Volume
Vol. 12, The Vision of God and Man
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The Path of Meditation
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Sub-Heading
2. Contemplation
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Vol. 12, The Vision of God and Man
The Path of Meditation
2. Contemplation
And when one goes a little further on the same path one finds that there is contemplation, which means the retaining of the same thought or thought-picture. The distinction between concentration and contemplation is that the former is the composition of a form, and the latter is the retaining of this impression, of this form. It is difficult to explain to what extent the power of contemplation works; those who are acquainted with the working of contemplation can only call its result a phenomenon. The reason is that the mind is creative because the divine spirit is creative, and became the divine spirit is creative therefore the mind inherits, as its divine heritage, the faculty of creating. No one, however material, will deny the fact that all beauty and art, through whatever realm it is manifested, through science or industry, is a phenomenon of the mind. All the wonderful things made in the world in the way of inventions, of architecture, of art, have come as a phenomenon of the mind. But they are mostly the phenomena of an active mind, and one does not realize how great the phenomena are when produced by a controlled mind, controlled through concentration and contemplation.
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