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THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
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brought to a focus will do so at once, so will not the individual will, i.e., mental energy, have any effect unless it is also brought to a focus and concentrated on one point. For all our achievements are due to concentration. Even knowledge is possible by concentration of thought, that is, meditation, not otherwise. Those who hear the doctrine and do not meditate on it for themselves, are best described in the parable of the sower, as the wayside, the stony-ground, or the field of thorns, where the seed either does not take root at all or is choked up soon after. But that alone is good ground which produces a thirty- , a sixty- , or a hundred-fold harvest. As seed sown on the wayside, the stonyground, in a field of thorns, or in a plot where it is choked up by the weeds, produces little or no harvest, but on good ground multiplies thirty- , sixty- , and even a hundred-fold, so does knowledge increase in a thoughtful mind. When one hears the 'word' and meditates on it, it multiplies enormously. We may, for instance, take the little aphorism, 'the wages of sin is death.' In itself it consists of only six words, but it embraces within its scope the possibility of an enormous amplitude, that is, the entire range of knowledge. If we bring our concentrated thought to bear on the aphorism, we shall solve the riddle of the Universe ; but if we merely content ourselves with saying, “ how true it is,” or "it is quite wrong," and the like, we shall not understand anything. The difference between the adept and the average man lies in the power of concentration; and the whole science of Yoga is a commentary on this one principle. It is a matter of daily experience that even
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