Dharana – Mental Concentration
The mind is similar to a monkey: the more one wants to calm his mind down using force, the more it will refuse to comply, and will skip with even more agitation from one thought to another.
Mental concentration can be described as “do not act”. Zen adepts say it is “to simply stay” (Zazen).
A perfect state of mental concentration means the entire potential of attention is focused upon the chosen object, without force nor mental tension. This process is similar to the phenomenon of sunlight focusing through magnifying lenses: the power of the sunrays increase enormously compared to the normal dispersed rays. If the light is perfectly focused but only for a short period, the results are insignificant, because the focalisation should be maintianed for a certain length of time in order to have observable results (for instance, creating fire on a piece of wood). Similarly, Dharana should be maintained for a certain period of time to allow the process of resonance with the corresponding cosmic energies, the transfer of these energies into one’s being, and to learn about the object of concentration.
The human mind constantly receives information from the exterior world through the five gates of the senses: smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. Out of all this information, the mind has the capacity to select only those that are important at that moment of time. This selection is done by focusing the attention on particular information and ignoring those that are less important. The more the attention is focused on a certain sense, the greater the quantity of information received through it. In this case the volume of information received from other senses is lessened or even ignored.
A special characteristic of the human mind is its capability to focus attention on the inner world of feelings, thoughts and ideas. Moreover, the mind can be focused on itself – this being of real importance, because this creates the possibility for mental control. This feature of the mind to modify the orientation of conscious attention by power of the will represents the main mechanism for mental concentration.
To concentrate means to unify everything into a centre; to bring together; to focus. Through mental concentration – Dharana – the mind is focused on a single goal for a period of time, without jumping from one object to another . The opposite of concentration is dispersion, scattering. In this case, the uncontrolled mind jumps from one object to another, without fixing on anything. Unfortunately, this is the mental condition of the majority of people nowadays. When it perceives an exterior object, the mind takes the form of that object. Thus, it represents a first aspect called vritti. In its quality of vritti, the mind is the representation of the exterior object. The physical object represents the “coarse” object and the mental impression it creates is the “subtle” object. Besides the perceived object, there is also another aspect of the mind that perceives. Thus, there are two important aspects in the process of concentration: vritti, the object to be known, and the experts, who know what they perceive.
Dharana is translated as “to control (to stop) the mind”. The ancient wisdom tradition considers the mind complying with fixed laws, and is only a continuous flux of mental patterns (vritti-s). This succession of thoughts has an emotional substrata, consistently accompanied by physiological responses. In reality, mind means movement. It is like the wind: wind appears when the air starts to move; when this movement stops, the air is still there but the wind has disappeared. The mental substance that remains after the mental phenomena (vritti) are stopped is called “chitta”. Once thought is stopped, the mind disappears and there is the non-mind state, a state characterised by the highest degree of spiritual creativity and intuition.
Patanjali defined yoga as: “Yoga citta vritti nirodha” (Yoga Sutra), which means: “Yoga is the gradual stopping (nirodha) of mental patterns (vritti) of chitta”. This sutra contains the essence of the entire science of Yoga and the secret of mental concentration.
Ignorance and prejudice prevent people believing they can be successful in training their mind. But they should not let themselves be fooled! Every person has the capacity to concentrate, and very profoundly sometimes, when there is an object of great interest. The question is whether this type of concentration has anything to do with the authentic practice of concentration in Yoga. Even if it can add to the knowledge about the real state of mental concentration, this is still not the issue in Yoga.
Dharana; voluntary concentration, is the capacity to focus through will power, even if the object does not naturally attract attention; for an indefinite time.
It is not advisable to force the mind to concentrate; this is the main rule during training. The mind is like a monkey, such that the more one wants to calm it, the more it jumps from one thing to another. To prevent this phenomenon, one should start by focusing the mind on a well defined object.Then when the mind gets the tendency to jump to another thought, one should bring it back with patience and calmness, with humour and compassion for one”s lack of inner discipline. If due to this continuous mental balancing one gets in a nervous state, this will only increase the mind’s tendency towards dispersion.
Mental concentration – Dharana – is a method that begins the process of harmonizing with the universal subtle energies whose visible manifestation is the object of concentration. Do not try to accelerate this process, but rather let things happen. In this situation, knowledge comes from the object to the subject.
