Please explain how to develop super-concentration. In Yogananda's teachings, Special exercise for concentration? Lie down on back fix gaze at between eyebrows? Eyes looking upwards lie down?
—Sunkoju , India
Dear Sunkoju,
You are right, Yogananda used the term “Super-concentration,” just as he used “Super-relaxation” and “Super-living.”
He explained the technique you are mentioning in the following way:
HOW TO DEVELOP THE POWER OF SUPER-CONCENTRATION
SPECIAL EXERCISE
In the morning, as soon as your consciousness comes back into the brain, and 15 minutes during the lunch hour, and also before going to bed, practice the following exercise: Lie motionless in the same position that you sleep (preferably you should practice sleeping on your back so that when you awake you may find yourself in that position).
Keep body relaxed without the slightest motion. Offer a deep prayer of devotion to God in the language of your own heart. Offer this prayer until you feel that God has responded to you. Through the increase of your inner peace and inner satisfaction, know that God has heard you. Do not concentrate on time. Then, with your eyes closed, concentrate upon the point between the eyebrows. Keep your gaze and mind fixed throughout the practice of this method. Then exhale breath and, keeping breath out, concentrate upon the point between the eyebrows, 12 times mentally uttering: Om-Spirit-Christ; or Om-Spirit-Bliss. Then inhale.
Repeat the above exercise 12 times. If you have time, repeat it about 24 times. Then after it is over, offer a deep heart’s prayer to God until you feel the contact of God through ever-increasing peace. The surest sign of the presence of God within you is that only by meditation and in no other way you will feel a strange, living, consciously-responding Peace looming up from within you. The more you concentrate, longer and more deeply, the greater will be the increase of this Peace, which is the language of God. Peace derived from Super-Concentration is the power of God within you. After you find this deep Peace within you, then affirm: “Spirit and I are One. Spirit, Thou art in me; manifest Thy wisdom fully through me.” Or: “Spirit and I are One; Thou art my Father; I am Thy child; what Thou hast, I have. Give unto me my birthright as Thy child, all the real prosperity which belongs to me.”
Yogananda’s main technique for achieving super-concentration is the Hong-Sau technique. You can find it on the Ananda website. He called it “the highest technique of concentration.”
Yogananda also taught: “By strict celibacy alone, one can gain great mental concentration.” You might try if you feel to.
All the best,
jayadev
