3rd PART

"MEDITATION"

 

CHAPTER II

"MENTAL COMPONENTS"

To work the mental, it is necessary to know the mental components, the laws that govern the thought and the functions of the intelligence.

We will begin by the components that are: attention, observation, concentration and memory. They are known elements. The novelty is to notice how much they were not trained so that they were developed. The more the civilization went on organizing in groupings distanced of the life natural, more untrained went being those factors.

1. Attention

- It is the capacity to select a stimulus in the middle of many others.

The attention demands three conditions:

a) She needs a sensorial incentive;

b) That incentive needs to have a condition of novelty. Incentives that repeat frequently tend to annul the intensity of the answer. Objects that stay for a long time in the same position don't stimulate the attention anymore. For instance, a picture in certain place of the wall, after certain time, is not more noticed. If it be changed of place, or taken out, the attention accuses. It is as the boy shepherd's history, who was always screaming, as a joke, that a wolf was attacking him and people started not hearing him anymore until that, one day, the wolf really appeared and nobody reacted to help him. The novelty is necessary not only in the mental field, but in the emotional also. Not to leave the monotony invades your daily life, your relationships; to use the creativity to break the routines.

c) Motivation. It is necessary that there is an emotional gratification. The object of the attention needs to satisfy, somehow, the individual's emotional needs. It is for that reason that the man becomes attentive, effortlessly, when there are emotional throws; this is the reason of the gossip to have so much prestige, to be so gratifying; that is why the soap opera is so popular and the soccer is so involving. However, before subjects that demand mental activity, it is common to the person feel sleepiness, not to get to maintain the attention, to disperse, to distract and even sleepy. When the man becomes aware of the need of those incentives for the awaken of his attention, he ends up concluding that, to take off the largest possible advantage of that mental component, he needs to pass to drive his attention through the Will, in a conscious way, even if there are not external incentives; to try to read with attention and in a concentrated way, forming mental images of the text; to visualize the written message. To be attentive to the events that surrounds you.

When hearing a speaker, for instance, to accompany the ideas even if the subject is monotonous, even if the speaker says absurd things. The mind must have capacity to accompany and to go executing a critical analysis.

Training:

 - Amid the tumult of the city to try to hear the song of a bird, to identify a noise among others.

 - To put a series of objects or to ask that someone put them in any place, covered by a cloth; to lift the cover, to look for one minute and being capable to describe the sequence and the physical aspect of each object.

 - To describe engravings.

 - To be in the here and now. The human being has difficulty of putting himself in the present. It seems that there is a generalized state of dissatisfaction and anxiety that makes him to look for the subsequent moment, or to fix his mind in some previous one. It seems that there is a hurry of finishing the current activity to arrive to the next one. In order to bring for the current moment, to practice the exercise of the tensions: to verify which are the tensions that we are maintaining in our body; to verify which sensations are dominating our psyche; to detect them and to let them to dilute, together with a relaxation of the spine.

2. Observation

- It depends on the capacity of attention. They are conjugated stages. It is, actually, a prolongation of the attention. It is the process that follows to awaken of the attention. It is the capacity to see details of the things, like transforming the perception in a camera.

Training:

- To try to describe details of the places where you were.

- To try to describe the physical aspect of those that you knew, the clothes that they used etc.

3. Concentration

 - Capacity to stay inside of a same mental process without deviating. We only concentrate when we create images, when we feel the ideas and, therefore, when we participate in the process. We cannot disconnect these three steps. In the Yoga of Patanjali it is the sixth step, Dhyana, when there is participation of that who meditates in the object of his meditation. In the complete mental process there is a lot of application of the emotion, in other words, of the emotional body, just as in the culmination of the Yoga that is Samadhi, when that who meditates integrates in the object of his meditation. If we observe, the context trains the lack of concentration. TV and the Radio, with avalanches of information without deepness, they are examples.

Training:

- To read visualizing; to accompany the ideas with images.

- To take difficult books, as science, philosophy, history and to summarize each paragraph.

- To practice Yoga.

- To try to elaborate a figure mentally.

- To prepare a class and, if possible, to give that class.

- To catch a piece of white cardboard, to cut a circle of 1 centimeter of diameter approximately, to put that cardboard circle at the distance of some 30 centimeters of the eyes, on the table in front of which is seating, to direct the view on that circle and to throw all the force of the conscience on the same, being abstracted completely of any other object or thought; all the senses should be placed on that small disk.

Observation: It is convenient to register a curious fact in relation to these components.

A type of scatterbrained people exists, whose capacity of attention doesn't pass for the observation and, still much less, for the concentration. They see everything, they accompany everything, they are capable to repeat everything, but they don't continue in the mental process.

If we had been trained we would have good level of mental operation today. But we were not. The current life is a lot full of facilities and the traditional education presents the concepts chewed, ignoring the processes. One of the great concerns of the active schools, renewed, is exactly the one of training the mental components. The most modern educators, like Montessori, Decroly, Dienes, Piaget, offer immense training. It is teaching though the existence, by the discovery of the knowledge. Only later the tables are elaborated as the one of the table, the one of the square and of the cube of the numbers etc.

4. Memory

- It is culmination of the process. If I don't have my attention wakened up, if I don't observe to catch the details, if I don't concentrate on a sequence until obtaining all the data, I don't get to keep in the memory. Usually, we forget what we hear with carelessness, without participation and also of things that don't interest or that displease and that we try to bury in the unconscious. However, it happens, sometimes, that the person wants to render attention, she is even interested, but doesn't get to memorize for the lack of training. Along the life we begin to think that the memory is worsening, being defective. It happens that the human memory is perfect. She registers everything that saw, that heard, that spoke, that read, since the birth and it never loses the energy unless there is a problem physical or organic. The impressions are stocked in the bank of the memory. They never fade. The recording is photographic as well proved. A person, under hypnosis, would take hours only to tell details of a small trip between the house and the office. There were already experiences made with people that entered in an office, just opening the door, looking and leaving; under hypnosis, they described everything, inclusive saying size, color, format of the things. The subconscious registers independently that we have taken conscience. However, we have a great accumulation of frustrations for forgetfulness - names, addresses, exam matter, where we left certain object etc. We don't get to evoke because we didn't use the mental factors conveniently. Not passing through the stages, it hinders the evocation. A proof of our lack of attention and concentration is the fact, for instance, of looking several times the number of a new telephone that we are going to dial, or to look several times for the clock in order to verify which hour it is. We open every day, for several times, the cupboard of the bathroom. Will it be that we would be capable to describe with details?

It happens that, for we not act in a conscious way, using attention, observation, concentration, which demand certain effort, we throw the whole fault for the memory and we go on conditioning our mechanism of memory for not reacting, emitting, inclusive, negative creative suggestions: I forgot; I cannot remember; I never get to remind names; if you don't remember, I forget; I will tie string in the finger etc. The person can be organized for organization, not for distrusting of the memory. The effective idea that the memory decline with the age helps to create insecurity that is transmitted for the subconscious. When the oldest person begins forgetting, exactly because she trained for more time in a wrong way, therefore, the lack of memory is better trained, the person begins feeding great anguish: I am at the end, sclerosis etc. It happens that when younger they also forgot but they didn't worry. I know people that started to have memory much better when older than when young, because they learned how to work with her.

Training:

- Never to emit negative creative suggestion but only the positive ones. To think: I always know; I simply remember when it is necessary; I remember of everything that is necessary; I have perfect memory and all of the information are at my disposition when I will need.

- To maintain an opened communication with the memory, through a mental peacefulness; to remind the introduced people's name, to repeat the name and to associate with the person, attentively.

The memory is not properly in the brain as we think, in spite of the experiences done in 1.951 by Dr. Penfield have proved that, when touching certain points with very thin electrodes, they level clear memoirs of events of the past. That happens because the brain is connection instrument and really has a part in the process, but the memory of all of the things is in that part that goes on forming inside of us - in the subconscious. According to the Theosophy, the registrations are made in the emotional and mental body. As we saw in the outline of Psycho-cybernetics, the memory is in the subconscious. We have, then, two aspects to consider:

1. How to put the knowledge in the subconscious;

2. How to go and look for the registered knowledge inside of the subconscious.

1. To put the knowledge so that it is at the disposition to be evoked, it is necessary that the same be processed in a conscious way - the knowledge needs to be incorporated. I become aware of knowledge or perceptions of any nature, following exactly the analyzed process, in other words, through the living of the thing that I want to keep in the memory. Even if is in a mental activity, purely theoretical, to see, to feel, to imagine. It is for this reason that the material decorated is difficult of being evoked. He is not incorporated.

If we compare that evolution of the mental process with the one of the Yoga we will see that there is a great relationship among the steps.

2. To go and look for what is recorded, I need to create conditions so that there is communication between the conscious and the subconscious. I need to calm the mental matter that the Yoga calls of Writtis; the desire to memorize, as well as the desire to bring something to the conscious cannot be made with effort, with obsession. The effort blocks the mind, it moves the mental matter. You can repair that, when you forget something, as of any name, the more we insist, the more the name stands back. He was about to leave, the effort makes it go away. This happens because, in the effort, we revolve the Writtis and they block the passage of the idea. If we don't worry and we say: "In a little while I remember" and we continue speaking, suddenly, the word appears.

In everything it is necessary to find that point of the middle; an attitude between the effort and the disposition to remind. It is an intermediate state between mental request and passivity to receive the information. When I wanted to remind I already sent the message. If I don't block, agitating the Writtis, she returns with the answer. While I await the answer, to trust and to order positive creative suggestions - I know; everything is recorded; in a little while it comes. Only that procedure strengthens the memory.

To improve the memory and the mental capacity that depends on her we need, summarizing:

- To train the mental factors - to be more alert, more alive, more conscious of the present situation;

- Never to emit negative creative suggestions; sporting attitude.

- To maintain the communication line between conscious and subconscious.

- To observe the formal laws of the reasoning and the functions of the intelligence subjects that we are going to approach in the next chapter.

Observation: The development of the mental factors doesn't depend on the cultural degree. It can be  trained in any level.

 

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