WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Concentration

23 December 1953

Sometimes we look fixedly at a point; one forgets everything at that moment and if there is a noise one is disturbed. What is this state?

Concentration! It is exactly the very principle of concentration. Can you do it spontaneously?

Yes, many times.

Indeed, that's very good!

Yes, Sweet Mother, but what I thought at that moment I cannot capture.

Ah!... If you are suddenly pulled out from it, thought vanishes?

Yes.

That's because you enter a state of consciousness which is different from your ordinary state of consciousness and probably the link between the two is not established very well. That takes time. It is as though one had to build a bridge. Otherwise one takes a sudden jump to one side or the other, and then in jumping one forgets what was there. One leaves behind the experience one had. But if the thing is done methodically, that is, if every day one keeps a particular time for this, and meditates for ten or fifteen minutes in order to establish a contact between that and the outer life, well, after some time one succeeds and then one remembers, and this becomes very useful. It is very useful. And [new p. 399]if your power of concentration is complete, then there is [old p. 400]not a problem you cannot solve--I don't mean arithmetic problems (laughter), I mean problems about leading one's life, about decisions to be taken, psychological problems which need solving. There is not one that can resist this power of concentration.

And in fact it is very convenient to take a point: one looks steadily at the point, and so steadily that at a certain moment one becomes the point. One is no longer somebody looking at the point; one is the point. And then, if you continue with sufficient strength and quietness, without anything disturbing you, you may suddenly find yourself before a door which opens and you pass to the other side. And then you have the revelation.

Since when have you been doing this? This has always happened? Or is it recent?

I don't know.

You don't know? Perhaps you were doing it and were not aware of it!

I didn't know.

But you don't do it deliberately? It just comes upon you, takes hold of you?

Yes.

Ah! this is perhaps also one of the reasons why you don't remember.

(Another child) Sweet Mother, when one passes into the region of knowledge, is it necessary to pass through the intermediary regions?

Intermediary? But you see, if one does it by a methodical discipline, generally one is obliged to pass from one plane to an [old p. 401] other: [new p. 400]one wakes up in a particular plane, and then there one enters a sort of sleep and wakes up in another plane, and so on. And if one does it this way, then one remembers, for one does it with one's conscious will and witnesses the working--these movements for quietening the being, precisely, in order to enter somewhere and see what is happening there, and the movement of taking notes of what is happening and preparing oneself for another higher opening, all this establishes conscious contact between the different parts of the being, and then one can have experiences without forgetting anything, and even at will.