Book 4 (Part I)

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.