WHEN the student is well practised in concentration, so that he can put on the mood of it like a garment, let him or her proceed to meditation and contemplation.

In all our acting and thinking we shuttle to and fro between two poles of our being — advancing without and retreating within, in both of which we become more and more alive, until we are sufficiently mature to unite the two.

Advancing without. I may look at a flower casually as I pass. I have not been properly aware of its qualities, but only that there is a flower there. But I could pause attentively, and say:

“That yellow color is really nice. How yellow it is! And the shape is beautiful, as the petal turns this way, then that way! And the scent is delicious! And the texture — it is heavenly!”

When I thus pause I bring more of myself to the flower. In this moment I am wedded to the flower. We live together, without reservations. I give myself to the flower, and I believe that in some unseen way the life in the flower is also enhanced. At all events I am enhanced, to a point of great happiness. Let me enjoy this moment of rich living. Let me not lose any of it, even by thinking, “What can I do to preserve this moment?” I need not fear to give myself, for I cannot give myself away.

In thus bringing more of myself to the flower, I am more awake and alive than I was.

But there is death — the moment dies, the pause dies, the flower dies.

Retreating within. Still, I do not die. In a quiet place in my house, and in a quieter place in my mind and heart, the moment lives for ever. I recall it. “A pale simulacrum of the moment”, someone may say. Not so. Pale simulacra result from pale living. Anyhow, now pause, eyes closed, and take the memory of that flower within, into the depths of your thought. Say to yourself, “Here I am, a mind. Alas, a flat, dull and seemingly unprofitable mind”. Perhaps; but not so, if you say, “Come in, little flower, into my lonely mind”. And you meditate with the flower. And soon you will be worshipping the flower and saying, “Wonderful flower, holy flower — forgive me, forgive me, my pride and contumely”. And the flower will forgive, and there will be love and ecstasy. That is meditation.

Our life is the same at both poles. By bringing out the whole of myself to meet the world my life is enhanced. By taking that realest experience within, it is still further enhanced. And just as the outer experience gives a vividness to be carried into the meditation, so does the meditation give new power to future experience. After the meditation I may meet the flower again, and it will be to me more a flower than it was before — in color, form, scent and everything.

How I am made strong by this shuttle action of full living!

It is a shuttle action that will produce full cloth, for soon my meditation-mood will be present while I am advancing without and the object-experience will be clear and strong when I am retreating within.

The whole of life is of this kind and follows this process, but ordinarily it is carried on without much attention. The world seems designed for this purpose. We make things — and in so doing concentrate upon them; and then they react upon us. As we go through life, it is as though we were children making toys for ourselves, playing with them awhile, and then turning to something else. The toy is a limitation to the child, inasmuch as it engrosses the attention in the small field of the object and out of the wider and more diffuse field of indefinite attention.

Even the body and the senses conduce to the same end, shutting out most of the world and admitting only a little of it, but that little is clear and strong, somewhat as in a camera a distant picture is formed upon the plate or film because the small hole in front admits only a limited quantity of light rays. I have often thought that if ordinary men could suddenly be endowed with super-physical senses, as they sometimes wish, they would not benefit thereby, but would be overwhelmed by the variety and volume of new experience. There would not be enrichment of mind, but only worse confusion than already is, as if in the round of daily action we were to see all the operations of the interior of the body. The consciousness of the average man is sufficiently diffused and indefinite; let him practice concentration so as to make it clearer and stronger, and then meditation so as to expand that clearer, stronger, consciousness over a larger field. Let him become master of himself in the small region where he is ruler, and then the time will be ripe for him to have a more expanded life.

Returning to meditation, notice that it is preceded always by concentration, that concentration produces a very wide-awake consciousness, consciousness at its best, and that in meditation this wide-awakeness is preserved and applied to full reflection upon a chosen subject. Meditation is thus the opposite of going to sleep. It is the very completion of thought upon that subject. Sleep, mind-wandering, day-dreaming, drift, dullness and disorder are all absent in meditation. [Patanjali, the ancient exponent of meditation, whose aphorisms are acknowledged to this day all over India to be the most informative ever written on the subject, gave the whole process as threefold - concentration, followed by meditation, passing on to contemplation. His definitions of concentration and meditation are (I) Concentration is the binding of the mind to one place, and (2) Meditation is continued mental effort there. This is my own translation, which is very literal.