Secret of Concentration by Swami Sarvapriyananda (PART_6)

The secret of Concentration by Swami Sarvapriyananda (PART_6)

Sri Ramakrishna

you know tremendous focus on that so mental bearing down on a subject the book or the instrument of what which you are doing focusing the mind on that mental bearing down on the subject second the hood flaring to block out all distractions the hood of the Cobra flaring to block out all distractions, of course, the Cobra does not flare the hood to block out distractions or anything like that but this is the meaning which you are giving to it have you noticed how little children study why little children and last year I was in AI year before last

I was in IIT Kanpur I was in the library as many of the boys and girls they're studying and they also do the same thing you ever noticed how they study or how you many of you study like this book is there a place what are you doing there unconsciously you're basically cutting out the world so that's another part of concentration you are pulling out as much of the 126 bits per second which is scattered here and there you're pulling it out basically and putting it here so it's very natural this hood flaring to block out distractions and holding steady in your unblinking focus a few seconds of that anybody can manage a couple of minutes of that anybody can manage but hours and hours and hours of that holding steady in your unblinking focus these are the three elements engage your mind to pull out the bits you have scattered all over and in your life, you know different subjects in

you're the life you pull it out and pour it here and hold it like that mathematician Swami eight hours 10 hours 12 hours on one problem I was joking with him you know did you leave the students to them for lunch break he said no I said he'll faint said okay once the cover recovered consciousness they can do maths again along with this one more point which is not mentioned as yet by tricking me

 I am positive psychology but Swami Vivekananda insists on this he says along, we must develop the power of detachment, we must learn not only to attach the mind to one thing exclusively but also to detach it at a moment's notice and place it on something else 

you see many of you have good concentration otherwise, he wouldn't be here but there is an ability that if you can pull your mind out from one thing and then put it totally into another thing that's a tremendous ability it seems

I read in Napoleon's life once you know he could do so many things at a time writing letters back to Paris about the construction of bridges writing about the new financial system writing letters about the direction of the military forces in battle and so and so forth writing to his wife Josephine somebody asked him how do you do all that and he said see I have this cabinet is a time before computers came 

so I had this cabinet in my mind dryers so when I want to talk about when I want to work on the army I opened that dryer and shut all other drawers but 

Sri Ramakrishna

I want to talk about finances I shut the other drawers and open the drawer about the finances and so and so forth and when I shut all the dryers I go off to sleep he had the ability to go to sleep and anytime he wanted that's a tremendously organized mind but it shows the structure of the mind it matches with what we have been studying here and Swami very kind of a misquotation education is the concentration of mind, if I had to do my education all instrument I could collect facts at will another aspect of flow is feeling in control if you know a person who's playing tabla and him gets flow anybody who plays musical instruments sometime or the other you would have felt it musical instruments or singing

so sometimes you know you are in the flow and you must know how to play that instrument pretty well there must be a sense of control if you don't know what you're doing you'll never get flow it will just be straining a little bit it'll be tension and strain loss of self awareness which spoke to a spoke about this we just leave this one out for the time being another aspect is the transformation of time again we have experienced this there is a time distortion when you are in flow hours seem to pass by very quickly you know when you look up and you see the clock and you find that already two or three hours have gone you don't feel that you have been sitting there for two or three hours that is the nature of flow with

Sri Ramakrishna

deep concentration times T seems to fly if you don't have deep concentration then time seems to drag I have often you know I was talking to some students in a college somewhere else and I was speaking about the way I saw the boys and girls in the IIT Kanpur library studying and I said to see this when on Sundays they come and I saw some of them studying from the morning till afternoon till night sometimes they do all Nydia studying not just one or two many of them they do that especially will I heard before examinations a lot of you are up and doing obviously you have to now one of them said one of the boys were sitting there he said oh how boring I said no it's not boring in fact if you like the subject and if you're immersed in it if you cut away everything else in life then it starts boring actually because when you get the flow is very enjoyable it's deeply satisfying of course because you're an exam and you have to go upgrades and all its tension but otherwise, it's deeply satisfying you know what is boring what is difficult if you give only a part of that one 26 bits may be 50 bits and 60 bits and the rest of it is still free then you can think about the good time you could be having watching TV or playing video games and you're still doing physics and then you feel how boring and irritating this is are you know you're sitting in the same kid who sits and watches a cricket match for hours together he does not complain about how hot it is how much Kito's are biting him does not complete but the moment you put that kid within front of his homework he'll say Que Se Puede Jeremy amateur how can

I study what happens is because out of that 126 bits almost all of it is absorbed on the cricket match he does not feel the discomfort of heat or mosquitoes or whatever but when he's doing something he does not like it most of his cognitive capacities free and it will go to whatever pulls his cognitive capacity you know like it may be a mosquito or whatever I remember when we meditate in Bellaire mud the mosquitoes have a free rein you know and especially when you are meditating you can't do anything about the mosquito even one mosquito can spoil your meditation and sometimes I've seen other monks and what they do early in the morning so they'll have this each other you open it and put a sort of cloth here like a veil so that mosquito can't enter and if one mosquito enters that then you are in deep the trouble really like somebody's fighting in that you will see and I was reading out Swami Vivekananda Girish Ghosh the famous dramatist he narrates how he saw Swami Vivekananda sitting in meditation and his face is black covered with mosquitoes it does not feel it he's gone deep within so much that nothing is left over, of course, you will feel it when he comes out maybe face will be swollen pit mosquito bites but at that moment does not feel it so this is exactly what happens to us in a lesser degree maybe when you are studying or working on something that absorbs most of your cognitive capacity if you are studying without that flow without that concentration it's much more strenuous then every few minutes you will feel like going and having a coffee break or going and taking a walk whatever because you there is that excess cognitive surplus left or which will remind you are suffering you are doing something boring please get up when that is not free you have a very good time actually you've forgotten time moves faster 

Sri Ramakrishna

I was no but I moved slower, of course, both are an interesting one surgeon was telling me how hours six-seven hours they have to do this neurosurgery six-seven hours so how is it possible such concentration for such a long time he says I don't feel I'm doing it for five or six hours after the operation is over I'd see it's five or six hours so time has moved very fast just the opposite I heard from a fighter the pilot sitting in Airport and this gentleman is retired, Air Force pilot, he's not retired but he is in the Air Force now at one time he was a fighter pilot and he was telling me how he ejected from a plane which was crashing and he spoke to the air traffic control gave a mayday call and he's saying that I'm ejecting at such-and-such position and he says I was feeling irritated at that moment why is the traffic control air traffic on to the military air traffic control why are they are taking so much time to respond to me I'm in an emergency where seconds count later on when the court of inquiry they have a board of inquiry after the crash there he saw they we're laughing at and he said that Vyas ponded within a second or two seconds but for your time seems to be dilated because at the time at a point of death you know you could die at that moment every fraction of a second seems to be living and you it stretched out and dilated so when you are in flow both effects are possible but the common thing is a distortion of time takes place so these are the characteristics of flow quickly let me run through it you feel completely involved in what you are doing focused on concentration concentrated second happiness sense of ecstasy in any kind of flow Csikszentmihalyi interviewed people who were scholars who were athletes who were musicians even monks and nuns

who are meditating all of them whatever the diverse activities but wherever they found flow he found joy they feel happy being outside everyday reality ecstasy great inner clarity moment to moment you know what has to be done and you are doing it and you're fully absorbed in it and forth knowing that activity is doable your skill is adequate to the task but challenged a sense of serenity you have no feeling no worries about yourself an intrinsic motivation whatever produces flow becomes its own reward see people who get flow in music or study or whatever depend to repeat it they tend to do it more and more they like it other people may find it very difficult they will say hey our job is going tape our idea in the boring or sectile it's not boring for you then timelessness you've suddenly focused on the there's a spelling mistake there on the present hours seem to pass by in minutes if there is anything that I would like you to take away from this talk, this is it this is the central finding of positive psychology about concentration let me walk you through this diagram then we'll relate it to yoga and conclude but this is central what does it say the basic idea is if you want to attain concentration there are these two dimensions you have to take care of one is your skills whatever the activity your capability and the second one is the challenge facing you so he takes the example of a tennis player who is a beginner so at when you're beginning tennis when we start playing it's just a great thing just to return yourself you can't do much more than that and if you play against a state champion or a national champion then what happens the challenge is too many skills are very low and the result is you have a worry or anxiety you can't face it's too much a teacher who's teaching may be something differential equations something first time he goes into class is a new teacher may be an assistant teacher his skills teaching skills are not all that great and he's facing a class for the first time and the challenge is pretty high here are IIT students so he feels worried or anxiety but as his skills improve as 

Sri Ramakrishna

he as the tennis players practices or the teacher keeps on teaching what happens is his skills improve challenge remains the same and this comes down this anxiety becomes you know arousal in the sense that he is ready to face the challenge and then it comes to flow it is equal it is a challenge here is a channel where skills and challenges are matched now the tennis player he can return the serve and he feels happy when he returns to serve he feels happy it gets a tiny bit of flow at that point so there is a child there is a channel here where your challenges and skills are matched if your skills are pretty high and the challenge is low skills are pretty high you are a state champion in tennis and you just have to do net practice then it's very very easy for your mechanical and you feel apathetic there is no response inside it's too easy for you or you feel bored and as your challenge increases you come back to flow now you see this entire spread here is the desirable Channel when you have flow if you if you see the teacher who is teaching for some time he gets the hang of it now he starts enjoying the class because he can teach well and the class is also enjoying it and he gets the feeling of flow after some time what happens after a couple of years or two or three years it's in control without putting too much effort into it