Secret of Concentration by Swami Sarvapriyananda (PART_7)

The secret of Concentration by Swami Sarvapriyananda (PART_7)

Sri Sarada Devi

The secret of Concentration by Swami Sarvapriyananda (PART_7)

He can manage the class the tennis player can manage the game also without too much effort after 

sometimes what happens is she gets relaxed about it and maybe even bored there he requires higher 

challenges to end to enter into flow the basic idea the crucial idea the point of flow the channel of flow also is dynamic as your skills keep on 

improving you must increase the challenge also to be in the flow and the basic of the fundamental fact behind it it it is that 126 bits you must put as much of it as possible into that activity 

so if your skills are very high challenge is very low you need not put 126 bits into that with some amount of cognitive capacity you can manage but that leaves the rest unutilized 

so to have the flow to have the concentration you require a dynamic equilibrium between the challenge you are facing and the skills and what is the learning for us what is the learning what do you take away from it it's pretty obvious if you want to be in flow you must look at your situation are you here do you find the courses to demanding the class is too tough then you must reduce the challenge and work up your skills how do you do that you know you maybe have

to parse the subject matter into smaller bits which you can focus at a time maybe you need to get help from your seniors or your professor many ways in which you can build up your skills and at the same time reduce the channel challenge by taking it into smaller bits parsing the material into smaller bits the opposite are you feeling bored in a class are you feeling bored in a course then increase the challenge 
I remember one Swami we were attending a class together in Bellaire mutt and I found the class boring and I found this other person sitting next to me taking extensive notes and I knew this person is his brilliant he's far more brilliant than me for him discourse is nothing but why is he taking such extensive notes when 
I looked closely you know what he was doing the teacher was teaching the Acharya was teaching in English and this rather this novice he was taking notes perfect notes in Sanskrit he was translating that into Sanskrit and taking down perfect notes why because he was bored he knew all of it

 so what will he do is to sit in the class as a discipline

so how does he get that flow he's not using this but very naturally he is using this he immediately upped the challenge he pushed the challenge up very high 

so he's listening translating into Sanskrit and believe me, it's not easy we had a teacher used to teach in Sanskrit only and I remember any time you have to ask a question you have to ask a question in Sanskrit otherwise, he will not respond and if you ask a question in Sanskrit you know if you put together grammatical it must be correct by the time I asked the question he will find out two or three grammatical errors in my question and then he go on teaching him he will not come to the answer is unless you ask a perfectly correct question grammatically correct I will not answer it's not what the answer 

so that's how he was getting flow okay now we come to the final part of this Csikszentmihalyi in that book flow psychology of optimal experience he says the similarities between yoga and flow are very strong he has also a few pages on yoga on Patanjali yoga, he has studied literature's from all over the world and he says in that book the similarities between yoga Patanjali yoga and flow is very strong and he calls yoga very thoroughly planned flow activity, in fact, he says one of the oldest and most systematic methods of getting flow is this Indian system of yoga he says that now I am NOT going to teach you yoga now but I'll give you the basic basics of yoga and how we can use it for attaining 

concentration and the flow that will be my final point okay what does yoga say to get perfect 
concentration according to yoga there are eight steps eight steps Yama and niyama these are preliminary disciplines asana posture pranayama breathing pratyahara withdrawing from the external

China focusing on a topic and Dhyana meditation or unbroken focus and finally the highest possible 
concentration Samadhi remember this is not the point of this does not flow the point in the Yogi's used this for spiritual realization but they do get flow now in fact I was reading one of the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna he's talking about meditation when you get good meditation he says it should be effortless and one of the characteristics of flow is effortlessness before flow, there is an effort when the challenge is more skill is not not 

so high then you get into an effortless mode which is flow without if the skills are high and challenges are low even there there is effortlessness but there is no flow because you are bored then

 
so when you have flow there's effortlessness okay now how do you use this for flow Yama and niyama would be Yama would be a moral life a clean life that's important Yama and niyama specifically a disciplined life rhythm is necessary for life for generating 

concentration and focus there is a story about said G who went to Asami in the Himalayas I'm called john zika oaks achhi and the Swami started all right very good sit down first Satya you have to tell the the truth I am sorry should not hurt anybody Brahma chair yourself control Yama then the sage he got disgusted I said arrey Mahatma G I'm going diancie kya pranayama sin pronounced Kawika such bull night dude named Bill Nighy sub cassock aramco then that Swami said to Ashtanga Yoga cookie yeah week along yokes ago a Stanga is eight limp and weaker song means two limbs are not there you want to remove morality and discipline from your life just want meditation that is not Ashtanga Yoga that's fickle

hungry hope it's not possible and then that Swami told that businessman it's a story he said that black money per a sandwich Arcadia hoga you've got lots of black money which are hidden under your bed and you put anise on on top of your seat for meditation the UH Novica be never 

so a certain amount of morality a moral life first a disciplined life second then third what is required for flow third asana asana need not mean that you've to sit in Padmasana whatever it simply means posture what posture they have found that sitting straight not rigid not like not like a robot and Sauron not like that relaxed but straight where the head and the neck and the spine which has turned the waist and the spine are more or less in one straight line relaxed but not drooping you can see the difference it makes in your mental attitude when you more or less sit up straight after you get flow one may concentrate on you know we are already mind is there that's not important but before that good posture is important pranayama there is a connection between breathing and 

concentration positive psychology till today they have not talked about it is an area these are areas of research but there is a connection one thing you will notice the kind of breathing when you are you have when you are tired when we feel tired and sleepy and dull one kind of breathing often you will see it comes from the left nostril when you are excited angry or working physically hard-working you know physically doing something then right nostril very jogging or playing you'll see most of the time breathing comes from right nostril and they say in perfect mint in 

concentration breathing

will come slowly from both nostrils anyhow you need not go into all that but basically breathing just of some amount of deep breathing helps even physiologically it makes

 sense if you oxygenate your blood and our concentration is better then pratyahara withdrawing your cognitive capacities from the world outside remember the snake with the with the hood cutting out the world pratyahara not thinking of other things and here you need to be little intelligent suppose I'm concentrating many times school students say this if I look at my book and try to concentrate I fall asleep or I am looking at the book half an hour later if you ask me what have you read I can tell you my mind went all over the world but I cannot tell you what was there in the page in front of me so many are smiling and think it's a common problem but not 

so much here many of you have good concentration 

so here you have to be little intelligent pratyahara withdrawing the mind from the world outside even from your own body you take the help of for example active reading you know what is active reading you underline take notes maybe you will never need to read the notes again but use your hand the moment you start using your hand it takes some more of the cognitive capacity from the world outside and puts it there uses a computer use feedback block out the noise you know in many ways you can concentrate your mind one very powerful way of 

concentration is the curiosity you can arouse curiosity you know how powerful curiosity is and the train I saw a little baby crying I know many of you have seen this child crying like anything and when the mother or the father suddenly comes in front of the child and does like this or get some toy and swings it in front of the baby is screaming but in front of that suddenly some strange the thing you put stop screaming and looking wonderful at least for one the minute it looks like that will forget to cry curiosity is very powerful and we also have that power so how do you use Curie curiosity in Mara

I don't want to read all these exams are there that's why I read I am reading and don't want to know else all these things but you can artificially induce curiosity by asking questions or setting up the problem, before you go into the material often what we do, is a mistake we do is read the material then solve problems which is set up the problem then start reading the material then it's a voyage of discovery it's not just learning something which will apply later on 

so these are tricks which you can use to engage your cognitive capacities in the study material 
so practice ihara has to be done intelligently should not be a struggle then folk karana is focus Hana holding on to that focus yes but they are I remember Swami Ranganathan and the G he used to come to IIT Kanpur campus long back I think in the 70s maybe or 60s I have seen his books in our villa room at the library the books he donated he was a voracious reader all of his books you can easily know it is Ranganathan G's books because they're all heavily underlined lot of remarks are there very agree is very disagrees where something reminds you of him some something else questions he has got everything he puts down now imagine the kind of involvement in that book the Bhagavad-gita also says this in one chapter sri Krishna's Arjuna be completely in you know concentrated on God 
so I'm sure just like you Arjuna would have scratched is it then he says after each of the pure shock doses if you cannot do that also then whatever work you're doing you connect it you offer it to me 
so the daily work which you are doing you're studying your work in the kitchen or your work in the office you offer it to God you connecting

your daily work to God now you see how concentration is helping concentration by involving other things in the world 

so I mean Abaddon and the Gone of the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna I read as reminiscence by a young person he said when I was young I used to go to visit Swami Abaddon and the G and he would meditate he was quite old at that time and I would see he would meditate you know he would sit for meditation he would rock his body back and forth a little bit then as if he's a stone statue he will sit and that's it three hours later he'll open his eyes like a rock he's sitting and this body would ask Swamiji within 2 minutes I get bird how can you sit like this without moving at all for three hours and he would joke and Bengali would say boo Rashad Odin kena an old monk I've been meditating for 
so many years but it is this thing ability to pull everything out from the world and put it on the object of meditation swami Vivekananda it was natural for him in New York used to go for lectures and in those days you have tramps and on in San Francisco I think and he would go on the tram and he would get 
so absorbed in this in his thoughts the try and would take the entire circuit of the city and come back more than once and he would be ashamed of this you know he would say that no you have to remind me

I have to go for the class the concentration tremendous concentration was absolutely natural to him I have 
so many stories about that and that focus Dharana is focused Dianna is the unbroken concentration depends into let's call it flows let's call it a higher kind of flow 
so here I am breaking it up again moral life discipline life good posture deep breathing irregular breathing don't be like a boiler regular breathing withdrawing from the world remember the snake then haruna holding on the focus then unbroken focus flow this is what our Patanjali yoga also has to say about 
concentration this is one key idea let me just sum up by going back to this idea remember you have 126 bits per second and you have to use that to get concentration or flow and it's always a function of matching your challenges and skills whenever you are out of flow and their characteristic are there you'll be bored or you will be under strain whenever you're out of flow you increase the challenges or the skills as the need may be these are the basic principles I think I'll conclude here

we have run out of time also thank you very much true clear goals you have to have clarity about the goals swami vivekananda puts it very beautifully make sure what your end is goal is then he says forget the ends and concentrate on the means our main problem is we are too focused on the grades and getting the iit degree now and and then getting this high paying job big pay packet and now if you keep that in mind most of the time or all of the time then you are not focusing on what is in front of you that will happen if that is your goal keep it there but don't keep on thinking about it it's no use thinking about it once you have set up the goal times where they kind of says you forget the goal what it says here is clear goals are necessary for flow if your goals are not clear you will always be in anxiety it will be anxious you if you don't know exactly what you are doing at this moment you will not get that flow it's one characteristic of flow that a certain amount of inner clarity has to be there what

I am doing but the eventual goals you should keep them in the background fix it keep it in the background there seems to be a deep connection between mental purity and concentration because you will say that that's not necessarily 
so we know many brilliant people who will be they were nice but they are very brilliant true but you see there again if that person had more pure mind you believe it's a hypothesis that it seems to be like that a lot of people in your personal experience also you see if you have a clean life and uncomplicated life you can actually concentrate much poison it's that simple each other to truth yes I'll take two minutes to answer this yeah 
so when we want results what is mentioned what is actually spoken about in the Gita disability you will have to do your work and don't ask for results it means the sense for ourselves and that's okay because most of us will be mean results currently pal we mean well power outage business problems now the traditional idea was what do human beings want,

these are two things Tama would be pleasured any kind of sense pleasure you want to party and make merry and all that kind of sense from having a the school are you listening to very defined classical music that's also pressure octa money and IIT degree a big corporate pay packet whatever money success Awards head of the department whatever 
so all of that now these are what people want instinctively what people want instinctively what religion any religion will tell you is both of these that means morality not unlimited or thank um they follow the rules of the society they follow the rules of decency of morality of law - as much as possible they do - more or less they did do that there will be a very few people section of society few people who would like to chase utley and karma money and pleasure to the exclusion of eight decency or valid it just will not get caught by the police but through whatever means, I will earn money and I will never term you know

I mean what freak out like have alike enjoyed life whatever 
I want to do I will do and this kind of category you know which is which who just want these to earth and karma there is a term in Sanskrit called para para means an instinctive lowest uncultured kind of person an instinctive life what I want I wanted just now I wanted just now and this kind of life actually leads to unhappiness not only unhappiness even modern psychology shows that this kind of life such people do not go on to achieve much in life also but the because they cannot resist they cannot control themselves the kind of

Swami Vivekananda

The secret of Concentration by Swami Sarvapriyananda (PART_7)

sacrifice you need to come to IIT, for example, many of your classmates did not have that control 

so you had to sacrifice quite a bit to slog you know to put in that kind of work to be here today and that's because these desires you had to rein into some extent immediate gratification no let me work hard

I will get more of this later on so some amount of control is necessary 

so those who have all three Dharma Artha kama you know normally when we speak about artha kama and Dharma what is the phrase we never say karma Dharma we normally see there Martha Graham of option 

so you always say Therma first Dharma does not mean only religion morality and everything all three, if you have then the term which we use, 

is 
I wish I person a worldly person but whose good wish I normally have a bad connotation it is a worldly person but actually dharmic I wish a person who is good moral you see most people in the world are like this they are good they are not evil people they are not lawbreakers but they want worldly things and they want to do it within the bounds of common good sense and morality now beyond this also there is there are people the term would be moksha or spirituality or whatever there's a certain group of people didn't he need not be seduced or sannyasis Anna Hazare somebody like that who is actually genuinely in it for welfare he wants good for the society Mahatma Gandhi if he wanted he could have been the Prime Minister the president for life if you live long enough but he did not want it at all but he wanted the welfare of Indians why Indians he wanted everybody's welfare who ever came into contact with him even the Englishman who came into contact with him so such people they are in this category what they do is they do not want these two but they base Dharma and moksha spirituality based on Dharma they want spiritual realization mat maganda says in one place in his autobiography my experiments with the truth many people think that I am a politician some say I am a freedom fighter but what

I am is actually a man a simple man in search of God I am doing it through politics freedom fighting but I am in search of God that's all I am that's his own idea about himself 

so they don't want these two and you can see it in their lives they reject it when they have no interest in these two such people they work without any desire for results which result in these results what are these results personal gain and personal enjoyment they don't want it but they do seek something which is the welfare of everybody 

so Swami Vivekananda many great Saints, they have worked for the welfare of others and them really don't want anything and you know I will tell you just one the small thing many people many of you will say the oh that's 

so tough what a great sacrifice if you ask them it is no sacrifice at all to them it's no sacrifice at all to them they would not be doing anything that is the sacrifice I want to do that I cannot I am NOT doing it I'm giving it up and then

 I am doing something so a mother who could have a very good career in the corporate sector she gives up a job for her children and she later complaints that you fellows you have no gratitude

I guess at rifice 
so much for you because she has the feeling she has sacrificed something for the children truly she's she wanted that she did not take it up for their sake but in the case of Mahatma Gandhi or Vivekananda or whatever if you ask them a great sacrifice you have made there is no more sacrifice at all Swami Brahma Hahn and the once was asked by the president of the Ramakrishna mission Sri Ramakrishna's disciple Swami Vivekananda's brother disciple and the person who became the first president of the Ramakrishna mission he was once asked Oh Swamiji you have sacrificed so much you've given up everything for God you are a great yogi Swami Brahma Nanda bowed down to that man

I bow down to a greater tally so why you have given up the diamond for a piece of glass you have given up God for the world how great you are your sacrifice is tremendous mine is nothing at all 

so from their point of view it's no great sacrifice and it's not just very spiritual persons anybody who's doing work for others you will think it's a sacrifice if you ask them they'll say no I enjoy it I've met a number of social entrepreneurs and somebody was telling me Swamiji you have sacrificed 

so much I said no it's not a sacrifice I really enjoy this if I have to do what you are doing it would be a sacrifice for me and I asked social entrepreneurs none of whom are Swamiji's and all of them said the same thing none of them feel that we have sacrificed our corporate jobs their big corporate jobs they gave that atom they came to this kind of life 

so they are actually you know giving up the results and doing work it is in this sense in this sense okay give a fairly detailed answer to that one should we wrap up now afterward and they deep-fried children part of the initiative from each one of you to poverty I was truly listening to him with very bad prevention and

I actually have a beard you're dipping it and I would like to show this to my Oh models position is to hold on to their ability in fact I must share with you my own experience I joined this business a little over a year back and by the time I finished one semester I certainly was getting extremely bored in the true sense of being bored and that had decided that now I'll go back to my motivation the true a profession which is teaching and 

I started teaching and somebody was saying that why are you doing this extra thing and my honest answer was an ease that I derive my strength from teaching whatever I do whatever we do everything and anything you need conditions - Stanley

 I derived my conviction my strength from being truthful to my own profession and watching him delivery's lecture I was full all the time wondering that why would assume they were complaining about a class or lecture he listens to a lecture which is truly in the Icefall moment and 

so I certainly, see what exactly he was talking all at all, it's not a reflection of that 

so I  would request you to come back whenever possible engineer your time and knowledge with us we all basically in this set up in this academic center all that we choose to perceive knowledge and we have only one objective which is to either disseminate or share knowledge or trying general in knowledge it's not very easy to generate Thank You jeepers if any lectures but then essentially we tried to pursue at least at the end of every 20 page publications at the final conclusion but just a few words or maybe love a sentence that is truly a new knowledge that's worth reading that a person that's exactly what we pursue and we should always have such excellent examples before we 

so thank you again and said if this beautiful conversation interaction stops here

I seek your bodies from typicals something very very important instead of waiting and I must attend to that 

so and  obviously for the situation but the focus of this talk was each person how each person can enrich it is our third quality of experience and how do you do that one-word answer by through by 
concentration whatever you're the situation is if you concentrate there on whatever you want to achieve what is in front of you then you get a richer experience the principle here is how much you concentrate and what you concentrate just now in this place, you know how much you are concentrating and what you're concentrating on there are 

so many things here there is a lecture going on also in your mind will be that child as to what such-and-such things to do next now if you're concentrating on that then your experience will be one of restlessness like can you concentrating on that and you're thinking about it and how to apply it in your own life you're getting a richer experience in the same the environment you understand there are many elements what will I pick out of that and how much I can concentrate on that will make your experience very rich absolutely yes but that expect what we have seen you know 

so many stories of young boys and girls coming from very tough backgrounds poor people educationally disadvantaged and struggling and making their way up maybe coming to IIT and other places you know Anand Kumar gave a talk their super 30 and how 

so many disadvantaged children are making it here to this campus and other campuses and doing well not only academically even people who are who are physically challenged and they're doing so well in some areas of life 

so from a very tough background, one can do well not necessarily that they will do well most don't but they do

well and again just the opposite from very privileged backgrounds how many especially, teachers, I have been a teacher for more than 10 we knew how many boys and girls from very privileged backgrounds parents are highly educated they are well-off and they have got every facility and it completely spoiled their lives 

so the background is important but what is important is what you make of that background and how to do you make something of the background by choosing what to concentrate on and how much to concentrate on there's an I'll end with this Milton the famous English poet he says in one place the mind in its own the place can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven the mind in its own place, the mind by itself can make a hell of heaven and heaven of Hell how by this method by what you are concentrating on in your environment and how much you're concentrating there 

so those boys and girls from very tough backgrounds who made it suppose to IIT if you ask them they had extremely you know disheartening circumstances in their life but that one area their studies and how it will open up better avenues in life and 

so they pick that element to concentrate on and they ignore everything else I have seen people, young boys, and girls, completely depressed mental breakdown why because they had some genuine the problem in life it may be a relationship problem may be health the problem may be a grades problem whatever and what did they do they concentrated totally upon that they will say that how can 

I not concentrate on that my it's pulling my attention it is not pulling attention it's a conscious the decision if you if your default setting is that you will be pulled into the depression in a cycle of depression and you know sadness and failure misery but it's a conscious decision that that setting it's

not it's not you know a fixed set you can change the default setting you can actually consciously choose what you are going to think about and how much you're going to think about that okay and tomorrow we'll take it up after the class tomorrow and day after the classes the lectures will be very different not like this 

we are going to be serious concentrating on Vedanta very advanced Vedanta 
so I'm not discouraging you I'm setting up a high challenge for you to get into flow does come to thank you