Dharanasu cha yojnata manasah. 

Dharana is not only concentration. "Concentration" gives a little glimpse into the nature of dharana, but dharana is a bigger concept than concentration. So let me explain it to you...

The Indian word dharma also comes from dharana. Dharana means: the capacity to contain, the capacity to become a womb. When, after pranayam, you have become in tune with the whole, you become a womb -- a great capacity to contain. You can contain the whole. You become so vast that anything can be contained. But why has dharana been continuously translated as "concentration"? Because "concentration" gives a little glimpse into it. What is concentration? To remain with a single idea for a long time is concentration, to contain a single idea for a long time.

If I tell you to just concentrate on a picture with a monkey inside, try so that you remain with the concept of the monkey, the picture of the monkey and nothing else -- -it will be very difficult for you. A thousand and one things will interfere. In fact, only the monkey will not be there and everything else will be there, the monkey will disappear again and again and again.

It becomes so difficult for the mind to contain anything. Mind is very narrow. It can contain something only for a few seconds, then it loses it. It is not vast; it cannot remain with one thing for long. That is one of the deepest problems of humanity. You fall in love with a woman or a man; then the next day the mind is moving to somebody else, to somewhere else. One day, and you cannot contain. You cannot be in love with the same person for long; even hours is too much. Your mind goes on wandering all over the world.

You were hankering for a car for many days. You struggled; somehow you managed. Now the car is there in your drive -- but finished. Now the mind is moving somewhere else again -- the neighbor's car. And the same will happen with that car also. The same has been happening for ever and ever: you cannot contain. Even if you reach to a point, soon you lose it.

Dharana means the capacity to contain -- because if you want to know God you will have to become capable to contain him. If you want to know your innermost being you will have to create the capacity to become the womb for it. You will have to give a rebirth to yourself. Concentration is only a fragment of it. Dharana is a very wide word; it is very, very comprehensive. It contains more than concentration; concentration is only one part of it.

"And then the mind becomes fit for concentration." I would like to translate it: "And then the mind becomes a womb." When I say "a womb" I mean: a woman contains a child for nine months in her own being, like a seed she carries it.

Hindus have called woman the earth, because she carries the child, the seed of the child, just as the earth carries a seed of a great oak tree, for months together. When the seed settles deep into the soil, loses all fear, is no longer a stranger in the earth, starts feeling at home.... Remember, a seed has first to feel at home, only then the shell breaks; otherwise the shell will not break. When the seed starts feeling that this earth is motherly -- now there is no need to protect oneself, there is no need to carry the armor of the shell around -- it becomes loose. By and by, the shell breaks and disappears into the earth. Now the seed is no longer a stranger; he has found the mother. And then the sprout comes up.

In India we have called woman the earth element and man the sky element -- because man is a wanderer. He cannot contain much. And it happens every day: if a woman falls in love with a man, she can remain in love for her whole life. That is easier for her -- she knows how to contain one idea deep, and remain with it. Man is a vagabond, a wanderer. If there were no women there would have been no homes in the world -- at the most, tents -- because man is a wanderer. He would not like to live in the same place for ever and ever. He would not create stone palaces and marble palaces, no; that is too static. He will have a vagabond's tent so any moment he can remove it, move somewhere else.

There would have been no home if there were no women. Home exists because of the women. In fact the whole civilization exists because of the women. Man would have remained a nomad, moving. And that remains his mind still: even though he lives in the home, his being goes on moving. He cannot contain; he has no capacity to become a womb.

That's why this has been my feeling: that women can move in meditation more easily than men. It is difficult for a man; his mind wavers more, tricks him into new traps, always is on the move, always thinking of going to the Himalayas, to Goa, to Nepal, to Kabul -- somewhere. A woman can settle down; she can remain in one place. There is no inner urgency to move.

And then the mind becomes fit to become a womb -- because only through that womb a new being is to be born to you. You are going to be born to yourself; you have to carry yourself in your womb. Concentration is part of it. It is beautiful to learn concentration. If you can remain with one idea for long, you become capable of the higher possibility of remaining one and the same for a long period -- because if you cannot remain one and the same for a long period, you will be distracted by the objects: one car, then another car; one house, then another house; one woman, then another woman; this post, then another post. You will be distracted by objects. You will not be able to come back home.

When no object distracts you, only then is the return possible. A mind which can remain in deep patience, like a mother, can wait, can remain unmoving, only that mind can come to know one's own divinity.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #9
Chapter title: Returning to The Source
9 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall