The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

II

THOUGHT AND THOUGHT-POWER

Thought the Creator

Human thought always creates forms in the mental world. It is a creative force. You are creating thought-forms constantly and sending them out into the atmosphere around; they go abroad to do their work. You are yourself surrounded always by such formations. No doubt there are people who cannot think clearly; they form around them only a kind of whirl. But they who think clearly and strongly create thought-forms that go out to accomplish their task and return when they are re-thought. There are cases of people who are troubled by their own formations that return to them or upon them as if to possess them and which they cannot get rid of; they do not know how to unmake a form which they make. When you have made a particularly strong formation, it remains always linked to you; it comes back again and again hitting your head and gathering force. In the end it is a necessity to you. There is a whole world of mystery to learn in this matter. Men live in ignorance; they have powers of which they are thoroughly unconscious or know very little.

Buddhists, I mean those who are in the more orthodox tradition, do not believe in God or an eternal Reality; they do not believe in gods either, that is to say, in beings who are truly divine. They, however, know admirably to use the mind and the mind's power. The Buddhist

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discipline makes you master of the mental instrument. A person following the Buddhist discipline came to me once and said that he had made an experiment: he had formed a being with his thought, he had created something like a Mahatma. He knew and it is a proved fact that these mental formations after a time begin to have a personal life, independently of the author,—although they may be connected with him, yet they are quite independent, in the sense that they have a will of their own. But now he was facing a formidable difficulty. He said: "Do you know I have formed my Mahatma so well that he has become a personality quite independent of me and comes all the while to trouble me? He comes, scolds me for this and that, advises me in this matter and that and wants to control my life altogether. I am unable to get rid of him. I find it extremely difficult and do not know how to go about it. As I say, my Mahatma has become extremely troublesome. He does not leave me to be at rest. He interferes in all my activities, prevents me from doing my work and yet I know it is my own creation and I am unable to do away with it." He explained to me how he tried to get rid of the thing. I then told him it was because he did not know the trick. I showed him the process and the next morning he came happy and beaming, saying "it has left". He could not cut the connection; even then cutting the connection is not sufficient, for the being would continue to live apart and independent. What is needed is to re-absorb what one created, to swallow what was put out.

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