Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
The Practice of Concentration
To gather the scattered mind onto one chosen symbol or idea and hold it there steadily, until effortful mental activity gives way to a quiet inward perception that is ‘not thinking, but knowing.’
Settle the life first (body, emotions). Sit; take one worthy symbol or idea — TAO, a mandala, an aspect of Truth — and hold the mind on it. When it wanders, return it gently. Don’t grip; let effort give way to a quiet “not thinking, but knowing.” Keep it short, daily, and natural — never forced, never via breathwork or kundalini.
What it is
For Hall, concentration is the disciplined gathering of the wandering mind onto a single chosen point — a symbol, an idea, an aspect of Truth — and the holding of it there until the noisy effort of thinking subsides into a quiet inner perception.
He frames the goal of the practice as a shift from mental processes to “an inward mystical perception that is not thinking, but knowing.” It is the fourth of his twelve “Realizations,” deliberately placed after purification of the body and the cultivation of poise — concentration is not a stunt of will but the natural next step for a life already brought into some order.
It rests on trained attention (The Inner Creates the Outer), uses a symbol as its anchor (Life Is a Dream), ripens into stillness (The Inner Creates the Outer), and turns the mind toward the deeper Self (All Is One).
The Method
Synthesised faithfully from Hall’s Fourth Realization:
- Prepare before you concentrate. Hall gives “Preparation for Concentration” its own section: the body must be reasonably purified and the emotions reasonably settled first (the earlier Realizations). You do not begin with a turbulent life.
- Choose a worthy symbol or idea — not a trivial one. Hall uses “Concentration Symbols,” the mandala (“a magical symbol of the universe”), and the begging bowl as receptive emblems; he points the Western student to ideas such as the word TAO as an object of meditation. The object should carry meaning, so that dwelling on it draws meaning out.
- Hold the mind on the one point. Fix attention on the chosen symbol and keep it there. When the mind slips to other things, bring it back — gently, without violence to yourself.
- Let effort give way to perception. The aim is not to grip harder but to pass through effortful thinking into the quieter knowing: concentration deepens (in his Fifth Realization) into “Philosophical Attention” and “Concentration as a Form of Experience.”
- Keep it regular, and keep it natural. Hall insists the disciplines are “not to be practiced as rituals, but as inherent qualities until they become as natural as eating and digestion.” A short daily sitting, made habitual, beats occasional forcing. (Sourcing: “an inward mystical perception that is not thinking, but knowing,” the mandala as “a magical symbol of the universe,” the use of the begging bowl, meditating “upon the word TAO,” and “not to be practiced as rituals, but as inherent qualities until they become as natural as eating and digestion” are from Self-Unfoldment; the ordering and the preparation steps follow his Fourth/Fifth Realization structure.)
Source & Lineage
The practice is set out in the Fourth Realization of Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization (Philosophical Research Society, 1942) — Hall’s most explicitly practical book. He draws the disciplines from “Oriental metaphysical doctrine supplemented with Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy,” adapting Eastern concentration (the mandala, the begging bowl) for a Western, philosophical student rather than prescribing literal ritual use.
Common refinements
Concentrating on a turbulent life. Hall’s whole sequence puts purification and poise before concentration; skipping that makes the sitting a wrestling match.
- Forcing. The goal is to pass through effort into knowing, not to clamp the mind harder; gripping breeds strain and the “psychism” Hall warns against.
- A trivial object. A meaning-rich symbol (TAO, a mandala, an aspect of Truth) yields more than an arbitrary dot; the object is meant to unfold.
- Treating it as a ritual. Make it as natural as eating; a stiff, occasional ceremony forfeits the habit Hall relies on.