Attention

Voluntary, conscious and deliberate attention is an act of will. It focuses on full awareness of the here and now and avoids any escape into thoughts about the past or the future. Inward attention involves a stilling of the mind to all external activity and is a state analogous to meditation, or more easily achieved after meditation, or an exercise in preparation for meditation. Practice and discipline render this state increasingly more easily achieved, in the same way that one learns to meditate by meditating. The practice of antarmukha is similar to [pratyahara]

, the fifth step on the eightfold path of yoga.