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When the whole attention of the mind is directed to anything whatsoever, that state of mind is called concentration. No action of the mind can be called concentration if the whole of it is not centralized in the chosen objective. For instance, if you are to solve a very intricate mathematical problem - it may be algebra, geometry or arithmetic - the whole mind is concentrated on that because you are expecting such a question to arise in the exam. Sometimes people sit the whole night to solve an equation. You won't think anything else at that time. The necessity to think anything else does not arise because of the absolute value of that on which the concentration is fixed. That on which you want to concentrate your mind should have absolute value, entire value, whole value, so that it is not some partial reality on which you are concentrating your mind.

Usually, the whole of a person can never get concentrated on anything, because of the fact there is practically nothing in the world which can evoke such an interest in the mind of a person. We cannot say that anything in the world is wholly desirable. It may be tentatively desirable, conditionally desirable and partially desirable, but unconditionally desirable objects cannot be seen in this world. The reason why nothing can be unconditionally desirable is because there are things in the world which are other than and different from the objective that is chosen by the mind. It is not possible for you to bring together at one stroke the total objectivity of creation to your attention. You cannot concentrate on the whole world at the same time. As the whole world cannot evoke the attention of the mind, some part of it will be excluded and some other part will draw the attention. That which draws the attention may be considered as valuable and very necessary under certain conditions; but that aspect of reality, that segment of the world which has necessarily been excluded from the point of concentration will set up a subtle reaction. That reaction is called distraction of mind.

The mind wanders here and there and does not permit itself or persuade itself to get concentrated on anything. Since everything is finite, it cannot evoke an infinite attention on the part of any person. Then the attention will also be finite - a finite mind will be thinking of a finite object. Then the result also would be finite and it will be tentative, temporal and evanescent. The excluded part of the world is oftentimes not considered even as existing at all because of a tentative, temporal attraction that the mind feels for one particular object.

Do we know that there are deeper layers of our own mind within us, and they are very powerful media which condition the way of thinking in the waking condition also? There are subtle potentials and vibrations of the psyche in the subliminal level; psychologists call these levels as subconscious, unconsciousness, etc. They actively operate, determining the manner in which the waking mind works, such that the waking mind will be wrongly assuming the role of a self-competent medium of thought, with freedom of choice which it can absolutely exercise. It is necessary to study deep psychology, not for the purpose of becoming a professor of it, but to understand one's own nature. You must know what you are made of. When you think something, you must know why you are thinking in that manner. "I don't know. I happen to think like that." You should not say that. That is an unintelligent reaction to a phenomenon taking place in one's own mind. Every bit of psychological action should understood and should be subjected to careful, rational study. One cannot afford to be unintelligent about one's own self - that will serve no purpose.

If in our own selves there are deeper layers of the psyche which condition waking thoughts, and for the time being we accept that all concentration of mind that we are thinking of is an activity of the waking mind, we can conclude at the same time that this activity of the so-called concentration of mind in the waking condition is not adequate, because it is conditioned by the impulses that are deep within one's own self. The freedom of choice that we are trying to exercise in the waking condition is supposed to be a will-of-the-wisp and an illusion cast by the propensities of the lower layers of the mind, which defeat the so-called purpose of the activity of the waking mind. In every movement of the waking mind we seem to be engaged in a self-defeating exercise, which predicament is not to be allowed if we are careful about our own selves.

There is no use being too much interested in the sun and the moon and the stars and the Mars and the skies and all that without knowing one's own self, because all the knowledge you have got of the higher space and astronomical universe is again conditioned by the structure of your own capacity to know. Philosophers tell us the study of the structure of knowledge is a primary study before anything else is taken up. They call it epistemological studies. You must first of all know how you are knowing anything at all. Otherwise, that which you are supposed to be knowing may be really not a knowledge at all. Even our choice made by our own selves personally of an object of concentration or meditation may be determined by a temporary impulse of the notion of value imposed upon that object. It is accepted that every object has a value, but as I mentioned, no object has absolute value. That is the reason why unconditional concentration on any object in the world is not possible. If the concentration is not unconditional, you cannot really call it concentration at all. This is a very important background of study in which we have to engage ourselves before we take to spiritual life, especially a God-seeking life.

What do you mean by seeking God? It is the search for that which is complete in itself. It is the whole in every sense of the term. A partial attempt on the part of a finite mind cannot contain within itself the idea of a whole, whether you call it a universe or the God Himself. Has anyone attempted to think of a complete situation or a wholeness of anything, excluding every facet of things which are external to it?

Spiritual meditation, therefore, is the reaction of the whole person in respect of the whole of reality. It is not like the attention that you pay during a mathematical problem solution. It is not the accountant's concentration when he totals figures or subtracts figures, though that also is a concentration of some kind. When people walk on a wire in a circus they have concentration on what they are doing, otherwise they will slip down and fall. When you walk on a precipitous edge of a deep ravine, you are very careful. If there is a ropeway bridge across the Ganga with only two ropes which swing this way, that way, and on those ropes you have to walk, you know how careful you will be, lest you fall down. These are all concentrations, no doubt, but the whole mind does not work even here, because walking on the ropeway bridge is not a whole necessity - it is a tentative necessity. Every other action that we are performing is a tentative need that we feel, but it is not a total need. A total need is that without which you cannot even exist. It is not that you want something for a satisfaction - you want it for your being itself. Your existence itself will be nullified if that particular thing is not attended to properly.

An apparently intelligible example of this kind of concentration is the need that you feel to take your breath every day. Do you know how important breathing is? Fortunately, God in His infinite compassion has not compelled us to be aware constantly of the process of breathing. Some automatic, computerized action, as it were, is taking place through the heart and the lungs, and it is not forcing you to attend on the process of breathing; otherwise, day in and day out you will be thinking only of breath. Merciful God, merciful nature has freed you from this torture of feeling that you have to breath always. When you take your meal, the food goes inside; after that nobody bothers as to what happens to it. Suppose you go on thinking it passes through this gut, then it converts itself into something else, it goes to the stomach, it goes to the intestines; suppose you go on thinking like that, will it be a happy mood?

So there are certain automatic actions taking place which free us from the need to concentrate excessively even on important issues like breathing, digestion of food, sleep, etc. We don't even know how we sleep - it takes place. If you have to pay a price for getting into sleep, then what will happen to you? Without paying any price, spontaneously, freely you are given the choice of going into sleep and becoming very happy, wholesome and vigorous when you wake up.

These are little, visible examples of a totality of action taking place in some way or the other, but meditation on God, which is the principle motive of spiritual living, is a deliberate, wholesome activity of the total individual in the direction of the total reality of the universe. What is religion? It is the reaction of the whole man, whole person, to the whole of creation. Religion does not mean Hinduism, Christianity or any kind of 'ism' or fundamental, denominational section. Religion is not what you do, but what you are. You cannot be something different within yourself and start doing something which is religious in its nature. Religion is your encounter with God, not encounter with a temple or a church or a textbook or a scripture. That which is permanently real is the object of concentration in spiritual living. That which is permanently real can evoke attention only if that which is permanently real within our own selves starts concentrating. That which is permanently real in our own selves is that which concentrates itself on that which is permanently real in the cosmos. It is the real that is concentrating on the real. If you take this logic to its finale, you may come to the conclusion that meditation on God is nothing but God thinking Himself. I think it was Aristotle who mentioned somewhere when thought thinks another thing, it is called a human being - when thought thinks itself, it is called God.

But no thought can think itself. The very procedure adopted by human thought is to externalize itself in the direction of things which are externally placed in space and time. The mind is conditioned by the pressure exerted upon it by the actions of space and time. The space and time complex has only one function to perform - to externalize everything, and nothing that can be considered as whole and integrated in itself can be conditioned by space and time. This is why we say God is not in space and time - it transcends space and time. It is another way of saying God is not an external object, it is a total being. God is not an object of any kind so that you can open your eyes and look at it. You cannot even conceive it in the manner that you are conceiving objects in the world. The habit of the mind to think in terms of externality - space, time and cause - is to be transcended.

Great philosophers right from Plato onwards - Sankaracharya and Upanishads - have told us that the causal nexus of something proceeding from something else, motivated by the pressure exerted by space and time, has to be overcome. The mind that is completely engrossed in the operations of space and time externally will not be able to wholly attend upon that which is complete in itself. Nothing that is external in space and time can be complete in itself. It is not complete because it is external. Why is it not complete? Because the external excludes the internal - therefore it is not complete. The internal also is not complete because it excludes the external. Can you conceive of a situation, psychologically, where you can bring a blend between the internal and the external? If that would be possible, you will be thinking transcendentally and not empirically. Meditation is a kind of transcendental thinking, if at all you are permitted to use that word 'thought'. Meditation is not thinking - it is a state of the emergence of Being in one of its degrees. God is being - we call God Supreme Being. We do not say God is supreme object, nor do we say God is supreme becoming. God is not a process, God is not even a creative activity; God is not a work, it is not a procedure, and therefore to be in tune with that fundamental nature of the finally real thing, we have to set ourselves en rapport with that nature.

The characteristics of our center of aspiration should be in tune with the characteristics of that on which the concentration is directed. Likes attract like; dissimilar things cannot attract each other. If the substantiality of your being is dissimilar to the substance of God, there will be a repulsion from the side of God, and you will see that you feel great discomfort even in meditation. Why should there be discomfort in meditation? You should be engulfed in joy, rather. That which is going to bless you with infinite completeness requires from you nothing except your own self. God does not want any kind of gifts from you, like objects that we offer in temples of worship, etc. God does not want incense, flowers, sandalwood, fruit or delicious dishes. You have no right to offer this to Him because you have not manufactured these objects. You cannot offer to God that which is not your property.