A mentally restless person can never be, and never will be a mystic. This statement cannot be refuted by the fact that most of the lay mystics are mentally restless people who largely speculate. These people have, also, actually brought out, to the level of the daily consciousness, their various hidden inclinations, whose excess makes them suffer; therefore their restlessness is their characteristic which makes them unable to remain with all senses on the ground. Given the diffuse character of their mind, only fantastical matters suit them. The common ignorance considers fantastical matters to be the mysticism in its true conception. To concentrate is supposed to mean, in the first stage, retention of the reflexive functions of the mind and, in the second stage, its focusing or fastening. The initial stages of the mystical efforts should have no other aims. Therefore, by focusing of the mind, only its holding back is meant, when it tries to escape from the sober reality to fantasies. When a person succeeds in holding it back, they should let it rest on one object, which can be some place on the body; the mind’s potential restlessness will not allow this state of it to continue for long, in any case; therefore this whole process is repeated over and over again. After a long period of such constant striving to hold back the uncontrolled activity of mind, the mind will certainly stabilise. This is already concentration, by which the mystical path begins, but not at all the mystical development, because, it is only a state of mind which allows observing with sufficient attention in order for a person to obtain knowledge about things that they see around them, which they have earlier always only seen. In another sense, it means that he or she begins towalk the path of obtaining knowledge about the world and that their spirit will no longer be benumbed by the narrowing of consciousness, which occurs so easily when the so-called powerful or intensive concentration is used – i.e. a powerful concentration of the mind on one point or a sole object. As soon as the mind, by the holding back of its spontaneous activity, becomes capable of a continuous maintaining of its calmness, while the developed observation ability, which brings the knowledge of the phenomena of the surrounding world, does not disappear, but on the contrary, it develops further, the mind can be led to concentration. For this, caution and forethought are needed, because, with the intensity of the mind’s concentration, the danger of its fixation and narrowing of consciousness grows too, both of which usually accompany it. It has to be achieved, that the attention, which is bringing thorough cognition of the things of the surrounding world, is maintained and even intensified, but only with regard to the concentration on a sole object, because, only a mind capable of illuminative observation of the outer phenomena is a terrain on which it is possible to build an all-penetrating concentration, which is a tool helping the person to penetrate all the way to the centre of all existence, without the mind being paralysed by narrowing resulting from fixation. Let us, however, return to the initial stages of the methodical sequence of steps towards the concentratedness of mind. Its purpose is to turn a wandering mind into a mind, which does not wan40 (8) Květoslav Minařík
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