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The Fifth Lesson: The Cultivation of Attention.555
Thompson has said: “The experiences most permanently impressed upon
consciousness, are those upon which the greatest amount of attention has
been fixed.”
Another writer upon the subject has said that “Attention is so essentially
necessary to understanding, that without some degree of it the ideas and
perceptions that pass through the mind seem to leave no trace behind them.”
Hamilton has said: “An act of attention, that is, an act of concentration,
seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness, as a certain
contraction of the pupil is requisite to every exertion of vision. Attention
then is to consciousness what the contraction of the pupil is to sight, or, to
the eye of the mind what the microscope or telescope is to the bodily eye.
It constitutes the better half of all intellectual power.”
And Brodie adds, quite forcibly: “It is Attention, much more than any
difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast
difference which exists between minds of different individuals.”
Butler gives us this important testimony: “The most important intellectual
habit I know of is the habit of attending exclusively to the matter in hand. It is
commonly said that genius cannot be infused by education, yet this power
of concentrated attention, which belongs as a part of his gift to every great
discoverer, is unquestionably capable of almost indefinite augmentation by
resolute practice.”
And, concluding this review of opinions, and endorsements of that which
the Yogis have so much to say, and to which they attach so much importance,
let us listen to the words of Beattie, who says: “The force wherewith anything
strikes the mind, is generally in proportion to the degree of attention
bestowed upon it. Moreover, the great art of memory is attention, and
inattentive people always have bad memories.”
There are two general kinds of Attention. The first is the Attention
directed within the mind upon mental objects and concepts. The other is
the Attention directed outward upon objects external to ourselves. The
same general rules and laws apply to both equally.