The Mother's Concentration in the Heart

Drawn from her talks of 23 June 1929 (CWM 3) and 27 July 1955 (CWM 7):

1. Sit quietly and still. Take a comfortable, steady posture. She told disciples to sit “candid and simple as a child, not interfering by your external mind, expecting nothing, insisting on nothing.”
2. Gather the scattered consciousness. Collect the consciousness that is “dispersed in all the thoughts you have and your preoccupations.” In her image: “gather all the strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up.” Bring it back within yourself as completely as possible.
3. Bring it down out of the head. Deliberately draw the active mental energy down from the head — “all that keeps the brain running” — so the constant mental churn quiets and the centre of gravity drops.
4. Concentrate in the heart / solar-plexus region. Place and hold the gathered consciousness “in the region of the heart, near the solar plexus.” She specified: “concentrate here, on the solar plexus, the centre… because it’s here that one can most easily find the psychic, enter into contact with the psychic.”
5. Concentrate, do not think. This is the pivot of her method: “I don’t say think in the heart, I say concentrate, concentrate the energy, concentrate the consciousness, concentrate the aspiration, concentrate the will.” She added: “One can have an extremely intense concentration without a single thought, and in fact it is usually much more intense when one doesn’t think.”
6. Aspire inwardly, with self-detachment. Sustain “a very intense aspiration” — a wordless inner call toward the soul/the Divine — together with a quiet detachment from the surface self. She warned explicitly not to mistake emotions and feelings (which are vital, not psychic) for the soul: “It’s not through the feelings that one goes to the psychic, it is through a very intense aspiration and a self-detachment.”
7. Wait, receptive. Hold the concentration without forcing a result. What comes, comes “in the measure of your capacity to receive it.” Over repeated practice the psychic presence is felt as a calm, warm, steady fire of the heart. (Sourcing note: bracketed phrasing in quotes is the Mother’s, from CWM 3 and CWM 7 as cited. Step ordering is a faithful reconstruction of her described method, not added doctrine.)

Mirra Alfassa developed her inner discipline first in Paris under Max and Alma Théon (from whom, she said, the very term “psychic being” came), then in full partnership with Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry, where she answered disciples’ practical questions in the Questions and Answers talks (collected across CWM vols.

3–9). → entry for the Mother; lineage to Sri Aurobindo. The heart-concentration-to-the-psychic is the operational core of Integral Yoga’s “psychicisation” stage.

Hridaya / heart-centred dhyana (Yoga, Vedanta) — concentration in the spiritual heart (hridaya) to reach the Self; structurally close.

• Hesychast “prayer of the heart” — Eastern-Orthodox descent of the mind into the heart in stillness.
• Ramana Maharshi’s heart-centre — abidance at the right-side spiritual heart.
• Anapana / antar-mauna — gathering scattered attention to one interior point.
• Quaker/contemplative “centring down” — collecting the dispersed self into inward silence.

Thinking instead of concentrating. The single biggest error she names. Stop narrating; just hold the gathered consciousness at the centre, wordless.

• Mistaking emotion for the soul. Strong feeling (devotional rush, sentimentality) is vital, not psychic. Aspire and detach; don’t chase the emotional high.
• Staying stuck in the head. If concentration stays behind the eyes, it stays mental. Deliberately bring it down into the chest.
• Forcing / straining for a result. Receptivity, not effort, is the mode — “expecting nothing, insisting on nothing.”
• Refinement: anchor lightly on the felt sensation of the heart/upper-belly to give the concentration something concrete to rest on without verbalising.