| Attention and Concentration |
|
Once you are able to abstract yourself, you can practice reinforcing the attention and its concentration in order to do the meditation, or, the prolonged concentration on a single idea.
When one follows the development of a single idea, excluding all the others, then we have the perfect or concentrated attention. The concentration is true when one is able to keep the mind fixed for twelve seconds on the object of meditation, without other ideas intruding. For the most part, people have imperfect attention because the course of their idea is pursued distractedly, interposing other ideas, with consequent tiredness, poor effectiveness and lack of enjoyment. The attention can be defective for many reasons: organic weakness, nervous and muscular tension, lack of training, incorrect education of the attention, and, very often, little interest in what is being carried out; or, due to an excessive fear or a desire which deviates the thought onto another object. Attention might also be harmful, but, in such a case, who thinks about a reading, some explanation or argument is simultaneously conscious of a scruple, a worry, a sense of boredom. This kind of attention brings psychic tiredness, ideas imprint themselves poorly, shallowly, and are quickly forgotten. The men and women of genius, the inventors, artists, heroes, saints, are usually concentrated and silent. They have a good and perfect attention. Haste in the attention produces tiredness, mental strain and depression. Therefore, you must train yourself. Focalized attention is called concentration and brings calm to the mind, all oscillation and fluctuation stops, and the mind gathers itself in a single point, excluding every other idea. It is the self-identification of the mind with the subject. For the most part, one moves from the sensible to the super-sensible, from the coarse to the subtle, first of all choosing some organ or center of the body as an object. excerpt from "THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ATTENTION AND OF MENTAL CONCENTRATION" in the 9th Booklet |