Imagination · “Feel It Real”
The Spinning Disc
Develop active concentration — sustained, wordless thinking about a self-created image — by visualising a spinning white disc and then deliberately shrinking, growing and re-sizing it at will.
Ex. 4: on a black field, build a steady, followable spinning white disc (~12 in, 2 ft ahead); hold 10 min. Ex. 4A: shrink it ~1 in/day to a whirling point (cardboard-circle aid allowed); 10 min/size, weeks-months. Ex. 5A/6: repeat with eyes, then ears, open. Ex. 6A: smoothly enlarge the point back up to 12 in under open senses. Wordless throughout; never rush.
What it is
With the disc series Sadhu crosses from concentrating on a given object to concentrating on a wholly self-created one — what he names active concentration: “the uninterrupted thinking about a very simple mental image without words.” Against an imagined “pitch-black curtain” you build a “flat, snow-white disc” that spins rapidly, “the power which turns the disc [having] its source in your own eyes.” Then comes the distinctive twist: you don’t just hold the image, you operate on it — shrinking it inch by inch (day by day) down to a whirling point, and later enlarging it back up — proving and refining deliberate command over your own imagery.
Sadhu calls No. 4A “perhaps one of the most important in this course,” because the ability to manipulate the image at will is the gateway to the passive, empty-mind exercises that follow.
The Method
No. 4 — build the spinning disc:
- Prepared and seated (Red Pranayama), eyes closed (ears optionally plugged). Imagine “a pitch-black curtain, enveloping everything.” On it, “a flat white disc like a plate of about ten or twelve inches in diameter. about two feet in front of your forehead,” thin as cardboard.
- Set it spinning “very rapidly, but not so fast that you cannot follow the revolutions,” perfectly centred, “without any deflections or vibrations.” “There is nothing else in the whole world for you except the white disc, whirling noiselessly at great speed against a black background.”
- Time your best span, multiply by three, build to ten minutes unbroken. (“This is a condition, and there is nothing that can change it.”) No. 4A — shrink it, day by day:
- After No. 4 (≈two weeks), “at each daily session diminish, by one inch, the size of the rotating disc” — 12 in, 11 in, 10 in. down to one inch, then “to that of a pea, and later to a white revolving point.”
- Physical aid if needed: cut concentric circles in white cardboard (each ½-inch smaller radius), visualise one, cut it away, compare — using the real reference to train each smaller mental size. Spend as many days per size as accuracy requires. Ten minutes remains the target for each stage. “Months may be required.” No. 5A / 6 / 6A — re-size and open the senses:
- No. 5A: repeat the disc work with open eyes, gazing “aimlessly into space,” seeing nothing but the white disc on black for ten minutes.
- No. 6: the same again, now with ears open too.
- No. 6A: start from the whirling white point, then “gradually, without interrupting the exercise, enlarge the point to a revolving disc of about one inch,” contemplate it, then keep enlarging “from two inches to three. so on till twelve inches is again reached” — a smooth, willed zoom under full sensory openness. By now Sadhu drops the stopwatch: rely on your developed “instinctive measurement”; exactness is “of secondary importance.”
Source & Lineage
Chapter XIX, “Fourth Series,” of Concentration (Allen & Unwin, 1959). Here Sadhu formalises the active/passive distinction and presents the disc as the bridge. The image-manipulation drills descend from his Western occult training (he credits Brandler-Pracht’s graded scheme, modified); the goal-language of consciousness “beyond the brain” is read through Advaita and Ramana Maharshi.
Mouni Sadhu (1897-1971). → (sadhu mouni).
Common refinements
Spinning too fast. Keep it followable; an uncontrollable blur is not concentration.
- Wobble and drift. The disc must be centred and steady — instability signals lost control; rebuild.
- Rushing the shrink. Give each smaller size as many days as accuracy needs; use the cardboard circles if the mental step won’t hold.
- Any verbalizing. Active concentration is wordless image-thinking.
- Impatience. Sadhu: “No one can be better than he is. development is gradual.” Frustration is the enemy, not slowness.