10.3 Exercises in Grasp

Exercise 9. This could be called expansion of concentration. One day I asked a student to imagine a five-pointed star and tell me what he saw. He said that he could not see it all at once, but seemed to have a sort of mental astigmatism, whereby he saw only one or two points clearly, while the others were ``out of focus'' or even ``out of sight'' as he described it. I set him to concentrate on one point only until it was clear, then on a second point alone, then on both together, side by side, then to drop this compound and concentrate on still, another point, then to recall the compound and add it on, and so on. In this way he succeeded in getting the whole figure clear and in focus. Practice this with several different geometrical figures.

Exercise 10. When the figures mentioned in Exercise 9 are clear, practice a gradual enlargement and reduction of size. You will find that a certain size is best for you for each object. This is true for geometrical figures, and even more obviously so for a natural object. Thinking of an inkstand I will surely find the natural size best, but if my object is a mouse I will do well to magnify it a little, or if it is an elephant to reduce it to, let us say, half the size. This will be evident to anyone who has stood or sat quite near to an elephant for any length of time, as I once did for about two hours. You must either get farther away or else reduce the object.

Exercise 11. Set up in front of you a picture of a human face, or a portrait of someone you like. Look at it carefully and experiment to see how much of it you can imagine clearly at once. Have you omitted the ears? Anyhow, the practice is as follows. Take a small part, such as one eye. Compare your thought with the original. Correct it. Repeat. When the eye is clear and strong, drop it, and begin on the other eye. You must drop the first part of the face in order, to bring all the power of your mind to bear on the second. In the previous exercises you will have acquired the experience necessary to know that what you have fully concentrated upon will come up very well when recalled, so now you will have faith in this method and confidence in yourself. Next, with the second eye clear, recall the first and think of both together as one picture. Concentrate well on this. Then drop the whole and attend to the nose. And so on.

Exercise 12. This exercise deals with a natural scene. I had in my room in India a very attractive picture of Shri Krishna as a boy seated on a boulder in a field and playing the flute. Scattered about the field were several cows happily grazing as far as the bank of a peaceful river. The whole scene was enclosed, as it were, by some tree-clad hills and white clouds in a blue sky.

Imagine the entire scene, then contract your mental picture by gradually dropping the sky and hills, the foreground of grass and small flowers and the portion containing cows and trees on either side, until you have only the boy on the rock. Continue till you have only the spot between the eyes. Then expand the image gradually until you have the whole scene again.

Choose any scene you like, but preferably something agreeable and serene.