effort of attention. Then this attending consciousness is held on its
object. Third, there is the ardent will to know its meaning, to illumine
it with comprehending thought. Fourth, all personal bias - all desire
merely to indorse a previous opinion and so prove oneself right, and
all desire for personal profit or gratification must be quite put away.
There must be a purely disinterested love of truth for its own sake.
Thus is the perceiving consciousness made void, as it were, of all
personality or sense of separateness. The personal limitation stands
aside and lets the All-consciousness come to bear upon the problem.
The Oversoul bends its ray upon the object, and illumines it with pure
light.

4. When these three, Attention, Meditation Contemplation, are
exercised at once, this is perfectly concentrated Meditation (sanyama).

When the personal limitation of the perceiving consciousness stands
aside, and allows the All-conscious to come to bear upon the problem,
then arises that real knowledge which is called a flash of genius; that
real knowledge which makes discoveries, and without which no
discovery can be made, however painstaking the effort. For genius is
the vision of the spiritual man, and that vision is a question of growth
rather than present effort; though right effort, rightly continued, will
in time infallibly lead to growth and vision. Through the power thus
to set aside personal limitation, to push aside petty concerns and
cares, and steady the whole nature and will in an ardent love of truth
and desire to know it; through the power thus to make way for the
All-consciousness, all great men make their discoveries. Newton,
watching the apple fall to the earth, was able to look beyond, to see
the subtle waves of force pulsating through apples and worlds and
suns and galaxies. and thus to perceive universal gravitation. The