cinIntroduction Each of us has ideals, concepts of what our life should be. These are goals to be attained. However, sometimes at first we reach too far, as grasping for a star. Nevertheless, attainment in life, no matter what our personal philosophy may be, is dependent upon the tools which we use to bring it about. There are certain seemingly commonplace techniques which we call tools. These are necessary for mastery in any undertaking. Failure to use these techniques correctly or fully may result in disappointment, that is, in not realizing an objective no matter how well one may apply himself. It is the purpose of this series of booklets to provide each Rosicrucian throughout his studies with a series of useful techniques, not only help- ing him to derive the utmost from his Rosicru- cian studies but, as well, from his everyday living. IMPERATOR COPYRIGHT BY SUPREME GRAND LODGE OF AMORG, INC, ‘OCTOBER, 1977 Practical Techniques for Everyday Living Concentration is more important than we ordinarily realize. Proper concentration is necessary to the harmonious fulfillment of many of our functions in life. In fact, concentration has a definite relationship to certain of our other mental faculties. In concerning ourselves with the subject of concentration let us not resort to the usual dic- tionary definition. Rather, let us approach it from the point of view of our personal experience. If we use the word concentration in relation to a number of objects which are scat- tered about and which we wish to pick up, what do we mean? We think of concentratior this sense as the gathering together of the separate, scattered objects. It is as far as possible the act of trying to bring the objects into a kind of unity. In other words, for all practical purposes we are causing the objects to assume a compactness appearing to be a single unit rather than many. To use still another analogy in connection with the use of the word concentration, if before the closed doors of an auditorium we see a large gathering of persons who are waiting for the doors to open, we might say that this is a con- centration of waiting persons, Here again we mean that many beings are compressed into a state of relative oneness. PAGE ONENow let us think of concentration in the psy- chological, the mental sense. We say that we are concentrating on something. Again let us ask ourselves, exactly what do we mean by that? How strange it is that we often do not think of the semantics of the words which we use. The words perhaps aptly or habitually fit into our conversation. But what is our personal under- standing of them? A limited understanding of concentration and its functions will cause us to derive a limited value from such a faculty. Suppose we want to work with something which is perhaps minute in size, or intricate. Furthering this analogy, the work may be the threading of a fine needle or the inserting of a very small screw into an aperture of some mechanism. We have all had experiences similar to these. We were aware that in such circum- stances we could not permit our vision to wander because in order to achieve the desired result, it required an intense focusing of our vision upon the minute objects with which we were working. There is another way to describe this mental aspect of concentration. It is the focusing of atten- tion. In the above example this consisted of making our faculty of concentration responsive primarily to our visual impressions. If for further.example you are listening to a celebrated violinist, you are focusing your auditory faculty, your hearing sense, upon the sound waves com- ing to you. ‘Now this making our consciousness respon- PAGE TWO. | { sive to only one kind of impression introduces a very important factor in connection with con- centration. Simply, it is the relative suppression of our other sense faculties, that is, making them subordinate for the time being to the one sense faculty we are using. This brings us to the relationship of consciousness to our peripheral, outer, five sense faculties. These faculties are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling What are we to say about consciousness? This subject is one which is very extensively dealt with in our monographs. However, for our pre- sent purpose we will say that consciousness is a stream of sensitivity in our whole body, and this, which will also be more fully explained in our monographs, is an attribute of life force. When this sensitivity, or consciousness, is acted upon by some stimulus, such as the vibrations of light or sound waves, these impressions or vibrations ‘of consciousness are conveyed to the visual organs, the eyes, and to the visual center of the brain, or to the hearing or auditory center of the brain. In this center the impressions, or wave vibrations, are transformed into the sensations of sight or hearing, or any of the other peripheral senses. There is an intricate physiological pro- cess showing how all this occurs, but this lies outside our consideration of concentration. In concentration how do we command one sense to be more responsive than others? First, it is necessary for us to realize that our intense concentration can alternate its focus from one PAGE THREE