The Ultimate Focus of Concentration

The genius of the Rishis of ancient India was their ability to focus on the essential core of knowledge, will and existence. They reminded us that we can obtain many forms and types of knowledge, but each of these is but a fragment, an isolated fact or event, if we have not identified that central Knowledge which, being known, all is known. Similarly, when we focus our will on an aim, it should be to reach that central status that represents the core of our existence. Young Bhrigu, in the Taittiriya Upanishad, asks his father and preceptor to teach him the Eternal. The reply is illustrative: “Seek thou to know that from which these creatures are born, whereby being born they live and to which they go hence and enter again; for that is the Eternal.”

The Kena Upanishad provides an extensive exposition of this insight: “That which is unexpressed by the word, that by which the word is expressed, know That to be the Brahman and not this which men follow after here. That which thinks not by the mind, that by which the mind is thought, know That to be the Brahman and not this which men follow after here. … ” [Sri Aurobindo’s translation]

Concentration can be focused on any phenomenal result in the world, but it finds its highest use in withdrawing focus from the outer things and events and turning its attention to the essential, core Reality.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “It is by the thought that we dissipate ourselves in the phenomenal; it is by the gathering back of the thought into itself that we must draw ourselves back into the real. Concentration has three powers by which this aim can be effected. By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fears, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter IV Concentration, pp. 44-45