Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/123

Rh i.e., in ritual worship or otherwise, in prayer, congregational or individual, much of the thought-process is engaged in the arrangement of favorable conditions. Still there is the attempt to concentrate on some subject of worship or prayer. So far as the diversity in thought processes is checked or prevented, the devotional method is successful. Still the defect is this: due to our bad habit, confirmed in the course of ages, our concentration is not deep, leaving the possibility of setting the diversity of thought-processes at work on the slightest disturbance.

In the Meditation method outward formalities, conventions, rites, etc., being dispensed with, thus barring the possibility of the thought-processes being set into motion as easily as in the Devotional method, concentration is fixed on one object of thought. And there is a gradual tendency to leave the sphere of thought to step into that of Intuition, which we shall next consider.