And so what must be acquired is the power of observation and the capacity for concentrating and for pursuing a little continuously a certain movement in one's being; as when you have some very strong feeling which takes hold of you, seizes you, then you must look at it, so to say, and concentrate upon it and manage to find out where it comes from, what has brought you this. Just this work of concentrating in order to succeed in finding this out is enough to lead you straight to an experience. And then if, for example, you want to do something practical, if in your feelings you are completely upset, agitated, if there's a kind of storm within, then by concentrating you can try to find out the cause of all that, you see, the inner cause, the real cause, and at the same time you can aspire to bring peace, quietude, a kind of inner immobility into your feelings, because without that you can't see clearly. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/9-march-1955#p24 </ref>
==Concentration Before and After Sleep==
A short concentration before going to sleep, with an aspiration to remember the activities of the night when you wake up. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/18-january-1967#p2 </ref>
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Before going to sleep you must concentrate for a few minutes, look into the day that has passed, remember when and where you have forgotten the Divine, and pray that such forgettings should not happen again. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/prayer-and-calling-the-divine#p4 </ref>
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Before you go to sleep, concentrate a few seconds in the aspiration that the sleep may restore your fatigued nerves, bring calm and quietness to your brain so that on waking you may, with renewed vigour, begin again your journey on the path of the great discovery [discovery of psychic being]. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/psychic-education-and-spiritual-education#p1 </ref>
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When you concentrate before sleeping, then in your sleep you remain in contact with the Divine force; but when you fall heavily to sleep without any preliminary concentration, you sink into the inconscient and the sleep is more tiring than restful, and it is difficult to come out of this sluggishness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/8-october-1961#p3</ref>
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I think there is an entire category of dreams which are absolutely commonplace, useless and simply tiring, which one can avoid if, before going to sleep, one makes a little effort of concentration, tries to put himself in contact with what is best in him, by either an aspiration or a prayer, and to sleep only after this is done... even, if one likes, try to meditate and pass quite naturally from meditation into sleep without even realising it...
Usually there is a whole category of dreams which are useless, tiring, which prevent you from resting well—all this might be avoided. And then, if one has truly succeeded well in his concentration, it is quite possible that one may have, at night, not exactly dreams but experiences of which one becomes conscious and which are very useful, indications, as I just told you, indications about questions you asked yourself and of which you did not have the answers; or else a set of circumstances where you ought to take a decision and don't know what decision to take; or else some way of being of your own character which does not show itself to you clearly in the waking consciousness—because you are so accustomed to it that you are not aware of it—but something that harms your development and obscures your consciousness, and which appears to you in a symbolic revelatory dream, and you become clearly aware of the thing, then you can act upon it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/13-april-1955#p19 </ref>
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Listen: if every evening before going to sleep you take off only a tiny minute, like that, and in this little minute, with all the concentration you are capable of you ask to become conscious of the divine Force, simply like that, nothing more; in the morning when waking up, before beginning your day, if you do the same thing, take a minute off, concentrate as much as you can and ask to become conscious of the divine Force, you will see, after some time, it will happen. Nothing but these small things which are nothing at all and take no time. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/10-november-1954#p37</ref>
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When you wake up, do not make any sudden movement of the head and keep still for a few minutes, with a concentration to remember what happened during your sleep. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/18-january-1967#p3 </ref>
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In any case one thing you can do in all security is, before going to sleep, to concentrate, relax all tension in the physical being, try... that is, in the body try so that the body lies like a soft rag on the bed, that it is no longer something with twitchings and cramps; to relax it completely as though it were a kind of thing like a rag. And then, the vital: to calm it, calm it as much as you can, make it as quiet, as peaceful as possible. And then the mind also—the mind, try to keep it like that, without any activity. You must put upon the brain the force of great peace, great quietude, of silence if possible, and not follow ideas actively, not make any effort, nothing, nothing; you must relax all movement there too, but relax it in a kind of silence and quietude as great as possible. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/2-march-1955#p10</ref>
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For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive—quietly attentive—and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established—very rarely is there no communication. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/6-may-1953#p13 </ref>
'''Resting in Concentration'''
A rest which is not a falling into the inconscient―which generally tires you more than it refreshes―but a conscious rest, a concentration in which one opens oneself and absorbs the forces which come, the universal forces. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/20-june-1956#p72 </ref>
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You must rest—but a rest of concentrated force, not of diluted non-resistance to the adverse forces. A rest that is a power, not the rest of weakness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/sleep-and-rest#p21 </ref>
==Concentration for Silence==