Concentration & Meditation - Vedanta

Concentration and Meditation 7of which the image is only a symbol. To seek an intangible unknownReality in the unknown depths of the soul becomes possibleonly if there is intense aspiration and faith.Then there is the fifth difference. The human mind has twopowers: to experience and to create. Most of our normal thinkingis a creative process—we are always trying to create something:new objects, new relationships, new meanings, new ideas, etc. Ifwe cannot create anything real, we create unreal things and try tolive in a dream world. All the great achievements of science, technologyand art are the result of people’s stupendous efforts increative concentration. But creation of this type gives rise to diversityand conflict.Meditation is an attempt to make the mind stop creating byseeking the source of experience. Though experience is also afunction of the mind, its real source (consciousness) is in the Atmanor the self. Meditation is an attempt to isolate the self anddiscover the Uncreated or the Absolute, which is what humanityis trying to seek through creative activity. Meditation is a movementtowards unity and peace.Another difference, related to the above, is that ordinary concentrationis a movement in time. Meditation is an attempt to remainin timelessness. The more we think, the more we move withtime and get caught in the ever-flowing stream of life.There are two types of time. One is external time, determinedby the movements of the earth with reference to the sun. Thesecond is internal time, determined by the movement ofthoughts. In very small children these two times remain distinct;as they grow up they learn to correlate the two. But this correlationis lost during deep sleep and dreaming when we live in anentirely different world of time. In the normal waking state a certainco-ordination between inner time and outer time is maintainedas a kind of ratio. This ratio varies from person to person:for some people time flies, for others time hangs heavy.To live constantly in time, to be under the tyranny of time, to“run with the hare and hunt with the hound” all the time causesgreat strain on the nerves. People want to escape from this oppressivetime awareness. So they go on vacation and try to forgetthemselves by getting absorbed in books or movies. But theyfind that this does not work all right, for time haunts them like a