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To concentrate, then, is to gather the scattering lines of consciousness and focus them upon a unifying idea. Concentration is a highly active mental state, not mere passivity, or "letting go."

To concentrate is to exclude. If your "silence" is to be of an uplifting sort, you must wisely select a line of profitable thinking, then give your mind so fully to it that undesirable thoughts will be shut out. If the consciousness of sensation intrudes, never mind the intrusion; fill your mind more actively with the thought which you wish to meditate upon. To be restfully silent is of course to be calm within. But it is a choice between activities, not between activity and passivity. If you are to meditate in peace you must be peaceful. But to be peaceful you must be so strong in your attitude of inner poise that no other activity can break into your concentrated repose. "Power through repose" is Miss Call's phrase, that is, the power of repose, not the weakness of it. The majority of people are rather loosely put together. What they need is not to dangle and "let go," but to take hold of themselves and turn their reorganised life into a wise channel.
 
Again, some devotees of the "silence" have thought that there was some sort of mysterious
power or feeling which one might enter into by opening the mind in what they called a "spiritual"