07/14/2020
Within this writing about what is concentration, you will see:
As the mind ideates from its own true ground, a breakdown of negative structures occurs, and through this breakdown new, fresh interactive structures are achieved in which the original nature of mind reasserts itself.
As well as:
For instance, examine the German word, "Einfühlung,” meaning, “to feel within,” which refers to the ability in a person to know what another person is experiencing through the latter’s eyes.
During these chaotic times, perhaps we are to return to this "concentration" instead of whatever we have been habitually attending. See the entire writing of "What is Concentration?" below.
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What is concentration? It is an ideation process, which is fundamentally different from forced thinking. When forced thinking is made to give up its agitated, anxious behavior and allowed to become a restful process, another mental process develops in its place, which is ideation through concentration. A relaxed mind generates its own ideas, and the distinguishing feature of such ideas is that they are invariably energizing and potent. Popularly, concentration has been considered merely a blank state of consciousness. In fact, the blank state of consciousness is only an intermediate stage between forced thinking and true ideation through concentration. The passing blank moment has no virtue of its own except emptiness, in which the person becomes completely empty of forced thought. At the next moment true ideation begins in the form of a spontaneous release of pleasurable images. Therefore, if concentration does not spontaneously burst out in the form of these deep images, in the end it cannot be considered true concentration. In this process of deep centeredness and visualization, the mind unfolds itself and thought generates on its own. As the mind ideates from its own true ground, a breakdown of negative structures occurs, and through this breakdown new, fresh interactive structures are achieved in which the original nature of mind reasserts itself. During this state one translates an original element of nature into a new, living, effective unit of thought.
In the past, popularized concentration techniques often taught concentration on a mere dot or a candle, or they taught one to look at mere nothingness and experience the great Void itself. More recently, mental concentration has been introduced through the individual’s mental tracking of inner signals through instrumentation, as in biofeedback. But evidence has disclosed that the practitioners of these techniques soon return to their ordinary troubled consciousness in a predictable way. At the deeper layer of mental response, mechanistic control of thought eventually comes to face a formidable challenge from problematic images which recurrently show up and disturb the artificial peace.
If mental activities can be regulated by a mechanical device or a mere magic formula, why should we involve ourselves in laborious dissection of problematic image states? Fortunately or unfortunately, mental blueprints, like any map, are a complex web of representations deserving very careful study. Proper awareness is born of disciplined concentration on meaningful mental content; it is not born of dissipated and chaotic states of consciousness by control or panic.
The idea that the process of seeing in some way represents an act of understanding is central to the concentration theory, which treats the functions of the eye as a miniature brain mechanism within the larger brain. This little brain, the watching eye, organizes the activity of the larger brain. For instance, examine the German word, “Einfühlung,” meaning, “to feel within,” which refers to the ability in a person to know what another person is experiencing through the latter’s eyes. Various theories in the clinical and experimental field, whether a role-playing theory, an inference theory, or a theory searching for a clinical dialogue between a therapist and his client, all center on the interpretation of psychical behaviors through some kind of “watching.” To know, in brief, means to “watch,” and to “watch” means to “see.” To think, therefore, really means to see in a profound sense, a state of ideation in which true thought spontaneously flows, without any force or coercion on the part of the visualizer.
Concentration as a meaningful mental activity culmination in restful mental functioning has been discussed very often in literature but has not been understood. We often look at objects through colored glasses of bias, habit, and suspicion. Familiar ideas and prejudices provide known modes of security to us in the cold expansiveness of the world. But these modes have conceptual limitations and often cannot be of much use, and in the end, they imbue our minds with feelings of negative attachment, sorrow, and excruciating pain. On the other hand, we cannot help but prostrate ourselves before these useless, frozen ideas. The rhythm of our forced thinking helplessly marches on through compulsive worship of these little gods of clay, while our deeper side yearns for the lost experience of life.
It is argued that few in the contemporary world are able to invest the time and energy required to attune themselves to their inner selves. In addition to the attitude of suspicion concerning mind and insistence on body functions, modern man shuns the silent place immune to the pressures of immediate anxiety, given as he is to machine technology. For most people, the necessity to keep functioning at the “optimum level” demanded by technological standards completely rules out the possibility of finding time for the mind. The seemingly unanswerable question arises: How can we join the historical reality represented by modern man’s time-space limitations with his need for expanded consciousness? The answer lies in the use of a specific type of image which does not limit and bind the individual to restricted ritualistic space for concentration, but elucidates and frees his mentation through its own ongoing dynamics―the eidetic image.
~ Akhter Ahsen, Ph.D., Psycheye, Self-analytic Consciousness, A Basic Introduction to the Natural Self-analytic Images of Consciousness, Eidetics, pp. 44-46.
