens Bj rneboe, #NFDB
406:Citizen is one of those books that reminds me that black life is often like walking a balance beam: It requires strategy and concentration for stability is so fleeting. ~ Glory Edim, #NFDB
407:Playing chess has many aspects that can be useful in everyday situations like planning, concentration and combinations. You learn to win but also to lose and to be creative. ~ Judit Polgar, #NFDB
408:I do think that my work has gotten calmer, and that the violence of some of the earlier series was necessary to reach the higher degree of concentration in the later ones. ~ Rineke Dijkstra, #NFDB
409:In many places an administrative approach prevails over a pastoral approach, as does a concentration on administering the sacraments apart from other forms of evangelization. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
410:The internet, wrote Nicholas Carr in The Shallows, his book about brain science and screen time, steadily chips away at one’s “capacity for concentration and contemplation. ~ Michael Finkel, #NFDB
411:The painting cannot be laid aside even for a day; for it takes constant work to keep 'flowing,' but above that it takes concentration, which in our language is consecration. ~ Morris Graves, #NFDB
412:The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
413:They were always doing something. Quietly, without interruption, and with great concentration, they carried on with the hundred-and-one small things that made up their world. ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
414:A leading difficulty with the average player is that he totally misunderstands what is meant by concentration. He may think he is concentrating hard when he is merely worrying. ~ Bobby Jones, #NFDB
415:By repeatedly bringing your attention back to the breath each time it wanders off, concentration builds and deepens, much as muscles develop by repetitively lifting weights. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
416:Concentration of effort and the habit of working with a definite chief aim are two of the essential factors in success, which are always found together. One leads to the other. ~ David Frost, #NFDB
417:Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #NFDB
418:A picture was once a rare sort of symbol, rare enough to call for attentive concentration. Now it is the actual experience that is rare, and the picture has become ubiquitous. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
419:It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
420:The sensayer frowned. “You’re saying you discuss theology while having sex.”
“For beginners it’s before and after mostly, managing it during sex takes skill and concentration. ~ Ada Palmer,#NFDB
421:Whatever luck I had, I made. I was never a natural athlete, but I paid my dues in sweat and concentration and took the time necessary to learn karate and become world champion. ~ Chuck Norris, #NFDB
422:What is the best method to find the Divine who is in each of us and in all things?
Aspiration. Silence. Concentration in the solar plexus region.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
423:As long as we have practiced neither concentration nor mindfulness, the ego takes itself for granted and remains its usual normal size, as big as the people around one will allow. ~ Ayya Khema, #NFDB
424:Concentrate on your goals. Do not allow other thoughts to enter your mind. If you allow them to, other things could take your concentration away from your ultimate aim. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
425:I guess that as life is speeded up and our capacity for concentration is being nibbled away at by all the obvious things, that leads us actually to be more susceptible to boredom. ~ Geoff Dyer, #NFDB
426:It's all well and good to say that Germans were all responsible for the concentration camps, but I don't think they were. I think that was the work of a small group of fiends. ~ James Laughlin, #NFDB
427:Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don't have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
428:One who has not ceased from evil living or is without peace or without concentration or whose mind has not been tranquillised, cannot attain to Him by the intelligence. ~ Katha Upanishad II.24, #NFDB
429:The first law of success is concentration – to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right or to the left.” (William Mathews) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
430:Viktor Frankl the Concentration camp survivalist said no matter how much mental or physical abuse had been given nobody could cause him to think something he didn't want to think ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
431:I think that both Bernie [Sanders] and Hillary [Hillary] have highlighted how much, over the last few decades, we have seen the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. ~ Julian Castro, #NFDB
432:Kyra Sedgwick told me, 'Keep your heart where your feet are' and that's incredibly difficult to do. It takes a lot of concentration. You've got to be conscientious of each other. ~ Angie Harmon, #NFDB
433:The mind’s continual keeping in the presence of God 8 and the concentration of its thoughts on Him would so enrage the fiend that, although he might try the experiment once, he ~ Teresa of vila, #NFDB
434:The secret for mastery is concentration; the success of concentration is in elimination. Avoid everything in general and focus one thing in particular. You will be a master! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
435:From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
436:Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator, I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
437:history have noted that the sheer concentration of power in government is lethal—that only a sense of absolute unchecked power can make atrocities like the Rape of Nanking possible. ~ Iris Chang, #NFDB
438:Although they liberated some concentration camps, American troops reached none of the major killing sites of the Holocaust and saw none of the hundreds of death pits of the East. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
439:Concentration upon oneself means decay and death. Concentration on the Divine alone brings life and growth and realisation.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Divine Is with You, #index,#NFDB
440:Concentration on the Divine is the only truly valid thing. To do what the Divine wants us to do is the only thing valid.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life, [T0],#NFDB
441:I have to use other things to help my tennis, like my brain. But I believe that, even when your muscles are not so fast, with the brain and with concentration you can compensate. ~ Marion Bartoli, #NFDB
442:People can insert thoughts into your mind. This is more dangerous for psychic people. Use concentration exercises and read to combat this; boredom is an easy way to be drained. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
443:The concentration and reciprocal effect of industry and agriculture conjoin in a growth of productive powers, which increases more in geometrical than in arithmetical proportion. ~ Friedrich List, #NFDB
444:The real value of tests is not that they detect bugs in the code but that they detect inadequacies in the methods, concentration, and skills of those who design and produce the code. ~ Tony Hoare, #NFDB
445:BALANCING THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES Mindfulness also works to balance what the Buddha called “the five spiritual faculties”: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
446:But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel. ~ Hans Kung, #NFDB
447:I say why do you harp on money? You talk so much of your wife and of name and fame. Give all these up and direct your mind to God with full concentration. Enjoy the bliss of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
448:In The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts laments the loss of “deep reading,” which requires intense concentration, a conscious lowering of the gates of perception, and a slower pace. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
449:So, without first calming the mind, it’s very difficult to have any clarity. That’s why there’s slightly more emphasis on the concentration component in this particular technique. ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
450:Of course, had the British Army been used in a more all-out fashion, concentration camps, air raids, artillery bombardments and the rest of it, the result might have been different. ~ Tim Pat Coogan, #NFDB
451:The fault of our nature is first an inert subjection to the impacts of things as they come in upon the mind pell-mell without order or control. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #NFDB
452:intergenerational warfare has not replaced class warfare. The very high concentration of capital is explained mainly by the importance of inherited wealth and its cumulative effects: ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
453:The opsin would have to be smuggled into the cell using a virus, but at a concentration that would not kill the neuron. Deisseroth told Zhang that the experiments could be transformative. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
454:The powers developed are liable to become obstacles to a perfect concentration by reason of the possibility of wonder and admiration which results from their exercise. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms III. 38, #NFDB
455:You do not necessarily lose concentration; you only allow something else to take control of a greater portion of your attentiveness and attention at any given moment of time. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
456:You're what I give to the world, what I leave behind. I am proud." He said it slowly, every word with intention, with concentration, as if it were the most important thing he'd ever say. ~ Staci Hart, #NFDB
457:Jack Kennedy brought an "intense concentration" and a "gently teasing humor" to the dinner table, along with what Katherine Graham called his habit of "vacuum cleaning your brain. ~ Sally Bedell Smith, #NFDB
458:Some people can detect the odor molecules in a green bell pepper at a concentration of less than one part per trillion. That is like picking out one grain of sand from a mile-long beach. ~ Neil Shubin, #NFDB
459:When you're making something, you're in a different state. You go into a deep level of concentration, to the point where you're not self-conscious anymore, it's just flowing out of you. ~ David Rakoff, #NFDB
460:She focused on her favorite machine in the room: the one that kept track of Blake’s heartbeat. With slow breaths and concentration, Livia could make her heart beat in tandem with his. ~ Debra Anastasia, #NFDB
461:When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings. Hugging with mindfulness and concentration can bring reconciliation, healing, understanding, and much happiness. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
462:Animation requires a great deal of concentration, and I preferred to work alone because then I'm not deterred by somebody asking me if I want coffee, or the phone ringing or something. ~ Ray Harryhausen, #NFDB
463:she had this look of calmness, of concentration, the look, I think, of all women who for the first time are with child and find that the world around them has become relatively unimportant. ~ Paul Scott, #NFDB
464:The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured. It's uncontroversial. It's going up. We know that has a tendency to warm the atmosphere and we should be worried about that. ~ Martin Rees, #NFDB
465:This, in the end, might be the greatest social good of poetry: to get us to live differently, with a different sort of thinking and concentration, even if it's just for a few moments. ~ Matthew Zapruder, #NFDB
466:Cities with a high concentration of urban jobs include Austin, New Orleans and Portland, Ore. In Atlanta, Los Angeles and Miami, meanwhile, less than 10 percent of jobs are in the urban core. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
467:Egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momentary strength and concentration to men, and seems to be much used in Nature for fabrics in which local and spasmodic energy is required. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
468:I want to make my contribution to humanity so that there will be no more Auschwitzes. Children who are born wanted and are given love and attention will not build concentration camps. ~ Henry Morgentaler, #NFDB
469:Mindfulness picks the objects of attention, and notices when the attention has gone astray. Concentration does the actual work of holding the attention steady on that chosen object. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
470:Practice mediation and concentration exercises, and begin to think more about regaining your sensitivity by avoiding draining situations. Not because of fear but because of intelligence. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
471:Our goal was Munich in Bavaria in southern Germany, the town where Hitler had gotten his start in a beer hall. But on the way, we made a stop to liberate the concentration camp at Dachau. ~ Charles Brandt, #NFDB
472:The concentration of the flow experience—together with clear goals and immediate feedback—provides order to consciousness, inducing the enjoyable condition of psychic negentropy. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
473:The key to clear thinking and problem solving is therefore an alert but relaxed mind. Concentration is not tension. On the contrary, it is possible only when the mind is relaxed but attentive.” M: ~ Sri M, #NFDB
474:One has to keep a certain balance by which the fundamental consciousness remains able to turn from one concentration to another with ease. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Becoming Conscious in Work, #NFDB
475:What should we control? As a rule, intervening to limit size (of companies, airports, or sources of pollution), concentration, and speed are beneficial in reducing Black Swan risks. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
476:You need to make a decision today: do you want to improve your concentration or don’t you? It is always up to you. Therefore, eliminate your excuses, clean up your beliefs, and be here now! ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
477:Just as the pure crystal takes color from the object which is nearest to it, so the mind, when it is cleared of thought-waves, achieves sameness or identity with the object of its concentration. ~ Patanjali, #NFDB
478:While in the clinic, I discovered I had problems with concentration, motivation, attitude, and temper. I have found a new way of life through the clinic's program and a 12-step recovery plan. ~ Albert Belle, #NFDB
479:You need at least six or seven years to understand the philosophy and concentration of karate to know to clean your spirit of everything and dedicate your mind and body to the sport. ~ Jean Claude Van Damme, #NFDB
480:Adults,” Phillips writes, “are not less excessive in their behavior than adolescents. Concentration camps were not run by adolescents; adolescents are not mostly alcoholics or millionaires. ~ Jennifer Senior, #NFDB
481:But the instruction that the awareness is only twenty-five percent really brings home the idea that it's not a concentration practice - there's a very light touch on the berath as it goes out. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
482:Ericsson notes that for a novice, somewhere around an hour a day of intense concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand to as many as four hours—but rarely more. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
483:Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
484:The principal difference between love and hate is that love is a irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred. ~ Sydney J Harris, #NFDB
485:Thousand got away to other countries; thousands returned to Spain tempted by false promises of kindness. By the tens of thousands, these Spaniards died of neglect in the concentration camps. ~ Martha Gellhorn, #NFDB
486:Viktor Frankl said the Concentration camp survivalist said no matter how much mental or physical abuse had been given nobody could cause him to think about anything he didn't want to think about ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
487:Well, many of us believe that excessive media concentration is a subject that ought to be addressed, and it is, of course, the intention of the majority party not to allow that to be discussed. ~ Barney Frank, #NFDB
488:DEPORT yourself from the coast of negative attitudes and you will give your dreams a lift up from a level of high concentration of repeated failure to an indelible success! God is with you! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
489:I enjoyed being in movies when I was a boy. As a child you're not acting - you believe. Ah, if an adult could only act as a child does with that insane, playing-at-toy- soldiers concentration! ~ Roddy McDowall, #NFDB
490:Place an object within your view, hopefully at about eye level. You might have to look down a little bit. Some people have a meditation table on which they put an object of concentration on. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
491:Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration . They're relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame. ~ Susan Cain, #NFDB
492:What I caution against is any unaccountable concentration of power. And I don't care whether that's the government, a corporation, the church, a really bad-ass girl scouts troop, whatever it is. ~ Daniel Suarez, #NFDB
493:When by a constant practice a man is capable of effecting mental concentration, then wherever he may be, his mind will always lift itself above his surroundings and will repose in the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
494:Who is the enemy? Ignorance, anger, attachment, and pride are the ultimate enemies; they are not outside, but within, and must be fought with the weapons of wisdom and meditative concentration. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
495:And the American people should be made aware of the trend toward the monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power in fewer and fewer hands. ~ Spiro T Agnew, #NFDB
496:Calling upon God with one's mind steadfast is equivalent to a million repetitions of the Mantra. What is the good in doing Japa for a whole day if there is no concentration of mind? ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
497:Concentration is the magic key that opens the door to accomplishment. By concentrating our efforts upon a few major goals, our efficiency soars, our projects are completed we are going somewhere. ~ Michael Korda, #NFDB
498:Many of the old masters of watercolour painted from notes, with enthusiasm either unabated or renewed. It is hard to assume the same degree of concentration in the studio, but not impossible. ~ Walter J Phillips, #NFDB
499:One of the main differences between silent meditation and chanting is that silent meditation is rather dependent on concentration, but when you chant, it's more of a direct connection with God. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
500:The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it. ~ John Szarkowski, #NFDB
501:When by a constant practice a man is capable of effecting mental concentration, then wherever he may be, his mind will always lift itself above his surroundings and will repose in the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
502:...because of forced globalization, there's a clear trend these days towards uniformity. This trend comes largely from the ever-greater concentration of power in the hands of large media groups. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
503:In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson, #NFDB
504:Not all activities are equal... Those that involve genuine concentration - studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing - are associated with a lower risk for dementia. ~ Norman Doidge, #NFDB
505:The Terror-Famine of 1932-33 was a dual-purpose by product of collectivization, designed to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and the most important concentration of prosperous peasants at one throw. ~ Norman Davies, #NFDB
506:You must direct your full, intense concentration on the heart. You must feel that you are not the mind. You have to feel that you are growing into the heart. You are only the heart and nothing else. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
507:It is often mild distraction that moves imagination forward, not uninterrupted concentration. Thinking then works by indirection, sauntering in a roundabout way to places it cannot reach directly. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
508:thalamus also acts as a filter or gatekeeper. This makes it a central component of attention, concentration, and new learning—all of which are compromised by trauma. As you sit here reading ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
509:The joy of life is born of concentration. When you are having a cup of tea, the value of that experience depends on your concentration. You have to drink the tea with 100 percent of your concentration. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
510:The more you concentration on God, the longer your conversation with him lasts and the holier his consacration will be on you. Let your communication with him be controlled by your committment. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
511:The sky which had started out with such verve and spirit in the morning was beginning to lose its concentration and slip back into its normal English condition, that of a damp and rancid dishcloth. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
512:To explode or to implode – said Qfwfq – that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to expand one's energies in space without restraint, or to crush them into a dense inner concentration. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
513:An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
514:Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
515:Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
516:The busyness of things obscures our concentration on God ... Never let a hurried lifestyle disturb the relationship of abiding in Him. This is an easy thing to allow, but we must guard against it. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
517:The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
518:There were now fourteen hundred quartered here with more arriving weekly as concentration camps in Poland, France, Belgium, Austria, as well as Holland were evacuated toward the center of Germany. ~ Corrie ten Boom, #NFDB
519:The sky which had started out with such verve and spirit in the morning was beginning to lose its concentration and slip back into its normal English condition, that of a damp and rancid dish cloth. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
520:When we render natural and easy to us perfect concentration (or the operation which consists in fixing attention, contemplation and meditation), a power of exact discernment develops. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 9, #NFDB
521:If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
522:You can just sweep the floor generally and gain nothing from it. Or you can figure out the best way to sweep the floor, put your power into it, use it as a concentration exercise, and be meditative. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
523:Danny’s mom can help him internalize a process-first approach by making her everyday feedback respond to effort over results. She should praise good concentration, a good day’s work, a lesson learned. ~ Josh Waitzkin, #NFDB
524:Focus on one point and hold your attention there. The mind will waiver, you'll think a million thoughts, but each time you do, bring your mind back to the point of concentration, seeing it visually. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
525:but make the self grow? To fill free time with activities that require concentration, that increase skills, that lead to a development of the self, is not the same as killing time by watching ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
526:Jacob’s concept: The concept of Asperger’s is like a flavoring added to a person and although my concentration is higher than those of others, if tested everyone would have traces of this condition too. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
527:Then the memory of the Darkling's kiss blew through me and rattled my concentration, scattering my thoughts like leaves and making my heart swoop and dive like a bird borne aloft by uncertain currents. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
528:Through the practice of concentration and various techniques, we silence the mind and we enter into a flow of perfect light. We go outside of the parameters of mind and thought and experience nirvana. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
529:Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism or homophobia or policy issues or taxes or urban decay or health care, you're not going to go anywhere with it if we don't focus on the concentration of power. ~ Ralph Nader, #NFDB
530:When I visited concentration camps, I was more interested in how people responded to the camps than in the actual places. I watched kids picnicking on the ovens and other people stricken with grief. ~ Rachel Whiteread, #NFDB
531:I endeavor to make a picture, for instance, exert a positive influence on the observer by its coloring, mood, and compositional idea, encouraging, say, activation, tranquilization, concentration, or harmony. ~ Max Bill, #NFDB
532:Mom's dad was in the army, stormed the beach at Normandy, fought through the French hedgerows, the Battle of the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, and liberated concentration camps at the end of the war. ~ Mark Hoppus, #NFDB
533:The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
534:We artists are indestructible, even in a prison cell or a concentration camp I would be all right in my own world of art. Even if I had to paint my pictures with my tongue on the dusty floor of my cell. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
535:During the time of Atlantis, members of the Mystery Schools discovered and developed specific concentration exercises that they found would radically increase and sharpen their innate psychic abilities. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
536:Give full attention to what you do. If you give a rapt attention to what you do, you can have what you could have done in 3 hours well completed within 2 hours or less. Concentration is the key word. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
537:His gaze dropped and fell to the floor in thoughtful concentration for a long moment. When he looked up at her again, his gaze was direct and unflinching. "Because I have fallen in love with you." ~ Kathleen E Woodiwiss, #NFDB
538:Literature is the best thing humanity has. Poetry is the heart of literature, the highest concentration of everything that is the best in the world and in man. It is the only true food for your soul ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya, #NFDB
539:Someone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
540:The artist works with a concentration of his whole personality, and the conscious part of it resolves conflicts, organized memories, and prevents him from trying to walk in two directions at the same time. ~ Henry Moore, #NFDB
541:Thinking-mind
There throned on concentration’s native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#NFDB
542:This is one of the sweet spots where, as anyone who has done repetitive manual labor understands, the single minded focus, concentration, and hard physical work combine to form a sort of temporary nirvana. ~ Finn Murphy, #NFDB
543:a poet is someone who is abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. Which is to say the highest form of concentration possible: fascination; to report on the electrifying experience of being ~ E E Cummings, #NFDB
544:a poet is someone who is abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. Which is to say the highest form of concentration possible: fascination; to report on the electrifying experience of being ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
545:As far as I can see, our concentration of different abilities in one species - there's nothing I can see that in this Darwinian evolution that could've done that. So it seems to be a miracle of some sort. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
546:His gaze dropped and fell to the floor in thoughtful concentration for a long moment. When he looked up at her again, his gaze was direct and unflinching. "Because I have fallen in love with you." ~ Kathleen E Woodiwiss, #NFDB
547:In whatever centre the concentration takes place the Yoga force generated extends to the others and produces concentration or workings there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Descent and Other Kinds of Experience, #NFDB
548:Literature is the best thing humanity has. Poetry is the heart of literature, the highest concentration of everything that is the best in the world and in man. It is the only true food for your soul. ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya, #NFDB
549:After long practice one who is master of himself can dispense with diverse aids to concentration...and he will be able to make himself master of any result whatsoever simply by desiring it. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 34, #NFDB
550:Gymnastics does take great focus and concentration. What I do is look to my coach. He keeps me focused. And I meditate to get myself confident before the competition floor. That helps keep me focused, too. ~ Gabby Douglas, #NFDB
551:Just as a wet match, when struck, does not produce fire, so a mind saturated with restlessness cannot produce the fire of concentration even when one makes great efforts to strike the cosmic spark. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
552:One of the things that makes me a conservative, or a libertarian, or whatever the heck it is that I am - a person who doesn't much like big government - is that I do not like the concentration of the power. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
553:One type of concentration is immediate and complete, as it was with Mozart. The other is plodding and only completed in stages, as with Beethoven. Thus genius works in different ways to achieve its ends. ~ Stephen Spender, #NFDB
554:We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
555:He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always by the rules of the game. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
556:It was only later that I realised that I had experienced extended close contact with another human without feeling uncomfortable. I attributed it to my concentration on correctly executing the dance steps. ~ Graeme Simsion, #NFDB
557:Sam picks the stone up and clenches his entire body in deep concentration. Nothing happens. " Oh come on," he says to the stone. " I promise to use it for the power of good. No girls' locker rooms, I swear. ~ Pittacus Lore, #NFDB
558:Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
559:Buttoning the length of my shirt with Left Neglect and one right hand takes the same kind of singular, intricate, held-breath concentration that I imagine someone trying to dismantle a bomb would need to have. ~ Lisa Genova, #NFDB
560:And the statement made nearly 2,000 years ago came to my mind:
'Not even a hair dares to fall from your head without My Father's will . . .'
To realize this means to reach the inner peace. ~ Mouni Sadhu, Concentration,#NFDB
561:And when no subject is given, is it enough to concentrate on your Presence in the heart-centre? Should we avoid a formulated prayer?
Yes, concentration on the Presence is enough.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
562:Concentration is a genius; it has the power to solve any kind of problems. It works with the same principle a magnifier uses when creating fire: Bring all your powers to a point and destroy your problem! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
563:For instance, against the tremendous resistance of Hitler and Kaltenbrunner, and at first Himmler too, I managed to save nine thousand Norwegians and Danes, whom I had released from concentration camps. ~ Walter Schellenberg, #NFDB
564:For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the uncontrolled is there the power of concentration; and for him without concentration there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness? ~ Jerzy Kosi ski, #NFDB
565:He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
566:In the second training, we develop energy, concentration, and mindfulness. These are the meditative and life tools that enable us to awaken. Without them we simply act out the patterns of our conditioning. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
567:No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
568:The art of pictorial creation is so complicated - it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization. ~ Hans Hofmann, #NFDB
569:Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
570:Proper visualization by the exercise of concentration and willpower enables us to materialize thoughts, not only as dreams or visions in the mental realm, but also as experiences in the material realm. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
571:Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning.” — Viktor Frankl (psychiatrist who survived a Nazi concentration camp and wrote about his experiences in Man’s Search for Meaning) ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
572:There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
573:To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
574:For unknown reasons, there is a tremendous concentration of psychoactive plants on the South American continent. The South American continent has more known hallucinogens than the rest of the planet combined. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
575:In meditation you first get sense control. And yoga will help you with the body and when the mind is steady, concentration will come automatically. When you get such concentration, then you get peace of mind. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
576:One of the major forces driving the decline in wages and the concentration of wealth at the top is the offshoring of American jobs overseas - reducing wages not only in manufacturing but also across the economy. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
577:Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things. . .fail because we lack concentration--the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else? ~ John D Rockefeller, #NFDB
578:If Adler’s theory of human action relates to power, concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl’s brand of existential psychology, “logotherapy,” posits that the human species is uniquely made to seek meaning. ~ Tom Butler Bowdon, #NFDB
579:The bosses of our mass media, press, radio, film and television, succeed in their aim of taking our minds off disaster. Thus, the distraction they offer demands the antidote of maximum concentration on disaster. ~ Ernst Fischer, #NFDB
580:Whether this moment is happy or not depends on you. It`s you who makes the moment happy, not the moment that makes you happy. With mindfulness, concentration, and insight, any moment can become a happy moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
581:How about a kiss, hey?” Etta liked that she was still able to startle him, just a little. The blank look of concentration broke as he barked out a laugh. “I don't know if that's a wise idea. We'd never leave. ~ Alexandra Bracken, #NFDB
582:all the school is preparing them for is to sit quietly and fake that they’re working. To feign the appearance of concentration when in fact they’re checking sports scores or e-mail or watching videos or spacing out. ~ Nathan Hill, #NFDB
583:New York. The greatest concentration of human potential in the history of the world. So much so that they had to start piling the people one on top of the other. An island so crowded it had nowhere to go but up. ~ Adam Sternbergh, #NFDB
584:Spiritual people are often persecuted because of their beliefs. Christians were fed to the lions. Jews were slaughtered in concentration camps. Various forms of persecution still exist today throughout the world. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
585:Success in anything is about focus and concentration. When I coached, I'd say to the players, 'Yes, I know you played hard, but that's not good enough. You've got to stay focused on the task at hand the entire game.' ~ Rick Barry, #NFDB
586:Viktor Frankl the Concentration camp survivalist said no matter how much mental or physical abuse had been given nobody could cause him to think about anything he didn't want to think about”
― Bob Proctor ~ Bob Proctor,#NFDB
587:An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
588:Deficiencies of innate ability may be compensated for through persistent hard work and concentration. One might say that work substitutes for talent, or better yet that it creates talent.”6 —Santiago Ramón y Cajal ~ Barbara Oakley, #NFDB
589:Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. ~ Donald Knuth, #NFDB
590:If before devoting the required time, you feel that you are ready to meditate on the next chakra, almost always you’ll be wrong. It is absolutely necessary to develop consistency in the quality of your concentration. On ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
591:The difference in men does not lie in the size of their hands, nor in the perfection of their bodies, but in this one sublime ability of concentration: to throw the weight in one blow, to live eternity in an hour. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
592:Training your concentration isn’t that hard. You just have to learn to become more peaceful and find the moment. You have to learn to be here now. When you are at work, be at work. When you are at home, be at home. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
593:You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
594:At some point you start seeing the difference between what you really want, and what is your priority order. I feel that today I know what I want. That's the problem with perspective, as well as focus and concentration. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
595:Concentration of wealth and power has been built upon other people's money, other people's business, other people's labor. Under this concentration, independent business has been a menace to American society. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
596:Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things … fail because we lack concentration—the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?”9 Rockefeller ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
597:energy is used to pump individual protons from inside the cell (where there is a low concentration of protons) to outside the cell (where there is a high concentration of protons). This is like charging a battery. ~ David Christian, #NFDB
598: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, Letters on Yoga - II, Concentration and Meditation, #NFDB
599:The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
600:Without the steadiness of concentration, it is easy to get caught up in the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts as they arise. We take them to be self and get carried away by trains of association and reactivity. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
601:In Central and Southern Africa, the ability to detect witches was also believed in several places to be inherent in chiefs, as one of that concentration of semi-mystical qualities that gave them the right to lead. In ~ Ronald Hutton, #NFDB
602:These were, on various unimportant charges, sent to jail or, later, to concentration camps—which were also jails, but the private jails of the M.M.’s, unshackled by any old-fashioned, nonsensical prison regulations. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
603:A regular sitting practice has been shown to enhance concentration, lower blood pressure, and improve sleep. It is used to treat chronic pain, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive ~ Culadasa John Yates, #NFDB
604:Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him. A great number of Christian workers worship their work. The only concern of Christian workers should be their concentration on God. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
605:Concentration and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom. No external action needs to happen. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
606:Concentration's like a shower. You don't turn it on until you want to bathe... You don't walk out of the shower and leave it running. You turn it off, you turn it on... It has to be fresh and ready when you need it. ~ Garfield Sobers, #NFDB
607:Learn to control your emotions. Be able to glide through them. By practicing concentration exercises and meditation, you will find that when strong emotions strike, you will gain the ability to not be swayed by them. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
608:Materialism has cast man into such depths that a mighty concentration of forces is necessary to raise him again. He is subject to illnesses of the nervous system which are veritable epidemics of the life of the soul. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
609:Did it ever occur to you that this might require a modicum of concentration?” snapped Myfanwy in irritation, breaking out of her trance. “Did the dramatic pose and the look of profound focus not tip you off?” “Sorry, ~ Daniel O Malley, #NFDB
610:Citizen is one of those books that reminds me that black life is often like walking a balance beam: It requires strategy and concentration for stability is so fleeting.
-- "To Be a Citizen" by Morgan Jerkins ~ Glory Edim,#NFDB
611:I hate nothing more profoundly than the multitude... the accumulation of people, the concentration of vileness and mindlessness and lies. Much as we should love each individual, I believe, so we hate the mass. ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
612:Let us henceforth make war on all monopolies—whether corporate or union. The enemy of freedom is unrestrained power, and the champions of freedom will fight against the concentration of power wherever they find it. ~ Barry M Goldwater, #NFDB
613:"Mindfulness practice is not an evasion or an escape. It means entering vigorously into life — with the strength generated by the energy of mindfulness. Without this freedom and concentration, there is no happiness." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
614:Too much concentration belittles life. Concentration is a narrowing down of the mind - but we are concerned with the total process of living, and to concentrate exclusively on any particular aspect of life, belittles life. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
615:Benedictine spirituality, after all,
is life lived to the hilt.
It is a life of concentration
on life's ordinary dimensions.
It is an attempt to do
the ordinary things of life
extraordinarily well. ~ Joan D Chittister,#NFDB
616:Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.... Our motto seems to be, "Let's do a little bit of everything." ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
617:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
618:Each of the basic requirements of deliberate practice is unremarkable: • A clearly defined stretch goal • Full concentration and effort • Immediate and informative feedback • Repetition with reflection and refinement ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
619:The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move. ~ Conrad Hall, #NFDB
620:The main thing for a gymnast is total concentration while competing. At such moments one has to put everything else behind. I know that other gymnasts can do so with a smile, but I can't. And I don't even try to. ~ Ludmilla Tourischeva, #NFDB
621:The secret of the psychic training, as Tibetans conceive it, consists in developing a power of concentration of mind greatly surpassing even that of men who are, by nature, the most gifted in this respect. Mystic ~ Alexandra David N el, #NFDB
622:You must claim America, she said. America will not give itself to you. If you do not claim America, if America is not in your heart, America will throw you into a concentration camp or a reservation or a plantation. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
623:Concentration holds an object before mindfulness. Mindfulness then pays close attention to it. Then investigation finds that it is constantly changing, thus showing the signs of unsatisfactoriness and selflessness. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
624:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
625:Concentration should be regarded as a tool. Like any tool, it can be used for good or for ill. A sharp knife can be used to create a beautiful carving or to harm someone. It is all up to the one who uses the knife. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
626:Creation signifies, above all, emotion, and that not in literature or art alone. We all know the concentration and effort implied in scientific discovery. Genius has been defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains. ~ Henri Bergson, #NFDB
627:Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
628:Michael allowed himself to look at Caddy for the first time since she had climbed into the car. It was a moment that he always put off for as long as possible because his concentration was never quite the same afterwards. ~ Hilary McKay, #NFDB
629:The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization ~ David Epstein, #NFDB
630:When you write down your ideas you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools. ~ Michael LeBoeuf, #NFDB
631:Americans' lack of passion for history is well known. History may not quite be bunk, as Henry Ford suggested, but there's no denying that, as a people, we sustain a passionate concentration on the present and the future. ~ Larry McMurtry, #NFDB
632:Contemplating a beautiful sunrise, you’re not distracted by thinking about the past or the future. The more concentrated you become, the more you see the beauty all around you. So concentration is a source of happiness. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
633:it was incredible that this thing should be happening to him. It was what he had read of and had found some difficulty in crediting. It was what they were supposed to do to Jews in concentration camps. It could not be true. ~ Nevil Shute, #NFDB
634:Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called - or whatever it is they do. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
635:Ninety percent of my game is mental. It's my concentration that has gotten me this far. I won't even call a friend on the day of a match. I'm scared of disrupting my concentration. I don't allow any competition with tennis. ~ Chris Evert, #NFDB
636:she watched his face because she hoped it would betray some indication of her own reality – some flicker of interest or concentration of notice which might indicate that she was actually present with another person. ~ Stephen R Donaldson, #NFDB
637:You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have nitroglycerin. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
638:Art for the most part, is about concentration, solitude and determination. It's really not about other people's needs and assumptions. I'm not interested in the notion that art serves something. Art is useless, not useful. ~ Richard Serra, #NFDB
639:If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
640:It looks as though yields of over 10 times what we can currently grow per acre are feasible if you control the CO2 concentration, the humidity, the temperature, all the various factors that plants depend on to grow rapidly. ~ Ralph Merkle, #NFDB
641:It was officially known as Kwan-li-so Number 18. That meant Penal Labor Colony in Korean. It was a concentration camp. It was a gulag. It actually was hell, near the Taedong River in North Korea's P'yongan-namdo province. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
642:The artist and the politician stand at opposite poles. The artist enhances life by his prolonged concentration upon it, while the politician emphasizes the impersonal aspect of life by his attempts to fit men into groups. ~ Richard Wright, #NFDB
643:Each of the basic requirements of deliberate practice is unremarkable: • A clearly defined stretch goal • Full concentration and effort • Immediate and informative feedback • Repetition with reflection and refinement But ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
644:Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We'll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration. That's the bastion of money. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
645:Her concentration was gone, and last night she had had a nightmare about discovering a formalism that let her translate arbitrary concepts into mathematical expressions: then she had proven that life and death were equivalent. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
646:The one fundamental requirement to increase the flow of fatty acids out of adipose tissue—to increase lipolysis—and so decrease the amount of fat in our fat tissue, is to lower the concentration of insulin in the bloodstream. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
647:Because America isn't perfect, it must be evil. Because Marxist regimes make claims of perfection, they must be good. ... Remind me again, was it John Ashcroft or Fidel Castro who put H.I.V. sufferers in concentration camps? ~ Ron Rosenbaum, #NFDB
648:I found that all I really wanted was to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible. That was it. So I declared a double major, really-in speaking and in eating (with a concentration on gelato). ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
649:I must concentrate all of my energies on the enfranchisement of my own sex! She had named and claimed her calling. Here is concentration of purpose. This declaration, as we shall see, unified her energy in extraordinary ways. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
650:Kendrick has this look of deep concentration, then she sat up really quick and grinned. "Oh, my God... I know what your task is."
...
"You have to kiss her... like, in front of everyone. Total hard-core make-out session. ~ Julie Cross,#NFDB
651:When your attention is diffuse, it’s like a broad, weak beam of light that doesn’t reveal much. Concentration brings the weak beam down to a single, sharply focused, supremely bright, exponentially more illuminating point. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
652:Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. Deep ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
653:Ice is remarkable in many ways. A simple experiment one can do at home is to add salt to an amount of water in different concentrations. For example, one can mimic the concentration of the ocean, or one can make it even saltier. ~ Ira Flatow, #NFDB
654:It refers to the concentration of hydrogen ions. The fewer the hydrogen ions, the greater the pH level; the greater the pH level, the more the alkalinity. Your cells, tissues or fluids could be acidic, alkaline or neutral. Measured ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
655:Attention is the vital thing and there is no tension in attention. It just happens to be a similar word. It's not concentration or straining. Attention has the openness of a young child not yet dominated by the conceptual mind. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
656:Concentration is the lens. It produces the burning intensity necessary to see into the deeper reaches of the mind. Mindfulness selects the object hat the lens will focus on and looks through the lens to see what is there. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
657:I've inherited the worst of each parent. I have my father's hypochondria and lack of concentration. I have his amorality. I have everything bad that he had. Then I have my mother's surly, pill-like, complaining, whining attitude. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
658:The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book. ~ Margaret Mahy, #NFDB
659:She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure. ~ Thrity Umrigar, #NFDB
660:Sit in front of an object of concentration with the eyes open. Focus on a candle flame, or a yantra, a little dot, something small. Just look at it. Focus on it until there is nothing else in your mind. This develops willpower. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
661:The very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
662:When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
663:As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility. ~ Dick Van Dyke, #NFDB
664:The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
665:The sense of being physically empty, of dissolving, of being a ghost whose existence was sourced by electric anxiety. And it became hard to breathe. The air thinned. It took massive concentration just to keep control of my breathing. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
666:Well, my parents originally wanted me to become a doctor - that's why I was in school; I was pre-med, and I graduated with a degree in psychology and a concentration in neuroscience. Really, the plan was for me to go to med school. ~ Steven Yeun, #NFDB
667:China today has the economy of a twenty-first-century economic superpower with a political regime little changed since the 1950s. Is this slow evolution in political institutions down to the concentration or the dispersion of power? ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
668:🌸If you have the capacity to concentrate, your meditation willbe more interesting and easier. But one can meditate withoutconcentrating. Many follow a chain of ideas in their meditation— it is meditation, not concentration. ~ The Mother(CWM 4:8)🌸, #NFDB
669:One is always seeking the touchstone that will dissolve one's deficiencies as a person and as a craftsman. And one is always bumping up against the fact that there is none except hard work, concentration, and continued application. ~ Paul Gallico, #NFDB
670:Sit down, keep your back straight, relax and have an object on which to concentrate; you might use a candle flame, a brightly colored rock, a yantra, which is a geometrical designed specifically for the practice of concentration. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
671:The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers the true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
672:We frequently define an acid or a base as a substance whose aqueous solution gives, respectively, a higher concentration of hydrogen ion or of hydroxide ion than that furnished by pure water. This is a very one sided definition. ~ Gilbert N Lewis, #NFDB
673:Today, most people are unaware that of the eleven million people exterminated, five million were not even Jewish. In Dachau, one of the largest and most infamous of all concentration camps, only a third of the population was Jewish. ~ Andy Andrews, #NFDB
674:...women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps...they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit. ~ Betty Friedan, #NFDB
675:He who knows even how to prepare a smoke properly, knows also how to meditate. And he who cannot cook well cannot be a perfect sannyasin. Unless cooking is performed with a pure mind and concentration, the food is not palatable. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
676:The thing about World War II is that everyone knows about the concentration camps in Europe - in Nazi Germany and Poland and Auschwitz and the other camps - but, no one really talks about the camps that were here in the United States. ~ Lea Salonga, #NFDB
677:Also, he was more discriminating now than he had been then, back in the old days when he would read a book to its bitter end whether he liked it or not. These days, a book he disliked was unlikely to last ten pages of his concentration. ~ Ian Rankin, #NFDB
678:Capablanca plays very superficially sometimes, in a way that can only be ascribed to lack of concentration. This is an integral weakness of his make-up and can only be partially compensated by his employing his time allowance to the full. ~ Max Euwe, #NFDB
679:Effort, concentration, and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom NO external action needs to happen. [p. 17] ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
680:I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
681:There were the twins, faces vacant with concentration as they walloped small red balls attached to paddles. Pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a . . . They’d been jai-alai-ing all this time. Despite himself, Dexter smiled. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
682:Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the increase is due in large part to human activity. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
683:The basic word I-Thou can be spoken only with one's whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a Thou to become; becoming I, I say Thou. ~ Martin Buber, #NFDB
684:[A] mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
685:Fishing is like watching baseball, he says, in that it takes such total concentration that you shouldn’t even be noticing little details like your arms and legs and head and mind and the miles- long strings of questions inside it. ~ David James Duncan, #NFDB
686:In Buddhism, mindfulness is the key. Mindfulness is the energy that sheds light on all things and all activities, producing the power of concentration, bringing forth deep insight and awakening. Mindfulness is the base of Buddhist practice ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
687:It's us that's really amazing. As far as I can see, our concentration of different abilities in one species - there's nothing I can see that in this Darwinian evolution that could've done that. So it seems to be a miracle of some sort. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
688:What I do requires fantastic concentration... but you can't be totally alone, or you lose all contact with reality, so even when I'm engrossed and secluded, Jack Dunphy can be there. He's my oldest and best friend, and best critic too. ~ Truman Capote, #NFDB
689:The Indians had to be either killed, or herded into reservations, which were essentially concentration camps, and forgotten. Their history had to be absolutely obliterated so that we could believe that we were living on virgin soil. ~ Richard Rodriguez, #NFDB
690:We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
691:When your meta-attention becomes strong, you will be able to recover a wandering attention quickly and often, and if you recover attention quickly and often enough, you create the effect of continuous attention, which is concentration. ~ Chade Meng Tan, #NFDB
692:One must practice japa and meditation first before one complains that one is not progressing. But one must practice it with little concentration. People don't practice and simply say, "Why am I not progressing spiritually?" ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
693:Results show that just one year of chess tuition will improve a student's learning abilities, concentration, application, sense of logic, self-discipline, respect, behavior and the ability to take responsibility for his/her own actions. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
694:The politics of the Essays preach a conservatism natural in one who aspired to rule. Bacon wants a strong central power. Monarchy is the best form of government; and usually the efficiency of a state varies with the concentration of power. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
695:But it was indecent, it was sacrilegious to annoy an emperor, and in his irritation he had an ex-Senator and twelve workmen who were in concentration camps taken out and shot on the charge that they had told irreverent stories about him. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
696:le défi stimule notre concentration, et que c'est lui qui nous pousse à donner le meilleur de nous-mêmes• dans ce que nous faisons, et à en tirer ensuite une réelle satisfaction. C'est une condition pour nous épanouir dans nos actions. ~ Laurent Gounelle, #NFDB
697:Tengo had a gift for such work. He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always by the rules of the game. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
698:The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one's life towards a goal. Without such a goal, chastity is bound to become ridiculous. Chastity is the sine qua non of lucidity and concentration. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
699:That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much importance. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
700:Bring your mind to noble silence. Unify your mind in noble silence. Concentrate your mind in noble silence... Enter into rapture and pleasure born of silence derived of concentration and awareness that is free from thought and fabrication. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
701:In the concentration camps...we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
702:I've learned over the years that geography is not that important, except that I seem to work better in the country than the city. I get more done. There's just less happening around me, and I have more time and concentration to work on music. ~ Steve Reich, #NFDB
703:The obstacles met by the seeker after concentration are illness, langour, doubt, negligence, idleness, the domination of the senses, false perception, impotence to attain and instability in a state of meditation once attained. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms I. 30, #NFDB
704:What I'm after is the liquidity of things, how one things leads you on to the rest... The works are about concentration, intention, and paths of thought: the flow of totality in our perception, the fragmentation of the river of phenomenon. ~ Gabriel Orozco, #NFDB
705:You took thoughts, choosing them out of your store, and then, not dwelling on them, you let them slip through the fingers of your mind, never clutching at them, never dwelling on them, no concentration…just letting them drift gently past. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
706:A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music. ~ Sergei Rachmaninoff, #NFDB
707:The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
708:Apply the experiences of peace and poise received during concentration and meditation to your daily life. Maintain your equilibrium amidst trying circumstances, and stand unshaken by others’ violent emotions or by adverse events. Body ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
709:I forgot all about him and lost myself in the story.That's what I love about films and good books- you can climb right into them and be there. I just hate it when I'm doing that, and then somebody butts in and messes with my concentration. ~ Kristen D Randle, #NFDB
710:There was such a dense concentration of American energy there, American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years. ~ Michael Herr, #NFDB
711:You taught me about concentration. At first I thought that meant just being still, but I was to understand it meant much more. You meant to tell me to be where I was, not some place in the past or future. I worried too much about tomorrow. ~ Stephen Sondheim, #NFDB
712:And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
713:From a psychological perspective, there can be returns to focus or concentration when people ignore signals below a certain threshold (called a “salience effect” in psychology) or when they believe in momentum—that success leads to success. ~ Richard P Rumelt, #NFDB
714:If you focus the rays of the sun through a lens, they can burn cotton or a piece of paper; but, the scattered rays cannot do this act. If you collect the dissipated rays of the mind and focus them at a point, you will have wonderful concentration. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
715:Kurt Schumacher, the Hanover-based anti-Nazi who quickly became the leading figure in the post-war Social Democratic Party, was outraged. ‘Wir sind kein Negervolk’ (‘We are not blacks’) the fiery former concentration-camp inmate told Annan. ~ Frederick Taylor, #NFDB
716:Make wise choices about what you read. Read only what is necessary or worthwhile. And then take the time to read carefully. One book read with concentration and reflected upon is worth a hundred flashed through without any absorption at all. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
717:Through an intensive process of concentration and quietude our consciousness does reach that infinity where knowledge ceases to be knowledge, subject and object become one—a state of existence that cannot be defined. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man, #NFDB
718:British merchants became notably more aggressive and successful in exploring extra-European markets, and Crisp’s progress, from a concentration on Mediterranean commerce to involvement in ever more distant seas, perfectly exemplified this trend. ~ Linda Colley, #NFDB
719:When people are anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes, concentration upon aspects directly relevant to a problem. This is a useful strategy in escaping from danger, but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem. ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
720:I remember when I was in the prisoner camp, I was a French prisoner. And I saw the first photograph from the concentration camps, and we discussed it with other prisoners. And our feeling was we did not only lose the war, we lost also our honor. ~ Manfred Rommel, #NFDB
721:these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with its accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
722:At any rate, during the few hours when the depressive state itself eased off long enough to permit the luxury of concentration, I had recently filled this vacuum with fairly extensive reading and I had absorbed many fascinating and troubling facts ~ William Styron, #NFDB
723:Jasenovac concentration camp, which had been the largest “place of extermination” in fascist Croatia during the Second World War. “No one know exact number, but some say a million murdered there. They killing Jews and Gypsies, but most was Serbs. ~ Olen Steinhauer, #NFDB
724:Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind. ~ Ajahn Chah, #NFDB
725:The house looked on to other tenement-like structures, experiments in architectural insignificance, that intruded upon a central concentration of buildings, commanding and antiquated, laid out in a quadrilateral, though irregular, style. Silted-up ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
726:When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
727:[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
728:You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity people doing stupid things without realising or, instead, thinking they were doing good. ~ Tom Lehrer, #NFDB
729:Concentration is not wholesome in itself. A thief needs concentration to break into a house.
The object of our concentration is what makes it beneficial or not. If you use meditative concentration to run away from reality, that is not beneficial. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#NFDB
730:Just as light destroys darkness,
Generosity destroys miserliness,
Discipline destroys harmfulness.
Patience destroys intolerance,
Perseverance destroys laziness,
Concentration destroys distraction,
Wisdom destroys ignorance. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#NFDB
731:No company has a permanent consumer franchise. No one has the only game in town. The never-ending cycle of destruction and change inherent in a capitalist economy always provides new opportunities for those with determination, goals and concentration. ~ Harvey Mackay, #NFDB
732:After I started getting criticism for doing 'Big Brother,' someone told me that Hugh Downs used to host 'Concentration' and Mike Wallace used to do 'The Big Surprise.' I thought, Huh, maybe that door isn't sealed shut if I want to do '60 Minutes' one day. ~ Julie Chen, #NFDB
733:Deep concentration has the effect of slowing down the thought process and speeding up the awareness viewing it. The result is the enhanced ability to examine the thought process. Concentration is our microscope for viewing subtle internal states. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
734:I don't like being called a denier because deniers don't believe in facts. There are no facts linking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming there are only predictions based on complex computer models. ~ David Bellamy, #NFDB
735:The parallel between these animals sick from surplus value and humans sick from industrial concentration is illuminating. (...) Against the industrial organization of death, animals have no other recourse, no other possible defiance, except suicide. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
736:Aristocracy: A combination of many powerful men, for the purpose of maintaining their own particular interests. It is consequently a concentration of all the most effective parts of a community for a given end, hence its energy, efficiency and success. ~ James F Cooper, #NFDB
737:French police and the SS worked together on round-ups in Marseille, classified as ‘moral cleansing’. In all, some 75,000 Jews would be deported from France in terrible conditions to concentration camps in eastern Europe. Only 3 per cent returned alive. ~ Jonathan Fenby, #NFDB
738:Studies strengthen the mind and turn its concentration away from the impulses and desires of the vital. Concentrating on study is one of the most powerful ways of controlling the mind and the vital; that is why it is so important to study.
~ The Mother, On Education,#NFDB
739:Think of attention as a mental muscle that we can strengthen by a workout. Memorization works that muscle, as does concentration. The mental analog of lifting a free weight over and over is noticing when our mind wanders and bringing it back to target. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
740:An army should always be so distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place, while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration. ~ B H Liddell Hart, #NFDB
741:I certainly do not adore the writer's discipline. I have lost lovers, endangered friendships, and blundered into eccentricity, impelled by a concentration which usually is to be found only in the minds of people about to be executed in the next half hour. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
742:If your child is going to develop a healthy personality with the capacity to remain intact and grow, she must learn how to test reality, regulate her impulses, stabilize her moods, integrate her feelings and actions, focus her concentration and plan. ~ Stanley Greenspan, #NFDB
743:Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor who wrote the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, drew a similar social-psychological conclusion: deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
744:The Principle of Least Resistance, protected from scrutiny by the metric black hole, supports work cultures that save us from the short-term discomfort of concentration and planning, at the expense of long-term satisfaction and the production of real value. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
745:The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
746:Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor who wrote the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, drew a similar social-psychological conclusion: deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
747:What we call pure water at room temperature contains equal numbers of positive hydronium and negative hydroxyl groups, at a concentration that translates to a pH of 7 (a “power of hydrogen” of 10−7 moles of hydronium groups per liter, in chemistry terms). ~ Robert M Hazen, #NFDB
748:I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I'm moving words around on screen. ~ Joshua Ferris, #NFDB
749:Berlin was a cauldron of espionage on the front lines of the Cold War. The Berlin Operations Base, known as BOB, sat in the middle of the largest concentration of Soviet troops anywhere in the world. The CIA sought to recruit Soviets as agents or defectors, ~ David E Hoffman, #NFDB
750:People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in an event. The less strong their self, the greater the fear of losing themselves in the act of concentration on the non-self. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
751:I like to understand, very specifically, what it is I'm seeing, and where it is and where it's going, and a lot of that is just hitting the mark and following the dotted line. But, that's good too because there's concentration and focus that's involved in that. ~ Stephen Lang, #NFDB
752:My background is full of pain. My mother was in a Nazi concentration camp and our whole family was killed off. Then early on your father leaves and all you've got is your mother, and I was an only child. Then you come to a new country and I can't speak English. ~ Gene Simmons, #NFDB
753:that the body does not produce flow merely by its movements. The mind is always involved as well. To get enjoyment from swimming, for instance, one needs to cultivate a set of appropriate skills, which requires the concentration of attention. Without ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
754:The best students understood the role intensity plays in productivity and therefore went out of their way to maximize their concentration—radically reducing the time required to prepare for tests or write papers, without diminishing the quality of their results. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
755:I know people could tell incredible stories. People have been in concentration camps, or women being raped, or a man going to war and not recovering from it. People have been robbed and beaten. A lot of people have had strong events in their life, which I didn't. ~ Agnes Varda, #NFDB
756:I’ll make Goyle do lines, it’ll kill him, he hates writing,’ said Ron happily. He lowered his voice to Goyle’s low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair. ‘I … must … not … look … like … a … baboon’s … backside. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
757:To do justice to a lifelong dream of being a writer, I must give it the intense concentration and focus I gave to track. To do both with excellence is not possible. It is with a sense of sadness and joyous anticipation that I leave track and move on. ~ Florence Griffith Joyner, #NFDB
758:A rich person becomes trapped by belongings that take control of him, degrading his sleep at night, raising the serum concentration of his stress hormones, diminishing his sense of humor, perhaps even causing hair to grow on the tip of his nose and similar ailments. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
759:At that time the authorities used to love to set up their concentration camps in former monasteries: they were enclosed by strong walls, and had good building, and they were empty. (After all, monks are not human beings and could be tossed out at will.) ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
760:Our mind is a flowing something. It oscillates. Concentration is merely the continuous return to the same problem from a million angles.... So my problem is this: Can I bring the Lord back in my mind-flow every few seconds so that God shall always be in my mind? ~ Frank Laubach, #NFDB
761:When a second finger joins the party, his brows draw together. Beads of sweat break out on his forehead. Mine, too. Loosening him up is one of the hottest things I’ve ever done. It takes all my concentration. Stroking, teasing, twisting, getting him ready for me. ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB
762:As usual, she’s completely wrapped up in her book. The entire building could crumble around her and I doubt she would notice. I admire intense concentration like that. Reading is an escape from the outside world. Everyone needs a little of that to keep their sanity. ~ Kim Holden, #NFDB
763:Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
764:... programming requires more concentration than other activities. It's the reason programmers get upset about 'quick interruptions' - such interruptions are tantamount to asking a juggler to keep three balls in the air and hold your groceries at the same time. ~ Steve McConnell, #NFDB
765:the centre in her brow
Where the mind’s Lord in his control-room sits;
There throned on concentration’s native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#NFDB
766:Unimpeded by other schemes, this hint of things to come takes time to expand in the new morning light, and we attempt to watch it unobtrusively, with deep concentration. The night has begun to open up at last. There will be time until the next darkness arrives. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
767:The burning Indian imagination, which can extort new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory facts, is held in check by the habit of concentration. This restraint confers the power to hold the mind to the pursuit of truth with an infinite patience. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
768:Concentration, itself, is nothing but a matter of control of the attention! Learn to fix your attention on a given subject, at will, for whatever length of time you choose, and you will have learned the secret passage-way to power and plenty! This is concentration! ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
769:His face was a study in concentration and empathy, as if every word I said was of supreme importance. It was that expression, that intensity, that had worn me down, and won me over, history lesson after history lesson, day after day, and he didn't even know I was his. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
770:It was like a fire in my thoughts, my concentration, burning ever more brightly, more pure, refining my anger, my hate, into something steel-hard, steel-sharp. I could feel it burning, and reached for it eagerly, shoving the pain inside to fuel my incandescent anger. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
771:Jean-Marie Le Pen is a holocaust denier who was convicted and fined for dismissing Nazi concentration camps as a, quote, "Detail in History." But he kept running this anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, populist unapologetic xenophobic far right party in French politics. ~ Rachel Maddow, #NFDB
772:The mountains are exceptional places for, as the natural environment is concerned, they are the concentration of the wildest possible variety of all natural phenomena and forms. They are somehow a concentration of the truth of nature or even I'd say its essence. ~ Wojciech Kurtyka, #NFDB
773:There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.
Nevertheless, say "yes" to life; A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
774:To put it bluntly, we are living in an electronic concentration camp. Through a series of imperceptible steps, we have willingly allowed ourselves to become enmeshed in a system that knows the most intimate details of our lives, analyzes them, and treats us accordingly. ~ Jim Marrs, #NFDB
775:With ice in my heart, I watched him prepare to defend me. His intense concentration betrayed no hint of doubt, though he was outnumbered. I knew that we could expect no help—at this moment, his family was fighting for their lives just as surely as he was for ours. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
776:*I love climbing mountains in all fields (Whatever was this fields).
*I love tranquility and it is more for me precious than money.
*Honesty is a few valuable nowadays.
after willing of God and Step by step with Concentration i will achieve What I want to. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
777:Last period of the day was new gym class. It was her only class that didn't include Evan, which was a relief. She should be functioning at a peak concentration, but he and his luminous eyes kept distracting her. First opprtunity I have, she thought. I'll bite him. ~ Sarah Beth Durst, #NFDB
778:Perdu suspected that these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with its accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
779:I’ll make Goyle do lines, it’ll kill him, he hates writing,” said Ron happily. He lowered his voice to Goyle’s low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair. “I... must... not... look... like... a... baboon’s... backside. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
780:My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest," said Conor, frowning with concentration. "My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle's wings, and fly forth. This is the way of'truth. ~ Juliet Marillier, #NFDB
781:My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest,” said Conor, frowning with concentration. “My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle’s wings, and fly forth. This is the way of truth. ~ Juliet Marillier, #NFDB
782:As part of his life-saving therapy with suicidal patients and his own experience in a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl learned there are three things that give meaning to life: first, a project; second, a significant relationship; and third, a redemptive view of suffering. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
783:Feminism has fought no wars ... killed no opponents ... set up no concentration camps ... starved no enemies ... practiced no cruelty. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets ... for reforms in the law. ~ Dale Spender, #NFDB
784:Like his predecessors, Marx totally neglected the possibility of durable technological progress and steadily increasing productivity, which is a force that can to some extent serve as a counterweight to the process of accumulation and concentration of private capital. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
785:Once all come to know that by the concentration of the mind on one point, on one principle, on one desire, a power is radiated to that point with creative nature and demonstrative abilities, man will think more carefully, more constructively and more efficiently ~ Harvey Spencer Lewis, #NFDB
786:Sertillanges argues that to advance your understanding of your field you must tackle the relevant topics systematically, allowing your “converging rays of attention” to uncover the truth latent in each. In other words, he teaches: To learn requires intense concentration. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
787:I went to Our Lady of Mercy, parochial school and I started Fordham Prep, but that only lasted about a year and then I - to me, it was like going to some kind of concentration camp. I was not very happy. And I only went there because that's where my brother went, really. ~ Robert Barry, #NFDB
788:We must not be bewildered by appearances. Sri Aurobindo has not left us. Sri Aurobindo is here, as living and as present as ever and it is left to us to realise his work with all the sincerity, eagerness and concentration necessary. 15 December 1950 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, #NFDB
789:Chess is a game that benefits people of all ages, especially kids, in any area of life, business, problem solving, and social skills. Chess has the unique ability to combine focus, concentration, imagination, coordination, teamwork, and leadership all at the same time. ~ Dustin Diamond, #NFDB
790:Solving any puzzle involved methodical, logical stages. First came the eagerness to get started, followed by an understanding of the enormity of the challenge ahead. Next comes the focused concentration required to make headway, the commitment to achieving the end goal. ~ Angela Marsons, #NFDB
791:The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck sledge-hammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
792:The growth, through the interaction and ever-increasing concentration of individual viewpoints, of a faculty of common vision penetrating beyond the continuous and static world of popular conception. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Great Event Foreshadowed - The Planetization of Mankind, #NFDB
793:Children who grow up in family situations that facilitate clarity of goals, feedback, feeling of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge will generally have a better chance to order their lives so as to make flow possible. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
794:I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished. ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
795:Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
796:And, if you'll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you'll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just a matter of tidying up around the fringes of the big ideas. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
797:Happiness requires courage, stamina, persistence, fortitude, perseverance, bravery, boldness, valor, vigor, concentration, solidity, substance, backbone, grit, guts, moxie, nerve, pluck, resilience, spunk, tenacity, tolerance, will power, chutzpah, and a good thesaurus. ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
798:The whole Christ seeks after each sinner, and when the Lord finds it, he gives himself to that one soul as if he had but that one soul to bless. How my heart admires the concentration of all the Godhead and humanity of Christ in his search after each sheep of his flock. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
799:The Pivotal Lever: Disproportionate Influence Factors The key to tipping point leadership is concentration, not diffusion. Tipping point leadership builds on the rarely exploited corporate reality that in every organization, there are people, acts, and activities that exercise ~ W Chan Kim, #NFDB
800:I follow his eyes to the pane of glass separating us from reality and I wait for his lips to part; I wait to listen to him speak . And then I try to pay attention as his words bounce around in the haze of my head, fogging my senses, misting my eyes, clouding my concentration. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
801:The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as a part of our experience; but, because it is UNNECESSARY. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
802:The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has changed greatly since fossilized life began on Earth nearly 600 million years ago. In fact, there is only 1/19 as much CO2 in the air today as there was 520 million years ago. That high CO2 was hardly the recipe for disaster. ~ Greg Benson, #NFDB
803:the four keys (or Cs) to improving your memory. The first section talks about improving your Concentration. The second section is about improving your ability to Create imagery and Connecting concepts together, and the final key is about creating a habit with Continuous use. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
804:America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don't think that way. We don't think much at all, thank God. Start thinking and pretty soon you get ideas, and then you get idealism, and the next thing you know you've got ideology, with millions dead in concentration camps and gulags. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
805:As any actor will tell you, the hardest thing to do is small parts, because you focus all your attention and concentration on that small part. When you're playing the lead part, you don't have time to think about the whole of it, so you just have to steam on and get on with it. ~ Colin Baker, #NFDB
806:She had been fair at drawing before the war. She’d drawn her mother dozens of times, as she sat reading or sewing. There had been so many things in those days that kept a person still, that required perfect concentration for hours on end. It had been easy to draw portraits. ~ Simone St James, #NFDB
807:Very sweetly, he always told her he loved her just the way she was. Although, honestly he had no idea. She shuddered to think what she would really look like if she stopped waxing, plucking, highlighting, manicuring, applying make-up and
dressing with care and concentration. ~ Carmen Reid,#NFDB
808:In today's world where, more than ever, the ongoing concentration of money and power in the hands of a self-selected few, relies on political and public apathy, Live My Life provides a much needed shot of timely, thought-provoking, musically forward, irreverence to the status quo. ~ Nomi Prins, #NFDB
809:It is not brilliance or facility that is necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one's own bad prose again, and one more time, and then once again, with the utmost concentration and taste, looking for opportunities to mine deeper. ~ Stewart O Nan, #NFDB
810:Only since the turn of the century has abstraction again become recognized as an artistic means of representation. It was then that one returned to the recognition of the immense role abstraction plays in the human mind by its power of concentration upon absolute essentials. ~ Sigfried Giedion, #NFDB
811:The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply. ~ Susan Cain, #NFDB
812:The truth was that her photographs were an extension of who she was, what she thought, how she felt. It took perfect concentration to capture the exquisite pain of personal tragedy on film. You had to be there one hundred percent, in the moment - but it had to be their moment. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
813:We, too, as the Celtic saying goes, “live in the shelter of each other.” World War II historians have noted that the unit of survival in concentration camps was the pair, not the individual. Surveys show that married men and women generally live longer than do their single peers. ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
814:What most people call power Buddhists call cravings. The five cravings are for wealth, fame, sex, fancy food, and lots of sleep. In Buddhism, we speak of the five true powers, five kinds of energy. The five powers are faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
815:Not merely by rules of conduct and religious observances, nor by much learning either, nor even by attainment of concentration, nor by sleeping alone, do I reach the happiness of freedom, to which no worldlings attain. If you have not put an end to compulsions, nurse your faith ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
816:They handled hundreds of cases at a time, at a pace of sixty per hour or more; the life or death of an individual human was decided in a minute or less. In a single night the Leningrad troika, for example, sentenced to death 658 prisoners of the concentration camp at Solovki.55 ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
817:My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
818:...the waiter has to come from a place of concentration, subjugation, and complete, limitless service. Nothing is too much trouble. The customer is always right, even when he is wrong. There is no limit to what you will do to serve while that person is in your bar and in your care. ~ Stuart Wilde, #NFDB
819:The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration. There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
820:Children who grow up in family situations that facilitate clarity of goals, feedback, feeling of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge will generally have a better chance to order their lives so as to make flow possible. Moreover, ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
821:Facing the Extreme: Moral life in the concentration camps by Tzvetan Todorov.5 This is a careful study of the moral situation of both prisoners and guards in the German and Russian camps. It shows how much more complex and many-sided that situation was than might have been expected, ~ Mary Midgley, #NFDB
822:In the end, of the one thousand fifty-six who had left, in a body, from the Tiburtina station, a total of fifteen came back alive.
And of those dead, the luckiest were surely the first eight hundred and fifty. The gas chamber is the only seat of charity, in a concentration camp. ~ Elsa Morante,#NFDB
823:The Jews of Europe had been foolish to entrust their safety and security to anyone but themselves. What if they had been organized? What if they had been armed and trained and immobilized? No one could have sent them to concentration camps to perish by the hundreds of thousands. ~ Joel C Rosenberg, #NFDB
824:When you're writing for the screen, you have to be hyper-conscious every moment of how the audience is going to react. If you write just one scene where the audience is confused or it breaks their concentration in some way, then you've lost them, and you might never get them back. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
825:When you want to think and find a solution, instead of following the deductions of thought, you stop everything and try to concentrate and concentrate, intensify the point of the problem. You stop everything and wait until, by the intensity of the concentration, you obtain an answer. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
826:A strange vision, no doubt, this vision of a universe in which each thinking planet would represent, at its term, by concentration of its Noösphere, a point of penetration and escape from the temporo-spatial envelope of things. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phyletic Structure of the Human Group, #NFDB
827:The name came from the fact that prisoners could be “concentrated” in a group and held under protective custody following Nazi law. Quickly, this changed. Himmler made concentration camps “legally independent administrative units outside the penal code and the ordinary law.” Dachau ~ Annie Jacobsen, #NFDB
828:To me, this acquirement of nervous, physical, and emotional concentration is the one element possessed to the highest degree by the truly great dancers of the world. Its acquirement is the result of discipline, of energy in the deep sense. That is why there are so few great dancers. ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
829:After a moment or two, a strange awareness shot through me, and I looked up to see Aidan Gray slip into the seat directly across the room, facing me. Great. There went my concentration, especially since he sat there watching me, studying me like some interesting bug under a microscope. ~ Kristi Cook, #NFDB
830:Once the concentration camps and the hell-holes of the world were in darkness. Now they are lit by the light of the Amnesty candle; the candle in barbed wire. When I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind the old Chinese proverb: 'Better light a candle than curse the darkness.' ~ Peter Benenson, #NFDB
831:Samadhi. Immersed in concentration and meditation, all thoughts and distractions far away. Your focus steady, you achieve samadhi. All that exists is the heart of the experience. There is no one meditating, no one concentrating, only awareness. There is no yogi, only the yoga. (3) ~ Alberto Villoldo, #NFDB
832:The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essential feeling of obligation to one’s job, are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance. ~ Max Weber, #NFDB
833:Fur Person,' he decided then—not really a name at all, but a way of describing the relationship between a Gentle Cat and his true friends among the human people. For a Fur Person, he saw in his state of extreme concentration, is not just an ordinary cat. He is a cat who is also a person. ~ May Sarton, #NFDB
834:I had an opportunity to make an album - that was a dream come true. I had to make sure that I could do it the best way I could, and at least at the end of it be very pleased with it and not regret anything. So that took a lot of concentration. Being isolated really helps with that. ~ Michael Kiwanuka, #NFDB
835:People who experience flow describe it as “a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems,” and their descriptions of the joy of that state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an “optimal experience. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
836:Cohen was on his knees taking a picture of a passing cloud, an unremarkable cirrus shaped as if it were sketched expressly for a meteorology textbook, its immortality assured only through the wild Polish luck of having passed the former concentration camp on the day of Cohen's visit. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
837:The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future. ~ Robert Capa, #NFDB
838:To achieve that state of lasting happiness and absolute peace, we must first know how to calm the mind, to concentrate and go beyond the mind. By turning the mind's concentration inward, upon the self, we can deepen that experience of perfect concentration. This is the state of Meditation. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
839:To concentrate implies bringing all your energy to focus on a certain point; but thought wanders away... Whereas attention has no control, no concentration. It is complete attention, which means giving all your energy, the energy of the brain, your heart, everything, to attending. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
840:In fact, yogic and Ayurvedic texts mention knowledge (jnana), scientific knowledge (vijnana), restraint (samyam), mindfulness (smriti) and concentration (ekagrata) as the antidote and treatment for mental afflictions caused by imbalanced mental humours. Each of these five strengthens sattva. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
841:The two seem, at first glance, to be opposed, but when you have advanced a little in both, you find that concentration learned in Yoga is of immense use in attaining the mental powers necessary in Magick; on the other hand, the discipline of Magick is of the greatest service in Yoga. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
842:They had somehow taken a group of women from the town through the (concentration) camps to show them what had been right there, and Tommy's brother said that although some of the women wept, some of them put their chins up, and looked angry, as if they refused to be made to feel bad. ~ Elizabeth Strout, #NFDB
843:We all belonged to the same category marked down for absolute destruction. The astonishing thing is not that so many of us went to concentration camps or died there, but that some of us survived. Caution did not help. Only chance could save you. —NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM, HOPE ABANDONED, P. 67 ~ Clive James, #NFDB
844:Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him— mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
845:I am interested not so much in the human mind as in the marvel of a nature which can obey such an elegant and simple law as this law of gravitation. Therefore our main concentration will not be on how clever we are to have found it all out, but on how clever nature is to pay attention to it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
846:It was a total and absolute surprise to find out that what was inside the concentration camps was a sea of skeletons. What is clear to me, therefore, is that while the tragedy of war grinds on, the contemporary aesthetics of the tragedy seem not only confused but, in some way, suspicious. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
847:Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. ~ Vladimir Lenin, #NFDB
848:People such as inventors searching for new material, make their discoveries in a state of self-forgetfulness. It is in a condition of deep intellectual concentration that this forgetfulness of the ego arises and the invention is revealed. This is also a way of developing intuition. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
849:The erotic state – again, a mixture of concentration and spontaneity – is a hypnoidal state, probably the most powerful kind that we are capable of experiencing, and it is in this condition that unexpected regions of the self are revealed, as the majority of people know from experience. ~ Peter Redgrove, #NFDB
850:The Media are corporations so... It's the concentrations of private power which have an enormous, not total control, but enormous influence over Congress and the White House and that's increasing sharply with sharp concentration of private power and escalating cost of elections and so on. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
851:To me acting and doing movies is really strongly about the present time. It's all about when you do it. It's to create this feeling of extreme awareness and concentration. Because it doesn't happen without an extreme concentration, when you are completely immersed and focused on that. ~ Isabelle Huppert, #NFDB
852:Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, ‘There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
853:In each case it is Tapas that is effective, but it acts in a different manner according to the thing that has to be done, according to the predetermined process, dynamism, self-deploying of the Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance,#NFDB
854:I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
855:But suppose, for the sake of argument, free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would develop capitalism trade more rapidly. Is it not a fact that the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly? ~ Vladimir Lenin, #NFDB
856:I am more able to recognize when my mind has gotten itself into trouble and increasingly eager to mobilize the energy to rescue it. Concentration and mindfulness, as remedies to confusion, are either self-activating ... or at least reasonably available remedies to confusion. [pp. 17-18] ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
857:I am not allowed to be afraid. My mother made me like that. As a child, if I was afraid of the dark, she would lock me in the closet. Things like this. And she would talk about the time she spent in the concentration camp, but not about being afraid, only about the good side of it. ~ Diane von Furstenberg, #NFDB
858:We apply our effort to be mindful, to be aware in this very moment, right here and now, and we bring a very wholehearted effort to it. This brings concentration. It is this power of concentration that we use to cut through the world of surface appearances to get to a much deeper reality. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
859:A mental habit has been annihilated, but at least the way towards a sounder mental habit is clear. For although we are made of nothing, we are made into something; and since WHAT WE ARE MADE OF does not account for us, we are forced to a more intense concentration upon THE GOD WE ARE MADE BY. ~ Frank Sheed, #NFDB
860:Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
861:If you neglect those who are currently poor and stable, you may create more poor and unstable people. There has been a tremendous concentration of donor interest in countries that are seen as particularly fragile - but it becomes harder to mobilise money for sub-Saharan, plain poor countries. ~ Helen Clark, #NFDB
862:A highest Godward tension liberates the mind through an absolute seeing of knowledge, liberates the heart through an absolute love and delight, liberates the whole existence through an absolute concentration of will towards a greater existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Theory of the Vibhuti, #NFDB
863:Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
864:I would not draw definitive conclusions from that. If we look at South and North Korea, it is pretty hard to believe that we're dealing with the same people. Half of the people are forced to live in a concentration camp; the other have created one of the most dynamic economies in the world. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
865:The curmudgeons among us are vaguely uneasy about the attention people pay to their phones, and pine for the days of unhurried concentration, while the digital hipsters equate such nostalgia with Luddism and boredom, and believe that increased connection is the foundation for a utopian future. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
866:The history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
867:Galm's tone was reserved, each of his words precisely enunciated, almost as if it required extra concentration for him to speak. He was thousands of years old, and I wondered if he was so ancient and powerful that he sometimes had difficulty remembering simple things, like how to use language. ~ Tim Waggoner, #NFDB
868:Training your concentration isn’t that hard. You just have to learn to become more peaceful and find the moment. You have to learn to be here, now. When you are at work, be at work. When you are at home, be at home. “Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb,” said Pythagoras. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
869:When I began research, I read the writings of the Sonderkommandos. They are not well known, but these prisoners wrote from the middle of hell from Auschwitz, to let the world know what happened. The texts were buried beneath the ground and found after the liberation of the concentration camps. ~ Laszlo Nemes, #NFDB
870:I play drums, and I'd recommend it to anyone, except maybe your neighbors. It's great exercise - physical, mental, emotional, and social. It takes deep concentration but also activates concentration. If you're doing it right, it's always just a little harder than what you can actually pull off. ~ Greg Saunier, #NFDB
871:You can remember mountains of information when you are interested in the subject. It almost feels automatic and your concentration is at a peak. Your deficits of attention are mostly interest deficits. Your mind never wanders away; it only moves towards more interesting and outstanding things. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
872:He looked out over the shirtless, muscled, tanned men and realised that right here, on this disco floor, there was such a concentration of fashion, slimming, money, bleaching, plastic surgery, psychotherapy – and all for naught. In a few years they’d all be old walruses, and in a few more, dead. ~ Edmund White, #NFDB
873:By contrast, if you’re trying to learn a complex new skill (say, SQL database management) in a state of low concentration (perhaps you also have your Facebook feed open), you’re firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly to isolate the group of neurons you actually want to strengthen. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
874:Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
875:He has neither what I call the outward vision (seeing details all around you what is called an observant person) nor the inner vision--concentration, the focusing of the mind on one object. He has a purposefully limited vision. He sees only what blends and harmonises with the bent of his mind. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
876:I am very worried about this concentration of power, and it's not only because of Erdogan. We have the ballot box, but we don't have the culture of democracy. The government says: You see, we have the majority, we're entitled to do anything we want. But that's not democracy, that's majoritarianism. ~ Elif Safak, #NFDB
877:New Jersey was actually a very cold place. There was such an intense concentration of wealth, and such a low concentration of any actual human happiness. A lot of people seem to be similar to the kid in school, which is doing a lot of things with no direct consequence to their joy, or their lives. ~ Ezra Miller, #NFDB
878:Emotional instability can be one of the factors giving rise to a failure by chess players in important duels. Under the influence of surging emotions (and not necessarily negative ones) we sometimes lose concentration and stop objectively evaluating the events that are taking place on the board. ~ Mark Dvoretsky, #NFDB
879:Hitler admired our concentration camps for American Indians in the west and according to John Toland, his biographer, “often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat” as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies (Rom people). ~ James W Loewen, #NFDB
880:It’s not the chatter of people around us that is the most powerful distractor, but rather the chatter of our own minds. Utter concentration demands these inner voices be stilled. Start to subtract sevens successively from 100 and, if you keep your focus on the task, your chatter zone goes quiet. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
881:Just like two pieces of wood can be rubbed together to produce fire and the same fire later consumes them both, intellect and concentration support the contemplative meditation. But when the fire of insight arises, it consumes both intellect and concentration, giving way to pristine awareness. This is ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
882:On the contrary, anyone speaking or writing about concentration camps is still regarded as suspect; and if the speaker has resolutely returned to the world of the living, he himself is often assailed by doubts with regard to his own truthfulness, as though he had mistaken a nightmare for reality. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
883:When you use concentration to run away from yourself or your situation, it is wrong concentration. Sometimes we need to escape our problems for relief, but at some time we have to return to face them. Worldly concentration seeks to escape. Supramundane concentration aims at complete liberation. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
884:Some Mistakes Some People Make. If you waste your time reading sensational stories or worthless newspaper items, you excite the impulsive and the emotional faculties, and this means you are weakening your power of concentration. You will not be a free engineer, able to pilot yourself to success. ~ Theron Q Dumont, #NFDB
885:These broadcasts were of varied content. But all of them took the United States and Canada to task for their anti-Semitism, for not being willing to comprehend and act on the news of the concentration camps early enough, and for continued anti-Semitic policies as they pertained to Jewish refugees. ~ Howard Norman, #NFDB
886:And he listened to me. That was the thing he did, as if he was trying to fill himself up with all the sound he could hear. He listened to the wind and the falling ocean and my voice, always with rapt attention, a concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and kept only the sounds. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
887:In the bipolar patients we have studied, there is a significantly increased number of small areas of focal signal hyperintensities [areas of increased water concentration] suggestive of abnormal tissue. These are what neurologists sometimes refer to as ‘unidentified bright objects,’ or UBOs. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
888:Children, in the present dark age of materialism, chanting the mantra is the easiest way for us to obtain inner purification and concentration. Japa can be done at any time, anywhere, without observing any rule regarding the purity of mind and body. Japa can be done while engaged in any task. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
889:Elegance is the correct posture if the writing is to be perfect. It’s the same with life: when all superfluous things have been discarded, we discover simplicity and concentration. The simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be, even though, at first, it may seem uncomfortable. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
890:Meditation objects are like launching pads. Once you have gained jhana, everything that follows after that is the same. The concentrated mind is on its own, alone, dependent upon nothing external. Whatever object has been used for abandoning hindrances and gaining concentration is left behind. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
891:The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey. ~ William Ellery Channing, #NFDB
892:My dear friends, from the devil's standpoint there is not the slightest difference between being puffed up with pride in yourself or spending the whole of your time condemning yourself. Either way the devil is very well-pleased. Any concentration upon self in any shape or form is of the devil. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
893:pinched into a knot as she chewed, an expression that might have been concentration or a commentary on the tartness of the fruit. She wiped the juice from her over-inflated lower lip with the back of her hand. “Did he used to be on Days of Our Lives?” Sharon rolled her eyes. The bimbob made no comment. ~ Tami Hoag, #NFDB
894:Everything must be given to the Divine within us, to the universal All and to the transcendent Supreme. An absolute concentration of our will, our heart and our thought on that one and manifold Divine, an unreserved self-consecration of our whole being to the Divine alone
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 89,#NFDB
895:How big can you make it?” “It takes some concentration,” I told her. “You didn’t seem like you wanted to wait, earlier. And what makes you think there’s a limit?” “Well, at some point you wouldn’t be able to walk because your giant dick would get in the way,” she pointed out. “I can fly,” I replied. ~ E William Brown, #NFDB
896:My friend, who loved above all things precision and concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand. And yet, without a harshness which was foreign to his nature, it was impossible to refuse to listen to the story of the young and beautiful woman ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
897:What, after all, is “entertainment”? Entertainment is the ritual of sitting in the dark, staring at a screen, investing tremendous concentration and energy into what one hopes will be a satisfying, meaningful emotional experience. Any film that hooks, holds, and pays off the story ritual is entertainment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
898:Marx.... Lenin.... Mao Tse-Tung.... These men were animated by the love of brother and this we must believe though their ends meant the seizure of power, and the building of mighty armies, the compulsion of concentration camps, the forced labor and torture and killing of tens of thousands, even millions. ~ Dorothy Day, #NFDB
899:There exists no purer concentration of Americanism than among the First Americans.” The Navajos were so eager to fight that some of them lied about their age, or gorged themselves on bunches of bananas and swallowed great quantities of water in order to reach the minimum weight requirement of 120 pounds. ~ Simon Singh, #NFDB
900:Communist," he repeated. "You may have heard someone in a concentration admit to being a murderer and many agreed that they had been spies. A prisoner would sometimes even confess to having at one time - for a short while - been a Jew. But a communist, no. No one would ever let that word pass their lips. ~ Len Deighton, #NFDB
901:I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore with an extremely high concentration of Jewish families - where the Levys and Cohens in the high school yearbook went on for pages, where I could count far more temples than I ever could churches. Anti-Semitism, in our cultural biodome, was mostly an abstract concept. ~ Jeffrey Kluger, #NFDB
902:Human nature was all about shifting blame...and responsibility. How else could you explain concentration camps and genocide and all the awful things people did to each other every day? They just carried on life and pretended like the evil didn't exist, as long as it was happening out of their direct view. ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
903:There are no parallels to the life of the concentration camps. All seeming parallels create confusion and distract attention from what is essential. Forced labor in prisons and penal colonies, banishment, slavery, all seem for a moment to offer helpful comparisons, but on closer examination lead nowhere. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
904:Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
905:Golf is like acting in that both require concentration and relaxation at the same time. In acting, you can't push emotion. You have to let it rise from you naturally. Same thing in golf. You have to have a plan and a focus; but then you need to just let it happen and enjoy the smooth movement of the swing. ~ Jane Seymour, #NFDB
906:In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
907:What went wrong is we had tremendous concentration in the sense we put a lot of our money to work against U.S. real estate. We got here by lending money, and putting money to work in the U.S. real estate market, in a size that was probably larger than what we ought to have done on a diversification basis. ~ Vikram Pandit, #NFDB
908:Your concentration must come as easily as the breath. Fix yourself on one thing and try to hold onto it. All will come right. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts. The dissipated mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
909:Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It's about intensive research, really. The concentration is warm and intimate and like the fire inside the earth - intense but not distorted. You can go to a place, really feel it in your heart. It's actually a beautiful feeling. ~ Peter Zumthor, #NFDB
910:The Reichstag had two things to do: first, to hear him make a long speech, and second, to vote its endorsement of everything he had said. This vote never failed to be unanimous—since any member who presumed to voice disapproval would be sent off to a concentration camp before that afternoon’s sun had set. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
911:As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without trial or hearing. I would like to see the government admit they were wrong and do something about it, so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color. ~ Fred Korematsu, #NFDB
912:Intuition was not just visual but also auditory and kinesthetic. Those who watched Feynman in moments of intense concentration came away with a strong, even disturbing sense of the physicality of the process, as though his brain did not stop with the grey matter but extended through every muscle in his body. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
913:We lack an organization that will support fashion week. The five-day week shows a lack of vision and that we are not able to command respect. I am not saying it's anyone's fault in particular, it's our fault. We have the highest concentration of brands, how can we accommodate everyone in four or five days? ~ Franca Sozzani, #NFDB
914:I had just come off of doing a play in Los Angeles which actually got me the role. It was called Bent and it was at the Mark Taper Forum. I was playing a homosexual in 1930 to 1934 Berlin who is eventually put into a concentration camp for the second half of the play. I had lost about 38 pounds for that. ~ Patrick Heusinger, #NFDB
915:It’s never going to be very mainstream. One reason is that poetry requires concentration, both on the part of the writer and the reader. But it’s kind of unkillable, poetry. It’s our most ancient artform and I think it’s more relevant today than ever, because it’s one person saying what they really believe. ~ Simon Armitage, #NFDB
916:Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
917:In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. Our ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
918:[Speaking of his experience in a concentration camp:] As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal...Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
919:We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
920:When you play against good people, that's when you focus your concentration. Your sense of urgency to be disciplined in your execution all become more critical. Sometimes you get away with doing things not quite right against lesser competition, but when you play against real good people that's when it shows up. ~ Nick Saban, #NFDB
921:Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar. ~ Rose Wilder Lane, #NFDB
922:She could kiss him. The urge felt almost overwhelming. his bated breath. His lips, so near, parted in concentration. Perhaps that was the proper thought before death's door. This kiss would be the best last gift the earth had to offer her. He was so beautiful, and she'd wanted it for years. It was time to take it. ~ Ellie Ann, #NFDB
923:The best strategy is always to be very strong first in general, then
at the decisive point.... There is no higher and simpler law of strategy
than that of keeping one’s forces concentrated.... In short the
first principle is: act with the utmost concentration. On War, Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831 ~ Robert Greene,#NFDB
924:We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
925:certainly she nodded from time to time, and pursed her lips, and shook her head, and uttered little ejaculations; but it seemed to Mary that years of fear and anxiety had taken away her powers of concentration, and that some underlying terror prevented her from giving her whole interest to any conversation. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
926:Nothing succeeds like concentration on the right business. And if the company is not in the right business, diversification will no more make it a “growth company,” than a man with a broken hip will be restored to health, by being taken on a twenty-mile forced march with an eighty-pound pack on his shoulders. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
927:The body has a wisdom of its own. However, slowly and circuitously that wisdom manifests, once it is experienced it is a foundation, a basis of knowing that gives confidence to the ego. To reach its wisdom requires absolute concentration: dropping the mind into the body, breathing into whatever is ready to be ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
928:What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
929:Sex can no longer be the germ, the seed of fiction. Sex is an episode, most properly conveyed in an episodic manner, quickly, often ironically. It is a bursting forth of only one of the cells in the body of the omnipotent I, the one who hopes by concentration of tone and voice to utter the sound of reality. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick, #NFDB
930:If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
931:I told a story earlier from Jonathan Glover about a woman who lived close to a concentration camp and felt empathy for those being tortured. Her response was to ask that the torture be done elsewhere, where it wouldn’t disturb her. This was one of a series of examples meant to show how empathy need not make us good. ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
932:You don't get a chance to sit back and relax because this is the point where we're tweaking things to see what works and what doesn't work; so the level of concentration is very focused. But who wouldn't be happy with this? It's a great opportunity and a really great piece of writing. I'm just really very fortunate. ~ Sean Mahon, #NFDB
933:I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
934:Japanese American, she corrected me. Not Japanese. And Vietnamese American, not Vietnamese. You must claim America, she said. America will not give itself to you. If you do not claim America, if America is not in your heart, America will throw you into a concentration camp or a reservation or a plantation. And ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
935:I want to emphasize in the great concentration which we now place upon scientists and engineers how much we still need the men and women educated in the liberal tradition, willing to take the long look, undisturbed by prejudices and slogans of the moment, who attempt to make an honest judgment on difficult events. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
936:The purpose of the deep work chamber is to allow for total focus and uninterrupted work flow,” Dewane explains. He imagines a process in which you spend ninety minutes inside, take a ninety-minute break, and repeat two or three times—at which point your brain will have achieved its limit of concentration for the day. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
937:The similarity is that concentration of capital influences virtually everything that goes on. It influences the way the media functions, it very powerfully influences how the government works and it of course influences corporate sector elements, like say how Google or Amazon present materials that reach the public. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
938:We in the West have arranged our institutions to prevent the concentration of political power. … But we have failed utterly to prevent the concentration of economic power, or take account of how such concentration damages the conditions under which full human flourishing becomes possible (it is never guaranteed). ~ Matthew Crawford, #NFDB
939:attacks occurred, the FDNY’s response would have been severely compromised by the concentration of so many of its off-duty personnel, particularly its elite personnel, at the WTC. The PortAuthority’s response was hampered by the lack of both standard oper= ating procedures and radios capable of enabling multiple commands ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
940:Even mild dehydration can cause headaches and fatigue, affect your concentration, impair short-term memory and impede mental function. If you want to be at your most productive, it’s important for your brain to be firing on all cylinders. Therefore, you should make sure you are sufficiently hydrated before starting work. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
941:We accept and welcome therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
942:Despite all deliberation, sense, insight, and sober reason, I could not fail to recognize within myself the furtive and yet—ashamed as it might be, so to say, of its irrationality—increasingly insistent voice of some muffled craving of sorts: I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp. ~ Imre Kert sz, #NFDB
943:The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions. In ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
944:I am reminded of the query made about man's inhumanity to man in the concentration camps. The question was asked: At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?
And the answer came: Where was man?
For it was men alone who did this evil. Not God or religion or men acting in the name of God or religion. But simply men. ~ Glenn Meade,#NFDB
945:The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness. ~ Leigh Hunt, #NFDB
946:In a modern political, economic, and social context, socialism isn't voluntary like the Girl Scouts. Its central characteristic is the concentration of power to forcibly achieve one or more (or usually all) of these purposes: central planning of the economy, government ownership of property, and the redistribution of wealth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
947:Christmas gift for her. Christine tightened her lips in concentration, ignoring the familiar ache in her heart. She couldn’t quite get the angle of the sleigh. Perhaps if she brought it down closer to the rooftop… “Mommy, it’s almost—” Christine startled at the tug on her sleeve, nearly upsetting her coffee. She gripped the ~ Ginny Baird, #NFDB
948:NEGRO :; Member of a subgroup of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamed not by its residents Africa. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis. ~ John Brunner, #NFDB
949:The real thinkers of the world aren't the best dressed. Staying on top of the latest fashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that- ask yourself what they're running from. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
950:A poet has to adapt himself, more or less consciously,to the demands of his vocation, and hence the peculiarities of poets and the condition of inspiration which many people have said is near to madness... The problem of creative writing is essentially one of concentration... a focusing of the attention in a special way. ~ Stephen Spender, #NFDB
951:Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
952:The premise of National Socialism was that Germans were a superior race, a presumption that, when confronted by the evidence of Polish civilization, the Nazis had to prove, at least to themselves. In the ancient Polish city of Cracow, the entire professoriate of the renowned university was sent to concentration camps. The ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
953:At the end of the day, we are all guests in this world; we will move on eventually. However, while you are here, you can leave your mark by setting goals and putting your heart, soul and body into them, and letting the outcome be the by-product of your focus. Let your concentration be on your craft and watch the magic unfold. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
954:We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
955:Any man was capable of jaunting provided he developed two faculties, visualization and concentration. He had to visualize, completely and precisely, the spot to which he desired to teleport himself; and he had to concentrate the latent energy of his mind into a single thrust to get him there. Above all, he had to have faith. ~ Alfred Bester, #NFDB
956:Frank grimaced with concentration. Suddenly, he disappeared. On the deck where he’d been standing, a green iguana crouched next to an empty set of Chinese handcuffs. “Well done, Frank Zhang,” Leo said dryly, doing his impression of Chiron the centaur. “That is exactly how people beat Chinese handcuffs. They turn into iguanas. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
957:In Hidden Writing, a main plot is constructed to camouflage other plots (which can register themselves as plot holes) by overlapping them with the surface (superficially dynamic plot) or the grounded theme. In terms of such a writing, the main plot is the map or the concentration blueprint of plot holes (the other plots). ~ Reza Negarestani, #NFDB
958:I wake up fairly early every day, by 8, for sure. Sunday is a lighter writing day than the weekdays, but I still wake up and write for about an hour, beginning right around 8. I definitely have coffee first, and then I start writing. I do think it's kind of hard to get the right level of concentration without coffee. ~ Karen Thompson Walker, #NFDB
959:Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands…. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it “deliberate,” as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
960:...he couldn’t help wondering how it had felt: refugees turning up from concentration camps, from a broken Europe, to find this bleak estate; its squat huts their new homes.There’d been watch towers and barbed wire fences. It can’t have looked like freedom. But freedom was measured, he supposed, by what you were leaving behind. ~ Mick Herron, #NFDB
961:In a world suffering from mental stress, yoga promises calm. In a distracted world, yoga creates focus, creates concentration. In a world of fear, yoga promises strength and courage. A healthy body and a disciplined mind are the foundations of a world free from fear. In crafting a new self through Yoga, we create a new world. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
962:...The miracle is not to walk on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Walk in such a way that you become fully alive and joy and happiness are possible. That is the miracle that everyone can perform.... If you have mindfulness, concentration, and insight then every step you make on this Earth is performing a miracle. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
963:Thus contemplation or meditation which seeks a result is neither contemplation nor meditation, for the simple reason that contemplation (kuan) is consciousness without seeking. Naturally, such consciousness is concentrated, but it is not 'practising concentration;' it is concentrated in whatever happens to be its 'eternal now. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
964:To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
965:I’ve always been treated in a friendly manner, and even people I hardly know have rarely been rude or brusque or cold to me. In certain people that friendly manner, with my encouragement, might have been converted into love or affection, but I’ve never had the patience or mental concentration to even want to make the effort. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
966:Meditation does not imply only the development of single-pointed concentration, sitting in some corner doing nothing. Meditation is an alert state of mind, the opposite of sluggishness; meditation is wisdom. You should remain aware every moment of your daily life, fully conscious of what you are doing and how you are doing it. ~ Thubten Yeshe, #NFDB
967:Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute. Where do you seek the spiritual? You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there. With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
968:Never let it be said that Harry Dresden is afraid of a dried, dead bug. Creepy or not, I wasn't going to let it ruin my concentration. So I scooped it up with the corner of the phone book and popped it into the middle drawer of my desk. Out of sight, out of mind. So I have a problem with creepy, dead, poisonous things. So sue me. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
969:The skins of concentration camp prisoners, especially executed for this ghoulish purpose, had merely decorative value. They made, it was found, excellent lamp shades, several of which were expressly fitted up for Frau Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald and nicknamed by the inmates the “Bitch of Buchenwald.”* ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
970:Concentration, for our Yoga, means when the consciousness is fixed in a particular state (e.g. peace) or movement (e.g. aspiration, will, coming into contact with the Mother, taking the Mother's name); meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [concentration is:],#NFDB
971:Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands…. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it “deliberate,” as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. If ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
972:Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. ~ William James, #NFDB
973:Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after. ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
974:Prayer and contemplation are both exercises in concentration. The normal deluge of conscious thought is restricted and the mind is brought to one conscious area of operation. The results are those you find in any concentrative practice: deep calm, a physiological slowing of the metabolism and a sense of peace and wellbeing ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
975:The commitment to morality, or non-harming, is a source of tremendous strength, because it helps free the mind from the remorse of having done unwholesome actions. Freedom from remorse leads to happiness. Happiness leads to concentration. Concentration brings wisdom. And wisdom is the source of peace and freedom in our lives. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
976:There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
977:West took a step back, dropped the combs to the floor, and reached out to grasp a handful of shining red hair. He brought a few of the ruddy locks to his face, stroking them over his cheeks and mouth, and kissed them. His face was grave, almost severe, as he stared at her with absolute concentration. "How can you be so beautiful? ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
978:I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration. ~ Ethan Canin, #NFDB
979:No matter what you may have heard or read in the popular media, there is no scientific evidence we have suggesting that a drug, a device, or any amount of psychological willpower can replace sleep. Power naps may momentarily increase basic concentration under conditions of sleep deprivation, as can caffeine up to a certain dose. ~ Matthew Walker, #NFDB
980:With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
981:Existing regulation is not too efficient in curbing media concentration, and individual institutions, such as public broadcasters, have proved easier to regulate than entire markets. Consequently, contrary to the arguments that public broadcasters would be marginalized, arguments abound that they are becoming too dominant and powerful ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
982:Surely the most urgent task confronting the genius of man at this moment is to conceive and undertake the construction of another ‘Palomar’—but this one would be designed to bring out not an expansion of the universe in space but a psychogenic concentration of the universe upon itself. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Convergence of the Universe, #NFDB
983:There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
984:When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
985:In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
986:The conceited, benevolent tone of the prefaces, the abundance of translator’s notes, which disturb my concentration, the parenthetical question marks and sic’s that the translator generously scatters through the article or book, are for me like an encroachment both upon the person of the author and upon my independence as a reader. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
987:There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
988:Emotion constricted Hawke’s throat. He suddenly understood why the victims of concentration camps had walked quietly to the gas chambers. In the face of horror and insanity, it was the one human thing to do. Not the noble thing, not the heroic thing—the human thing. To live succumbing to the insanity, was the ultimate loss of pride. ~ Karl Marlantes, #NFDB
989:I see,” said Will. But Halt shook his head. “No. All too often, you don’t see, because you don’t maintain your concentration. You’ll have to work on that.” Will said nothing. He merely accepted the criticism. He’d learned by now that Halt didn’t criticize without reason. And when there was reason, no amount of excuses could save him. ~ John Flanagan, #NFDB
990:Losing faith is a complicated business and takes time. There are no epiphanies, no "moments of truth." It takes much thought and concentration in the later phases, which thenselves come about through an accumulation of small accidents: examples of general injustice, misfortune falling upon the godly, prayers of one's own unanswered. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
991:Never let it be said that Harry Dresden is afraid of a dried, dead bug. Creepy or not, I wasn't going to let it ruin my concentration.
So I scooped it up with the corner of the phone book and popped it into the middle drawer of my desk. Out of sight, out of mind.
So I have a problem with creepy, dead, poisonous things. So sue me. ~ Jim Butcher,#NFDB
992:Recording sessions were stimulating to photograph, because everything was in motion: the subject, the musicians, the technicians and the photographer. You needed fast reflexes to keep up with moving targets, and sensitivity and skill to get the pictures while keeping out of the performers' eyeline so as not to break their concentration. ~ Eve Arnold, #NFDB
993:System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
994:To say "I accept" in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration-camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murder. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
995:Emotion constricted Hawke’s throat. He suddenly understood why the victims of concentration camps had walked quietly to the gas chambers. In the face of horror and insanity, it was the one human thing to do. Not the noble thing, not the heroic thing—the human thing. To live, succumbing to the insanity, was the ultimate loss of pride. ~ Karl Marlantes, #NFDB
996:It reminded him of history lessons back in the world beyond the manor, whenever World War II came up in the curriculum. Students had stared wide-eyed, shifting in their seats with discomfort as the teacher showed grainy pictures of yellow stars, striped clothing, and concentration camps, horrified that the scenes had once been reality. ~ Bella Forrest, #NFDB
997:Meditation sharpens your concentration and your thinking power. Then, piece by piece, your own subconscious motives and mechanics become clear to you. Your intuition sharpens. The precision of your thought increases, and gradually you come to a direct knowledge of things as they really are, without prejudice and without illusion. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
998:If we practice meditation, we can generate the energies of mindfulness and concentration. These energies will lead us to the insight that there is no birth and no death. We can truly remove our fear of death. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief. Non-fear is the ultimate joy. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
999:So too, monks, I saw the ancient path, the ancient road traveled by the Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past. And what is that ancient path, that ancient road? It is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
1000:What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
1001:you want to know what reality is, you must look directly at it and see for yourself. But this needs a certain kind of concentration, because reality is not symbols, it is not words and thoughts, it is not reflections and fantasies. Therefore to see it clearly, your mind must be free from wandering words and from the floating fantasies of ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1002:Architecture has its own realm. It has a special physical relationship with life. I do not think of it primarily as either a message or symbol, but as an envelope and background for life which goes on in and around it, a sensitive container for the rhythm of footsteps on the floor, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep. ~ Peter Zumthor, #NFDB
1003:Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. It seems to me that most of us are not aware, not only of what we are talking about but of our environment, the colours around us, the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement of water. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1004:More striking still, it appeared that, if the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
1005:Too much
awareness without calm to balance it will result in a wildly over-sensitized state similar to
abusing LSD. Too much concentration without a balancing ratio of awareness will result
in the 'Stone Buddha' syndrome. The meditator gets so tranquilized that he sits there like
a rock. Both of these are to be avoided. ~ Henepola Gunaratana,#NFDB
1006:Varian had to remind himself that these were not merely political ciphers, nor scrawled signatures, nor ghostly photographic images; they were human beings, real men and women whose genius placed them at risk, who were in peril, in concentration camps, in hiding, or worse, living in plain view, ignorant to the threat of their own lives. ~ Julie Orringer, #NFDB
1007:By my monastic life and vows I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1008:How did we start worrying about climate? In 1948 a conservationist named Fairfield Osborn wrote a book titled Our Plundered Planet (the first jeremiad of its kind) and, with Laurance Rockefeller, founded the Conservation Foundation in New York. In 1958 Charles Keeling began his epic project measuring the atmospheric concentration of CO 2. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
1009:The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
1010:The State certainly played a decisive role. I also believe that it may have stemmed from the rivalry itself. Grow or die, devour or die. That's the one problem that I have to wrestle with. I have to wrestle with whether or not rivalry in the free market does not ultimately lead to concentration, corporatism, and finally totalitarianism. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
1011:Architecture has its own realm. It has a special physical relationship with life. I do not think of it primarily as either a message or a symbol, but as an envelope and background for life which goes on in and around it, a sensitive container for the rhythm of footsteps on the floor, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep. ~ Peter Zumthor, #NFDB
1012:D.: In the practice of meditation are there any signs of the nature of subjective experience or otherwise, which will indicate the aspirant's progress towards Self-Realisation
M.: The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measure to gauge the progress.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 427,#NFDB
1013:If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1014:If we think of life as a kind of Olympic games, some of life's crises are sprints. They require maximum emotional concentration for a short time. Then they are over, and life returns to normal. But other crises are distance events. They ask us to maintain our concentration over a much longer period of time, and that can be a lot harder. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
1015:Practicing meditation, we can generate the energies of mindfulness and concentration. These energies will lead us back to the insight that nothing is really born or dies. We can truly remove our fear of death. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief. Nonfear is the ultimate joy. If ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1016:Some people have a mistaken idea that all thoughts disappear through meditation and we enter a state of blankness. There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any, thoughts. But other times, we can be flooded with memories, plans or random thinking. It's important not to blame yourself. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
1017:The stars associated with the solar system, such as the planets and asteroids (and it should be remembered that the term star in Biblical usage applies to any heavenly body other than the sun and moon) would be particularly likely to be involved, in the view of the heavy concentration of angels, both bad and evil, around the planet Earth. ~ Henry M Morris, #NFDB
1018:When you begin the jhana meditation practice, you avoid anything not conducive to gaining concentration. On the cushion, you avoid the hindrances, the reactions that would pull you away from your meditation subject. Off the cushion, you practice the same skills by avoiding the thoughts, words, and deeds that perpetuate the hindrances. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
1019:Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman's well-cut suit it is not noticed. For the common people of Britain, Gestapo and concentration camps have approximately the same degree of reality as the monster of Loch Ness. Atrocity propaganda is helpless against this healthy lack of imagination. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1020:The Magician therefore represents the state of concentration without effort, i.e. the state of consciousness where the centre directing the will has “descended” (in reality it is elevated) from the brain to the rhythmic system, where the “oscillations of the mental substance” are reduced to silence and to rest, no longer hindering concentration. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1021:Concentration and relaxation are considered necessary concomitants to awareness. They are required precursors, handy tools, and beneficial byproducts. But they are not the goal. The goal is insight. Vipassana meditation is a profound religious practice aimed at nothing less than the purification and transformation of your everyday life. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
1022:Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over the dunes, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over a pond and a stand of pines. Get a life in which you pay attention to the baby as she scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1023:I hold his gaze until the chaos outside breaks my concentration. Outside, where everything is falling, landing and breaking at once. Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they're swallowed into other, bigger noises. This is what it sounds like when the world ends. ~ Courtney Summers, #NFDB
1024:I sought for (and sometimes achieved) an intense concentration, a complete absorption in the worlds of mineralogy and chemistry and physics, in science – focusing on them, holding myself together in the chaos...create my own world from the neutrality and beauty of nature, so that I would not be swept into the chaos, the madness, the seduction, ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
1025:Negative beliefs and thoughts place a block on your concentration and memory. Unless you decide to take responsibility and change the thoughts that you are constantly feeding yourself, you will not be able to break through your negative conditioning. Every single thought we have is creative: it has the power to build and the power to destroy. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
1026:Those who take their own lives, especially when the quality of those lives is much less bad than those of the cancer patient or the concentration camp prisoner, fly in the face of the normal will to live. They are seen as abnormal, not merely in the statistical sense of being unusual, but of being defective, either morally or psychologically. ~ David Benatar, #NFDB
1027:Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema noted that "through the entire war, one dream never left us, not for single day : our homecoming to Holland as we remembered it. We did come home, but the memory was crushed by reality and the dream exploded. Our country lay before us unrecognizable, emaciated like a wretch from a concentration camp. We couldn't cope.... ~ Lynne Olson, #NFDB
1028:He did all this with great concentration in order to keep his thoughts at bay, in order to let them in only one at a time, having first asked them what they contained, because you can't be too careful with thoughts, some present themselves to us with a cloying air of false innocence and then, when it's too late, reveal their true wicked selves. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
1029:The sensation of the seat of a chair coming together with his drooping posteriors at last was so delicious that he rose at once and repeated the sit, lingeringly and with intense concentration. Murphy did not so often meet with these tendernesses that he could afford to treat them casually. The second sit, however, was a great disappointment. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
1030:Duhamel calls the movie “a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
1031:Art is a process of concentration. It is both the distilled essence and the commentary upon otherwise mundane activities and reflections. Musical notes must be charged, must gather more than one and the surface meaning, must reveal audible and "inaudible" connections to other notes, patterns, and meaning, either by way of affinity or contrast. ~ Russell Sherman, #NFDB
1032:God plants the talent and it grows, sustained by a spirit-given strength to endure, even in the midst of darkness. It thrives in the valleys of life and ignores the peaks. It blooms like a flower when cradled by the warmth of the sun. It remains in a hidden stairwell in a concentration camp. It grows, fed in secret, in the heart of every artist. ~ Kristy Cambron, #NFDB
1033:If concentration is made with the brain, sensations of heat and even headache ensue.
Concentration has to be made in the heart, which is cool and refreshing.
Relax and your meditation will be easy.
Keep your mind steady by gently warding off all intruding thoughts, but without strain - soon you will succeed. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Ramana II. XI,#NFDB
1034:When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1035:And so you see, dear reader, the death of my friend Sophie forced me to realize that the whole universe is one big concentration camp run by God -- the biggest Nazi of them all! So slavery in Virginia wasn't all that bad. And it was really God's fault anyway. Pretty good tragic insight there. Think I'll crank some Bellamy Brothers and get loaded! ~ William Styron, #NFDB
1036:It is not only that in man, as Julian Huxley has said, evolution becomes conscious (that is, reflectively inventive); what is more, by the gathering together and concentration of all its forces and all its strands, from being divergent it is becoming convergent. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Transformation and Continuation in Man of the Mechanism of Evolution, #NFDB
1037:The force of attention properly guided and directed towards the inner life allows us to analyse our soul and will shed light on many things. The forces of the mind resemble scattered rays; concentrate them and they illumine everything. That is the sole source of knowledge we possess. To conquer this knowledge there is only one method, concentration. ~ Vivekananda, #NFDB
1038:To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication. Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done. ~ James Dean, #NFDB
1039:Concentration of ownership in the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1040:Durant cette heure, j’avais vu à découvert le secret éternel de tout grand art et même, à vrai dire, de toute production humaine : la concentration, le rassemblement de toutes les forces, de tous les sens, la faculté de s’abstraire de soi-même, de s’abstraire du monde, qui est le propre de tous les artistes. J’avais appris quelque chose pour la vie. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1041:In using the terms play and playfulness, I do not intend to suggest any lack of seriousness; quite the contrary. Anyone who has watched children, or adults, at play will recognize that there is no contradiction between play and seriousness, and that some forms of play induce a measure of grave concentration not so readily called forth by work. ~ Richard Hofstadter, #NFDB
1042:Female castration results in concentration of her feelings upon her male companion, and her impotence in confrontations with her own kind. Because all her love is guided by the search for security, if not for her offspring then for her crippled and fearful self, she cannot expect to find it in her own kind, whom she knows to be weak and unsuitable. ~ Germaine Greer, #NFDB
1043:If a photographic plate under the center of a lens focused on the heavens is exposed for hours, it comes to reveal stars so far away that even the most powerful telescopes fail to reveal them to the naked eye. In a similar way, time and concentration allow the intellect to perceive a ray of light in the darkness of the most complex problem. ~ Santiago Ramon y Cajal, #NFDB
1044:His reading aloud was constantly improving, and histories were more like radio plays. Perdu suspected that these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with an accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
1045:Recognizing the power of our Mind and the power of our Soul, learning the art of Concentration and Love, we are learning to Live with the Flow, not against it.
It is in our nature to learn and grow. For happiness we need to learn to Love, we need to learn to Concentrate and we should keep the flow and energy of inspiration within our lives. ~ Nata a Nuit Pantovi,#NFDB
1046:Varying this, we could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of prisoners. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1047:15 à 20 % des émissions mondiales de méthane sont liées à l’élevage des animaux. Depuis deux siècles, la concentration de méthane dans l’atmosphère a plus que doublé. Les ruminants – bœufs, vaches, buffles, moutons, chèvres et chameaux – constituent l’une des sources les plus importantes de production de méthane (37 % des émissions liées à l’homme). ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
1048:Do you have nicknames for any of your other brothers?"
The youngster squinted his dark gray eyes in concentration. "Well, Tristan is Dare, and sometimes he's Tris; and Bradshaw is Shaw; and sometimes we call Andrew, Drew, but he doesn't like that very much."
"Why not?"
"He says it's a girls' name, and then Shaw calls him Drusilla. ~ Suzanne Enoch,#NFDB
1049:Right there is the usefulness of migraine, there in that imposed yoga, the concentration on the pain. For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1050:There are some surprising payoffs with only a few minutes' practice, like eliminating the loss of concentration that multitasking usually brings. Short daily mindfulness practice in beginners also improves memory, to the point that a group of students who volunteered for a study got significantly better scores on their graduate school entrance exams. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
1051:At the core of what happened with the Apaches and with AA was the concentration of power. Once people gain a right to property, be it cows or book royalties, they quickly seek out a centralized system to protect their interests. It's why we want our banks to be centralized. We want control, we want structure, we want reporting when it comes to our money. ~ Ori Brafman, #NFDB
1052:Contraction is our concentration—the activation of the muscle of the mind’s attention—while relaxation is our becoming distracted as attention is deactivated. We activate intentionally, deactivate unintentionally—inadvertently, unavoidably and repeatedly—and then reactivate the directing of attention to refocus on our chosen subject of attention. See ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
1053:Meditation is not concentration. It is simple awareness. You simply relax and watch the breathing. In that watching, nothing is excluded. The car is humming - perfectly okay, accept it. The traffic is passing - that's okay, part of life. The fellow passenger snoring by your side, accept it. Nothing is rejected. You are not to narrow down your consciousness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1054:Purity” suggests a single, uncontaminated, element or quality. “Purity of heart,” therefore, is an undeviating regard to God alone, who has become the center and focus of all one’s thoughts, words and actions. Only by such purity of heart is the mind of man readied and prepared for the perfect concentration of mind, which is known as contemplation. ~ Swami Abhayananda, #NFDB
1055:The real challenge is figuring out how the United States can regain control of its future from its new oligarchy and restore its position as a prosperous, fair, well-educated nation. For if we don't, the current pattern of great concentration of wealth and power will worsen, and we may face the steady immiseration of most of the American population. ~ Charles Ferguson, #NFDB
1056:Holocaust is very much a part of present discussion all over the place. There are little plaques everywhere you go around in different neighborhoods. "This person here was prosecuted." "This person was sent to this concentration camp." "A family of Jews lived here. They took over his business." Little, very discrete, very dignified plaques are everywhere. ~ Bob Balaban, #NFDB
1057:I knew they weren’t brown. I didn’t know you were studying Light Manipulation. I’m impressed. But it takes concentration.” He leans forward slowly until his mouth is inches from my ear. My eyes flutter and I know he heard the gasp of air I took no matter how quiet it was. “You got distracted,” he whispers, then grabs his backpack from behind me and leaves. ~ Kasie West, #NFDB
1058:the bimodal philosophy of deep work. This philosophy asks that you divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. During the deep time, the bimodal worker will act monastically—seeking intense and uninterrupted concentration. During the shallow time, such focus is not prioritized. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1059:This is, I think, what holiness is:
the natural world, where every moment is full
of the passion to keep moving.
Inside every mind there’s a hermit’s cave full of light,
full of snow, full of concentration.
I’ve knelt there, and so have you,
hanging on to what you love,
to what is lovely.
Mary Oliver, At the Lake ~ Mary Oliver,#NFDB
1060:All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. It ~ E B White, #NFDB
1061:Prayer is the highest form, the supreme act of the Creative Imagination. ... For prayer is not a request for something: it is the expression of a mode of being, a means of existing and of causing to exist, ... The organ of Prayer is the heart, the psychospiritual organ, with its concentration of energy, its himma. ... Prayer is a "creator" of vision, ... . ~ Henry Corbin, #NFDB
1062:Voluntary simplicity is at once joyous and altruistic. Joyous because it is not permanently plagued by the hunger for “more”; altruistic because it does not encourage the disproportionate concentration of resources in the hands of a few, resources which—were they to be spread evenly—would significantly improve the lives of those deprived of basic needs. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
1063:From the point of view of action (physical action), it is the will: you must work and build up an unshakable will. From the intellectual point of view, you must work and build up a power of concentration which nothing can shake. And if you have both, concentration and will, you will be a genius and nothing will resist you.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, [T4],#NFDB
1064:Let's take my truck," Jim said as he hit the gravel. "Less noise."
And it has a radio, right?" With tragic concentration Adrian started warming up his voice, sounding like a moose being backstroked by a chesse grater.
Jim shook his head at Eddie as the doors opened "How can you stand that racket?"
Selective deafness"
Teach me,master. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
1065:Damn it. What are we exactly calling a 'masculine problem'? Did he have trouble running the flag up? Or did it fall to half staff?
"Do we have to speak about this metaphorically or-"
"Yes," Leo said firmly.
"All right. He..." Poppy frowned in concentration as she searched for the right words, "... left me while the flag was still flying. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1066:For concentration does indeed unlock all doors; it lies at the heart of every practice as it is of the essence of all theory; and almost all the various rules and regulations are aimed at securing adeptship in this matter. All the subsidiary work—awareness, one-pointedness, mindfulness and the rest—is intended to train you to this. ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, #NFDB
1067:To concentrate is not to meditate, even though that is what most of you do, calling it meditation. And if concentration is not meditation, then what is? Surely, meditation is to understand every thought that comes into being, and not to dwell upon one particular thought; it is to invite all thoughts so that you understand the whole process of thinking. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1068:The Principle of Least Resistance, protected from scrutiny by the metric black hole, supports work cultures that save us from the short-term discomfort of concentration and planning, at the expense of long-term satisfaction and the production of real value. By doing so, this principle drives us toward shallow work in an economy that increasingly rewards depth. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1069:There will be a competition among critics for the best Paris Hilton insult. Here's my first: Her attention span is so short that she can't even maintain her concentration while running away from a psycho... Maybe the ultimate insult is that she makes her co-star Elisha Cuthbert seem, by comparison, the sexiest and most interesting actress in modern cinema. ~ David Edelstein, #NFDB
1070:wealth and power are also often disasters, with casualties and wreckage. Maybe what often gets called wealth in booms should mostly be imagined as impoverishment of the majority who don’t become wealthy and often become displaced or priced out locally, served up with the collateral damage from the concentration of power, resources, and the control of place. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1071:We've had days of unrest here. The situation is no better than it was a week ago, even if there are no 'incidents' to report. The state of siege continues without interruption. Curfew begins at seven P.M. One might think this would be conducive to work, but the necessary atmosphere of concentration and peace is missing. So we all sit sunk in our armchairs. ~ Gershom Scholem, #NFDB
1072:The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1073:Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
1074:How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? No, there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to him; a constant looking to him for grace. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
1075:It is one of the sad facts of biomedical science that the road to scientific progress is littered with the bodies of both humans and animals. The modern era of human experimentation began with the Nazis. Doctors and scientists performed horrific experiments on people held in concentration camps, and all of this was justified in the name of scientific progress. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
1076:Meditation consists of generating three kinds of energy: mindfulness, concentration, and insight. These three energies give us power to nourish happiness and take care of our suffering. Suffering may be there. But with the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we can embrace and take care of that suffering and nourish happiness at the same time. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1077:Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1078:Parents who want a fresh point of view on their furniture are advised to drop down on all fours and accompany the nine or ten month old on his rounds. It is probably many years since you last studied the underside of a dining room chair. The ten month old will study this marvel with as much concentration and reverence as a tourist in the Cathedral of Chartres. ~ Selma Fraiberg, #NFDB
1079:The inhabitants of the highest order, those who have been bred to contain the greatest concentration of the old ones’ ‘pure’ blood, they build the machine, and as their home planets breathe their last gasps, the chosen ones leave behind the corpse of their mothers. They spread out through the universe like a virus, scouting new and suitable targets for exploitation. ~ J D Horn, #NFDB
1080:When you think about it, going to the movies is bizarre. Hundreds of strangers sit in a blackened room, elbow to elbow, for two or more hours. They don't go to the toilet or get a smoke. Instead, they stare wide-eye at a screen, investing more uninterrupted concentration than they give to work, paying money to suffer emotions they'd do anything to avoid in life. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
1081:[L]ove for a particular "object" is only the actualization and concentration of lingering love with regard to one person; it is not, as the idea of romantic love would have it, that there is only the one person in the world whom one can love, that it is the great chance of one's life to find that person, and that love for him results in withdrawal from all others. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1082:Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1083:Never underestimate a well-dressed bimbo. The real thinkers of the world aren’t the best dressed. Staying on top of the latestfashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy, and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that—ask yourself what they’re running from. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
1084:the first six months, try only to build up your power of concentration, to create an inner calmness and serene joy. You will shake off anxiety, enjoy total rest, and quiet your mind. You will be refreshed and gain a broader, clearer view of things, and deepen and strengthen the love in yourself. And you will be able to respond more helpfully to all around you. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1085:We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. In stating this opinion, we define risk, using dictionary terms, as “the possibility of loss or injury. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1086:Anyone deserves the West who arrives with fresh energy to break up the deadly, antiseptic boredom of its civilization, prepared to undergo the quarantine that we prescribe for immigrants. We do not realize that our whole life has become a quarantine, and that all our countries have become barracks and concentration camps, admittedly with all the modern conveniences. ~ Joseph Roth, #NFDB
1087:Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma. ~ Sven Birkerts, #NFDB
1088:The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy. ~ Alvin Toffler, #NFDB
1089:When it comes to deep work, in other words, consider the use of collaboration when appropriate, as it can push your results to a new level. At the same time, don’t lionize this quest for interaction and positive randomness to the point where it crowds out the unbroken concentration ultimately required to wring something useful out of the swirl of ideas all around us. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1090:Consider why Germany, fighting a war on two fronts, desperate for fuel and materiel of every sort, would bother to load millions of Jews on railroad cars and transport them hundreds, even thousands, of miles to concentration camps. Camps built specifically to house them, where they would be fed, clothed, even tattooed so they could be inventoried...just to kill them. ~ Edgar Steele, #NFDB
1091:The doctrine of Original sin, which is contained in the story of Genesis – one of the most beautiful concentrated metaphors in existence – is about the way we human beings fall from treating each other as subjects to treating each other as objects. Love, respect and forgiveness come from that. When we treat each other as objects, then we get the concentration camps. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1092:Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class structure in stone by dividing children into classes and setting them against one another; and has been midwife to an alarming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a fraction of the national community. ~ John Taylor Gatto, #NFDB
1093:What most people call power Buddhists call cravings. The five cravings are for wealth, fame, sex, fancy food, and lots of sleep. In Buddhism, we speak of the five true powers, five kinds of energy. The five powers are faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. The five powers are the foundation of real happiness; they are based on concrete practices ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1094:Distraction and diversion. It was more than Luke had dared hope for. He planned to make a move no matter what—he had to—come what may at whatever cost to himself. Then Cal and Jed had blundered along, scared witless and thinking only of getting off the street before the shooting started. Their timely interruption broke the concentration of Cort and Devon Randle. ~ William W Johnstone, #NFDB
1095:Images, however sacred they may be, retain the attention outside, whereas at the time of prayer the attention must be within -- in the heart. The concentration of attention in the heart -- this is the starting point of prayer. [2430.jpg] -- from For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, by Roger Housden
~ Theophan the Recluse, Images, however sacred
,#NFDB
1096:N. S. Khrushchev established his supremacy in the U.S.S.R. after post-Stalinist alarums and excursions (1958-64). This admirable rough diamond, a believer in reform and peaceful coexistence, who incidentally emptied Stalin's concentration camps, dominated the international scene in the next few years. He was also perhaps the only peasant boy ever to rule a major state ~ Eric Hobsbawm, #NFDB
1097:They could not see the sprawling Sachsenhausen concentration camp under construction that summer just north of Berlin, where before long more than two hundred thousand Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, and eventually Soviet prisoners of war, Polish civilians, and Czech university students would be held, and where tens of thousands of them would die. ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
1098:But he couldn't feel self-pity in the face of the memorial. He hadn't lost nearly enough as these children, who'd lost their homeland and, in many cases,their whole families. Perhaps they had gained something, too, though. They had at least escaped the concentration camps, been taken in by good, caring families, and had grown up to live their lives in relative freedom. ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
1099:You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1100:In this atmosphere of general discouragement, it is tempting to attack something that is sufficiently linked to the powers-that-be so as not to appear very sympathetic, but sufficiently weak to be a more-or-less accessible target (since the concentration of power and money are beyond reach). Science fulfills these conditions, and this partly explains the attacks against it. ~ Alan Sokal, #NFDB
1101:When he sees little kids sitting in the backseat of cars, in those little car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver's seat. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1102:The right kind of practice is not a matter of hours. Practice should represent the utmost concentration of brain. It is better to play with concentration for two hours than to practice eight without. I should say that four hours would be a good maximum practice time-I never ask more of my pupils-and that during each minute of the time the brain be as active as the fingers. ~ Leopold Auer, #NFDB
1103:Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something which is good and right, but which doesn't come naturally. And then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what's required automatically. Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices become second nature. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
1104:With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence ... the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is. Even though everything seems inexpressible, there remains the need to express. A child needs to make a sand castle even though it makes no sense. In old age, with only a few grains of sand, one has the greatest possibility. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
1105:He leaned towards the young man, his eyes, mouth and face all round in concentration. ‘“There was a banned crow,”’ he intoned sonorously. ‘“There was a cold day.” Not bad, eh? I learned those on the boat. Sounds like perfect Urdu, I’m told.’ He paused and frowned. ‘The devil of it is remembering which one means, “close the door,” and which one will get someone to open it. ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
1106:When you give us a subject for meditation, what should we do about it? Keep thinking of it?
Keep your thought focused upon it in a concentrated way.
And when no subject is given, is it enough to concentrate on your Presence in the heart-centre? Should we avoid a formulated prayer?
Yes, concentration on the Presence is enough.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
1107:When a one-dimensional, totalizing worldview gains political power, those who disagree will be marginalized, oppressed, left out, silenced, dominated, co-opted, controlled, and coerced. They will be stigmatized as different, perceived as “the other,” locked up in concentration camps. All must bow to the state-enforced idol—or be burned in the fiery furnace of oppression. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1108:The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced six-cent-mihaly) has done more than anyone else to study this state of effortless attending, and the name he proposed for it, flow, has become part of the language. People who experience flow describe it as “a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems, ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1109:Nothing more enhances authority than silence. It is the crowning virtue of the strong, the refuge of the weak, the modesty of the proud, the pride of the humble, the prudence of the wise, and the sense of fools. To speak is to . . . dissipate one's strength; whereas what action demands is concentration. Silence is a necessary preliminary to the ordering of one's thoughts. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
1110:He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the backseat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1111:It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1112:If writing with a goal - whether it be evangelistic, apologetic, or didactic - implies propaganda, then all recorded history is propaganda. . . a work shouldn't be dismissed simply because of the strong convictions of the writer. Should we discount the facticity or reliability of the accounts of Nazi concentration camp survivors simply because they passionately recount their story? ~ Paul Copan, #NFDB
1113:Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. ~ Anonymous, The Upanishads, #NFDB
1114:We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1115:I don't think I would use a gun, but who knows what a person would do in certain circumstances? My instincts are that I don't see the point of using violence to oppose violence, but many people would and the Brotherhood know that. For this reason they want an unarmed population. Adolph Hitler introduced gun laws shortly before he began to transport people to his concentration camps. ~ David Icke, #NFDB
1116:My narcotic was what had got me through the war; it was an ability to let my emotions be stirred by only one thing - my love for Helga. This concentration of my emotions on so small an area had begun as a young lover's happy illusion, had developed into a device to keep me from going insane during the war, and had finally become the permanent axis about which my thoughts revolved ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1117:The hands of Hitler were filthy, but those of the United States were not clean. Our government had accepted, was still accepting, the subordination of black people in what we claimed was a democratic society. Our government threw Japanese families into concentration camps on the racist supposition that anyone Japanese—even if born in this country—could not be allowed to remain free. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
1118:We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1119:When one is rising, standing, walking, doing something, stopping, one should constantly concentrate one's mind on the act and the doing of it, not one ones' relation to the act or its character or value... One should simply practice concentration of the mind on the act itself, understanding it to be an expedient means for attaining tranquility of mind, realization, insight, and wisdom. ~ Asvaghosa, #NFDB
1120:The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1121:This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. ~ Jacob Bronowski, #NFDB
1122:Coping with any death is traumatic; suicide compounds the anguish because we are forced to deal with two traumatic events at the same time. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the level of stress resulting from the suicide of a loved one is ranked as catastrophic–equivalent to that of a concentration camp experience. ~ Carla Fine, #NFDB
1123:There is a name for the tsunami wave of extermination: the Holocene extinction event. There's no asteroid this time, only human behavior, behavior that we could choose to stop. Adolph Eichman's excuse was that no one told him that the concentration camps were wrong. We've all seen the pictures of the drowning polar bears. Are we so ethically numb that we need to be told this is wrong? ~ Lierre Keith, #NFDB
1124:Take Action Now! 1. Identify your self-limiting beliefs. 2. Question these beliefs and ask yourself: “Is it I can’t improve my concentration and memory or is it I won’t make the time to improve my concentration and memory?” 3. What else do you believe about your mind and your potential? 4. Memorize this quote by Jim Rohn, “If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
1125:It's important for celebrities, environmentalists and world leaders to continue to increase education and eco-awareness through the forums provided to them naturally by virtue of being famous. Take inspiration from these words of wisdom from a Nazi-era teenager and concentration camp victim: "how wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~ Anne Frank, #NFDB
1126:Mom told me that love is like a seed. You've got to plant it to grow. But that's not all. You need to water it. The sun needs to shine enough, but not too much. The roots have to take hold," he continued, narrowing his eyes in concentration. "And from there, if it pops its head above the surface, there are about a million things that could kill it, so it takes a whole lot of luck too. ~ Nicole Williams, #NFDB
1127:Realize that the Silence offers an ever available and almost unlimited opportunity for awakening the highest conception of Truth. Try to comprehend that Omnipotence itself is absolute silence; all else is change, activity, limitation. Silent thought concentration is therefore the true method of reaching, awakening and then expressing the wonderful potential power of the world within. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
1128:Mindful awareness is not presented as a passive concentration on a single, steady object, but as a refined engagement with a shifting, complex world.
Mindfulness is a skill that can be developed. It is a choice, an act, a response that springs from a quiet but curious intelligence. And it is empathetic, keenly sensitized to the peculiar texture of one’s own and others’ suffering. ~ Stephen Batchelor,#NFDB
1129:So true prayer demands that we be more passive than active; it requires more silence than words, more adoration than study, more concentration than rushing about, more faith than reason. We must understand thoroughly that true prayer is a gift from heaven to earth, the Father to his child; from the Bridegroom to the bride, from him who has to one who has not, from Everything to nothing. ~ Carlo Carretto, #NFDB
1130:Even from behind, I knew the seated man was Garth. I'd seen him in chair, saddle, and by a campfire. I'd known him running with his hounds, grooming his horses, leaning back to look at the stars from the branches of a pine tree, hunched with concentration whittling a doll, carrying Alice through a storm, and even sparring with a dragon. A woman will know a man from all sides after that. ~ Janet Lee Carey, #NFDB
1131:For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
1132:The concentration of a baby is alive wonderment. It is to that kind of organic interest, or passion, and awareness that Toni [Packer] seems to be pointing: listening that is not rote or methodical in any way. The baby has no sense yet of self-image, of itself as an object—a person—who needs to be improved, and Toni will question any meditation practice that contributes to such a picture. ~ Joan Tollifson, #NFDB
1133:women complaining about their husbands’ gas. He has never once heard a husband complain about a wife, despite this scientifically proven (by Levitt) fact: “the flatus of women has a significantly greater concentration of hydrogen sulfide and was deemed to have a significantly worse odour by both judges.” (However, this is likely balanced out by the male’s “greater volume of gas per passage.”) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1134:Prayer does not mean the mere repetition of certain words and motions with accuracy; it must also reflect the concentration of the mind. The individual must say his prayers sincerely. When he is submitting himself to God with his utterances and his body, his mind and intention should also be in submission to Him. Along with his physical obeisance, his consciousness should inhere in his prayer. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1135:Raistlin ran to Fizban’s side. “Now is the time for the casting of the fireball, Old One,” he panted. “It is?” Fizban’s face filled with delight. “Wonderful! How does it go?” “Don’t you remember!” Raistlin practically shrieked, dragging the mage behind a pillar as the slug spat another glob of burning saliva onto the floor. “I used to … let me see.” Fizban’s brow furrowed in concentration. ~ Margaret Weis, #NFDB
1136:We can now construct the following table: abandoning the hindrances—access concentration gladness (pāmojja)—focusing on the pleasant sensation rapture (pīti)—first and second jhānas bodily tranquility (passaddhakāya)—second and third jhānas happiness (sukha)—third jhāna (the pīti is gone since passaddhakāya precedes this; therefore, third jhāna only) concentration (samādhi)—fourth jhāna ~ Leigh Brasington, #NFDB
1137:What I want to avoid is staying at the same place. As I improve in skills, musical interpretations, and acting, I am able to approach each element of my programs with perfection. As Im preparing, I build momentum and confidence until I reach a peak of concentration. It is the moment that I feel my best. Then I can bring out one hundred percent, which makes me satisfied with myself. This is my goal. ~ Yuna, #NFDB
1138:And Mrs. Mackay gave me a right rollicking for not paying attention. That was my problem, she told me, I had no concentration. I was a dreamer. Plenty of ability, but no will to work. In truth, I had no will to do much of anything. I was like some sad, lovesick little puppy locked away on its own in a cupboard. It is strange, looking back, to remember how early I was afflicted by such emotions. ~ Peter May, #NFDB
1139:Cacao has the highest antioxidant concentration of any major food in the world. Cacao is thirty times higher in antioxidants than red wine, twenty times more potent in antioxidants than blueberries, three times higher than acai, and twice as much as chaga mushrooms. These antioxidants protect our cells from free radical damage and therefore contribute to our longevity and state of well-being. ~ David Wolfe, #NFDB
1140:We study better in hostile surroundings than in hospitable ones, a student is always well advised to choose a hostile place of study rather than a hospitable one, for the hospitable place will rob him of the better part of his concentration for his studies, the hostile place on the other hand will allow him total concentration, since he must concentrate on his studies to avoid despairing, ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
1141:Man carries within himself perfect power, perfect wisdom, and perfect knowledge, and if he wants to possess them, he must discover them in the depth of his being, by introspection and concentration. These divine qualities are identical at the centre, at the heart of all beings; this implies the essential unity of all, and all the consequences of solidarity and fraternity that follow from it.
~ The Mother,#NFDB
1142:Mindfulness should guide all your actions and your spiritual endeavors. Whatever you do, always apply three essential points: undertake the action with the intention of doing so for the good of all beings; execute it with perfect concentration, free of attachment to concepts of subject, object, and action; and, finally, dedicate the merit you have created to the enlightenment of all beings. ~ Dilgo Khyentse, #NFDB
1143:Our use of the phrase 'The Dark Ages' to cover the period from 600 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe. [...] From India to Spain, the brilliant civilisation of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilisation, but quite the contrary. [...] To us it seems that West-European civilisation is civilisation, but this is a narrow view. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1144:Addicts of drunkenness or other habit-forming vices cannot possibly hope to be students of concentration for the simple reason that their real will-power is too close to zero. If they cannot stop their bad habits, which they know perfectly well are harmful for them, where then would they find enough inner strength to overcome their mental apathy and laziness? ~ Mouni Sadhu, Concentration, Obstacles and Aids, #NFDB
1145:Frank tugged again with no luck. Even Hazel was trying not to laugh. Frank grimaced with concentration. Suddenly, he disappeared. On the deck where he’d been standing, a green iguana crouched next to an empty set of Chinese handcuffs. “Well done, Frank Zhang,” Leo said dryly, doing his impression of Chiron the centaur. “That is exactly how people beat Chinese handcuffs. They turn into iguanas. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1146:But still, I’d be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining wordsw from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
1147:For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of the mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson, #NFDB
1148:From the beginning of his time until the end, Bonhoeffer maintained the daily discipline of scriptural meditation and prayer he had been practicing for more than a decade. Each morning he meditated for at least half an hour on a verse of Scripture. And he interceded for his friends and relatives, and for his brothers in the Confessing Church who were on the front lines or in concentration camps. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1149:What most people call power Buddhists call cravings. The five cravings are for wealth, fame, sex, fancy food, and lots of sleep. In Buddhism, we speak of the five true powers, five kinds of energy. The five powers are faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. The five powers are the foundation of real happiness; they are based on concrete practices we will learn in this book. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1150:A fellow writer told me that Richard [Hell] once told her that the best thing about being a rock 'n roll star would be the option of constructing his environment so that he would never have to be around anyone he didn't want to know from, which not only sounds like building your own concentration camp but is just exactly what most of the declining rockstars of the Sixties have done to themselves. ~ Lester Bangs, #NFDB
1151:criminal law, a field that presented many of the same conditions and offered many of the same rewards as topflight athletics. It had the same elements of intense preparation and concentration, of confrontation in a circumscribed arena, where passion and aggression were bound by elaborate rules, of the final decision, and the emotional charge that went with it: won, lost, guilty, not guilty. ~ Robert K Tanenbaum, #NFDB
1152:Yes, she might have managed to lift the portcullis—with concentration, an unprecedented bout of luck, and the absence of a hangover. Oh, and if she were in mortal danger.
Unfortunately, her power was adrenaline-based, making it as infinite as it was uncontrollable.
“You think I use magick like mine to open a tomb?” Mari asked in a scoffing tone. Mistress of bluffing, working it here. ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB
1153:Had Beta been French, perhaps he would've been an existentialist, probably though that would not have satisfied him.
He smiled contemptuously at mental speculations, for he remembered seeing philosophers fighting over garbage in the concentration camps.
Human thought had no significance; subterfuge and self-deception were easy to decipher: all that really counted was the movement of matter. ~ Czes aw Mi osz,#NFDB
1154:In areas close to the ZPA, where there is a high concentration of this molecule, cells would respond by making a pinky. In the opposite side of the developing hand, farther from the ZPA so that the molecule was more diffused, the cells would respond by making a thumb. Cells in the middle would each respond according to the concentration of this molecule to make the second, third, and fourth fingers. ~ Neil Shubin, #NFDB
1155:To do real good physics work, you do need absolute solid lengths of time … it needs a lot of concentration … if you have a job administrating anything, you don’t have the time. So I have invented another myth for myself: that I’m irresponsible. I’m actively irresponsible. I tell everyone I don’t do anything. If anyone asks me to be on a committee for admissions, “no,” I tell them: I’m irresponsible. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1156:To the untutored sage, the concentration of population was the prolific mother of all evils, moral no less than physical. He argued that food is good, while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded than the pestilence following upon crowded and unsanitary dwellings was the loss of spiritual power inseparable from too close contact with one's fellow-men. ~ Charles Alexander Eastman, #NFDB
1157:True concentration itself is free from such contaminants. It is a state in which the mind is gathered together and thus gains power and intensity. We might use the analogy of a lens. Parallel waves of sunlight falling on a piece of paper will do no more than warm the surface. But if that same amount of light, when focused through a lens, falls on a single point, the paper bursts into flames. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
1158:Frank tugged again with no luck. Even Hazel was trying not to laugh.
Frank grimaced with concentration. Suddenly, he disappeared. On the deck where he’d been standing, a green iguana crouched next to an empty set of Chinese handcuffs.
“Well done, Frank Zhang,” Leo said dryly, doing his impression of Chiron the centaur. “That is exactly how people beat Chinese handcuffs. They turn into iguanas. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1159:In the end it is nothing other than the loving kindness with which the woman cares for her child that makes the difference. Her concern concentrates on one thing just like the Buddhist practice of concentration. She thinks of nothing but her child, which is similar to Buddhist compassion. That must be why, although she created no other causes to bring about it, she was reborn in the Brahma heaven. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
1160:And so the bulk of chicotte blows were inflicted by Africans on the bodies of other Africans. This, for the conquerors, served a further purpose. It created a class of foremen from among the conquered, like the kapos in the Nazi concentration camps and the predurki, or trusties, in the Soviet gulag. Just as terrorizing people is part of conquest, so is forcing someone else to administer the terror ~ Adam Hochschild, #NFDB
1161:By the end of his presidency—and the sixteen-year run of Dixie dominance in Washington—income inequality and the concentration of wealth in the federation had reached the highest levels in its history, exceeding even the Gilded Age and Great Depression. In 2007 the richest tenth of Americans accounted for half of all income, while the richest 1 percent had seen their share nearly triple since 1994.8 ~ Colin Woodard, #NFDB
1162:It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed...I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1163:Richard Bandler said, “Beliefs aren’t about truth. Beliefs are about believing. They are guides for our behavior.” We always defend what we believe. If you believe you have a bad memory, you will always act and think in accordance with that belief. Where your attention goes, your energy flows. If you want to improve your memory and concentration, you need to create a belief system that supports them. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
1164:It is amazing how little effort most people make to improve control of their attention. If reading a book seems too difficult, instead of sharpening concentration we tend to set it aside and instead turn on the television, which not only requires minimal attention, but in fact tends to diffuse what little it commands with choppy editing, commercial interruptions, and generally inane content. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1165:It is a good practice to write at least on page of mantra daily. Many people get better concentration by writing than by chanting. Try also to inculcate in children the habit of chanting and neatly writing the mantra. This will help to improve their handwriting, too. The book in which the mantra is written should not be thrown around; it should be carefully kept in our meditation or shrine room. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
1166:The four million enslaved bodies, at the start of the Civil War, represented an inconceivable financial interest—$75 billion in today’s dollars—and the cotton that passed through their hands represented 60 percent of the country’s exports. In 1860, the largest concentration of multimillionaires in the country could be found in the Mississippi River Valley, where the estates of large planters loomed. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
1167:Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1168:There is no harm in concentrating sometimes in the heart and sometimes above the head. But concentration in either place does not mean keeping the attention fixed on a particular spot; you have to take your station of consciousness in either place and concentrate there not on the place, but on the Divine. This can be done with eyes shut or with eyes open, according as it best suits you. [how to concentrate?]
~ SATM?,#NFDB
1169:Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?
The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,#NFDB
1170:Eating carbohydrates prompts the kidneys to hold on to salt, rather than excrete it. The body then retains extra water to keep the sodium concentration of the blood constant. So, rather than having water retention caused by taking in more sodium, which is what theoretically happens when we eat more salt, carbohydrates cause us to retain water by inhibiting the excretion of the sodium that is already there. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1171:I already know there will be happiness. For even there, next to the chimneys, in the intervals between the torments, there was something that resembled happiness. Everyone asks only about the hardships and the “atrocities,” whereas for me perhaps it is that experience which will remain the most memorable. Yes, the next time I am asked, I ought to speak about that, the happiness of the concentration camps. ~ Imre Kert sz, #NFDB
1172:The lesson is that, though we expect our best thinking time to be when we are fresh, our elastic thinking capacity may be highest when we feel “burnt out.” That’s good to know when scheduling your tasks—you could be better at generating imaginative ideas if you do that kind of thinking after working on a chore that involves a period of tedious, focused effort that strains your powers of concentration. ~ Leonard Mlodinow, #NFDB
1173:The more improbable the situation and the greater the demands made on [the climber], the more sweetly the blood flows later in release from all that tension. The possibility of danger serves merely to sharpen his awareness and control. And perhaps this is the rationale of all risky sports: You deliberately raise the ante of effort and concentration in order, as it were, to clear your mind of trivialities. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
1174:O my Brothers! love your Country. Our Country is our home, the home which God has given us, placing therein a numerous family which we love and are loved by, and with which we have a more intimate and quicker communion of feeling and thought than with others; a family which by its concentration upon a given spot, and by the homogeneous nature of its elements, is destined for a special kind of activity. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini, #NFDB
1175:They were nearly to Annie's by now, and they made the rest of the trip in silence, Peter frowning out at the road with a look of deep concentration. Emma didn't blame him; after all, she'd insulted his entire system of beliefs. But how were you every supposed to get anywhere if you always stuck to the same route? He spent so much time charting out the world that he barely had a chance to get lost in it. ~ Jennifer E Smith, #NFDB
1176:This study, which we published in 2007, provided strong evidence that the brain’s attention systems can be trained. Like any form of workout, from weight lifting to cycling to learning a second language, it causes an enduring change in the system that is engaged. In this case, that change is the ability to maintain laser-sharp concentration with less and less activity in the brain’s attention circuit. ~ Richard J Davidson, #NFDB
1177:you might institute a ban on any Internet use, or maintain a metric such as words produced per twenty-minute interval to keep your concentration honed. Without this structure, you’ll have to mentally litigate again and again what you should and should not be doing during these sessions and keep trying to assess whether you’re working sufficiently hard. These are unnecessary drains on your willpower reserves. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1178:A. The eight parts of this path are called angas. They are: 1. Right Belief (as to the law of Causation, or Karma); 2. Right Thought; 3. Right Speech; 4. Right Action; 5. Right Means of Livelihood; 6. Right Exertion; 7. Right Remembrance and Self-discipline; 8. Right Concentration of Thought. The man who keeps these angas in mind and follows them will be free from sorrow and ultimately reach salvation. ~ Henry Steel Olcott, #NFDB
1179:Many of the peculiarities attributed to creative persons are really just ways to protect the focus of concentration so that they may lose themselves in the creative process. Distractions interrupt flow, and it may take hours to recover the peace of mind one needs to get on with the work. The more ambitious the task, the longer it takes to lose oneself in it, and the easier it is to get distracted. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1180:Concentration is always the narrowing of your consciousness. The narrower it becomes, the more powerful it is. It is like a sword that cuts into any secret of nature: you have to become oblivious of everything. But this is not religion. Many people have misunderstood – not only in the West, but in the East too. They think that concentration is religion. It gives you tremendous powers, but those powers are of the mind. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1181:There is, however, an important corollary to this idea: Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction. Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you’ll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1182:I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I’d used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. Knuth ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1183:Someone should start answering,” Cain says, leaning up. “She’s got that crazy look in her eyes, and they’ll follow her lead. You’ve spent too long pissing them off.” Cain is officially my new favorite sibling. I recant that when he reaches down and scratches his balls with a firm look of concentration on his face. Man, with the effort he’s putting into that, they must really itch… I just threw up in my mouth. ~ Kristy Cunning, #NFDB
1184:Griffith calculates that, in order to keep the atmospheric concentration of CO 2 at no more than 450 ppm, humanity has to do something that is almost unimaginably difficult. We have to cut our fossil fuel use to around 3 terawatts, which means we have to produce all the rest of our power from non-fossil-fuel sources, and we have to do it in about twenty-five years or it will be too late to level off at 450 ppm. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
1185:The theory of numbers is particularly liable to the accusation that some of its problems are the wrong sort of questions to ask. I do not myself think the danger is serious; either a reasonable amount of concentration leads to new ideas or methods of obvious interest, or else one just leaves the problem alone. "Perfect numbers" certainly never did any good, but then they never did any particular harm. ~ John Edensor Littlewood, #NFDB
1186:I feel a tug in the air. The magic. When I look over, Felicity has her eyes closed in concentration, and a faint smile curves those full lips. Suddenly, Lady Denby breaks wind with an enormous crackling sound. There is no hiding the shock and horror on her face as she realizes what she's done. She breaks wind again, and several women clear their throats and look away as if they can pretend no to notice the offense. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
1187:My father learned his disinterest under the guise of masculinity. Boys don’t cry. There are whole disciplines, institutions, rubrics in our culture which serve as categories of denial.
Science is such a category. The torture and death that Heinrich Himmler found disturbing to witness became acceptable to him when it fell under this rubric. He liked to watch the scientific experiments in the concentration camps ~ Susan Griffin,#NFDB
1188:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
1189:The Noble Eight-Fold Path is the path of living in awareness. Mindfulness is the foundation. By practicing mindfulness, you can develop concentration, which enables you to attain understanding. Thanks to right concentration, you realize right awareness, thoughts, speech, action, livelihood and effort. The understanding which develops can liberate you from every shackle of suffering and give birth to true peace and joy. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1190:The geography hypothesis claims that the great divide between rich and poor countries is created by geographical differences. Many poor countries, such as those of Africa, Central America, and South Asia are between the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. Rich nations in cntrast tend to be in temperate latitudes. This geographic concentration of poverty and prosperity gives superficial appeal to the geography hypothesis. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
1191:To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1192:As I see it, our revolutionary task is to destroy phallic identity in men and masochistic non-identity in women--that is, to destroy the polar realities of men and women as we now know them so that this division of human flesh into two camps--one an armed camp and the other a concentration camp--is no longer possible. Phallic identity is real and it must be destroyed. Female masochism is real and it must be destroyed. ~ Andrea Dworkin, #NFDB
1193:At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
1194:If you prioritize properly, there is no need to multitask. It is a symptom of “task creep”—doing more to feel productive while actually accomplishing less. As stated, you should have, at most, two primary goals or tasks per day. Do them separately from start to finish without distraction. Divided attention will result in more frequent interruptions, lapses in concentration, poorer net results, and less gratification. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1195:By dawn on Sunday he had been awake for over thirty hours, tracking a crisis of ever-expanding but indeterminate scope. A large body of operational research demonstrates that human beings suffer disproportionately from fatigue-induced errors of judgment after twelve hours of concentration at work; while Gerald Lockhart had long experience of pushing himself under crisis conditions, he was about to make a fatal mistake. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
1196:Difficulties with concentration are correlated with sleep impairment, especially insomnia, arising from hypervigilance. The insomniac person is always on alert, which increases his or her stress-hormone levels and heart rate, and turns on the sympathetic nervous system. One of the roles of histamine, released in response to stress, is to ensure that you’re wide-awake. These processes make relaxation and sleep difficult. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
1197:How has all the knowledge in the world been gained but by the concentration of the powers of the mind? The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration. There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point; that is the secret. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1198:to become conscious of the psychic :::
The psychic being always has an influence on the thoughts and actions, but one is rarely conscious of it. To become conscious of the psychic being, one must want to do so, make one's mind as silent as possible, and enter deep into the heart of one's being, beyond sensations and thoughts. One must form the habit of silent concentration and descent into the depths of one's being.
~ The Mother,#NFDB
1199:We should be telling girls what they already know but rarely see affirmed: that the lives they lead inside their own self-contained bodies; the skills they attain through their own concentration and rigor, and the unique phase in their lives during which they may explore boys and eroticism at their own pace - these are magical. And they constitute the entrance point to a life cycle of a sexuality that should be held sacred. ~ Naomi Wolf, #NFDB
1200:The books say that he alone is the Yogi who, after long practice in self-concentration, has attained to this truth. The Sushumna now opens and a current which never before entered into this new passage will find its way into it, and gradually ascend to (what we call in figurative language) the different lotus centres, till at last it reaches the brain. Then the Yogi becomes conscious of what he really is, God Himself. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1201:When you really concentrate, you will get a sense of expansion. You will feel that you are larger person than you are physically, as if you become a person two or three sizes bigger than your ordinary physical self, and that you are flowing with all your being toward the object of your concentration. Whether it is a physical thing or an image that you are concentrating on, your whole invisible person will be in movement. ~ Michael Chekhov, #NFDB
1202:As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1203:As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain intensity of will, and the shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations, they are called, although to their creator they are real as any visible object is to any one else. Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete, visible, objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a MAGICIAN. ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, #NFDB
1204:Bored with obvious reality, I find my fascination in transforming it into a subjective point of view. Without touching my subject I want to come to the moment when, through pure concentration of seeing, the composed picture becomes more made than taken. Without a descriptive caption to justify its existence, it will speak for itself - less descriptive, more creative; less informative, more suggestive - less prose, more poetry. ~ Ernst Haas, #NFDB
1205:The Olympic Village wasn’t empty for long. The cottages became military barracks. With the Olympics over and his usefulness for propaganda expended, the village’s designer, Captain Fürstner, learned that he was to be cashiered from the Wehrmacht because he was a Jew. He killed himself. Less than twenty miles away, in the town of Oranienburg, the first prisoners were being hauled into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1206:No matter how much he loved someone, he still couldn't share his life with them. He needed solitary time every day to concentrate, and he couldn't stand it when someone's presence threw off his concentration. If he lived with someone he knew he would end up detesting them. Whether it was his parents, a wife, or children. He feared that above all. He wasn't afraid of loving someone. What he feared was growing to hate someone. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1207:The Zionist movement did not send any assistance, financial or otherwise, for the victims of Nazism and it did not allow any other side to provide any kind of aid. The Zionist movement concealed the information that came from within the ghetto walls and concentration camps, news that shed light on what was really happening. If it had to publish anything, it did so by questioning that information and diminishing its importance. ~ Mahmoud Abbas, #NFDB
1208:The biochemist's approach pivots on concentration: find the protein by looking where it's most likely to be concentrated, and distill it out of the mix. The geneticist's approach, in contrast, pivots on information: find the gene by search for differences in "databases" created by two closely related cells and multiply the gene in bacteria via cloning. The biochemist distills forms; the gene cloner amplifies information. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
1209:For three hours that day I forgot everything except my body and my pony’s body; the rushing, the scrambling, the splashing, struggling up the hills, sliding down them again, the tugging, the bucketing, the earth and the sky. I forgot everything, I could hardly have told you my name. That must be the great hold that hunting has over people, especially stupid people; it enforces an absolute concentration, both mental and physical. ~ Nancy Mitford, #NFDB
1210:Then the nose moved along the rubber tube up to the bottle and back again, sniffing with the utmost concentration. When I removed the needle the nose began a careful inspection of the injection site. Then a tongue appeared and began to lick the bullock’s neck methodically. I squatted back on my heels and watched. This was something more than mere curiosity; everything in the dog’s attitude suggested intense interest and concern. ~ James Herriot, #NFDB
1211:So many of my sisters are so completely unaware of who the real criminals and dogs are. They blame themselves for being hungry; they hate themselves for surviving the best way they know how, to see so much fear, doubt, hurt, and self hatred is the most painful part of being in this concentration camp. "Anyway, in spite of all, i feel a breeze behind my neck, turning to a hurricane and when i take a deep breath I can smell freedom ~ Assata Shakur, #NFDB
1212:The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions. In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1213:A recent study documented a 52 percent decline in sperm concentration and a 59 percent decline in total sperm count in men over a nearly forty-year period ending in 2011 (Levine et al. 2017). A decline in sperm count and concentration leads to a decreased probability of conception. The authors of the study speculated that increased exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment may be partly to blame for this trend. ~ Chris Kresser, #NFDB
1214:By the 1990s, Gerald Reaven at Stanford, among others, was reporting that insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia raised uric acid levels, apparently by decreasing the excretion of uric acid by the kidney. “It appears that modulation of serum uric concentration by insulin resistance is exerted at the level of the kidney,” Reaven wrote. Therefore, the more insulin-resistant an individual, the higher the serum uric acid concentration. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1215:Well, of
course one must have concentration. Courage. Self-control. That goes
without saying. But more important than these, one must have... I
don't know how to say it. One must be both a mathematician and a
poet. As though poetry were a science; or mathematics an art. One
must have an affection for proportion to play Go at all well.Ah... what Go is to philosophers
and warriors, chess is to accountants and merchants. ~ Trevanian,#NFDB
1216:Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1217:It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. … The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1218:The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is
simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. That’s a higher concentration of nerve fibers
than is found anywhere else in the male or female body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is
twice, twice, twice the number in the penis. Who needs a hand gun when you’ve got a semi-automatic? ~ Eve Ensler,#NFDB
1219:The English could bring into this tight area four hundred and forty-eight thousand soldiers, but they could not find space in their ships for the extra medicines and food needed to save emaciated women and children. They could import a hundred thousand horses for their cavalry, but not three cows for their concentration camps. Guns bigger than houses they could haul in, but no hospital equipment. It was insane; it was horrifying... ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
1220:Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g. the Divine-there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
1221:Perhaps there is no other way of reaching some understanding of being than through art? Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope. To say this is not to mystify the process of writing but to make an image out of the intense inner concentration the writer must have to cross the chasms of the aleatory and make them the word's own, as an explorer plants a flag. ~ Nadine Gordimer, #NFDB
1222:Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1223:If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
1224:I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1225:If the object of meditation were something concrete, something solid and graspable - an image or a statue or a dot on the floor or a candle - it would be much more of a concentration exercise. But the breath is very elusive; even if you wanted to give it one hundred percent attention, it would be difficult because it is so ephemeral, so light, so airy and spacious. As the object of meditation, it brings a sense of softness and gentleness. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
1226:We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
1227:My grandfather was a most gifted person, and amongst his many qualities, one of them had always particularly impressed me. While the past was a book he had read and re-read may times, the future was just one more literary work of art into which he used to pour himself with deep thought and concentration. Innumerable people since his death have told me how he used to read in the future, and this certainly was one of his very great strengths. ~ Aga Khan IV, #NFDB
1228:The upper retainable income limit would be a reflection of a consciousness shift on the planet; an awareness that the highest purpose of life is not the accumulation of the greatest wealth, but the doing of the greatest good—and a corollary awareness that, indeed, the concentration of wealth, not the sharing of it, is the largest single factor in the creation of the world’s most persistent and striking social and political dilemmas. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1229:Sadhana is the practice of Yoga.
Tapasya is the concentration of the will to get the results of sadhana and to conquer the lower nature.
Aradhana is worship of the Divine, love, self-surrender, aspiration to the Divine, calling the name, prayer.
Dhyana is inner concentration of the consciousness, meditation, going inside in Samadhi.
Dhyana, tapasya and aradhana are all parts of sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, 215 [sadhana is:],#NFDB
1230:An innate sense of approximate numerical quantities may well be embedded in our genes; but when faced with exact symbolic calculation, we lack proper resources. Our brain has to tinker with alternate circuits in order to make up for the lack of a cerebral organ specifically designed for calculation. This tinkering takes a heavy toll. Loss of speed, increased concentration, and frequent errors illuminate the shakiness of the mechanisms... ~ Stanislas Dehaene, #NFDB
1231:Deep concentration causes the energy consumption in your brain to go up by only about 1 percent. No matter what you are doing with your conscious mind, it is your unconscious that dominates your mental activity—and therefore uses up most of the energy consumed by the brain. Regardless of whether your conscious mind is idle or engaged, your unconscious mind is hard at work doing the mental equivalent of push-ups, squats, and wind sprints. O ~ Leonard Mlodinow, #NFDB
1232:The concentration of a conscious universe would be unthinkable if it did not reassemble in itself all consciousnesses as well as all the conscious; each particular consciousness remaining conscious of itself at the end of the operation, and even (this must absolutely be understood) each particular consciousness becoming still more itself and thus more clearly distinct from others the closer it gets to them. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
1233:what happens if we take a cyanide pill: it jams up the final proton pump of the respiratory chain in our mitochondria. If the respiratory pumps are impeded in this way, protons can continue to flow in through the ATP synthase for a few seconds before the proton concentration equilibrates across the membrane, and net flow ceases. It is almost as hard to define death as life, but the irrevocable collapse of membrane potential comes pretty close. So ~ Nick Lane, #NFDB
1234:I was born in the middle of the Second World War when the United States dropped their atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when millions of people were dying in concentration camps, when half the planet were colonies that belonged to empires. The word feminism didn't exist. And in my lifetime I have seen all these things improved, changed. We are more connected, more informed. We can fight against stuff together in ways we couldn't before. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
1235:Our growing addiction to the Internet is impairing precious human capacities such as memory, concentration, pattern recognition, meaning-making, and intimacy. We are becoming more restless, more impatient, more demanding, and more insatiable, even as we become more connected and creative. We are rapidly losing the ability to think long about any- thing, even those issues we care about. We flit, moving restlessly from one link to another. ~ Margaret J Wheatley, #NFDB
1236:The effects which follow too constant and intense a concentration upon evil are always disastrous. Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
1237:I remember being disappointed when Papa had shown me Caravaggio's Judith. She was completely passive while she was sawing through a man's neck. Caravaggio gave all the feeling to the man. Apparently, he couldn't imagine a woman to have a single thought. I wanted to paint her thoughts, if such a thing were possible - determination and concentration and belief in the absolute necessity of the act. The fate of her people resting on her shoulders. ~ Susan Vreeland, #NFDB
1238:Ironically, Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers today who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for American Indians in the west and according to John Toland, his biographer, “often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat” as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies (Rom people).94 ~ James W Loewen, #NFDB
1239:The total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. If any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power, inventiveness, excellence of the senses, all are subsidiary to this. ~ William James, #NFDB
1240:Meditation means thinking on one subject in a concentrated way. In concentration proper there is not a series of thoughts, but the mind is silently fixed on one object, name, idea, place etc. There are other kinds of concentration, e.g. concentrating the whole consciousness in one place, as between the eyebrows, in the heart, etc. One can also concentrate to get rid of thought altogether and remain in a complete silence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
1241:psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West, and will refer to two systems in the mind, System 1 and System 2. System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1242:Sharko looked at Henebelle out of the corner of his eye, just to his left. The light struck her face in a peculiar way, as if it darkened on contact with her skin. The cop could see her doggedness, her concentration, the dangerous flames burning in the depths of her blue irises. He knew that look only too well. Leclerc took note of Kashmareck’s findings and continued: “And Vlad Szpilman? Who was he, apart from a collector and occasional klepto? ~ Franck Thilliez, #NFDB
1243:I remember being disappointed when Papa had shown me Caravaggio's Judith. She was completely passive while she was sawing through a man's neck. Caravaggio gave all the feeling to the man. Apparently, he couldn't imagine a woman to have a single thought. I wanted to paint her thoughts, if such a thing were possible -- determination and concentration and belief in the absolute necessity of the act. The fate of her people resting on her shoulders... ~ Susan Vreeland, #NFDB
1244:I prize intensity and fear emotionalism. Consistency in high performance and production is a trademark of effective and successful organizations and those who lead them. Emotionalism destroys consistency. A leader who is ruled by emotions, whose temperament is mercurial, produces a team whose trademark is the roller coaster—ups and downs in performance; unpredictability and un-dependability in effort and concentration; one day good, the next day bad. ~ John Wooden, #NFDB
1245:And for those valuing their brainpower, low cholesterol turned out to be a startling bummer: a 2005 analysis found that folks with the lowest total cholesterol—even in “desirable” ranges up to 200 mg/dL—scored the worst on measures of verbal fluency, attention, concentration, abstract reasoning, and a composite score for multiple cognitive domains.14 Those with higher cholesterol, on the other hand, exhibited strikingly better cognitive performance. ~ Denise Minger, #NFDB
1246:This process of hardwiring cannot occur if you are constantly distracted, moving from one task to another. In such a case, the neural pathways dedicated to this skill never get established; what you learn is too tenuous to remain rooted in the brain. It is better to dedicate two or three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours of diffused concentration on it. You want to be as immediately present to what you are doing as possible. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1247:Symmetry suggests one myth, or significance: the drinking of writers coming from too much concentration, in solitude, upon feelings expressed for or even about possibly indifferent people, people who are absent or perhaps dead, or unborn; the suicide of psychiatrists coming from too much attention, in most intimate contact, concentrated upon the feelings of people toward whom one may feel indifferent, people who are certain, sooner or later, to die... ~ Robert Pinsky, #NFDB
1248:Everything in life, except her kids, made her impatient. She had tried to do a million things. She'd wanted to be a documentary filmmaker and then a painter and then a tiny-ceramic-figure maker. None of it panned out. She'd be full of enthusiasm at first, full of big ideas and energy and drive, but it would all gradually evaporate and disappear. She could never maintain the momentum or the concentration or the confidence she needed to get anything done. ~ Miriam Toews, #NFDB
1249:To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1250:cover. In her sunglasses and short sleeves, Amé seemed oblivious to the glare and heat, although several trails of sweat had stained the neck of her shirt. Maybe it wasn’t the sun. Maybe it was concentration, or mental diffusion. Ten minutes went by, apparently not registering with her. The passage of time was not a practical component in her life. Or if it was, it wasn’t high on her list of priorities. It was different for me. I had a plane to catch. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1251:He watched her retreating form, his sinful mind fixating on her small, pleasantly rounded bottom, which had a wiggle that was definitely unintentional, but quite engaging.
Apparently deeming it safe to come out again, his stallion, Petruchio, came out from hiding. The beast nudged Rothbury in the back, breaking his concentration.
"I beg your pardon," he muttered to the horse. "I do not have the attention span of a butterfly when it comes to women. ~ Olivia Parker,#NFDB
1252:If anything has kept me on track all these years, it’s being skewered to this principle of central focus. There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination. (emphasis added) As you evaluate your current leadership environment and responsibilities, what do you see that needs to be eliminated? What needs to be delegated? What would it “not be right” for you to continue doing? ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
1253:In fact, beginning meditators often think that they are able to concentrate on a single object, such as the breath, for minutes at a time, only to report after days or weeks of intensive practice that their attention is now carried away by thought every few seconds. This is actually progress. It takes a certain degree of concentration to even notice how distracted you are. Even if your life depended on it, you could not spend a full minute free of thought. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1254:There was nothing in the fourth stack. Not even a possible. A hundred and sixty gone by. Neagley slid the final forty into place. Reacher watched Klopp. One card at a time, left thumb and index finger, held easy, not near and not far. Decent vision, with his glasses on. Genuine concentration. Not a bored blank stare or an impatient sneer. A calm focus. He was interrogating the photographs, one by one, point by point. Eyes, cheek bones, mouth. Yes or no. No, ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1255:We simply should not care about politics as much as we do, because it should not be as important as it has become. The question of who serves in political office should not be as consuming as it has become, but is a consequence of the concentration of power and expectations. There is a lesson here for both sides of the political spectrum. Our politics have become too toxic and scary, in large part because our government is too large and consequential. ~ Charles J Sykes, #NFDB
1256:Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
1257:Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations... ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
1258:Not all activities are equal in this regard. Those that involve genuine concentration—studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing—are associated with a lower risk for dementia. Dancing, which requires learning new moves, is both physically and mentally challenging and requires much concentration. Less intense activities, such as bowling, babysitting, and golfing, are not associated with a reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s. (254) ~ Norman Doidge, #NFDB
1259:You do many things at once; you read, listen to the radio, talk, smoke, eat, drink. You are the consumer with the open mouth, eager and ready to swallow everything—pictures, liquor, knowledge. This lack of concentration is clearly shown in our difficulty in being alone with ourselves. To sit still, without talking, smoking, reading, drinking, is impossible for most people. They become nervous and fidgety, and must do something with their mouth or their hands. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1260:I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed—and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1261:To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1262:media aren’t just channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
1263:I suppose the thing I most would have liked to have known or been reassured about is that in the world, what counts more than talent, what counts more than energy or concentration or commitment, or anything else - is kindness. And the more in the world that you encounter kindness and cheerfulness - which is its kind of amiable uncle or aunt - the better the world always is. And all the big words: virtue, justice, truth - are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1264:Somewhere in the distance he could hear a wireless playing Judy Garland's 'Over the Rainbow.' Wolf had seen the film but, had he been the one swept up to the magical land of Oz, he would have raised an army of flying monkeys, stuck the witches in a concentration camp, razed the Emerald City to the ground and executed the wizard for communist sympathies, being a Jew, a homosexual, intellectually retarded, or all of the above.
He did like the tune, though. ~ Lavie Tidhar,#NFDB
1265:This state of mind brings a contentment he never finds with any passive form of entertainment. Books, cinema, even music can't bring him to this. Working with others is one part of it, but it's not all. This benevolent dissociation seems to require difficulty, prolonged demands on concentration and skills, pressure, problems to be solved, even danger. He feels calm, and spacious, fully qualified to exist. It's a feeling of clarified emptiness, of deep, muted joy. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
1266:How the holy and the profane mix in the light of day and at the end of life is sometimes the most beautiful thing in this world and a compassionate entry into the next. After failure and defeat, a concentration upon certain beauties, though forever lost and unretrievable, can lift the wounded past roundedness and the dying past dying, protecting them with an image, still and bright, that will ride with them on their long ride, never to fade and never to retreat. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
1267:... The sadhana of inner concentration consists in:
(1) Fixing the consciousness in the heart and concentrating there on the idea, image or name of the Divine Mother, whichever comes easiest to you.
(2) A gradual and progressive quieting of the mind by this concentration in the heart.
(3) An aspiration for the Mother's presence in the heart and the control by her of mind, life and action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti,#NFDB
1268:Awareness means to listen to me unfocused - alert of course, not fallen asleep, but alert to these birds, their chirping, alert to the wind that passes through the trees, alert to everything that is happening. Concentration excludes much, includes little. Awareness excludes nothing, includes all. Awareness is a state of no-mind. You are, yet you are not focused. You are just a mirror reflecting all, echoing all; see the beauty of it and the silence and the stillness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1269:Because Shingon is Vajrayana, the main meditation practice involves working with visualizations, mantras, and mudra gestures. You replace your self-image with that of an archetype, you replace your usual mental talk with the mantra of that archetype, and you take on the physical and emotional body experience of that archetype through making mudras—ritual hand gestures. If your concentration is good enough, your identity briefly shifts. You become that archetype. ~ Shinzen Young, #NFDB
1270:I hate when people act like music is nothing but wild creativity," Logan said. "That's bullshit. It's also about counting and measuring and calibrating. If you do it right." He passed his hand over my MP3 player sitting on the bed between us. It was playing Mozart to help my concentration. "And if you do it really right, no one can tell how hard it is for you. You can let them believe it's magic, because that means you must be magic. You're worth worshipping. ~ Jeri Smith Ready, #NFDB
1271:I realise I'll have to acquire the ability to speak to my audience in between numbers. I've never had to do that. On the street I only focus on the keyboard settings for my next song, which takes a bit of time and a lot of concentration. So I'll have to develop that new skill, which gives me pause, because I'm afraid I'll say something stupid and disillusion people when they realise I'm an ordinary earthling - in fact, as ordinary as anyone else on this planet. ~ Susan Schneider, #NFDB
1272:Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent’s preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it’s supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1273:A personal over-concentration upon power as an end in itself is always suspect to the psychologist: he reads into it an attempt to conceal inferiority, impotence, anxiety. When this tendency is combined with inordinate ambitions, uncontrolled hostility and suspicion, and a loss of any sense of the subject's own limitations, leading to 'delusions of grandeur,' this becomes the typical syndrome of paranoia: one of the most difficult psychological states to exorcise. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
1274:In Brazil there is a thrilling sight. The River Solimoes and River Negro are two tributaries of the Amazon. These two giant rivers join at Manaus to make the Amazon River. The water in the two is different in color and they flow side by side for nearly six kilometers before they mix. I have seen this for myself on one of my teaching trips to Brazil. Mindfulness and concentration work that way in the fourth jhana. They blend together to form one mighty river. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
1275:[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?" I notice that I don't hear from them much lately. ~ Tracy Hickman, #NFDB
1276:For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery. ~ David Christian, #NFDB
1277:A room may be in darkness for thousands of years, but if a light is brought into it, in that very instant the darkness vanishes.
"So is it with sin. You cannot drive sin out of the mind any more than you can beat darkness out of a room with a stick. By concentration on delusion, indeed, you may only increase its hold on your mind. Bring in the light of God, however, through deep meditation and devotion, and the darkness will vanish as though it had never been. ~ Swami Kriyananda,#NFDB
1278:In the second row was a boy named Doon Harrow. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration, and his hands clasped tightly together. His hair looked rumpled, as if he hadn’t combed it for a while. He had dark, thick eyebrows, which made him look serious at the best of times and, when he was anxious or angry, came together to form a straight line across his forehead. His brown corduroy jacket was so old that its ridges had flattened out. ~ Jeanne DuPrau, #NFDB
1279:The advantages of developing absorption concentration are not only that it provides a stable and receptive state of mind for the practice of insight meditation. The experience of absorption is one of intense pleasure and happiness, brought about by purely mental means, which thereby automatically eclipses any pleasure arising in dependence on material objects. Thus absorption functions as a powerful antidote to sensual desires by divesting them of their former attraction. ~ An layo, #NFDB
1280:The manufacturing industry is starting to press for some kind of national healthcare. Now it's beginning to put it on the agenda. It doesn't matter if the population wants it. What 90% of the population wants would be kind of irrelevant. But if part of the concentration of corporate capital that basically runs the country - another thing we're not allowed to say but it's obvious - if part of that sector becomes in favor then the issue moves onto the political agenda. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1281:The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1282:The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth -- all save this -- come and go with us through life; again and again in riper years we experience, under a new stimulus, what we thought had been finally left behind, the authentic impulse to action, the renewal of power and its concentration on a new object; again and again a new truth is revealed to us in whose light all our previous knowledge must be rearranged. ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
1283:you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1284:Like Nazi concentration camps, labour camps in North Korea use confinement, hunger and fear to create a kind of Skinner box: a closed, closely regulated chamber in which guards assert absolute control over prisoners. Yet while Auschwitz existed for only three years, Camp 14 is a fifty-year-old Skinner box, an ongoing longitudinal experiment in repression and mind control in which guards breed prisoners whom they control, isolate and pit against each other from birth. ~ Blaine Harden, #NFDB
1285:I soon learned that thought was not free in North Korea. A free thought could get you killed if it slipped out. If you were lucky, you might get sent to some remote mountainous region to do hard labor. Or you might get sent to a concentration camp for political prisoners because you were deemed a “liberal” or a “capitalist” with “bad habits.” And bad habits needed to be stamped out. By means of a jackboot to the genitals. Or then again, you might simply be executed. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
1286:People with low pH levels age quicker for, your skin, your hair, most muscles are made from protein. pH is measured in molecular weight also known as moles per liter. An increase of one point on the pH scale represents a tenfold or one thousand percent decrease in the concentration of hydrogen ions. And a decrease of one point on the pH scale means a thousand percent increase in hydrogen ions. Therefore, a pH of six and eight is not merely two points but twentyfold change. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
1287:Strange bent over these things, with a concentration to rival Minervois's own, questioning, criticizing and proposing. Strange and the two engravers spoke French to each other. To Strange's surprize Childermass understood perfectly and even addressed one or two
questions to Minervois in his own language. Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch. ~ Susanna Clarke,#NFDB
1288:you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1289:Over a million lives were shortened by exhaustion and disease in the Soviet Gulag between 1933 and 1945—as distinct from the Soviet killing fields and the Soviet hunger regions, where some six million people died, about four million of them in the bloodlands. Ninety percent of those who entered the Gulag left it alive. Most of the people who entered German concentration camps (as opposed to the German gas chambers, death pits, and prisoner-of-war camps) also survived. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1290:So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1291:There could be an independent labor-based party, which might over time become an important force the way the Labor Party did in England. To all of these things there are plenty of barriers, in the culture and in the social and political institutions, the concentration of economic power. But these are not insuperable barriers, I think. They can be overcome. And it is urgent that this be done, because there are really incredible problems that are simply not being addressed. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1292:[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?"
I notice that I don't hear from them much lately. ~ Tracy Hickman,#NFDB
1293:How would it be," she asked them coldly as they left the classroom [Prof Binns, History subject], "if I refused to lend you my notes this year?"
"We'd fail our O.W.L.s," said Ron. "If you want that on your conscience, Hermoine..."
"Well, you'd deserve it," she snapped. "You don't even try to listen to him, do you?"
"We do try," said Ron. "We just haven't got your brains or your concentration -- you're just cleverer than we are -- is it nice to rub it in? ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
1294:The idea of watching an entire film basically from one person's perspective - and not even really from their perspective, but [it's] probably the most intimately shot film that's in any of these categories. If you're not familiar with Son of Saul, basically it's a film about a Jewish guy who's in concentration camp, but he helps dispose of the bodies after they leave the gas chamber. So, you watch the entire movie looking at Saul's face and looking at his interactions with people. ~ Bun B, #NFDB
1295:The sadhana of this Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T3],#NFDB
1296:They set off. After a few seconds the Luggage got carefully to its feet and started to follow. “Psst!” It turned carefully, little legs moving in a complicated pattern, and appeared to look up. “Is it good, being joinery?” said the tree, anxiously. “Did it hurt?” The Luggage seemed to think about this. Every brass handle, every knothole, radiated extreme concentration. Then it shrugged its lid and waddled away. The tree sighed, and shook a few dead leaves out of its twigs. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1297:What happens when children observe domestic violence, warfare, a gang murder, a school massacre? For weeks afterward there is impaired concentration and impulse control. Witnessing gun violence doubles a child’s likelihood of serious violence within the succeeding two years. And adulthood brings the usual increased risks of depression, anxiety, and aggression. Consistent with that, violent criminals are more likely than nonviolent ones to have witnessed violence as kids. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
1298:Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves. ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
1299:Countries were told they had no incentives because of social ownership. The solution was privatization and profit, profit, profit. Privatization would replace inefficient state ownership, and the profit system plus the huge defense cutbacks would let them take existing resources and an increase in consumption. Worries about distribution and competition or even concerns about democratic processes being undermined by excessive concentration of wealth could be addressed later. ~ Joseph Stiglitz, #NFDB
1300:Every single American knows about the Third Reich, a more recent and more efficient barbarism than the French Revolution. But Hitler got his playbook from Robespierre, as did all the great liberal “reformers” of the twentieth century, from Lenin to Hugo Chávez. It was the Rousseauian idea of a few select individuals exercising the “general will” that gave the world the gulag, the concentration camp, the killing fields, the reeducation camps, and corpse upon corpse, without end. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
1301:Having said that, the enchanted wanderer seemed to feel prophetic inspiration coming upon him anew and lapsed into quiet concentration, which none of his interlocutors ventured to interrupt with any new question. And what more could they have asked him? He had divulged the story of his past with all the candor of his simple soul, and his predictions remained in the hands of Him who conceals their destinies from the wise and prudent and only sometimes reveals them unto babes. ~ Nikolai Leskov, #NFDB
1302:Is hockey hard? I don't know, you tell me. We need to have the strength and power of a football player, the stamina of a marathon runner, and the concentration of a brain surgeon. But we need to put all this together while moving at high speeds on a cold and slippery surface while 5 other guys use clubs to try and kill us. Oh yeah, did I mention that this whole time we're standing on blades 1/8 of an inch thick? Is ice hockey hard? I don't know, you tell me. Next question. ~ Brendan Shanahan, #NFDB
1303:Sallust was particularly eloquent on the theme. In his other surviving essay, on a war against the North African king Jugurtha at the end of the second century BCE, he reflects on the dire consequences of the destruction of Carthage: from the greed of all sections of Roman society (‘every man for himself’), through the breakdown of consensus between rich and poor, to the concentration of power in the hands of a very few men. These all pointed to the end of the Republican system. ~ Mary Beard, #NFDB
1304:Un acte qui nous prouverait, ainsi qu'à lui-même, qu'il était réellement possible de mettre en oeuvre les principes élevés que nous avait enseignés Julian. Devoir, piété, loyauté, sacrifice. Je me rappelle son reflet dans le miroir alors qu'il levait le revolver vers sa tête. Il avait une expression de concentration extatique, presque de triomphe, celle d'un plongeur de haut vol courant à l'extrémité du tremplin : joyeux, les yeux fermés, dans l'attente du grand plongeon. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1305:Apply the blacksmith's homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1306:The distribution of salt throughout food can be explained by osmosis and diffusion, two chemical processes powered by nature’s tendency to seek equilibrium, or the balanced concentration of solutes such as minerals and sugars on either side of a semipermeable membrane (or holey cell wall). In food, the movement of water across a cell wall from the saltier side to the less salty side is called osmosis. Diffusion, on the other hand, is the often slower process of salt moving from a ~ Samin Nosrat, #NFDB
1307:The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already... begun to be warped, had been subtly manoeuvred in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result… The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1308:When he at least reached the door the handle had cease to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble, but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door. ~ Mervyn Peake, #NFDB
1309:Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has himself acquired- any problem which he has himself solved, becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much more thoroughly his than it could else be. The preliminary activity of mind which his success implies, the concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent on his triumph, conspire to register the facts in his memory in a way that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a schoolbook, can be registered. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
1310:How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? . . . We must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature! ~ Pope Benedict XVI, who visited the former concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland, on (28 May 2006), as quoted in “Why, Lord, Did You Remain Silent?”, in The Watchtower magazine (15 May 2007), #NFDB
1311:Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans had been trying to do in only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred.
... Like the Nazis, antebellum whites had known quite a bit about torture - quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn. ~ Octavia E Butler,#NFDB
1312:The postures are only the "skin" of yoga. Hidden behind them are the "flesh and blood" of breath control and mental techniques that are still more difficult to learn, as well as moral practices that require a lifetime of consistent application and that correspond to the skeletal structure of the body. The higher practices of concentration, meditation and unitive ecstasy(samadhi) are analogous to the circulatory and nervous system." Georg Feuerstein The Deeper Dimension of Yoga ~ Georg Feuerstein, #NFDB
1313:There are three key practices that can transform your suffering and allow you to truly make a home for yourself so that you have solidity and understanding to give your partner. They also lead you to great joy. They are the practices of mindfulness (smrti), concentration (samadhi), and insight (prajña). With mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we can purify our mind so that the afflictions will be lighter, we can connect more deeply with our loved ones, and we can be free. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1314:As McLuhan suggested, media aren’t just channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
1315:In Egypt the neoliberal programs have meant statistical growth, like right before the Arab Spring, Egypt was a kind of poster child for the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund:] the marvelous economic management and great reform. The only problem was for most of the population it was a kind of like a blow in the solar plexus: wages going down, benefits being eliminated, subsidized food gone and meanwhile, high concentration of wealth and a huge amount of corruption. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1316:Meditation is totally different. When you concentrate you close your mind to everything else. Meditation means just an openness, a relaxed openness. It is not concentration. While listening to me you are listening to the birds singing in the trees too. The wind passing through the trees singing its song - you are open to it too. The aeroplane passing by, or the train - you are open to it too. This is meditation - you are simply open, available, conscious, available, all doors are open. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1317:...a book provides for a distillation of our sporadic mind, a record of its most vital manifestations, a concentration of inspired moments that might originally have arisen across a multitude of years and been separated by extended stretches of bovine gazing. To meet an author whose books one has enjoyed must, in this view, necessarily be a disappointment... because such a meeting can only reveal a person as he exists within, and finds himself subject to, the limitations of time. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1318:..slowly I discerned a familiar shift in my concentration. That compulsion that prohibits me from completely surrendering to a work of art, drawing me from the halls of a favored museum to my own drafting table. Pressing me to close Songs of Innocence in order to experience, as Blake, a glimpse of the divine that may also become a poem.
That is the decisive power of a singular work:a call to action. And I, time and again, am overcome with the hubris to believe I can answer that call ~ Patti Smith,#NFDB
1319:We pick up the problem again at the point at which the realisation of the confluence of human thoughts had already led us. Being a collective reality, and therefore sui generis, mankind can only be understood to the extent that, leaving behind its body of tangible constructions, we try to determine the particular type of conscious synthesis emerging from its laborious and industrious concentration. It is in the last resort only definable as a mind. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
1320:Johann Clement watched the blows fall. First there had been wild talk and then printed accusations and insinuations. Then came a boycott of Jewish business and professional people, then the public humiliations: beatings and beard pullings. Then came the night terror of the Brown Shirts. Then came the concentration camps. Gestapo, SS, SD, KRIPO, RSHA. Soon every family in Germany was under Nazi scrutiny, and the grip of tyranny tightened until the last croak of defiance strangled and died. ~ Leon Uris, #NFDB
1321:Your camouflage and your world is created by conscious focusing and unconscious concentration. Only by turning your head away for a moment can you see what is beneath the seemingly solid pattern. By plunging into our ocean of value climate you can dive beneath your camouflage system and look up to see it, relatively foundationless, floating above you, moved, formed and directed by the shifting illusions caused by the wind of will, and the force of subconscious concentration and demand. ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
1322:But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul. ~ Andre Dubus, #NFDB
1323:concentration on children at areas other than Burj Khalifa or Mercato mall could be also an effective tool to have other type of audience, such as traditional shops, beaches, and desert tourism areas, where it reflects how people are having great times at unique places only available in this city, showing their happiness of what they are having from services in such areas, revealing the systems theory of choosing the audience affecting the campaign positively for the environment Dubai has. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1324:...slowly I discerned a familiar shift in my concentration. That compulsion that prohibits me from completely surrendering to a work of art, drawing me from the halls of a favored museum to my own drafting table. Pressing me to close Songs of Innocence in order to experience, as blake, a glimpse of the divine that may also become a poem.
That is the decisive power of a singular work:a call to action. And I, time and again, am overcome with the hubris to believe I can answer that call. ~ Patti Smith,#NFDB
1325:The 1970s were the height of social mobility. College was accessible. My grandfather was a poor immigrant who went to a public school in Ohio, and my father went to Harvard. That wasn't unusual. There was a feeling that anything was possible and you didn't have to be born into money to have a successful life. Now, people don't believe in the idea that anything is possible. We have more inequality than we've had ever before and a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. ~ Lauren Greenfield, #NFDB
1326:While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
1327:Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1328:The 80s and 90s were the beginning of the hollowing out of the American little democracy. It started with Reagan and went to Bill NAFTA Clinton! Hey, but who's paying attention to history!? What's stunning is how many people think Trump is the beginning of fascism. He's the result of many, many years of corporate plunder and spineless Democrats and greedy, racist Republicans. The concentration of wealth, the monopolized media, basically a march toward a fractured Republic. We are broken! ~ Eddie Pepitone, #NFDB
1329:We fill our minds up with all kinds of conflict, and this takes us away from the moment. Have you ever had a fight with someone at home, then you get to work, and the whole day you can’t concentrate? Conflict pulls your mind in many directions; when you fill your mind with conflict, your mind will be all over the place. Conflict is the opposite of concentration. When you are peaceful, you enjoy the moment and your mind becomes like a laser beam. Peace and concentration are the same thing. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
1330:Exposures, if they are mild, in the sense of barely just a small concentration, it's mostly an irritant, particularly the peroxides, that in that smoke would irritate the skin or even irritate the lungs. So, for the most time, it could be either just a little bit of a nuisance irritant, or if you get a really big whiff of it, particularly people who have, for example, reversible airways disease, like asthma or different types of hypersensitivity diseases, you could get a serious problem. ~ Anthony S Fauci, #NFDB
1331:I would say that Futurama: Bender's Big Score requires a lot of concentration to watch. It's a very complicated time-travel story. Part of the joke on that was just that the complexity would be over the top. This one is a more straight-forward science-fiction story, I would say. Alien invasion and people running in terror, that kind of thing, with a slight twist of there being an inappropriate physical relationship with the big octopus monster. We've got a straight-up science-fiction movie. ~ David X Cohen, #NFDB
1332:Just as the education of nerve and sinew is vital to the excellent athlete and education of the mind is vital to the scholar, education of the conscience is vital to the truly proactive, highly effective person. Training and educating the conscience, however, requires even greater concentration, more balanced discipline, more consistently honest living. It requires regular feasting on inspiring literature, thinking noble thoughts and, above all, living in harmony with its still small voice. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1333:Our anger is a formation, a mental formation. Some mental formations are present all the time and are called “universal” (contact, attention, feeling, perception, and volition). Some arise only under particular circumstances (zeal, determination, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom). Some are uplifting and help us transform our suffering (wholesome, or beneficial, mental formations), and others are heavy and imprison us in our suffering (unwholesome, or unbeneficial, mental formations). ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1334:Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity. We now know from decades of research in both psychology and neuroscience that the state of mental strain that accompanies deep work is also necessary to improve your abilities. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1335:That was the reason why very few people fleeing the rise of fascism in Europe, especially in Germany, could get to the United States. And there were famous incidents like with the MS Saint Louis, which brought a lot of immigrants, mostly Jewish, from Europe. It reached Cuba, with people expecting to be admitted to the United States from there. But the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt wouldn't allow them in and they had to go back to Europe where many of them died in concentration camps. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1336:To have that concentration to act well is like lugging things up staircases in your brain. I think that’s a thing people don’t understand. It is that exhausting. If you’re doing it well, if you’re concentrating the way you need to, if your will and your concentration and emotional and imagination and emotional life are all in tune, concentrated and working together in that role, that is just like lugging weights upstairs with your head... And I don’t think that should get any easier. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman, #NFDB
1337:The reader should beware of taking the same step. It is important you be on your guard against any impression that perhaps – to be fair – this version of history hangs together in some way, or that it feels true in some unspecific poetic or, worse, spiritual way. Important because a momentary lapse of concentration in this regard and you might – without at first noticing it and with a light heart and a spring in your step – begin to walk down the road that leads straight to the lunatic asylum. ~ Jonathan Black, #NFDB
1338:While public school history courses in the United States stress the horrors of the German Nazi murder of 6 million Jews and Josef Stalin's pogroms against racial minorities and political dissidents in the Soviet Union, the facts that the U.S. Army's solution to the 'Indian Problem' was the prototype for the Nazi 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem' and that the North American Indian Reservation was the model for the twentieth century gulag and concentration camp, are conveniently overlooked. ~ Jonathan Ott, #NFDB
1339:After a series of campaign scandals involving secret donations from the newly rich industrial barons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Progressives had passed laws limiting spending in order to protect the democratic process from corruption. The laws were meant to safeguard political equality at a time of growing economic inequality. Reformers had seen the concentration of wealth in the hands of oil, steel, finance, and railroad magnates as threatening the democratic equilibrium. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
1340:Loving God "with all thy mind", means withdrawing one's attention from the senses and giving it to God, giving to Him one's whole concentration in meditation. Every seeker of God must learn to concentrate. A prayer that one utters while at the same time thinking of other things in the background of his mind is not a true prayer and is unheeded by God. Yoga teaches that in order to find the Father it is first necessary to seek Him with all one's mind with concentration that is one-pointed. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1341:Thus with continued concentration and the expenditure of enormous amounts of energy he tried to keep himself from slipping into the vast distances of his unhappiness. It was all around him. It was a darkness as impudently close as his brow. It choked him by its closeness. And what was most terrifying was its treachery. He would wake up in the morning and see the sun coming in the window, and sit up in his bed and think it was gone, and then find it there after all, behind his ears or in his heart. ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
1342:Fletcher appeared beside her. He peered at the baby.
"Can it do any tricks yet?"
"I'm still working on it. Want to hold her?"
"God, no," Fletcher said laughing. "I'd drop it."
"It's not an it, it's my baby sister. Go on, hold her. You won't make a mess of it, i swear. Only an idiot could drop a baby."
"You always say I am an idiot."
"But you're a special kind of idiot. Here."
She passed Alice into his arms, and he stood there, rigid, a look of intense concentration on his face. ~ Derek Landy,#NFDB
1343:Concentration is the magic key that opens the door to accomplishment. By concentrating our efforts upon a few major goals, our efficiency soars, our projects are completed -- we are going somewhere. By focusing our efforts to a single point, we achieve the greatest results. The first rule of success, and the one that supercedes all others, is to have energy. It is important to know how to concentrate it, how to husband it, how to focus it on important things instead of frittering it away on trivia. ~ Michael Korda, #NFDB
1344:If you watch Rafael Nadal play tennis, you can only respond with amazement and great admiration. He is an incredible athlete with so much discipline, so much concentration and someone who likes to put a lot of passion into every point. Words fail to come out of me to describe his game appropriately. I've rarely seen anyone who approaches a ball with so much attention. With such passion and joy that it makes great fun to watch him. With him, you can associate everything that makes tennis so beautiful. ~ Steffi Graf, #NFDB
1345:The problems with this concentration on God’s wrath are pluriform. First and foremost, it contradicts the experience that most of us have with God, and that a lot of us have with the Bible. Our experience of God is not of wrath, but of love. Indeed, that’s how most people experience God even before they accept the idea that Christ stands between us and God. So it seems odd to first have to convince people that God’s wrath burns against them, then to convince them that Jesus lovingly took on that wrath. ~ Tony Jones, #NFDB
1346:The 'I' casts off the illusion of the 'I' and yet remains 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-realization. The Realized do not see any paradox in it. Consider the case of the worshipper. He approaches God and prays to be absorbed in Him. He then surrenders himself in faith and by concentration. And what remains afterwards? In the place of the original 'I', self-surrender leaves a residuum of God in which the 'I' is lost. That is the highest form of devotion or surrender and the peak of detachment. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1347:You can read all the books in the world on the Nazi concentration camps and the gas chambers, and yet reality will draw upon you only when you are put through that yourself. It is a law of God, or nature, if you prefer, that pain, suffering and grief cannot be transferred or known by proxy. Neither empathy nor sympathy but experience alone is a valid currency of affliction. It alone makes you a card-holding member all allows you to join the club of the wretched of the earth. All else is counterfeit. ~ Kiran Nagarkar, #NFDB
1348:There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex behavioural patterns can be triggered by a tiny concentration of moleculas coursing through the bloodstream, and that different animals of the same species generate different amounts of these hormones, is something worth thinking about when it's time to judge such matters as free will, individual responsibility, and law and order. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1349:The rhythmic philosophy provides an interesting contrast to the bimodal philosophy. It perhaps fails to achieve the most intense levels of deep thinking sought in the daylong concentration sessions favored by the bimodalist. The trade-off, however, is that this approach works better with the reality of human nature. By supporting deep work with rock-solid routines that make sure a little bit gets done on a regular basis, the rhythmic scheduler will often log a larger total number of deep hours per year. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1350:Many years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew. And then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1351:Often people who commit terrible acts are empathic and caring in other parts of their lives. One manifestation of this, often pointed out by those who want to mock vegetarians, was the concern that many Nazis had for nonhuman animals. Hitler famously loved dogs and hated hunting, but this was nothing compared to Hermann Göring, who imposed rules restricting hunting, the shoeing of horses, and the boiling of lobsters and crabs—and mandated that those who violated these rules be sent to concentration camps! ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
1352:What a concentration of images in Pasternak's swallow's nest! And, in reality, why should we stop building and molding the world's clay about our own shelters? Mankind's nest, like his world, is never finished. And imagination helps us to continue it. A poet cannot leave such a great image as this, nor, to be more exact, can such an image leave its poet. Boris Pasternak also wrote "Man himself is mute, and it is the image that speaks. For it is obvious that the image alone can keep pace with nature. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
1353:Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it’s about letting go of control. This is meditation. Anything else is actually a form of concentration. Meditation and concentration are two different things. Concentration is a discipline; concentration is a way in which we are actually directing or guiding or controlling our experience. Meditation is letting go of control, letting go of guiding our experience in any way whatsoever. The foundation of True Meditation is that we are letting go of control. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
1354:Baseball's clock ticks inwardly and silently, and a man absorbed in a ball game is caught in a slow, green place of removal and concentration and in a tension that is screwed up slowly and ever more tightly with each pitcher's windup and with the almost imperceptible forward lean and little half-step with which the fielders accompany each pitch. Whatever the pace of the particular baseball game we are watching, whatever its outcome, it holds us in its own continuum and mercifully releases us from our own. ~ Roger Angell, #NFDB
1355:PROPYLENE GLYCOL (PG) Propylene glycol is the active ingredient in antifreeze. It is also used in makeup, toothpaste, and deodorant. Stick deodorants have a higher concentration of PG than is allowed for most industrial use! Direct contact can cause brain, liver, and kidney abnormalities. The EPA requires workers to wear protective gloves, clothing, and goggles when working with it. Yet the FDA says we can put it into our mouths even though it has determined that it is not safe to use in or on cat food!17 ~ Frank Lipman, #NFDB
1356:The moment the door closed behind him, Tessa was in Will's arms, her hands locked about his neck. "Oh, by the Angel," she said. "That was mortifying." Will slid his hands into her hair and was kissing her, kissing her eyelids and her cheeks and then her mouth, quickly but with fervor and concentration, as if nothing could be more important. "Listen to you," he said. "You said 'by the angel.' Like a Shadowhunter." He kissed the side of her mouth. "I love you. God, I love you. I waited so long to say it. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1357:As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
1358:Many years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionist, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew. And then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1359:If this is the degree of inflation planned for in advance, the real outcome is indeed likely to be such that most of those who will retire at the end of the century will be dependent on the charity of the younger generation. And ultimately not morals but the fact that the young supply the police and the army will decide the issue: concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves are likely to be the fate of an old generation whose income is entirely dependent on coercing the young. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
1360:It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of subconscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking.... Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my subconsciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with a blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what happened as if in a revelation. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1361:Meditation, as taught by the Buddha, is a means of investigating the mind by bringing the entire range of thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations into awareness. This not only makes what we would today call “the unconscious” conscious but also makes the conscious more conscious. There were already various forms of meditation widely practiced in the Buddha’s day, but they were all techniques that solely emphasized concentration. The Buddha, before his awakening, mastered each of them but still felt uneasy. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
1362:the light of consciousness back onto itself. You’re always contemplating something, but this time you’re contemplating the source of consciousness. This is true meditation. True meditation is beyond the act of simple, one-pointed concentration. For the deepest meditation, you must not only have the ability to focus your consciousness completely on one object, you must also have the ability to make awareness itself be that object. In the highest state, the focus of consciousness is turned back to the Self. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
1363:The moment the door closed behind him, Tessa was in Will's arms, her hands locked about his neck. "Oh, by the Angel," she said. "That was mortifying."
Will slid his hands into her hair and was kissing her, kissing her eyelids and her cheeks and then her mouth, quickly but with fervor and concentration, as if nothing could be more important. "Listen to you," he said. "You said 'by the angel.' Like a Shadowhunter." He kissed the side of her mouth. "I love you. God, I love you. I waited so long to say it. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
1364:A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1365:Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves. ~ Huey Newton, #NFDB
1366:Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative. It ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1367:Yet we see, on the contrary, that many acts are most successfully carried out when they are not the objects of particularly concentrated attention, and that the mistakes occur just at the point where one is most anxious to be accurate—where a distraction of the necessary attention is therefore surely least permissible. One could then say that this is the effect of the "excitement," but we do not understand why the excitement does not intensify the concentration of attention on the goal that is so much desired. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1368:So my new, simple, and regular life began. I got up before five a.m. and went to bed before ten p.m. People are at their best at different times of day, but I’m definitely a morning person. That’s when I can focus and finish up important work I have to do. Afterward I work out or do other errands that don’t take much concentration. At the end of the day I relax and don’t do any more work. I read, listen to music, take it easy, and try to go to bed early. This is the pattern I’ve mostly followed up till today. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1369:The practice of concentration is like acquiring a lampshade to help us concentrate our mind on something. While doing sitting or walking meditation, cutting the future, cutting the past, dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration. With that power of concentration, we can look deeply into the problem. This is insight meditation.
First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature [...]. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#NFDB
1370:This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1371:To explode or to implode - said Qwfwq - that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to expand one's energies in space without restraint, or to crush them into a dense inner concentration and, by ingesting, cherish them. To steal away, to vanish; no more; to hold within oneself every gleam, every ray, deny oneself every vent, suffocating in the depths of the soul the conflicts that so idly trouble it, give them their quietus; to hide oneself, to obliterate oneself; perchance to awaken elsewhere, unchanged. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1372:Munich before we reached a small town called Dachau. Of course, I knew my closest friend was Jewish, but I only thought of him as a classmate, and we never quarrelled about anything except who should open the batting for Yorkshire. And when Ben once told me that his grandmother kept a packed suitcase by the front door, I had no idea what he was talking about. When the bus came to a halt outside the entrance of the concentration camp, we all got off in an uneasy silence and stared up at the uninviting rusty gates. I ~ Jeffrey Archer, #NFDB
1373:Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman explaining in an interview one of his less orthodox productivity strategies: To do real good physics work, you do need absolute solid lengths of time… it needs a lot of concentration… if you have a job administrating anything, you don’t have the time. So I have invented another myth for myself: that I’m irresponsible. I’m actively irresponsible. I tell everyone I don’t do anything. If anyone asks me to be on a committee for admissions, “no,” I tell them: I’m irresponsible. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1374:The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals; between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard. [WOLVERHAMPTON, 23 JULY 1949] ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1375:As an inmate of a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom heard a commotion, and saw a short distance away a prison guard mercilessly beating a female prisoner. “What can we do for these people?” Corrie whispered. “Show them that love is greater,” Betsie replied. In that moment, Corrie realized her sister’s focus was on the prison guard, not the victim she was watching. Betsie saw the world through a different lens. She considered the actions of greatest moral gravity to be the ones we originate, not the ones we suffer. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
1376:Creative people have to be fundamentally egoistic. This may sound pompous, but it happens to be the truth. People who live their lives watching what goes on around them, trying not to make waves, and looking for the easy compromise are not going to be able to do creative work, whatever their field. To build something where there was nothing requires deep individual concentration, and in most cases that kind of concentration occurs in a place unrelated to cooperation with others, a place we might even call dämonisch. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1377:I am not speaking of incompetent hands,” said he. “We are speaking of this concentration which has come about and the power it brings with it getting into the hands of very ambitious men, perhaps not overscrupulous. You see a peril in that, do you not?” “Yes,” said Baker. “So that the safety, if you think there is safety in the situation, really lies in the personnel of the men?” “Very much.” “Do you think that is a comfortable situation for a great country to be in?” Very slowly, Baker replied, “Not entirely. ~ Frederick Lewis Allen, #NFDB
1378:Again I linger over the names. Crème de cassis. Three nut cluster. I select a dark nugget from a tray marked Eastern Journey. Crystallized ginger in a hard sugar shell, releasing a mouthful of liqueur like a concentration of spices, a breath of aromatic air where sandalwood and cinnamon and lime vie for attention with cedar and allspice... I take another, from a tray marked Pêche au miel millefleurs. A slice of peach steeped in honey and eau-de-vie, a crystallized peach sliver on the chocolate lid. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
1379:A Buddha is not a man of concentration, he is a man of awareness. He has not been trying to narrow down his consciousness; on the contrary, he has been trying to drop all barriers so that he becomes totally available to existence. Watch... existence is simultaneous. I am speaking here and the traffic noise is simultaneous. The train, the birds the wind blowing through the trees - in this moment the whole of existence converges. You listening to me, I speaking to you, and millions of things going on - it is tremendously rich. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1380:Because of … this concentration of all that is universal and real in one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing to the imagination; whereas the idea of humanity has little power over the feelings, because humanity is only an abstraction; … God is … a subject; … the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite extension of the species as an all-comprehending unity. But God is only man's intuition of his own nature; thus the Christians … deify the human individual, make him the absolute being. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1381:...America didn't have to fight scarcity and we all felt guilty before people who still had to struggle for bread and freedom in the old way ... We weren't starving, we weren't bugged by the police, locked up in madhouses for our ideas, arrested, deported, slave laborers sent to die in concentration camps. We were spared the holocausts and nights of terror. With our advantages we should be formulating the new basic questions for mankind. But instead we sleep. Just sleep and sleep, and eat and play and fuss and sleep again. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
1382:We owe our liberation to chemistry," he went on. "For all perception is but a change in the concentration of hydrogen ions on the surface of the brain cells. Seeing me, you actually experience a disturbance in the sodium-potassium equilibrium across your neuron membranes. So all we have to
do is send a few well-chosen molecules down into those cortical mitochondria, activate the right neurohumoral-synaptic transmission effector sites, and your fondest dreams come true. But you know
all this," he concluded, subdued. ~ Stanis aw Lem,#NFDB
1383:One foot after another; he tried to keep his mind clear. But a thought broke his concentration- Sophia. Once he left London, he would never be able to see her again. Nick did not identify his feelings for her as love, because he knew himself to be incapable of that emotion. But he was conscious of a rip in his soul, a sense that to leave her for good would mean the loss of the fragment of decency he still possessed. She was the only person on earth who still cared for him, who would continue to care, no matter what he did. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
1384:The man, who shuts himself up from all men, however high spiritually he may be, will not be free in Malakut, in the higher sphere. He will have a wall around him, keeping away the jinns and even the angels of the angelic heavens; and so his journey will be exclusive. It is therefore that Sufism does not only teach concentration and meditation, which help one to make one-sided progress, but the love of God which is expansion; the opening of the heart of all beings, which is the way of Christ and the sign of the cross. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1385:But I must work on in full calmness and serenity... The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feeling. So this work is the aim-and through concentration upon that one idea, everything one does is simplified. Now the work goes slowly-a reason the more to lose no time. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
1386:CUSTOMER: Hi, I just wanted to ask: did Anne Frank ever write a sequel?
BOOKSELLER: ........
CUSTOMER: I really enjoyed her first book.
BOOKSELLER: Her diary?
CUSTOMER: Yes, the diary.
BOOKSELLER: Her diary wasn’t fictional.
CUSTOMER: Really?
BOOKSELLER: Yes... She really dies at the end – that’s why the diary finishes. She was taken to a concentration camp.
CUSTOMER: Oh... that’s terrible.
BOOKSELLER: Yes, it was awful -
CUSTOMER: I mean, it’s such a shame, you know? She was such a good writer. ~ Jen Campbell,#NFDB
1387:Don’t cry, my sweet,” he entreated. “I cannot bear to see you distressed.”
“Then go away,” she begged. “Go away and leave me alone.”
His brows came together in a troubled frown. “For the life of me, my love, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” She faced him with the question.
His gaze dropped and he stared at the floor in thoughtful concentration for a long moment. When he looked at her again, his gaze was direct and unflinching.
“Because I have fallen in love with you.”
-Christopher & Erienne ~ Kathleen E Woodiwiss,#NFDB
1388:Shirley Jackson’s work and its nature and purpose have been very little understood. Her fierce visions of dissociation and madness, of alienation and withdrawal, of cruelty and terror, have been taken to be personal, even neurotic, fantasies. Quite the reverse: they are a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb. She was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned “The Lottery,” and she felt that they at least understood the story. ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
1389:Creative people have to be fundamentally egoistic. This may sound pompous, but it happens to be the truth. People who live their lives watching what goes on around them, trying not to make waves, and looking for the easy compromise are not going to be able to do creative work, whatever their field. To build something where there was nothing requires deep individual concentration, and in most cases that kind of concentration occurs in a place unrelated to cooperation with others, a place we might even call dämonisch. Still, ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1390:Many times, she wanted to ask her papa if he might teach her to play, but somehow, something always stopped her. Perhaps an unknown intuition told her that she would never be able to play it like Hans Hubermann. Surely, not even the world's greatest accordionists could compare. They could never be equal to the casual concentration on Papa's face. Or there wouldn't be a paintwork-traded cigarette slouched on the player's lips. And they could never make a small mistake with a three-note laugh of hindsight. Not the way he could. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1391:I don't belong to a church or political party or a group of any kind. I feel that Amnesty International is the most civilized organization in history. Its currency is the written word. Its weapon is the letter; that's why I am a member. I believe in its non-violence; I believe in its effectiveness. Its dignity and its sense of commitment. Its focus on individuals and the concentration and tenacity with which they defend those imprisoned for their ideas has earned it the cautious respect of repressive governments throughout the world. ~ Sting, #NFDB
1392:Praise, help, or even a look, may be enough to interrupt him, or destroy the activity. It seems a strange thing to say, but this can happen even if the child merely becomes aware of being watched. After all, we too sometimes feel unable to go on working if someone comes to see what we are doing. The great principle which brings success to the teacher is this: as soon as concentration has begun, act as if the child does not exist. Naturally, one can see what he is doing with a quick glance, but without his being aware of it. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
1393:Look, my soul, at the way one human being tries to inflict as much pain on another as possible; look at these people plotting to bring harm to their fellows; look at these parents molesting their children; look at this landowner exploiting his workers; look at the violated women, the misused men, the abandoned children. Look, my soul, at the world; see the concentration camps, the prisons, the nursing homes, the hospitals, and hear the cries of the poor. This grieving is praying. There are so few mourners left in this world. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1394:Many years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionist, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.
And then they came for me -
and there was no one left to speak for me. ~ Eric Metaxas,#NFDB
1395:a result of this creeping public fatalism, we now have depressingly low levels of civic participation, knowledge, engagement, and awareness. Political life has been subcontracted out to a band of professionals—money people, message people, outreach people. The rest of us are made to feel like amateurs, as in suckers. We become demotivated to learn more about how things work. And this pervasive power illiteracy becomes, in a vicious cycle, both a cause and a consequence of the concentration of opportunity, wealth, and clout in society. ~ Eric Liu, #NFDB
1396:Huxley was haunted by the fear that this 'Final Revolution', brought about by the combined effect of drugs and the mass media, could create 'within a generation or so for entire societies a sort of painless concentration camp of the mind, in which people will have lost their liberties in the enjoyment of a dictatorship without tears'. In other words, Huxley advocated the use of mescaline and other psychedelic drugs, to guide us along the eightfold path towards cosmic consciousness, mystic enlightenment, and artistic creativity, ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1397:The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participating in it. Anyone can "drive" on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do, hesitating here and resisting there, losing the rhythm of the lane change, thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participation requires total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1398:In Edmund Gosse, Agnes Smedley, Geoffrey Wolff, we have a set of memoirists whose work records a steadily changing idea of the emergent self. But for each of them a flash of insight illuminating that idea grew out of the struggle to clarify one's own formative experience; and in each case the strength and beauty of the writing lie in the power of concentration with which this insight is pursued, and made to become the the writer's organizing principle. That principle at work is what makes a memoir literature rather than testament. ~ Vivian Gornick, #NFDB
1399:What we see in the period 1870–1914 is at best a stabilization of inequality at an extremely high level, and in certain respects an endless inegalitarian spiral, marked in particular by increasing concentration of wealth. It is quite difficult to say where this trajectory would have led without the major economic and political shocks initiated by the war. With the aid of historical analysis and a little perspective, we can now see those shocks as the only forces since the Industrial Revolution powerful enough to reduce inequality. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1400:citing a prayer Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in April 1945 for his co-prisoners in the concentration camp of Flossenburg before all of them were hanged. In the dawn of the day I call to Thee Help me pray Direct my thoughts to Thee I cannot manage on my own It is dark within me, but there is light in Thee I am lonely, but Thou will not leave me I am faint of heart, but know Thou will help me I am troubled, but know that in Thee is peace I am bitter, but in Thee is endurance I do not understand Thy ways But Thou understandeth them for me. ~ Gitta Sereny, #NFDB
1401:There are many causes for the increasing concentration of wealth in a shrinking elite, but let us throw one more into the mix: the ever more aggressive appropriations of the attentional commons that we have allowed to take place.
I think we need to sharpen the conceptually murky right to privacy by supplementing it with a right not to be addressed. This would apply not, of course, to those who address me face to face as individuals, but to those who never show their faces, and treat my mind as a resource to be harvested. ~ Matthew B Crawford,#NFDB
1402:If blood-sugar levels increase—say, after a meal containing carbohydrates—then more glucose is transported into the fat cells, which increases the use of this glucose for fuel, and so increases the production of glycerol phosphate. This is turn increases the conversion of fatty acids into triglycerides, so that they’re unable to escape into the bloodstream at a time when they’re not needed. Thus, elevating blood sugar serves to decrease the concentration of fatty acids in the blood, and to increase the accumulated fat in the fat cells. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1403:The proteins create a gradient within the egg. Like sugar diffusing out of a cube in a cup of coffee, they are present at high concentration on one end of the egg, and low concentration on the other. The diffusion of a chemical through a matrix of protein can even create distinct, three-dimensional patterns-like a pool of syrup ribboning into oatmeal. Specific genes are activated at the high-concentration end versus at the low-concentration end, thereby allowing the head-tail axis to be defined, or other patterns to be formed. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
1404:you visit Knuth’s website at Stanford with the intention of finding his e-mail address, you’ll instead discover the following note: I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I’d used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1405:It often takes real effort to maintain the appropriate focus, which is why it takes so much concentration to get into the proper exit lane at a complicated freeway interchange. But once you muster the appropriate focus, you can literally direct your brain to filter out the suppressive effects of distracting signals. Willfully directed attention can filter out unwanted information—another example of how directed mental force, generated by the effort of directed attention, can modulate neuronal function. When it comes to determining ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
1406:Overall, depression is considered “clinical” when symptoms are severe and include difficulty getting through a daily routine, sleeping too much or too little, disturbance of concentration, excessive negative or pessimistic thoughts, severe guilt, and an inability to connect with or be around others. Secondary symptoms include diverse aches and pains, headaches, or other uncomfortable physical symptoms. Depression can make you feel overwhelmed, anxious, worthless, and hopeless, and you might even have thoughts about ending your life. ~ Archibald D Hart, #NFDB
1407:The effects of what are now called psychedelic (mind–manifesting) chemicals differ from those of alcohol as laughter differs from rage or delight from depression. There is really no analogy between being “high” on LSD and “drunk” on bourbon. True, no one in either state should drive a car, but neither should one drive while reading a book, playing a violin, or making love. Certain creative activities and states of mind demand a concentration and devotion which are simply incompatible with piloting a death–dealing engine along a highway. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1408:instead of being aware of your thoughts, you’re aware that you’re aware of your thoughts. You have turned the light of consciousness back onto itself. You’re always contemplating something, but this time you’re contemplating the source of consciousness. This is true meditation. True meditation is beyond the act of simple, one-pointed concentration. For the deepest meditation, you must not only have the ability to focus your consciousness completely on one object, you must also have the ability to make awareness itself be that object. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
1409:Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious poetry, a little hazy in logic and philosophy, but full of hearty enthusiasm and an honorable simplicity. He is, as he expresses it, "an old and trained engineer," and is like all of the old and trained engineers I have happened to come across, a man who indemnifies himself for the superhuman or inhuman concentration required for physical science by a vague and dangerous romanticism about everything else. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1410:If he (The New York Taxi Driver) talked to me, he might lose his concentration, which would be very bad because the taxi has some kind of problem with the steering, probably dead pedestrians lodged in the mechanism, the result being that there is a delay of 8 to 10 seconds between the time the driver turns the wheel and the time the taxi actually changes direction, a handicap that the driver is compensating for by going 175 miles per hour, at which velocity we are able to remain airborne almost to the far rim of some of the smaller potholes. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
1411:It should be for satsang that we go to spiritual centers. By going there, people who are involved in the world can attain peace and concentration. The concentration gained when one goes there cannot be achieved if one sits at home. Even though the breeze blows everywhere, coolness will be felt more if we sit in the shade of a tree. In the same way, although God is all-pervading, this presence will clearly shine in certain places more than others. That is the greatness of satsang. Satsang is the best thing for spiritual advancement. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
1412:The Adventures of Dickson McCunn, Adam Bede, Eric or Little by Little, these and many others, old and new, good bad and indifferent were grist to Duggie’s mill. He found a novel by Rhoda Broughton entitled Not Wisely But Too Well and read it all through. He read an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe, and Under Two Flags and Coral Island with equal concentration. He read Little Women and Wuthering Heights. Cheyney he found difficult, for the people seemed to speak an unfamiliar language, but he struggled on manfully all the same. Needless ~ D E Stevenson, #NFDB
1413:To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1414:If our hearts and minds are not properly transformed, we are like musicians playing untuned instruments, or engineers working with broken and ill-programmed computers. The attunement of the heart is essential to the outflow of grace...We must aim at building the structures of God's kingdom but recognized that we will only create these through the transformation of our experience. Concentration on reformation without revival leads to skins without wine; concentration on revival without reformation soon loses the wine for want of skins. ~ Richard Lovelace, #NFDB
1415:Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps. Any historian, commentator or scientist who doubts that is taken to prison or gets condemned. Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true... If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe - like in Germany, Austria or other countries - to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, #NFDB
1416:Nothing can be defined or derided on the basis of its origin. The important thing is what is done with it and how far a community identifies with something that symbolizes its favourite way of dreaming, living, dancing, playing or loving. This is the positive side of the world: a constant intermingling that produces new responses to new challenges. But because of forced globalization, there's a clear trend these days towards uniformity. This trend comes largely from the ever-greater concentration of power in the hands of large media groups. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
1417:Ric Furrer is a master craftsman whose work requires him to spend most of his day in a state of depth—even a small slip in concentration can ruin dozens of hours of effort. He’s also someone who clearly finds great meaning in his profession. This connection between deep work and a good life is familiar and widely accepted when considering the world of craftsmen. “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy,” explains Matthew Crawford. And we believe him. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1418:But human memories change each time they are recalled, Jon. This is known as memory reconsolidation. It’s part of a natural updating mechanism that imbues even old memories with current information as you recall them. Thus, human memory does not so much record the past as hold knowledge likely to be useful in the future. That’s why forgetting is a human’s default state. By contrast, remembering requires a complex cascade of chemistry. Were I to increase the concentration of protein kinase C at your synapses, your memory retention would double. ~ Daniel Suarez, #NFDB
1419:Some of the biggest bores I've ever known are men who have been highly successful in business, particularly self-made heads of big companies. Before the first olive has settled into the first martini, they pour the stories of their lives into the nearest and sometimes the remotest ears capturable.... These men have indeed paid the price of success. To rise to the top of a big company often takes a totality of effort, concentration and dedication. Others, too, have to pay part of the price. Wife and children are out of mind even when in sight. ~ Malcolm Forbes, #NFDB
1420:Von Braun and his team had just launched America’s first successful satellite, Explorer I, and as far as the public was concerned, von Braun’s star was on the rise. But Army intelligence had information on von Braun that the rest of the world most definitely did not, namely, that he had been an officer with the Nazi paramilitary organization the SS during the war and that he was implicated in the deaths of thousands of slave laborers forced to build the V-2 rocket, in an underground labor-concentration camp called Nordhausen, in Nazi Germany. ~ Annie Jacobsen, #NFDB
1421:Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings, - a dialogue of man with himself, with his heart. … [I]n prayer, man speaks undisguisedly of what weighs upon him, which affects him closely; he makes his heart objective; … Concentration … is the condition of prayer; … prayer is itself concentration, - the dismissal of all distracting ideas, of all disturbing influences from without, … in order to have relation only with one's own being. Only a trusting, open, hearty, fervent prayer is said to help; but this help lies in the prayer itself. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1422:We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth -- one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1423:In my practice I use neurofeedback primarily to help with the hyperarousal, confusion, and concentration problems of people who suffer from developmental trauma. However, it has also shown good results for numerous issues and conditions that go beyond the scope of this book, including relieving tension headaches, improving cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury, reducing anxiety and panic attacks, learning to deepen meditation states, treating autism, improving seizure control, self-regulation in mood disorders, and more. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
1424:State social spending is taken to be the normal case and if ever questioned is done so only in relation to private charity; which is to say, it is generally assumed charity of some sort is necessary; the state is better suited to this than private individuals. The idea no one in present society should be dependent on any sort of charity, public or private, in present society is, of course, dismissed as utopian and, not surprisingly, often by the same sorts of folks as are “outraged” by statistics on concentration of wealth that circulate in the media. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1425:The evidence was powerful: the Allied powers—the United States, England, the Soviet Union—had not gone to war out of compassion for the victims of fascism. The United States and its allies did not make war on Japan when Japan was slaughtering the Chinese in Nanking, did not make war on Franco when he was destroying democracy in Spain, did not make war on Hitler when he was sending Jews and dissidents to concentration camps, did not even take steps during the war to save Jews from certain death. They went to war when their national power was threatened. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
1426:THIS BOOK DOES not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small torments. In other words, it will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1427:Looking out the window, Moist saw a small swarm of goblins leave the train and at first he thought, ha! Trust the buggers to run away, and then he mentally corrected himself: that was storybook thinking and with clearer eyesight and a bit of understanding he realized that the goblins were scrambling up to the delvers on the rocks and beating the shit out of them by diving into the multiple layers of dwarf clothing. The delvers discovered all too rapidly that trying to fight while a busy goblin was in your underwear was very bad for the concentration. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1428:The faster we surf across the surface of the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google gains to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Its advertising system, moreover, is explicitly designed to figure out which messages are most likely to grab our attention and then to place those messages in our field of view. Every click we make on the Web marks a break in our concentration, a bottom-up disruption of our attention—and it’s in Google’s economic interest to make sure we click as often as possible. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
1429:In South America euphemism appears to be the grisly preserve of violent power. 'Liberty' was the name of the biggest prison in Uruguay under the military dictatorship, while in Chile one of the concentration camps was called 'Dignity.' It was the self-styled 'Peace and Justice' paramilitary group in Chiapas [Mexico] that in 1997 shot 45 peasants in the back, nearly all of them women and children, as they prayed in a church. What have the souls of the south done over the past few decades to deserve quite so much liberty and dignity and peace and justice? ~ Isabel Fonseca, #NFDB
1430:I don't think poetry needs to be "easily understandable." First of all, there are often complexities of syntax, form, unfamiliar absences, etc., that require a deeper concentration than is usually demanded of us. So that, right off the bat, is a little difficult. Then there is the deeper issue of what poetry is really asking of us. I feel it is asking us to read with great, even sacred, care and attention. That, too, is difficult. It requires discipline and the creation of a temporary zone of privacy, which is inimical to our current conditions of life. ~ Matthew Zapruder, #NFDB
1431:Given the concentration of the Big 4, which accounts for 94% of public companies followed by Grant Thornton International and BDO International, 235 a mid-size accounting firm’s typical client is a mid-size or privately held company. Fortunately there are hundreds of thousands mid-size companies which are now part of the global economy. This has created a growing need for network membership. However, the rules on auditing public companies are being re-evaluated to require that auditing assignments rotate outside of the Big 4 to independent accounting firms. 236 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1432:People slip spontaneously into moments of concentration all the time—while reading a book, exercising, playing chess, or creating art. A yogi seeks to experience that same level of concentration intentionally in a practice known as dharana—the act of purposefully narrowing the mind’s focus on the breath, the sensations of the body, a mantra, or a prayer bead. This consistent and purposeful focusing of the mind while on the yoga mat or meditation cushion gives the yogi the same level of focus in life, allowing for wild creativity and unfathomable productivity. ~ Darren Main, #NFDB
1433:What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.
The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.
But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment . . .
What a soft thoughtful time.
In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color. ~ Vera Nazarian,#NFDB
1434:I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day-to-day affairs that they had no time for friend-making.... They may flatter themselves that their unrelaxing concentration on business constitutes patriotism of the highest order. They may tell themselves that the existing emergency will pass, and that they can then adopt different, more sociable, more friendly habits. [But] such a day is little likely to come for such individuals. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
1435:We are quite ready to accuse others of ‘narcissism' in particular those whom we desire, with the aim of reassuring ourselves and relating their indifference, not to the very minor interest that we hold in their eyes or even perhaps in absolute terms […] but to a kind of weakness that afflicts others. When we do this, we credit them with an excessive and pathological concentration on themselves— with a kind of illness that makes them more sick than we are and consequently incapable of breaking out of their over-protected ego and meeting us half-way as they should. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1436:As we become more skillful we also discover that concentration has its own seasons. Sometimes we sit and settle easily. At other times the conditions of mind and body are turbulent or tense. We can learn to navigate all these waters. When conditions show the mind is tight, we learn to soften and relax, to open the attention. When the mind is sleepy or flabby, we learn to sit up and focus with more energy. The Buddha compared this with the tuning of a lute, sensing when we are out of tune and gently strengthening or loosening our energy to come into balance. In ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
1437:The broad principle, which appears throughout this book, bears repeating. Healthy parenting can be boiled down to those two essential ingredients: love and control. They must operate in a system of checks and balances. Any concentration on love to the exclusion of control usually breeds disrespect and contempt. Conversely, an authoritarian and oppressive home atmosphere is deeply resented by the child who feels unloved or even hated. The objective for the toddler years is to strike a balance between mercy and justice, affection and authority, love and control. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
1438:Where you go, I will go,” Shade said, holding his wife closer. “I love you, Lily. Always.”
Shade listened to the night, focusing on the sounds around him until he could separate each sound, searching for the one he wanted—the sound of his heartbeat.
He concentrated on the speed of his pumping heart then each single beat. Gradually, he slowed his heartbeat, one beat at a time, just how he had learned to do all those years ago as a sniper. It took time and concentration on each … single … beat … before there was nothing other than complete and utter silence. ~ Jamie Begley,#NFDB
1439:Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1440:These stimuli “invoke attention modestly, allowing focused-attention mechanisms a chance to replenish.” Put another way, when walking through nature, you’re freed from having to direct your attention, as there are few challenges to navigate (like crowded street crossings), and experience enough interesting stimuli to keep your mind sufficiently occupied to avoid the need to actively aim your attention. This state allows your directed attention resources time to replenish. After fifty minutes of such replenishment, the subjects enjoyed a boost in their concentration. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1441:Through concentration we become one-pointed and through meditation we expand our consciousness into the Vast. But in contemplation we grow into the Vast itself. We have seen the Truth. We have felt the Truth. But the most important thing is to grow into the Truth and become totally one with the Truth. If we are concentrating on God, we may feel God right in front of us or besides us. When we are meditating, we are bound to feel Infinity, Eternity, Immortality within us. But when we are contemplating, we will see that we ourselves are Infinity, Eternity, Immortality. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1442:All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes—characters even—caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you. Well, it was like that. All day I had been prey to distractions. Thoughts, memories, feelings, irrelevant fragments of my own life, playing havoc with my concentration. ~ Diane Setterfield, #NFDB
1443:Remind me: who was the greater mass murderer, Stalin or Hitler? Well, Stalin is thought to have been responsible for about 50 million deaths, and Hitler for a mere 25 million. What Hitler did in his concentration camps was equalled if not exceeded in foulness by the Soviet gulags, forced starvation and pogroms. What makes the achievements of communist Russia so special and different, that you can simper around in a CCCP T-shirt, while anyone demented enough to wear anything commemorating the Third Reich would be speedily banged away under the 1986 Public Order Act? ~ Boris Johnson, #NFDB
1444:The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. This idea might sound obvious once it’s pointed out, but it represents a departure from how most people understand such matters. In my experience, it’s common to treat undistracted concentration as a habit like flossing—something that you know how to do and know is good for you, but that you’ve been neglecting due to a lack of motivation. This mind-set is appealing because it implies you can transform your working life from distracted to focused overnight if you can simply muster enough motivation. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1445:I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, living off parents, friends or the State And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine. I didn't want to work in a place where I couldn't wear my fur coat. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
1446:Police caught the guy responsible for smashing windows and painting swastikas outside Jewish businesses on Devon Avenue. He’s out on bail now, and this morning’s paper included a picture of him. What strikes me is that he has a very small mouth, smaller than a baby’s. I mean, tiny. If you wanted him to suck your thumb, you’d have to grease it up first. The article says he belongs to a skinhead group and has tattoos, which is strange, I think, because Jews in concentration camps had shaved heads and tattoos. You’d think the anti-Semites would go for a different look. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
1447:Now there is always a way out, there is always a way out through the creative will. It’s just that we have become very passive because our culture has made us so. We have been fed by television and by passive entertainment to such a degree that the idea of the creative will is almost unknown now. When the young write me, they write to me as if the place of despair in which they are has absolutely no opening. And yet today when I heard the “Soul of a Bird,” I thought that if one can escape from the concentration camp he certainly can escape from the narrowness of any life. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1448:Hitler thought highly of Himmler. He readily accepted that Himmler's ‘concentration camps’ were indispensable for the political re-education of the dissident – and indeed of the dissolute as well, because by 1935 the camps contained more than one hapless inmate whom Hitler had ordered incarcerated as a drastic cure for alcoholism or some other less savoury human failing. (‘The punishment was not ordered by the Führer to hurt you,’ Himmler wrote to one alcoholic in Dachau on May 18, 1937, ‘but to retrieve you from a path that has clearly led you and your family to ruin.’) ~ David Irving, #NFDB
1449:The source of inspiration can be any of the things:deep emotional experiences - say, romantic love or spiritual contemplation.I think such rare moments come only when you have total concentration. You are consumed in and by the music. I guess you could say that it is akin to contemplation. In order to reach this desirable state of mind you have to rise above the environment you're in at that particular time - a bad piano, glaring stage lights, or the attitude of the audience. Sometimes the inspiration of the other musicians you're playing with helps you reach this stage. ~ Dave Brubeck, #NFDB
1450:We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, brethren! Be careful, teachers! ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1451:Coffee, he insisted, has all but destroyed the plague in England. It preserves health in general and makes those who drink it hearty and fat; it helps the digestion and cures consumption and other maladies of the lung. It is wonderful for fluxes, even the bloody flux, and has been known to cure jaundice and every kind of inflammation. Besides all that, the Englishman wrote, it imparts astonishing powers of reason and concentration. In the years to come, the author said, the man who does not drink coffee may never hope to compete with the man who avails himself of its secrets. ~ David Liss, #NFDB
1452:Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary, it is excluding all thoughts, since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one's true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to removing the veil of ignorance. Concentrating the mind solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss. Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them and preventing them from straying outwards is called detachment (vairagya). Fixing them in the Self is spiritual practice (sadhana). Concentrating on the heart is the same as concentrating on the Self. Heart is another name for Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1453:Everything, Sara,” John said simply. He pulled out a book, glanced at the binding, and put it back on the shelf. “You see, focus can be a dangerous thing. Your view of the world narrows. You grow obsessed. Blinded. You see everything in terms of your obsession and nothing else. You cannot accept defeat. You cannot understand why everyone else does not share your passion. Don’t get me wrong. Concentration and focus are good and necessary. But when they slide unchecked, they can distort your perspective. In the ultimate pursuit of knowledge, you can easily become ignorant.” Sara ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1454:Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of the cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony - this is the ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
1455:What does reflect reality very well is complexity theory, which comes from physics. I'm the one pioneering the idea of bringing it to capital markets. When you look at capital markets through the lens of complexity theory, you ask "what's the scale of the system?" Scale is a fancy word for size. What measures are you using? If you look at total debt, the concentration of assets in the five largest banks, what percentage of the total assets of the five largest banks are interconnected? What you see is a very densely connected, fragile system that could collapse at any moment. ~ James Rickards, #NFDB
1456:But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors—be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important, do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances? ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1457:WHEN YOU CONTEMPLATE the big, full sunrise, the more mindful and concentrated you are, the more the beauty of the sunrise is revealed to you. Suppose you are offered a cup of tea, very fragrant, very good tea. If your mind is distracted, you cannot really enjoy the tea. You have to be mindful of the tea, you have to be concentrated on it, so the tea can reveal its fragrance and wonder to you. That is why mindfulness and concentration are such sources of happiness. That’s why a good practitioner knows how to create a moment of joy, a feeling of happiness, at any time of the day. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1458:Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too,” says Marek Halter, “because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others.” Perhaps he is right: There are abandoned children, massacred civilians, innocent people imprisoned, lonely old people, drunks in the gutter, madmen in power. But perhaps he isn’t right at all, for there are also Warriors of the Light. And Warriors of the Light never accept what is unacceptable. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1459:Kidney Stones Eating a plant-based diet to alkalinize your urine may also help prevent and treat kidney stones—those hard mineral deposits that can form in your kidneys when the concentration of certain stone-forming substances in your urine becomes so high they start to crystallize. Eventually, these crystals can grow into pebble-sized rocks that block the flow of urine, causing severe pain that tends to radiate from one side of the lower back toward the groin. Kidney stones can pass naturally (and often painfully), but some become so large that they have to be removed surgically. ~ Michael Greger, #NFDB
1460:way of the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. ... An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 78,#NFDB
1461:As a rule the only mantra used in this sadhana is that of the Mother or of my name and the Mother. The concentration in the heart and the concentration in the head can both be used - each has its own result. The first opens up the psychic being and brings bhakti, love and union with the Mother, her presence within the heart and the action of her Force in the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #NFDB
1462:I don't remember when I first heard the word Konzentrationslager, but I became aware of it long before I learned about the Holocaust. I sensed that concentration camps were sinister places, and I imagined that the people who lived there were forced to concentrate to the point of physical anguish. But I was too afraid to ask, feeling that this was something embarrassing to talk about, something that grown-ups discussed in whispers, something evoking the same unsettling feeling as the man who sometimes gave candy and balloons to my brother and me when we were playing alone in the front yard. ~ Nora Krug, #NFDB
1463:We must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected" and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1464:Vanity. It’s possible that one of the reasons you got on the path of mastery was to look good. But to learn something new of any significance, you have to be willing to look foolish. Even after years of practice, you still take pratfalls. When a Most Valuable Player candidate misjudges a ball and falls on his duff, he does it in the sight of millions. You should be willing to do it before your teacher and a few friends or fellow students. If you’re always thinking about appearances, you can never attain the state of concentration that’s necessary for effective learning and top performance. ~ George Leonard, #NFDB
1465:In striking down the existing campaign-finance laws, the courts eviscerated a century of reform. After a series of campaign scandals involving secret donations from the newly rich industrial barons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Progressives had passed laws limiting spending in order to protect the democratic process from corruption. The laws were meant to safeguard political equality at a time of growing economic inequality. Reformers had seen the concentration of wealth in the hands of oil, steel, finance, and railroad magnates as threatening the democratic equilibrium. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
1466:The Russian Revolution is a radical change in history. The abolition of private property has created a new world. You may like it or detest it, but it’s new. Hitler’s socialism was a sham to get a mob of gangsters into power. He’s frozen the German economy just as it was, smashed the labor unions, lengthened the working hours, cut the pay, and kept all the old rich crowd on top, the Krupps and Thyssens, the men who gave him the money to run for office. The big Nazis live like barons, like sultans. The concentration camps are for anybody who still wants the socialist part of National Socialism. ~ Herman Wouk, #NFDB
1467:That status of knowledge is then the aim of this path and indeed of all paths when pursued to their end, to which intellectual discrimination and conception and all concentration and psychological self-knowledge and all seeking by the heart through love and by the senses through beauty and by the will through power and works and by the soul through peace and joy are only keys, avenues, first approaches and beginnings of the ascent which we have to use and to follow till the wide and infinite levels are attained and the divine doors swing open into the infinite Light.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
1468:Being mindful of the moment doesn't mean that we give up savoring memories or setting goals. I like to quote Thich Nhat Hanh: 'To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future,' he says. 'The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
1469:The population is angry, frustrated, bitter—and for good reasons. For the past generation, policies have been initiated that have led to an extremely sharp concentration of wealth in a tiny sector of the population. In fact, the wealth distribution is very heavily weighted by, literally, the top tenth of one percent of the population, a fraction so small that they’re not even picked up on the census. You have to do statistical analysis just to detect them. And they have benefited enormously. This is mostly from the financial sector—hedge fund managers, CEOs of financial corporations, and so on. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1470:You are in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz..."
A pause. He was observing the effect his words had produced. His face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man, in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.
"Remember," he went on. "Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don't you will go straight to the chimney. Work or crematorium--the choice is yours. ~ Elie Wiesel,#NFDB
1471:I would normally have scheduled my driving time according to published studies on fatigue and booked accommodation accordingly. But I had been too busy to plan. Nevertheless, I stopped for rest breaks every two hours and found myself able to maintain concentration. At 11.43 p.m., I detected tiredness, but rather than sleep I stopped at a service station, refuelled, and ordered four double espressos. I opened the sunroof and turned up the CD player volume to combat fatigue, and at 7.19 a.m. on Saturday, with the caffeine still running all around my brain, Jackson Browne and I pulled into Moree. ~ Graeme Simsion, #NFDB
1472:I hate to admit it," she said, "but for all we hear about the States, Canada's capacity for racism seems even worse." "Worse?" "The American Japanese were interned as we were in Canada, and sent off to concentration camps, but their property wasn't liquidated as ours was. And look how quickly the communities reestablished themselves in Los Angeles and San Francisco. We weren't allowed to return to the West Coast like that. We've never recovered from the dispersal policy. But of course that was the government's whole idea—to make sure we'd never be visible again. Official racism was blatant in Canada. ~ Joy Kogawa, #NFDB
1473:meditation is direct superconsciousness. In perfect concentration the soul becomes actually free from the bonds of the gross body and knows itself as it is. Whatever one wants, that comes to him. Power and knowledge are already there. The soul identifies itself with that which is powerless matter and thus weeps. It identifies itself with mortal shapes. ... But if that free soul wants to exercise any power, it will have it. If it does not, it does not come. He who has known God has become God. There is nothing impossible to such a free soul. No more birth and death for him. He is free for ever. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1474:This is like beginning to read a book. When we start, we will often be interrupted by many distractions around us. But if it is a good book, perhaps a mystery novel, by the last chapter we will be so absorbed in the plot that people can walk right by us and we will not notice them. In meditation at first, thoughts carry us away and we think them for a long time. Then, as concentration grows we remember our breath in the middle of a thought. Later we can notice thoughts just as they arise or allow them to pass in the background, so focused on the breath that we are undisturbed by their movement. As ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
1475:There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack of concentration in coal. Now, if a coal-mine could be put into one's waistcoat pocket—but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascination in coal, the supreme commodity of the age in which we are camped like bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1476:November 27 Share your master's joy! Matthew 25:21 Each of us has dreams. And if we trust Christ with all our hearts, nothing can disable God from surpassing our dreams with His divine reality. The suicide of her husband could not keep God from surpassing Kay Arthur's dreams. Sudden paralysis could not keep God from surpassing Joni Eareckson Tada's dreams. A horrifying ordeal in a Nazi concentration camp could not keep God from surpassing Corrie ten Boom's dreams. God surpasses our dreams when we reach past our personal plans and agendas to grab the hand of Christ and walk the path He has chosen for us. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1477:By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence— the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes— all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
1478:create a mini-stack that you’ll complete prior to any activity that requires 100% concentration. Description: First, you need to set aside thirty minutes (one time) to create a simple routine where you identify all the distractions in your life. Then you’ll map out a simple process for how you’ll remove each one. Next, you will complete a five-minute habit before starting an important task. My recommendation is to have it as the last small action in a stack, which can act as a bridge between the routine and your first MIT. Here are a few things you can add to this stack: • Put your cellphone on airplane mode. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
1479:Why did God do it? or is there really a Devil who led to the Fall? Souls in Heaven said "We want to try mortal existence, O God, Lucifer said it's great!"—Bang, down we fall, to this, to concentration camps, gas ovens, barbed wire, atom bombs, television murders, Bolivian starvation, thieves in silk, thieves in neckties, thieves in office, paper shufflers, bureaucrats, insult, rage, dismay, horror, terrified nightmares, secret death of hangovers, cancer, ulcers, strangulation, pus, old age, old age homes, canes, puffed flesh, dropped teeth, stink, tears, and goodbye. Somebody else write it, I dont know how. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1480:direction?” “Easy McSqueezy.” The sword tugged at my arm. “I’m reading a big concentration of hot air and thunder that way!” Sam and I helped Hearthstone to his feet. He wasn’t looking too good. His lips were pale green. He wobbled like he’d just gotten off a Tilt-a-Whirl. “Otis,” Sam said, “can our friend ride you? It might be quicker.” “Sure,” the goat said. “Ride me, kill me, whatever. But I should warn you, this is Jotunheim. If we go the wrong way, we’ll run across giants. Then we’ll all be butchered and put in a stew pot.” “We won’t go the wrong way,” I promised. “Will we, Jack?” “Hmm?” said the sword. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1481:So this python is full of gas. You set it down by the campfire because you’re going to eat it. Somebody kicks it or steps on it, and all this hydrogen shoots out of its mouth.” Hydrogen, as the you and I of today know but the you and I of the Pleistocene did not know, starts to be flammable at a concentration of 4 percent. And hydrogen, as Stephen Secor showed, comes out of a decomposing animal at a concentration of about 10 percent. Secor made a flamethrowery vhooosh sound. “There’s your fire-breathing serpent. Imagine the stories that would generate. Over a couple thousand years, you’ve got yourself a legend. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1482:The moment had gone. You're probably thinking, How much concentration does a man need to throw himself off the top of a high building? Well, you'd be surprised. Before Maureen arrived I'd been in the zone; I was in a place where it would have been easy to push myself off. I was entirely focused on all the reasons I was up there in the first place; I understood with horrible clarity the impossibility of attempting to resume life down on the ground. But the conversation with her had distracted me, pulled me back out into the world, into the cold and the wind and the noise of the thumping bass seven floors below. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1483:New Rule: Since Glenn Beck is clearly onto us, liberals must launch our plan for socialist domination immediately. Listen closely, comrades, I've received word from General Soros and our partners in the UN--Operation Streisand is a go. Markos Moulitsas, you and your Daily Kos-controlled army of gay Mexican day laborers will join with Michael Moore's Prius tank division north of Branson, where you will seize the guns of everyone who doesn't blame America first, forcing them into the FEMA concentration camps. That's where ACORN and I will re-educate them as atheists and declare victory in the war on Christmas. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
1484:Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat ax. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more complex), all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. The whole created being—man—is reduced to matter. It is characteristic that Communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
1485:Similar things are happening in Africa, here, and in Europe. The indignados in southern Europe and the Occupy movements here are in a sense similar, even if that are from different worlds. The protests are not against dictatorships but against the shredding of democratic systems and the consequences of the Western version of the neoliberal system, which has had structurally consistent effects for the past thirty years: a very narrow concentration of wealth in a fraction of 1 percent of the population, stagnation for a large part of the rest, deregulation, and repeated financial crises, each one harsher than the last. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1486:When we step back from these individual observations, we see a clear argument form: To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. If you’re not comfortable going deep for extended periods of time, it’ll be difficult to get your performance to the peak levels of quality and quantity increasingly necessary to thrive professionally. Unless your talent and skills absolutely dwarf those of your competition, the deep workers among them will outproduce you. What ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1487:I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without even realizing it. ~ Shauna Niequist, #NFDB
1488:raving maniacs, half paralysed with hunger and fear’. In collaboration with an UNRRA team, the soldiers took over a former Napola School at Feldafing, drafted many of its German staff, including cooks and medical personnel, and turned it into a refugee camp, with a nearby hotel requisitioned as hospital accommodation. The number of inmates rapidly grew to some 4,000. By the end of May 1945, the camp had experienced its first survivor wedding and those in the hospital – now moved to a former monastery – had been treated to a concert by the Kovno Ghetto orchestra, dressed in their striped concentration-camp pyjamas. ~ Frederick Taylor, #NFDB
1489:The wealth of options we face today has extended personal freedom to an extent that would have been inconceivable even a hundred years ago. But the inevitable consequence of equally attractive choices is uncertainty of purpose; uncertainty, in turn, saps resolution, and lack of resolve ends up devaluing choice. Therefore freedom does not necessarily help develop meaning in life—on the contrary. If the rules of a game become too flexible, concentration flags, and it is more difficult to attain a flow experience. Commitment to a goal and to the rules it entails is much easier when the choices are few and clear. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1490:a. Only such measures should be taken which do not involve danger to German life or property. (For instance synagogues are to be burned down only when there is no danger of fire to the surroundings.)* b. Business and private apartments of Jews may be destroyed but not looted…. d…. 2. The demonstrations which are going to take place should not be hindered by the police… 5. As many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing prisons… Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as soon as possible. ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
1491:This lesson, in a nutshell, says: the abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word, indeed finds in it the fertile soil in which to hide and grow and get ready, so much so that the latent potential of the totalitarian poison can be ascertained, as it were, by observing the symptom of the public abuse of language. The degradation, too, of man through man, alarmingly evident in the acts of physical violence committed by all tyrannies (concentration camps, torture), has its beginning, certainly much less alarmingly, at that almost imperceptible moment when the word loses its dignity. ~ Josef Pieper, #NFDB
1492:As early as the late eighteenth century, the great French political philosopher Montesquieu noted the geographic concentration of prosperity and poverty, and proposed an explanation for it. He argued that people in tropical climates tended to be lazy and to lack inquisitiveness. As a consequence, they didn’t work hard and were not innovative, and this was the reason why they were poor. Montesquieu also speculated that lazy people tended to be ruled by despots, suggesting that a tropical location could explain not just poverty but also some of the political phenomena associated with economic failure, such as dictatorship. The ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
1493:The Yoga must start with an effort or at least a settled turn towards this total concentration. A constant and unfailing will of consecration of all ourselves to the Supreme is demanded of us, an offering of our whole being and our many-chambered nature to the Eternal who is the All. The effective fullness of our concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all else will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude nothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will's ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5], #index, #NFDB
1494:Without his even being aware that it was happening, Paul's face rearranged itself into the expression of sincere concentration he always wore while listening to editors. He thought of this as his Can I Help You, Lady? expression. That was because most editors were like women who drive into service stations and tell the mechanic to fix whatever it is that's making that knocking sound under the hood or going wonk-wonk inside the dashboard, and please have it done an hour ago. A look of sincere concentration was good because it flattered them, and when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1495:And so it came about that the demon king Mara found himself staring at a most unwelcome intruder. He glared at the naked old man sitting in lotus position before his throne. Nothing like it had happened in a long while.
“Go away,” Mara growled. “Just because you got here doesn’t mean you can’t be destroyed.”
The old man didn’t move. His yogic concentration must have been strong, because his lean brown body, as tough as the sinew showing under its skin, grew sharper in out-line. Mara would have commanded some lesser demons to torment the intruder, but these hermits weren’t so easily dismissed, so Mara bided his time. ~ Deepak Chopra,#NFDB
1496:Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent’s preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it’s supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn.
[…]
If talent’s the foundation you rely on, and yet it’s so unreliable that you have no idea what’s going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have? ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
1497:after all that, after the concentration camps in Germany, after we stated definitely that our former home was changed into a mass grave, we can only grope and clasp with our finger tips the shadows of our dearest and painfully cry: I can never more see my home. The victorious nations that in the 20th century removed the black plague from Europe must understand once and for all the specific Jewish problem. No, we are not Polish when we are born in Poland; we are not Lithuanians even though we once passed through Lithuania; and we are neither Roumanians though we have seen the first time in our life the sunshine in Roumenia. We are Jews!! ~ Ian Buruma, #NFDB
1498:It does not take the constant barrage of bourgeois propaganda to reinforce the thinking among native-born white male workers that a woman, black, or migrant worker is a threat to his job security and wages. He already knows the competitive conditions of his class and the means by which his job and his wages are to be secured. He is King Rat, the guy who is going to survive in the middle of an all-sided struggle no matter how conditions deteriorate for the class as a whole in the open-air concentration camp of class society. His measure of success is not how he is doing in absolute terms, but how he is doing relative to other wage slaves. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1499:[O]ur thoughts and feelings are us. They are a part of ourselves. There is a temptation to look upon them, or at least some of them, as an enemy force which is trying to disturb the concentration and understanding of your mind. [...] When we have certain thoughts, we are those thoughts. We are both the guard and the visitor at the same time. We are both the mind and the observer of the mind. Therefore, chasing away or dwelling on any thought isn't the important thing. The important thing is to be aware of the thought. This observation is not an objectification of the mind: it does not establish distinction between subject and object. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1500:Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences" did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
504 Integral Yoga
44 Yoga
39 Occultism
21 Christianity
11 Science
11 Education
10 Psychology
10 Integral Theory
7 Philosophy
7 Fiction
6 Poetry
6 Hinduism
3 Cybernetics
2 Theosophy
2 Mysticism
2 Buddhism
1 Thelema
1 Philsophy
1 Mythology
349 The Mother
220 Satprem
207 Sri Aurobindo
63 Nolini Kanta Gupta
24 Swami Krishnananda
21 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
18 Aleister Crowley
12 A B Purani
10 Swami Vivekananda
9 Carl Jung
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Sri Ramakrishna
7 Peter J Carroll
7 H P Lovecraft
6 Aldous Huxley
5 Thubten Chodron
5 Paul Richard
5 Franz Bardon
4 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
4 Patanjali
4 Nirodbaran
3 Rudolf Steiner
3 Norbert Wiener
2 William Butler Yeats
2 Saint John of Climacus
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jordan Peterson
2 Bokar Rinpoche
57 The Synthesis Of Yoga
28 The Life Divine
24 The Study and Practice of Yoga
24 Agenda Vol 03
23 Record of Yoga
23 Letters On Yoga IV
22 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
21 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
21 Agenda Vol 04
21 Agenda Vol 02
20 Agenda Vol 01
19 Agenda Vol 09
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
17 Letters On Yoga II
17 Agenda Vol 11
15 Questions And Answers 1956
15 Questions And Answers 1955
15 Agenda Vol 10
15 Agenda Vol 08
14 Prayers And Meditations
13 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
13 Agenda Vol 07
12 Questions And Answers 1953
12 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
11 Talks
11 On Education
10 Questions And Answers 1954
10 Liber ABA
10 Letters On Yoga III
10 Agenda Vol 13
10 Agenda Vol 05
9 The Phenomenon of Man
9 The Future of Man
9 Some Answers From The Mother
8 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
8 Magick Without Tears
8 Agenda Vol 12
8 Agenda Vol 06
7 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
7 Lovecraft - Poems
7 Liber Null
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
6 Words Of Long Ago
6 The Perennial Philosophy
6 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
6 Raja-Yoga
6 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
6 On the Way to Supermanhood
6 Essays On The Gita
6 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
5 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
4 Words Of The Mother II
4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
4 The Practice of Magical Evocation
4 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
4 Letters On Poetry And Art
4 Amrita Gita
3 The Secret Doctrine
3 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
3 Savitri
3 Mysterium Coniunctionis
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Cybernetics
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Yeats - Poems
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2 The Blue Cliff Records
2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Letters On Yoga I
2 Let Me Explain
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 Essays Divine And Human
2 Aion
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual Concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the worship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special form of initiation from a qualified guru, and for Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy word in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep Concentration.
Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
--
Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of Concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
step 2, the Concentration of Ain Soph Aour in Kether;
step 3, duality and the rest of it down to Malkuth;
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose Concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist's brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.
Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is by the Concentration of our will and the intensity of our
aspiration that we can hasten the day of victory.
--
I prayed with Concentration that each workman might
become conscious that he was working for Mother and
--
an hour, I felt fatigued and imperceptibly the Concentration frittered away. What is the cause of this feeling of
fatigue? What is the difficulty in keeping such a Concentration for all the 24 hours?
The physical being is always fatigued when it is asked to keep a
lasting Concentration.
The Concentration can be kept constantly but not by mental
decision.
--
process is based on the power of Concentration. One has to
concentrate on the object to be known (in this case the roof)
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
hardly emerge into the light. But with a little Concentration and
insistence, the resistance of matter lessens and the life-forces are
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pran.ayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kun.d.alin, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through Concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner Concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
grateful to her for having taught me the discipline and the necessity of self-forgetfulness through Concentration on what one
is doing.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and Concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must find the Divine first, whether in yourself by interiorisation and Concentration, or in Sri Aurobindo and me through
love and self-giving. Once you have found the Divine you will
--
Concentration does not mean meditation; on the contrary, Concentration is a state one must be in continuously, whatever the
outer activity. By Concentration I mean that all the energy, all the
will, all the aspiration must be turned only towards the Divine
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
indispensable starting-point. Through interiorisation and Concentration one has to enter into conscious contact with one's
psychic being. This psychic being always has an influence on the
--
meditation, japa and Concentration that one puts oneself in
contact with these various forms of Energy.
--
But if through meditation or Concentration we turn inward
or upward, we can bring down into ourselves or raise up from
--
less deep, or else by an effort of Concentration which ends in
identification. It is this latter process that we adopt when we
--
them, it is enough to read with attention and Concentration and
an attitude of inner good-will, with a desire to receive and live
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must read with much attention and Concentration, not
novels or dramas, but books that make you think. You must
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive Concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The spirit of the age demands this new gospel. Mankind needs and awaits a fresh revelation. The world and life are not an illusion or a lesser reality: they are, if taken rightly, as real as the pure Spirit itself. Indeed, Spirit and Flesh, Consciousness and Matter are not antinomies; to consider them as such is itself an illusion. In fact, they are only two poles or modes or aspects of the same reality. To separate or divide them is a one-sided Concentration or abstraction on the part of the human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through the ages in the course of the evolution of his consciousness. Many, however, are the prophets and sages who have set this ideal before humanity and more and more insistently and clearly as we come nearer to the age we live in. But none or very few have expressed it with such beauty and charm and compelling persuasion. It would be carping criticism to point out-as some, purists one may call them, have done-that in poetising and aesthetising the spiritual truth and reality, in trying to make it human and terrestrial, he has diminished and diluted the original substance, in endeavouring to render the diamond iridescent, he has turned it into a baser alloy. Tagore's is a poetic soul, it must be admitted; and it is not necessary that one should find in his ideas and experiences and utterances the cent per cent accuracy and inevitability of a Yogic consciousness. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation.
Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous beauty as the Lila (Play) of the Lord, and the Lord, God himself, is nothing but Love and Beauty. Still Tagore is not all Vaishnava or merely a Vaishnava; he is in addition a modern (the carping voice will say, there comes the dilution and adulteration)in the sense that problems exist for himsocial, political, economic, national, humanitarianwhich have to be faced and solved: these are not merely mundane, but woven into the texture of the fundamental problem of human destiny, of Soul and Spirit and God. A Vaishnava was, in spite of his acceptance of the world, an introvert, to use a modern psychological phrase, not necessarily in the pejorative sense, but in the neutral scientific sense. He looks upon the universe' and human life as the play of the Lord, as an actuality and not mere illusion indeed; but he does not participate or even take interest in the dynamic working out of the world process, he does not care to know, has no need of knowing that there is a terrestrial purpose and a diviner fulfilment of the mortal life upon earth. The Vaishnava dwells more or less absorbed in the Vaikuntha of his inner consciousness; the outer world, although real, is only a symbolic shadowplay to which he can but be a witness-real, is only a nothing more.
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, a spiritual communism embraces individualism and collectivism, fuses them in a higher truth, establishes them in an intimate and absolute harmony. The individual is the centre, the group is the circumference and the two form one whore circle. The individual by fulfilling the truth of his real individuality fulfils also the truth of a commonality. There are no different laws for the two. The individuals do not stand apart from and against one another, the dharma of one does not clash with the dharma of the other. The ripples in the bosom of the sea, however distinct and discrete in appearance, form but a single mass, all follow the same law of hydrodynamics that the mother sea incarnates. Stars and planets and nebulae, each separate heavenly body has its characteristic form and nature and function and yet all fulfil the same law of gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the Concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being.
Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside downurdhomulo' vaksakhah and establishes him upon his soul, his inner godhead. Thus established the individual soul finds and fulfils the divine law that by increasing itself it increases others and by increasing others it increases itself and thus by increasing one another they attain the supreme good. Unless man goes beyond himself and reaches this self, this godhead above, he will not find any real poise, will always swing between individualism and collectivism, he will remain always boundbound either in his freedom or in his bondage.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The characteristic then of the path is a one-pointed Concentration. Great stress is laid upon "oneliness", "onedness":that is to say, a perfect and complete withdrawal from the outside and the world; an unmixed solitude is required for the true experience and realisation to come. "A full forsaking in will of the soul for the love of Him, and a living of the heart to Him. This asks He, for this gave He." The rigorous exclusion, the uncompromising asceticism, the voluntary self-torture, the cruel dark night and the arid desert are necessary conditions that lead to the "onlyness of soul", what another prophet (Isaiah, XXIV, 16) describes as "My privity to me". In that secreted solitude, the "onlistead"the graphic language of the author calls itis found "that dignity and that ghostly fairness which a soul had by kind and shall have by grace." The utter beauty of the soul and its absolute love for her deity within her (which has the fair name of Jhesu), the exclusive Concentration of the whole of the being upon one point, the divine core, the manifest Grace of God, justifies the annihilation of the world and life's manifold existence. Indeed, the image of the Beloved is always within, from the beginning to the end. It is that that keeps one up in the terrible struggle with one's nature and the world. The image depends upon the consciousness which we have at the moment, that is to say, upon the stage or the degree we have ascended to. At the outset, when we can only look through the senses, when the flesh is our master, we give the image a crude form and character; but even that helps. Gradually, as we rise, with the clearing of our nature, the image too slowly regains its original and true shape. Finally, in the inmost soul we find Jesus as he truly is: "an unchangeable being, a sovereign might, a sovereign soothfastness, sovereign goodness, a blessed life and endless bliss." Does not the Gita too say: "As one approaches Me, so do I appear to him."Ye yath mm prapadyante.
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
because of our lack of solid Concentration?
The cause of mediocre work is neither the variety nor the number
of activities, but the lack of power of Concentration.
One must learn to concentrate and do all that one does with
full Concentration.
4 July 1961
--
without any preliminary Concentration, you sink into the inconscient and the sleep is more tiring than restful, and it is difficult
to come out of this sluggishness.
--
silence, full of force and conscious Concentration, it is good. If
it is a tamasic and unconscious silence, it is harmful.
--
mean exercise of Concentration and will.
Mother, I have started reading French books - X has
--
of mental silence in Concentration.
1 June 1966
--
thing that contains such a Concentration of spontaneous beauty
- not man-made: spontaneous, a blossoming; one has only to
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"To its heights we can always come. For those of us who are still splashing about in the lower ooze, the phrase has a rather ironical ring. Nevertheless, in the light of even the most distant acquaintance with the heights and the fullness, it is possible to understand what its author means. To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only there, but also in the outer worlds of minds and things and living creatures. It is easier because the heights within reveal themselves to those who are ready to exclude from their purview all that lies without. And though this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fullness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive Concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusivelyto realise the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental."
The neatness of the commentary cannot be improved upon. Only with regard to the "ironical ring" of which Huxley speaks, it has just to be pointed out, as he himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean humanity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
1) A short Concentration before going to sleep, with
an aspiration to remember the activities of the night
--
movement of the head and keep still for a few minutes, with a Concentration to remember what happened
during your sleep.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the habit of silent Concentration and descent into the depths of
one's being.
--
can rest properly. A little Concentration for that, before going to
sleep, will surely be effective.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And how many years have you all been here, half-asleep? Naturally, youre happy to think about it now and thenespecially when I speak to you about it or sometimes when you read. But THATthat fire, that will which plows through all barriers, that Concentration which can triumph over EVERYTHING
Now who was it that asked me what you should do?
0 1956-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am broken and battered in the depths of my being as I was in my flesh in the Concentration camps. Will the divine grace take pity on me? Can you, do you want to help me? Alone I can do nothing. I am in an absolute solitude, even beyond all rebellion, at my very end.
Yet I love you in spite of all that I am.
0 1957-10-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I need a practical method corresponding to my present possibilities and to results of which I am presently capable. I feel that my efforts are dispersed by concentrating sometimes here, sometimes therea feeling of not knowing exactly what to do to break through and get out of all this. Would you point out some particular Concentration to which I could adhere, a particular method that I would stick to?
I am well aware that a supple attitude is recommended in the Yoga, yet for the time being, it seems to me that one well-defined method would help me hold on1this practical aspect would help me. I will do it methodically, obstinately, until it cracks for good.
0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And these things act upon my body. It is strange, but it coagulates something: all the cellular life becomes one solid, compact mass, in a tremendous Concentrationwith a single vibration. Instead of all the usual vibrations of the body, there is now only one single vibration. It becomes as hard as a diamond, a single massive Concentration, as if all the cells of the body had
I became stiff from it. When the forest scene5 was over, I was so stiff that I was like that (gesture): one single mass.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It must be strong enough to pull me from my Concentration or my activity. If I knew when you concentrate or do your puja,1 I could tune into you, and shell I would know more; otherwise, my inner life is too l am not at all passive inwardly, you see, I am very active, so I dont usually receive your vibrations unless they impose themselves strongly or unless I have decided beforeh and to be attentive to what is coming from someone or other. If I know that at a given moment something is going to happen, then I open a door, as it were. But its difficult to speak of these things.
When you left on your journey,2 for example, I made a specie! Concentration for all to go well so that nothing untoward happen to you. I even made a formation and asked for a constant, special help over you. Then I renewed my Concentration every day, which is how I came to notice that you were invoking me very regulary. I Saw you everyday, everyday, with a very regular precision. It was something that imposed itself on me, but it imposed itself only because l had initially made a formation to follow you.
For people here in the Ashram, my work is not the same. It is more like a kind of atmosphere that extends everywherea very conscious atmospherewhich I let work for each one according to his need. I dont have a special action for each person, unless something requires my special attention. When I would tune into you while you were travelling, I clearly saw your image appear before me, as though you were looking at me, but now that you have returned here, I no longer see it. Rather, I receive a sensation or an impression; and as these sensations and impressions are innumerable, its rather like one element among many. It no longer imposes itself in such an entirely distinct way nor does it appear before me in the same manner, as a clear image of yourself, as though you wanted to know something.
As soon as I am alone, I enter into a very deep Concentration,a state of consciousness, a kind of universal activity. Is it deep? What is it? It is far beyond all the mental regions, far, far beyond, and it is constant. As soon as I am alone or resting somewhere, thats how it is.
The other day when I was in this state of Concentration, I had the vision that I mentioned to you. I felt I was being pulled, that something was pulling me and trying to draw my attention. I felt it very strongly. So I opened my eyes, my mental eyes (the physical eyes may remain opened or closed, it makes no difference either way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, for that is where I felt myself being pulled, and then I had this vision I told you of. Someone was trying to draw my attention, to tell me something. It takes someone really quite powerful, with a very great power of Concentration, to do thatthere are certainly a great many people here and elsewhere who try to do this, yet I dont feel a thing.3
In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any moment, you called me for anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my memory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a work that is done automatically.
When you asked me if X4 were thinking of me, I consulted my atmosphere and saw that it was true, that even many times a day Xs thoughts were coming. So I know that he is concentrating on me, or something: it simply passes through me, and I answer automatically. But I dont particularly pay attention to X, unless you ask me a question about him, in which case I deliberately tune into him, then observe and determine whether its like this or like that. Whereas this vision the other day was something that thrust itself on me; I was in another region altogether, in my inner contemplation, my Concentrationa very strong Concentrationwhen I was forced to enter into contact with this being whose vision I had and who was obviously a very powerful being. After telling me what he had to tell me, he went away in a very peculiar way, not at all suddenly as most people appear and disappear, not at all like that. When I first saw him, there was a living form the being himself was there but upon leaving (probably to see the effect, to find out whether he had truly succeeded in making himself understood), he left behind a kind of image of himself. Afterwards, this image blurred and it left only a silhouette, an outline, then it disappeared altogether leaving only an impression. That was the last thing I saw. So I kept the impression and analyzed it to find out exactly what was involved; all this was filed away, and then it was over. I began my Concentration once again.
I intentionally carry everybody in my active consciousness for the work, and I do the work consciously; but the extent to which people in the world, or those who are here in the Ashram, are conscious of this or receive the results depends upon them, though not exclusively.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Even at a very young age, I had a kind of intuition of my destiny. I felt that something in me had to be exhausted, or that I had to exhaust myself. I dont know, as though I had to descend into the depths of the night to find the thing. I thought it was the Concentration camps. Perhaps this was still not deep enough Do you see any meaning in all this?
It can hardly be formulated; these are merely impressions that follow one another. I know that when you thought of leaving with Swami,1 I saw that a door was opening, that it was the truth, that this was IT.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the new moon, when I felt very down, he gave me the first tantric mantraa mantra to Durga. For a period of 41 days, I must repeat it 125,000 times and go every morning to the Temple, stand before Parvati and recite this mantra within me for at least one hour. Then I must go to the sanctuary of Shiva and recite another mantra for half an hour. Practically speaking, I have to repeat constantly within me the mantra to Durga in a silent Concentration, whatever I may be doing on the outside. In these conditions, it is difficult to think of you and this has created a slight conflict in me, but I believe that your Grace is acting through Swami and through Durga, whom I am invoking all the time I remember what you told me about the necessity for intermediaries and I am obeying Swami unreservedly.
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I read your P.S. and I understand. This too confirms my feeling. I am not happy that you are plagued with work, and especially urgent work that has to be done quicklyit is contrary to the inner calm and Concentration so indispensable for getting rid of ones difficulties. I am going to do what is necessary to change this situation. Besides, this is why I have been telling you recently that my work is not urgent. But this work for the Bulletin should stop for the moment.
The other point also has its element of truthwe shall speak of it later.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In fact, you can immediately see the difference between those who have a mantra and those who dont. With those who have no mantra, even if they have a strong habit of meditation or Concentration, something around them remains hazy and vague. Whereas the japa imparts to those who practice it a kind of precision, a kind of solidity: an armature. They become galvanized, as it were.
Original English.
0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Of all forms of ego, you might think that the physical ego is the most difficult to conquer (or rather, the body ego, because the work was already done long ago on the physical ego). It might be thought that the form of the body is a point of Concentration, and that without this Concentration or hardness, physical life would not be possible. But thats not true. The body is really a wonderful instrument; its capable of widening and of becoming vast in such a way that everything, everything the slightest gesture, the least little taskis done in a wonderful harmony and with a remarkable plasticity. Then all of a sudden, for something quite stupid, a draft, a mere nothing, it forgetsit shrinks back into itself, it gets afraid of disappearing, afraid of not being. And everything has to be started again from scratch. So in the yoga of matter you start realizing how much endurance is needed. I calculated it would take 200 years to say ten crore of my japa. Well, Im ready to struggle 200 years if necessary, but the work will be done.
Sri Aurobindo had made it clear to me when I was still in France that this yoga in matter is the most difficult of all. For the other yogas, the paths have been well laid, you know where to tread, how to proceed, what to do in such-and-such a case. But for the yoga of matter, nothing has ever been done, never, so at each moment everything has to be invented.
0 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I came down that evening for distribution,2 at first I was annoyed. I had said that I didnt want anybody in the hall, precisely because I wanted to establish an atmosphere of Concentration, the immobility of the Spirit but there were at least thirty people in there, those who had decorated the hall, thirty of them stirring, stirring about, a mass of little vibrations. And before I could even say scat I had hardly taken my seatsomeone put the tray of medals on my lap and they started filing past.
But what is surprising is that in a flash, no one was there any longer. No one, you understand I was gone. Perhaps I was everywhere (but in fact I am always everywhere, I am always conscious of being everywhere at the same time), though normally there is the sense of the body, a physical center, but that evening there was no more center! Nothing, no one, not even the sense that there was no onenothing. I was gone. There was indeed something handing out the medals which felt the joy of giving the medal, the joy of receiving it, the joy of mutually looking at each other. It was simply the joy of the action taking place, the joy of looking, this joy everywhere, but me?Nothing, no one, gone. Only later, afterwards, did I see what had happened, for everything had disappeared, even the higher mind that understands and organizes things (by understand I mean contain, which contains things). That also was gone. And this lasted the entire distribution. Only when that [the body] had gone back upstairs to the room did the consciousness of what is me return.
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For example, there was one difficulty he helped me resolve. I have always been literally pestered, constantly, night and day, by all kinds of thoughts coming from peopleall kinds of calls, questions, formations2 that have naturally to be answered. For I have trained myself to be conscious of everything, always. But it disturbed me in the work, particularly when I needed absolute Concentration and I could never cut myself off from people or cut myself off from the world. I had to answer all these calls and these questions, I had to send the necessary force, the necessary light, the healing power, I constantly had to purify all these formations, these thoughts, these wills, these false movements that were falling on me.
What was needed was to effect a shift, a sort of transference upwards, a lifting up of all these things that come to meso that each one, each thing, each circumstance could directly and automatically receive the force from above, the light, the response from above, and I would be a mere intermediary and a channel of the Light and the Force.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And what was really very lovely was the ACCURACY and the power which directed the forces. I watched this for three quarters of an hour: for each thing that presented itself (it could have been someone thinking, something taking place, anything at all), a special little Concentration of this flood went exactly onto that point, like a special insistence.
And all this was absolutely egoless, without any personal reaction, nothing; there was nothing but the consciousness of the Supreme Action. It was the only thing existing.
0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
During the operation and just afterwards, I had simply put the Force on him, as I always do in such cases, so that everything would turn out for the best. Then a few days ago, during my japa, a kind of order camea very clear orderto concentrate on him so that he would be conscious of his soul and able to leave under the best conditions. And I saw that the Concentration worked wonderfully: it seems that during his last days he was ceaselessly repeating Ma-Ma-Ma1even while he was in a semi-coma.
And the Concentration grew stronger and stronger. The day before yesterday it became very, very powerful, and yesterday morning, around half past noon, it pulled me inward; he came to me in a kind of sleep, a conscious sleep, and I even said almost aloud, Oh, K!
It lasted fifteen minutes; I was completely within, inside, as if to receive him.
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I came out of the Concentration at 4:10quite late. For I was VERY busy! I was in some sort of small house similar to my room, but it was at the top of a tower, for you could see the landscape from above. It was similar to my room here, with large windows. And I was much taller than I actually am, for there was a ledge below each window (there was a cupboard below each window, as in my room), and this ledge came quite low on me; in my room, it comes up to my chest, whereas it was much lower in my vision. And from there oh, what beautiful landscapes! It was surrounded by such lovely countryside! There was a flowing river, woods, sunlightoh, it was really lovely! And I was very busy looking up words in the dictionary!
I had taken out a dictionary. There, its this one, I said. Someone was next to me, but this someone is always symbolic: each activity takes on a special form which may resemble someone or other. (The people around me for the work here are like families in those worlds there; they are types, that iseach person represents a typeso then I know that Im in contact with all the people of this same type. If they were conscious, they would know that I was there telling them something in particular. But its not a person, its a type and not a type of character, but a type of activity and relationship with me.)
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The most recent incident took place a few days ago, for there was a general excitement in the factory due to the expected visit of a government minister during the day. That afternoon, exactly at half past three, I felt that I had to make a little Concentration. So I paid attention and saw poor L11 praying to me. He was praying, praying, calling mesuch a strong call that it pulled me. I was having my bath (you know what happens when Im very strongly pulled Im stopped right in the very midst of a gesture, then the consciousness goes wandering off! And I cant do anything, it stops me dead. Thats exactly what happened to me in the bathroom). When I saw what was happening, I straightened things out. Then they must have had their ceremony, for suddenly I felt, Ah, now it has calmed down, its all right. And I went on to something else.
The next day, L came to see me. He told me that shortly before 3:30, the machine had stopped once again, but this time it was quickly set right; they found out right away what had to be done. And then he told me that at 3:45 he had started praying to me that all should go well. Oh, I know! I said.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Doing japa seems to exert a pressure on my physical consciousness, which goes on turning! How can I silence it? As soon as my Concentration is not absolute, the physical mind starts upit grabs at anything, anything at all, any word, fact or event that comes along, and it starts turning, turning. If you stop it, if you put some pressure on it, then it springs back up two minutes later And there is no inner consent at all. It chews on words, it chews on ideas or feelingsinterminably. What should I do?
Yes, its the physical mind. The japa is made precisely to control the physical mind.
--
Even now, when something or other is not all right, I have only to reproduce the thing with the same type of Concentration as at the beginning for, when I say the japa, the sound and the words together the way the words are understood, the feel of the wordscreate a certain totality. I have to reproduce that. And the way its repeated is evolving all the time. The words are the same, however, the original sound is the same, but its all constantly evolving towards a more comprehensive realization and a more and more complete STATE. So when I want to obtain a certain result, I reproduce a certain type of this state. For example, if something in the body is not functioning right (it cant really be called an illness, but when somethings out of order), or if I wish to do some specific work on a specific person for a specific reason, then I go back to a certain state of repetition of my mantra, which acts directly on the bodys cells. And then the same phenomenon is reproducedexactly the same extraordinary vibration which I recognized when the supramental world descended. It comes in and vibrates like a pulsation in the cells.
But as I told you, now my japa is different. It is as if I were taking the whole world to lift it up; no longer is it a Concentration on the body, but rather a taking of the whole world the entire world sometimes in its details, sometimes as a whole, but constantly, constantlyto establish the Contact (with the supramental world).
But what you are speaking of, this sort of sound-mill, this milling of words interminably repeating the same thing, Ive suddenly caught it two or three times (not very often and with long intervals). It has always seemed fantastic to me! How is it stopped? Always in the same way. Its something that takes place outside, actually; its not insideits outside, on the surface, generally somewhere here (Mother indicates the temples), and the method is to draw your consciousness up above, to go there and remain therewhite. Always this whiteness, white like a sheet of paper, flat like a plate of glass. An absolutely flat and white and motionless surfacewhite! White like luminous milk, turned upwards. Not transparent: white.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was just before Durga Puja,3 or just after I cant remember (dates and I dont go together)no, it was after Durga Puja. So I went into a deep Concentration and, as a matter of fact, I saw that a very powerful and dangerous rakshasic4 power was involved. And then, when I started walking for my japa upstairs in my room (I had given some thought to this story and tried asking for something to be done), I suddenly saw Durga before me raising high a lance of white light the lance of light that destroys the hostile forcesand She struck into a black swarming mass of men.
But then there came a frightful reaction. For one day I was nearly as sicknot quiteas two years ago5 (they must have used the same mantra). And, you see, I who never vomit terrible vomitingeverything inside came out! Only now Im a bit more experienced than two years ago (!), so I set it right It happened here, downstairs, in the afternoon. I went right back up to my room (I didnt see anyone that afternoon), and I remained concentrated to try to find out what had happened. I saw that it came from therea backlash of those people trying to defend themselves.
--
In occult language, a 'formation' is a Concentration of power towards a specific end. In this case, the tantric guru's formation to save the nephew.
The yearly ritual worship in honor of Durga, the universal Mother.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I listen, I answer. Its not satisfactory! I told them. But theyve kept to their idea, they like it. When that first storm came some time back (you remember, with those terrible bolts of lightning and that asuric being P.K. saw and sketched): Dont you want us to destroy something? I got angry. But it was This influence was so close and acute that it gave you goose bumps! The whole time the storm lasted, I had to hold on tight in my bed, like this (Mother closes her fists tight as in a trance or deep Concentration), and I didnt movedidnt movelike a a rock during the entire storm, until he consented to go a bit further away. Then I moved. And even now, it comesfrom others (theres not just one, you see, there are many): How about a good flood? A roof collapsed the other day with someone underneath, but he was able to escape. So roofs are collapsing, houses Arouse public sympathy, we must help the Ashram! Its no good, I said. But maybe thats whats responsible for this interminable rain. And they offer so many other things oh, what they parade past me! You could write books on all this!
But generally and this is something Theon had told me (Theon was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that resists the divine influence, and he was a great fighteras you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory. Its a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, its trueif you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but its not what we want; we want it to change, really change.
0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother may be alluding to the following passage from The Synthesis of Yoga: 'There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a Concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing clement.'
Cent. Ed., Vol. XX, p. 300.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Consequently, there is only one solution: by aspiration, Concentration, interiorization and identification, to unite with the supreme Will. And that is both omnipotence and perfect freedom. Its the only omnipotence, the only freedomall the rest are approximations. You may be en route, but its not That, not the total thing.
If you make the experiment, you will come to see that this supreme freedom and this supreme power are accompanied by a total peace and an unfaltering serenity; if you notice any contradictionrevolt, disgust or something inadmissiblethis indicates that some part in You is not touched by the transformation, is still en route: something still holding on to the old consciousness, thats all.
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Savitri is really a condensation, a Concentration of the universal Mother the eternal universal Mother, Mother of all universes from all eternityin an earthly personality for the Earths salvation. And Satyavan is the soul of the Earth, the Earths jiva. So when the Lord says, he whom you love and whom you have chosen, it means the earth. All the details are there! When she comes back down, when Death has yielded at last, when all has been settled and the Supreme tells her, Go, go with him, the one you have chosen, how does Sri Aurobindo describe it? He says that she very carefully takes the SOUL of Satyavan into her arms, like a little child, to pass through all the realms and come back down to earth. Everything is there! He hasnt forgotten a single detail to make it easy to understand for someone who knows how to understand. And it is when Savitri reaches the earth that Satyavan regains his full human stature.
These seem to be the forces ruling the subconscious mechanisms or reactions of the body: all the automatism produced by evolution and atavismwhat might be termed evolutionary habits. This is the 'descending path,' which started forty years earlier, as Mother said (or the 'physical plunge' referred to by Sri Aurobindo), leading to the pure cellular consciousness.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, yes, this is very, very annoying, my child! You dont need to tell me! I have never in my life had enough time. Whatever I do, whether I am speaking to someone, organizing something, doing a particular work, the time is always too short, and I have the feeling, Oh, if I could only do that quietly! Anything, no matter what, becomes interesting if it can be done calmly, with the right attitude and the right Concentration. Yet we are perpetually hurried by the next thing coming along.
But this is a shortcoming. And I know it, I know it I will find the solution. And when I have found it, it will be.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A formidable Concentration of vitalityof all animals, the serpent has the most vitality. Its tremendous! And energy progressive energy, energy of movement (progressive in the mechanical sense). Its meaning has been changed to a psychological one, but its a force of movement.
Then why do these creatures always seem so evil to us?
0 1961-02-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its absolutely truetrue at each stage, on all levels. Whatever level you have attained, even the very highest, if you concentrate on that [the body], it is finished! And all the difficulties begin, you know, with that very Concentration that tries to draw down Light and Poweryogic Concentration itself.
So it would seem that if one wants to use his individuality, his body, to transform the whole that is, if one wants to use his bodily presence to act upon the universal corporeal substance theres no end to it. No end to the difficulties, no end to the battle BATTLE!
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Basically, if we were capable of. When I am up in my room, its very easy, very easy: it comes and what is a little more difficult is getting out of that state. There I am, like this (gesture of blissful abandonment), and when I feel its time to go downstairs or I have something to do or someone is coming with lunch or whatever, then its a little difficult; otherwise, I am like that (same gesture). Whats difficult is my contact with the Ashram people. As soon as I go down and simply that, having to fidget on my feet, giving people flowers. And they are so unconsciously egotistical! If I dont go through the usual Concentration on each one of them, they wonder, What is it? Whats wrong? Have I done something? And and it turns into a big drama.
Otherwise, Concentration is very good, it doesnt tire mewhen my body is not drained, when it isnt constantly aware that it exists because it hurts here, hurts there, aches here, aches there (pain is what gives it a sense of existing), when the body is able to forget itself, things go well, its nothing. Now the Force passes through me without causing fatigue, while many years ago, too much Force created tension; but its not like that now, not at allon the contrary, the body feels better when a lot of force has passed through it.
I dont know. We shall see.
--
Thats how it works. Because all substance is ONE. All is onewe constantly forget that! We always have a sense of separation, and that is total, total falsehood; its because we rely on what our eyes see, on (Mother touches her hands and arms, as if to indicate a separate body, cut off from other bodies). That is truly Falsehood. As soon as your consciousness changes a little, you realize that what we see is like an image plastered over something. But its not true, NOT TRUE AT ALL. Even in the most material Matter, even a stoneeven in a stoneas soon as ones consciousness changes, all this separation, all this division, completely vanishes. These are (how to put it?) modes of Concentration (something akin to yet not quite that), vibratory modes WITHIN THE SAME THING.8
(The clock strikes) Oh, now I must go!
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, the body needed a test, a VERY SEVERE test, because from a personal viewpoint, its the only explanation I can find for all these disorders. There are many explanations from a general viewpoint, but. Anyway, I will know the day I am toldall these imaginings are useless. But from a personal viewpoint. You see, for a long time (more than a year now, probably almost two), this body hasnt felt its limits.14 It is not at all its former self; it is scarcely more than a Concentration now, a kind of agglomeration of something; it is not a body in a skinnot at all. Its a sort of agglomeration, a Concentration of vibrations. And even what is normally called illness (but it is not illness, these are not illnesses, they are functional disorders), even these functional disorders dont have the same meaning for the body as they have for the doctor, for instance, or for ordinary people. Its not like that, the body doesnt feel it like that. It feels it rather as as a kind of difficulty in adjusting to some new vibratory need.
(silence)
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive been feeling lazy! I have received an abominable avalanche of letters, three-quarters of which are useless but I have to look at them to know whether theyre useless or not, so it takes up my morning before coming downstairs. I usually translated The Synthesis of Yoga in the afternoons, or answered questions, but nowadays I go into Concentration at that time: I dont do anything. I want to cure my legs.
I am determined to cure myself they told me it was incurable. The doctors poison you to cure you (as they poisoned our poor S.), and thats no cure! When they dont feel the need to show off in front of the patient, they openly acknowledge that it isnt at all sure that their medicines cure: they merely make you inoffensive to others! But I dont believe in it I dont believe in doctors, I dont believe in their remedies and I dont believe in their science (they are very useful, they have a great social utility, but for myself, I dont believe in it).
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the earth it probably happened like that, all at once: a sort of ascent, then the fall. But the earth is a tiny Concentrationuniversally, its something else.
(silence)
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yet the cells sense so perfectly that. All the experiences in the subconscient at night are quite clear proofs that a a WORLD of things and vibrations is being cleaned outall the vibrations opposed to the cellular transformation. But how can one poor little body do all that work! The body is quite aware of being a sort of accumulation and Concentration of things (yet there is inevitably a selectionMo ther laughsbecause if everything had to be worked out in one center like this [her body] it would be it would be impossible!). Oh, if you knew how deeply and perfectly convinced these cells are, in all their groups and sub-groups, each one individually and within the whole, that everything is not only decreed but executed by the Divine, everything! They have a kind of constant awareness so filled with a conscious faith in His infinite wisdom, even when there is what the ordinary consciousness calls suffering or pain. Thats not what it is for the cellsits something else! And the result is a state of yes, a state of peaceful combat. There is a sense of Peace, the vibration of Peace, and simultaneously an impression of being (how to put it?) on the alert, in constant combat. Taken all together it creates a rather odd situation.
And within oh! Its like waves, constantly, the equivalent of those nuances of color I was speaking about, waves of this joy of life, the joy of life rippling past, touching; but instead of being. At times, you see, the body is in a sort of equilibrium (what we, in our ordinary outer consciousness, call equilibrium that is, good health), and then this joy is constant, like swells on the sea (Mother shapes great waves): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face for a moment, then vanishes. In the very tiny things of lifeyes, physical life the joy of these things, the joy life contains, this luminous, special kind of vibration, rises up as if to remind us that its here; it is here, it mustnt be forgotten, its here but its kept down by this tension.
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had told N. to knock at the door when he arrived with X, but he didnt do itluckily I heard the door opening. I stood up, still in that state and almost fell over! X must have thought I was having a spell of weakness or something, because I was holding onto the arms of the chair, and when I took his flowers, my hands were trembling I wasnt in my body. And afterwards, ah, what a Concentration! We remained in it for about thirty-five minutes. It was SOLIDan extraordinary solidity! I didnt want to waste time waiting for it to subside before coming here, and you must have seen how I was when I arrived: like a sleepwalker! I said to the people I passed in the corridor, Im coming back, Im coming back! Thats all I could say, like an idiot.
(silence)
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was mainly on your right side I banged on it. But strangely enough, it didnt break it became supple, but then it lost its beauty. (It was so beautiful, as though sculptured!) I tried to pass through it, but to do so (this is what I found interesting), instead of passing through at this level (the chest), the psychic plane the level of the souls vibration I had to climb up above and then descend; and finally, without even realizing it, I found myself inside I had entered through sheer force of Concentration. There, at the vital level, the emotional vital (solar plexus), I put two flowers: one very large Endurance in the Most Material Vital [zinnia] and another flower like the one X just gave me [cosmos] but bigger and pure white (it concerns sexual movements, light in sexual movements). But curiously enough, I passed inside through a trance; I was quite busy trying to make it more fluid when all at once, poof! I found myself inside. But since I entered through a trance it became completely objective: no more thought, nothing. And I saw I had put these two flowers there (at the levels of the abdomen and chest), one more active, a very large, dark purple Endurance flower, and another much smaller, pure white, slightly lower down. While I was watching this I think the clock must have struck something pulled me and it all faded away.
And I found it interesting that when I received your letter yesterday evening I concentrated for a moment, almost out of curiosity: Why doesnt he ever feel he has an experience? Why doesnt he feel anything? I wanted to know precisely what type of experience would give you the feeling of having an experience!
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the occult sense, a 'formation' signifies a Concentration of power or force directed towards a particular goal. it is like a bullet of force going inexorably to its target. In fact, all beings are constantly making 'formations' with their thoughts and desires, but these formations have scarcely any power other than that of clinging to the one who has made them or returning upon him like a boomerang.
The following undated note (which could date from this or any number of other times!) was found among Mother's scattered papers: Now the situation has become very critical, all the reserves have been swallowed up, there are debts, many important works remain unfinished and the daily life has become a problem. It is the subsistence of more than 1,200 people which is in question.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are successive curves, each second of which would have to be noted down; and in the course of one of these curves, something is suddenly found. For example, at the beginning of The Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo reviews other yogas, beginning with Hatha Yoga. I had just translated this when I remembered Sri Aurobindo saying that Hatha Yoga was very effective but that it amounted to spending your whole life training your body, which is an enormous time and effort spent on something not essentially very interesting. Then I looked at it and said to myself, But after all, (I was looking at life as it is, as people ordinarily live it) one spends at least 90% of ones life merely to PRESERVE ones body, to keep it going! All this attention and Concentration on an instrument which is put to hardly any use. Anyway, I was looking at it with that attitude, when suddenly all the cells of my body responded, in such a spontaneous and WARM way. How to say it? Something so so moving. They told me, But its the Lord who is looking after Himself in us! Each one was saying: But its the Lord who is looking after Himself in us!
It was truly lovely. Then I gave my reason a good poke: How stupid can you be! You always forget the essential.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes, all of a sudden, I see myself as a FORMIDABLE Concentration of power, pushing, pushing, pushing in an inner Concentration to pass through. It happens to me anywhere, any time, at any moment I see a whole mass of consciousness gathered into a formidable power pushing, pushing, pushing to pass to the other side.
When we have passed to the other side, all will be well.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. The earth is a representative and symbolic world, a kind of crystallization and Concentration of the evolutionary labor giving it a more concrete reality. It has to be taken like this: the history of the earth is a symbolic history. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (its not the history of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the individual terrestrial atmosphere.
Lets take Savitri, which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first theres a sort of emanation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does with SatyavanSatyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, HERE is where I will do my work. Elsewhere (Mother indicates regions of higher Consciousness), its enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on earth you have to work.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then comes what Theon called the nervous sub-level, which lies between this subtle physical and the vital. And it acts as a protection: if it is stable, harmonious and strong, it protects youit protects you even physicallyfrom contagious diseases, for instance, and even from accidents. I experienced it when I was living at Val-de-Grce. It was the year I resolved to attain union with the psychic being and I was concentrated on this from morning to night and night to morning. Every day I spent some time in the Luxembourg Gardens. They were right near the house, but to get there I had to go all the way down Rue du Val-de-Grce and cross Boulevard Saint Michel, where there were streetcars, automobiles, buses the whole circus. I would remain in my Concentration the whole time, and once, while crossing the boulevard, I felt a shock about this far from my body [slightly more than arms length], so spontaneously I jumped backjust enough for the streetcar to pass by. I hadnt heard anything; I was totally absorbed, and without that warning I would surely have been run over; instead, I jumped back just in time, and the streetcar sped by. I understood then that this nervous sheath was something entirely concrete, because what I had felt was not an idea of danger but a shocka material SHOCK.
So its true that as long as this envelope is strong and undamaged, you are protected. But for instance, if you are over-tired or worried or flusteredanything that brings disorder into the atmosphere seems to make holes in this envelope, and all kinds of things can enter.
0 1961-08-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was very interesting. However, the experience could not last because after a while I wasnt alone anymore. Actually, it was dinner time. Not that I couldnt eat in that stateit makes no difference (I can eat very easily through others, for instance: it has happened quite frequently that someone else eats and I am satisfied; theres no need to put anything inside, its very convenient! These are experiments.) But this was it was the almost total annihilation of the center. It didnt last because of the people (four, as always) bringing in dinner, serving the plates, etc.their Concentration weakened the experience: it faded. The feeling of Im eating returned a littlenot I! That notion disappeared a long time ago! Not my true Imy true I has been settled up above for a very long time, and it doesnt move from there. But this body is eating; this body which has been put at the disposal of the work is eating (it didnt come in so many words and sentences, but still!). In short, the experience faded with the sensation of eating and I was unable to know its effect.
But I would like to know the effect it must have on the bodys functioning. It would be interesting to know if the functioning becomes wholly harmonious or what? We will probably see. But the experience must last; it must last for at least one day, or even two or three then the result would be interesting to see.
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This Concentration on finding the mechanism sprang from the fact that there were disorders in the body which were vanishing and then reappearingpermanent cure seemed impossible. So I told myself, Somewhere, probably in the subconscient, something must be justifying their presence. Then, after concentrating and searching and concentrating some more, suddenly a memory rose up from the subconscient (a memory which is a kind of continued existence under a certain form), the memory of a particular set of movements and actions (not physical movements, but attitudes) that go back many years and had never attracted my attention. None of it had ever been included in the general clearing-out because, like so many other things, it all seemed to be due to normal, ongoing circumstances. But thats just where I saw (what to call it?) the hue, the taint of Falsehood. Its very subtle. These are very subtle things. But suddenly, oh! It caught hold of me and created a revolution in the whole being. All those vibrations were cast up and transformedan extraordinary thing. It stirred up much more commotion and revolution than I had ever expected. And ah! A relief. Something was clarified, bringing a brilliant, new comprehension, and then quite interesting physical results. Before this, I was really feeling rather poorly, extremely tired, with the impression of a decline into decrepituderelatively speaking! (It was in a very superficial part of the being, but it was enough to be disagreeable.) And all of itpfft! Gone in a single stroke.
And that very day, I had this experience with the possessed personit all came together. And then afterwards, a sort of mastery over the problem and the impression of a breakthroughan opening up of the WAY to change, which is this enlargement. First, the movement of generosity (not that shriveling movement, but its exact opposite the movement of expansion), and from there you go on to universality, and from universality to Totality.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He is there and the atmosphere is full of a sort of Concentration of force, and there are these two things: This is how legends come into being how legends begin. The beginning of the legend. I hear this. And there is also a kind of analogy to the old stories of Buddha, of Christ. Its strange.
I seemed to be looking back into the present from some thousands of years ahead (its no longer now, but as if I were propelled somewhere several thousand years ahead, looking backwards) and its the beginning of the legend.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only Concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
Then everything vanished.
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can have that experience at any moment whatsoever: one second of Concentration, stepping back from action, and its Bliss. And when I dont step back, then its something like an eternal omnipotence geared to action and entirely upheld and englobed by That. This power geared to action is the first manifestation of That thats what manifests first when That begins to exist consciously. (Mother places her palms together and, without separating them, turns her hands from side to side, as if to show two faces of the same thing.) So its indissoluble: its not two things, not even two aspects, because it isnt an aspect at all (words are idiotic, imbecilic, meaningless). The experience is renewable at will: one single thing in its essence, innumerable in its expression, and apparently increasing in power. I have experienced this at will, in every possible circumstance, including physically fainting (I told you the other day). Its called fainting, but I didnt lose consciousness for a minute! Not for one minute did I PHYSICALLY lose consciousness and behind it all, witnessing everything, was this experience.
(Pavitra enters the room to ask Mother an urgent question)
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The 19th was so-so, and on the 20th I was concentrated all day long: no contacts with anyone, nothing external, only an intense invocation as intense and concentrated as when youre trying to melt into the Lord at death. It was like that. The same movement of identification, but at its core a will for everything to work out in a good way here [on the material plane]. In a good way I mean I said to the Lord, YOUR Good, the true Good, not. The true Good, a victorious Good, a real progress over the way life is usually lived. And I stayed in this unwavering Concentration the whole day, all the time, all the time: even when I spoke, it was something very external speaking. And then at night when I went to bed I felt something had changed the body felt completely different. When I got up in the morning, all the pains and disorders and dangers had vanished. Lord, I said, You have given me a gift of health.
And with this change, the bodily substance, the very stuff of the cells, was constantly being told, Dont you forget, now you see that miracles CAN happen. In other words, the way things work out in physical substance may not at all conform to the laws of Nature. Dont forget, now! It kept coming back like a refrain: Dont forget, now! This is how it is. And I saw how necessary this repetition was for the cells: they forget right away and try to find explanations (oh, how stupid can you be!). Its a sort of feeling (not at all an individual way of thinking), its Matters way of thinking. Matter is built like that, its part of its make-up. We call it thinking for lack of a better word, but its not thinking: it is a material way of understanding things, the way Matter is able to understand.
--
Tapas: literally, heat. It is the concentrated energy constituting everythingnot generated by some mechanism, but by the very Concentration of the power of Consciousness (chit). In Indian tradition, the world was created by Tapas in the form of an egg the primordial eggwhich broke open from the incubating heat of consciousness-force and gave birth to the world. To "become the tapas of things" is to uncover in one's own material, bodily substance that same formidable, supramental seat of energy (what physicists, following Einstein, call atomic energy: E = mc2), the energy that animates the stone and the bird and the universe for then like can act upon like. Mother was reaching that point.
***
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its easier with the mind because we are more used to concentrating there. When you want to reflect and find a solution to something, instead of using mental deduction, you stop everything, focus on the idea or problem, and then concentrate, concentrate, intensifying the crux of the problem. You stop everything and wait until, through sheer intensity of Concentration, a response comes. Learning that also demands a little time; but if you were ever a good student you have something of the aptitudeits not so very difficult.
Theres a kind of extension of the physical senses. In American Indians, for instance, the senses of hearing and smell are far more extended than ours (in dogs too!). When I was eight or ten years old, I had an Indian friend who came with Buffalo Bill in the days of the Hippodrome that was a long time ago, I was around eight. He was so sharp that he could put his ear to the ground and tell, from the intensity of the vibrations, how far the sound of footsteps was coming from. All the children immediately said, Id really like to know how to do that! And so you try.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it is very silent there is no thought; there is barely, barely the ability to observe. And all kinds of movements, an infinity of movements and vibrations of something that could be the essence of thoughts, move there, rhythmically, in a movement of waves without beginning or end, with a condensation like this (gesture from above down), with a condensation like that (horizontal gesture), and a movement of expansion (gesture like a pulsating ocean). That is, a sort of contraction, Concentration, and then expansion, diffusion.2
Yesterday I had the total experience I let myself go completely. It lasted something like forty minutes as I walked around the room.
--
My physical consciousness has been universalized for a long, long time, it encompasses all terrestrial movements3; but the body is limited solely to this small Concentration of substance (Mother touches her body)thats what I call the body-consciousness.
And when I said, I have left the body,4 it certainly didnt mean I have left the physical consciousness my overall contact with the terrestrial world has remained the same. It concerns only the purely bodily aspect, the specific concretization or Concentration of substance giving each of us a different bodya different APPEARANCE.
And a rather illusory appearance, besides. As soon as you rise to a certain height (I saw it quite clearly during that progressive reconcretization5), this appearance quickly loses its reality. Our external appearance is very, very illusory. Our particular form (this ones form, that ones form), the form we see with our physical eyes is very superficial, you know. From the vital world onwards, its completely different.
--
A movement of waves without beginning or end, with a condensation like this (gesture from above down), with a condensation like that (horizontal gesture). We cannot fail to be reminded of the electromagnetic field with its two perpendicular components, the electric and magnetic fields, which are propagated along an infinite sinusoidal wave. And then again: A movement of expansion a sort of contraction, Concentration, and then expansion, diffusion. Unmistakably, this is an exact description of the propagation in space of a sinusoidal wave.
Striking though the parallel may be, there is still a fundamental difference between these mathematical concepts and Mothers experience. In the first case, we are dealing with conceptual instruments used by the human mind to better explain and master the world: no one has actually seen electromagnetic wavesnot to speak of gravitational ones! They are images, convenient models, invisible and nonexistent in themselves. They exist only through their effects: a beam of sunlight, which is an electromagnetic wave, strikes our retina and enables us to distinguish a flower; by means of gravitational waves, Newtons apple falls from the tree but no one has lived the reality of those waves. The way Mother grasps reality, on the contrary, is first and foremost through lived experience. She is the movement, she is the wave: I walk around the room, and that is what is walking. Here we touch upon a stupendous mystery and a formidable question: How is it possible for a material and cellular body to be the wave that at once constitutes and carries the worlds along in its infinite undulating movement and governs the existence of atoms and galaxies? How is it possible to be an infinite and ubiquitous electromagnetic wave while remaining within the narrow confines of a human body?
0 1962-05-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know, I cant define it very clearly. Instead of trying to push down walls, I feel I may be remaining more passive. Its that kind of movement now, a movement of surrender rather than Concentration.
Yes, exactly! Thats where I find fault with the Tantric system they have no belief in the possibility of something helping you from above. They believe in walking the tightrope. Its no good.
0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But from the purely material standpoint, its elementary: if you so much as turn your head on awaking, everything fades away. You have to stay absolutely still, in a sort of peaceful Concentration. And then you wait.
If you sometimes remember a word or a gesture, a color or an image, hang on to it and dont move.
0 1962-06-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I cant say I find it terribly interesting (!) but I am clearly meant to know about it. Not that I am seeking to see or know (my focus is rather on preparing the body and making it receptive; thats what I am actively doing), but what probably happens is that, in my contemplation, I suddenly exteriorize (or something of the sort) and then I see all kinds of things. But I DONT sleep, you see (I dont know how to explain it). I go from a state of conscious Concentration to a more passive state in which I am made to take part in all kinds of scenes and visions, involving many people and many things, as if to complete my knowledge. Some of these visions are amusing, new and interesting, and I dont know, but I suspect Sri Aurobindo has something to do with it, because theres such a sense of humor running through it all! (Mother laughs) Things that make me laugh, comical things due mainly to the tremendous earnestness with which people take the most unimportant things; yes, the disproportionate importance people give to absolutely unimportant events!
(silence)
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two nights ago, I had an experience I hadnt had for perhaps more than a year. A sort of Concentration and accumulation of divine Energy in the cells of the body. During a certain period (I dont remember when), every night I had a kind of recharging of batteries through contact with universal forces; I had it again two nights ago, spontaneously. Then last night, when I wanted to look, to study, to understand how it worked, I was given a lavish demonstration of the inadequacy and utter uselessness of all processes of consciousness working through the mind. They are useless, they simply spoil the experience.
Previously, when I had an experience, I took great care to keep everything quiet and still so that it wouldnt be interrupted; but afterwards it was always made use of by the mind in its typical way (not exactly typical, but typical to the mind), and this appeared to be inevitable. But now it doesnt work in the same way: its limited to a few inevitable interventions; I mean people speak to me or I to them (I keep as silent as I can, but they still chatter away about every possible subject and I am obliged to answer), and its limited to that. But as it is, even that as soon as I am a bit concentrated, even that seems so not wrong or distorted, not that, but INADEQUATE. It expresses absolutely nothing, thats all I can say.
--
Everything that happened prior to the experience of April 13 has disappeared, as it were, and the usual functioning of the consciousness has been totally annulled; it is trying little by little to create a new mode of operationnot merely trying: it is in the PROCESS of doing so on a truer foundation; a truer foundation, or truer relations, or vibrations, or functionings (I dont know the right word for it: all these things at once). That presence the other day [the tall white Being] was nothing essentially newit had already intervened a good many times; and yet it was new, because the whole functioning was new. Its like my experience two nights ago [the recharging of batteries], I had it for months on end; well, it was new because it was based on a new functioning. And each time (is it out of habit, or to make me understand, to make me see the difference?), each time the old functioning starts up, first of all I really feel I am losing the true contact, that the TRUE thing is escaping, and then I wonder how anybody can function like that without going insane! Thats what strikes me nowthis feeling of going insane! I mean it grates, it scrapes, it makes no senseit misses the point. It is not the TRUE thing, its beside the point. It tries to imitate something inimitable. And so I ask myself, What is this? Am I going crazy? Am I losing my faculties? And then I realize its not that at all! Above theres a state of immutable and UNSHAKABLE Concentration, constant and almighty, and with but a drop of That, a spark of That, all problems are solved. Then I see clearly that its only a demonstration to make me see the inadequacy of the old, habitual functioningto really and truly convince me that its inadequate. Its rather hard to bear, actually. Last night I had it, I have seen it again in recent days: it lasts a few secondsjust enough for a satisfactory lesson! It may also happen to make me understand, but afterwards I wonder, Well, if everybody is in this state they dont know it, but its just terrible! And I realize that the LEAST thing, the slightest circumstance, is COMPLETELY distorted, instantly distorted by the way people work it out, the way they cause events to develop.
Thats an ever-present experience.
0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not partitionedno, there arent any walls, its not like that. Rather its a Concentration with (how to explain?) some irregularities, in the sense that suddenly theres a very intense light, flashes of lightning, and then it dims. Some places are extremely bright, receptivereceiving, receiving, receiving; others are not asleep but more passive. And its not like this (horizontal), its like that (vertical). And all your activity is above the head; its very, very active there, but not walled-invery active. Now and then theres a small burst of light.
I always see you that way. You LIVE there (gesture above the head).
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, I wasnt sleeping, I was concentrating; and in this Concentration, while I was fully enveloped in those forces, THROUGH THAT you came to me. It was truly fine!
Good. It will come; its a good sign. I was very pleased: Ah, something is happening!
--
And simultaneously there is an automatic perception of timeclock timewhich is rather curious (everything is regulated by the comings and goings of the people around me, you see: such a thing at this time, such a thing at that time), I dont need to hear the clock I am warned just before it strikes. I repeat one part of the japa in a particular way while lying down, because the Power is greater (these arent meditations, they are actions), and another part while walking. So I stay stretched out for a certain time, I walk for a certain time, and at a fixed hour this one goes, another comes, and so on. But none of them are people; I dont tell them so, but theyre not people: they are movements of the Lord. And its extremely interestingone of the Lords movements will have this particular character, another movement will have a different type of vibration, and they all harmonize very nicely into a whole. But I know what time it is just before the clock strikes: six oclock, 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, like that. Not with the words six, seven, but: its time, its time, its time. And along with thisthis clockwork precision I have that other notion of time which is quite different, its. Although its a very rigid convention, our time is a living formation with its own living power here in the world of action. The other time is the rhythm of consciousness. So according to the intensity of the Presence (theres a Concentration and an expansion, I mean), according to this pulsationwhich can vary, its not regular and mechanicalwalking around the room takes either no time at all, or else an ENORMOUS amount of time. But this doesnt interfere with the other time, theres no contradiction. Our time is on a different plane, something far more external; but it has its usefulness and its own law, and the one doesnt hinder the other.4
And its gradually becoming foreseeable that.5
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But now the body the body itself, its very own selffeels it is WITHIN things or WITHIN people or WITHIN an action. There are no more limits, none of this (Mother touches the skin of her hands as if all separation had disappeared). Take this example: someone accidentally bumps me (it does happen) with an object or a part of his body. Well, it is NEVER something external: it happens INSIDE the bodys consciousness is much larger than my body. Yesterday, the table leg bumped my foot; so there was the ordinary outward reaction (it operates automatically and in a curious way the body jumped), and then the body-consciousness now I am speaking of the body-consciousness saw that an unexpected and involuntary collision of two objects had taken place INSIDE ITSELF. And it also saw that if it made a certain movement of Concentration at that particular spot, inside itself, some pain or damage would result; but if it made the other movement of (how shall I put it?) of union, of abolishing all separation (which it can do very well), well, then the results of the blow would be annulled. And thats what happened, I did it. I was simply sitting down, and I let my body cope with the whole thing (while I watched with keen interest); and I noticed it really did feel the blow inside and not outsideit wasnt that something from outside had struck it, but that there had been an unexpected, or rather an unforeseen and involuntary collision of two things inside itself. And I clearly followed how the body made a more complete movement of identification (you see, someone with the sense of separation had moved the table, so the sense of separation accompanied the blow, and then of course there was all the regret,2 and so on and so forth); well, the body simply went into its usual state where theres no sense of separation, and the effect vanished instantaneously. Had I been asked, Where were you hit, what spot?, I couldnt have told, I dont know. All I know, because of words I heard spoken, is that the table leg bumped into my foot. But where? I cant say; I couldnt have said even five minutes after the incidentit had utterly disappeared, and disappeared through a VOLUNTARY movement.
This body-consciousness has a will; it is constantly, constantly calling upon the Lords will: Lord, take possession of this, take possession of that, take. Theres no question of taking possession of the will, that was done ages ago, but: Take possession of these cells, those cells, this, that. It is the BODYS aspiration. Well, the blow wasnt caused by this will acting in the body; the blow didnt come directly from the body, but from something that had slipped in through an unconscious element; and the body simply erased, or absorbed, digested this unconsciousness and the thing vanished without a trace!
0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The feeling is rather one of vibrations gathered together and coagulated somewhere and even at that, theres a very supple inner play, for it spreads out like this (Mother makes a gesture of diffusion or expansion all around her) through a sort of subtilization or etherization. And its limitlesshow could it have any limits! It goes like this (same radiating gesture)these same vibrations are everywhere, in all bodies and all things. What people call this body is merely the result of a willed Concentration organized in a specific way; thats how it spontaneously feels, all the time (not that its observing itself, but if something forces it to observe itself, thats what it spontaneously feels). And the delimitation that exists in all beings, and which WAS in this body (was it this body? Havent the cells changed? I dont know), which once existed in what people call this body, has completely disappeared. Before (thirty years or so ago), it used to feel like something separate moving among other separate things thats all gone.
I have tried several times, telling myself, Ah, lets have a good lookis there anything, anywhere, that feels that separation? (I am looking at the body from above.) Theres nothingtruly? Are you one hundred percent spontaneously sincere? Nothing at all? Its impossible to find a thing. Impossible.
--
Perhaps there once was a jiva. I dont know, I dont remember; all I remember now is ultimately, an evolving universe, with a special Concentration on the affairs of the earth, because the Lord has decided that the time has come to to change something. Thats all. To change something.
(silence)
0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And afterwards, its not as though he suddenly went away: he went slowly, slowly, slowly, like something evaporating; then things went back to normal, with various Concentrations here and there, various activities.
I think some people must have felt itmaybe they didnt fully understand, since they lack total vision, but they may have felt as if he were descending into them. Because in the afternoon, when everything had returned to normal (he is always here of course, but not that way! He is always here), there was a kind of wave of regret passing through the atmosphere, like something saying, Oh, this beautiful thing has come to an end! Oh, now August 15 is over, this beautiful thing is over. But it was like I described, something so more than concrete, I dont know how to express it, it was there was a sense of absoluteness about it.
0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have already explained this to you on several occasions: instead of SHIFTING from one to the other, its as if one were permeated by the other, like this (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand in between the fingers of her left hand), and you can almost feel both simultaneously. Its one of the results of whats going on these days. A very slight Concentration, for example, is all it takes to feel both at the same time, which leads me to a near conviction that true change in the physical results from a kind of PENETRATION. The most material physical substance no longer has that unreceptive sort of density, a density that resists penetration: it is becoming porous, and thus can be penetrated. Several times, in fact, Ive had the experience of one vibration quite naturally changing the quality of the other the subtle physical vibration was bringing about a sort of almost a transformation, or in any case a noticeable change in the purely physical vibration.
That seems to be the process, or at least one of the most important processes.
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was lying on my chaise longue in Concentration when all at once I found myself in my friend Zs house. He and several others were playing music. I could see everything very clearly, even more clearly than in the physical, and I moved around very quickly, unimpeded. I stayed there watching for a while, and even tried to attract their attention, but they were unaware of me. Then suddenly something pulled me, a sort of instinct: I must go back. I felt pain in my throat. I remember that to get out of their room, which was all closed except for one small opening high up, my form seemed to vaporize (because I still had a form, though unlike our material onemore luminous, less opaque), and I went out like smoke through the open window. Then I found myself back in my room, next to my body, and I saw that my head was twisted and rigid against the cushion, and I was having trouble breathing. I wanted to get into my body: impossible. So I became afraid. I entered through the legs, and when I reached the knees I seemed to bounce back out; two, three times like that: the consciousness rose and then bounced back out like a spring. If I could only tip over this stool, I thought (there was a small stool under my feet), the noise would wake me up! But nothing doing. And I was breathing more and more heavily. I was terribly afraid. Suddenly I remembered Mother and cried out, Mother! Mother! and found myself back in my body, awake, with a stiff neck.
(Mother laughs and laughs.)
0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Prayers and Meditations came to me, you knowit was dictated each time. I would write at the end of my Concentration, and it didnt pass through the mind, it just came and it obviously came from someone interested in beautiful form. I used to keep it under lock and key so nobody would see it. But when I came here Sri Aurobindo asked about it, so I showed him a few pages and then he wanted to see the rest. Otherwise I would have always kept it locked away. I destroyed whatever was leftthere were five thick volumes in which I had written every single day (there was some repetition, of course): the outcome of my Concentrations. So I chose which parts would be published (Sri Aurobindo helped in the choice), copied them out, and then I cut the pages up and had the rest burned.
Thats a shame!
0 1962-09-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am not doing it to show it to people or to have anyone read it, but to remain in Savitris atmosphere, for I love that atmosphere. It will give me an hour of Concentration, and Ill see if by chance. I have no gift for poetry, but Ill see if it comes! (It surely wont come from a mentality developed in this present existence theres no poetic gift!) So its interesting, Ill see if anything comes. I am going to give it a try.
I know that light. I am immediately plunged into it each time I read Savitri. It is a very, very beautiful light.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Personally, you know, I have come to feel Him everywhere, all the time, all the time, to the point of actual physical contact (its subtle physical, but physical): in things, in the air, in people, in like this (Mother presses her hands against her face). So I dont have far to go! I just have to do this (Mother turns her hands slightly inwards), one seconds Concentration and there He is! Because He is here, you know, He is everywhere.
He is far only if we think Hes far.
Of course, when we start thinking of all the zones, all the universal planes of consciousness, and that Hes way, way, way up there at the end of all that, well then it does become very far, very far indeed! (Mother laughs) But if we think of Him as being everywhere, in everything, that He is everything, that only our way of perceiving things keeps us from seeing and feeling Him, and all we have to do is this (Mother turns her hands inwards) a movement like this, a movement like that (Mother turns her hands inwards and outwards in turn), then it gets to be quite concrete: you go like this (outward gesture) and everything becomes artificialhard, dry, false, deceptive, artificial; you go like that (inward gesture) and all is vast, tranquil, luminous, peaceful, immense, joyous. And its merely this or that (Mother turns her hands inwards and outwards in turn). How? Where? It cant be described, but it is solelysolelya movement of consciousness, nothing else. A movement of consciousness. And the difference between the true and the false consciousness becomes more and more precise and at the same time THIN: you dont need to do great things to get out of it. Before, there used to be a feeling of living WITHIN something and that a great effort of interiorization, Concentration, absorption was needed to get out of it; but now I feel its something one accepts (Mother puts her hand in front of her face like a screen), something like a thin little rind, very hardmalleable, but very hard, very dry, very thin, very thin something like a mask you put on then you go like this (gesture), and its gone.
I foresee a time when it will no longer be necessary to be aware of the mask: the mask will be so thin that we can see and feel and act through it, and it wont be necessary to put it back on.
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To have it (just to give you an idea) took me a year of exclusive Concentration on finding that within myself that is, to enter into contact with the immanent God. I did nothing but that, thought of nothing but that, wanted nothing but that. There was even a rather funny instance, because I had resolved to do it (I had already been working for a very long time, of course; Madame Thon had told me about my mission on earth and all that, so you can imagine I am talking about the psychic being belonging to this present creation, this formationMo ther touches her body) anyway, it was New Years Eve and I decided: Within the coming year. I had a large, almost square studio, a bit bigger than this room, with a door leading onto a patio. I opened the little door and looked at the sky and there, just as I looked, was a shooting star. You know the tradition: if you formulate an aspiration just as you see a shooting star, before the star disappears, it will be realized within the year. And there, just as I opened the door, was a shooting star I was totally in my aspiration: Union with the inner Divine. And before the end of December of the following year, I had the experience.
But I was entirely concentrated on that. I was in Paris, and I did nothing else but that; when I walked down the street, I was thinking only of that. One day, as I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel, I was almost run over (Ive told you this), because I was thinking of nothing but thatconcentrating, concentrating like sitting in front of a closed door, and it was painful! (intense gesture to the chest) Physically painful, from the pressure. And then suddenly, for no apparent reason I was neither more concentrated nor anything elsepoof! It opened. And with that. It didnt just last for hours, it lasted for months, mon petit! It didnt leave me, that light, that dazzling light, that light and immensity. And the sense of THAT willing, THAT knowing, THAT ruling the whole life, THAT guiding everythingsince then, this sense has never left me for a minute. And always, whenever I had a decision to make, I would simply stop for a second and receive the indication from there.
0 1962-11-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its somewhat similar to collecting ones thoughts. Its part Concentration, part interiorization, and both togetherlike drawing back, but without movement.
After a while, it becomes almost automatic; I do it hundreds of times a day. Its difficult to describe, because the description makes it too concrete. But its a drawing back, an interiorizationa self-gathering. But all those words seem dense, heavy; too material, too heavy. Yet its a very concrete sensation, very concrete, which immediately brings about a kind of stabilizationeverything stops. Everything stops, to the point where even a vibration of pain is stopped, it doesnt exist any more. But when you leave this state, back it comes again. It gets cured only when you persist for some time; otherwise the two might continue to coexist.
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Everything was like that, and without thought I am now trying to put it into words. And at the center of that immensity was a Concentration of white light as we know it (far more intense), but denser, forming a sort of cube that was relatively tiny in the immensity, but nonetheless quite perceptible. It was vibrant, fluid, condensed, concentrated, and tremendously active. And all that immensity converged there (how?) without moving. And from there, it was spreading everywhere, without going out.
In order to be discernible, the cube was enveloped in something that looked like a kind of tulle, a tulle made of a pale gray substance, which expressed the individual nonexistence, the perfect humility that completely abolishes the ego: because of that there wasnt the least possibility of egoif you ask me why, I cant say, but thats how it was. And I was seeing that tulle all the time something extremely delicate, scarcely perceptible, yet maintaining the cubes form. It was perfect humility (in the divine sense) and total absence of egothere wasnt even the memory or idea of it, nothing whatever: the abolition of the ego. And it served to receive that immobile immensity which manifested through an action of the Power. And then, the action of the Power. I was conscious (I was consciouswhere was I? I dont know; the cube represented my physical being: I had been TOLD it was my physical being), and I was watching it without being situated I myself had no precise place but could see and understand the whole thing. And I could discern all the action being done through the cube: this action for that thing, this for that, this for that the whole earth (gesture expressing forces radiating outward, each for a special purpose), things from the past and things FAR into the future.
--
A time will come when it will all be done automatically, but right now that would be impossible. As it is, the way the Force acts is already making people here a little disorientedits verging on being unintelligible to them. In other words, its beginning to obey another law. For instance, to know at the exact moment what needs to be done or said, whats going to happenif theres the slightest bit of concern or Concentration to know, it doesnt come. But if I am just like that, simply in a kind of inner immobility, then for all the little details of life, I know at the exact moment. What needs to be said comes: you say this. And not like an order from outside: it just comes, there it is. What needs to be said is there, the reply that needs to be sent is there; the person who enters, entersyoure not forewarned. You do things in a kind of automatic way. In the mental world, you think of something before doing it (it may happen very fast, but both movements are distinct); here it isnt like that.
This is beginning to be a rather constant occurrence. Its already very baffling for all those who live with me, but if I were as I should be, I think it would be quite intolerable.
0 1962-12-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And with this new perception I feel, inexpressibly, a Concentration of the truth of what we call Sri Aurobindo gathering around and on and within this body (there is really neither within nor without). And the body, which has reopened the doors it had closed2 to be able to go on, feels an increasingly total and unmixed identity, to the point where, if I give my hand free rein, my handwriting begins to resemble Sri Aurobindostiny, like his.
And its not what one might imagine, its not one form entering anotherit doesnt keep him from being wherever he wants to be and doing whatever he wants to do, appearing as he wants to appear and being involved with everything happening on earth: it doesnt change any of that. And its not just a part of him [that is in Mother, but his totality]. And thats how I know he was manifesting the Absolute, he was a manifestation of the Absolute. Of course, afterwards he revealed himself as what I had called the Master of Yoga; that was the reason he came on earth (what people here in India call an Avatar). But thats still a way of seeing things SEPARATELY: its not the thingTHE thing.
0 1962-12-19, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, for instance, I had to see F. and R., since they had just arrived the day before. I spent three-quarters of an hour with them, and by the time it was over they had literally EMPTIED the atmosphere of all spiritual senseit had become empty and hollow. It took me two or three minutes of Concentration (which isnt so long) to bring it all back to normal.
I havent seen much of that room,2 I havent been there often. I went to see what it was like for the first time the evening before the inauguration, and it gave me the feeling of something totally emptyyou know, hollow and dry. It was so strong that the body felt like this (wavering gesture, as if Mother were losing her footing). Thats how the BODY felt, its not the consciousness; I am talking about the body-consciousness. The room seemed so hollow and empty that the body felt drained, as if all its force and consciousness had to spread out everywhere in order to fill up that emptiness.
0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But for instance, if this had happened with people who know nothing of my outer life, they would have said, But Mother went outside, I saw her. I had experiences like that in Paris (it happened to someone else, not me personally). Someone swore that another person (who, by the way, was with me at the time) had come to him, spoken to him and even clapped him on the shoulderall the typical phenomena of ubiquity which in this case were explained by mental Concentration. But this person had no idea that it was impossible (according to material logic) for the other one to have come to him, you see. So he quite simply and naturally said, But look, I saw him, I spoke to him, he clapped me on the shoulder!
So one doesnt say anything because. You see, when people are in Ignorance their immediate explanation is always the same:
0 1963-01-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some panic. Some have already had a few experiences, they know better and see clearer, they work to adapt to the new vibration. But others have yet to understand, and they feel so stupid, so stupid! And from above, something watches it all and finds it both (both at once) very funny, because really its exceedingly ridiculous, and at the same time so sad! Its so sad to see that EVERYTHING is like this: the WHOLE earth, the WHOLE earth! That this body is the object of a special Concentration, a special effort, a special CHARGE, a special concern, a special carethis minuscule fragment, minuscule and theres the whole earth, the whole earth. And they all think themselves so wonderful, so smart!
I could keep talking for hours.
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive had a very interesting experience (not personal). Did you know Benjamin3? His psychic being had left him quite some time ago and, as a result, to the surface consciousness he seemed a bit derangedhe wasnt deranged but diminished. And he lived, as I said, out of habit. The physical consciousness still held a minimum of vital and mind and he lived out of habit. But the remarkable thing is that sometimes, for a few seconds, he would live admirably, in full light, while at other times he couldnt even control his gestures. Then he left altogether: all the accumulated energy dwindled little by little, little by little, and whatever remained left his body. It was just on his birthday, on December 30 (the night of December 30). He left. So they did as is always done: they cleaned his room, took out the furniture. Since then, there had been no sign of him. Yesterday evening, after dinner (which is about the same time he left twelve days ago), I was in Concentration, resting, when suddenly here comes a very agitated Benjamin who tells me, Mother, theyve taken all the furniture out of my room! What am I to do now!? I told him gently, Do not fret, you dont need anything any more. Then I put him to rest and sent him to join the rest of his being.
Which means it took twelve days for all his elements to form again. You see, they burned his body. (He was Christian, but his familyhis wife is alive and his brother toofound it less costly to let us handle it than to bury him as a Christian! So they had him cremated.) We cremated him, but I demanded a certain interval of time,4 although in his case it was really a gradual exhaustion and nothing much remained in his body; nonetheless, even then the consciousness is flung out of the cells violentlyit took twelve days to form again. It wasnt his soul (it had already left) but the spirit of his body that came to me, the body consciousness gathered in a well-dressed, neat Benjamin with his hair neatly brushed. He was quite trim when he came to me, just as he would have been in life: he always wanted to be well-groomed and impeccable to see me, that was his way. It took twelve days to gather together because I didnt see to it (I can do it in a few hours but only if I see to it), but in his case, his soul having been at rest for a long time, it didnt matter much. So over twelve days it took form again and when he was ready (laughing), he came to reoccupy his room! And there was no furniture left, nothing!
0 1963-03-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because at the start, there is usually that vibration with all the colors, though with blue strongly predominant (the color I have come to call the Tantric power in Matter); thats immediately with you, its a sort of normal state of Concentration. Then afterwards, you seemed to recede or stretch out into a vast Immensity of very quiet silvery whitenessvery quiet and unbroken. Like a receding from outer life and a stretching out into that state. And then there comes downliterally comes downa very intense golden light, very intense, almost (what could I call it?) a colorful gold, really golden, very, very intense, and as though atomizeda powdering. The three in succession. Dont you feel that way?
I feel the second movement: a sense of expanse, it is all white and open.
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, with a Concentration of the true being (gesture above), it disappears instantly but that means it isnt the body that feels a sense of security! Its the true consciousness (and quite naturally so, for it would not be true if it didnt have that sense). But what we want is the body to exist in ITSELF, by ITSELF, with all qualities WITHIN ITSELF. In other words, God shouldnt need to manifest for the body to live without anxiety!
No, thats not THE thing!
--
I began reading the letter, it was four or five pages long and I didnt have time. Nolini didnt say anything (of course, he is much too well-mannered to say anything), but within himself, he thought, Why does Mother waste her time reading this letter when we barely have time to do our work? It entered the atmosphere, and even before it reached me, as soon as I saw one, two, three, four, five pages, I said, Oh, enough! At the end of the first page, I said, Enough! and put the letter aside. But the thought from Nolini and the fact that my decision was made just a moment too late, a few seconds too late my body was in a sweat from head to toe! It felt terribly exhausted. It took me at least half a minute of Concentration to set things right. You understand, it has become so sensitive that in ordinary life it would be impossible but for its transformation it was a necessity. Still, it surprised me. Naturally, after half a minute it was all over, but I had to concentrate and call for calm.
So the body thought, Oh, I havent got beyond that. If I have to do the right thing in the right way and right on the dot to keep my balance You understand, a sense of insecurity! And very strong, very strong. Of course, there is something like reason (not quite ordinary reason), something like reason that says, When you automatically and always do exactly what should be done, it will vanish. (Mother laughs) Thank you very much! But as it cannot be a mental decision, then how? You see, you can learn only through experience, and since everything is in perpetual motion, the experience of the past cannot help for the future: its a matter of every minute. So how can you know? It means well know that we are free from error only when we are all the time, all the time in perfect harmony! But then there will be no point in knowing it, it will be done! Thats the situation. If the body is transformed and lives naturally in the divine rhythm, why would I need to know it! (Laughing) It will be immaterial to me, because it will BE. We want to know things when they arent yet.
0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, its not a question of just these cells here: its a question of cells in, well, quite a lot of people, hundreds, maybe thousandsall that clings anywhere and in any way to the higher Consciousness. And since my mind is silent (I deliberately keep the mind absolutely still, trying not to react to all that constantly comes to it from outside, or trying to react almost subconsciously), nothing is there to think, Oh, its this ones body, its that ones body its THE Body! Thats what is so difficult for people to understand. It is THE bodythis (Mother touches her body) is not my body any more than other bodies (a bit more, in the sense that it is more directly the object of the Concentration of the Force). So everything, all the sensations, the movements of consciousness, the battles, all of it is everywhere. And suddenly, with this little affair, oh, I understood a fantastic number of thingsand also the difficulty, mon petit! The difficulty because really, after this experience, the body was not ill but very tired. But then it is seized with such things all the time! All the time, all the time, all the time, you know, they spring up, brrm! pounce on it, brrm! from this side, that side, every which way. So I have to keep still (gesture of stopping, silent, in the midst of other activities), and then I start waging the battle.
(silence)
0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the perception of a terrestrial movement more than anything else. So the details are unimportant in themselves, but they are symptomatic of the whole. I mean that difficulties, obstacles, battles, victories, advances are in themselves nothing but indications of a general movement: at times, the resistance and opposition are formidable; at other times there are fantastic advances or progress, seemingly miraculous. If you see everything together, you feel, you feel a sort of thrustan overall thrustin which a small cellular Concentration seems really unimportant in itself; its importance diminishes with its lack of resistance, in the sense that the more it allows the Work to be done without hindering or distorting the movementwithout hindering it or making it more complicated the more the sense of its importance diminishes. In other words, it appears important only insofar as it hinders.
There is evidently a twofold movement: on one hand, something that tries to draw less and less the attention and Concentration of others, that is, to lessen the sense of intermediary necessary for forces and thoughts to spread (more and more there is an attempt to undo that1), and on the other hand, an increaseat times prodigious, staggeringof power. Now and then (seldom, and I must say I dont at all try to make it happen more often), now and then, for a minutenot even a minute: a few secondscomes a sense of absolute Power; but immediately it is covered over, veiled. The effect at a distance is becoming greater and greater, but that is not the result of a conscious will I mean there is no attempt to have more power, none at all. Now and then, theres the observation (a very amusing observation, sometimes) that for a moment (but its a matter of seconds), the Power is absolute, and then the usual hodgepodge takes over again.
The effect on others is increasing considerably, though it too isnt the result of an attempt in that direction, not at all: those things are automatic. Yet, as I said, at certain seconds, there rises something that wills. Wills, but not in the ordinary way: something that its between knowing, seeing and willing. A little something that has something of all three and is as hard as diamond (oh, how can I explain it? I dont know, there are no words for it), it has something of the emotive vibration, but thats not it; it has nothing to do with anything intellectual, nothing at all; its neither intellectual vision nor supramental knowledge, thats not it, its something else. It is a diamondlike, live forcelive, living. And thats all-powerful. But extremely fleetingit immediately gets covered over by a heap of things, like visions, supramental vision, understanding, discernmentall this has become a constant mass, you understand.
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same with my mantra. When I wanted to translate the end of my mantra, Glory to You, O Lord, into Sanskrit, I asked for Nolinis help. He brought his Sanskrit translation, and when he read it to me, I immediately saw that the power was therenot because Nolini put his power into it (!), God knows he had no intention of giving me a mantra! But the power was there because my experience was there. We made a few adjustments and modifications, and thats the japa I do now I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.1 And thats how a mantra has life: when it wells up all the time, spontaneously, like the cry of your beingthere is no need of effort or Concentration: its your natural cry. Then it has full power, it is alive. It must well up from within. No guru can give you that.
Well up. Well, its a long way to go! I will need a great deal of paper for all those diagrams [Tantric diagrams given by X]: seventy-two every day.
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Probably its necessary because at times, when everything is in utter confusion, at times I ask for an Assurance and I see very well, very well that if my bodys cells, the body consciousness were told, You are immortal; all those difficulties are experiences; the pain you feel has no importance; this apparent decomposition has no importance; all those things are necessary experiences, and you will go on to the end of the experience, that is, to transformation, if it were told that, obviously it would be mere childs play, just enduring the difficulties thats nothing. So I wonder. But never have I been told that, never, never have I been given the Assurancenow and then the body is in a sort of STATE, a state of immortality, but it isnt constant, its dependent on other things; so the minute its dependent, it is no longer a supreme Assurance. There is at the same time a sort of discernment: very likely there would be a general slackening of the cells effort if they were told, Never mind, none of this is important, because you will last till the work is done. Maybe they would flag. The Concentration of will in the battle would disappear. Which means one of the necessary conditions would be missing.
Then again something else comes and says, Oh, you always have very favorable explanations to comfort yourself! You see, I am like a spectator (Mother does the same gesture of great cosmic waves assailing her) at a sort of contest of all the different reactions. (I put it into words to make myself understood, but there are no wordsonly SENSATIONS; the verbal translation is just for explaining, but they are like sensations, or rather states of consciousness. They are all states of consciousness.) And they all run into each other (gesture of waves).
0 1963-05-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I would like a clarification on a passage from a previous conversation [of May 3], in which you said: Something tries to draw less and less the attention and Concentration of others. And you added: That is, to lessen the SENSE OF INTERMEDIARY necessary for forces and thoughts to spread. What is this sense of intermediary? Do you mean your role of intermediary in the diffusion of forces? Do you want to lessen that roleto withdraw?
It isnt role! The role is a fact, a sort of ineluctable fact, absolutely independent of the individual will and consciousness I am more and more convinced of it, fantastically so. The Work is done through a certain number of elementswhe ther they are aware of it or not, whether they collaborate or not makes little difference. It has been decided that way, it has been chosen that way and it is done that way. Whether you like it or not, whether you are aware of it or not, whether you collaborate or notvery little difference. Its more a question of personal satisfaction!
0 1963-07-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it isnt total Victory, no. It isnt the power of transformation. The other day, I told you, I think, that one of my present activities consisted of a sort of conscious Concentration on one person or another, one thing or another, to obtain the desired result. For years on end, the Will and Force acted from above, and the outer conscious being [of Mother] wasnt concerned with anything further, knowing that it would only make things more complicated instead of helping them, and that the Force left to itself, directly under the supreme Impulsion, worked things out far better and far more accurately. But over these last months, there have come a will and a tendency to make the material being [of Mother] participate consciously in the details of execution. It has a kind of passive obedience, and so, once that was willed [the need for Mothers material intervention], it began to happen. There was a case recently, with a very good friend of the Ashram, a man with an important position who has been very, very useful. He had to be operated on (I wont tell the whole story, it would be too long); we received two or three wires a day, I followed the thing step by step. There was a very powerful force of destructionit was a very grim battle and there was a will to keep him, because in this body he had been very useful, he was still very useful and could still be very useful. He had a great faith, a great trust, and he was conscious (his consciousness was very sufficiently developed: I saw him constantly and constantly he came to me). He fell into a butchers hands; anyway, it was a wretched thing. Still, even though everyone expected him to leave his body, he held on and was constantly saying (we were kept informed by his son) and feeling that it was I who was keeping him alive. I could even see what they should have done and constantly I sent the formation, the thought, But THIS is what should be done, insistently. Finally they caught my thought, but I think (I cant say, I dont know the details, the small material details), I think probably they didnt do exactly what they should have thats why I say they must have been butchers. Thus they performed three operations in a row, and after undergoing all that, he came to me (before also he used to come very oftenthey said he was drowsy all the time, in a semi-coma, but thats not it: he was living inwardly), he came to me, totally conscious as usual, but he said, I am afraid my body is irretrievably ruined, and if I survive now, instead of this body being a help and a tool of work, it will be a hindrance, an impediment, a source of difficulty, so I have come to ask to be freed I prefer to enter a new body. I answered immediately, But as you are, you are useful, very useful; the position you occupy makes you very useful; you are totally conscious; it would be good if you could recover. He listened, again insisted a little, I too insisted, and then he left.
The next morning, he was much better. I was hoping he had decided to stay, but we were without news for about twenty-four hours, till suddenly we were told he had stopped breathing and was being given oxygen. And then he left.
0 1963-07-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the body is docile, full of goodwill. Only I find its a little bit of a whiner (that must be particular to this one, I am sure other bodies are different), it isnt spontaneously joyful. Not that it complains, not at all, but Perhaps its due to that sort of Concentration of Force of progressits not a blissful satisfaction, far from it. Its a long time since it stopped enjoying ordinary satisfactions, like the sense of taste, of smell: it doesnt enjoy any of thatit is conscious, very conscious, it can discern things very clearly, but in an entirely objective way, without deriving any pleasure from them.
Yet it has a spontaneous tendency to find itself incapable; and it receives the same answer all the time: Thats still the ego. That happens so often, it says to the Lord, Look how incapable I am of doing what You want, and pat comes the answer, direct, in a flash: Dont bother about that, its not your business! Naturally, I put it into words to express myself, but it isnt words, its only sensationsnot even sensations: vibrations.
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This body was built for that purpose, because I remember very well that when the war the First World Warstarted and I offered my body up in sacrifice to the Lord so that the war would not be in vain, every part of my body, one after another (Mother touches her legs, her arms etc.), or sometimes the same part several times over, represented a battlefield: I could see it, I could feel it, I LIVED it. Every time it was it was very strange, I had only to sit quietly and watch: I would see here, there, there, the whole thing in my body, all that was going on. And while it went on, I would put the Concentration of the divine Force there, so that allall that pain, all that suffering, everythingwould hasten the preparation of the earth and the Descent of the Force. And that went on consciously throughout the war.
The body was built for that purpose.
--
During all that period of Concentration and meditation on what happens in a body after death (I am speaking of the bodys experience after what is now called death), well, several times the same kind of vision came to me. I had been told (shown and told) of certain saints whose bodies did not decompose (theres one here, there was one in Goafantastic stories). Naturally, people always romanticize those things, but there remains the material fact of a saint who died in Goa, left his body in Goa, but whose body didnt decompose.5 I dont know the story in all its details, but the body was removed from India, taken away to China and remained buried there, in Hong-Kong, I believe (or somewhere in that region) for a time; then it was taken out, brought back here, buried again. For ten or twelve years it stayed buried in those two places: it didnt decompose. It dried out, became mummified (dried out, that is, dehydrated), but it remained preserved. Well, this fact was presented to me several times as ONE of the possibilities.
Which means, to tell the truth, that everything is possible.
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have reached this conclusion: in principle, what gives rapture is the awareness of and union with the Divine (thats the principle), therefore the awareness of and union with the Divine, whether in the world as it is or in the building of a future world, must be the samein principle. Thats what I keep saying to myself all the time: How is it that you dont have that rapture? I do have it: at the time when the whole consciousness is centered in the union, whenever that is, in the midst of any activity, along with that movement of Concentration of the consciousness on the union comes rapture. But I must admit it disappears when I am in that its a world of work, but a very chaotic world, in which I act on everything around meand necessarily I have to receive whats around me in order to act on it. I have reached a state in which all that I receive, even the things considered the most painful, leave me absolutely still and indifferentindifferent, not an inactive indifference: no painful reaction of any kind, absolutely neutral (gesture turned to the Eternal), a perfect equanimity. But within that equanimity, there is a precise knowledge of the thing to be done, the words to be said or written, the decision to be made, anyway all that action involves. All that takes place in a state of perfect neutrality, with a sense of the Power at the same time: the Power goes through me, the Power acts, and neutrality stays but theres no rapture. I dont have the enthusiasm, the joy and plenitude of action, not at all.
And I must say that the state of consciousness that rapture gives would be dangerous in the present state of the world. Because it has almost absolute reactions I can see that that state of rapture has an OVERWHELMING power. But I insist on the word overwhelming, in the sense that its intolerant of, or intolerable to (yes, intolerable to) all thats unlike it! Its the same thing, or almost (not quite the same but almost), as supreme divine Love: the vibration of that ecstasy or rapture is a first hint of the vibration of divine Love, and thats absolutely yes, there is no other word, intolerant, in the sense that it doesnt brook the presence of anything contrary to it.
--
We can very well conceive (its something easy to conceive) that beings may be born in another manner, through a power of Concentration, and that those beings may materialize without any of the miseries that beset us thats all very well, but its for later. We are in between, thats where the difficulty is.
"All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond."
0 1963-09-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One thing has been coming back to me almost obstinately lately, its the memory (thats whats odd, it comes as a MEMORY, as though it were something I had lived), the memory of your Concentration camp. Very odd. It came back to me perhaps two or three weeks ago, I dont know, very strongly. I even lookedstudied, ratherwhat the consequences were for your body. Studied and well, did what was needed.
I dont know, I cant say, because for all these experiences I try to drive all thoughts as far away as possible, because they dont help to get the correct perception. So that I cant say whether or not there was a reason for that memoryto tell the truth, the mind always finds reasons for everything, so You know, I am not occupied with those things, I dont try to know, and therefore they dont comethey come of their own accord. There was obviously a necessity: all that comes is necessary, I know that, otherwise it wouldnt come. But that memory didnt bring with it any sense or perception of a danger to your physical life, not in the least. I dont have that perception, while I did have it two years ago. Now I dont have it.
0 1963-09-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had several hours of Concentration regarding that decrease of energy in your body; not an illness: a decrease of energy in your body2 (you add mental things to it, but thats your affair, mon petit, you will correct that). I had several hours of Concentration, and I even reproached the Lord, telling Him that really if thats the effect I have on people, (laughing) its not worth mentioning, Id better leave! (There was a conjunction of a good number of things.) I dont believe a word of my complaint! But anyway (laughing) I make it just like that.
Immediately, there came a massive descent, and everything was blissful I said to myself, Lord, its up to You. Its up to You to have me here, its up to You to have me act; I dont act, You are the one who acts. The result is up to You, but as far as I can see, if I am allowed to see, I dont find that logical!
0 1963-09-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The difference is this: In one case, the purpose of the earth is a Concentration of the Work (which means it can be done more rapidly, consciously and perfectly here), and so there is a serious reason to stay on and do it. In the other case, its just one experiment amidst thousands or millions of others; and if that experiment doesnt particularly appeal to you, to want to get out of it is legitimate.
I dont see how it would be possible for one point of the Supreme not to be the whole Supreme. If there is a difficulty here, its a difficulty for the WHOLE, isnt it?
--
It had always seemed to me that way [the earth as a symbolic point of Concentration], but I am so convinced that Sri Aurobindo saw things more truly and totally than anyone did that, naturally, when he says something, you tend to consider the problem!
I dont know, I havent reached the end of Savitri yet. Because I notice (rereading it after the space of a few months, barely two years) that its altogether something else than the first time I read it. Altogether something else: there is in it infinitely more than what I had experienced; my experience was limited, and now its far more complete (maybe if I reread it in a year or two, it would be still more complete, I dont know), but there are plenty of things that I hadnt seen the first time.
0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I tried to find out why your physical life began (well, not quite began, but you were very, very young, just the same) with such a painful experience [the Concentration camps]. And I saw why: it was like a separationnot separation, but disentanglement, you understand? There are two things in every human being: what comes from the past and has persisted because it is formed and conscious, and then all that dark, unconscious mass, really muddy, that is added in every new life. Then the other thing gets into that and finds itself imprisoned, you knowadulterated and imprisoned and generally it takes more than half ones life to emerge from that entanglement. Well, for you, care was taken to more than double the dose at the beginning, and it caused a kind of tearing apart: one part went up above, another part fell down below. And the part (it acted almost like a filter), the part that rose up was very cleansed, very cleansed of all that swarming: its becoming very, very conscious of the mixture. Just see, today, the whole morning until I was swamped with work by people, till then there was a sharp awareness of the part of the being that still belongs, as I said, to Unconsciousness, to Ignorance, to Darkness, to Stupidity, and is not even as harmonious as a tree or a flower; something thats not even as tranquil as a stone, not even as harmonious and not even as strong as the animal something that is really a downfall. That is really human inferiority. And maybe (no, I shouldnt say maybe: I know) it was necessary for things to settle downsettle, you know, as when you let a liquid settle? Thats exactly it: its the Light that settles, the Consciousness that settles. And indeed its true, there is in you a part that has entirely settled. Every time I see it (it comes in the course of the work, you understand), its lovely in its quality of light, its quality of vibration, and it has settled considerably. But its true that there is also a kind of sediment, a deposit (deposit, you know?) which is a bit heavy thats what youre conscious of.
But you shouldnt say me! Its not you, that residue isnt you! But you are indeed conscious of the Light, arent you?
0 1963-12-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was only one difficulty: the little children, who cannot be conscious of a test, of course, and who remained four and a half hours in the rain. I didnt want it to do any damage there were about a hundred small ones, tiny tots. I spent the night in Concentration to bring into their material sensation the true reaction (because, for a short while, children love rain, they have a lot of fun in it), so I said to myself, That part of their consciousness should predominate so there is no damage. And I waited for the day after. The day after, no one was sick.
Then I received a letter from M., the captain, saying that they had felt it was a test, the lila2 of the Lord (he called it the lila of the universal Mother) and asking me if it was true. I was happy and answered him that it was true and that I was happy. And everyone told me, They were wonderful. As if doing that performance in the rain had given rise to a kind of will in them, and they were remarkable: everybody was enthusiastic. So instead of saying to the Lord, Thats not nice, I thanked Him heartily! And I laughed, I thought, There you have it! Its always that way.
--
I would like to be able to pass this experience on to others, because, well, its definitive: once you LIVE that for several hours, its over, you can no longer entertain any illusion,3 its not possibleits impossible, its so STUPID, you know! Above all, so silly, so flatits impossible (Mother makes the same gesture of a round, moving totality). But then you cannot say, I said this, the other answered that! How can we express ourselves? Our language is still truly inadequate. Its not that way its (same round gesture) and there isnt even either sense or direction: its not that this goes that way and that goes this way (gesture from one person to another, or from inside to outside), or that it goes this way and comes back that way (gesture from low to high and high to low), thats not it; its a whole a whole that moves, moves always forward, and with internal vibrations, internal movements. So according to the given point of Concentration, this or that action is done.
Very long ago, many times over, when I looked at the universe (I dont mean the earth: the universe), it was that way (same gesture of a round totality). How can I put it? It gave the feeling of moving forward, of moving forward towards a progressive perfection. For years on end, my perception of the earth has been that way; and now, it takes place completely at will, in the sense that it takes only just a small movement in the consciousness (gesture of a trigger or a slight reversal, a drawing within) for the whole earth to move that way, along with the events and the inner complications. But now, that same consciousness of the whole works that way: when it thinks of something (for some reason of work, not because of an arbitrary decision), the thing imposes itself; its a whole set of things that presents itself as the TOTALITY on which the action must take place. So it may be a small thing like this sports festival, it may be the Ashram (very often the Ashram as a whole), it may be a part of the earth, or sometimes even a single individual (who is no longer an individual but a set or a world of things, a totality4). A totality of things (round gesture) that move within themselves in (Mother draws within that totality small movements, individual and local, like waves or currents of force). Oh, its most interesting! And even there, there is no more notion of this person, that person, so-and-soall that vanishes.
0 1963-12-07 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There have been many efforts, Concentrations, meditations, prayers to bring about the clarification and control of all those semiconscious reflexes that govern individualsa great Concentration on that point. And this experience seems to be the outcome.
There are lots of things which people dont even take notice of in life (when they live an ordinary life, they dont take any notice), theres a whole field of things that are absolutely not quite unconscious, but certainly not conscious; they are reflexesreflexes, reactions to stimuli, and so on and also the response (a semiconscious, barely conscious response) to the pressure exerted from above by the Force, which people are totally unconscious of. It is the study of this question which is now in the works; I am very much occupied with it. A study of every second. You see, there are different ways for the Lord to be present, its very interesting (the difference isnt for Him, its for us!), and it depends precisely on the amount of habitual reflex movements that take place almost outside our observation (generally completely outside it) And this question preoccupied me very, very much: the ways of feeling the Lords Presence the different ways. There is a way in which you feel it as something vague, but of which you are sureyou are always sure but the sensation is vague and a bit blurred and at other times it is an acute Presence2 (Mother touches her face), very precise, in all that you do, all that you feel, all that you are. There is an entire range. And then if we follow the movement (gesture in stages, moving away), there are those who are so far away, so far, that they dont feel anything at all.
0 1963-12-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards I took a look. I wasnt too happy: To do that during the meditation! And I was told that it could be done only during the meditation and not at any other time, in activity or even in Concentration, because its not the same thing: it could be done only in deep meditation. So I said, Very well. And I was also shown that there was a concrete result, a kind of partial victory over that type of ill willa very, very aggressive ill will, extremely aggressive, which belongs to another age: its something that no longer has the right to exist on the earth. It must go.
Its the same thing, moreover, which brought about Kennedys assassination. And I suppose thats why I had to intervene. Because Kennedys assassination has upset many things from the point of view of the general work. And it was the same thing, because as soon as I had news of the assassination, I saw the same kind of vibration, the same black forcevery, very black and spontaneously, I said (it isnt I who said it), Oh, that may mean war. In other words, a victory of that force over the one that tries to follow more harmonious paths. But I have been protesting and working since then, and what happened on the 9th is the outcome of it.
--
To the point that what happens in the body isnt (oh, its been that way for a long time, but its becoming more and more that way), isnt familiar like something that happens in a particular body: its just one way of being among all the others. Its becoming more and more like that. The reaction here [in Mothers body] isnt any more intimate than the reaction in others. And its barely more perceptible: it all depends on the state of attentiveness and Concentration of the consciousness (its all movements of consciousness). But the consciousness isntis NO LONGER individual AT ALL. I am positive about that. A consciousness which is becoming more and more total. And now and thennow and thenwhen everything is favorable, it becomes the Lords Consciousness, the Consciousness of everything, and then its a drop of Light. Nothing but Light.
In 1958.
0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I noticed Ws difficulties, I put a lot of force on him, a lot, a great Concentration to get him out of that tight corner, because I felt a kind of wavering in him, I felt he wasnt so steady on the path any more. Thats what worried me. So I put a very great Concentration of force on him to set him on the right road again. And, as I said, the Force circulates; it circulates: it isnt something which goes out like that, like a little beam which you send out, which reaches its goal and stays there thats not it. Its a thing (round gesture) that spreads out with waves of Concentration. And Ive noticed this for everybody (I did my first study on myself), but the ego must be completely (gesture of palms upward, immobile) must become nonexistent, must stop interfering, at any rate, in order to feel that great, universal Pulsation.
It is simply the art of putting yourself in the right place in order to be in the path of the Force.
Or else, when you are able to see things from above, you can direct Concentrations and channel the Force, as it were [on people and events]. And Ive noticed (since it became a natural fact for me), Ive noticed those two categories of people (with all kinds of nuances and differences): those who are happy to receive, and who are therefore much more conscious of the moment when the Force comes IN, and those (they are generous by nature, but also dominating) who are happier when they have a feeling of giving; so they are far more conscious of the Movement when it goes out of their individuality.
Thats just what I knew of Ws nature: the ego in him is that he likes to be a guru thats when one is quite egoistic, but as one grows less so, there still remains that aspect of the nature that makes one more inclined to give than to receive. And as I had made a very strong Concentration, quite naturally he felt the force going out of him.
I didnt tell him anything, I simply said it was a very good experience: an experience that was given to you or that you were given (all that impersonal, as impersonal as possible). I am very glad when people do not tell me, You did this, you did that because immediately I feel that sort of little limitation which is so childishintellectuals would call it idolatry! (Mother laughs) I dont like that.
0 1964-01-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Immediately afterwards, I had a visit from the Pope! The Pope [Paul VI] had come to Pondicherry (he does intend to visit India), he had come to Pondicherry and asked to see me (quite impossible things materially, of course, but they were perfectly simple and straightforward). So I saw him. He came, we met each other over there (in the music room), and we actually did speak to each other. I really felt the man in front of me (gesture of feeling), felt what he was. And he was very worried at the thought of what I was going to say to people about his visit: the revelation I would give of his visit. I saw that, but I didnt say anything. Finally he said (we were speaking in French, he had an Italian accent; but all this, you see, doesnt correspond to any thought: its like pictures in a film), he said, What will you tell people about my visit? So I looked at him (inner contacts are more concrete than pictures or words) and I simply answered him, after staring at him intently, I will tell them that we have been in communion in our love for the Lord. And there was in it the warmth of a golden lightextraordinary! Then I saw something relax in him, as if an anxiety were leaving him, and he left like that, in a great Concentration.
Why did that come? I dont know.
--
I am giving these two examples because they are recent and a little unexpected (or at least, they didnt correspond to my occupations or preoccupations), but they come in hundreds! Every day thirty, forty of them will come and take hold of me, and then, all at once, Ill go into a Concentration, Ill LIVE a certain thing, until I have seenseen, known through the vision something that had to be seen, and as soon as it is seen, pfft! gone away, finished. It loses its interest, its gone.
Ill go into a sort of Concentration for a time during which I am completely isolated, absorbed; then when its over, hup! it goes away abruptly (gesture of pulling a curtain).
And it doesnt stop me from continuing my activities I tell you, I was dressing again after my bath! But then all the movements become almost automatic: the consciousness is no longer occupied with its gestures, there is only a delegation of the consciousness to keep watch, thats all.
0 1964-01-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And always the same thing (the first vision was quite correct, I mean the vision of the cells was quite correct): it isnt something coming from outside, its the impulse that comes from outside, its the wrong vibration that comes from outside, and the difficulty is that you are unable to replace this wrong vibration or, rather, CANCEL it, with the True Vibration. Thats what I had already said: the proportion isnt sufficient, so it takes time. I can understand that with a sufficient proportion of cells remaining in the True Vibration, the cure should be instantaneous, that is, the effect of the wrong vibrations should be canceled automatically. But I had seen the thing and spent almost an hour, three quarters of an hour [in Concentration], and the little bit that had been affected (it was in the throat) was canceledit didnt return. It was canceled. But after those three quarters of an hour, I had to resume my activities, see people, do things, take my bath, too (although the bath is always beneficial), and a sort of memory lingered. And then, from three oclock, a quarter to three, the invasion started: first one, then another, then two more, then a third, then So all at once, because my attention had been DIVERTED to what I had to do (scores of answers to be written, of blessings to be sent, of problems to be resolvedall of it dumped on me), as my attention was diverted to that, naturally all at once I started sneezing and so forththere was nothing to do but go through it.
Still, for actions in this domain, actions of transformation, I dont say solitude because thats sillythere is no such thing as solitude but peace is necessary, that is, the perfect control over the activity: the activity must be kept on a level where it doesnt interfere with the inner work thats the point. That was why, in fact, I was forced (apparently) to remain upstairs, because downstairs it had become it was infernalinfernal, no one can imagine! Its always the same principle: Why not me? And there are 1,300 of them, you understand let alone the visitors who come in their hundreds (some days, there are more than 200 or 300 of them at one time); they hear that there is someone worth seeing, and when I was downstairs and one of the circus showmen ([laughing] excuse me!) came, he would bring a troop along.
0 1964-03-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you last time that when I returned from the balcony on the 29th, it was as if in my Concentration I said to the Lord, Well, well wait another four years. That was the impression. And since then (today is the same day as the 29th, it was just a week ago), everything has been like this (quivering gesture in the atmosphere), like hosts of little promises but promises that havent come to fruition, in other words, its always something that IS to come, something that IS to be, something that IS to be realized; something thats drawing near, but nothing tangible. And last night, when I awoke from my usual Concentration (its almost always at the same time: between midnight and half past midnight), I felt something special in the atmosphere, so immediately I let myself flow into it and made contact with it.
I noticed (Ive known it for some time, but it was quite concrete this time) that in my rest, as soon as I am at rest, the body is completely identified with the material substance of the earth, that is to say, the experience of the material substance of the earth becomes its ownwhich may be expressed by all sorts of things (it depends on the day, on the occasion). I had known for a long time that it was no longer the individual consciousness; it isnt the collective consciousness of mankind: its a terrestrial consciousness, meaning it also contains the material substance of the earth, including the unconscious substance. Because I have prayed a lot, concentrated a lot, aspired a lot for the transformation of the Inconscient (since it is the essential condition for the thing to happen)because of that there has been a kind of identification.
--
At any rate, last nights experience was decisive in that it coordinated all those scattered little promises, all those scattered little advances, and gave a TERRESTRIAL meaning to all those little things that came making a promise of progress here, a promise of consciousness thereall those promises have suddenly been coordinated within a sort of totality on the scale of the earth. I didnt feel it as something crushing in its immensity, not at all: it was still something dominated by my consciousness. A little thing (Mother holds up a ball in her hands), which my consciousness dominated but which was (for the moment) the exclusive object of my Concentrations. And when I returned to the external consciousness (there was a moment when I had both consciousnesses at once), then I saw that the supposedly individual or personal consciousness, the consciousness of the bodyof the bodywas no more than a sort of convention necessary for maintaining contact. With the feeling that a step or two morenot manywill give THE Will (the supreme Will, that is) full power to act on this body.
It [this body] wasnt much more interesting or important than many other bodiesit didnt at all have the sense of its importance. Even, in the overall vision of the Work, its present imperfections were quite simply tolerated, even accepted, not because they are unavoidable, but because the amount of Concentration and exclusive attention necessary to change them does not appear to be important enough to stop or reduce the general work. Thats how it was there was a smile for lots of little things. Finally, as for the Thing (the great thing from the artistic point of view of the material appearance, great too from the point of view of public faith, which only goes by appearances, of course, and which will be convinced only when there is an obvious transformation), it appeared to be, for the moment, at any rate, something secondary and not urgent. But there was a fairly clear perception that soon (how can I put it?) the state of being or way of being (I think they say the modus vivendi) of the body, of this fragment of terrestrial Matter, could be altered, ruled, entirely driven by the direct Will. Because it was as if ALL the illusions had fallen away one after another, and every time an illusion disappeared it produced one of those little promises that came in succession, announcing something that would come about later. So that prepared the final realization.
When I got up this morning, I had the feeling that a corner had been turned. But not at alloh, not at all!a subjective thing, not at all: a corner has been turned FOR THE EARTH. It doesnt matter in the least if people arent aware of it.2
0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two or three nights ago, something like that occurred: in the middle of the night, early morning, there was a descent of this Force, a descent of this Truth-Power; and this time it was everywhere (its always everywhere), but with a special Concentration in the brainnot in this brain: in THE brain.2 And it was so strong, so strong, so strong! The head felt as if it were about to burstyes, as if everything were going to burstso that for about two hours I simply had to keep calling for the widening of the Lords Peace: Lord, Your widening, Your peace, like that, in the cells. And with the consciousness (which is always conscious, of course [gesture above]) that this descent into an unprepared brain would be enough to drive you completely mad or absolutely daze you (at the very best), or else you would burst.
This experience, like the other one,3 hasnt left.
0 1964-07-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its extremely interesting, because its becoming absolutely concrete. It isnt a thought, it isnt an idea, its absolutely concrete: all, but all the contacts with people are simply vibrations. There isnt this person or that person, thats not it: its nothing but vibrations, with places or moments of Concentration, others of broadening and diffusion. And whats extremely interesting is that constant mass, in constant motion, of vibrations of all kinds: of falsehood, disorder, violence, complication. Then, within that mass, there is a rain, as it were, but a very consciously directed rain, of vibrations of Light, Order, Harmony, which enter that (Mother draws movements of forces), and it all resists, it all works. Its something that lives untrammeled, constantly, everywhere, every second, and in a consciousness if I use the word love, it wont be understood, because Thats what is everywhere, constantly, eternally and immutably; nothing exists but by That and in Thatin fact, only That exists essentially. And within that mass, there is a sort of strugglewhich isnt a struggle because theres no sense of struggle, but an effort against a resistance, an effort so that Order and Harmony and, naturally, eventually Love (but thats for later) overcome the disorder and confusion. And in that Order (that essentially true Order), the greatest contradiction is precisely Falsehood. But those are all vibrations. Theyre not individual wills or individual consciousnesses: within one individual aggregate, you find the whole range, and not only the whole range, but it changes constantly: the proportion of the vibrations changes; only the appearance remains what it was, but thats very superficial.
This experience is becoming so constant, so constant thats its difficult for me to adapt myself to the ordinary perception.
0 1964-07-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Anyhow, the American doctor told him, At any rate, theres nothing else I can do for another three months. So he has waited there for three months. And I, all that timeall the time, almost constantly I kept seeing death written over the second operation. But I knew that if I sent a letter, it would be useless, it would only create an atmosphere of distrust, thats all. So I made formation upon formation, formation upon formation, on the American doctor. Finally, S. asked me for a talisman for the second operation I sent it immediately, with a great Concentration of force so that nothing fatal should happen.
Recently, on July 20, S. enters the hospital for the second operation. The American doctor keeps him two days, three days, then tells him, I cant, I wont run that risk. It seems that during those three months, he had operated on several people for whom it was also a second operation, on the other side, as for S., and all of them ended in hemorrhage, paralysis, or death. So the American doctor declared, I wont run the risk. S. replied, It doesnt matter to me, Id rather die than be crippled. But this American very cleverly told him, I wont do anything without the permission of your Mother! So they sent me a telegram saying that the American doctor refused to operate because it was too dangerous, and they asked for my opinion. I answered, No operation.
--
The left side. And the American doctor isnt quite happy about the extent of the cure. Which means, as always, that however things seem to be in the world, when they are brought into contact with the Light, that is to say, a Concentration of Truth, they appear in their stark reality: all the ballyhoo about that operation and all the illusion gathered around that miraculous power of surgical cure, it all vanished into thin air. The American doctor himself, according to Dr. S.s letter, was shaken and lost trust in the absoluteness of his system. But from the first minute, you know, I saw that there wasnt even sixty percent of truth in it. There is an entire obscure field, which they deliberately ignore and which showed itself in broad daylight in order to make itself known. And for Dr. S., its the same thing: A doctor COULD NOT be deluded, and he didnt want to admit it. When I told him that one operation might not be enough, he almost got angry: Why do you say such things! (Mother laughs) He knew it as well as I did, but he didnt want to admit it.
He will have gone through a terrible experience.
0 1964-07-31, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the more sophisticated those machines are, the more sensitive they are. A few years ago, when I was still downstairs, they brought me a machine that measured the vibratory waves of speech. They use it, but I dont know what for. They brought it to show it to me. I said, Wait, lets make an experiment. I dont remember exactly, but I remember having said the same thing twice: once, with my usual Concentration, and once, with a full charge of the Lords Presence. You know, those machines draw kinds of graphsit started dancing! Everyone could see it, there was no mistake. And as far as I was concerned, I said the same thing in the same way; only, in the first case I said it without special Concentration, while in the second case, I put the full charge and Concentrationit started jumping and jumping! I said, See!
Those machines have a sensitivity.1
0 1964-10-10, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother is alluding to the Concentration camps.
***
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its odd; from the point of view of Truth, this is the problem thats being worked out. And when the Concentration becomes very acute and very intense, something seems to burst inside the consciousness, and then spreadsspreads outin the intensity of a Love. And then it is like an answer, not to a question because it isnt formulated, but to the will to be.
(long silence)
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, in matters of faith (I dont mean for a very precise and very clear scientific mind), but in matters of faith, there is so far no clear proof that the Lord wants to realize Himself here; except, perhaps, for two or three visionaries who had the experience. Someone asked me if there had been a supramental realization previously, that is, before historical times (because historical times are extremely limited, of course). Naturally, the question always corresponds to one of the things that are shown to me in moments of Concentration. So I answered very spontaneously that there hadnt been a collective realization, but that there might have been one or several individual realizations, as examples of what would be and as a promisea promise and examples: This is what will be.
Ive had some very precise memorieslived memoriesof a human life on earth, quite primitive (I mean outside any mental civilization), a human life on earth that wasnt an evolutionary life, but the manifestation of beings from another world. I lived in that way for a timea lived memory. I still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a NATURAL, spontaneous life, like animal life, but with a perfection of consciousness and power that far surpasses the one we have now; and indeed with a power over all surrounding Nature, animal nature and vegetable nature and mineral nature, a DIRECT handling of Matter, which men do not havethey need intermediaries, material instruments, whereas this was direct. And there were no thoughts or reasoning: it was spontaneous (gesture indicating the direct radiating action of will on Matter). I have the lived memory of this. It must have existed on earth because it wasnt premonitory: it wasnt a vision of the future, it was a past memory. So there must have been a moment It was limited to two beings: I dont have the feeling there were many. And there was no childbirth or anything animal, absolutely not; it was a life, yes, a truly higher life in a natural setting, but with an extraordinary beauty and harmony! And I dont have the feeling it was (how can I explain?) something known; the relationships with vegetable life and animal life were spontaneous ones, absolutely harmonious, and with the sensation of an undisputed power (you didnt even feel it was possible for it not to be), undisputed, but without any idea that there were other beings on earth and that it was necessary to look after them or make a demonstrationnothing of the sort, absolutely nothing of mental life, nothing. A life just like that, like a beautiful plant or a beautiful animal, but with an inner knowledge of things, perfectly spontaneous and effortlessan effortless life, perfectly spontaneous. I dont even have the feeling that there was any question of food, not that I remember; but there was the joy of Life, the joy of Beauty: there were flowers, there was water, there were trees, there were animals, and all that was friendly, but spontaneously so. And there were no problems! No problems to be solved, nothing at allone just lived!
0 1965-02-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I put represents because the word is always a symbolic form of something infinitely greater than it. Its one of the things one should feel: it is like a means of contact. A means of contact that you make more and more effective, first through the sincerity of the Concentration, of the aspiration, then through habit, through use, while taking care when you use the mantra always to remain in contact with That which is beyond it. And it makes a kind of Concentration, as if the word were being charged with force, increasingly charged like a battery, but a battery that can take an indefinite charge. So I wrote (it seemed more exact to me), The first word represents It represents:
the supreme invocation
--
(long Concentration)
OM
0 1965-04-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Lets take the sense of form, for example (I am giving one example among many others). Evolution is openly moving towards diminishing the difference between the female and the male forms: the ideal thats being created makes female forms more masculine and gives male forms a certain grace and suppleness, with the result that they increasingly resemble what I had seen all the way up, beyond the worlds of the creation, on the threshold, if I can call it that, of the world of form. At the beginning of the century, I had seen, before even knowing of Sri Aurobindos existence and without having ever heard the word supramental or the idea of it or anything, I had seen there, all the way up, on the threshold of the Formless, at the extreme limit, an ideal form that resembled the human form, which was an idealized human form: neither man nor woman. A luminous form, a form of golden light. When I read what Sri Aurobindo wrote, I said, But what I saw was the supramental form! Without having the faintest idea that it might exist. Well, the ideal of form we are now moving towards resembles what I saw. Thats why I said: since there is an evolutionary Concentration on this point, on the physical, bodily form, it must mean that Nature is preparing something for that Descent and that embodimentit seems logical to me. Thats what I meant by an improved physical form.
The other point is quite secondary, its incidental, it isnt in the line of evolution. I am only saying that its a method that CAN be used, and it has been used in the past.
0 1965-04-28, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may simply be the incompleteness, I mean the limitation of our vision, our perception: we see the details too much instead of seeing the whole. You know, I had a sudden feeling with the tension of the Concentration: What is the physical perception of the totality of the physical world? What is the consciousness of the totality of the physical world? Isnt, for that consciousness, isnt all that we call death and life a phenomenon analogous to the phenomenon of decomposition, assimilation, transformation that takes place in every living being?
Its enough to leave you completely dazed!
0 1965-05-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into Concentration)
Its like this (vast, expansive gesture), im-mo-bile. But with a great intensity of vibration the vibration that doesnt move.2
--
There is a growing sense of a Power thats beginning to be limitless. But that state is in fact linked with those difficulties [heart or circulatory troubles]. And, you know, I dont make any decisions, I dont do anything [to attain that state]: I am like this (immobile gesture, palms open to the Heights), in something that feels as if it could be eternally like that. But within it, I perceive waves, movements (and sometimes Concentrations, when it has to do with world events) that have a stupendous power.
We just have to keep still and, well, well see what will happen anyway.
0 1965-09-11, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if I told you that the day before it was known that it had really become a sort of war, the night before that, I had an experience that has occurred to me only two or three times in my life, always in similar circumstances. This time, I wasnt expecting anything, and in the night, there was in the TERRESTRIAL atmosphere, with a Concentration on India, a sort of something I might call a pressure of the Supreme. Its as if the Supremes Consciousness were exerting a pressure, and it produces a certain type of stillness with a solidity and a consistency not found anywhere else. You know, its even more solid and substantial than the most inert inertia. And its the pressure of the Supreme Power. Its almost intolerable or unbearable for Matter, for material substance. And it goes like this (gesture of massive descent), absolutely impossible to budge, and at the same time you feel its the Supreme Power. Well, it lasted for hours that night, and I was extremely attentive in order to know what it meant. And the next day, I was told things had all of a sudden broken out like a war: all that friction that had been there for years had suddenly taken that form.
So it is clearly a very exceptional intervention that has brought this about.
0 1965-09-15a, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when I got out of it (it was 3 in the morning), I said to myself, All right, let me look after something else now, and I made a special Concentration to get out of it. And I found myself in a place I know very well, which is like a replicaa mental replicaof what I might call certain Ashram rooms (its not exactly that, but it corresponds). And there was a gentleman there I knew very well, a Frenchman, who had come to see me. He had a big desk, he was sitting at the desk, waiting for you: you were expected (thats why I am telling you the story). But I myself wanted to see him before he saw you. There was something I wanted to tell him. Then, instead of going through the usual door, I went by another way and arrived before you. I saw him (we didnt speak to each other I never speak to people), but he was very warm, very enthusiastic, very friendly and full of a sort of rather pleasant fervorignorant, but pleasant. A rather tall man, I think, dressed in an ordinary European suit. I cant describe him very well; if I saw him, I could say, Yes, thats him. And he said two words to me that were like that didnt mean anything at all, but that were like the expression of his feeling. I dont exactly recall the word, but it was nothing, it was Oh! something. So I put my message into his head and left, and as I was leaving (Mother laughs), I almost bumped into youyou were rushing in! And I told you, Dont worry, dont worry, everything is fine! And I left.
Maybe its one of the publishers, or maybe the man to whom you sent your article.1
0 1965-10-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When you were in hospital, for several days I was in constant Concentration at night so that My own way is a way that intelligent people regard as very childish, but which I find the best: I turn to the Lord and pray to Him with all the ardor of my consciousness; and I asked Him to save your life, which was in danger, with the knowledge of the cause and of what should cure you. And I didnt cease till a sort of certitude came that things would turn out all right.
Not so long ago, maybe a few weeks, I did see something that was wrong, but still I insisted and hoped it was just a memory that had come up again from the subconscient.
0 1965-12-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday evening, I gave him a little over twenty minutes of Concentration. He was sitting and I was standing, holding his hands. Never pull down on yourself, it is said, but you can pull down on someone else I pulled the Force all out. It was so powerful that his hand kept trembling2 while mine was still! Afterwards, once it was over, I wondered how it could be, I didnt understand: my hand, which was holding his, stayed still, but his was shaking; I felt his tremor in my hand. Then I stopped, when, all of a sudden, everything came to a halt: he stopped moving. And relaxation came, a relaxation. I was concentrating there, on his headrelaxation. Then I stopped. Time was up, anyway. Therefore IT CAN BE DONE. But this lack of faith based on the higher intelligence, the higher reason, prevents it from staying: it brings back the difficulty instantly. But I saw I saw it: it did stop. For me that was an obvious proof.
And I did it deliberately. Its true that it is dangerous to pull down because if the resistance is too great, something gets demolished, but there was nothing to risk anymore since he himself was ready to go to Madras to be sent to another world. I did it.
0 1966-01-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when I concentrate on someone while calling the Lord, then, generally, near the shoulder (gesture between the persons head and shoulder), there is a great golden light, like that, which sparkles and sparkles, shines and shines, very brightly, all the while. And when the light goes, the Concentration goes.
But just now, it was amusing, it was quite small like this, moving along with my pen. Now its finished, gone! (Mother laughs)
0 1966-03-02, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Wait, I am not seeing clearly anymore (Mother takes her head in her hands and stays motionless for a moment) You know, in a very precise, material and detailed way I am developing the power to heal. I dont do it deliberately, thats just how it is. And then (laughing), I am given opportunities to test, to experiment on my own bodytheres always something the matter. Suddenly something goes wrong and I apply my hand, or simply do a Concentration, some movement or other, and everything disappears but materially: the power to heal. You know, I apply my hand and then the Force goes through. Its very interesting. Only (laughing), I am the laboratory! Thats not so funny.
***
0 1966-05-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But everything, absolutely everything is becoming strange. As if there were two, three, four realities (superimposed gesture) or appearances, I dont know (but they are rather realities), one behind another or one within another, like that, and in the space of a few minutes it changes (gesture as if one reality were surging forward to overtake and replace another), as though one world were just there, inside, and emerged all of a sudden. When I have peace and quiet, there is a slight not a movement, I dont know what it is: it might rather feel like pulsations, and depending on the case, there are different experiences. For instance, customary things take a usual amount of time when nothing abnormal happens, and then you have an exact sense of the time they take. So then, I am given the following experience, of the same thing done in the same way, accomplished a first time in its normal duration, and another time, when I am in another state, that is, when the consciousness seems to be placed elsewhere, the thing seems to be done in a second!Exactly the same thing: habitual gestures, things you do absolutely every day, quite ordinary things. Then, another time (and its not that I try to have it, I dont try at all: I am PUT in that state), another time I am put in another state (to me, it doesnt make much difference, they are like very small differences in the Concentration), and in that state, the same thing, oh, takes a long, long time, an endless time to get done! Just to fold a towel, for instance (I am not the one who does it), someone folds a towel or someone puts a bottle away, wholly material and absolutely simple things devoid of any psychological value; someone folds a towel thats on the floor (I am giving that example): there is a normal time, which I perceive internally after a study; its the normal time, when everything is normal, that is, usual; then, I am in a certain Concentration and without my even having the time to notice it, its done! I am in another state of Concentration, with absolutely minimal differences as far as the Concentration is concerned, and its endless! You feel it takes half an hour to get done.
If it occurred just once, youd say, Never mind, but it takes place with persistence and regularity, as when someone is trying to teach you something. A sort of insistence and regular repetition as if someone wanted to teach me something.
0 1966-05-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(long, refreshing Concentration)
You must go rest.
0 1966-06-02, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I lie down on my bed at night, there is an offering of all the cells, which regularly surrender as completely as they can, with an aspiration not only for union but for fusion: let there remain nothing but the Divine. Its regular, every day, every single day. And for some time, these cells or this body consciousness (but it isnt organized as a consciousness: its like a collective consciousness of the cells), it seemed to be complaining a little, to be saying, But we dont feel much. We do feel (they cant say they dont feel: they feel protected, supported), but still They are like children, they were complaining that it wasnt spectacular: It HAS to be marvelous. (Mother laughs) Ah, very well, then! So two nights ago, they were in that state when I went to bed. I didnt move from the bed till about two in the morning. At two in the morning I got up, and I suddenly noticed that all the cells, the whole body (but it really is a cellular consciousness, not a body consciousness; it isnt the consciousness of this or that person: theres no person, its the consciousness of a cellular aggregate), that consciousness felt bathed in and at the same time shot through by a MATERIAL power of a fan-tas-tic velocity bearing no relation to the velocity of light, none at all: the velocity of light is something slow and unhurried in comparison. Fantastic, fantastic! Something that must be like the movement of the centers out there (Mother gestures towards faraway galactic space). It was so awesome! I remained quite peaceful, still, I sat quite peaceful; but still, peaceful as I could be, it was so awesome, as when you are carried away by a movement and are going so fast that you cant breathe. A sort of discomfort. Not that I couldnt breathe, that wasnt the point, but the cells felt suffocated, it was so awesome. And at the same time with a sensation of power, a power that nothing, nothing whatsoever can resist in any way. So I had been pulled out of my bed (I noticed it) so that the BODY consciousness (mark the difference: it wasnt the cells consciousness, it was the bodys consciousness) would teach the cells how to surrender and tell them, There is only one way: a total surrender, then you will no longer have that sensation of suffocation. And there was a slight Concentration, like a little lesson. It was very interesting: a little lesson, how it should be done, what should be done, how to abandon oneself entirely. And when I saw it had been understood, I went back to bed. And then, from that time (it was two, two: twenty) till quarter to five, I was in that Movement without a single break! And the peculiar thing was that when I got up, there was in that consciousness (which is both cellular and a bit corporeal) the sense of Ananda [divine joy] in everything the body did: getting up, walking, washing its eyes, brushing its teeth. For the first time in my life I felt the Ananda (a quite impersonal Ananda), an Ananda in those movements. And with the feeling, Ah, thats how the Lord enjoys Himself.
Its no longer in the foreground (it was in the foreground for an hour or two to make me understand), now its a bit further in the background. But, you understand, previously the body used to feel that its whole existence was based on the Will, the surrender to the supreme Will, and endurance. If it was asked, Do you find life pleasant?, it didnt dare to say no, because but it didnt find it pleasant. Life wasnt for its own pleasure and it didnt understand how it could give pleasure. There was a Concentration of will in a surrender striving to be as perfectpainstakingly perfectas possible, and a sense of endurance: holding on and holding out. That was the basis of its existence. Then, when there were transitional periods which are always difficult, like, for instance, switching from one habit to another, not in the sense of changing habits but of switching from one support to another, from one impulsion to another (what I call the transfer of power), its always difficult, it occurs periodically (not regularly but periodically) and always when the body has gathered enough energy for its endurance to be more complete; then the new transition comes, and its difficult. There was that will and that endurance, and also, Let Your Will be done, and Let me serve You as You want me to, as I should serve You, let me belong to You as You want me to, and also, Let there remain nothing but You, let the sense of the person disappear (it had indeed disappeared to a considerable extent). And there was this sudden revelation: instead of that base of enduranceholding on at any costinstead of that, a sort of joy, a very peaceful but very smiling joy, very smiling, very sweet, very smiling, very charmingcharming! So innocent, something so pure and so lovely: the joy which is in all things, in everything we do, everything, absolutely everything. I was shown last night: everything, but everything, there isnt one vibration that isnt a vibration of joy.
Thats the first time.
0 1966-06-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the body is increasingly conscious: it has a very acute perception of the vibrations coming from the old habits, from the old ways of being and from the opposition, and of the presence of the True Vibration. So its a question of dose and proportion, and when the amount, the sum total of the old vibrations, the old habits, the old responses, is too great, that creates a disorder which takes stillness and Concentration in order to be overcome, and which gives such a clear and intense perception of how precarious the equilibrium and existence are. And then, behind: a Glory. The Glory of the divine Light, the divine Will, the divine Consciousness, the eternal Motive.
It was for the next Bulletin that Satprem read this Talk to Mother.
0 1966-06-25, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At that time I could have answered you in detail; now I dont exactly remember. But the best thing is, when you go to bed, a slight Concentration with the will to remain conscious. Just that. A sort of aspiration to remain conscious.
Yet I never go to sleep just anyhow, I always go to sleep after a meditation.
--
At that time, when I was deep in occultism, I could have told you in detail, now I dont remember. But I know (thats one thing I still know): an aspiration. An aspiration for the thing You know, when you want to wake up at a precise time and you say to yourself, I want to wake up at such and such a time, it works very well; well, its the same principle. Instead of asking for a precise time, you ask to remember, to remain consciousto remember what has happened. It can act. And also, as I have always said, not to wake up abruptly, that is, not to leap from ones bed, to stay quite still for a while. It happens to me even now: if I wake up and get up abruptly, its after a time, when I enter my Concentration again, that the memory comes back.
These two things are enough, they should do.
0 1966-06-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It would be far easier if those things were written in large characters. Its a pity about my eyes. I waste a lot of time, quite a lot. I am forced to ask, or else to take a magnifying glass. What I used to do in three minutes takes me half an hour. Thats how it is. But to recover my sight (that would be possible, nothing is damaged, its only worn), I would have to spend a lot of time on it; it would take me a lot of time in exercises, Concentrations. I dont have the time.
But the promptness of the consciousness when I used to see! I dont find it with other eyes. That was so convenient.
--
Tapas: energy or heat, or also the Concentration of the power of consciousness.
***
0 1966-08-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And with all this, there is (it almost seems to be the key to the problem, to the understanding), there is a special Concentration on the why, the how of death. Years and years ago, when Sri Aurobindo was still here, there came one day a sort of dazzling, imperious revelation: One dies only when one chooses to die. I told Sri Aurobindo, This is what I saw and KNEW. He said to me, It is true. Then I asked him, Always, in every case? He said, Always. Only, one isnt conscious, human beings arent conscious, but thats how it is. But now I am beginning to understand! Some experiences, some examples are given in the details of the bodys inner vibrations, and I see that there is a choice, a choice generally unconscious, but which, in some individuals, can be conscious. I am not talking about sentimental cases, I am talking about the body, the cells accepting disintegration. There is a will like this (Mother raises a finger upward) or a will like that (Mother lowers her finger). The origin of that will lies in the truth of the being, but it seems (and that is something marvelous), it seems that the final decision is left to the choice of the cells themselves.
I am not at all referring to the physical, vital, psychic consciousnesses, not to any of that: I am referring to the consciousness of the cells.
0 1966-09-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She writes this: We must stop encouraging torturers, whether of men or of animals. I am writing to beg you to teach me how to obtain the powers to lessen sufferings in others through Concentration of fluid, and how to act by inwardly returning blow for blow to the aggressors, without hatred but implacably. I beg you to help me. Which inner giving, which renunciation is necessary? Who will teach me the force and justice that will enable me to act and not to always let evil triumph? It is too easy to forget, deny, minimize others suffering. I can no longer put up with it. I no longer want to shut my eyes and comfort myself till the next time. What should I undertake?
When did you get this letter?
0 1966-10-05, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
About the financial situation, I have a little story to tell you, which took place on Sunday or Monday. I told you that the situation was quite to ordinary consciousnesses, it was critical. And there was a payment to be made. I dont remember the material details, but something had to be paid very urgently (I think it was to the workers: they were hungry and hadnt been given their money). And I needed a certain amountwhich I didnt have: I had nothing. Then a sort of compassion came into me for those people who didnt have any money. I saw it wasnt right, and I couldnt do anything because there was none. So, in the evening while I was walking (I have an hour of meditation and quiet, of Concentration), I presented it all like this (gesture upward), and with an almost childlike attitude I said to the Lord (He was there, of course, I was with Him) something that can be translated (I dont know, I dont speak but it could be translated into words) roughly like this: I know You are with me and behind everything I do and everywhere, but Id like to know whether what I do, the work I do, interests You or not! (Mother laughs) And if it does interest You, well, I must have this money.
It came like that, in a quite childlike form, but very, very pure. And two days later, when it was necessary for the money to come, for me to have money, just as everything seemed quite impossible, Amrita suddenly came in, telling me, Here, so-and-so has sent a cheque for such-and-such an amount.Exactly the amount needed. And I think it was the first time that person had sent money. It was quite unexpected, absolutely a miraclea miracle for children. The required amount, just at the required time, and absolutely unexpected. Then I had a good laugh. And I said to myself, How silly we can be! We dont know that everything happens exactly as it has to.
0 1966-10-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To me its even stronger than that: when I look at a rose like the one I gave you, this thing which holds such a Concentration of spontaneous beauty (not fabricated: a spontaneous beauty, a blossoming), you only have to see that and youre sure the Divine exists, its a certitude. You cant disbelieve, its impossible. Its like those peopleits fantastic!those people who have studied Nature, studied really in depth how everything works and occurs and exists: how can they study sincerely, carefully and painstakingly without being absolutely convinced that the Divine is there? We call it the Divine the Divine is quite tiny! (Mother laughs) To me, the existence is undeniable proof that there is nothing but THAT something we cannot name, cannot define, cannot describe, but which we can feel and BECOME more and more. A something which is more perfect than all perfections, more beautiful than all beauties, more wonderful than all wonders, which even a totality of all that is cannot expressand only THAT exists. And its not a something floating in nothingness: there is nothing but That.
By the Body of the Earth or the Sannyasin. Satprem complained of difficulty in writing the end of his book.
0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its true tenderness: that of the Divine. People dont know, they always think of something very human. But its not human (Mother closes her eyes and remains standing in Concentration) Its extremely luminous, rose-colored, slightly golden always smiling. Its a very particular sensation. (After a long silence) Everything is like a beautiful pink rosea beautiful rose. Its better than that, much better (how can I put it?). No difficulties can existthey dont exist [when one is in that Tenderness]. Its the side of life (of life, I mean of the manifestation) which is all beauty, smile, peace and lightspontaneously, effortlessly, with an impossibility for anything else to exist. Its very particular. And its very high up, very high up. Yet, now and then I see a drop of it here. The first time I saw it (Mother wobbles on her feet). I must sit down because Im going away!
(Mother sits down and resumes) It can only be realized in a world devoid of egoism. Which means that when the whole action of individualization is over and there is no more need for the element of egoism, then it will be possible for that to be fully manifested.
0 1967-01-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To replace the need for immobility and immobile rest by the power of inner Concentration and inner peace that peace which is perfectly independent of action, which can be there, unchanging, even in the midst of the most frantic actions.
Is that where you envisage the vitals intervention?
--
Or should one have, I dont know, a special Concentration in our activities?
No, because the transformation is the only thing that doesnt call for the minds intervention: the mind befuddles everything.
0 1967-02-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, this incident made me realize that I seem to be learning a way of resting without going out of the body. Because there, I was sure I was awake, as its called: there was nothing resembling sleep, and I wasnt thinking. There was only the consciousness watching, like that. But interiorized. And a will to get up at four-thirty. I looked at the time once in between (there was a clock near my bed, I looked at it), it was 3:15. I was surprised, I thought, How come? It was 2:30 a minute ago. Then I made a slight Concentration to be sure of being quite awake at 4:30. And at exactly 4:30: How come? Ive just seen it was 3:15! It was astounding, because I didnt leave my body, I know I didnt sleep, and the consciousness was perfectly still, motionless, so to say; a consciousness concentrated like that (but a consciousness with foresight, which sees what has to be done), simply like that, without thought.
It was so to say instantaneous.
0 1967-04-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There has been for some time a deliberate will not to leave the body. In the mornings, when I emerged from my nocturnal activities, I would often notice that there was a whole work of readjustment to be done in the body, as though the Concentration of forces had been disturbed and even undone in the night and everything had to be started up again. It was a sheer waste of time, a waste. Previously, in the evening when I would lay down on my bed, I would go limp, a complete relaxation (one should always do that), that is, surrender, and the consciousness would rise above. There was a Concentration of forces, but it wouldnt last: after two or three hours, everything was taken up by the nights activities. But now, instead of that, there is a will to keep the whole consciousness in the body, to concentrate and to keep all the energies so that the work in the cells may go on undisturbed. And I see the effect lasts much longer; even when I wake up (or rather when I get into external activity), I can see it goes on, it doesnt cease, and it resumes as soon as I am outwardly awake. A sort of Concentration of energy, of consciousness, force, light, which starts working in the cells at night. And then theres nothing, no activity, theres a contemplative silence.
I had only one instance of activity these last four days, one morning between two and four, that I spent absolutely conscious and active with Sri Aurobindo, who had made changes in his activities and his organization of the subtle physical; he had made changes and wanted to show them to me, to let me know about them. And he showed it all to me for two hours. But that was the only thing, and as for the resteverything, going to see people, going here or there, doing this or that I have stopped it all. And things are better.
0 1967-04-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the first time that has happened to my body. It always used to remain conscious. Sri Aurobindo, too, told me the same thing, that he never, ever, had samadhi in his body. Neither did I: I always, always, always used to remain conscious. While that only the Force remained, there was nothing left but the Force at work: there was a Concentration here, a Concentration on the whole country, and a Concentration on the whole earth. And all that was conscious, like that (vast gesture above the head), at work. But something massive, as powerful as an elephantenough to crush you.
I didnt say anything to anyone; I wanted to know (because when I speak, people try to find something, while I wanted to know the spontaneous reaction). The first thing I received was a letter from G. saying that he was at the Samadhi, and just before it began, a force came down on him so strongly that he fell (he was sitting, he fell forward). So he asked me what it was. I havent replied yet. Then there have been other people, other things.
0 1967-05-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I thought there may be You know, sometimes theres a very small gap (we have many layers of consciousness that interpenetrate like that), if there is just a gap, a lacuna, a void between the two, it is enough to not know. Thats what Thon explained to me: All your states of being are there in the fourth dimension, one inside the other; what you lack is a very small level. Its nothing, you know, in your consciousness you dont notice it, but in its construction something is undeveloped, and so whats on the other side cant come through; its lost between this and that. Its lost. So I asked him, What can be done? He told me, You must develop it. And I did the experiment (he told me and I did it). And indeed I had a nervous subdegree (he used to call the vital the nervous), a nervous subdegree that wasnt developed, not sufficiently conscious. And for a year, day after day after day, a Concentration to develop it, applying the consciousness, applying the consciousness absolutely no result. For at leastat leastsix months continuously, a Concentration every day; I kept an hour for thatabsolutely no result.
Only, I didnt doubt. I simply thought, How very stupid of me, I dont know how to do it I was living in Paris; come summer, I left on holidays. I went to some friends who had a property by the sea. There was a small wood, large meadows, it was pretty. And after lunch, I go and lie down on the grass and all of a sudden, everythingfrom the air, the earth, the water, from everywhereeverything came. Everything, but everything I wanted to have came like that. Suddenly. Like that, effortlessly. The result of six months of work.
0 1967-05-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But at the balcony (and even before, in the morning when that ball of lightning came), there was a very special Concentration on you. But that, I dont know, its for you to say. If you felt something, so much the better!
I had a very pleasant, very good meditation. I felt the Power, but
--
And it coincided with the moment when I was doing my Concentration here. (I had got the telegram from a young boy he adopted and is very fond of: he had sent a telegram to let me know that the doctors had all but condemned him.) Then he had that experienceits a transcription, of course, according to his conception. But its interesting.
But above all, I dont want anyone to know what I am saying here: everyone must be left to his own conception. As for him, he is convinced its Mahasaraswati who gave him back his life (all the same, he has much devotion for me, but that doesnt matter ). I dont want it known. I didnt say anything to him, I smiled at himyes, I told him, You are receptive. And when he expressed his gratitude, I said, We needed you to do some work. Like that, quite simply.
0 1967-05-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He lived for a time in that house at the corner, which has become the Auroville Office, and the roof of that house is uneven (one part is at a certain height, and without warning, it suddenly drops down half a story). Once while he was walking on the roof in meditation, he fell; it seems he had just taken his meal, and he had a blockage. And he claimed he cured himself with an hour of Concentration. It may be
He was very childlike, very enthusiastic, and very boastful at the same time, but with a fervour which was rather fine. A sort of very young enthusiasm. Now he must be rather old. And I always see him in the middle of a large crowd. He knows how to comm and attention. He isnt quite indifferent. But I didnt work to send him away from here: he had quarrelled with someone or other, then started openly receiving a large number of disciples; I said, It would be better if you saw your disciples elsewhere. Then he left.
--
I simply stop everything, and It is as if (I put it into words): Your presence, Lord, let there be nothing but That, and its over, everything stops. Then, at times I dont see anything, at other times But tell me, its ironic; I always see something when youre there! Sometimes I see nothing at all, simply like this (blissful gesture). Sometimes I can hear, but thats when the Concentration is shallower: then you can hear.
But that was very pretty! A very pretty spectacle in front of me! And they came like You know, like when they show slides: it comes from one side, pop! shows itself, and then goes away; then from the other side, another one comes, pop! and goes away. And it remained there, in front of you.
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience was that (laughing) impossible to get back in there! But Thon was there (Thon got such a fright!), and there was at that time the knowledge of the occult (a good deal of knowledge!), the knowledge was there and then the will (Mother makes a gesture of pushing to re-enter the body), and also an inner faith (but I never used to talk about that), and a Concentration. And he was capable, he knew. He knew how to pull. And the body hadnt deteriorated, you see, it wasnt damaged, so it wasnt difficult. It was in very good condition, but the thread was cut, which means that what gives life had gone out and could not get back in.
I came back in as a result of the power and the will, because In fact, simply because I still had something to do on earth.
0 1967-06-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I made a special Concentration for you, which continued this morning. Now I remember.
These are things that cant be explained yet. Its not yet possible to explain them.
0 1967-07-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into a long Concentration lasting about a half an hour)
Nothing to say?
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the end of the year you will give notes to the students, not based on written test-papers, but on their behaviour, their Concentration, their regularity, their promptness to understand and their openness of intelligence.
For yourself you will take it as a discipline to rely more on inner contact, keen observation, and impartial outlook.
--
Then Mother goes into a long Concentration
I have seen something. In its totality, it is luminous, but not radiant; its extremely peaceful, and as if golden, but not dazzling (I dont know how to explain), like a creamy and golden light. Very, very peaceful. But in it there were patches (as they say in English) of three VERY bright colours that were grouped together, as it were, and as though organized. There was a dazzling red, ruby red; a bluish white, almost like a pearl-grey, very luminous too; and (Mother tries to remember) Its gone, I dont remember if it was. Yes, it was green, but an emerald green that was also luminousluminous and transparent. They were like defined groups, but their positions were changing (Mother makes a rotating gesture, like the lights in a kaleidoscope). They were almost like entities. And it was in your atmosphere. Like formations moving about and organizing themselves (same gesture), made up of those three colours.
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into Concentration)
Now, Sri Aurobindo is there, like that, from here up to there (gesture from the lower part of the chest up to the forehead). So if you are like that when people are near you
0 1967-09-13, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a nasty little story to tell you. The other day, I forget when, F. met Mrs. Z, who told her (she too was in a Concentration camp), I would like (word for word) I would like Satprem to go back to the Concentration camp to see if his reaction now would be different! F. was so indignant that she couldnt help telling her, But that is a monstrous desire to have!
Theres my story: Id like him to go back to the Concentration camp to see!
But the marvel is that I feel now I could be sent anywhere, anything could happen to me, even the worst things, and nothing would budge!
--
It must be after that that she told F. shed like to see you in a Concentration campit was out of spite!
But I really spoke to her with the truthnot with violence, but with the truth that says, Here is how it is, I cant help it.
--
They tell me, Your look purifies me. I dont want to go into such considerations and do not answer anything, but there is only the Presence and the Action. I dont even try to know, neither what happens nor how nor what He does nor what takes placenothing. The only thing that comes into me (into this consciousness) is the state of the person who is there: thats very clearly recorded. (Laughing) The other day, there was a very amusing experience. A girl here has taken a fancy to a gentlemannei ther of them is very young, that is, they are neither children nor young people: they are both over thirty, or between twenty-five and thirty. So she writes him letters, long letters, sends him sweets, sends him flowers, and he passes it all on to me. (There is nothing more than that.) It was her birthday, and she must have had a rather guilty conscience, I supposeas for me, I had completely forgotten the story. She came for her birthday, I received her as I always do, in the same wayand suddenly, gnawing pains, cramps, sharp pains in the stomach. I wondered, Whats going on in her? What is all this? And it went on for quite a while, I had to make a little Concentration to make it go. Then in the afternoon, the gentleman (I dont think they meet) sends me a letter and a box of sweets she had sent him. Ah! (Laughing) I said, So there! She was afraid I would scold her and had gnawing pains in the stomach! There you are. Thats how it is, you understand, its a kind of work in a general unification. And peoples reactions are felt in my body, thats how I become aware of it, conscious of it. (Laughing) At times its bliss, at other times stomach cramps!
Its amusing.
0 1967-11-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, that experience, such as Ive told you, with the whole intensity of concrete reality, occurs not only daily, but several times a day. At times its very severe, that is, like a mass; at other times, its only like something that touches; then, in the body consciousness, its expressed like this, with a sort of thanksgiving: one more progress made over Unconsciousness. But those arent thunderous events, the human neighbour isnt even aware of them; he may note a sort of cessation in the outward activity, a Concentration, but thats all.3 So of course, you dont talk about it, you cant write books about it, you dont do propaganda. Thats how the work goes.
None of the mental aspirations are satisfied with that.
0 1967-12-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is obviously a will to abolish the sense of time, because Its very interesting, there are all kinds of experiences like that. I have work that would normally take thirty-six hours out of twenty-four, so naturally, I get later and later every day: I go to bed later and later, and I have to do the nights work, so sometimes I am late in the morning, at times Ive been as much as one hour late. Then in the morning, with a certain Concentration, in half an hour I do what would normally take me an hour. I have learned a lot in that respect.
Now, at this time (10:45 A.M.), I can see that the only fatigue is the sense of being late, otherwise one can work indefinitely. There is something to be learned. I mention it to you because its just occurred to me: it occurs to me that the purpose is to find the key to the mastery over time; not to be regular, but to do everything over a more or less longer or shorter time, in a contracted or expanded timeso time loses its concrete reality.
--
Oh, the correspondence has become something fantastic! Twenty-four, twenty-six, thirty, sometimes forty letters a day. So naturally, try as I may When its just a line, its all right, but I can barely reply to eight or ten a day: I have only an hour and a half, thats not muchnot even that much! No, no, the hour is too much: I have half an hour! But I extend it: I have from 7 to 7:30 in the evening, but every day I extend it till 8. Dinner is supposedly at 7: 30, I take it at 8. Supposedly too, I go to bed at 9:30 and get up at 4:30, but when I went to bed last night it was almost 1110:30 is frequent, which means an hour late. So from time to time I get up late. You understand, between about 1 and 2 A.M. (around 12:30, 1, or 2), I complete the first stage of Concentration to give the body a good rest; after that I start working, and before working, a little Concentration so that whatever the work, I should be back at 4:30; but sometimes its later sometimes its 4:45. Then, afterwards, I have a certain time in the morning for washing and dressing, and thats when there have been really interesting experiences: with a certain Concentration (which has nothing to do with willpower or anything of the kind: its a Concentration, a certain type of Concentration and making contact with the Presence and the sense of the relativity, the very considerable relativity of material time), with an intensity of Concentration, you can do the same thing much faster. I eventually found out that simply by Concentration you can reduce the time by more than half. And you do things in exactly the same way, but they dont take timehow? Well, the secrets havent been revealed yet. But the phenomenon exists.
The same principle is at work (its not a principle, its a way of doing or a way of being), is at work for all things: with fatigue, the onset of illness, that is, the cause of the illness (the internal disorder or the receptivity to the disorder from outside), it works also in the same way. If you add to it the intensity of faith or adoration, then its much easier, but it works in the same way. So what exactly takes place? To the inner perception, the perception of the consciousness, it is a sort of principle of disordera principle, almost a taste for disorder, I dont know, its between a habit and a preference for disorderwhich gets replaced by yes (to be as general as possible), by a vibration of harmony. But that vibration of harmony is full of light, of sweetness, of warmth, intensity, and so wonderfully CALM! So when that takes the place of the other, then all that belongs to the world of disorder is dissolved. AND the rigidity of time disappears.2 Time perhaps we could say (its just a way of speaking), we could say that time is replaced by a succession (Mother remains absorbed for a long time).
--
I take the simplest and most concrete things like, for instance, brushing ones teeth; its extremely flexible and things are done, not out of habit but by a sort of choice based on personal experience and routine, so there is no necessity for a special Concentration (the real purpose of routine is to avoid the need for a special Concentration: things can be done almost automatically). But that automatism is very flexible, very plastic, because depending, as I said, on the intensity of the Concentration, the time varies the time varies: you can (you can know by looking at your watch before and after), you can certainly reduce the time by more than half, yet things are done in exactly the same way. Thats right: you dont do away with anything, you do everything in the same way. To make sure, you can, for instance, count the number of times you brush your teeth or the number of times you rinse your mouth I am DELIBERATELY taking the most banal thing, because in other activities there is a natural suppleness that allows you to spread yourself and concentrate (and so its easier to understand with such things). But it works in the same way with the most concrete and banal things too. And there isnt any Oh, I wont do this today or I am neglecting thattheres none of that, nothing at all: everything is done in the same way, BUT with a sort of Concentration and constant call the constant call is always there. The constant call which might find a material expression in saying the mantra, but its not even that: its the SENSE, the sense of the call, of the aspirationits above all a call. A call. You know, when the mind wants to make sentences, it says, Lord, take possession of Your kingdom. For certain things, I remember, when there are certain disorders, something wrong (and with the perception of a consciousness that has become very sharp, you can see when that disorder is the natural origin of an illness, for example, or of something very serious), with the call, the Concentration and the response [the disorder is dissolved]. Its almost a surrender, because its an uncalculating self-giving: the damaged spot opens to the Influence, not with an idea of getting cured, but like this (gesture like a flower opening out), simply like this, unconditionally that is the most potent gesture.
But the interesting part is that formulating it in words makes it sound artificialits much more sincere, much truer, much more spontaneous than anything expressed or expressible by the mind. No formula can render the sinceritysimplicity, sincerity, spontaneity, something uncalculatingof the material movement. There was a time when expressing or formulating caused a very unpleasant sensation, like putting something artificial on something spontaneously true; and that unpleasantness was cured only, to begin with, by a higher knowledge that all that is formulated must be surpassed. For instance, every experience expressed or described CALLS FOR a new progress, a new experience. In other words, it hastens the movement. That has been a consolation, because in fact, with the old sensation of something very stable and solid and immobile because of inertia (a past inertia, which is now being transformed but has left marks), because of that inertia there is a tendency to prefer things to be solid; so there is a thrill at being forced to No, no! No rest, no halt, go on!farther and farther and farther on When an experience has been very fruitful and highly pleasant, let us say, when its had a great force and a great effect, the first movement is to say, We wont talk about that, well keep it. Then after comes, Well say it in order to go farther onto go farther on, ever farther, ever farther.
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are amusing little details. When I am in the presence of someone who, for some reason or other, gets a shock or feels uneasy because now I am stooped (someone who knew me before), it creates an atmosphere that gives the body a sort of regret for this appearancenot a regret, but rather a disapproval of this appearance of decay (I am giving one example among many others). Then, almost immediately, there is the very clear vision of what can cure this, of the STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS that can cure this. But to be constant, this state has to be spontaneous. There will be a moment of transition for this as for all the rest, and it will probably be dangerous. The state of truth-consciousness must be sufficiently ESTABLISHED to be spontaneous: there should be no need of a Concentration and a will, you understand, the state should be spontaneous. Then it will be possible for the transition to occur.
In my life, I have been given so many, so many experiences, as proof that EVERYTHING is possible. For instance, when I was twenty-two, one night, after an experience I had in the night (I forget the details of it) at the time women wore dresses that exactly touched the ground, just touched it without resting on it (gesture of skimming the ground), and in my experience at night, I had grown tallin the morning, there was one inch between the dress and the ground! Which means that the body had grown one inch WITH THE NIGHTS EXPERIENCE. You see, in the nights experience I had grown tall (I dont remember the details), and in the morning And Ive been given that material verification for many such experiences, so as to be sure, so the body may be convinced without having to repeat the experiences over and over again. So it KNOWS, it knows there is nothing impossible, it knows impossible doesnt mean anything. But it doesnt depend on an individual will, you understand. The Consciousness which rules things is a marvel of wisdom, patience, compassion, endurance. When there is destruction or disorder, it means its absolutely unavoidable, absolutelybecause matters resistance in the individual or in things is so strong that it quite naturally brings about disorder or destruction. But that doesnt form part of the Action, the supreme Action, which is a marvel. The body has understood that; it has understood, it is patient. Only, from time to time (how can I put it?) There are people whom I prevent from dyingseveral people. I dont yet have the consciousness, the conscious power to cure them, but the possibility is there and I maintain it above them. That is to say, its not all-powerful in the sense that a certain receptivity, a certain response, a certain attitude are necessary which arent always there (human natures are very fluctuating, there are ups and downs and more ups and downs, and that makes the work very difficult), but at times, during a down spell, when a being suffers or sags, there is something in the consciousness [of Mother], a compassion (how can I explain that?) Affliction and all those movements are movements of weakness, but that is something at once very strong and very sweet, almost like sorrow, and the whole, entire consciousness in the body rises like a prayer and an aspirationa pure prayer: Why are things still in this pitiful state, why? Why? And it instantly has an effect [in the sick person]. Unfortunately, the effect doesnt last; it doesnt last because certain conditions in others are still necessary. But its wonderful, you know! Its something so wonderful. And it makes one understand the necessity of a presence on this side, a presence capable of feeling, understanding still IN THE OTHER WAY, so the suffering of others may be a reality. And that also is taken into account, that also means time is needed, patience is needed. Now the body knows ittheres no longer any impatience; there is only, now and then, that sort of sorrow, especially when beings are full of aspiration, goodwill, faith, and in spite of it this suffering is still there, clinging. That on one side, and on the other, one thing: there is still a sort of horror and reprobation of acts of cruelty, of THE cruelty; thats And then, there is this awesome Poweryou feel, you can feel that a mere nothing, a simple little movement would, oh, bring about a catastrophe. So you have to keep that still, still, still so what happens may always be the best.
0 1968-03-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into a long Concentration)
Is he the one who fainted here during a meditation?
--
(Mother again goes into a long Concentration)
Its the only way. That danger is there, but hell have to go through it.
0 1968-04-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into a long Concentration)
Its strange, a strange sensation. You know, like turning a page. Yesterday and right up to now, its been so strong: the sense of something going like this (gesture of turning a page), and that was the beginning. And you know, nothing in the head, not a thought or anything: only a sort of perception of something going like this (same gesture) and
0 1968-04-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And that [new state] isnt the result of a Concentration or anything else: its the normal way of being, constant at last. But there are still divisions, in the sense that there is an attitude of consciousness observing another, and yet another observing the first twoall that is still (fluctuating gesture) Like a play of different consciousnesses observing one another, objectifying one another. So its not yet the thing.
All that is going on in the bodyperhaps in different parts of the body, I dont know. There are GRADATIONS of consciousness, or more or less complete identifications, according to certain bodily functions I dont know. And beneath, there are still old undercurrents of mental influence, from what we are used to calling the higher mind (intuitive mind and so on). And then, all around, a whole play of forces, suggestions, formations, which comes from outside. I say from outside, but theres no sense of outside; theres no such sense, no longer any sense of these people here and those people there its not like that, no longer at all, even for the body.
0 1968-05-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All these last days, there has been an INTENSE work, extremely intense, of impersonalization of the physical consciousness. It results in a sort of (unsteady gesture) You understand, the whole solid base that makes up the corporeal personhop! gone, taken away. So then, at times theres a wobbliness. For instance, for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, I had a total abolition of memoryof recollection and memory. And Now I am used to those things (theres a tremendous number of them), so I stay like that, exclusively turned towards all the cells are still, silent and exclusively turned towards the Force, the Consciousness, like this (gesture with the arms opened upward), and they wait. And then, there is a sort of Concentration of energy, of force, and suddenly, as if coming from elsewhere (thats a very odd sensation) You see, all that we do, all that we know, everything is based on a sort of semiconscious memory which is there thats gone. And theres nothing anymore. Its replaced by a sort of luminous Presence, and things are there, but you dont know how. Its not as if they had come back as before, its not that, its Theyre there effortlessly. And whats there is ONLY JUST whats needed at a given moment. There isnt all that baggage you constantly drag behind yourself like that, as before, its not that: theres JUST the thing you need. But you have to be very, very still; if youre restless or excited in the least, or even if you make an effort, theres nothing anymore. And on the most material level, there is also a sort of perception that the whole material equilibrium of the past has disappeared too, and that anything may happen at any time. Fortunately (that must be why its done), fortunately the cells have a very ardent faith, very ardent.
I told you just before that I had felt that avalanche of attacks. It came in a very subtle form: the unreality of the conception that has been admitted and adopted the unreality of the divine Presence in the body, the unreality of the world in transformation towards a more and more divine state; like an unreality surging up (gesture as of a wave from below), in a sly way, to cut off the base and support of the faith.
0 1968-05-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last night, at the time of the deepest sleep, I found myself in an infernal world. At first I thought it was the S.S.: tall fellows dressed in black, and I was a prisoner there. It was a world of horrible men, like S.S., but dressed completely in blackmaybe they were priests and not S.S.? I felt like a prisoner there, as in a Concentration camp.
Oh!
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The concluding state (after having written this note): first there was that completely spontaneous, natural, evident perception of the Consciousness using a thing and then leaving it, letting it fall apart when it can no longer be used but it wasnt that: it wasnt even taking a thing, utilizing it, making use of it until it becomes unusable; it was a CONTINUOUS movement (supple gesture like an immense wave) within a single substance, with, as it were, moments of Concentration and utilization of something to its utmost possibility, and then, moments not of rejection but of expansion, of immensity of peaceof return to a state of immensity of peace so as to take a new shape. A continuous thing, like this (same gesture like an immense wave), but then without real loss, without real waste: death is a mere appearance, you no longer even understand how one can live in this illusion. And THE Consciousness, ONE Consciousness not this and that and this (gesture showing an addition of separate individualities), no, no: ONE consciousness playing.
(silence)
0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After a long Concentration, Mother resumes:
There have been two little things, very little things, but amusing. A year or a year and a half ago (I dont remember), someone had sent me an album of photos of France, and Paris in particular, and I had looked at it; I looked at it, and as I looked, I saw a photo of the banks [of the Seine in Paris]. I saw it, looked at it attentively, in detail, saw the banks with all the bouquinistes [secondh and booksellers]. There was a bookseller in front, seated in the foreground, I saw him. Then I closed the album and put it aside. I wanted to mention it to someone and said, Would you like to see what the bouquinistes in Paris look like? Theres a photo I turned page after page after pagenot a single photo of a bookseller! I looked again and again not a single photo of a bookseller.3 It was enough of a problem for me to view the book several more times and even to try to find an explanation. And then M. and G. went to Paris and sent me a postcard of the banks with the bouquinistesit was my photo! I received it yesterday. It wasnt in the album: I received it yesterday, exactly my photo.
0 1968-06-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have even seen that those cells that have been specially developed and have become conscious of the divine Presence within themselves, when the Concentration that gives shape to the body is stopped and the body dissolves (it dissolves little by little), all those conscious cells spread out and enter other combinations in which, through contagion, they awaken the consciousness of the Presence each of them had. So then, its through this phenomenon of Concentration, development and scattering that Matter in its totality evolves, so to speak, and learns through contagion, develops through contagion, experiences through contagion.
But what enters other combinations isnt the cell itselfits the subtle consciousness of the cells?
0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Individualization is only a means to make the innumerable details of the Consciousness more complex, more refined, more coherent. And individualization we shouldnt mistake it for physical life; physical life is ONE of the various means of that individualization, with such fragmenting and such limitation that it compels a Concentration that intensifies the details of the development; but once that is done, it [individualization] isnt the lasting truth.
(Mother goes into a long contemplation)
0 1968-07-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It didnt have a very precise outline, because it was radiant. It had internal constitutions of varying radiances (Mother draws points or various Concentrations within the cell), and the center was wholly luminous. And there was a big hand, almost a paw, you know, a big hand holding this cell very carefully: he took great care to touch it as lightly as possible (Mother draws two big fingers holding the cell). It was luminous, held up with two fingers, like this. I dont know what the scientific shape of cells is, but it was like this. And he showed me the various radiances. The periphery was the most opaque; the deeper inside, the more luminous it became; and the center was wholly luminous, it was bright, that is, radiating. Then there were different colorsnot very intense, but different colors. The hand was magnified perhaps twice, because it was this big (about ten inches), while the object was this big (about three inches), and it was a cell.
He showed me the constitution, and how the connection was made.
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But more and more (through news people bring or things that happen), I have more and more the sense of such an awesome torrent that Yes, I think its like this: I think everything is changing, and changing with fantastic speed, but we dont notice it and well only become aware of it afterwards. Because there are hundreds of occasions to note details, and the overall impression is rather stupendous. For instance, if the consciousness is concentrated, if for some reason its concentrated here in the body, then everything seems as if its burstingboiling and burstingto such a point that I have asked several times, Do I have a fever?I dont have a fever at all! And as soon as there is stillness, inactivity, and a Concentration with the consciousness, then its something so awesome, immense, you know, and Then there is Peace, Serenity. A peace something inexpressiblein an awesome action. And then
(Mother goes into a contemplation)
--
I answered abundantly, very concretelyvery concretely, with great Concentration. I dont know if he is sensitive.
The contact lasted a long time, it was very complete, the work was very precise. I answered in a much truer way than words can do.
0 1968-09-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have told you many times, and couldnt repeat it too often, that we are not made of a piece. Within ourselves we have lots of states of being, and each state of being has its own life. All that is gathered together in a single body, as long as you have one, and acts through a single body; thats what gives you the sense of a single person, a single being. But there are many of them, and there are in particular Concentrations on different planes: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, a mental being, a psychic being, and many others with all possible intermediaries. So when you leave your body, all those beings will scatter. Its only if you are a very advanced yogi and have been capable of unifying your being around the divine center that those beings remain linked together. If you havent been able to unify yourself, then at the time of death, all that will scatter: every being will go back to its own region. With the vital being, for example, your various desires will separate and each of them will go and chase its realization quite independently, because there will no longer be a physical being to hold them together. While if you have united your consciousness to the psychic consciousness, when you die you will remain conscious of your psychic being, and the psychic being will return to the psychic world which is a world of bliss, joy, peace, tranquillity, and growing knowledge. But if you have lived in your vital and all its impulses, each impulse will try to realize itself here and there. For instance, for the miser who was concentrated on his money, when he dies the part of his vital that was concerned with his money will hook on there and will keep watching over the money so no one takes it. People wont see him, but he is there nonetheless, and very unhappy if something happens to his dear money. Now, if you live exclusively in your physical consciousness (which is difficult, because, after all, you have thoughts and feelings), if you live exclusively in your physical, when the physical being disappears, you disappear along with it, its over. There is a spirit of the form: your form has a spirit that lives on for seven days after your death. The doctors have declared you dead, but the spirit of your form is alive, and not only alive but conscious in most cases. It lasts for seven to eight days, and after that, it too dissolves I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, its quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them its like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to center it on a part of your being which is immortal; otherwise it will evaporate like a flame into thin air. And happily so, because if it were otherwise, there might be gods or kinds of superior men who would create hells and heavens as they do in their material imagination, inside which they would shut you up. (Question:) It is said that there is a god of death. Is it true? Yes. As for me, I call him a genius of death. I know him very well. And its an extraordinary organization. You cant imagine how organized it is! I think there are many of those genii of death, hundreds of them. I met at least two of them. One I met in France, the other in Japan, and they were very different. Which leads me to believe that depending on the mental culture, the education, the countries and beliefs, there must be different genii. But there are genii for all manifestations of Nature: there are genii of fire, genii of air, water, rain, wind; and there are genii of death. Any one genius of death is entitled to a certain number of dead every day. Its truly a fantastic organization. Its a sort of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature. If, for example, he decided, Here is the number of people I am entitled to, say four or five, or six, or one or two (it varies from day to day), if he decided so many people would die, hell go straight and set himself up near the person whos going to die. But if you (not the person) happen to be conscious, if you see the genius going to the person but do not want him or her to die, then, if you have a certain occult power, you can tell him, No, I forbid you to take this person. Thats something which happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It wasnt the same genius. Which makes me say there must be many of them. If you can tell him, I forbid you to take this person and have the power to send him away, theres nothing he can do but go away; but he wont give up his due and will go elsewhere there will be a death elsewhere. (Question:) Some people, when they are about to die, are aware of it. Why dont they tell the genius to go away? Two things are needed. First, nothing in your being, no part of your being, should wish to die. That doesnt often happen. You always have, somewhere in you, a defeatist: something tired or disgusted, which has had enough, something lazy or which doesnt want to fight and says, Ah, well, let it be over, so much the better. Thats enoughyoure dead. But its a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, if a hundredth part of a second, when he consents. If there isnt that second of consent, he will not die. But who is certain he doesnt have within himself, somewhere, a tiny bit of a defeatist which just yields and says, Oh well? Hence the need to unify oneself. Whatever the path we may follow, the subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesnt want to, is made to do what he doesnt want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organized, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. Its worth trying. At any rate, I find its better to be the master rather than the slave. The feeling of being pulled by strings and being made to do things you may or may not want to do is a rather unpleasant sensation. Its quite irksome. Well, I dont know, I, for one, found it quite irksome even when I was a small child. When I was five, I began finding it wholly intolerable, and I sought a way for it to be otherwisewithout anyone being able to tell me anything. Because I knew no one capable of helping me, and I didnt have the luck you havesomeone who can tell you, Here is what you must do. There was no one to tell me. I had to find it all by myself. I found it. I began at the age of five. And you, its a long time since you were five?
Well cut out the end.
0 1968-09-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, here, like this (gesture around the head). And at times, it can annul everything, but everything: thought, memory, everything is annulled. And no later than this morning, it turned all inner movements (movements of the nerves, muscles, all that) into soundssounds and wordsand with what malice! You could see a will to drive you insane. But its terrible! A terrible thing, I have never seen that. Naturally, all you have to do is to repel it, but it compels you to constant Concentration.
At times it yields (thats very recent, it began two or three days ago) and it goes away. Once I asked, I said, But why? Why is this permitted? And its always the same thing: difficulties must result in an increase in the Power.
0 1968-10-05, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He wasnt asleep: he could hear the noise of the [Ashrams] generator. It was a vision at 5:30 in the morning. He found himself in an immense hall with red carpets. There were all kinds of people there, each moving about according to his order. Then, in a corner, seated in a big armchair, there was a man wearing a red hat, a sort of miter,1 and in Concentration. He was concentrated, and was repeating something with a certain gesture of the hand, as if turning something in a circle. V. instantly knew it was him. A man with intense blue eyes, long eyelashes, not strong physically but with a very powerful appearance, a thin, pointed nose, a sparse beard like that of someone who doesnt shave properly or hasnt shaved for two or three days, about fifty-five years old. A man who gave the impression of a great egoistic ambition, says V. And he was intently watching P.L., particularly your symbol which P.L. wears around his neck. And he was repeating something while turning his wrist.
Oh, thats it! Thats why: P.L. went back there, and its since then that the attacks have come back.
0 1968-10-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother remains in a long Concentration)
A big beard, like this (floating gesture). Its not Sri Aurobindos beard, its bushy and well trimmed.
--
(Mother goes back into Concentration)
I am surrounded by [invisible] people and things, the room is full of them!
0 1968-10-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, every morning I see four people; I dont speak, but the consciousness is fully there, it works, does its work with a power of Concentration. Then they go away and it goes away.
But this [the body] doesnt even have the sense of being an instrument, you understand. I dont know what it is. Its not an instrument. I dont know what it is.
0 1968-11-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother laughs) Yes, extremely mental. Extremely mental. The vital she had dominated; the physical It was all mental, mental, mental. And with a sort of Concentration in her mental being.
She must have had a bad night, it must have been difficultbecause here it was very, very difficult, and I didnt know it had to do with her. As soon as I knew, I went and saw there (I knew it in the morning), because it wasnt a good place (but she didnt care, now shes gone out of it). But then her mind, constantly, constantly: What really happens after death? And for hours! I would do something else, be busy: for hours it kept coming back. In the end (it lasted the whole day yesterday, and this morning it was still there), this morning I told her, Listen, Bharatidi, be quiet, and if you are quiet, you will know. Since then, nothing anymore.
0 1968-11-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Perhaps the experience came because, for several days, there had been a very great Concentration to find, not exactly the why or the how, but the FACT, the fact of separateness, the fact that everything appears so stupid, so ugly. I was assailed, assailed by kinds of living memories of all sorts of experiences (all sorts: from things read to paintings, films, and life, people, things), memories of this body, all the memories we might call antidivine, in which the body had a sensation of repulsive or bad things, like negations of the divine Presence. It began like that. For two days I was like that, to such a point that the body was almost desperate. Then the experience came, and it hasnt moved. It hasnt moved. It came: vrrff! finished, hasnt moved. You see, experiences come and then draw back but this hasnt moved. Its there right now. So the body is trying to be fluid (Mother makes a gesture of spreading), its trying to melt; its trying, it understands what it is. Its tryingnot succeeding, obviously! (Mother looks at her hands) But its consciousness knows.
But that experience is having effects: some people have felt relieved all of a sudden, one or two absolutely cured. And when something goes wrong in the body, it doesnt need to ask: the trouble is set right quite naturally.
--
Only, the other consciousness is still there. Just now, this morning, I saw a considerable number of people: everyone of them came, and I looked (there was no I looked: for the PERSON there, it was like that, I was looking at him), the eyes were fixed [on the person] like that, and then there was the perception and vision (but not vision as its understood: its all a phenomenon of consciousness), the awareness of the Presence; the Presence permeating that sort of bark, of hardened thing, permeating, permeating everywhere. And when I look, when the eyes are fixed, it makes a sort of Concentration [of this Presence]. But its certainly quite a transitory and intermediate state, because the other consciousness (the consciousness that sees things and deals with them as usual, with the perception of what goes on in the individual, what he thinksnot so much what he thinks as what he feels, the way he is), thats there. Its obviously necessary, too, to maintain contact, but Its clearly still an experience, not an established fact. What I mean by established fact is the consciousness established in such a way that nothing else exists, it alone is presentits not yet like that.
(long silence)
0 1969-01-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Today I saw Pondicherrys lieutenant governor (he comes now and then, every two weeks), and other people (a guard of Auroville, who is a Muslim), a bit of everything, and now this consciousness comes: the other day, I told you, it was like a rampart, but today with the governor it was much smaller, of limited proportions (gesture like a beam), but it was there, intact: it was the same thing, only the Concentration was less. And it comes between the Action (Mother points to her own body) and the person. Its like a projection of power. And now it has become habitual.
There is in it a consciousness (something VERY precious) that gives lessons to the body, teaches it what it has to do, that is, the attitude it should have, the reaction it should have. I had already told you a few times how difficult it is to find the procedure of the transformation when theres no one to give you indications; and its the response, as it were: he1 comes and tells the body, Have this attitude, do this, do that in that way. So then the body is happy, its quite reassured, it cant make a mistake anymore.
0 1969-02-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It came effortlessly, and it left simply because I was too busy. It doesnt come at willwhat comes at will is what we might call a copy: it looks like it, but its not THE Thing. The Thing There is something wholly independent of our aspiration, our will, our effort wholly independent. And this something appears to be absolutely all-powerful, in the sense that none of the bodys difficulties exists. At such times, everything disappears. Aspiration, Concentration, effort no use at all. And its the DIVINE SENSE, you understand, thats what having the divine sense means. During these few hours (three or four hours), I understood in an absolute way what having the divine consciousness in the body means. And then, this body, that body, that other body (gesture here and there, all around Mother), it doesnt matter: it moved about from one body to another, quite free and independent, aware of the limitations or the possibilities of each bodyabsolutely wonderful, I had never, ever had this experience before. Absolutely wonderful. It left because I was so busy that and it didnt leave because it had just come to show how it is thats not it: its because life and the organization of life (gesture like a truckload being dumped) engulf you.
I know its there (gesture in the background), I know it is, but But thats a transformation as I understand it! And clearly, in people it could express itselfnot something vague, clearlyin this man, in that woman, in (same gesture here and there), quite clearly. And with a Smile!
0 1969-02-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am entirely convinced that things are as they must be, and that its simply the body that lacks suppleness, tranquillity, trust. So I cant even say that things grate (they dont grate at all), but You understand, the work consists in changing the conscious base of all the cells but not all at once! Because that would be impossible; even little by little is very difficult: the moment when the conscious base is changed is There is almost a sort of panic in the cells, and the impression, Ooh! Whats going to happen? And since there are still lots and lots of them So now and then, its difficult. Its by group, almost by faculty or part of faculty, and some of them are a little difficult. I dont know (since its quite new), I dont know if it would be easier if I werent doing anything? Probably not, because its not so much the work [to be done], its not that: its peoples general attitude. It makes for a kind of collective support at the moment of the transition. At the moment when the consciousness that ordinarily supports the cells fades away for the new one to take the place, the cells need (the cells, I dont know if its them), but there has to be the support of (how can I put it?) in people it gets expressed as the need of the Presence, but thats not what is necessary: its a sort of collaboration of the collective forces. Its not much, its not indispensable, but it helps a little, in some measure. There is a moment when theres almost an anguish, you know, youre suspended like that; it may be a few seconds, but those few seconds are terrible. This morning again there was a moment like that. I remember that at the time of the darshans, for two days Sri Aurobindo didnt want me to do any work for others (to see them, read letters, reply, all that), but he was here, so it was he who acted as support. Because I see that the work began long ago (in a subordinate and very little conscious way), but now its in full swing. So the cells feel some slight panic. Generally, a few minutes Concentration is enough, but it causes a sort of wearinessweariness in the cells, a need not to do anything (Mother points at the clock, which reads 11).
If I hadnt known, if the body hadnt known what it was, well, ordinarily I would have lain down without seeing anyone. But the consciousness was there to say that the unpleasantness of it [the second of transition], the unpleasant consequence of it would have been worse than the fact of being tired.
0 1969-03-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(long Concentration)
Its good.
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This experience [of the column of light] came so spontaneously, effortlessly, without Concentration or anything; and to the very body it was visible like this (gesture, eyes wide open). I couldnt see the window anymore, that table there I couldnt see anymore; I couldnt see: it was here, like this, here (gesture between Mother and the window). As if it were PHYSICALLY here, you understand.
The body is learning very, very small details, very small things, all the time, all the time, night and day.
0 1969-04-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This (Mother points to her note) came when I was looking at those actions there [at the Vatican], first; and then here in India, theres a gentleman a nasty gentleman (I saw his photo), a wicked man who wants to get into the Parliament (he isnt in it) so as to demolish Indira.3 Hes taken that into his head. So she was afraid. Shes been told not to be afraid, what she should do, and so on. He hasnt been elected yet (I think the election is to take place next month). But I was looking at that, and its in response to my Concentration that it came; it came like that: first the vision, then the explanations.
There would seem to be a rage among the adverse forces; they feel that something radical is now going on and want to prevent it at any costwhich is idiotic, by the way, completely stupid. But we might say its fine, because they actually give an opportunity they put themselves in the conditions needed to receive the answer: the backlash.
0 1969-05-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My method is always the same, of course: full Concentration of the Supreme Consciousness on the person, removing all obstacles. It works like this, like that (gesture of moving about here and there). And its like a factual demonstration that ALL the rules we have established in our consciousness, all of that is absolutely idiotic. It doesnt correspond to the truth. Theres something. There is something.
Yesterday (laughing), this Consciousness made me see all the wills, or the vibrations (because ultimately it boils down to qualities of vibrations), all the vibrations that bring about anything from the smallest troubles to the biggest catastrophesits all of the same quality. And how the physical cells respond. And now and thennow and thenlike a reward for the effort: what needs to be done, the true thing. But that passesits like a dazzle, but it doesnt last. We are This Consciousness seems to have to go very fast, because from the point of view of consciousness, we are still quite in a quagmire, and it goes like this (gesture of an irresistible march forward), oh, it asserts itself.
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All I know, the impression I have, is that its concentrated here. The Concentration is here, the work is here. But it may be the whole solar system, I dont know.
(silence)
0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A. A long time ago Mother was going everywhere in the subtle body but she found it of a very secondary interest. Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here. Besides, the earth is a Concentration of all the other worlds and one can touch them by touching something corresponding in the earth-atmosphere.1
Sri Aurobindo (25.373)
--
The Asram is not a religious association. Those who are here come from all religions and some are of no religion. There is no creed or set of dogmas, no governing religious body; there are only the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and certain psychological practices of Concentration and meditation, etc., for the enlarging of the consciousness, receptivity to the Truth, mastery over the desires, the discovery of the divine self and consciousness concealed within each human being, a higher evolution of the nature.8
Sri Aurobindo
0 1969-08-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into a long Concentration)
In the end, I am absolutely convinced that confusion is to teach us to live from day to day, that is to say, without being preoccupied with what may happen or what will happen, just concerning ourselves from day to day with what we have to do. All thinking and foreseeing and devising and all that furthers disorder a lot.
0 1969-11-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do you do a Concentration before going to sleep?
Oh, always. Thats the surprising thing, in fact.
0 1969-11-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And evil, what we call evil, has its INDISPENSABLE place in the whole. But it would no longer be felt as evil the minute one became conscious of Thatnecessarily Evil is that infinitesimal element looking on its infinitesimal consciousness; but because consciousness is essentially ONE, it recaptures, regains the Consciousness of Unityboth together. And thats what, THAT IS WHAT has to be realized. Its a marvelous thing. I had the vision: at the time, there was the vision of THAT. And the beginnings (is it beginnings?), what they call in English the outskirts, whats farthest from the central realization, becomes the multiplicity of things, also the multiplicity of sensations, feelings, everything the multiplicity of consciousness. And that action of separation is what created, what constantly creates the world, and what at the same time creates everything: suffering, happiness, all, all, all that was created, through its what we might call diffusion but its absurd, its not a diffusion: we live in the sense of space, so we say diffusion and Concentration, but its nothing like that.
I understood why Thon used to say that we are at the time of Equilibrium. That is to say, its through the equilibrium of all those innumerable points of consciousness and all those opposites that one recaptures the central Consciousness. All that one can say is stupidjust while I am saying it, I see how stupid it is; but theres no other way Its something something SO CONCRETE, so true, you understand, so ab-so-lute-ly THAT.
--
(Mother goes into a Concentration)
Isnt there power?
0 1969-11-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The children, those who are a few months old (as I said, those who were born in Auroville) are remarkable theyre remarkable. I thought it was just one case, but in all those Ive seen till now, all of them, a Concentration of consciousness.
That little Tamil was a marvel.
0 1969-11-29, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know that every time I saw him It was a strange thing: I saw him three times, and every time the parts of the body that werent yet sufficiently (how should I put it?) permeated with Force, and which therefore were capable of going awry, with him those parts always did go awry. I would see him, and they would start going like this (grating gesture). So it would take me a few hours of Concentration to have them keep quiet; I had managed to have everything keep quiet until the gradual transformation, but there, it was beginning to do silly things, to want to express itself. So I said no.
All three times.
0 1969-12-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, this decentralization stems from innumerable causes, but they are causes we might call psychological. And the cells contained in the body, or composing the body, are held in form by a centralization of the consciousness in them, and as long as that power of Concentration is there, the body cannot die. Its only when the power of Concentration disappears that the cells scatter. And then one dies. Then the body dies.
The sequel was like this.
--
The habitual Concentration of Nature (produced by Nature) is a MECHANICAL Concentration which is subject to all sorts of mechanical laws too, but (Mother reads out her note) Here is what came:
The very first step towards immortality is to replace the mechanical centralization by a willed centralization.
0 1970-01-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, people will not come for regular meditations or anything of the kind (the internal organization will be taken care of later): it will be a place for Concentration. Not everyone will be allowed in; there will be a time of the week or the day (I dont know) when visitors will be allowed, but anyway without mixture. There will be a fixed hour or day to show the visitors, and the rest of the time only for those who are seriousserious, sincere, who truly want to learn to concentrate.
So I think thats good.
--
Its a kind of tower with twelve regular facets representing the twelve months of the year, and absolutely empty. Only, it will have to hold one to two hundred people. So, to support the roof, there would be inside (not outside, inside) twelve columns; and right at the center, the object of Concentration. And with the suns Concentration, all year round it will have to get in AS A BEAM (not diffused: it will have to be so arranged that it can get in as beams); then, according to the hour of the day and the month of the year, the beam will revolve (there will be some device at the top) and it will be directed onto the center. At the center, there will be the symbol [of Mother], then Sri Aurobindos symbol supporting a globe. A globe which well try to have made of a transparent substance such as crystal or A large globe. Then people will be let in in order to concentrate(laughing) to learn to concentrate! No fixed meditations, nothing of the sort, but they will have to stay there in silencesilence and Concentration.
(P.:) Its very beautiful.
--
All that is certainly the consciousness of what Sri Aurobindo called the supramental:1 the being to come after man. How will he be? I havent yet seen I havent yet seen that. I did see, I did have perceptions of the superman, the intermediary being, but you clearly feel its only an intermediary being. What will that being be like who will come after the superman? I dont know. Because we are still much too human; when we visualize the Supreme Consciousness in a form, the Supreme Being and so on the Supremewe tend to give it a form similar to the human one, but thats our old habit. I saw that future being (I saw it many years ago): it was clearly a far more harmonious and expressive form than the human one, but there was a likeness, it was still a human form, that is to say, with a head and arms and legs and Will it be that? I dont know. There will necessarily be that as an intermediarynecessarily. There were all those kinds of apes which acted as intermediaries between the animal and man. But lightness, invulnerability, moving about at will, luminosity at willall that goes without saying, its part of supramental qualities, but Oh, yes, also clothing at will: its not something foreign added on, its the substance that takes on certain forms. All that I had seen, and I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and Sri Aurobindo himself gave me certain demonstrations (I see him sometimes and he shows me). He simply said what the intermediary step will be. But all descriptions are worthless. And when I see him at night (sometimes I spend hours with him), its so natural and spontaneous that I am not even observing, This is like this, that is like thatno. In the morning, with a Concentration, the impression remains very strong, but as for the details as we here understand them, you cant say.
Similarly, that sort of thing (Sri Aurobindo too calls it perception), that perception which replaces vision and all the rest is very strong at night. Its hard to say. You have an impression of it when you wake up, but not the capacity; the full capacity is not there.
0 1970-01-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into a long Concentration)
Well let the dust settle. Because, you understand, to accept those changes I must be sure that the origin of the inspiration is of the same quality as mine. For the execution, I know very well that we need people who know the job and do the work, but for the inspiration, I must be sure that the origin of the inspiration is AT LEAST as high as mine. And I am not sure, because I saw so clearly. With Paolos ideas, I saw the mixture straight away. His ideas are all mental ideas, I can assure you because for me thats very easy to see. Well, all of them bring along the same MIXTURE as with anything thats done in the world. And so whats the use of doing that over and over and over again?
0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres something very interesting on a psychological level: its that material needs decrease in proportion to the spiritual growth. Not (as Sri Aurobindo said), not through asceticism, but because the focus of attention and Concentration of the being moves to a different domain. The purely material being, quite conceivably, finds only material things pleasing; with all those who live in the emotive being and the outer mind, the interest of the being is turned to for instance, things of beauty, as with those who want to live surrounded by beautiful things, who want to use nice things. Now that appears to be the human summit, but its quite what we might call a central region (gesture hardly above ground level), its not at all a higher region. But the way the world is organized, people without aesthetic needs go back to a very primitive lifewhich is wrong. We need a place where life where the very setting of life would be, not an individual thing, but a beauty that would be like the surroundings natural to a certain degree of development.
Now, as things are organized, to be surrounded by beautiful things you need to be rich, and thats a source of imbalance, because wealth usually goes with quite an average degree of consciousness, even mediocre at times. So theres everywhere an imbalance and a disorder. We would need a place of beautya place of beauty in which people can live only if they have reached a certain degree of consciousness. And let it not be decided by other people, but quite spontaneously and naturally. So how to do that?
0 1970-04-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a curious situation. The being isnt at all turned in on itself: theres nothing, its like this (Mother stretches her arms into the infinite). Its like this. Maybe thats why: it receives forces but doesnt keep them, they hardly enter at all [into Mother], its like this (gesture of a continuous flow through Mother and spreading outward), all the time. All the time like that. So if I am told about something, it makes a point (Mother pinches a point in space between her two fingers), a point of Concentration for a moment; otherwise its all the time like that (same gesture of continuous flow), all the time. It goes like this, like this (same gesture of outward flow). It feels the body feels forces coming, but it doesnt even feel them going through, doesnt feel its giving them, not at all, its like that (same gesture of spreading). It all goes through without through what, one doesnt know Very nonexistent. Very nonexistent. And then, if the body starts being conscious of itself or of something, its MOST unpleasant, a discomfort.
I have noticed that with receptive people (I see people, lots of them), with receptive people, it starts flowing and flowing and flowing like that. And nothing else: no thought, no not even sensation. But the strange thing is that if the body becomes conscious of itself it doesnt suffer, thats not suffering, but something which is an inexpressible discomfort.
--
And the curious thing is that I dont at all feel it comes from one place. On the contrary, its a Concentration: a Concentration here, as if (laughing) as if an expanse of something were pushed through a hole! (Mother draws a small circle between two fingers). You understand, thats how it is! Yet, its not limited, but its its a movement like this (gesture of a flow through Mother). So its pointed [at a person or the word]. Its pointed.
But thats the ideal state! (Mother laughs)
0 1970-04-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is also this well-known thing: according to the Concentration of the consciousness, the value of time changes. Thats perpetual and constant. The same circumstances, the same everyday little events I am made to feel with the ordinary consciousness, and then three or four different consciousness esand their value changes. It goes from a long, interminable time to a second. Which means a demonstration of the unreality of time as we perceive it here thats every day, all the time.
There is a Force acting At least I think, I feel its the Force, because it acts through the will (but its deeper or truer or higher or whatever than the will). For instance, if I am not supposed to say something, instead of its going through the thought, Mustnt speak, you mustnt speak I just cant speak anymore! All sorts of things like that. The functioning is direct.
0 1970-05-06, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I stay lying down, it wont do, but when I stay in Concentration like that, it can do. So if you want to remain like that
(contemplation)
0 1970-05-23, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I tried to tell him is that this new consciousness doesnt demand spiritual athleticism, great Concentrations and meditations and tapasya [austerities], or special virtues.
No.
0 1970-05-27, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems to me to be the symbolic place of physical life. For example, within a small space, you can have a very wide action, which reaches very far. In that way there were, as though in adjacent rooms, people who live very far, in North India or in another country or They were just in different rooms, but I was able to move from one room to another; so it looks like (Mother gestures showing a Concentration or a restricted field). It doesnt have the same concrete reality, its symbolic.
For instance, money was symbolized as a certain food (asparagus, in fact! But not asparagus as we have here: it was big like this [gesture about a foot and a half]), and one could organize it, receive and arrange it, as you would arrange food, but it wasnt put into the mouth (thats symbolic).
0 1970-06-20, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother makes a face. Long Concentration)
One thing I know is that the Consciousness is working in you very strongly, but Dont you feel it?
--
(long Concentration)
Do you rest during the day?
0 1970-07-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think (the other day you told me something was wrong in your body), I think that on those spots that arent yet on the way to transformation, theres an increase, as though a Concentration of the difficulty: one feels more ill at such spots.
The only possible thing is (Mother opens her hands) the peace of total surrender, like this (absolutely flat gesture, vast, immutable): come what may. There. Then things are fine.
--
(after a long Concentration)
Only, its troublesome because one can injure oneself in a fall.
0 1970-07-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(after a long Concentration, Mother takes a notepad, then plunges back for a long time)
Theres a refusal to answer.
0 1970-07-29, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother goes into a long Concentration, closes her eyes very tightly, looking at something, then plunges in)
Z is propagandizing people to take them away from here.
0 1970-08-05, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Certain experiences make me think that this sense of personal limitation isnt necessary to physical existenceits a thing we have to learn, but its not necessary. The impression had always been there that a body defined as making up separate individualities is necessaryits not. One can live physically without that, the body can live without that. Spontaneously, that is to say, left to its old habits and ways of being, its very difficult, it results in an internal organization that quite looks like disorderits difficult. You see, problems crop up all the time, for everythingEVERYTHING there isnt one activity of the body thats not called into question by that.2 The process is no longer the old process, its no longer as it was, but as it is hasnt become a habit, a spontaneous habit, which means its not natural, it demands that the consciousness should be constantly watchful for everything, even to swallow lunch, you understand? So that makes life a bit difficultspecially, specially when I see people. I see lots and lots of people (forty or fifty people every day), and everyone brings something, so that this Consciousness that makes it all function has to make do with all that comes from outside. And, you know, I see that many people fall ill (or they think theyre ill, or seem to have some illness, or really have one), but in the body it becomes concrete through their own way of being, which is the old way. To this new physical consciousness, it could be avoided, but, oh, how difficult! Through a sort of conscious Concentration, you have to keep up a state, a way of being that isnt natural according to the old nature, but which is clearly the new way of being. That way, you can avoid illness. But its an almost Herculean labor.
Its difficult.
0 1970-09-05, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, earlier I would always take refuge in silence and Concentration, but now this thing comes3that has been the biggest difficulty. In silence and Concentration I could spend hours and hours and hours, but now those uncontrolled movements come, and Thats Thats really what saddened me, you understand?
(Satprem feels tears flow on his cheeks)
0 1970-09-12, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, there would seem to be a sort of will to force you to remain in your body, since your Concentrations are taken away from you, all that is taken away from you.
Yes, yes.
0 1970-09-19, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother gestures to say she does not know long Concentration)
Nothing, nothing comes, nothing.
0 1970-09-30, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(long Concentration on G.)
And then, the Dutch translation of the Adventure of Consciousness is going to be published, and D. asked A. M. to make a cover for the book. A. M. has done something hed like to show you. Here is what hes done.1 [Satprem shows the painting.]
0 1971-01-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Physical vision requires a much more continuous Concentration. The physical vision serves to stabilize. It gives continuity to things. The same with hearing. So when neither of them are there, you become conscious of the thing directly, which gives you the true knowledge of it. That is probably how the Supermind will work.
My physical vision and hearing have been pushed into the background to be replaced by identity through consciousness for the growth of consciousness.
0 1971-03-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother shakes her head, long Concentration, Mother takes Satprems hands)
***
0 1971-05-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like a Concentration of adverse forces wanting to create as much confusion as possible. And what is amusing is that theyre coming from all sides [asking Mothers advice] except PakistanPakistan doesnt ask anything, but otherwise. And all that.
But I was told fantastic things, for example, that Pakistan wanted India to declare war because she would immediately call for Chinas help; and that Pakistan is already receiving arms from America through Turkey. Such things.
0 1971-09-01, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is beginning to be such a Concentration of energy (oh! its not there yet, very far from it, but), theres a beginning of perception of how things will be. Its its really marvelous. And so powerful! A power and a reality in the consciousness that nothing, absolutely nothing else can haveeverything vital or mental and all that seems hazy and unsubstantial. Whereas this is concrete (Mother clenches her fists). And so strong!
Some problems are still to be solved, but not with words or thoughts. And things come to demonstratenot just personal things, but also things from people around me; people, things, circumstances, all that comes for teaching, teaching the body to have the true consciousness. Its its marvelous.
0 1971-09-04, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, when one is here, near you, one is taken up into a kind of absolute ray. Its. In the past, I remember my meditations up above, they were vast and quite pleasant, but here its a kind of ABSOLUTE. You say: this is IT. This is IT, you know, absolutely IT, its the absolute which is here and seizes you. But when one is no longer near you. Through Concentration, you can still capture IT again, to a certain degree.
Yes.
But as soon as you let go of the Concentration, well, you again have to. Thats the difficulty. There would have to be some kind of possession. But how is that done?
I dont know.
0 1971-09-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the Concentration of force is greater and greater.
(silence)
0 1971-10-06, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do you want a little Concentration?
(Mother goes within)
0 1971-10-23, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It depends on the case. Theres a slight difference. There are cases when nothing comesnothing, everything is stopped. So there you have to wait until it runs its course. There are cases where you are NATURALLY led to do one thing or another, which seems totally indifferent but is part of the Action (I dont know how to say it). I have experienced both. It depends on the case. There are cases where nothing is needed. There are cases where its simply as though you put the Divine ON the thing (Mother makes a gesture of aiming a beam). You know, youre like not an intermediary, I dont know its like a power of Concentration on something; then the Divine Force flows through and is focused (same gesture of aiming a beam), but you yourself do nothingyet the thing is done. Sometimes, if there is a word to be said, then the word comes to you; or if there is something to be done (it may seem like a very small, indifferent thing), you just have to do it quietlyyou are LED to do it.
Youre led, yes, I understand.
0 1972-01-29, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And if he did feel somethingwhatever it is, an impression (I dont want to define it), something, a Force, some phenomenonif he felt something at that hour, we could agree on a particular day and time, and try: I would do a special Concentration on him.
If he could send a photo, it would be easier.
0 1972-02-26, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But obtaining silence at will is no problem, Mother. You concentrate for a second and everything is stilled, and it lasts perfectly as long as you remain concentrated. But the moment you let go of the Concentration, pfft!
(Mother laughs)
--
The type of Concentration itself must change, then.
Yes.
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I call on you rather than any other contemporary writer because I think your works embody the very anguish of the West, an anguish I have bitterly experienced all the way to the German Concentration camps at the age of twenty, and then in a long and uneasy wandering around the world. Insofar as I have always turned to you, daring and searching with each of your characters what surpasses man, I am again turning to you because I have a feeling that, more than anyone else, you can understand Sri Aurobindos message and perhaps draw a new impetus from it. I am also thinking of a whole generation of young people who expect much from you: more than an ideal of pure heroism, which only opens the doors (as does all self-offering) on another realm of man we have yet to explore, and more than a fascination with death, which also is only a means and not an end, although its brutal nakedness can sometimes open a luminous breach in the bodily prisonwhere we seem to have been immured alive and we emerge into a new dimension of our being. For we tend too often to forget that it is for living that your heroes think so constantly of death; also I think that the young people I mentioned want the truth of Tchen and Katow, the truth of Hernandez, Perken and Moreno [characters in Malrauxs novels] beyond their death.
It may seem strange to speak of you in an Indian Ashram that one would consider far removed from the world and the agonizing problems and struggles of the Human Condition, but as a matter of fact Sri Aurobindos Ashram is concerned with this earthly life; it wants to transform it instead of fleeing it as all traditional Indian and Western religions do, forever proclaiming that His kingdom is not of this world. Knowing that there exists a fundamental reality beyond man, religions have focussed on that other realm to find the key to man just as your heroes focus on their death to discover the fundamental reality that will be able to stand in the face of death. But religion has not justified this life, except as a transition toward a Beyond which is supposedly the supreme goal; and your heroesthough so close to lifes throbbing heart that at times it seems to explode and reveal its poignant secretfinally plunge into death, as if to free themselves from an Absolute they cannot live in the flesh.
0 1972-04-05, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The battery of droning fans, the huge crowd, the glaring lights reflected on the zinc ceiling. Her little white figure, which seemed to be absorbed in a powerful, almost fierce Concentration. Scream? Scream what? To WHOM? Could my screams bring her back to her room? Were they going to cancel their messages and prepared statements? There was no one to listen. They had arranged everything to perfection. There was not a single dissenting voice. The collusion was total.
See Agenda VIII, August 2, 1967.
0 1972-04-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is very concretevery concrete and very powerful: a Concentration.
As if the Grace were concentrated on an instrument of the Divine, of the divine Poweran instrument.
For me, you see, there was constantly: May Your Will be done, Lord, may Your Will be done, Lord. As if he were chosen as an instrument, as one of the instruments. May Your Will be done, Lord with a great force of Concentration.
(Mother plunges in)
0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As much as possible, as much as it can, the body tries to be nonexistent: just letting That pass through, That pass through all the time, like this (gesture with her hands). Let the body be only a point of Concentration and diffusion, like this (gesture of something flowing through Mother). As supple, as impersonal, as (how to term it?) without any personal will. Without any personal will, just like that, like a transmitter: let That pass throughuntainted.
Untainted, undiminished. Voil.
0 1972-05-27, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The old methods, the methods that even yesterday were effective and powerful, all seem nonexistent. Yet, side by side, when that Force comes, I concretely feel (and I have proof, a factual proof) that a simple expression of will, or even a simple vision of something is (Mother lowers her hands) all-powerful. Materially so. Some people on their deathbeds are returned to life; some healthy people, brrt, suddenly pass awayto that extent, you know. Circumstances that seemed inextricable find marvelous solutionspeople themselves say its miraculous. Its not miraculous to me, its very simple: just like this (Mother lowers a finger). But its INDISPUTABLE. Indisputable and new in the world. No longer the old method, no longer a mental Concentration or a mental vision, none of that (Mother lowers a finger): a fact.
A fact.
0 1972-06-07, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Any Concentration on the body itself causes a kind of strange discomfort, a discomfort which stops only when it is conscious of the Forceof the Force working (same gesture of descent through Mother), the Force working, when That comes and flows through it. Then the I cant say the old method is gone, its not at all that, its something.
(Smiling) Theres a phrase that comes to me in English: the joy of nothingness.
0 1972-08-02, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In occult terms, a formation is a strongly formed thought, or a Concentration of force with a specific goal and a permanent existence of its own. Formations can be negative or positive. In everyday life, for example, wills or desires or long-nurtured suggestions one day come to their happy or sorry fruition. The day, the success, or the accident were prepared by the constant repetition of insignificant little thoughts, which eventually exude their cancer or dazzling success. Thus Mother, who for long had had no thoughts or will of her own, except what You will, was extremely sensitive and vulnerable to anything coming from the outside, precisely because there was no more outside for her, she was directly and instantly bathed in everything: she was in people. My body is excessively sensitive, she said, and needs to be protected from all those things coming in. As if it had to work inside, as in an egg.
February 26
0 1973-04-07, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother comes out of her Concentration, she speaks to Satprem:)
Tell me if youre tired.
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus the spiritualisation of Matter becomes possible simply because Matter and Spirit are not absolutely different, contradictory or incommensurable entities; they are one and the same reality, in different modeseven as water or water vapour and ice are in substance one and identical, although different in appearance. Spirit has become Matter and Matter at heart is Spirit. Spirit is latent in Matter, as Matter itself is a possible formulation involved in Spirit. Matter has come out of Spirit as Spirit pressed upon itself and gradually condensed and consolidated into the concrete material reality. Spirit has become Matter by a process of crystallisation, of self-limitation and exclusive Concentration. The movement follows a definite line of self-modification, along a downward gradient till it is consummated: it is one among an infinite variety of possible self-modifications, chosen and exclusively developed with a special purpose and a definite fulfilment In view.
A movement of involution through a series of termsof consciousnessof gradually diminishing facial value has made the Spirit terminate in Matter. If it is so, it stands to reason that a movement of evolution, a return journey would make Matter culminate in Spirit. Thus the very fact of Spirit having become Matter, of Matter being a mode of the Spirit, at once creates the possibility of Matter being transmuted into Spirit. Now even granting such a possibility, it may be argued yet that the thing achieved is a resolution of Matter into Spirit; it means the destruction of the characteristic form and consistency that is called Matter. We know, thanks to modern Science, that Matter can be transmuted into pure energy, but then it loses its materiality, it is dematerialised.
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A further descent into obscurity occurs when consciousness passes from Mind to Life. Darkness is almost visible here: there is a greater withdrawal on the part of each unit from its surrounding reality, a narrower Concentration upon one's own separative existenceshades of the prison-house have gathered close around. The light, already dulled and faint in the mind, has become a lurid glare here. Passion has arisen and desire and hunger and battle and combat.
Here also in the vital three ranges can be distinguished the lower becoming more and more turbid and turbulent and fierce or more and more self-centred and selfish. These levels can best be seen by their impact on our vital being and formations there. The first, the highest one, the meeting or confluence of the Mind and the Vital is the Heart, the centre of emotion, the knot of the external or instrumental vehicle, of the frontal consciousness, behind which is born and hides the true individualised consciousness, the psyche. The mid-region is the Higher Vital consisting of larger (egoistic) dynamisms, such as high ambition, great enterprise, heroic courage, capacity for work, adventure, masterfulness, also such movements as sweeping violences, mighty hungers, and intense arrogances. The physical seat of this movement is, as perhaps the Tantras would say, the domain ranging between the heart and the navel. Lower down ranges the Lower Vital which consists of small desires, petty hankerings, blind cravingsall urges and impulses that are more or less linked up with the body and move to gross physical satisfactions.
--
When consciousness has reached the farthest limit of its opposite, when it has reduced itself to absolutely unconscious and mechanical atoms of Matter, when the highest has descended into and become the lowest, then, by the very force of its downward drive, it has swung round and begun to mount up again. As it could not proceed farther on the downward gradient, having reached the extreme and ultimate limit of inconscience, consciousness had to turn round, as it were, by the very pressure of its inner impetus. First, then, there is a descent, a gradual involution, a veiling and closing up; next, an ascent, a gradual evolution, unfoldment and expression. We now see, however, that the last limit at the bottomMatteralthough appearing to be unconscious, is really not so: it is inconscient. That is to say, it holds consciousness secreted and involved within itself; it is, indeed, a special formulation of consciousness. It is the exclusive Concentration of consciousness upon single points in itself: it is consciousness throwing itself out in scattered units and, by reason of separative identification with them and absorption into them, losing itself, forgetting itself in an absolute fixation of attention. The phenomenon is very similar to what happens when in the ordinary consciousness a worker, while doing a work, becomes so engrossed in it that he loses consciousness of himself, identifies himself with the work and in fact becomes the work, the visible resultant being a mechanical execution.
Now this imprisoned consciousness in Matter forces Matter to be conscious again when driven on the upward gradient. This tension creates a fire, as it were, in the heart of Matter, a mighty combustion and whorl in the core of things, of which the blazing sun is an image and a symbol. All this pressure and heat and concussion and explosion mean a mighty struggle in Matter to give birth to that which is within. Consciousness that is latent must be made patent; it must reveal itself in Matter and through Matter, making Matter its vehicle and embodiment. This is the mystery of the birth of Life, the first sprouting of consciousness in Matter. Life is half-awakened consciousness, consciousness yet in a dream state. Its earliest and most rudimentary manifestation is embodied in the plant or vegetable world. The submerged consciousness strives to come still further up, to express itself to a greater degree and in a clearer mode, to become more free and plastic in its movements; hence the appearance of the animal as the next higher formulation. Here consciousness delivers itself as a psyche, a rudimentary one, no doubt, a being of feeling and sensation, and elementary mentality playing in a field of vitalised Matter. Even then it is not satisfied with itself, it asks for a still more free and clear articulation: it is not satisfied, for it has not yet found its own level. Hence after the animal, arrives man with a full-fledged Mind, with intelligence and self-consciousness and capacity for self-determination.
--
This, then, is the nature of creation and its process. First, there is an Involution, a gradual foreshorteninga disintegration and concretisation, an exclusive Concentration and self-oblivion of consciousness by which the various levels of diminishing consciousness are brought forth from the plenary light of the one supreme Spirit, all the levels down to the complete eclipse in the unconsciousness of the multiple and disintegrate Matter. Next, there is an Evolution, that is to say, embodiment in Matter of all these successive states, appearing one by one from the down most to the topmost; Matter incarnates, all other states contri bute to the incarnation and uphold it, the higher always transforming the lower in a new degree of consciousness.
Creation, the universe in its activity, is thus not simply a meaningless play, a pointless fancy. It has a purpose, an end, a goal, a fulfilment, and it follows naturally a definite pattern of process. The goal is the concretisation, the materialisation (which includes, of course, vitalisation and mentalisation) of the Spirit and the spiritual values. It means the establishment of divine names and forms in terrestrial individuals leading a divine life, individually and collectively here below.
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A question is asked, where, at what stage or level of Involution does the principle of exclusive Concentration (the principle of Ignorance) come in? If, as Sri Aurobindo says, it comes subsequently at a later stage, where was it then before? Was it not in the Absolute Reality itself? There can be nothing that is not inherent in the Absolute Reality. We all know, nothing comes out of nothing. Then, if it is in the original Reality already, why should it come out at a later stage and not be active from the very beginning? This standpoint seems to have been anticipated by some schools (Visishtadwaita Vedanta, for example) who describe in consequence the Reality (Brahman) as consisting, when viewed as a totality, of both Knowledge and Ignorancecit-acit; the Ignorance is a sort of peripheral reality not touching or affecting the Knowledge, but connected with or depending upon the nuclear reality, something like the physical body coexisting with and depending on the soul or self. One can also remember in this connection the Purusha-Prakriti relation in Sankhya. Such a standpoint, I suppose, is the precursor or philosophical background of what is well known as the Manichean principle.
Sri Aurobindo's view is different. It is something like this I am putting the thing as simply as possible, without entering into details or mysteries that merely confuse the brain. The Absolute Reality contains all, nothing can be outside it, pain and sin and all; true. But these do not exist as such in the supreme status, they are resolved each into its ultimate and fundamental force of consciousness. When we say I all things, whatever they are, exist in the Divine Consciousness, the Absolute, we have an idea that they exist there as they do here as objects or entities; it goes without saying, they do not. Naturally we have to make a distinction between things of Knowledge and things of Ignorance. Although there is a gradation between the twoKnowledge rolls or wraps itself gradually into Ignorance and Ignorance unrolls or unfolds itself slowly into Knowledgestill in the Divine Consciousness things of Knowledge alone exist, things of Ignorance cannot be said to exist there on the same title, because, as I have said, the original truths of things alone are therenot their derivations and deformations. One can say, indeed, that in the supreme Light darkness exists as a possibility; but this is only a figure of speech. Possibility does not mean that it is there like a seedor even a chromosome rodto sprout and grow. Possibility really means just a chance of the consciousness acting in a certain way, developing in a particular direction under certain conditions.
--
The unrolling or Involution is the path traced by consciousness in its changing modes of Concentration. The principle of Concentration is inherent in consciousness. Sri Aurobindo speaks of four modes or degrees of this Concentration: (I) the essential, (2) the integral, (3) the total or global and (4) the separative. The first is a sole in-dwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being it is the superconscient Silence, at one end, and the Inconscience, at the other. The second is the total Sachchidananda, the supramental Concentration; the third, multiple or totalising overmental awareness; the fourth is the Concentration of Ignorance. All the four, however, form the integral play of one indivisible consciousness.
Here we come to the very heart of the mystery. As we have put it thus far, the process of Involution would appear as a series of stages in a descending order, a movement along a vertical line, as it were, one stage following another, more or less separate from each other, the lower being ever more ignorant, more separative, more exclusive. But this is not the whole picture. At each lower stage the higher is not merely high above, but also comes down and stands behind or becomes immanent in the lower. Along with the vertical movement there is also a horizontal movement. In other words, even when we are sunk in the lowest stratum of Ignorancein the domain of Matterwe have also there all the other strands behind, even the very highest, not merely as passive or neutral entities, but as dynamic agents exerting their living pressure to the full. Indeed the Ignorance is not mere Ignorance, but Knowledge itself, the very highest Knowledge, but in a particular mode of activity. What appears ignorant is full of a secret Knowledgeit is just the outer surface, the facet that appears as its opposite because of a particular manner of Concentration, a total self-abandonment in the object of Knowledge. That Knowledge stands revealed if the mask is put away, that is to say, if we get behind, If we release the exclusiveness of the Concentration. This release or getting behind does not mean necessarily the dissolution of the status itself for it is the pressure from behind, the Concentration of the hidden consciousness that creates the status and its truth-forms; with the exclusiveness goes away only the twist, the aberration produced by it. When the consciousness withdraws from its mode and field of exclusive Concentration, it need not concentrate again on the withdrawal only, it can be an inclusive Concentration also embracing both the status the frontal and the behind. Both can be held together in one single movement of consciousness possessing the double function of projection and comprehensionprajna and vijna.
Such a synthetic poise is not a mere theoretical possibility: it is an actuality and is being demonstrated by the fact of evolution. The partial release of the absolutely exclusive Concentration of consciousness in Matter has given rise to Life which is a double poise: Life plays in and through Matter and has not dissolved Matter. Likewise a further release of Concentration has given birth to Mind which still bases itself upon and is woven into Life and Matter. The change-over from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to super-consciousness is the movement of consciousness from a unilateral towards an ever widening multiple poise and functioning of Concentration.
The exclusive Concentration was the logical and inevitable final term of a movement of separativity and exteriorisation. It had its necessity and utility. Its special function was utilised by Nature for precision and perfection in details of execution in the most material order of reality. Indeed, what can be more exact and accurate than the laws of physics, the mathematical laws that govern the movements of the material particles? Furthermore, if we look at the scientist himself, do we not find in him an apt image of the same phenomenon? A scientist means a specialist the more specialised and restricted his view, the surer he is likely to be in his particular domain. And specialised knowledge means a withdrawal from other fields and viewpoints of knowledge, an ignorance of them. Likewise, a workman who moulds the head of a pin is all concentrated upon that single point of existencehe forgets the whole world and himself in that act whose perfect execution seems to depend upon the measure of his self-oblivion. But evidently this is not bound to be so. A one-pointed self-absorption that is Ignoranceis certainly an effective way of dealing with material objectsthings of Ignorance; but it is not the only way. It is a way or mechanism adopted by Nature in a certain status under certain conditions. One need not always forget oneself in the act in order to do the act perfectly. An unconscious instinctive act is not always best doneit can be done best consciously, intuitively. A wider knowledge, a greater acquaintance with objects and facts and truths of other domains too is being more and more insisted upon as a surer basis of specialisation. The pinpointed (one might almost say geometrically pointed) consciousness in Matter that resolves itself into unconsciousness acts perfectly but blindly; the vast consciousness also acts there with absolute perfection but consciouslyconscious in the highest degree.
As we have said, super-consciousness does not confine itself to the supreme status alone, to the domain of pure infinity, but it comes down and embraces the most inferior status too, the status of the finite. Precisely because it is infinity, it is not bound to its infinity but can express its infinity in and through infinite limits.
--
The principle of exclusive Concentration does not by itself really create the objects of the material world; it creates the perception the illusory perceptionof separativeness, that objects are more or less closed systems, distinct and isolated from one another. The sense of limitation and hence actual limitation, not however real or essential limitationcomes out of the exclusive Concentration. This does not mean that the limitation or discreteness of objects is merely psychological (mental), not ontological, as one may say. In Sri Aurobindo's outlook the distinction between psychological and ontological is not trenchant and absolute. For, psychological, according to him, does not mean merely mental but also relating to consciousness; and although mind does not create material objects, consciousness may do soindeed it is the force of the original consciousness, which is the force of being, that has created the physical plane of multiplicity. This creative power is the self-projecting energy of consciousness prajna. It is, in other words, the force of individuation inherent in the play of consciousness. Now, as I have already said, at a certain stage, under certain conditions, through a gradation of stages, this force of individuation originally and intrinsically existing and working in and through unity and integration, is possessed or veiled by or devolves into a force of limitation, meaning separateness and exclusion. What would otherwise be an ensemble, an organism of individualities held together and moving as various forms or lines of force of one and the same reality, is now broken up and becomes a conglomeration of isolated entities. Unity is transformed into multiplicity, solidarity is lost in plurality.
We can, however, make a distinction between limitation and delimitation or individuation. Limitation is a movement of Ignorance: it is the result of exclusive Concentration. It creates separateness, forgets the unity. Delimitation, on the contrary, is a movement of knowledge, of pure consciousness dynamic. It creates diversity, multiplicity maintained in unity.
It is to be added that the limitation in Ignorance is after all apparent; that does not mean it is unreal or illusory, in the sense of Mayavada. Here is the distinction: Mayavada holds all formation as my, illusory, makes no difference between limitation and delimitation: according to it, all delimitation is ignorant and illusory limitation; none has real or essential existence. In Sri Aurobindo's view limitation is real, as also delimitation: only the former is a temporary reality, it is the latter itself but under certain conditions. Again, Mayavada speaks of the Brahman, the Absolute or Transcendent as the sole and true reality: it is the Stable, the Unmoving, the utter Unity cancelling, negating all movement and multiplicity. Sri Aurobindo views the highest reality as dynamic also, permeating the multiplicity and becoming the multiplicity, becoming or existing as the multiplicity in a movement of Knowledge, becoming and appearing also at first in a movement and mode of Ignorance as the material multiplicity but gradually transmuting this ignorant multiplicity into a movement and embodiment of Knowledge. For the Knowledge was always there in and behind the Ignorance, secretly informing and guiding, moulding and transforming it.
--
One must not forget, however, that the principle of exclusive Concentration cannot be isolated I from the total action of consciousness and viewed as functioning by itself at any time. We isolated it for logical comprehension. In actuality it is integrated with the whole nisus of consciousness and operates in conjunction with and as part of the total drive. That total drive at one point results in the multiple realities of Matter. When the element of limitation in the physical plane is ascribed to the exclusiveness of a stress in consciousness, it should not be forgotten that the act is, as it were, a joint and several responsibility of the whole consciousness in its multiple functioning. And the reverse movement is also likewise a global act: there too the force that withdraws, ascends or eliminates cannot be isolated from the other force that reaffirms, re-establishes, reintegrates,the principle of exclusiveness (like that of pain) is not proved to be illusory and non-existent, but reappears in its own essential nature as a principle of centring or canalisation of consciousness.
***
03.07 - Brahmacharya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The energy that one stores by continence, regular habits and self-discipline increases also in that way. Sometimes special methodskriyaare adopted to help the process, Asana or Pranayama, for example. But an inner and a more psychological procedure is needed, a Concentration of will and consciousnessa kind of dhyana, in other wordsin order to be able to take the next step in discipline. For after the storage and increase of energy comes the sublimation of energy, that is to say, the physico-vital energy transmuted into the energy of mental substance, medh. Sublimation means also the increase of brain-power, an enhancement in the degree and quality of its capacity. This has nothing to do with the volume of knowledge enclosed (the mass of information to which we referred before) the growth is with regard to the very stuff of the mind from within, the natural strength of intelligence that can be applied to any field of knowledge with equal success and felicity.
The basis and the immediate aim of education according to the ancient system was to develop this fundamental mental capacity: the brain's power to think clearly, consistently and deeply, to undergo labour without tiring easily and also a general strength and steadiness in the nerves. The transference of nervous energy into brain energy is also a secret of the process of sublimation. It is precisely this aspect of education that has been most neglected in modern times. We give no thought to this fundamental: we leave the brain to develop as it may (or may not), it is made to grow under pressuremore to inflate than to growby forcing into it masses of information. The result at best is that it is sharpened, made acute superficially or is overgrown in a certain portion of it in respect of a narrow and very specialised function, losing thereby a healthy harmony and homogeneity in the total movement. The intellectual's nervous instability is a very common phenomenon among us.
03.14 - From the Known to the Unknown?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is why it is said constantly by the ancient sages that the truth cannot be found by much inquiry and much study, the truth is found only when it condescends to reveal itself to the inquirer. The true truth is not at our beck and call, you cannot get it as and when you like, it does not wait comfortably just at the terminus of your investigations and argumentations. This does not mean, however, that we remain helpless and hopeless until the manna falls from heaven. No, something lies in our power, a spontaneous and natural faculty, to create at least favourable conditions for the light to descend and appear. A quiet awaiting in the being, calm Concentration and aspiration, a sincere opening are some of the conditions under which it is easier for the unknownxto reveal its identity.
It is not a blunder and it need not lead inevitably to a catastrophe if, for example, a child were given its first education not through his mother tongue, but through what is termed a foreign language. Would it, for that matter, harm a child invariably and necessarily, if he did not confine himself within the walls of his school in the midst of the known and the familiar, if he were to stir out and venture into wildshow otherwise would Alice discover her Wonderland? A foreign tongue, a foreign atmosphere would often interest a child more than things known and familiar. The very distance and imprecision and even the peculiar difficulties exert a charm and evoke greater attention in the child. This is not to say that familiarity breeds contempt, but that unfamiliarity does not repel but attracts also.
04.01 - The Divine Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine descends as an individual person fundamentally to hasten the evolutionary process and to complete it; he takes the human form to raise humanity to divinity. The fact and the nature of the process have been well exemplified in Sri Ramakrishna who, it is said, took up successively different lines of spiritual discipline and by a supreme and sovereign force of Concentration achieved realisation in each line in the course of a few days what might take in normal circumstances years or even lives to do. The Divine gathers and concentrates in himself the world-force, the Nature-Energyeven like adynamo and focuses and canalises it to give it its full, integral and absolute effectivity. And mortal pain he accepts, and swallows the poison of ignorant lifeeven like Nilakantha Shivato transmute it into ecstasy and immortality. The Divine Mother sank into the earth-nature of a human body:
Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword. . .
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus consciousness is not merely a status of being, but also a force of becoming. All that is to take form and be active, whether in the grossest, the material mode or in the most subtle, the ideative mode is originally a seed, a stress, a point of Concentration of this consciousness. The Yogi becomes potentially all-powerful, because he is one with the All-Power, the Mother Consciousness. The perfect spiritual man not merely dwells with or is close to the Divine (slokya), he is not merely made in the image of the Divine (srpya), and again he is not merely unified and one with the Divine (syujya) but what is most marvellous, he has the same nature, that is to say, he has the same powers and capacities as the Divine (sdharmya).
The dynamic becoming, becoming a power and personality of the omnipotent Divine, is a secret well known to the Yogis and mystics. Only it has not been worked out in all its implications, not given the full value and importance rightfully due to it. The reason is that although the principle was discovered and admitted, the proper key had not been found that could release and manipulate the Energy at its highest potential and largest amplitude. Because the major tendency in the spiritual man till now has been rather to follow the path of nivtti than the path of pravtti, this latter path being more or less identified with the path of Ignorance. But there is a higher line of pravtti which means the manifestation of the Divine, not merely the expression of the inferior Nature.
04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So then we say that the East starts from the summit and surveys reality from above downwards, while the West starts from below and works upward. The two complementary movements can be described in several other graphic terms. Instead of a movement from the summit to the base and of another from the base to the apex, that is to say, a movement of ascent and of descent, we can speak of a movement from within outward and of that from outside inward, that is to say, from the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to the centre; we can speak also of a movement of contraction, withdrawal or Concentration and a movement of expansion; and expression and diffusion. Again, we can refer to a vertical movement and a horizontal movement. All however express the same truth. We postulate one reality, take our stand upon that and work our way towards the other; the two together form the total reality and together can they give the integral life fulfilment.
As I have said, the history of mankind, as a matter of fact, the whole history of creation gives a graphic picture of the interaction of this double movement. There are ages and countries in which one or the other of the two takes precedence and special or exclusive emphasis. But the inner story is always a converging movement.
04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On Concentration's luminous voiceless peaks,
World-naked hermits with their matted hair
05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The integral Divine not merely suffers (as in the Christian tradition) a body material, He accepts it in his supernal delight, for it is his own being and substance: it is He in essence and it will become He in actuality. When he comes into the world, it is not as though it were a foreign country; he comes to his own,only he seeks to rebuild it on another scale, the scale of unity and infinity, instead of the present scale of separativism and finiteness. He comes among men not simply because he is' moved by human miseries; he is no extra-terrestrial person, a bigger human being, but is himself this earth, this world, all these miseries; he is woven into the fabric of the universe, he is the warp and woof that constitute creation. It is not a mere movement of sympathy or benevolence that actuates him, it is a total and absolute identification that is the ground and motive of his activity. When he assumes the frame of mortality, it is not that something outside and totally incongruous is entering into him, it is part and parcel of himself, it is himself in one of his functions and phases. Consequently, his work in and upon the material world and life may be viewed as that of self-purification and self-illumination, self-discipline and selfrealisation. Also, the horrors of material existence, being part of the cosmic play and portion of his infinity, naturally find shelter in the individual divine incarnation, are encompassed in his human embodiment. It is the energy of his own consciousness that brought out or developed even this erring earth from within it: that same energy is now available, stored up in the individual formation, for the recreation of that earth. The advent and acceptance of material existence meant, as a kind of necessity in a given scheme of divine manifestation, the appearance and play of Evil, the negation of the very divinity. Absolute Consciousness brought forth absolute unconsciousness the inconscientbecause of its own self-pressure, a play of an increasingly exclusive Concentration and rigid objectivisation. That same consciousness repeats its story in the individual incarnation: it plunges into the material life and matter and identifies itself with Evil. But it is then like a pressed or tightened spring; it works at its highest potential. In other words, the Divine in the body now works to divinise the body itself, to make of the negation a concrete affirmation. The inconscient will be embodied consciousness.
The humanist said, Nothing human I reckon foreign to me," In a deeper and more absolute sense the divine Mystic of the integral Yoga says the same. He is indeed humanity incarnate, the whole mankind condensed and epitomised in his single body. Mankind as imbedded in ignorance and inconscience, the conscious soul lost in the dark depths of dead matter, is he and his whole labour consists in working in and through that obscure "gravitational" mass, to evoke and bring down the totality of the superconscient force, the creative delight which he is essentially in his inmost and topmost being. The labour within himself is conterminous with the cosmic labour, and the change effected in his being and nature means a parallel change in the world outside, at least a ready possibility of the change. All the pains and weaknesses normal humanity suffers from, the heritage of an inconscient earthly existence, the Divine takes into his incarnated bodyall and more and to the highest degreeinto a crucible as it were, and works out there the alchemy. The natural man individually shares also each other's burden in some way, for all are interconnected in lifeaction at one point has a reaction at all other points: only the sharing is done unconsciously and is suffered or imposed than accepted and it tends to be at a minimum. An ordinary mortal would break under a greater pressure. It is the Avatar who comes forward and carries on his shoulders the entire burden of earthly inconscience.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Even Eddington is not so absurd or impossible as it may seem to some. He says, as we have seen, that all so-called laws of Nature can be discovered from within the mind itself, can be deduced logically from psychologically given premises: no empiricial observation or objective experimentation is necessary to arrive at them: they are found a priori in the subject. Now, mystic experience always lays stress on extra-sensory knowledge: it declares that such a knowledge is not only possible, but that this alone is the right and correct knowledge. All thingsmatter and mind and life and allbeing but vibrations of consciousness, even as the colours of a spectrum are vibrations, electro-magnetic waves of different frequency, mystic discipline enables one to enter into that condition in which one's consciousness mingles with all consciousness or with another particular consciousness (Patanjali's term is samyama), and one can have all knowledge that one wishes to have by this inner contact or Concentration or identification, one discovers the knowledge within oneself, no external means of sense observation and experimental testing, no empirical inductive process is needed. We do not say that Eddington had in view anything of this kind, but that his attitude points in this direction.
That seems to be the burden, the underlying preoccupation of modern physical science: it has been forced to grope towards some kind of mystic perception; at least, it has been put into a frame of mind, due to the crumbling of the very fundamentals of the past structure, which is less obstructive to other sources and spheres and ways of knowledge. Certainly, we must admit that we have moved very far from Laplace when we hear today a hard-boiled rationalist like De Broglie declare:
05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We may illustrate here a little. At the apex of the pyramid of existence is the Divine, the Supreme Person, the Purushottama. Even there as He begins to lean and look dawn, He expresses himself at the very outset as the dual personality of Ishwara and Shakti (the Divine Father and the Divine Mother)sa dvityam aicchat, as the Upanishad says. That is still the Divine in His highest transcendent status, partpara. Next, this dual or biune or divalent reality shows itself or throws itself further out in a fourfold valency of the dynamic truth consciousness, creating and leading the cosmic evolution. The Four Aspects of Ishwara, forming the male or purua line, are the great names: Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna and Aniruddha. And the corresponding four aspects of Ishwari form the other great quaternary: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. They embody the four major attri butes of the Divine in his relation to the created universe: Knowledge, Power, Love and skill in work. They also represent thus a divine fourfold order. The first embodies the Brahmin quality of large wisdom, wide comprehension, a vast consciousness; the second has the Kshatriya quality of force, dynamism, Concentration and drive of energy; the third possesses the Vaishya quality of harmony, beauty, mutuality and the fourth has the Shudra quality of perfect execution, thoroughness in detailed working, order and arrangement.
The higher Gods, like those, for example, envisaged in the Veda, may be considered each as an emanation of one or other of these Divine Aspects. They are dwellers of Swar or the Overmind. Varuna seems to be an emanation of Mahavira, a son of Maheshwari: for he is pre-eminently the god of the pure and vast consciousness who releases us from the triple bonds and shows us the winding way into the embrace of the infinite Mother. His associate, Mitra, is the lord of love and harmony, evidently an emanation of Pradyumna (or Mahalakshmi). Other gods of the same category are Bhaga and Soma. The Balarama or Mahakali aspect is manifested in Aryaman: Rudra being another form of the same. And Mahasaraswati (or Aniruddha) must have given birth to and inspired the Ribhus, who are artisans of divinity. The Puranic trinityBrahma, Vishnu and Shivawith lndra as the fourth member forms a parallel system embodying a similar conception.
05.13 - Darshana and Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
European thought, European philosophy particularly, moves under the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind and from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and therefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception, its most intimate contacts with spirit-truths are 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought'. The Indian standpoint, on the contrary, is first to contact the truth by a direct realisationthrough meditation, Concentration, an uplifting and a deepening of the consciousness, through Yoga, spiritual discipline, and then endeavour to express the truth thus realised, directly intuited or revealed, through mental terms, to make it familiar and communicable to the normal intelligence. Mind, so subordinated and keyed to a new rhythm, becomes, as far as it is possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the main systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as their background. Each stands on a definite experience, a spiritual realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth and in and -through that seeks to give a world-view, building "up an intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that are natural to it or derive inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet mentally systematised or logically buttressed: truths were delivered there as self-evident statements, as certitudes luminous in their own au thenticity. We accept them without question and take them into our consciousness as forming its fundamental norms, structuring its most intimate inscape. This is darana, seeing, as philosophy is named in India. One sees the truth or reality and describes it as it is seen, its limbs and gestures, its constituents and functions. Philosophy here is fundamentally a recording of one's vision and a translation or presentation of it in mental terms.
The procedure of European philosophy is different. There the reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light is cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and happenings and then proceeds to find out a general trutha law, a hypothesisjustified by such observations. But as a matter of fact this is the ostensible method: it is only a make-believe. For mind and reason are not normally so neutral and impersonal, a tabula rasa. The observer already comes into the field with a definite observational angle and a settled viewpoint. The precise sciences of today have almost foundered on this question of the observer entering inextricably into his observations and vitiating them. So in philosophy too as it is practised in Europe, on a closer observation, if the observer is carefully observed, one finds not unoften a core of suppositions, major premises taken for granted hidden behind the logical apparatus. In other words, even a hardened philosopher cherishes at the back of his mind a priorijudgments and his whole philosophy is only a rationalisation of an inner prejudgment, almost a window-dressing of a perception that came to him direct and in other secret ways. That was what Kant meant when he made the famous distinction between the Pure and the Practical Reason and their categories. Only the direct perceptions, the spiritual realisations are so much imbedded behind, covered so much with the mist of mind's struggle and tension and imaginative construction that it is not always easy to disengage the pure metal from the ore.
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There is another concept in Whitehead which seems to be moulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with regard to the working out of the process of creation, the mechanism of its dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the occult functioning of the world forces. Whitehead speaks of two principles that guide the world process, first, the principle of limitation, and second, the principle of ingress. The first one Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of Concentration (and of exclusive Concentration) by which the infinite and the eternal limits himself, makes himself finite and temporal and infinitesimal, the universal transforms itself into the individual and the particular. The second is the principle of descent, which is almost the corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo's system. There are layers of reality: the higher forces and formulations enter into the lower, work upon it and bring about a change and transformation, purification and redemption. All progress and evolution is due to this influx of the higher, the deeper into , the lower and superficial plane of existence.
There is one concept in Whitehead which seems rather strange to us; it is surely a product of the brain-mind. God, according to him, is not the creator: he is only the Redeemer, he is a shaper but not the source and origin of things. That is because he thinks that if God is made the creator of the world, he would be held responsible for the evil there. This difficulty comes when one thinks of God too much in the popular anthropomorphic way, like someone seated above the world and passing judgment upon a world which is not his doing. God is perhaps a lover of the world, but not its Mastera certain Christian outlook says. According to Sri Aurobindo, God is a triple reality in his transcendental, cosmic and individual aspect. In creating the world, God creates, that is to say, manifests himself. And Evil is an evolute in the process of God's self-creation through self-limitation: it proceeds to self-annihilation and even self-transmutation in a farther process of God's self-unfoldment in world and Nature.
05.22 - Success and its Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Success in any undertaking can come only by the application of a quiet force. A force that is restless, shaky, nervous always misses the mark. A steady, controlled, almost rigid hand alone can shoot the missile that hits the bull's-eye. The Upanishad speaks of being one and indivisible with one's aim, even like an arrow-head fixed into the target. An undivided Concentration naturally means an absolute unruffled tranquillity.
How is this tranquil energism to be secured? What are the conditions that produce and maintain and foster it? The first condition is self-confidence. One must have trust in oneself, a full faith that one is able to do the thing. A pessimist, a half-hearted doubter, a defeatist can never achieve anything in the world. All successful men, whatever share they agreed to give to chance, had always immense hope and faith. Against failures, against tremendous odds they have always persisted, always believed in their star. Like Caesar they said not only to themselves but also to others: "Thou carriest with thee the fate of Caesar." Only, of course, the self-confidence sometimes overrides itself, becomes conceit and arrogance. Then you go beyond your depth, tempt the fates beyond your control and open the door to failure. So along with self-confidence, there must be an element of sobriety; we will call it modestytrue modesty that can perceive the extreme limit at least of the possible and the impossible. Such modesty itself is a source of serenity and calmness in the mind and nerves. Imagine a lion couchant, aiming at its prey. The prey remains spellbound, unable to run away. The lion's gaze is fixed upon its victim; its hypnotism consists in a calm and absolute self-confidence, an unshakable assurance that its will shall prevail.
06.03 - Types of Meditation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The next type we may call Concentration, instead of meditation. Here we do not pursue a thought-line, but fix the thought upon one object unmoved. It means a further process of withdrawing the consciousness from its habitual outgoing and dispersive movement. The thought is held at a point and attention is focussed upon it: it is continuous and unbroken attention, for example, upon an idea, a phrase (mantra) or an image. One can concentrate also upon a physical point, say, fixing the gaze upon the tip of one's nose, or on a luminous point outside etc. In this discipline the whole mind is gathered together and focussed: or, everything else is shut out leaving only one thing upon which all the light of the consciousness is directed. It is a standstill consciousness, like a flame erect and immobile in a windless place.
There is a third grade when the mind becomes a void, all thoughts being driven out, all vibrations tranquillised. It is a wide silence suffused with a still luminosity. The operation is difficult. For it means a kind of continuous and methodical drainage or rarefication which takes more or less a very long time. First you throw' out well-formed ideas and notions, processes and products of reasoning and judgment the bigger waves, as it were; as soon as these subside you find there are smaller waves below or behindhalf-formed thoughts, budding ideas, fugitive notions and so on; when these too are quieted down, you come across still another layer of smaller ripples of thought, close to sensations, nervous reactions, vibrations of the brain-mind, rudimentary precepts, etc., etc. One may go on like that if not ad infinitum, at least, to a considerable length. One arrives in the end at what is practically a vacuum, to all intents and purposes a silent mind. Even then it is a difficult and arduous process and may not be as absolute as one may expect. There are other surer and even perhaps easier processes to attain the same end. Thus instead of striving and struggling and forcing your will upon the restless waves, you simply relax yourself, bypass them as it were, await and aspire and open yourself towards the Silence that is above: call for the silence with trust and reliance and it comes not unoften as a massive inundation, a glacial sweep and automatically overwhelms you, drowning and filling you from top to toe. There is also another way: to contact, to enter into the Mother's Presence. Mother's Presence means all the realisations to which we aspire concretised, brought down, near to us, within our human reach. We have not to travel far and wide, mount to inaccessible heights, labour and strainwith blood and sweat and tearsto get what we want: all the gettings are ready-made there in our atmosphere, we have only to know and perceive, open something in us for them to flow in. That is perhaps the action of Grace: silence, absolute silence, not only in the mind, but in the whole being, can come this way too.
06.09 - How to Wait, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And then there is a time, a propitious time for everything. A thing cannot be done at any time, it has its own appointed hour; you cannot succeed even if you attempt a hundred times before that hour strikes. But when the time is ripe, how easily a thing seems to get done! In what does this ripeness of time consist, what are the marks of the propitious hour? It is when you are in complete possession of the right instruments and when the disposition of circumstances is such that they concur to help and execute and not mar and obstruct. But how to find out or recognise when such conditions are available? Not by your mind or external reasoning. You must have the intuition, and instinctive perception of the situation. Always the indication is there in the very poise of your consciousness. That is to say, when it is filled with a great calm, trust and confidence, a luminous Concentration.
***
06.10 - Fatigue and Work, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The question is not about your scope and capacity. All depends upon your attitude, the consciousness with which you approach a work, especially when you are a sadhak. When a work comes to you or when you have to do a work, you must take it up as a thing worth doing. Whatever the value given to it normally or you often put upon it, you should not neglect or merely tolerate it, but welcome it and set about it with the utmost conscientiousness possible. Even if it were a trifling insignificant thing, a menial affair, for example, do not consider it as mean or beneath your dignity. Directly you begin to do a thing in the right spirit, you will find it becoming miraculously interesting. Try to bring perfection even in that bit of insignificance. Do it with a goodwill, even if it is scrubbing the floor, telling yourself: I must do it as best I can, that is to say, this too I shall do even better than a servant, I shall make the floor look really neat and clean and beautiful. That is the crux of the matter. You should try to bring out the best in you and put it into your work. In other words, the work becomes an instrument of progress. The goodwill, attention, Concentration, self-forgetfulness and the control over yourself, over your organs and nerves the smaller the work the more detailed is the control gainedall which are involved in doing a work perfectly, with as much perfection as it is possible for you to command, are elements called forth in you and help to make you a better man. Indeed a work for which you have no preferential bias, to which you are not emotionally attached, even indifferent normally, may be of especial help, for you will be able to do it with less nervous disturbance, with a large amount of detachment and disinterestedness.
Man usually chooses his work or is made to choose a work because of a vital preference, a prejudice or notion that it is the kind in which he can shine or succeed. This egoistic vanity or opportunism may be necessary or unavoidable in ordinary life; but when one wishes to go beyond the ordinary life and aspires for the true life, this attachment or personal choice is more an impediment than a help to progress, towards finding the way to the true life. The Yogic attitude to work therefore is that of absolute detachment, not to have any choice, but to accept and do whatever is given to you, whatever comes to you in your normal course of life and do it with the utmost perfection possible. It is in that way and that way alone that all work becomes supremely interesting, and all life a miracle of delight.
06.12 - The Expanding Body-Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All this means that the physical body is not man's sole means of action in the physical world. The physical extends and expands into more and more subtle modes of activity and all the more, not less, effective for that very reason. Behind the physical lies the subtle physical, behind which again is the vital physical and then the various grades of the vital. Indeed the vital or life energy as a whole is the real dynamism of all our physical activities and if it usually acts through its bodily instruments, it can act independently of them too; normally, too, it often acts in this way, only we are not conscious or observant enough to notice. A conscious Concentration of the vital energy directed upon a material object can handle it with the effectivity of material energy. When it needs physical conditions it creates them, as the protective vital energy of the young man created the physical disposition of objects that formed a covert for the girl.
In the present case, the phenomenon happened automatically without any premeditation on the part of the persons concerned; because the sympathy between the two was so strong, other considerations did not weigh in the balance against it. Needless to say, if one wishes to obtain conscious mastery of this occult power, one will have to go through a long and arduous discipline. But, if difficult, the thing is not impossible. In the matter of physical feats, for example, a particular development may seem for the moment beyond your reach; but with practice and perseverance, stubborn will and wise guidance, you can not only arrive at your immediate end but do much more. The story of many who have broken Olympic records is revealing in this respect. In the same way, one can master the subtle forces, if one goes about the thing earnestly and in the right way. It is more difficultmuch more perhaps but the way is there provided the will is there.
06.18 - Value of Gymnastics, Mental or Other, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Intellectual activity is a kind of gymnastics. What is the value of physical gymnastics? It develops the muscles, makes them strong, supple and agile. But simply to develop them, to make them grow as much as possible or to take delight in a mere muscle-bound body is not the ideal; it rather frustrates the very object of gymnastics. The object is to develop, streng then, shape all the limbs of the body and organise and harmonise them into a beautiful and capable whole. A particular exercise is not to be indulged in for its own sake: all the energy of the body turned to that alone and the whole attention devoted to that one thing. An exclusive Concentration upon a single physical feat does not bring out the full capacity of the body. It is to that end, the fullness of the body potential, that the culture of the bodily limbs is to be directed. In the same way, mental culture the power of thinking, reasoning, arguinghas its value in its relation to the total culture of the mind and consciousness. There are higher regions of consciousness beyond the reach of the intellect; and you have to stop all intellectual activity, make your mind a total blank before you can hope to reach there. And indulgence even in so-called higher or philosophical speculations can only block the way to the true consciousness and knowledge. And yet you cannot leave the intellectual faculties uncared for or undeveloped on the plea that something higher is needed. In the physical body it need not be your ideal to become a muscle man; but neither would you like to have frail, ill-grown, rickety limbs that are weak and unshapely. With regard to your mental body too it would not serve any purpose to have a mind or intellect that is unable to think powerfully, cogently, closely.
It is harmful when you take to mental gymnastics only for its own sake, to exclusive intellectual acrobaticsdiscussions, disputations, verbal quibbles, etc., etc.; in that case the result attained is a disproportionate growth. But the development of the mind, even of the logical mind, can be and must be made part of the integral development, it must attain its true form, stature and strength, as a help towards and finally as an expression in its own field of the divinity, the highest and richest consciousness in man, even as the body too is to express and make concrete the supreme beauty and vigour of the perfect being.
06.20 - Mind, Origin of Separative Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This power which in the inferior human consciousness appears as mind or mental discernment is the image or delegate here below of that very force of consciousness that originally separated the world from the Divine, created the ego and placed it as an objective reality against itself. It was a force of dividing consciousness, of exclusive Concentration, that created the fission in the original unitary status of the Divine: it was that that precipitated the world of negation, of ignorance and inconscience out of the supreme Light and Reality.
It was a power of denial that severed the world from its pure source: the same power can now be utilised for the return back for the reintegration. The power that separated from the Divine is capable of separating from the world; the consciousness that moved away from the One Divine can move away also from the Multiple Ignorance. As the individualised element isolated itself from the unitary consciousness of the Divine, in the same way the individualised element in man can stand aloof from the unitary being of the world: as it came down the ladder of consciousness from the supreme light of the spirit into the lowest depth of unconscious dead matter, the same path it can take in the opposite way and from the unconsciousness rise into the fullness of the original light. The soul has freely chosen the bondage, he is free too to choose his freedom again. That is what the Upanishad meant when it said: avidyay mtuym tirtw, by the Ignorance he shall cross death.
07.05 - The Finding of the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As if on Concentration's marble seat,
Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds
07.08 - The Divine Truth Its Name and Form, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is the meaning, the thought behind the word that is important. When the thought is powerfully thought, it produces a vibration of which the word is only a carrier, an intermediary. Indeed, you can develop the thought-power to such an extent that you are able to establish a direct material contact with the minimum or even no words at all. Naturally this requires a strong power of Concentration. But you will find that the bodily mechanism is only a mechanical means; it is an instrument, but not always important or indispensable.
When we are conscious of the Divine, do we see Him in all things in some particular form?
07.14 - The Divine Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine's compassion, translated in the individual physical consciousness, becomes a sorrow that is not egoistic, a sorrow that is an expression of one's identification with the universal sorrow through sympathy. I have described the experience at some length in one of the Prayers and Meditations. I spoke there of the sweetest tears that I shed in life; for those tears were not for my sake, I was not weeping for myself. In almost every case man grieves for egoistic reasons, in the human way. Whenever anyone loses a person he loves, he suffers and weeps, not over the condition of the person: in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred or even more, people do not know in what condition the person gone may be, do not and cannot know if the person is happy or unhappy, if he is suffering or is in peace. It is the sense of separation that causes the grief, the feeling that he will not be with them anymore which they so much wish. At the root of all human sorrow, there lies this return upon one's own self, more or less conscious, more or less admitted. But when you feel unhappy for the unhappiness of others, there comes in a mixture. That is to say, to your personal grief is added a psychic element which I described as the reversed image of the Divine Compassion. Now, if you can distinguish between the two, the personal anguish and the disinterested sorrow, come out of what is egoistic and concentrate upon the divine element, make yourself one with it, then you can in that way come in contact with the great universal compassion, which is something immense, vast, calm, mighty, pro-found, which is perfect peace and infinite Bliss. If you know then how to enter into your suffering, go down to the very bottom of it, pass beyond the portion that is egoistic and personal, go farther on, then you arrive at the door of a wonderful revelation. Not that you should seek suffering for the sake of the suffering and in order to have the experience; but when it is there, when it has come upon you, then try what I have suggested, cross the border, the barrier of egoism in your suffering: note first where is the egoistic part, what is it that makes you suffer, what is the egoistic reason of your suffering, then step across and beyond, towards something universal, towards a greater principle. You enter then into the vast, the infinite compassion, the door of the Psychic opens for you. If, in that domain, you see me in tears, as you say you did in your dream, then you can identify yourself with me at the moment, enter into those tears as it were, melt into them. That will open the door and it will bring you an experience, a very unique experience that leaves always a deep mark upon the consciousness. It is never blotted out altogether even if the door closes again and you become once more what you are in your ordinary movements. That experience, that mark remains behind and you can recall it, go back to it, refer to it in your moments of Concentration. You feel then the immensity of an infinite sweetness, a great peace, pervading all your being, it is not in your thought only; it goes out and sympathises with everything and can cure everything.
Only you must sincerely wish, you must have the will, to be cured. Everything lies there. Now I always come back to the same theme. You must be sincere. If you want an experience for the sake of the experience and, once you have it, to go back to your ordinary ways, that will not do. You must sincerely will to be curedcured precisely of the ordinary waysyou must have the aspiration, the true aspiration to overcome the obstacle, to mount up and up, above and beyond yourself, so that you may drop all that pulls you back, drags you down, to break all limits, clarify and purify yourself, rid yourself of all that lies in your way. If you have this will, the true intense will not to fall back into past errors, to rise out of obscurity and ignorance towards the light, shorn of all that is human, too humantoo small, too ignorant then that will and that aspiration shall act, act gradually, strongly and effectively bringing you a complete and definitive result. But beware, there must be nothing that clings to the old movements, that does not declare itself but hides its head and when the occasion is opportune puts up its snout.
07.29 - How to Feel that we Belong to the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Three hundred years is the minimum, I should say. You must realise what it means to transform the body. The body with all its organs and functionings works automatically without the intervention of your consciousness, and is built upon an animal plan. If your heart stops for the hundredth part of a second, your body goes off. You cannot do without a single one of your organs and you must keep watch over their proper functioning. Transformation means the replacement of this purely material arrangement by a systematic Concentration of forces. You must bring about an arrangement of forces, according to a certain kind of vibration, replacing each organ by a centre of self-conscious energy which governs through the Concentration of a higher force. There will no longer be a stomach, no more a heart even. These things will give place to a system of vibrations which represent what they really are. The material organs are symbols of energy centres; they are not the essential reality, they only give a form or figure to it under certain circumstances. The transformed body will function through its real energy centres, not through their representatives as developed in an animal body. For that you must first of all be conscious of these centres and their functionings; instead of an unconscious automatic movement there has to be a movement of conscious control. Thus one will have at his disposal not physical animal organs but the symbolic vibrations, the symbolic energies. This does not mean that there will not be any definite recognizable form. The form will be built up with qualities rather than with solid (dust) particles. It will be, so to say, a practical or pragmatic form: it will be supple and mobile, unlike the fixed grossly material shape. As the expression of your face changes with your feeling, impulsion, even so the body will change according to the need of the inner movement: have you never had this kind of experience in your dream? You rise up in the air and you give as it were a push with your elbow in one direction and your body extends that way; you give a kick with your foot and you land somewhere else: you can be transparent at will and go easily through a solid wall! The transformed body will behave somewhat in the same way, it will be light, luminous, elastic. Lightness, luminosity, elasticity will be the very fundamental qualities of the body.
To prepare such a body 300 years is nothing; even a thousand years will not be too much. Naturally, I am speaking of the same body. If you change your body in between, it will no longer be the same body. At 50 the body already begins to wear out. But, on the contrary, if you have a body that goes on perfecting itself; if each passing year represents a step in progress, then you can continue indefinitely: for after all, you are immortal.
07.35 - The Force of Body-Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a state of consciousness in which you perceive that the effect of things, circumstances, movements, all the activities of life upon yourself depends almost exclusively upon your attitude towards them. You become then conscious, conscious to the extent of realising that things in themselves are neither good nor bad, they are so only in relation to ourselves: their effect, I say, depends entirely upon the way in which we regard these things. If we take, for example, a circumstance as a gift from God, as a divine Grace, as an outcome of the total harmony, it will help us to become more conscious and truer and stronger. The same identical circumstance, if we take it differently, as a blow of Fate, as a bad force wishing us harm, becomes, on the contrary, a damper on our consciousness, it saps our strength, brings obscurity, creates disharmony. And yet in either case it is altogether the same circumstance. I would like you to have the experience and make the experiment. For your ideal is to be master of yourselves. But not that only. You should not only be master of your own selves, but master of the circumstances of your life, the circumstances, at least, that immediately surround you and concern you. You must note further that it is an experience that is not confined to the mind alone: it need not happen in your head only, it may and indeed must continue into the body. Certainly, this is a realisation needing great labour, much Concentration and self-mastery: you have to force the consciousness into the body, into dense Matter. It is the attitude of the body that will in the end determine everything: shocks and contacts of the outside world will change its nature according to the way in which they are received by the body. And if you attain perfection in that line, you can become even master of accidents. Such a thing is possible, not only possible, but it is bound to happen, for it is a forward step in man's progress. First of all, you have to realise the power in your mind to the extent that it can act upon circumstances and change their effect upon you. Then the power can descend into Matter, into the substance, the cells of your body and endow the body with this capacity of control over things outside and around you.
There is nothing impossible in the world. We ourselves put the bar: always we say, this is possible, that is impossible, one can do this, one cannot do that. Sometimes we admit a thing to be possible but ask who would do it, so it is impossible and so on. Like slaves, like prisoners we bind ourselves to our limits. You call it common sense, but it is a stupid, narrow and ignorant sense; it does not truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what we think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives them to be; they are quite otherwise.
07.36 - The Body and the Psychic, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You ask why the body has a limited receptive power. The reason is that in the physical world things must not get mixed up, they must remain somewhat stable, in shape and position. For example, if your body suddenly began to melt and flow towards another, it would be rather troublesome; you would find it disgusting if the body of your neighbour, like a fluid, were to pour into your own fluid body. It is to prevent such a mixture that a greater Concentration in masses was necessary, a kind of fixity of force that separates them. Indeed it was to separate one individuality from another that this fixity was needed. And it is precisely this fixity again that prevents the body from progressing as rapidly as it could and should. As you grow up and attain your normal size and constitution, you become more and more rigid in your body. As a child you have this plasticity of growth. Children change continually, they change visibly. This plasticity, this growth and development continue, so long as you remain young. But beyond, say, forty, people generally feel that they have reached their goal, they sit down to gather the fruits of their labour; they gradually become dry as dust, hard like old wood, and even like stone in the end. The body then not being able to adapt itself to the movement of the inner change, gets fossilised and crumbles, which means death.
After Death there is then no further progress?
07.45 - Specialisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But it is a very natural and spontaneous movement in man to change from one work to another in order to maintain a kind of balance. Change also means rest. We have often heard of great artists or scholars seeking for rest and having great need for it. They find it by changing their activity. For example, Ingres was a painter; painting was his normal and major occupation. But whenever he found time he took up his violin. Curiously, it was his violin which interested him more than his painting. He was not very good at music, but he took great pleasure in it. He was sufficiently good at painting, but it interested him less. But the real thing is that he needed a stable poise or balance. Concentration upon a single thing is very necessary, I have said, if one aims at a definite and special result; but one can follow a different line that is more subtle, more comprehensive and complete. Naturally, there is a physical limit somewhere to your comprehensiveness; for on the physical plane you are confined in respect of time and space; and also it is true that great things are difficult to achieve unless there is a special Concentration. But if you want to lead a higher and deeper life, you can comm and capacities which are much greater than those available to the methods of restriction and limitation belonging to the normal consciousness. There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of one's limits, if not from the point of view of actual accomplishment, at least from the point of view of spiritual realisation.
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08.03 - Organise Your Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a way of diminishing the time taken for a work and that is by increasing your Concentration. There are people incapable of Concentration; it tires them. But it is like carrying a weight; you can get used to it. So, first you have to master this power of Concentration; for that you have to calm your mind and in that calmness, concentrate, go on concentrating on the point that you have to deal with, on the work that is to be done, whatever it is. The Concentration comes with a kind of driving force, quiet but extremely powerful; and you go forward without hesitation. Then you can do in a quarter of an hour what might normally take full one hour. That saves you a good deal of time. You can, instead of continually passing from one work to another, stretch yourself for a while and have complete rest. The rest gives relaxation to all the limbs that were under tension while you were working, that is to say, brings new strength to them and you can start again another spell of Concentration.
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08.05 - Will and Desire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What one may try, in respect of a child, is to turn the direction of his desires, let him desire better things, better because more true and also more difficult to obtain. For example, when you see a child full of desires, put into him a desire of higher quality, that is to say, instead of desiring purely material objects which can give only a temporary satisfaction, one could awaken in him the desire to know, to learn, to become great and so on. That would indeed be a very good beginning. As these things are more difficult to secure, it will serve to develop, to streng then his will. Even if the difficulty is of a physical kind, if, for example, you give the child a doll to prepare, a Chinese puzzle to solve or a game of Patience, the effort helps in the development of Concentration, perseverance, a certain clarity of ideas etc. You can in this way divert the child's will from wrong pursuits to right ones. True, it needs constant attendance and application on your part, but that seems to be the surest way. It is not easy, but it is the most effective.
To say "no" does not cure, but to say "yes" does not cure either. I knew some persons who allowed their children to do as they pleased. There was one child who tried to eat anything he could get hold of. Naturally he fell sick and got disgusted in the end and cured of the habit. Still the method means risk. For example, a child one day got hold of a match-box and as he was not prevented, burnt himself in playing with it, although thereafter he did not touch a match-box any more. The method may be even catastrophic. For there are children who are dare-devils most children are soand when a desire possesses them they are stopped by nothing in the world. Some are fond of walking along the edge of walls or on house tops; some have an impulse to jump into water directly they see it. Even there are some who love to take the risk of crossing a road when a car is passing. If such children are allowed to go their way, the experiment may prove fatal sometimes. There are people who do allow their children to have this liberty arid take the risk. For they say prevention is not a cure. Children who are denied anything do not usually believe that what is denied is bad, they consider that a thing is called bad simply when one wishes to deny it. So would it not be better, it is argued, to concede the liberty? The theory is that individual liberty must be respected at all costs. Past experiences should not be placed before beings that are come newly into the world; they must get their own experiences, make their own experiments free from any burden of the past. Once I remonstrated with someone that a child should be forewarned about a possible accident, I was told in answer it was none of my business. And when I persisted in saying that the child might get killed, the answer was, "What if? Each one must follow his destiny. It is neither the duty nor the right of anybody to meddle in the affairs of others. If one goes on doing stupid things One will suffer the consequences oneself and most likely stop doing them of one's own accordwhich is hundredfold better than being forced by others to stop." But naturally there are cases when one stops indeed, but not in the way expected or wished for.
08.07 - Sleep and Pain, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Usually there is a whole group of dreams, useless and tiresome, that prevent you from resting. You must avoid all that. You can avoid them, if just before you go to sleep you make a little effort at Concentration, that is to say, try to be in relation with what is best in yourself, through an aspiration or a prayer. You do that and go to sleep. Now, if you have done your Concentration in some way successfully, you are likely to get a kind of dreams, rather experiences in sleep which you remember, which are useful indications or signs about problems for which you had had no answer; it may be on the subject of certain circumstances where you have to take a decision and are unable to do So; or it may be something in your consciousness which is not clear to you in your waking state, because you are not in the habit of noticing or recognizing it normally, but which you feel in some way doing you harm. All these things may appear to you in a revealing symbolic dream. Things are clear which were obscure before. And this does not depend upon what you have been or were doing the whole day long, but much upon the way in which' you get into sleep. A minute of sincere aspiration just before going to sleep is sufficient to make of your sleep a powerful help instead of an agent for obscuration.
There is also a proper way of getting out of sleep, as there is a proper way of getting into it. Instead of jumping out of the bed as soon as you are awake or moving about in it, you should keep quiet and still as you awake; you awake slowly without the least movement in your limbs; you feel a sort of vague impression left in you of something that has happened, something peculiar and even strange. Keep yourself still and observe, observe closely and attentively. Slowly you perceive a kind of half memory emerging of an activity in your past night. Remain concentrated and always still and immobile, gradually something like the tail-end of a dream appears and if you pull at it, follow it up, that is to say, backwardalways keeping yourself quietyou can recollect practically the whole of your dream, quite an interesting activity of yours in the night.
08.21 - Human Birth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is possible, however, for the parents, instead of doing the thing in the animal way, driven by mere instinct and desire, most of the time even without wanting it, to do it with a conscious will, aspiring, praying almost that the body they are about to bring forth should be a form suitable to clo the a soul coming at their call. I have known people,there are not many, of course, still there are some,who chose especial circumstances, prepared themselves, holding an attitude of Concentration, meditation and aspiration, invoking some exceptional being to come into the body they were to form. For that one must have also an occult knowledge which people generally do not possess.
In ancient times, in some civilisations and even now in some countries, the expectant woman is kept specially in a surrounding of beauty and harmony and peace and ease and very normal physical conditions so that the coming child may be formed under the best circumstances. Evidently this is as it should be, for it is within human possibilities. Human beings have developed enough not to consider it as an exceptional thing. And yet in fact, it is an exceptional thing, for there are very few people who think of it, most are in the habit of producing children without giving a thought to it. But the least that is expected of man is that he should be somewhat conscious and do the things he has to do in the best of conditions.
08.22 - Regarding the Body, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
With regard to their physical being, men live in a formidable ignorance. How many of you know the exact quantity of food and the kind of food the body requires? Yes, simply this, how much to take and when to take? You do not know. You are taught all kinds of things. You learn why and how this earth moves or the sun does not, why or how the triangle consists of two right angles: your faculties of imagination and discrimination are set to the task and get sharpened. But this little bit of exact knowledge you do not have the quantity of food you must take and the hour when the body needs it. It may be you are not unaware at times of this exact need. But to know properly demands a discipline, continuous labour for years perhaps. Years indeed you require when it is a matter of control over your mind, of attaining a consciousness subtle enough to enable you to come in contact with the elements of transformation and progress, to know how to regulate for your body the exact amount of physical effort, material activity, expenditure and reception of energy, how to secure the proportion between what is received and what is given out, how to utilise energy to re-establish the equilibrium that was broken in order to push forward new cells that were lagging behind and then how to build up conditions for a further step in upward progress to be possible etc., etc. The task is formidable. And yet that is the thing to be done if you want the body to be transformed. First of all, you must bring the body into complete harmony with the inner consciousness. That means a work in each cell of the body, in each small activity, in each movement of the organs. Only that and nothing more can keep you busy day and night with no other thing to look to. It is not easy to maintain the effort, the Concentration, the inner vision in a continuous manner.
You have to enter into the disposition of the cells, your inner physical organisation, if the body is to answer to the force that descends. First of all, you must be conscious of your physical cells, you must know their different functions, the degree of receptivity in each, which of them are in good condition and which are not. Even the simple thing you do not know whether you are tired or not, not to speak of why you are tired. You do not know if you have a pain somewhere, and why it is there. It is exactly for this reason that you run to the doctor. For you have the illusion that the doctor would know better how to look into what is there inside your body and what is happening there. That does not seem to be quite rational, but there is the habit. Who can look into oneself so precisely, accurately, positively, as to know exactly what is out of order, why it is out of order, how it has come to be so? All that is a matter of pure observation. And then only arises the problem of doing the thing that will bring about a new order which is a much more difficult affair. And yet this is only the ABC of body-transformation.
08.27 - Value of Religious Exercises, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
These things, if they help you, are all right; if they do not, naturally they are of no use. The value is quite relative. It is worth only the effect it has on you or the measure of your belief in it. If it is an aid to your Concentration, then, as I say, it is welcome. The ordinary consciousness takes to the thing through a kind of superstition; one thinks, "If I go to the temple or to the church once a week, for example, if I say my prayers regularly, something good will happen to me." It is a superstition spread all over the world, but it has no spiritual value.
I have been to holy places. I have seen monuments considered as very highly religious, in France, in Japan and elsewhere; they were not always the same kind of temples or churches nor were they the same gods but the impression they left on me, my experiences of them were everywhere almost the same, with but slight differences. There is usually a force concentrated at the place, but its character depends entirely upon the faith of the faithful; also there is a difference between the force as it really exists and the form in which it appears to the faithful. For instance, in a most famous and most beautiful place of worship which was, from the standpoint of art, the most magnificent creation one could imagine, I saw within its holy of holies a huge black Spider that had spread its net all around, caught within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the devotion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. But the people who were there and prayed felt the divine contact, they received all kinds of benefit from their prayers. And yet the truth of the matter was what I saw. The people had the faith and their faith changed what was bad into something that was good to them. Now if I had gone and told them: 'you think it is God you are praying to! it is only a formidable vital Spider that is sucking your force,' surely it would not have been very charitable on my part. But everywhere it is almost the same thing. There is a vital Force presiding. And vital beings feed upon the vibrations of human emotion. Very few are they, a microscopic number, who go to the temples and churches and holy places with the true religious feeling, that is to say, not to pray or beg something of God, but to offer themselves, to express gratitude, to aspire, to surrender. One in a million would be too many. These when they are there, get some touch of the Divine just for the moment. But all others go only out of superstition, egoism, self-interest and create the atmosphere as it is found and it is that that you usually brea the in when you go to a holy place; only as you go there with a good feeling, you say to yourself "what a peace-giving spot!"
09.02 - Meditation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What I call an active attitude is to concentrate on the person who guides the meditation with the will to open yourself to receive what is being given to you or to the force with which you are put in contact. It is active, because here there is a will which acts and an active Concentration to open yourself to someone or something.
The passive attitude is simply this: after having concentrated in the way I told you, to open yourself as one opens the door: imagine that in the centre of the heart there is a door, then you open the door and remain still and silent in expectation, Naturally, you may use any other similar image; for example, the image of a book that you open completely, a book with all the pages white, that is to say, very peaceful and then wait for what happens.
09.04 - The Divine Grace, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I wish you all to have this experience. For when you have it, you become master of yourself, not only master of yourself, but master of the circumstances of your life, at least so far as they concern you personally. And that depends exclusively on the attitude that you take. It is not an experience that passes through your head (it may begin there); it is an experience that may happen even in your body. Its completion however needs much labour for Concentration, self-mastery, for driving the consciousness into Matter. The result of a shock received by the body from outside will vary according to the manner in which the body receives it. And the body can be so perfected in this line that you become master of accidents.
This power some have, fully developed and realised in the mind, the power, namely, to act upon the outer circumstances so that they are altogether changed when they act upon you. This power can come down into matter, into the physical substance itself, in the cells of the body and give to the body the same control over surrounding things. That is sure to come. This opens before you fresh horizons; it is one step on the way towards transformation.
09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Love for the Divine means an exclusive attachment to the divine Reality. This Concentration finds its culmination in an integral identification and is instrumental to the supramental realisation upon earth.
Love alone is capable of putting an end to the suffering of the world. Only the ineffable delight of Love in its essence can wipe out of the universe the burning pain of separation. For it is only in the ecstasy of the supreme union that creation will discover the reason of its existence and its fulfilment.
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There throned on Concentration's native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
But if we are social bodies with commitments and duties, a subconscious itching will be there at the bottom that, "I have to start work at eight o'clock." And that will be worrying us, though we will not be aware of it. The subconscious activity of the mind is a terrible activity and, therefore, when we actually start sitting for meditation, it is necessary that the period be a little before this time of commitment for catching the train, going to the court, etc. These commitments should not be very imminent or just near. The period of sitting should be such that it should be removed as far as possible from the point of activity which is of a distractive nature. And if it is towards the later part of the day when our commitments are over and the only commitment left is that we have to go to bed and sleep as there is nothing else to do, then the agitations will be a little less, because we have no other thing to do except to go to bed. Whatever it is, these are only minor details which have to be chalked out, each for oneself. The point is that there should be no feature, condition or factor that will even remotely cause distraction to the mind and draw attention away from the point of Concentration. Thus, a particular time has to be chosen.
Yoga scriptures tell us that we must also choose a particular place, as far as possible not that today we meditate in Haridwar, tomorrow in Delhi and the day after tomorrow in Benares. That is not all right if we want real success. We must be in one place. As a matter of fact, people who practise mantra purascharana, or disciplinary chanting of mantras for a chosen period, do this and what can be a greater purascharana than meditation? So when we take to exclusive spiritual practice as a very serious affair and not merely as a hobby, it would be necessary, I would say for beginners, that a period of at least five years is called for. If we are very serious and in dead earnest about it not taking it only as a kind of educational procedure for informative purposes and not being very earnest about achieving anything substantially we may have to stick to one place for five years continuously, and not less than that. If our point is to achieve something substantial, concrete and definite, then this amount of discipline is called for, which is a definite place, a definite time, and a chosen method of meditation a definite system, arranged in one's own mind, which should not be changed continuously.
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A fixed place, a fixed time, and a fixed method of Concentration are called for. In one of the aphorisms of the sutras of Patanjali, which is very relevant to this point, it is said that the practise should be for a long period: sa tu drghakla nairantarya satkra sevita dhabhmi (I.14). If we want to establish ourselves in yoga, some conditions are to be fulfilled. One condition he mentions is that the practice should be for a protracted period I said at least five years, and not less than five years. It should be repeatedly done every day, without missing even a single day. Even if we have a temperature, fever or a headache, we should not miss it, because these are obstacles. The more we try to exert our will in the practice of Concentration, the more will the body also try to revolt. It will create all kinds of complications we will have indigestion, we will have a stomachache, we will have a headache, we will have fever all sorts of things will come. As a matter of fact, it is specifically mentioned in the Yoga Sutras that we will fall sick. It will be an obstacle, and we should not think, "Today I am sick; I will not meditate." That is what it wants, and then it has succeeded. So, first of all, a little guarded way of living may be called for to see, as far as possible, that we do not become so ill that we cannot even sit for a few minutes of meditation. By a regulation of diet and living in a climate that is not too extreme, etc., one can be somewhat free from the anxiety of falling ill to the extent that it would prevent us from doing anything at all in the spiritual field.
Dirghakala is a protracted period of practice. Nairantarya is practice without remission of effort; that means to say, it has to be done every day at the same time. The third condition is that we must have great love for it. We must have immense affection for our practice. We know how much affection a novelist has for his own work; how much affection an artist has for the painting that he does; how much affection a musician has for his ragas. Every artisan, every engineer, every artist, and every professional has immense affection for his own or her own profession. One cannot have disgust for a profession and then succeed in it; nor should one take to it as a kind of suffering or pain. Suppose an artist feels, "Oh, this painting is a great torture and suffering for me," then a good painting will not come forth, because there is no love for it. So, the practice of yoga will yield fruits only if we have a real love for the practice; and if we have love for it, it will also have love for us. When we protect it, it will protect us. It is said in the yoga shastras that yoga will protect us like a mother it will feed us and take care of us, protect us in every direction at all times, visibly as well as invisibly. Sa tu drghakla nairantarya satkra sevita dhabhmi (I.14) then we get established. .
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of performing these small ceremonies regularly, and being as nearly accurate as possible with regard to the times. You must not mind stopping in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare lorries or no lorries and saying the Adorations; and you must not mind snubbing your guest or your host if he or she should prove ignorant of his or her share of the dialogue. It is perhaps because these matters are so petty and trivial in appearance that they afford so excellent a training. They teach you Concentration, mindfulness, moral and social courage, and a host of other virtues.
Like a perfect lady, I have kept the tit bit to the last. It is absolutely essential to begin a magical diary, and keep it up daily. You begin by an account of your life, going back even before your birth to your ancestry. In conformity with the practice which you may perhaps choose to adopt later, given in Liber Thisarb, sub figura CMXIII, paragraphs 27-28, Magick, pp. 420-422, you must find an answer to the question: "How did I come to be in this place at this time, engaged in this particular work?" As you will see from the book, this will start you on the discovery of who you really are, and eventually lead you to your recovering the memory of previous incarnations.
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Fifth. This etheric web, during incarnation, forms a barrier between the physical and astral planes, which can only be transcended when consciousness is sufficiently developed to permit of escape. This can be seen in both the microcosm and the macrocosm. When a man has, through meditation and Concentration, expanded his consciousness to a certain point he is enabled to include the subtler planes, and to escape beyond the limits of the dividing web.
PHYSICAL SUB-PLANES
1.013 - Defence Mechanisms of the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
According to ancient systems of spiritual practice, self-control is effected by three main methods: the control of the prana, the control of the mind, and Concentration of consciousness. These are the three standard methods of atma vinigrah or self-control. This is a triple method prescribed in the Yoga Vasishtha, for instance. It does not mean that each method is mutually exclusive of the other; they are connected with one another. Also, it is not possible here to say which should precede and which should succeed. Are we to control the prana first and the mind afterwards, or the mind first and the prana afterwards, or are we to practise Concentration first? We cannot do all of these things in a linear fashion. They all have to be worked at simultaneously in some acceptable degree.
In the Bhagavadgita, we have a hint of the method of self control where, in a very cryptic sloka, Bhagavan Sri Krishna says that the senses are turbulent and cannot be easily controlled unless resort is taken to a higher principle than the senses themselves: indriyi paryhurindriyebhya para mana, manasastu par buddhiryo buddhe paratastu sa (B.G. III.42). This is the verse which is relevant to this subject. The senses cannot be controlled because they are driven by a force which is behind them. As long as they are driven, pushed or compelled by a power that is behind them, they will naturally act in the direction of that push. So we have to exert some kind of pressure upon the power that is driving the senses towards objects. Otherwise, it would be like ordering the servants to work in a particular way while their master is saying something else which is contrary to our advice to the servants. We have to approach the master himself so that he may not direct the servants in a wrong manner or say something undesirable to them. So there is a master behind the senses, and unless this master is approached, the senses cannot be controlled. For all immediate purposes, we can regard the mind as the master and the senses as the servants. The senses cannot be controlled if the mind is not properly tackled, because the mind is the force that urges the senses towards objects. But there is a difficulty in controlling even the mind, because the mind orders the senses to move towards objects, on account of a misconception, so unless this misconception is removed we cannot do anything with the mind.
1.01f - Introduction, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Endowed with Concentration and wisdom,
Teaching the Dharma by innumerable illustrations
1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
To produce our conscious perceptions it was necessary that all the diffused clarities which the intelligence and the sense-faculty in our rudimentary being could assemble or could produce, should converge towards certain points in the vastness of infinity destined to form the field of our experiences and of our progress, and each of our possible conquests in that field, always obtained by a greater Concentration of light, has circumscribed around us, by the very act of giving it precision, the province of the visible.
In the beginning there was the immense penumbra of the uniform Inconscient and when the Spirit said, "Let there be light," the lightning broke forth from it and the Night settled with a greater weight of darkness over all that the flashes did not illumine. Thus the day was born out of the shadows and night had the day for its cause.
1.01 - Meeting the Master - Authors first meeting, December 1918, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
"But even supposing that I grant sadhana to be of greater importance, and even intellectually understand that I should concentrate upon it, my difficulty is that I feel intensely that I must do something for the freedom of India. I have been unable to sleep soundly for the last two years and a half. I can remain quiet if I make a very strong effort. But the Concentration of my whole being turns towards India's freedom. It is difficult for me to sleep till that is secured."
Sri Aurobindo remained silent for two or three minutes. It was a long pause. Then he said: "Suppose an assurance is given to you that India will be free?"
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
striking speculations of a philosophic intellect, but rather enduring truths of spiritual experience, verifiable facts of our highest psychological possibilities which no attempt to read deeply the mystery of existence can afford to neglect. Whatever the system may be, it is not, as the commentators strive to make it, framed or intended to support any exclusive school of philosophical thought or to put forward predominantly the claims of any one form of Yoga. The language of the Gita, the structure of thought, the combination and balancing of ideas belong neither to the temper of a sectarian teacher nor to the spirit of a rigorous analytical dialectics cutting off one angle of the truth to exclude all the others; but rather there is a wide, undulating, encircling movement of ideas which is the manifestation of a vast synthetic mind and a rich synthetic experience. This is one of those great syntheses in which Indian spirituality has been as rich as in its creation of the more intensive, exclusive movements of knowledge and religious realisation that follow out with an absolute Concentration one clue, one path to its extreme issues. It does not cleave asunder, but reconciles and unifies.
The thought of the Gita is not pure Monism although it sees in one unchanging, pure, eternal Self the foundation of all cosmic existence, nor Mayavada although it speaks of the
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Now Concentration is explained.
2. II R II
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At that time (the time of Concentration) the seer (the
PuraSa ) rests in his own (unmodified) state.
--
At other times (other than that of Concentration) the
seer is identified with the modifications.
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The Concentration called right know -ledge is that
which is followed by reasoning, discrimination, bliss,
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energy, memory, Concentration, and discrimination
of the real.
--
false perception, non-attaining Concentration, and
falling away from the state when obtained, are the
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Those forms of Concentration that bring extraordinary
sense perceptions cause perseverance of the mind.
This naturally comes with Dharana, Concentration; the Yogis
say, if the mind becomes concentrated on the tip of the nose
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This is another sort of Concentration. Think of the lotus of the
42
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another. This is called Nirvitarka , Concentration without
reasoning.
--
By this process (the Concentrations) with
discrim-ination and without discrimination, whose
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These Concentrations are with seed.
These do not destroy the seeds of past actions, thus cannot
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The Concentration without reasoning being
purified, the Chitta becomes firmly fixed.
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attaining to that super-consciousness is by Concentration, and
we have also seen that what hinder the mind from
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various powers of the Samskaras in hindering Concentration
of the mind, so this Samadhi which has just been given is the
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sort of Concentration will be so powerful that it will hinder the
action of the others, and hold them in check.
--
when that is gone, this Samadhi of Concentration is called
seedless; it leaves nothing, and the Soul is manifested just as
1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
another state of Concentration to protect beings from
danger, fears, and demons. This state is called the
--
states of Concentration.
Such is Tara's story in the domain of manifestation.
1.01 - The Corporeal Being of Man, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
physiologist and the anatomist; but that this Concentration of the structure increases more and more in the animal, and in man reaches a stage unequaled in any other being, is a fully established fact, a fact which is of the deepest significance in regard to the spiritual evolution of man, of which, indeed, we may frankly say it is a sufficient explanation. Where, therefore, the structure of the brain has not developed properly, where its smallness and poverty show themselves, as in the case of microcephali and idiots, it goes without saying that one can as little expect the appearance of original ideas and of knowledge, as one can expect propagation of species in persons with completely stunted organs of generation. On the other hand, a strong and beautiful construction of the whole person, especially of the brain, will certainly not in itself take the place of genius, but it will at any rate supply the first and indispensable requirement for higher knowledge." Just as one ascribes to the human body the three forms of existence, mineral, plant, animal, one must now ascribe to it yet a fourth, the distinctively human form. Through his mineral form of existence man
p. 18
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:The development of the experience in its rapidity, its amplitude, the intensity and power of its results, depends primarily, in the beginning of the path and long after, on the aspiration and personal effort of the Sadhaka. The process of Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state in which the Transcendent and Universal can pour itself into the individual mould and transform it. The first determining element of the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the Concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied energy are the measure of that intensity. The ideal Sadhaka should be able to say in the Biblical phrase, "My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up." It is this zeal for the Lord, utsaha, the zeal of the whole nature for its divine results, vyakulata, the heart's eagerness for the attainment of the Divine, -- that devours the ego and breaks up the limitations of its petty and narrow mould for the full and wide reception of that which it seeks, that which, being universal, exceeds and, being transcendent, surpasses even the largest and highest individual self and nature.
14:But this is only one side of the force that works for perfection. The process of the integral Yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distinguished or separate, but in a certain measure successive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world. So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujga, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the Sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divine Will and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth's spiritual progression or its transformation.
1.01 - The Mental Fortress, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Thus, we shall not effect the passage with our own strength; if such were the condition, no one could do it, except spiritual athletes. But those athletes, filled with meditations and Concentrations and asceticism, do not get out either, although they may seem to. They inflate their own spiritual ego (a kind worse than the other one, far more deceptive, because it is garbed in a grain of truth) and their illuminations are simply the luminous discharges of their own accumulated cloud. The logic of it is simple: one does not get out of the circle by the power of the circle, any more than the lotus rises above the mud by the power of the mud. A little bit of sun is needed. And because the ascetics and saints and founders of religions throughout the ages only reached the rarefied realms of the mental bubble, they created one church or another that amazingly resembled the closed system from which they originated, namely, a dogma, a set of rules, the Tables of the Law, a one and only prophet born in the blessed year 000, around whom revolved the beautiful story, forever fixed in the year 000, like the electrons around the nucleus, the stars around the Great Bear, and man around his navel. Or, if they did get out, it was only in spirit, leaving the earth and bodies to their habitual decay. Granted, each new hub was wiser, more luminous, worthy and virtuous than the preceding one, and it did help men, but it changed nothing in the mental circle, as we have seen, for thousands of years because its light was only the other side of one and the same shadow, the white of the black, the good of evil, the virtue of a frightful misery that grips us all in the depths of our caves.
This implacable duality which assails the whole life of mental man a life that is only the life of death is obviously insoluble at the level of the Duality. One might as well fight the right hand with the left. Yet, that is exactly what the human mind has done, without much success, at all levels of its existence, offsetting its heaven with hell, matter with spirit, individualism with collectivism, or any other isms that proliferate in this sorry system. But one does not get out by the decrees of any ism pushed to its perfection: deprived of its heaven, our earth is a poor whirling machine; deprived of its matter, our heaven is a pale nebula filled with the silent medusas of the disembodied spirit; deprived of the individual, our societies are dreadful anthills; and deprived even of his sins, the individual loses a focus of tension that helped him to grow. The fact is, no idea, however lofty it may seem, has the power to undo the Artifice for the very good reason that the Artifice has its value and season. But it has also its season, like the winged seed tumbling over the prairies, until the day it finds its propitious ground and bursts open.
1.01 - THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
previous Concentration of the stufl of the universe in nebulae and
suns. Whatever the overall figure of the worlds may be, the
1.01 - Who is Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
attitudesgenerosity, ethical discipline, patience, joyous effort, Concentration, and wisdom.
Tara, like Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara, Vajrapani, and others, is a Buddha.
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compassion, joy, equanimity, generosity, ethical discipline, patience, enthusiasm, Concentration, wisdom, and so forthalthough each manifestation
may emphasize a particular quality. For example, Tara symbolizes enlightened activity, while Avalokiteshvara embodies compassion. Among the
--
paramitasgenerosity, ethics, patience, joyous effort, Concentration, and wisdomare fully integrated in her being and decorate her every activity.
Tara is also adorned with three syllables: om at her crown chakra, ah at her
1.02.3.1 - The Lord, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
a realm of predetermination, of Concentration, of compelling
seed-state. But it is a determination not in previous Time, but in
--
of the movement as well as in the Concentration of the Idea.
Therefore the truth of the Soul is freedom and mastery, not
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Une grande Concentration s' est empare de moi et je me suis aperue que je m'identifiais avec une fleur de cerisier; puis travers cette fleur avec toutes les fleurs de cerisier; puis descendant plus profondment dans la conscience, en suivant un courant de force bleute, je devins tout coup le cerisier lui-mme, dressant vers le ciel, comme autant de bras, ses innombrables branches charges de leur offrande fleurie. J' entendis alors distinctement la phrase suivante:
"Ainsi tu t' es unit l' me des cerisiers et tu as pu de la sorte constater que c' est le Divin qui fait au ciel l' offrande de cette prire de fleurs." Lorsque je l'eus crit, toutseffaa; mais maintenant le sang du cerisier coule dans mes veines, et avec lui une paix et une force incomparables; quelle diffrence y a-t-il entre le corps humain et le corps d'un arbre? Aucune vraiment, et la conscience qui les anime est bien identiquement la mme.18
--
A deep Concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry-blossom, then through it with all cherry-blossoms, and as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following a stream of bluish force, I became suddenly the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their sacrifice of flowers. Then I heard distinctly this sentence:
"Thus hast thou made thyself one with the soul of cherry-trees and so thou canst take note that it is the Divine who makes the offering of this flower-prayer to heaven."
1.024 - Affiliation With Larger Wholes, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The mind can be brought to concentrate itself upon higher degrees of reality through the reading of scriptural testimony, which can be corroborated by the inductive logic and deductive reasoning, etc. of our own analytical power. Sruti and yukti, as the great masters tell us, should both come to our aid in bringing the mind to a point of Concentration on a higher reality than what it is experiencing now through the senses.
The urge that we feel from within to acquire more and more things, and to enjoy greater and greater degrees of happiness, is an insignia of the existence of such states where we can have that type of experience. An intellectual urge, moral urge, spiritual urge and aesthetic urge are all indications of the presence of certain values which cannot be comprehended at present by the powers of sense and reasoning. There is an irresistible desire to ask for more and more, and we cannot ask for more and more unless this 'more' exists. We will not ask for an empty thing. The idea of the more cannot arise in a mind which has not sensed the presence of that 'more' in some subtle manner. The mind has various levels of perception. Although through the conscious level it cannot directly perceive the existence of these higher levels of reality, it can sense the presence of these higher realities through other forms of apparatus that it has within, and it is due to the action of these inward sensations that it feels agonised and restless in any given condition of lower experience.
--
This is the conclusion arrived at by certain faculties of prehension which are operating in the subtle layers of the mind, invisible even to the mind itself in its conscious level. In our own six-foot bodily individuality, we have possibilities of the whole cosmic experience in a minute, microscopic form. The seeds of universal powers and achievements are hiddenly present in the cells of our own individual body. The vast tree of cosmic experience, the blossoming of universal realisation, is latent as a seed in the very fibre of our present individual existence. It is this that occasionally makes us brood over the possibilities of higher achievements in life and never allows us to rest contented with what we are at present. So, by these methods of self-analysis and study of scriptures, etc., we should be able to bring the mind back from its Concentration on diverse realities of the sense-world and fix it upon a higher reality so that its distractions get lessened as much as possible.
A distraction is the attention of the mind on diversity. Concentration is the withdrawal of the mind from diversity, and its attention bestowed upon a more unifying system of values. As we go higher and higher, the diversities become less and less. They all get included in a more comprehensive system, which includes all of the diversities which the mind originally perceived as independent existences. This is how the mind can be brought from its usual meanderings in the world of sense and made to concentrate itself on higher realities. By educative methods it has to be told, again and again, that a higher plane does exist and is implicit in one's own experience. It is not outside; it is hidden, latent potential, and it can be manifest by proper methods.
Infinity is hidden in every grain of sand. It can be directly contacted by the mind, by the application of suitable methods or techniques. These techniques are nothing but the affirmation of Reality in every particular form of reality, which in ordinary life is mistaken for an absolutely independent existence. These so-called absolutely independent existences called realities, which attract the mind in different directions, are aspects of a more comprehensive system which includes these realities.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
In the Concentration of the mind on one reality, ekatattva, what is intended is that the attention should be focused on a system or order of values which is immediately superior to, or transcendent to, the current state of affairs, the present state of experience, and the conditions through which we are passing through at this moment. Anything which can include particulars in a more organised whole can be regarded as a higher reality for this purpose. There are tentative realities created for the purpose of practical convenience by organisations, associations or systems which we have created for the purpose of subjugating the individual ego and compelling it to affiliate itself to a larger body to which also it ought to belong and is made to belong.
I can give you examples of quantitative systems which we create in our practical daily life for the purpose of overcoming the urges of the ego and connecting it with wider or larger wholes. A physical individual, or a bodily person, is the lowest unit of reality as far as our experience goes. An utterly selfish individual is one who looks upon the body as the ultimate reality, and the only reality there is nothing else. Now, this is the grossest form of egoism, where the bodily individuality is regarded as the only reality and everything else is completely ignored. This is the animal's way of thinking, to some extent. The tiger has no concern for anything except its own personal existence, and it can pounce on anyone for the sake of its own security and existence.
1.028 - Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We were discussing the relationship between abhyasa and vairagya in the system of yoga. The practice of yoga becomes effective when it is charged with the power of vairagya or the spirit of renunciation because, while practice is the endeavour to fix oneself in a particular attitude of consciousness, vairagya is a sympathetic attitude which simultaneously frees consciousness from attention to contrary objectives, or objectives which are irrelevant to the one that is taken up for the purpose of Concentration and meditation. We cannot have a double attitude in yoga. That is, our attention cannot be diverted into two channels. Else, there would be split devotion, as they call it vyabhicharini bhakti not whole-souled devotion.
What is called for in this practice is wholeheartedness, and perhaps every other qualification is included in this. When we are wholehearted in anything, we shall succeed, whatever be the direction. But our difficulty seems to be that we can never be wholehearted in anything. It is merely a peculiar trait of the mind that it cannot give itself up entirely to any kind of effort, thought, feeling, or volition. There is an inherent inadequacy in the structural character of the mind, which makes it sometimes look like a double-edged sword, cutting both ways sometimes like a naughty child asking for what is impossible, and at other times trying to upset, every moment, what it is trying to achieve by its effort.
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As we had occasion to observe, the practice commences with being seated in a particular posture; and sitting in a particular posture is itself a practice. Often we may be under the wrong notion that 'sitting' is not a very important part of yoga, because yoga is mental Concentration. Yes, it is true, but the Concentration of the mind will not be possible when we are seated in an awkward posture. We must remember that there is a vital connection obtaining among every part of our psychophysical organism. Right from the skin, which is the outermost part of our body, to the deepest level of our psychological being, there is an internal relationship. Any kind of disturbance that is felt in any part of this organic structure will be sympathetically felt to a particular degree in other parts or levels of this organic structure. The posture or asana, the steady seatedness in a particular mood not only of the mind, but also of the body, the nerves and the pranas is essential for the Concentration of the mind on the objective.
This practice becomes fixed and successful when it is continued under certain conditions. It has to be continued every day this is one thing to remember. Every day the practice should be taken up in right earnest, and it has to be done at a given time, if possible at a fixed time, at the same time, and not changing the hours of the day because this practice is not a hobby. We are not merely engaging ourselves in a sort of diversion for the sake of freedom from boredom in life. The practice of yoga is a serious undertaking and, therefore, it has to be taken up with the earnestness of a scientist who is bent upon achieving his objective by the adoption of all technical devices available.
--
So the subconscious mind goes there, and that outlet which the mind allows for at the bottom lets all the energy leak out in the wrong direction. The so-called Concentration of mind in the practice of yoga that is undertaken every day becomes a kind of futile effort on account of not knowing that some underground activity is going on in the mind which is completely upsetting all of our conscious activities called daily meditation. We have certain underground activities which we are not aware of always, and these activities completely disturb and turn upside-down all of the so-called practice of yoga that is done only at the conscious level.
I have always been saying that our personality is not merely at the conscious level. The larger part of our personality is in levels which are deeper than the conscious one. Until all of the levels come up and merge into a focused attention in the practice of yoga, we cannot expect the desired result. But once this whole-souled dedication is achieved, once it becomes part of our conscious life, it immediately speaks in the language of ultimate success.
1.02 - Groups and Statistical Mechanics, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
the gate is closed. In this way, the Concentration of particles of
high velocity is increased in compartment B and is decreased in
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
- that is Yoga. Pranayam and Asans, Concentration, worship, ceremonies, religious practice are not themselves Yoga but only a means towards Yoga. Nor is Yoga a difficult or dangerous path, it is safe and easy to all who take refuge with the Inner Guide and Teacher. All men are potentially capable of it, for there is no
Essays from the Karmayogin
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Nothing produces terror and fear like a Concentration camp unless the camp encountered is better than the
camp expected. Our hopes, desires, and wishes which are always conditional define the context within
--
and focused Concentration, activates large areas of neocortex. Similarly, increased cortical mobilization
takes place during the practice phase of skill acquisition, when awareness appears required for development
--
classification of unpredictable events. Attention and Concentration naturally gravitate to those elements in
the experiential field that contain the highest Concentration of novelty, or that are the least expected, prior
to what might normally be considered higher cognitive processing. The nervous system responds to
1.02 - Meditating on Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
do tantric practices, we have to be rmly grounded in the foundational teachings of the Theravada the three higher trainings of ethical discipline, Concentration, and wisdom. In addition, we must practice the general Mahayana
path to develop bodhichitta and meditate on wisdom. Then, on the basis of
--
order to secure a fortunate rebirth. An intermediate practitioner is determined to be free from all sufferings of cyclic existence and to attain liberation. She practices mainly the three higher trainingsethics, Concentration,
and wisdomas the path to liberation. An advanced practitioner wishes all
--
intention, single-pointed Concentration, and insight into the nature of reality, their spiritual mentor will instruct them in more advanced visualizations
and meditations to purify their extremely subtle body and mind. By means of
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Prana is the vital force in every being. Thought is the finest and highest action of Prana. Thought, again, as we see, is not all. There is also what we call instinct or unconscious thought, the lowest plane of action. If a mosquito stings us, our hand will strike it automatically, instinctively. This is one expression of thought. All reflex actions of the body belong to this plane of thought. There is again the other plane of thought, the conscious. I reason, I judge, I think, I see the pros and cons of certain things, yet that is not all. We know that reason is limited. Reason can go only to a certain extent, beyond that it cannot reach. The circle within which it runs is very very limited indeed. Yet at the same time, we find facts rush into this circle. Like the coming of comets certain things come into this circle; it is certain they come from outside the limit, although our reason cannot go beyond. The causes of the phenomena intruding themselves in this small limit are outside of this limit. The mind can exist on a still higher plane, the superconscious. When the mind has attained to that state, which is called Samdhi perfect Concentration, superconsciousness it goes beyond the limits of reason, and comes face to face with facts which no instinct or reason can ever know. All manipulations of the subtle forces of the body, the different manifestations of Prana, if trained, give a push to the mind, help it to go up higher, and become superconscious, from where it acts.
In this universe there is one continuous substance on every plane of existence. Physically this universe is one: there is no difference between the sun and you. The scientist will tell you it is only a fiction to say the contrary. There is no real difference between the table and me; the table is one point in the mass of matter, and I another point. Each form represents, as it were, one whirlpool in the infinite ocean of matter, of which not one is constant. Just as in a rushing stream there may be millions of whirlpools, the water in each of which is different every moment, turning round and round for a few seconds, and then passing out, replaced by a fresh quantity, so the whole universe is one constantly changing mass of matter, in which all forms of existence are so many whirlpools. A mass of matter enters into one whirlpool, say a human body, stays there for a period, becomes changed, and goes out into another, say an animal body this time, from which again after a few years, it enters into another whirlpool, called a lump of mineral. It is a constant change. Not one body is constant. There is no such thing as my body, or your body, except in words. Of the one huge mass of matter, one point is called a moon, another a sun, another a man, another the earth, another a plant, another a mineral. Not one is constant, but everything is changing, matter eternally concreting and disintegrating. So it is with the mind. Matter is represented by the ether; when the action of Prana is most subtle, this very ether, in the finer state of vibration, will represent the mind and there it will be still one unbroken mass. If you can simply get to that subtle vibration, you will see and feel that the whole universe is composed of subtle vibrations. Sometimes certain drugs have the power to take us, while as yet in the senses, to that condition. Many of you may remember the celebrated experiment of Sir Humphrey Davy, when the laughing gas overpowered him how, during the lecture, he remained motionless, stupefied and after that, he said that the whole universe was made up of ideas. For, the time being, as it were, the gross vibrations had ceased, and only the subtle vibrations which he called ideas, were present to him. He could only see the subtle vibrations round him; everything had become thought; the whole universe was an ocean of thought, he and everyone else had become little thought whirlpools.
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The ideal of the Yogi, the whole science of Yoga, is directed to the end of teaching men how, by intensifying the power of assimilation, to shorten the time for reaching perfection, instead of slowly advancing from point to point and waiting until the whole human race has become perfect. All the great prophets, saints, and seers of the world what did they do? In one span of life they lived the whole life of humanity, traversed the whole length of time that it takes ordinary humanity to come to perfection. In one life they perfect themselves; they have no thought for anything else, never live a moment for any other idea, and thus the way is shortened for them. This is what is meant by Concentration, intensifying the power of assimilation, thus shortening the time. Raja-Yoga is the science which teaches us how to gain the power of Concentration.
What has Pranayama to do with spiritualism? Spiritualism is also a manifestation of Pranayama. If it be true that the departed spirits exist, only we cannot see them, it is quite probable that there may be hundreds and millions of them about us we can neither see, feel, nor touch. We may be continually passing and repassing through their bodies, and they do not see or feel us. It is a circle within a circle, universe within universe. We have five senses, and we represent Prana in a certain state of vibration. All beings in the same state of vibration will see one another, but if there are beings who represent Prana in a higher state of vibration, they will not be seen. We may increase the intensity of a light until we cannot see it at all, but there may be beings with eyes so powerful that they can see such light. Again, if its vibrations are very low, we do not see a light, but there are animals that may see it, as cats and owls. Our range of vision is only one plane of the vibrations of this Prana. Take this atmosphere, for instance; it is piled up layer on layer, but the layers nearer to the earth are denser than those above, and as you go higher the atmosphere becomes finer and finer. Or take the case of the ocean; as you go deeper and deeper the pressure of the water increases, and animals which live at the bottom of the sea can never come up, or they will be broken into pieces.
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
cheerfulness of the mind, Concentration, conquest of
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1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:The difficulty of the task has led naturally to the pursuit of easy and trenchant solutions; it has generated and fixed deeply' the tendency of religions and of schools of Yoga to separate the life of the world from the inner life. The powers of this world and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya or another, a dark contradiction of the divine Truth. And on their own opposite side the powers of the Truth and their ideal activities are seen to belong to quite another plane of consciousness than that, obscure, ignorant and perverse in its impulses and forces, on which the life of the earth is founded. There appears at once the antinomy of a bright and pure kingdom of God and a dark and impure kingdom of the devil; we feel the opposition of our crawling earthly birth and life to an exalted spiritual God-consciousness; we become readily convinced of the incompatibility of life's subjection to Maya with the soul's Concentration in pure Brahman existence. The easiest way is to turn away from all that belongs to the one and to retreat by a naked and precipitous ascent into the other. Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of exclusive Concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that Concentration we can arrive through an uncompromising renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate. It is no longer incumbent on us to compel all the lower activities to the difficult recognition of a new and higher spiritualised life and train them to be its agents or executive powers. It is enough to kill or quiet them and keep at most the few energies necessary, on one side, for the maintenance of the body and, on the other, for communion with the Divine.
9:The very aim and conception of an integral Yoga debars us from adopting this simple and strenuous high-pitched process. The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a short cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impediments. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; we are determined to give him our becoming as well as our being and not merely to bring the pure and naked spirit as a bare offering to a remote and secret Divinity in a distant heaven or abolish all we are in a holocaust to an immobile Absolute. The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extracosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and near to us here in the universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body, -- ihaiva, as the Upanishads insist, -- we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our Yoga in order utterly to transmute it; we are forbidden to shrink from the difficulties that this acceptance may add to our struggle. Our compensation is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and bafflingly arduous, yet after a point we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit. Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the powers that oppose us.
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12:In the ordinary paths of Yoga the method used for dealing with these conflicting materials is direct and simple. One or another of the principal psychological forces in us is selected as our single means for attaining to the Divine; the rest is quieted into inertia or left to starve in its smallness. The Bhakta, seizing on the emotional forces of the being, the intense activities of the heart, abides concentrated in the love of God, gathered up as into a single one-pointed tongue of fire; he is indifferent to the activities of thought, throws behind him the importunities of the reason, cares nothing for the mind's thirst for knowledge. All the knowledge he needs is his faith and the inspirations that well up from a heart in communion with the Divine. He has no use for any will to works that is not turned to the direct worship of the Beloved or the service of the temple. The man of Knowledge, self-confined by a deliberate choice to the force and activities of discriminative thought, finds release in the mind's inward-drawn endeavour. He concentrates on the idea of the self, succeeds by a subtle inner discernment in distinguishing its silent presence amid the veiling activities of Nature, and through the perceptive idea arrives at the concrete spiritual experience. He is indifferent to the play of the emotions, deaf to the hunger-call of passion, closed to the activities of Life, -- the more blessed he, the sooner they fall away from him and leave him free, still and mute, the eternal non-doer. The body is his stumbling-block, the vital functions are his enemies; if their demands can be reduced to a minimum, that is his great good fortune. The endless difficulties that arise from the environing world are dismissed by erecting firmly against them a defence of outer physical and inner spiritual solitude; safe behind a wall of inner silence, he remains impassive and untouched by the world and by others. To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the only chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive Concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.
13:But for the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this outer solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others'; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe.
14:Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other, -- integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. All exclusive Concentration, or even a succession of Concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive Concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
15: Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving Concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga. A separate strong fixing of the thought, of the emotions or of the will on a single idea, object, state, inner movement or principle is no doubt a frequent need here also; but this is only a subsidiary helpful process. A wide massive opening, a harmonised Concentration of the whole being in all its parts and through all its powers upon the One who is the All is the larger action of this Yoga without which it cannot achieve its purpose. For it is the consciousness that rests in the One and that acts in the All to which we aspire; it is this that we seek to impose on every element of our being and on every movement of our nature. This wide and concentrated totality is the essential character of the sadhana and its character must determine its practice.
16:But even though the Concentration of all the being on the Divine is the character of the Yoga, yet is our being too complex a thing to be taken up easily and at once, as if we were taking up the world in a pair of hands, and set in its entirety to a single task. Man in his effort at self-transcendence has usually to seize on some one spring or some powerful leverage in the complicated machine that his nature is; this spring or lever he touches in preference to others and uses it to set the machine in motion towards the end that he has in view. In his choice it is always Nature itself that should be his guide. But here it must be Nature at her highest and widest in him, not at her lowest or in some limiting movement. In her lower vital activities it is desire that Nature takes as her most powerful leverage; but the distinct character of man is that he is a mental being, not a merely vital creature. As he can use his thinking mind and will to restrain and correct his life impulses, so too he can bring in the action of a still higher luminous mentality aided by the deeper soul in him, the psychic being, and supersede by these greater and purer motive-powers the domination of the vital and sensational force that we call desire. He can entirely master or persuade it and offer it up for transformation to its divine Master. This higher mentality and this deeper soul, the psychic element in mall, are the two grappling hooks by which the Divine can lay hold upon his nature.
17:The higher mind in man is something other, loftier, purer, vaster, more powerful than the reason or logical intelligence. The animal is a vital and sensational being; man, it is said, is distinguished from the animal by the possession of reason. But that is a very summary, a very imperfect and misleading account of the matter. For reason is only a particular and limited utilitarian and instrumental activity that proceeds from something much greater than itself, from a power that dwells in an ether more luminous, wider, illimitable. The true and ultimate, as distinguished from the immediate or intermediate, importance of our observing, reasoning, inquiring, judging intelligence is that it prepares the human being for the right reception and right action of a Light from above which must progressively replace in him the obscure light from below that guides the animal. The latter also has a rudimentary reason, a kind of thought, a soul, a will and keen emotions; even though less developed, its psychology is yet the same in kind as man's. But all these capacities in the animal are automatically moved and strictly limited, almost even constituted by the lower nervous being. All animal perceptions, sensibilities, activities are ruled by nervous and vital instincts, cravings, needs, satisfactions, of which the nexus is the life-impulse and vital desire. Man too is bound, but less bound, to this automatism of the vital nature. Man can bring an enlightened will, an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development; he can more and more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire. In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is mall and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards tile superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine.
18:It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, -- in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together, -- and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The Concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single Concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming Concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable Concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga.
19:But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this Concentration of our being upon him. A Concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.
20:But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
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22:When once the object of Concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will, -- a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law, -- the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For the work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action, -- and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true Spiritual Person can still remain and God's will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind arid life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves, -all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, Strength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the spirit's terrestrial adventure.
23:The Yoga must start with an effort or at least a settled turn towards this total Concentration. A constant and unfailing will of consecration of all ourselves to the Supreme is demanded of us, an offering of our whole being and our many-chambered nature to the Eternal who is the All. The effective fullness of our Concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all else will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude nothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will's ignorance. For our Concentration on the Eternal will be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine in all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the Divine, -- of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms in the Universe' It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as our sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic nature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things. This is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.
24:It is nothing less that is meant in the end when we speak of the absolute consecration of the individual to the Divine. But this total fullness of consecration can only come by a constant progression when the long and difficult process of transforming desire out of existence is completed in an ungrudging measure. Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender.
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26:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this Concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature's all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, -- but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and Tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga.
27:These movements are indeed not always or absolutely arranged in a strict succession to each other. The second stage begins in part before the first is completed; the first continues in part until the second is perfected; the last divine working can manifest from time to time as a promise before it is finally settled and normal to the nature. Always too there is something higher and greater than the individual which leads him even in his personal labour and endeavour. Often he may become, and remain for a time, wholly conscious, even in parts of his being permanently conscious, of this greater leading behind the veil, and that may happen long before his whole nature has been purified in all its parts from the lower indirect control. Even, he may be thus conscious from the beginning; his mind and heart, if not his other members, may respond to its seizing and penetrating guidance with a certain initial completeness from the very first steps of the Yoga. But it is the constant and complete and uniform action of the great direct control that more and more distinguishes the transitional stage as it proceeds and draws to its close. This predominance of a greater diviner leading, not personal to ourselves, indicates the nature's increasing ripeness for a total spiritual transformation. It is the unmistakable sign that the self-consecration has not only been accepted in principle but is fulfilled in act and power. The Supreme has laid his luminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda.
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
respects the progressive, and experientially known, Concentration
of human thought in an increasingly acute consciousness of its
1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
duced by deliberate Concentration. I have found that the exist-
ence of unrealized, unconscious fantasies increases the frequency
1.02 - The Divine Is with You, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Concentration upon oneself means decay and death. Concentration on the Divine alone brings life and growth and realisation.
Without the Divine life is a painful illusion, with the Divine all
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
enthusiasm to exhaustion, gray apathy to fugitive pleasures and recurring sufferings, and to find a poise above in other words, to recover the divine consciousness (yoga), the state of perfect equilibrium. In order to achieve this goal, they try to take us out of the state of dispersion and waste in which we live daily, and to create in us a Concentration powerful enough to break our ordinary limits and,
in time, to propel us into another state. This work of Concentration can be done at any level of our being physical, vital, or mental.
Depending on the level we choose, we undertake one kind of yoga or another: hatha yoga, raja yoga, mantra yoga, and many others,
1.02 - The Great Process, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The secrets are simple, as we have said. Unfortunately the mind has seized this one, as it seizes everything, and has pressed it into the service of its mental, vital or spiritual ego. It has discovered certain powers of meditation or Concentration, more refined energies, higher mental planes that were like the divine source of our existence, lights that were not from the moon or stars, more direct and almost superhuman faculties it has climbed the ladder of consciousness but all that only served to sublimate and rarefy a rare human elite; sublimate it so much, in fact, that there did not seem to be any other issue to this climb than an ultimate leap out of the dualities and into the changeless peace of eternal truths. A few souls were saved, possibly, while the earth went on its dark course, increasingly dark. And what should have been the earth's secret became heaven's. The most frightful schism of all time was accomplished, the bleakest duality was imprinted on the heart of the earth. And the very ones who should have been humankind's supreme unifiers became its dividers, the Founding Fathers of atheism, materialism and all the other isms that struggle for our world. The earth, duped, had no other recourse but to believe exclusively in herself and her own strength.
But the damage does not stop there. Nothing is stickier than falsehood. It sticks to the soles of our shoes even though we have turned away from the wrong path. Others had indeed seen the earthly relevance of the Great Process the Zen Buddhists, the Tantric initiates, the Sufis and others and, more and more, disconcerted minds are turning to it and to themselves: never have so many more or less esoteric schools flourished. But the old error is holding fast (to tell the truth, we don't know whether error is ever an appropriate term, for the so-called error always turns out to be a roundabout route of the same Truth leading to a wider view of itself). It took so much effort out of the Sages of those days, and out of the lesser sages of these days, so many indispensable conditions of peace, austerity, silence and purity for them to achieve their more or less illumined goal, that our subconscious mind was as if branded by a red-hot iron with the idea that, without special conditions and special masters and somewhat special or mystical or innate gifts, it was not really possible to set out on that path, or at best the results would be meager and proportionate to the effort expended. And it was still, of course, an individual undertaking, a lofty extension of book learning. But this new dichotomy threatens to be more serious than the other one, more potentially harmful, between an unredeemed mass and an enlightened elite juggling lights about which anything can be said since there is no microscope to check it. Drugs, too, are a cheap ticket to dizzying glimpses of dazzling lights.
1.02 - The Magic Circle, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
When working in the open air, a magic weapon, dagger or sword has to be used for drawing the circle on the ground. When working in a room, the circle may be drawn on the floor with a piece of chalk. A large sheet of paper can also be used for the circle. The most ideal circle, however, is the one sewn or embroidered into a piece of cloth, flannel or silk, for such a circle can be laid out in a room as well as outside of the house. The circles drawn on paper have the disadvantage that the paper will soon wear out and fall to pieces. In any case, the circle must be large enough to enable the magician to move about in it freely. When drawing the circle, the appropriate state of mind and full Concentration are most essential. If a circle were drawn without the necessary Concentration, a circle would undoubtedly be the result, but it would not be a magic one. The magic circle that has been worked into a piece of cloth or silk has to be re-drawn symbolically with one's finger or magic wand, or with some other magic weapon; not to forget the necessary Concentration, meditation and state of mind. The magician must, in such a case, be fully aware of the fact that it is not the magical weapon in use that draws the circle, but the divine faculties symbolized by that magical instrument. Furthermore, he must realize that it is not he that is drawing the magic circle at the moment of Concentration, but that the Divine Spirit is actually guiding his hand and instrument to draw the circle. Therefore, before drawing the magic circle, a conscious contact with the Almighty, with the Infinite, has to be brought about by the help of meditation and identification.
The trained magician, having a thorough comm and of the practical exercises of the first tarot-card, as explained in my first work "Initiation into Hermetics" , has learned during one of the steps of that book how to become fully conscious of the spirit and how to act consciously as a spirit. It is not difficult for him to imagine that not he, but the Divine Spirit in all its high aspects is actually drawing the magic circle he wishes to have. The magician has thus learned also that in the world of the Invisible it is not the same although two persons might physically be doing the same, for a sorcerer, who does not possess the necessary maturity, will never be able to draw a true magic circle.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
When God is regarded as exclusively immanent, legalism and external practices are abandoned and there is a Concentration on the Inner Light. The dangers now are quietism and antinomianism, a partial modification of consciousness that is useless or even harmful, because it is not accompanied by the transformation of character which is the necessary prerequisite of a total, complete and spiritually fruitful transformation of consciousness.
Finally it is possible to think of God as an exclusively supra-personal being. For many persons this conception is too philosophical to provide an adequate motive for doing anything practical about their beliefs. Hence, for them, it is of no value.
1.02 - The Ultimate Path is Without Difficulty, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
knowledge attained after diamond-like Concentration, one
studies the majestic conduct of Buddhas for a thousand aeons
1.02 - The Vision of the Past, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
by force of Concentration, it ends by reflecting upon itself?
(F.M., p. 67.)
1.02 - THE WITHIN OF THINGS, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
The degree of Concentration of a consciousness varies in
inverse ratio to the simplicity of the material compound lined by
1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Here I have to take a few moments to give some sort of an idea as to what love is, so that we may have an idea as to its relationship to the object of love. Most people have no idea of what it is and, therefore, it has been given many definitions. The most common definition of love is that it is a psychological emotion, a welling up of certain feelings in respect of an object. Love is the manner in which the mind arranges itself in respect of an object which it needs. Just as when one is on a battleground and there is a necessity to gird up one's loins for an immediate attack, one prepares oneself thoroughly, from head to foot, for the purpose of the task on hand or, a wrestler in the field prepares himself for the purpose for which he is there, and in this preparation he is worked up into a feeling of total Concentration of his personality for the achievement of that purpose in a similar manner, the mind works itself up into a concentrated feeling in respect of the object which it needs for a particular purpose, at a particular time. This working up of the mind in sympathy with the object which it needs at a particular time is the love that the mind has for the object. Therefore, love may be regarded as a condition of the mind. It is a state of mind not a perpetual state, but a temporary state of the mind in respect of that particular object which is necessary at that particular moment.
Ordinarily speaking, there is nothing in this world which we require always. Therefore, it is not possible for the mind to be in a condition of love for all times. If a particular thing can be needed for all time, then the love also can be there for all time; but such a thing is not present in this world. According to the conditions of body, atmosphere, age, etc., needs go on changing, and the mind arranges itself accordingly, under different conditions, in respect of the outer atmosphere in which it wants to place itself. So the condition of the mind called 'love' is subject to the necessities of the time, and there is no such thing as an eternal love for anything in this world. It is a movement of the mind towards the object. Sometime back we were discussing the nature of the movement of the mind in regard to the object, where it pervades the object that pervasion being called vrittivyapti, etc. So the mind, when it loves an object, is in the form of a vritti. Love is a vritti, and Patanjali says all vrittis must be controlled, which means that even love must be controlled.
1.035 - The Recitation of Mantra, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The mantra that Patanjali particularly refers to in his sutra is pranava or omkara. This is something very difficult to understand and cannot easily be explained however much we may try, because these are very great secrets which are invisible to the eyes and, therefore, ordinarily incapable of explanation. It is believed that the chanting of pranava or Om, in the prescribed manner, sets up a novel type of vibration in the system, which is free from every kind of distraction or particularisation in respect of any external object. Every name in this world particularises itself in respect of an external object, such as tree, mountain, sun, moon, star, etc. they are external objects. But here, the object of pranava or Om is not any given object in particular. It is a general being, and anything that is general is also harmonious. Hence the chanting of pranava or Om in the prescribed manner, with the required intonation, produces a generalised harmonious vibration in the entire physical and psychological system, and this is what is conducive to the Concentration of the mind in meditation, because meditation is nothing but the harmonious condition of the mind.
'Samadhi' is the word used for the highest state of harmony achieved thereby. Adhi is a mental condition, and an equilibrated mental condition is samadhi - equilibrated in the utmost manner, so that every component of thought is systematically harmonised with every other component, and not one setting itself against the other or distracting the other. So harmoniously are they knitted together that there is a uniform fabric of the mind, as it were, in respect of the object. A harmonious vibration creates a thrill in the system, which is the trick that the chanting of the mantra or pranava produces, and one can feel it when one chants pranava at least for a few minutes continuously. We will feel a subtle, creeping sensation in our system, as if ants are crawling through our nerves. We will feel a peculiar touching sensation, a titillating feeling in the beginning, which is an indication that our chanting is correct and the mind is getting concentrated.
--
Also, there is a special tradition of chanting mantra, known as purascharana in India, and it is supposed to be the recitation of the mantra as many lakhs of times (a lakh is one hundred thousand) as there are letters in a mantra, so that the completion of the purascharana is supposed to be the completion of a round of sadhana, the completion of a given cycle. As many lakhs of japa as there are letters in a mantra are to be chanted, and then it produces a novel effect in oneself. There are devotees, even today, and there were many previously, who did numerous purascharanas of this kind for the purpose of the realisation of the deity of the mantra. I personally feel that for the minds of today, japa is perhaps the best sadhana, because it is a technique by which the mind can be automatically drawn towards the point of Concentration by habitual recitation repetition of the mantra. It does not require much logic, study, or analysis, or anything of that sort. It requires merely a will to do that is all. There were many saints and sages who had spiritual realisation merely through this japa sadhana, because japa or recitation of the Divine Name or the mantra is virtually the same as meditation. As Patanjali mentions, japa is charged with the notion, idea or Concentration of the mind on the meaning of the mantra.
1.036 - The Rise of Obstacles in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
By a persistent, insistent practice of deep Concentration on a given reality, ekatattva abhyasah, there is an automatic exhaustion of the potentialities of individuality inside, because we do not go on adding to the karmas by further binding action. There is only a burning up of what is already there, and once the store of karmas, even in a hidden form, is exhausted by experience, there is no further bondage because we have not added any further karma to the already existing store. How these obstacles cease and karmas are exhausted is a miracle by itself.
Adepts in yoga tell us that there is a gradual exhaustion of karma and a slow diminution of the intensity of obstacles; but others are of the opinion that there can be a sudden end to all this. It is something like the theories of creation whether God created the world item by item, step by step, gradually, stage by stage, or by a fiat, at one stroke. Is it krama srishti, or yugapat srishti? 'Yugapat' means God willed, 'Let there be light,' and there was light; 'Let there be trees,' and there were trees; 'Let there be man,' and there was man. Is it like that? Or, was there an evolutionary process, gradually manifesting form after form? There are two theories of creation, and they are not contradictory both are correct. Likewise, both these views held by yogic adepts are correct. It is possible that obstacles may cease gradually, step by step, by the diminution of their intensity, or there can be a sudden burning up of everything and an instantaneous illumination. Individual logic or human understanding cannot probe into these mysteries. We have only to accept what comes, and to do our duty in the form of the practice prescribed. But, one thing is certain that whatever be the way in which the obstacles cease, they must cease, one day or the other.
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We have to cure these reactions of yoga only through yoga. Drugs will not cure these illnesses. If a headache is caused by intense meditation, it cannot be cured by an aspirin tablet, because it is a result of an intense pressure that we have exerted upon the mind, the nerves and the pranas, and that pressure can be lifted up only by another type of meditation, of which we have to gain the knowledge only through the Guru who has initiated us. It is not an easy thing to understand. Sometimes there can be such disturbance of the digestive system that we will have diarrhoea for days or months, and we cannot stop it with medicine. Headache, giddiness and diarrhoea are generally supposed to be the immediate reactions of intense Concentration of the mind. We will feel as if the mountains are revolving when we stand up. This is giddiness, and we cannot easily know why this is happening. Sometimes we may be under the impression that we are practising a wrong type of meditation, due to which these reactions are set up. It is not necessarily so. Our meditation may be correct, and yet the reactions can be there.
When there is a physical condition of the type of painful illness, the practice should not be diminished. Generally, when we have a little fever, we will not be able to sit for meditation; and of course when there is a headache, it is out of the question. But knowing that these are the necessary and expected consequences of practice, one should not become diffident, and the practice of meditation should not be brought down to a lower level, either in quantity or quality, merely because of these obstacles. They will be there for some days, and sometimes even for months, but they will pass away. Just as when we clean a room with a broom there is a rise of dust, and it may look as if we are worsening the condition in the room rather than cleaning it, that is not the truth, because afterwards all of the dust will vanish and the whole room will be clean. Likewise, in the beginning it may look as if there is something worse happening to us than what has occurred earlier, but it is not true. We are getting cleaned up, and a day will come when the storm will cease and we shall be happy.
10.37 - The Golden Bridge, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The recoil from the normal, the rich and lush physico-mental expression of human consciousness and experience has been so radical and complete that it has catapulted us into an opposite extreme of bareness and nudity, at the most into a world of pure signs and symbols of notches and blotches, the disjointed mimics and inarticulate groans of a deaf and dumb man. The process of abstraction has gone so far that it has now been reduced to an absurdity. It has its parallel in the movement that led man away from the world of Maya to the Transcendent featureless Brahman. In either case the reason is that the link that joins the two ends could not be founda living truth that is of the Transcendent, yet denying not, but affirming in a new manner the mayic existence. That is because man till now sought to create from a level of consciousness, by a force of consciousness that is not adequate to the task; for it belongs still to the mental region, to this inferior hemisphere although at present it seems to be the acme and topmost hemisphere in the scale. It is not an extension or intensification of the mind and its capacities that will solve the problem: a radical change in the very nature of the mind, a reversal of the mental consciousnessa turning of it inside out as it were, an opening out and up is needed to discover the true source of the Light. Therefore it has been said that man must transcend himself, find a new status in the other hemisphere. In fact there is a domain, a status of being and consciousness, a master-force which when revealed and made active will remould inevitably and spontaneously human creation and expression as a reality embodying the Highest. It is the world of Idea-Force which Sri Aurobindo has named Supermind: it is beyond the mind, even the highest mind: it is the typal Concentration of the Supreme Consciousness. It is the fulcrum for the Supreme Consciousness to create and express a new formulation of the Truth in the world of matter. The mind, the highest mind, in its attempt to grasp the Supreme Reality is prone to reject, annul and efface the Cosmic Reality. The Supermind has no need to do that. It links the two ends in a supreme and miraculous synthesis negating neither, giving the full value to each, for the two are united, concentrated in its substance. Thus is found the golden bridge uniting earth and heaven.
The physical mind, with its satellite, the human speech, must indeed be rescued from the thraldom of the animal life, the life of the ordinary senses. They should be put under the regimen of the new consciousness, the status of the Idea-Force. The action of that consciousness will create its own norm and pattern adequate for expressing and embodying suprasensuous realities. It will not have to depend upon allegories and parables, symbols and signs seized from ordinary life. What exactly this will be is difficult to say at present. Evidently there is likely to be an intermediary creationa passage leading from the sensuous to the supra-sensuous, the higher not totally rejecting the lower or primitive formula, the lower not altogether englobing and swallowing the higher.
--- Overview of noun concentration
The noun concentration has 7 senses (first 6 from tagged texts)
1. (25) concentration ::: (the strength of a solution; number of molecules of a substance in a given volume)
2. (5) concentration, density, denseness, tightness, compactness ::: (the spatial property of being crowded together)
3. (3) concentration ::: (strengthening the concentration (as of a solute in a mixture) by removing diluting material)
4. (2) concentration ::: (increase in density)
5. (2) concentration, engrossment, absorption, immersion ::: (complete attention; intense mental effort)
6. (1) concentration ::: (bringing together military forces)
7. assiduity, assiduousness, concentration ::: (great and constant diligence and attention)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun concentration
7 senses of concentration
Sense 1
concentration
=> property
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
concentration, density, denseness, tightness, compactness
=> spacing, spatial arrangement
=> placement, arrangement
=> position, spatial relation
=> relation
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
concentration
=> strengthening
=> increase, step-up
=> change of magnitude
=> change
=> action
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
concentration
=> increase
=> change, alteration, modification
=> happening, occurrence, occurrent, natural event
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
concentration, engrossment, absorption, immersion
=> attention
=> faculty, mental faculty, module
=> ability, power
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 6
concentration
=> assembly, assemblage, gathering
=> group action
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 7
assiduity, assiduousness, concentration
=> diligence, industriousness, industry
=> determination, purpose
=> resoluteness, firmness, firmness of purpose, resolve, resolution
=> trait
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun concentration
5 of 7 senses of concentration
Sense 1
concentration
=> titer, titre
=> hydrogen ion concentration
=> molality, molal concentration
=> molarity, molar concentration, M
Sense 3
concentration
=> pervaporation
Sense 4
concentration
=> compaction, compression, concretion, densification
=> rarefaction
Sense 5
concentration, engrossment, absorption, immersion
=> focus, focusing, focussing, focal point, direction, centering
=> specialism
=> study
Sense 7
assiduity, assiduousness, concentration
=> intentness, engrossment
=> singleness
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun concentration
7 senses of concentration
Sense 1
concentration
=> property
Sense 2
concentration, density, denseness, tightness, compactness
=> spacing, spatial arrangement
Sense 3
concentration
=> strengthening
Sense 4
concentration
=> increase
Sense 5
concentration, engrossment, absorption, immersion
=> attention
Sense 6
concentration
=> assembly, assemblage, gathering
Sense 7
assiduity, assiduousness, concentration
=> diligence, industriousness, industry
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun concentration
7 senses of concentration
Sense 1
concentration
-> property
=> actinism
=> isotropy, symmetry
=> anisotropy
=> characteristic, device characteristic
=> connectivity
=> duality, wave-particle duality
=> heredity, genetic endowment
=> age
=> manner, mode, style, way, fashion
=> constitution, composition, physical composition, makeup, make-up
=> consistency, consistence, eubstance, body
=> disposition
=> tactile property, feel
=> optics
=> visual property
=> olfactory property, smell, aroma, odor, odour, scent
=> sound property
=> fullness, mellowness, richness
=> taste property
=> saltiness
=> edibility, edibleness
=> bodily property
=> physical property
=> chemical property
=> sustainability
=> strength
=> concentration
=> weakness
=> temporal property
=> viability
=> spatial property, spatiality
=> magnitude
=> degree, grade, level
=> size
=> hydrophobicity
=> analyticity
=> compositeness
=> primality
=> selectivity
=> vascularity
=> extension
=> solvability, solubility
=> unsolvability, insolubility
Sense 2
concentration, density, denseness, tightness, compactness
-> spacing, spatial arrangement
=> openness
=> distance
=> distribution, dispersion
=> concentration, density, denseness, tightness, compactness
Sense 3
concentration
-> strengthening
=> concentration
Sense 4
concentration
-> increase
=> augmentation
=> concentration
=> explosion
=> jump, leap
=> runup, run-up
=> waxing
Sense 5
concentration, engrossment, absorption, immersion
-> attention
=> concentration, engrossment, absorption, immersion
=> mental note
=> watchfulness, wakefulness, vigilance, alertness
Sense 6
concentration
-> assembly, assemblage, gathering
=> mobilization, mobilisation
=> convocation, calling together
=> meeting, coming together
=> congregation, congregating
=> convention, convening
=> concentration
Sense 7
assiduity, assiduousness, concentration
-> diligence, industriousness, industry
=> assiduity, assiduousness, concentration
=> sedulity, sedulousness
=> studiousness
--- Grep of noun concentration
concentration
concentration camp
concentration gradient
hydrogen ion concentration
molal concentration
molar concentration
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Wikipedia - Nazi concentration camp
Wikipedia - Nazi human experimentation -- Unethical experiments on human subjects by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps
Wikipedia - Nephelometer -- Instrument for measuring the concentration of suspended particulates
Wikipedia - Neutropenia -- Abnormally low concentration of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) in the blood
Wikipedia - Occupational exposure banding -- Process to assign chemicals into categories corresponding to permissible exposure concentrations
Wikipedia - Occupational exposure limit -- Upper limit on the acceptable concentration of a hazardous substance
Wikipedia - Oranienburg concentration camp -- German concentration camp
Wikipedia - Orders of magnitude (molar concentration)
Wikipedia - Osmotic power -- The energy available from the difference in the salt concentration between seawater and river water
Wikipedia - Osthofen concentration camp -- Nazi concentration camp
Wikipedia - Oxygen sensor -- Device for measuring oxygen concentration
Wikipedia - Oxygen toxicity -- Toxic effects of breathing in oxygen at high concentrations
Wikipedia - Oxygen window in diving decompression -- Physiological effect of oxygen metabolism on the total dissolved gas concentration in venous blood
Wikipedia - Phil Lamason -- World War II pilot from New Zealand, Buchenwald concentration camp survivor
Wikipedia - Politische Abteilung -- Department of Nazi concentration camps
Wikipedia - Pressure swing adsorption -- method of gas concentration using selective adsorbtion under pressure
Wikipedia - Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp
Wikipedia - Radon mitigation -- Any process used to reduce radon gas concentrations in the breathing zones of occupied buildings, or radon from water supplies
Wikipedia - Rate equation -- Equation linking reaction rate with concentrations of reactants in a chemical reaction
Wikipedia - Ravensbrck concentration camp
Wikipedia - Ravensbruck concentration camp -- Women's concentration camp in Germany during World War II
Wikipedia - Red-light district -- Urban area with a high concentration of sex-related businesses
Wikipedia - Reed Edwin Peggram -- Concentration camp survivor
Wikipedia - Representative Concentration Pathway -- Projections used in climate change modeling
Wikipedia - Risiera di San Sabba -- Nazi concentration and transit camp for Jews and political prisoners in Italy during World War II
Wikipedia - Rudolf Hoss -- Nazi official; longtime commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp
Wikipedia - Rywka Lipszyc -- Polish concentration teenage camp survivor
Wikipedia - Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Wikipedia - Sea ice concentration -- The area of sea ice relative to the total area at a given point in the ocean
Wikipedia - SereM-DM-^O concentration camp -- Nazi labor and concentration camp for Jews in Slovakia during World War II
Wikipedia - Shapley Supercluster -- Largest concentration of galaxies in our local universe
Wikipedia - Siegfried Lederer's escape from Auschwitz -- 1944 prisoner escape from Auschwitz concentration camp
Wikipedia - Silos camp -- Bosniak-operated concentration camp during the Bosnian War
Wikipedia - Soldau concentration camp -- Nazi concentration camp in Dzialdowo
Wikipedia - Sonderkommando photographs -- Photographs taken at the Auschwitz concentration camp
Wikipedia - Standard drink -- Measure of alcohol consumption depending on the alcohol concentration of the beverage
Wikipedia - Tarnopol Ghetto -- Nazi German concentration camp in occupied Poland during World War II
Wikipedia - The Concentration City -- Short story by J. G. Ballard
Wikipedia - Thermal lance -- Tool that cuts materials by burning through in the presence of high concentration of oxygen
Wikipedia - Thermodynamic activity -- Measure of the effective concentration of a species in a mixture
Wikipedia - Threshold limit value -- Upper limit on the acceptable exposure concentration of a hazardous substance in the workplace
Wikipedia - Titration -- Laboratory method for determining the concentration of an analyte
Wikipedia - Trace element -- Element of low concentration
Wikipedia - Treasure -- Concentration of riches
Wikipedia - Uranium ore -- Economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within the Earth's crust
Wikipedia - Urbanization in Australia -- concentration of Australian population in urban areas
Wikipedia - Vaivara concentration camp -- Nazi concentration camp for Jews in Estonia during World War II
Wikipedia - Warsaw concentration camp -- Nazi concentration camp in Warsaw during World War II
Wikipedia - Wealth concentration
Wikipedia - Wilhelm Dorr (Nazi) -- German SS soldier and concentration camp guard
Wikipedia - Witold Pilecki -- Polish underground resistance soldier, World War II concentration camp resistance leader
Wikipedia - Yodok concentration camp -- Political prison camp in North Korea
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1308957.Concentration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20890478.Ravensbr_ck_Life_and_Death_in_Hitler_s_Concentration_Camp_for_Women
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24587749-the-power-of-concentration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25241895-right-concentration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27524364-right-concentration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27863169-the-power-of-concentration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36717665-the-power-of-concentration---theron-q-dumont-modern-library-classics
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40135803-power-of-concentration-part-three
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42105306-the-power-of-concentration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/553907.Camp_Concentration
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https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Bergen-Belsen_concentration_camp
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Dachau_Concentration_Camp
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_soldiers_mass_grave,_German_war_prisoners_concentration_camp_in_Deblin,_German-occupied_Poland.jpg
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/File:The_Liberation_of_Bergen-belsen_Concentration_Camp,_April_1945_BU4031.jpg
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Mauthausen-Gusen_concentration_camp
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Sachsenhausen_concentration_camp
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/User:CR_-87_3140_FBE#Genocide.2C_concentration_camps.2C_and_slave_labour
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/11_things_for_concentration_to_grow
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Terminology_of_Nazi_concentration_camps
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Concentration_meditation_3_by_Sister_Dipankara
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Concentration_meditation_4_by_Sister_Dipankara
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Halfway_to_concentration_by_Ayya_Khema
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path#Right_concentration
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path#Sam.C4.81dhi:_Mental_Discipline.2C_Concentration.2C_Meditation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Buddhism#Concentration_.E2.80.94_Sam.C4.81dhikkhandha
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Buddhism#Sam.C4.81dhi_.E2.80.94_Concentration
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Right_Concentration
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Wisdom_&_concentration_1_by_Ven._Gavesako
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Wisdom_&_concentration_2_by_Ven._Gavesako
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Wisdom_&_concentration_3_by_Ven._Gavesako
auromere - perception-of-time-changes-with-the-concentration-of-consciousnes
auromere - perception-of-time-changes-with-the-concentration-of-consciousness
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auromere - concentration-on-mothers-photograph
auromere - widen-the-consciousness
selforum - exclusive concentration and
selforum - exclusive concentration
dedroidify.blogspot - japanese-sent-to-american-concentration
wiki.auroville - Concentration
Psychology Wiki - Concentration
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Concentration
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AGameOfConcentration
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Concentration_camps
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Concentration_camp
Classic Concentration (1987 - 1991) - Classic Concentration is the third edition the game of puzzles and prizes which began back in 1958 on NBC's daytime line-up. The original version featured a mechanical board of 30 numbered squares which rotated with the number called (as did the syndicated show of 1973-78); Classic had a computer-ge...
Concentration (1958 - 1979) - Concentration is an American television game show based on the children's memory game of the same name. Matching cards represented prizes that contestants could win. As matching pairs of cards were gradually removed from the board, it would slowly reveal elements of a rebus puzzle that contestants h...
Sophie's Choice(1982) - Everybody, at one point or another in their lives, is forced to make a decision that will put an emotional weight on them for the rest of their lives. Sophie Zawistowski (Meryl Streep), a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, was forced to make one of the most heart-rending and emotionally shatteri...
Bent (1997) ::: 7.2/10 -- NC-17 | 1h 45min | Drama, History, Romance | 26 November 1997 (USA) -- In 1930s Berlin, a gay Jew is sent to a concentration camp under the Nazi regime. Director: Sean Mathias Writers: Martin Sherman (screenplay), Martin Sherman (play)
God on Trial (2008) ::: 7.7/10 -- 1h 26min | Drama, War | TV Movie 9 November 2008 -- Awaiting their inevitable deaths at one of the worst concentration camps, a group of Jews make a rabbinical court to decide whether God has gone against the Holy Covenant and if He is the one guilty for their suffering. Director: Andy De Emmony (as Andy de Emmony) Writer: Frank Cottrell Boyce
I Am David (2003) ::: 7.2/10 -- PG | 1h 30min | Adventure, Drama | 3 December 2004 (USA) -- A twelve-year-old boy escapes from a Bulgarian Communist concentration camp and sets out on a journey to reach Denmark. Director: Paul Feig Writers: Anne Holm (novel), Paul Feig (screenplay)
Sophie's Choice (1982) ::: 7.6/10 -- R | 2h 30min | Drama, Romance | 4 March 1983 (USA) -- Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. Director: Alan J. Pakula Writers:
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) ::: 7.8/10 -- The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (original title) -- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Poster -- Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences. Director: Mark Herman
The Night Porter (1974) ::: 6.7/10 -- Il portiere di notte (original title) -- The Night Porter Poster -- A concentration camp survivor rekindles her sadomasochistic relationship with her lover, a former SS officer - now working as a night porter at a Vienna hotel - but his former Nazi associates begin stalking them. Director: Liliana Cavani
The Odessa File (1974) ::: 7.0/10 -- PG | 2h 10min | Drama, Thriller | 18 October 1974 (USA) -- Following the suicide of an elderly Jewish man, a journalist in possession of the man's diary investigates the alleged sighting of a former S.S. Captain, who commanded a concentration camp during World War II. Director: Ronald Neame Writers:
https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/Concentration
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Casting_Concentration
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Concentration
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Bloodied_Concentration
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Classic_Concentration_(RGN_reruns)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Concentration
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Exorcist's_Concentration
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Concentration_camp
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Age:_Concentration_Training
https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Concentration
https://swfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Right_Concentration
https://valkyriesky.fandom.com/wiki/Concentration
SKET Dance -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 77 eps -- Manga -- Comedy School Shounen -- SKET Dance SKET Dance -- At Kaimei High School there is a special club dedicated to helping others known as the SKET Brigade. The brains of the group is Kazuyoshi "Switch" Usui, a tech-savvy otaku who speaks through speech synthesis software, while the brawn is provided by Hime "Himeko" Onizuka, the hockey stick-wielding girl once known as "Onihime." And last but not least, their leader is Yuusuke "Bossun" Fujisaki, whose latent ability is evoked by his goggles, allowing him to summon the awesome power of extraordinary concentration. -- -- However, most of the school only know them as the club that handles odd jobs. Many of their days are spent in the clubroom slacking off, but when there is something to be done, they give their all to help others—usually in sincere, but unintentionally hilarious, ways. The SKET Brigade do all they can to provide support, kindness, encouragement, and troubleshooting to any students crazy enough to ask for their services. -- -- 189,583 8.24
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cracking_in_concrete_due_to_stress_concentration.jpg
A Game of Concentration
Air pollutant concentrations
Allach concentration camp
Allied airmen at Buchenwald concentration camp
Amersfoort concentration camp
Arbeitsdorf concentration camp
Attention Concentration Test
Auschwitz concentration camp
Autonomous Provincial Concentration
Banjica concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bioconcentration
Boelcke-Kaserne concentration camp
Borgo San Dalmazzo concentration camp
Brain Age: Concentration Training
Breslau-Drrgoy concentration camp
Bretstein concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Camp de concentration d'Argels-sur-Mer
Chongjin concentration camp
Chungsan concentration camp
Columbia concentration camp
Concentration
Concentration (British game show)
Concentration Camps Inspectorate
Concentration (card game)
Concentration for the Liberation of Aruba
Concentration (game show)
Concentration inequality
Concentration of land ownership
Concentration of measure
Concentration of media ownership
Concentration of People's Forces
Concentration ratio
Crime concentration
Critical micelle concentration
Croatian Association of Prisoners in Serbian Concentration Camps
Crveni Krst concentration camp
Dachau concentration camp
Davidovka concentration camp
Defect concentration diagram
Eintrachthtte concentration camp
Equivalent concentration
Esterwegen concentration camp
Estimated maximum possible concentration
Falstad concentration camp
Female guards in Nazi concentration camps
Flossenbrg concentration camp
Force concentration
Forced labor in Nazi concentration camps
Francoist concentration camps
Free-air concentration enrichment
German Concentration Camps Factual Survey
Gross-Rosen concentration camp
Gusen concentration camp
Half-maximal concentration
Herzogenbusch concentration camp
Hinzert concentration camp
Hodonin concentration camp
Hoeryong concentration camp
Hwasong concentration camp
Identification of inmates in German concentration camps
Italian concentration camps in Libya
Jadovno concentration camp
Jgala concentration camp
Janowska concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp
Jaworzno concentration camp
Jon Cougar Concentration Camp
Jungfernhof concentration camp
Kaiserwald concentration camp
Kauen concentration camp
Kaufering concentration camp complex
Kemna concentration camp
Krakw-Paszw concentration camp
Kruica concentration camp
Kvnangen concentration camp
Lethal concentration low
Lety concentration camp
Lichtenburg concentration camp
Limiting oxygen concentration
List of concentration and internment camps
List of Italian concentration camps
List of most-polluted cities by particulate matter concentration
List of Nazi concentration camps
List of "return unwanted" concentration camp prisoners
Lobor concentration camp
Luftwaffe guards at concentration camps
Majdanek concentration camp
Market concentration
Mass concentration
Mass concentration (astronomy)
Mass concentration (chemistry)
Mauthausen concentration camp
Maximum acceptable toxicant concentration
Mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration
Measured environmental concentration
Measures of pollutant concentration
Minimum alveolar concentration
Minimum bactericidal concentration
Minimum inhibitory concentration
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
Molar concentration
Monigo concentration camp
Monowitz concentration camp
Mhldorf concentration camp complex
Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp
Nazi concentration camp badge
Nazi concentration camp commandant
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps in Norway
Neuengamme concentration camp
Neurohlau concentration camp
Niederhagen concentration camp
Oberer Kuhberg concentration camp
Ohrdruf concentration camp
Onsong concentration camp
Oranienburg concentration camp
Osmotic concentration
Osthofen concentration camp
Pechora concentration camp
Poniatowa concentration camp
Potulice concentration camp
Predicted environmental concentration
Predicted no-effect concentration
Preferential concentration
Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp
Pukchang concentration camp
Rab concentration camp
Ravensbrck concentration camp
Representative Concentration Pathway
Ryongdam concentration camp
Sachsenburg concentration camp
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sajmite concentration camp
Sea ice concentration
Second Boer War concentration camps
Sere concentration camp
ShapleySawyer Concentration Class
Shark Island concentration camp
Sisak children's concentration camp
Soldau concentration camp
Soluch concentration camp
Sonnenburg concentration camp
SS command of Auschwitz concentration camp
Stara Gradika concentration camp
St. Pantaleon-Weyer concentration camp
Stress concentration
Stutthof concentration camp
Sunghori concentration camp
ragamasamdhistra, The Concentration of Heroic Progress
Syrets concentration camp
Taehung concentration camp
Tanchon concentration camp
The Concentration City
Time of concentration
Topovske upe concentration camp
Torrens Island Concentration Camp
Transport of concentration camp inmates to Tyrol
Trawniki concentration camp
Vaivara concentration camp
Varniai concentration camp
Warsaw concentration camp
Wbbelin concentration camp
Yodok concentration camp
Zasaw concentration camp
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