Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
Meditation
Once concentration is established, to dwell steadily and at length on a single lofty idea or divine ideal, progressing from a concrete form to its qualities and toward the formless, until the lower mind sinks into quietude.
Once you can fix the mind, dwell. Sit at the same hour daily; take one lofty object — an ideal, a Teacher, a noble quality — and hold the mind on it, letting the support pass from concrete form, to its qualities, toward the formless, until the busy lower mind “sinks into quietude.” Recruit habit; carry the quality into your day.
What it is
For Besant, meditation is the prolonged, deliberate, formal sustaining of the mind on one chosen lofty object — what concentration becomes once the basic power to fix the mind is in hand. Concentration is the gathering of attention to a point; meditation is the steady dwelling there, held long enough that the chosen idea fills and reshapes the mind.
She defines it plainly: “Meditation is the deliberate and formal training of the mind in concentration and in fixity of thought.” The practice progresses from a concrete form (a “divine ideal”, a Teacher, an image) toward its qualities and toward the formless, so that “the lower mind will become peaceful, that the lower mind will sink into quietude.” It rests on trained attention (The Inner Creates the Outer), built by daily habit (The Inner Creates the Outer), yielding stillness (The Inner Creates the Outer) and a turning of the mind toward the higher Self (All Is One).
The Method
Synthesised faithfully from Besant’s Meditation essay and the practice teaching of An Introduction to Yoga:
- Build on concentration first. Meditation presupposes the power to hold the mind to one point. Meditation is that power sustained.
- Sit daily at a fixed hour. Besant insists on regularity: “You are to do it every day, because if you do it every day you are helped by what is called the automatism of the body and mind.” The morning sitting is her standard frame.
- Recruit habit. “That which you do daily becomes a habit; that which is done daily is done without an effort after a time; that which is hard to begin with becomes easy by practice.”
- Hold one lofty object. Take a single elevated subject — for Besant, “the divine ideal, on the Teacher”, a noble quality, a lofty truth — and dwell on it, fixedly, not letting it slip into a stream of associations.
- Move from form to formless. Begin with the concrete form; pass to its qualities; let the support grow more abstract until the active lower mind quiets and “sinks into quietude.” (In An Introduction to Yoga she frames this as Raja Yoga: “The Raja Yoga seeks to control the changes in consciousness, and by this control to rule the material vehicles.”)
- Carry it into the day. The meditation’s object is meant to colour ordinary life: having dwelt on a quality at morning, “when he goes out into the world he carries the memory of his meditation with him.” (Sourcing: the definition, the every-day/automatism/habit passages and “carries the memory of his meditation with him” are verbatim from Besant’s Meditation; the Raja-Yoga line is from An Introduction to Yoga; the form→quality→formless progression and “sink into quietude” reflect her stated teaching.)
Source & Lineage
The clearest practical statement is in The Path of Discipleship (1896), in the lecture “Control of Mind. Meditation. Building of Character”; the schema of concentration → meditation → contemplation and the Raja-Yoga framing are developed in An Introduction to Yoga (1908).
Besant is rendering Patanjali’s dharana → dhyana → samadhi for a Theosophical audience, fused with the devotional “divine ideal.”
Common refinements
Skipping the foundation. Without trained concentration, “meditation” collapses into drifting reverie. Build the fixing power first.
- Irregular practice. Besant’s whole mechanism is daily habit; sporadic long sessions forfeit the “automatism” she relies on.
- Forcing the formless. Don’t strip away the form prematurely; let the support grow abstract as the mind quiets, not before.
- Leaving it on the cushion. The point is partly to carry the dwelt-on quality into the day; a meditation sealed off from conduct is incomplete in her scheme.