The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

The Mind's Bazar

You can't imagine what a bazar there is in the head. It is something terrible. If you look truly objectively at what passes there you will be shocked. You have then to put it in order, see into it clearly and arrange; you have to note that two contradictory ideas do not run together on parallel lines.

I know a considerable number of persons who shelter in their head contrary ideas, not at all synthesised— there is no question of synthesis here—but cohabiting like two brothers engaged in eternal quarrels and contradictions, that is to say, the two ideas cannot live together, unless you lift them up and reconcile and unify in a higher and wider view; but that means work of a superior kind. People often do not even perceive that they are contradicting themselves with their conflicting ideas, they are not disturbed in any way. If I should give you examples—they are innumerable—you would laugh at the ridiculousness of incompatible ideas associating together.

I propose to give you a task. You have ideas on things. You must surely have ideas on the world, life, the why of existence and the whence and the whither, wherefore we are here, our present occupation, our future realisation etc., etc.

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Now try to put all these ideas in front of you and then arrange them. Will you find it easy? Surely it will amuse you and you will discover amazing things. First of all, the very work itself of exposition, that is to say, simply placing the ideas side by side in front of you, all the ideas that you have on a given subject, as if you were writing out a composition given in your class, will bring to you funny revelations. If you had not already the habit of holding to a central idea, a central immutable truth, if that were possible, around which you arranged all the collateral ideas, organised them in a logical order, if, I say, you did not do anything like that before, you would find yourself, if not in a sad, at least in a funny situation. You can't imagine how many contradictory thoughts you are thinking in the course of an hour without the least surprise! For example, take this subject: "what is the goal towards which life is moving?" or "why do men take birth only to die?" —take a subject a little general and even somewhat abstract like this and not the problem of why football today and not basket-ball—things can be easily explained away there—and then try to line up all your ideas on the matter; you will see how queer the affair is.

How to distinguish between an idea that is one's own and an idea coming from elsewhere (a book or a person) ?

There is nothing like an idea belonging to oneself and an idea belonging to others. No one has an idea

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exclusively his own. There is an immensity out of which one can draw according to one's personal affinity. Ideas are a collective possession, a joint property. Only there are different stages. There is the most common or commonplace stage where all of us have our brain sunk in a crowded mass of impersonal notions. It is the stage of Mr. Everybody. The next stage is a little higher, that of thinkers, as they are called. There are other stages further up, many others, some beyond the domain of words, others still within the domain of ideas. Those who can mount sufficiently high are able to catch something that looks like light and bring it down with its packet of ideas or its bundle of thoughts. An idea brought down from a higher region organises itself, crystallises itself into a variety of thoughts that are capable of expressing the idea in different ways. Then, if you are a writer, a poet or an artist and bring it further down into more concrete forms, then you can have all kinds of expressions, infinite ways of presenting a single idea, a single small idea perhaps, but coming from a great height. If you can do that, you know also how to distinguish between the pure idea and the manner of expressing it. If you are unable to do it by yourself, you can take the help of others, you can learn from persons and books. You can, for example, note how one particular idea has been given so many different forms by different poets. There is the pure or essential idea, then there is the typal or generic idea and then the many formulations. You can exercise your mind in this way,

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teach it suppleness, subtlety, strength and other virtues,

In fact, if you wish to be truly intelligent, you must learn a bit of mental gymnastics, even as you have to do physical gymnastics if you wish to have a strong capable body. People who have never done mental gymnastics have a small elementary brain; all their life they think like children. Mental exercise means that you must know how to do it and do it seriously. First of all, it means that you must not have fixed convictions, namely, that this idea is right and that one is wrong, this formulation is correct, the other one is inexact or that this religion is true, the other is false and so on. If you go on in that train you become very soon stupid, a blockhead. What you have to do, say, in the matter of religion, is to take up all the religions one by one and see how all have expressed the same human aspiration for the Absolute of some kind. You can compare and contrast, understand, weigh and balance, the game will be extremely interesting. Now, when you have mastered all the ideas, seized all the modes of expression, you can try to go beyond, look at them and smile at the eternal discussions mankind indulges in. You are then master of your mind and no longer subject to what seems to be the commonest habit of mankind—getting into a fury simply because someone does not happen to think like you.

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