Page 26 - All India Magazine Jun-2025

even from a very short time. Take a very ordinary example: to
have your bath and to dress; the time needed varies with peo-
ple, doesn't it? But let us say, half an hour is required for doing
everything without losing time and without hurrying. Then, if
you are in a hurry, one of two things happens: you don't wash
so well or you dress badly! But there is another way — to con-
centrate one's attention and one's energy, think only of what
one is doing and not of anything else, not to make a movement
too much, to make the exact movement in the most exact way,
and (it is an experience lived, I can speak of it with certitude)
you can do in fifteen minutes what you were formerly doing in
half an hour, and do it as well, at times even better, without for-
getting anything, without leaving out anything, simply by the
intensity of the concentration.
And this is the best answer to all those who say, "Oh, if one
wants to do things well, one must have time." This is not true.
For all that you do — study, play, work — there is only one solu-
tion: to increase one's power of concentration. And when you
acquire this concentration, it is no longer tiring. Naturally, in
the beginning, it creates a tension, but when you have grown
used to it, the tension diminishes, and a moment comes when
what fatigues you is to be not thus concentrated, to disperse
yourself, allow yourself to be swallowed by all kinds of things,
and not to concentrate on what you do. One can succeed in
doing things even better and more quickly by the power of
concentration. And in this way you can make use of work as
a means of growth; otherwise you have this vague idea that
work must be done "disinterestedly", but there is a great dan-
ger there, for one is very quick to confuse disinterestedness
with indifference.
CWM 4: 135-38

26 All India Magazine, June 2025