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ARS VIVENDI (ART OF LIVING) |
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CHAPTER 9: CONCENTRATION IN everything the secret of strength and success is concentration. Given a nucleus of any kind round which force can be gathered, and a certain amount of success is ultimately assured. On the other hand, let force be scattered, with no central attraction, and there is the condition of weakness, The successful business man is he who devotes his whole attention to a particular branch of trade, and masters every detail connected with it. The Jack-of-all-trades, on the other hand, is certain to come to grief, because he dissipates his energy. The tremendous success of Napoleon was due to concentration. His battles were won by concentrating, an overwhelming superiority of force upon a particular angle of the enemy's lines, and annihilating all resistance. Some of the best known stories of great men are anecdotes showing their power of concentration. Pericles, the Athenian statesman, was only to be seen in the street that led to the market-place and the senate-house. Demosthenes spent several months in a cave in order to conquer an impediment of speech which prevented him from gaining the ears of his fellow-countrymen. When Newton was asked how he had been able to achieve his discoveries, he replied, "By always intending my mind." THE TRUE INDIVIDUALISM Every man is born with a certain gift or attribute which, if he only knows how to cultivate it, will enable him to do with ease what would be impossible of accomplishment by any other person not so endowed. There is infinite variety in the Universe. No two blades of grass are quite the same. No two faces are quite the same. No two characters are quite the same. Herein consists the wonderful charm pervading the whole of Nature. Infinite variety, but yet infinite simplicity. All things are ultimately resolved into unity. Reason sees the unity, whilst the understanding fixes attention upon the variety, and does justice to every part by itself. The individual encloses the universal within itself, but in a way which differentiates it from every other individual. Let the individual, then, cherish his individuality, and not merge himself in the general mass. Thus only will he develop his peculiar endowments with credit to himself and with benefit to others. There is not the slightest fear that "Altruism," or living for others, will suffer from the individualism here inculcated. Rather, it will gather new force from the true cultivation of Self. The Universe has been so skilfully constructed that it is impossible for the individual to get any good, properly speaking, for himself at the expense of others. It is the most fatal of all mistakes to suppose that you can cheat Nature by attempting to violate fundamental laws. In maintaining your own individuality and devoting to it the attention it deserves, you are not bound to trample upon the rights of others; just as in standing upon your own feet, you need not lean upon others -- nor let them lean on you. That is the true individualism. From this standpoint the lives of many persons must be unhesitatingly condemned. They tell you they think too much of others and too little of themselves, and end by running down so low in the scale of vitality as to be a burden to their friends and a misery to themselves. In the present day, perhaps, when the rule is "everybody for himself and devil take the hindmost," it might seem totally unnecessary to warn that indiscriminate "living for others" is as much to be condemned from the point of view of health as "living for self." But then I am a confirmed optimist, and consider this the best of all possible worlds for the wise man and the worst for the fool. Laying the stress I do upon the development of the individual, and the cultivation of the wonderful faculties latent in Self, I regard individual health as the pivot on which turn all other questions. I am far from preaching a doctrine of cake and cosseting, which is as much removed on the one side from real health as too much hard work is on the other. Strength can never be maintained by "coddling." Bearing, this in mind, I don't think it will be possible for anyone to misinterpret the importance of concentration for the maintenance of health. I will consider the effect of concentration in two ways -- (1) Direct and (2) Indirect. DIRECT The individual is a nucleus of energy which is being continually expended in the performance of work necessary for the continuance of life. Its source of energy is not unlimited. On the contrary, it can be very easily exhausted to such an extent as to destroy life. Any prolonged drain of vitality, no matter whether caused by hard work or idle dissipation, is capable of depleting it of the energy necessary for its well-being. And, considering the happy-go-lucky method of living practised by the generality of men, it is matter of small wonder that they have by no means abundance of vitality. They go to this or that extreme without knowing, or even caring, whether it is prejudicial or not. In such cases THE HABITUAL PRACTICE OF CONCENTRATION by the following method will prove of enormous service in the recuperation of energy.
Probably the first thought that strikes the reader is that such counsel is meant for Utopia. But let me assure him that it is thoroughly rational, and a thing that can be done by practice, which may prove very irksome at first, but will amply repay all efforts spent in carrying it out. Once this power of resting is gained, the individual is master of the host of nervous troubles which makes life a miserable business to a great many men and women of the present day. The effect is just the same as if you stop up the outlets of a pond which has run low.
The business man sits at the counter all the morning, bolts down a hurried lunch while worrying about his troubles, and has the audacity to complain of indigestion. Only a special miracle in his favour could keep him in health.
The morning bath taken with deliberation, and thoroughly enjoyed, not hurried over as a disagreeable something to be got over as quickly as possible, will doubly enhance its value as a means of keeping in health; while, again, the operation of combing and brushing the hair can be made to contribute materially to the cure of headache and premature baldness. Every person ought to make these habits of concentration a tower of refuge to which he can flee in time of trouble. The stronger these habits the surer the protection. Let no one run away with the idea that he has no time to carry out the above advice. Everyone has plenty of time if he knows how to use it. "To make time for yourself, begin by Order, Method, Discipline." The power of every bath taken can be increased by Mental Concentration. INDIRECT The indirect effort of concentration -- as distinguished, for the sake of clearness, from what I have classed as the direct or immediate effect -- is the awakening in the individual of faculties which are latent in him, now, unless in exceptional cases, unheeded, unknown, and despised. But it will not always be so. The time will come when the spark within him, now faintly quivering, will blaze forth in splendour and illumine the darkness around him. "For the powers and the arts that it equally puzzles your reason to assign or deny to me," says Margrave in Lytton's romance, "A Strange Story," "I will say briefly but this: they come from faculties stored within myself, and doubtless conduce to my self-preservation -- faculties more or less, perhaps (so Van Helmont asserts), given to all men, though dormant in most; vivid and active in me, because self-preservation has been and yet is the strong master-passion or instinct; and because I have been taught how to use and direct such faculties by disciplined teachers. Enough for me to will what I wish and sink calmly into slumber, sure that the will would work somehow its way. But when I have willed to know what, when known, should shape my own courses, could see, without aid from your telescopes, all objects howsoever far. What wonder in that? Have you no learned puzzle-brained metaphysicians who tell you that space is but an idea, all this palpable universe an idea in the mind and no more?" Is it any more astonishing that the mind should attain an extraordinary degree of power and light by intense concentration than that the blazing suns of the heavens, whose rays extend over an area of thousands of millions of miles, should have been formed by concentration from a vaporous, homogeneous mass? Yet the "nebular theory" leaves no doubt that such was the process of birth of the sun and all other bodies in space. "Many phenomena presented by our own planetary system lead to the conclusion," says Humboldt, "that planets have been solidified from a state of vapour, and that their internal heat owes its origin to the formative process of conglomerated matter. William Herschel was of opinion that the vapoury celestial matter which becomes luminous as it condenses, conglomerates into fixed stars." Mental concentration is the door to the infinity of the inner world of mind. It reveals wonders not dreamt of by philosophy.
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