The ageless tradition of wisdom teaches that in order to enter the state of meditation, certain definite steps are to be followed. Nobody can enter meditation without passing through these steps. The steps are:
� Dharana - mental concentration
� Dhyana - meditation
� Samadhi ? blissful identification
In the Western Tradition, these three stages are called ?consideratio? ("considering"), ?contemplatio? ("contemplation") and ?raptus? ("rapture").
Each step, when mastered, naturally leads to the following step.
Dharana - mental concentration
The mind can choose
The human mind continuously receives information about the outer world through the five "gates" of the senses: smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. Among the data received through a certain sense, the mind can select only those that are of interest at a given time. This selection is realized through focusing the attention upon that particular data and ignoring the other unimportant data.
The more the attention is focused upon a certain sense, the more the amount of information received through that sense increases and the information coming from other senses becomes ?less important? and can even be completely ignored by the mind.
A special characteristic of the human mind is the capacity of focusing the attention toward the inner world of feelings, thoughts and ideas. More than that, the human mind can be focused even upon itself -- this fact is of paramount importance, because it creates the possibility of controlling the mind.
This faculty of the human mind to modify at will the orientation of the conscious attention is the basic mechanism of mental concentration (dharana).
Defining the concept
"To concentrate" means to reunite into a center, to gather, to focus. Mental concentration (dharana) means to focus the mind upon a unique object without allowing it (the mind) to jump to another object for a determined period of time. The opposite of concentration is dispersion, scattering. In this case, the mind jumps uncontrolled from one object to another fixing itself to nothing. Unfortunately, this is the mental condition of most people nowadays.
The yoga theory of perception
When an outer object (artha) is perceived, the mind ?takes the shape? of that object. This is called a vritti.
The mind as vritti is thus an inner representation of the outer object. The initial object is called the ?gross object? and the mental impression is the ?subtle object?. But besides the object, there is an aspect of the mind which perceives.
It follows that the mind has two aspects: vritti (the cognized) and the perceiver (the cognizer).
Because the mind is thus ?transformed? into the shape of the object perceived, the mind which meditates on a Deity, for example, is, at length, through continued concentration, transformed into the likeness of that Deity, becomes as pure and powerful as the Deity. This is a fundamental principle of worship.
Mind is movement
"Dharana" means "holding the mind." The Ageless Wisdom considers that "the mind", as we know it, is just a perpetual flow, according to definite laws, of psychic patterns (vritti-s). The train of psychic patterns has an undercurrent of emotions, doubled by a consequent physiological responses.
Actually, the mind is movement. Mind is like the wind: the wind is air movement; when this movement stops, the air is still there, but the wind disappeared. The mental-stuff that remains after the psychic patterns (vritti-s) have been stopped is called citta. When the mental patterns (vritti-s) are stopped, the mind disappears: we enter the no-mind state. No-Mind (which actually means ?beyond the mind?) is the state of highest creativity and spiritual intuition.
Patanjali defined yoga as follows: yoga [is] citta vritti nirodha.
Yoga Sutra, I, 1
That is, yoga is the gradual stoppage (nirodha) of the vritti-s (mental patterns) of citta.
This sutra contains the essence of the whole yoga Science and the secret of mental concentration.
Maybe ignorance and prejudices make you believe that you cannot concentrate your mind. This is not true! Everybody can concentrate, even deeply, upon an object that is highly interesting for that person. The question is: is this type of concentration the yoga concentration? Even though it can give you helpful hints about the real state of dharana (mental concentration), this is not what yoga understands by concentration
.
Intentional focusing
Dharana means to be able to focus at will the mind and to maintain it focused for long periods of time upon any object, even if this object does not spontaneously catch our curiosity.
Don't force it!
For training yourself in dharana, the most important rule is: do not force the mind to stay focused. The mind is like a crazy monkey: the more you try to calm it by force and to make it stay on a definite place, the more it will refuse to do that, doing exactly the opposite: jumping even more crazily form one place to another. Therefore start focusing the mind very softly upon the chosen object and when it jumps to another object just bring it back calmly and patiently, with humor and compassion at your lack of discipline. If you get angry about this continuous mental jumping, this will only increase the mind's tendency to disperse.
