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"If one busies himself with an outer display of scriptural wealth, what time is left for silent inward diving after the priceless pearls?" Sri Yukteswar directed the study of his own disciples by the same intensive method of one-pointedness. "Wisdom is not assimilated with the eyes, but with the atoms," he said.
One-pointedness means enthusiasm, but enthusiasm is impossible without ideals. So the teacher who desires to be one-pointed must be full of ideals to which he is eager to lead his school. These ideals will sharpen his attention, and make him able to concentrate it even upon quite trivial details.
The teacher's ideal will of course be modified as he learns more of his students' capacities and of the needs of the nation. In this way, as the years pass, the teacher may find himself far from the early ideals that at first gave him one-pointedness. Ideals will still guide him, but they will be more practical, and so his one-pointedness will be much keener and will produce larger results.
The practical application, then, of one-pointedness lies in the endeavour to keep before the mind some dominant central ideal towards which the whole of the teachers' and boys' daily routine shall be directed, so that the small life may be vitalised by the larger, and all may become conscious parts of one great whole.
It is well to keep in mind these steps on the path to illumination: faith, valour, right mindfulness, one-pointedness, perception. Not one can be dispensed with; all must be won. First faith; and then from faith, valour; from valour, right mindfulness; from right mindfulness, a one-pointed aspiration toward the soul; from this, perception; and finally, full vision as the soul.
Thus, he should teach the principles of citizenship, but not party politics. He should teach the value of all professions to a nation, if honourably filled, and not the superiority of one profession over another. There are six points which are summed up by the Master as Good Conduct. These are: 1. Self-control as to the mind. Self-control in action. Tolerance. Cheerfulness. One-pointedness.
I will finish it with what is really another of Liehtse's stories, also dealing with a man who walked through fire uninjured, unconscious of it because of the one-pointedness of his mind. The incident came to the ears of Marquis Wen of Wei, who spoke to Tsu Hsia, a disciple of Confucius, about it.
The Master quotes two sayings which seem to me to show very clearly the lines along which one-pointedness should work: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might"; and: "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men." It must be done "as to the Lord."
For a concrete example, take the gradual conquest of each day, the effort to live that day for the Soul. To him that is faithful unto death, the Master gives the crown of life. The gradual conquest of the mind's tendency to flit from one object to another, and the power of one-pointedness, make the development of Contemplation.
This is the true onepointedness, the bringing of our consciousness to a focus in the Soul. When, following this, the controlled manifold tendency and the aroused one-pointedness are equally balanced parts of the perceiving consciousness, his the development of one-pointedness. This would seem to mean that the insight which is called one-pointedness has two sides, equally balanced.
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