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Thought and Imagination WHEN you think of a person or a thing you are
immediately I there and come into contact with the object of your thought. But
this happens in the thought world only; you know nothing of the vital or
physical context of the object. Thought is conscious of thought only in the
mental world; by your thought you can be conscious of the mental atmosphere of
the distant object, of the thought of the person to whom you go, but nothing
else, absolutely nothing of his vital or physical. If you want to know of the vital you must go
to the object vitally; it means an exteriorisation that leaves the body at least three-fourths in trance. And if you want
to see things physically you will have to go out in your most material subtle
physical; that leaves the body in an entirely cataleptic condition. These
things cannot be done without there being someone by your side who has the
right knowledge and who can protect you. But the mental exteriorisation happens
constantly. It puts you in relation with the mental world. If you are very
conscious and the person you see in thought is also very conscious, then you
can know of the ideas and opinions which the person might form at that time,
but even then only indirectly, you do not know directly. When you imagine a thing, it means that you
make a mental formation which may be near to the truth or far from it according
to the quality of your formation. There are people who have this power of formation
to such an extent that they are capable of realising what they imagine. They
imagine something and they make such a strong and well-shaped formation that
they succeed in materialising it. They are truly creators. There are not many like that, but there
surely are a few. You can meet a dead person also in your
thought if he continues to be in the mental world; you can be in contact with
his mind and have a sort of mental vision of his life there. But if he is gone
to the psychic world, then thinking of him is not sufficient; you must know
how to go into the psychic world and meet him there. The mind has its own power of vision; it is
not the vision of the physical eyes, but it is yet vision, perception through
forms. It is not imagination which is a quite different faculty. Suppose you
figure to yourself an ideal being to whom you attribute all conceptions of
ideality you have. You say he must be like this, he must be like that, his
thoughts are like this, his character like that; you fill up all the details
and build up the being. Well, that is the work of imagination. Literary men,
novel-writers, always do this kind of construction. Of course, there are
writers who take up things from life; but there are others who imagine things
and impose them upon life. A character, a concourse of circumstances, a whole
chain of events, they spin out of their head. And if they are powerful and
possess sufficient creative force, it is quite possible there may be one day
actually a physical human being embodying the type imagined. You can make use of imagination for a high
purpose. With its help you can recreate your inner and outer life. You can
wholly build your life if you know how to use it and have the power. As a
matter of fact, it is the most ordinary and primary way of creating and forming
things in the world. I had always the impression that if one had not the
capacity of imagination, one would not make any progress. Your imagination
always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine
what you would like to become – that comes first, the prevision, and then you
follow it up; you continue to imagine and realise, realise and imagine.
Imagination opens the way to realisation." It is very difficult to move
unimaginative people. They see only what is just in front of their nose, they
feel only what is there at a given moment. They cannot advance, they are
blocked by the immediate present. It is imagination that makes the whole
difference. Men of science also have and should have a
great power of imagination; otherwise they would discover nothing. Imagination,
is in reality, the capacity to project oneself out of realised
Page – 37 things towards things realisable and pull them in by the very power of
projection. It is true there is a progressive and there is a regressive
imagination. There are people who always imagine all possible catastrophes and
have the power even to make them come. However, imagination has its good use.
It sends out, as it were, antennae into a world that is not yet
realised, and they catch hold of something there and draw it here. Naturally,
it means an addition to earth's atmosphere, addition of things that tend
towards manifestation. Imagination then is an instrument that one can train and
discipline and use at will. It is one of the principal faculties that should be
developed and made serviceable. Even, you can imagine the Divine and come
into contact with Him. You do in fact come into contact with that which you
imagine. Do you know you cannot imagine anything that is not somewhere? It may
not exist here upon earth, but it is and must be elsewhere. As I say, it is
impossible to imagine anything that is not contained in the universe in
principle at least. Otherwise it would not be there even as an idea. The universe is progressive. That is to say,
more and more things constantly manifest themselves there. Now, imagination is
a faculty by which you go beyond the range of manifested things; if you have
progressed so far as to imagine things that are not yet manifested, you already
help in bringing down these things and making them part of the manifested
reality. Naturally, you must know how to go beyond the manifested universe in
order to be able to imagine what is not there. And there are many, many such
things. First of all, you must know how to get beyond
the terrestrial manifestation, in order to be able to imagine a new thing in
it. And (or how many millions of years has earth existed! What has been the
output of new things there? Countless, for no two things upon earth are exactly
the same, although they may be very similar. It is not easy with your mind to
get out of the earthly atmosphere. But if you have succeeded in doing that, you
have to get out of the universal life. To enter into contact with all that has
been here upon earth since the beginning of its appearance till the present day
and then to enter into contact with the universal of which the earth forms only
a tiny particle from its beginning to its formulation today – this is not
sufficient. You
Page – 38 have still to go beyond, beyond the universal, into the transcendent,
the unmanifest. Then you can think of imagining and bringing down something new
into the manifestation and upon earth. Not that one cannot do this. But it is
not so easy.
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