56
the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole
minutes at a time; and at other times the object itselfwill begin to play
all sorts of tricks.
Suppose you have chosen a white cross.
It will move its bar up and
down, elongate the bar, turn the bar oblique, get its arms unequal, turn
upside down, grow branches, get a crack around it or a figure upon it,
change its shape altogether like an Amoeba,change its size and distance
as a whole, change the degree of its illumination, and at the same time
change its colour.
It will get splotchy and blotchy, grow patterns, rise,
fall, twist and turn; clouds will pass over its face. There is no conceiv-
able change of which it is incapable. Not to mention its total disap
pearance, and replacement by something altogether different!
Any one to whom this experience does not occur need not imagine
that he is meditating. It shows merely that he is incapable of concen—
trating his mind in the very smallest degree.
Perhaps a student may go
for several days before discovering that he is not meditating. When he
does, the obstinacy‘of the object will infuriate him; and it is only now
that his real troubles will begin, only now that Will comes really into
play, only now that his manhood is tested. If it were not for the Will-
development which he got in the conquest of Asana, he would probably
give up.
As it is, the mere physical agony which he underwent is the
veriest trifle compared with the horrible tedium of Dharana.