Concentration and Meditation

In the Sivananda method of teaching yoga, which was taken from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, we were taught the “Eight Limbs of Raja Yoga”.

These are, in order:
Yamas
Niyamas
Asanas
Pranayama
Pratyahara
Dharana
Dhyana
Samadhi

 

I’ll not go into them all, as you can find their meanings yourself and I want to focus on Dharana at the moment. I’m using my former teacher Swami Vishnudevananda’s description of the word’s meaning as “Progression in mental control or concentration” from his book “The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga”.

What came to mind recently was that this step of concentration seems to get all too little attention compared to Dhyana [Meditation] though it is in the sequence as a vital step in the path towards enlightenment [Samadhi].

I do want to make a distinction between what I consider meditation and “mindfulness”, which is sometimes referred to as “mindfulness meditation” though in my view is not meditation at all. The first time I was told about mindfulness, a couple of decades or more ago, it was described to me as “Doing what you are doing while you are doing it.” That infers active concentration and thus, in my view, points towards dharana not meditation. But I also think that “Doing what you’re doing while you are doing it” though intentional, is not the same as a creative act. Both require concentration but one is generative and the other is not.

It seems to me that the forward focusing nature of concentration is an aspect of Becoming, the creative aspect of the universe. It is what we are endowed with by consciousness both to explore and then to manifest, through choice, the next most perfect or beautiful experiences that we would like to enjoy. It does make sense that meditation is a very useful way to extricate ourselves from this ancient concentrated, creative flow that we have become wrapped up in by trying to perfect our lives. But what meditation’s extrication also provides is the possibility of then re-engaging in Becoming’s flow by consciously making choices from the quieter, more expansive perspectives that a quiet mind evokes. In my view this is not solely for the purpose of assisting others in extracting themselves from this world of “suffering”. I do not think that we were meant to use Concentration and Meditation to permanently extricate ourselves and others from Becoming, as the yogis have taught. Though there is suffering in the world, creating and experiencing beauty seems to me our primary purpose here, not avoiding suffering.

I wrote an essay about some of the differences between mindfulness and a space of meditation in my book, which has not been posted on this Blog.  In part, it points to experiential differences and similarities that I have observed in certain traits of Being and Becoming, which will be useful here in seeing the impacts of concentration and meditation. It points to other experiences too but I’m putting it here in its entirety anyway.

MINDFULNESS AND MINDLESSNESS

 Here I’m going to create a distinction between some types of attention. They are very different but have some interestingly similar traits.

The Witness state is a state of mindlessness, in fact a state solely of witnessing. There is no thinking there, no frequencies, no mind, nothing of any kind. Distinctions are available just outside the threshold of this place, but not within. One thing that is very clear is that there is no Justin there, nor anything or anyone else. It is assumed, upon exiting, that time has passed, but there is no knowing how much.

Then there is the immersion in pleasure or grace – appreciating or being appreciated, which I’ve described as the downward flow of particles. Immersion in this experience also tends to be mindless. The more one lets go into the flow, the more pleasure/bliss there is but the less self-awareness there is. Any “Oh my god this is good” seems to be expressed after being completely “lost” in the experience. Identity tends to disappear in that flow of pleasure, though it may be very brief. When lying down on the grass to enjoy a sunny spring day, sleep often lies on the distant side of that pleasure. Sleep is an energetic outreach in the same direction as grace – tapping up and allowing in – and though it is somewhat different in feel, I think they are related.

I see Mindfulness as clearly different than the two outlined above. How many things can you be attentive to at one time? Let’s say you are in a restaurant eating a hot egg roll. If you intend to be “mindful” you could pay attention to every way in which your tongue moves the food around to dissipate the heat, what the teeth are coming into contact with, the sounds of chewing something crunchy, the consistency of the filling or the shell, or the flavors that most jump out at you or the more subtle ones. You could just pay attention to one portion of the shell at the fold, which is particularly hard. What does it mean to be mindful? As with frequencies, the possibilities are immense. Every moment of life can be experienced in an infinite number of ways, and it is all a matter of where your focus of attention is. So being mindful appears to be a choice of where to put one’s full attention. If you are fully engaged on any one thing, like perhaps the sound of chewing in this case, being deliberately mindful can silence the mind to a great degree. It is full attention on one particular thing. Keeping it focused there, however, will typically require continuous intent.

I once had an experience where I was so lost in a project that over 5 hours had gone by in what seemed more like 2. I actually assumed that the clock in the room had gotten screwed up somehow, so I went downstairs to find out the “real” time. The moment I realized the actual time, it occurred to me that being fully involved in a creative act – the purview of Becoming – there was a loss of identity and a time dilation. It was different from the time dilation of Witnessing, in that it was full engagement rather than full detachment. I will note here that it also appears different from the full attention to the eggroll above. In that case, though initially consciously attentive, the act is pleasure seeking (appreciating), rather than creative. In my experience, creativity has a higher flow velocity than pleasure seeking. It also requires a greater degree of effort, of intent – ongoing choosing at some level transmitted through to this present moment.

On two occasions I have awoken in the night in a state very different from any other. I experience my “self” as a tight ball of intensity, a mind over-full. It felt as if all frequencies were so compacted that their condensed state allowed for no movement at all. It was pure potential waiting for a choice. There was no “outside” of me. My normal experience of frequencies is that they are distinct from my perceptions of them and they are just passing by. I can, in a way, experience them on the outside, like wind, as they are transiting through. In this particular experience, there was “nothing” out there, as I could sense no “out there”. I was enclosed but not by anything. Though my thought process did exist, it was very slow. I remember wondering if this is what it was like at the beginning, before the Big Bang. It was empty, nearly silent but not completely so. There was no impetus to act in any way – which later made me wonder where the impulse to choose comes from. There was nothing to choose from because the compaction of energy was such that there was no movement from which to discern any boundary. There was nothing distinct to choose. Yet, I do recall choosing to fall asleep again and I remembered all of it extremely clearly when I awoke in the morning. The rate and feel of thought in this space was similar to the flow rate that I remembered – after the fact – in the creative endeavor noted above. There was active, deliberative thinking and assessing going on, but just no creative action in these two nighttime cases.

What I’m pointing out in these experiences is that it seems that when full immersion occurs – full Becoming, full appreciating or full observation – they have attributes of mind quieting and time dilation. In each case, it can only be described afterwards and there is no experience of identity for some period of time.My reason for addressing this now is that over the past few months I have become aware that my attention has clearly shifted away from a slight preference towards the quiet of meditation, to now tilting towards the more active aspect of this duo, concentration, which is manifesting as clear, quiet and focused attentiveness.

 

I am wondering if the difference is only one of direction. Perhaps, on some deep level, a natural oscillation of passive to active, of Being to Becoming has occurred and I am experiencing its expression. Energetic oscillations occur at a seemingly infinite number of gradations and reflect the harmonies of the universe. Those with the longest wavelengths will naturally shift over greater timespans and be more subtle, and thus less perceptible. What has occurred to me is that perhaps the quiet aspects of concentration and meditation arise from a common source – reflected in their common features of time dilation and loss of identity – and that their subtle perturbations become more closely aligned with each other and less distinct the more my experiences reach back towards their subtle origins.

It seems at this moment that as these most subtle sensings continue arising over time, their natural back-and-forth flow will always beckon us to immerse ourselves in the expanse of consciousness and then to share our discoveries and manifest their expressions here in the physical environment. The Enlightenment of the yogis will never be the end of the road. We will inevitably be called again and again to manifest our imaginings of the beautiful as long as we reside in this place.