The memory has no enemy greater than lack of concentration. To go back to the story of the three travelers who made a trip together and then told what they had seen on their journey, it is apparent that the things they recalled were those on which they had concentrated their attention. From the preceding chapters you have learned also that the ability to concentrate is important in every effort of memory. For instance, if, while you are reading a book on travel in the United States, you begin to think of trips you have made to Europe, you will remember little of what you read.

Unfortunately, the present-day emphasis on political crises, threats of war and sensational news is an enemy of concentration. It tends to develop nervousness and lack of concentration. The more taut the nerves become in the struggle for daily bread, security, even preservation of one's self and family, the more difficult it is to shake off the cares of daily life and concentrate on a certain subject.

The term "concentration" has become rather hackneyed through constant loose usage, and it has a more exact meaning than is commonly given it. Many people believe they are "concentrating" to a sufficient degree when they succeed in doing their jobs competently even when surrounded by distracting noises. That this is not true concentration is evident when one attempts any sort of reasonably simple experiment demanding real, authentic concentration.

Americans as well as Europeans, we must confess, are greatly inferior in the art of concentration to Asiatics, especially Hindus. For hundreds of years Indian fakirs and yogis have practised concentration systematically, and they have passed their art along from generation to generation.

At this point I should like to cite as examples two stories from the countless numbers told by returning travelers. These stories are believed credible by so many people that we cannot doubt their authenticity.

The first is the so-called Magic Mango Tree:

For this performance the yogi lets the bystanders approach as closely as they please while he heaps a little mound of sand together before their eyes. Into this sand he puts a little seed which he has brought with him and covers the whole with a cloth. He then seats himself in the characteristic yogi pose and slowly waves his hand back and forth over the covered mound. After a short while the cloth begins to rise under the very eyes of the spectators and they see that the cloth is being lifted by a plant forcing its way up through the sand. As the cloth continues to rise, the yogi keeps up the monotonous waving of his hands and the plant grows to giant proportions. Soon the astonished spectators see an Indian mango tree whose size is described variously by the different observers, all of whom, nevertheless, agree that it towers over the person of the yogi.

The remarkable fact is that the tourists to India unanimously declare that the tree grew in so lifelike a manner before their eyes that no one could doubt its actual existence. And yet this audience was composed of tourists who had heard of the experiment long before they saw it and who knew that in reality there was no tree at all, merely an optical illusion. In spite of this knowledge, however, the yogi's power of concentration could conjure up this "suggestion."

All sorts of attempts have been made to explain this phenomenon, but in vain. One theory, for instance, is that the yogi conceals somewhere about him little India-rubber plants of varying sizes. These unusual plants can, as a matter of fact, be pressed into so small a ball that they are scarcely larger than an egg. When a conjurer on the stage imitates this experiment, he hides little rubber plants of varying sizes under the cloth and produces them one after the other before the eyes of the spectators by clever manipulation.

Other conjurers use little mango trees whose branches have been hollowed out, rather like wood canals. In these canals they place young locusts and tie their hind legs to the branches with fibers of bast. When the conjurer sprinkles a fine powder into the canals, the locusts come out of hiding, but, because they are tied, they remain sitting on the little branches. As the wings of these locusts are deceptively similar to leaves, the little tree seems to the spectators to be rich in foliage.

These attempts to explain the phenomenon are useless, however, when the performer has no opportunity to conceal anything. They become pointless when one sees a photograph taken by one of the spectators. The incorruptible photographic plate shows no trace of a real tree in spite of the fact that the spectators were convinced and swore under oath that they had actually seen a tree. This difference between what the human eye believes to be true and what the plate discloses proves the experiment to be true hallucination.
Later on we shall discuss the origins of such hallucinations. In the present connection it is sufficient to confirm the fact that extraordinary powers of concentration on the part of the yogi are necessary in performing the feat, for he is rarely in a position to bolster his experiment with explanations, since his American and European spectators understand his language as little as he understands theirs.

Another experiment calling for similar powers of concentration, also reported by many tourists in India, is im-perviousness to pain.

Indian fakirs and yogis have the faculty of concentrating so firmly on the idea of absence of pain that they are able to pierce their tongues, cheeks and the muscles of their upper arms with long needles. At times they leave the needles in place for more than ten minutes and actually are unaware of pain, conducting the experiment with a quiet smile.

We may rest assured that we shall never attain the yogi's remarkable power of concentration, since he has two advantages over us: his inheritance from past generations and the strict attention paid to the subject throughout his schooling. But, on the other hand, we can without doubt increase our power of concentration to a very high degree and at the same time conduct a successful fight against absent-mindedness.

As exercises in concentration I recommend the following:

1. Stretch out in a comfortable position on a couch or bed and be careful to relax your whole body, with no strain or tension anywhere. Close your eyes and try to visualize the form of some simple, familiar article. As soon as you succeed in doing so, concentrate your thoughts on this article to the exclusion of everything else and do not let them stray in any direction if you can help it. Suppose, for example, you choose an electric light bulb. You must keep your mind on the bulb and not let it stray to the chandelier or the room it illuminates or the people in the room.

At first it will be difficult for you to sustain this experiment for longer than four or five seconds. But by gradual, regular drill, you will succeed in running the time of concentration up to ten seconds or longer. When you have learned to do this, make the experiment more difficult. Instead of the quiet room, select a more or less populous spot where you are unable to stretch out in a position conducive to concentration, and where, moreover, the impressions on eye and ear will make it more difficult for you to collect your thoughts.

2. A more difficult, and consequently more interesting, exercise in concentration consists in remembering as exactly as possible the occurrences of the hour immediately preceding this. It is not sufficient for you to recall only that you were on Broadway where you bought a book or had an ice-cream soda. The correct method of carrying out the experiment would be somewhat as follows:

"It is now eight o'clock. At seven I left my office on Forty-second Street and went to the subway station at Times Square. On the way the show window of X's store caught my eye because it contained a particularly good-looking suit. I stood in front of the window and figured whether my income and my expenses for the current month would let me buy the suit. The answer was No, because I had a rather large medical bill for a throat infection this month. But I noted the name of the store and decided that I could buy the suit next month.

"I then went down the subway stairs, changed a dime at the booth because I had no nickel, and waited several minutes for my train. During this time I thought about this matter and that which had kept me busy all afternoon and about which I had not yet reached a decision. In the subway train I noticed two people sitting near me. One was a man who was sitting across from me. I noticed him because he wore a peculiar-looking tie. The other was a woman who resembled a relative of mine. During my ride I thought about a problem or two which worried me . . ."

If you carry out the exercise in this manner, you will make an important experiment in concentration: the more detailed, the better. That is, the more particulars you can recall, the more value the exercise will have for you. Of course, it is impossible for you to remember all the people you saw in the subway or all the thoughts that passed through your mind during the ride. But you will find that diligent, patient practice will increase your abilities.

It is important to remember that, aside from increasing your ability to concentrate, this exercise will in time make it possible for you to remember with a considerable degree of accuracy conversations which you have held and sensations which you have experienced. It is hardly necessary to point out how useful this can be in daily life.

And, finally, here is a third exercise which should appeal particularly to those of you who have lively imaginations:

Everyone occasionally falls into day-dreaming. There can be no objection to that, provided these day dreams do not interfere with more serious thinking. You can turn them into an interesting exercise in concentration if you make an attempt to recall your whole train of thought as exactly as possible. For example:
Mr. X is sitting on the beach in summer, enjoying the breeze. He sees a passing sailboat. It reminds him of the little sailboat his son received a few days before as a present from an aunt. He remembers he must buy another postcard for the aunt, and that he has just seen some especially attractive cards in a shop window. This reminds him that a road map was lying next to the cards with enticing tours in the neighborhood traced on it, and he muses that it really was too bad he had left his car at home because he could have made such pleasant trips in it.

Suppose that at this point Mr. X decided to do the above-mentioned exercise in concentration. He would try, starting with his car, to trace his entire train of thought backwards. That is, from the car to the road map, the postcards, the aunt, his little boy and the toy sailboat, to the actual sailboat which started him off on his train of thought. Since reveries are apt to be rather long drawn out, tracing them backwards is often—especially at the beginning— quite difficult. But if a person practises it often enough he will make excellent headway and with very little effort not only strengthen his ability to concentrate, but his memory as well.

Why do so many people neglect their powers of concentration or make so little effort to improve them? The real explanation, probably, is that concentration is an abstract idea whose practice does not always show concrete results. For instance, if you are studying an instrument such as the violin, you notice after a few practice periods that your tone and phrasing improve. If you are studying a foreign language, you notice after a little while that you can read books in this language or even converse with others in it. But in studying concentration, no such immediate, noticeable results are evident. Its benefits are only indirectly evident in a greater ease of learning, greater capacity of remembering and greater control over your environment. But these are all things which cannot be measured by rule or weighed in a scale.

And yet the ability to concentrate is no less important.

We shall return to it again and again and you will discover that it is indispensable to the memory and to suggestion. But in the meantime let us consider the third essential factor in the efficient functioning of the memory—association of ideas.

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