Changes

= What Is Imagination ? =

<div style="color:#000000;">… what The imagination is really the power of mental formation. When this power is put at the service of the Divine, it is not only formative but also creative. There is called imagination , however, no such thing as an unreal formation, because every image is a capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards things realisable, and then to draw them by reality on the projectionmental plane.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/power-of-imagination#p1</divref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/6-july-1955#p40~</divcenter>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>Our surface imagination is a selection from a vaster more creative and effective subliminal image-building power of consciousness.~</divcenter>

Imagination itself is in its nature a substitute for a truer consciousness faculty of intuition of possibility. <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memorythe-cosmic-egoillusion-andmind-selfdream-experience#p15</span><span style="backgroundand-color:transparent;color:hallucination#000000;">

p25</spanref>

<div style="color:#000000;">Imagination itself Our surface imagination is in its nature a substitute for selection from a truer vaster more creative and effective subliminal image-building power of consciousness faculty of intuition of possibility.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-ego-and-self-experience#p15</divref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream-and-hallucination#p25~</divcenter>

<div style="color:#000000And now, to come down to a more ordinary level, everyone has in him, in a greater or lesser measure, the power to give form to his mental activity and use this form either in his ordinary activity or to create and realise something. We are all the time, always, creating images, creating forms. We send them into the atmosphere without even knowing that we are doing so—they go roaming about, pass from one person to another, meet companions, sometimes join together and get on happily, sometimes create conflicts, and there are battles;">The imagination for often, very often, in these mental imaginations there is really the power a small element of mental will which tries to realise itself, and then everyone tries to send out his formationso that it can act, so that things can happen as he wants and, as everyone does this, it creates a general confusion. When this power is put at If our eyes were open to the service vision of all these forms in the Divineatmosphere, it is not only formative but also creativewe would see very amazing things: battlefields, waves, onsets, retreats of a crowd of small mental entities which are constantly thrown out into the air and always try to realise themselves. There isAll these formations have a common tendency to want to materialise and realise themselves physically, howeverand as they are countless—they are far too many for there to be room enough on earth to manifest them—they jostle and elbow one another, no such thing as an unreal formationthey try to push back those which do not agree with them or even form armies marching in good order, because every image always to take up the available room both in time and space—it is only a reality on very small space compared with the mental planecountless number of creations. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/3-september-1958#p9</divref>

http:<center>~<//incarnateword.in/cwm/03/power-of-imagination#p1center>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>When you imagine something, it means that you make a mental formation which may be close to the truth or far from the truth—it also depends upon the quality of your formation. You make a mental formation and there are people who have such a power of formation that they succeed in making what they imagine real. There are not many of these but there are some. They imagine something and their formation is so well made and so powerful that it succeeds in being realised. These are creators; there are not many of them but there are some.~</divcenter>

Imaginations that persist in the human mind, like the idea of travel in the air, end often by self-fulfilment; individual thought-formations can actualise themselves if there is sufficient strength in the formation or in the mind that forms it. Imaginations can create their own potentiality, especially if they are supported in the collective mind, and may in the long run draw on themselves the sanction of the cosmic Will. In fact all imaginations represent possibilities: some are able one day to actualise in some form, perhaps a very different form of actuality; more are condemned to sterility because they do not enter into the figure or scheme of the present creation, do not come within the permitted potentiality of the individual or do not accord with the collective or the generic principle or are alien to the nature or destiny of the containing world-existence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0721/6the-julycosmic-1955illusion-mind-dream-and-hallucination#p25p24</ref>

<div style="color''Q:#000000;">Imaginations that persist in the human mind, like the idea of travel in the airSweet Mother, end often by self-fulfilment; individual thought-formations can actualise themselves if there is sufficient strength in the formation or in the mind that forms it. Imaginations can create their own potentiality, especially if they are supported in one imagine the collective mind, Divine and may in the long run draw on themselves the sanction of the cosmic Will. In fact all imaginations represent possibilities: some are able one day to actualise in some form, perhaps a very different form of actuality; more are condemned to sterility because they do not enter into the figure or scheme of the present creation, do not come within the permitted potentiality of the individual or do not accord with the collective or the generic principle or are alien to the nature or destiny of have the containing world-existence.</div>contact?''

<div style="colorA:#000000Certainly if you succeed in imagining the Divine you have the contact, and you can have the contact with what you imagine, in any case. In fact it is absolutely impossible to imagine something which doesn't exist somewhere. You cannot imagine anything at all which doesn't exist somewhere. It is possible that it doesn't exist on the earth, it is possible that it's elsewhere, but it is impossible for you to imagine something which is not already contained in principle in the universe;"otherwise it could not occur. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2107/the6-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream-andjuly-hallucination1955#p24p42</divref>

<div style=Children are not as "color:#000000;concretised">Our mind , materialised in their physical consciousness as older people—as one grows up, it is as though one is an observer coagulated and user of actualities, becomes more and more gross in one's consciousness unless through a diviner or recipient of truths not yet known or actualisedwilled action one develops otherwise. For instance, a dealer in possibilities that mediate between the truth and actuality. But it has not the omniscience majority of an infinite Consciousness; children find it very difficult to distinguish their imagination, their dreams, what they see within themselves from outer things. The world is not as limited in knowledge as when one is older and has more precise. And they are extremely sensitive within; they are much closer to supplement its restricted knowledge by imagination their psychic being than when they are grown up, and discoverymuch more sensitive to the forces which, later, will become invisible to them—but at this moment are not. It does is not, like the infinite Consciousness, manifest the known, it has unusual for children to discover the unknown; it seizes the possibilities have some sort of fits of fear or even of the Infinitejoy in their sleep, not as results or variations from dreams. Children are afraid of forms all sorts of things which for older people don't exist any more. Their vision is not solely material. They have a latent Truthkind of perception, but as constructions more or creationsless exact and precise, figments of its own boundless imagination. It has not the omnipotence play of an infinite conscious Energy; it can only realise or actualise what the cosmic Energy will accept from it forces behind. So, being in that state they are influenced by forces which otherwise have no hold over people who are shut up in themselves and more gross. And these forces—the forces of destruction, for example, or what it has the strength to impose or introduce into the sum forces of cruelty, forces of wickedness, of ill-will—all, all these things because are in the secret Divinityatmosphere. When one is more conscious and well-formed within, superconscient or subliminalone can see that they are outside oneself and deny them any expression. But when one is very young and lives in a half-dream, these things can exercise much influence and make children do things which uses in their normal state they would not do. I believe it intends is due to that that should be expressed above all. <ref>http://incarnateword.in Nature./cwm/05/30-december-1953#p3</divref>

<div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream-and-hallucination#p22</div>Why is Imagination Important? =

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">… </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">our mind has the faculty of imagination; it people who can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: hereopen to a higher region, it might be thoughta higher force which, is something analogous to passing through the action of Maya. Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of layers, comes and takes a limited capacity of knowledge, form in a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious human mind and visible reveals itself in the things that world as new truths, new philosophical systems, new spiritual teachings, which are not obvious the works and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of at the possible and same time the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures actions of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true the great beings who come to outer experiencetake birth on earth. That is at least the appearance of its operation; butan imagination which can be called "Truth-imagination". These higher forces, in reality, it is when they come down into the mind's way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilitiesearth-atmosphere, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite. But, because it cannot do this with knowledge, it makes experimental constructions of truth and possibility and a yet unrealised actuality: as its power of receiving inspirations of Truth is limited, it imaginestake living, hypothetisesactive, questions whether this or that may not be truths; as its force to summon real potentials is narrow and restrictedpowerful forms, it erects possibilities which it hopes to actualise or wishes it could actualise; as its power to actualise is cramped and confined by spread throughout the material world's oppositions, it figures subjective actualisations to satisfy its will of creation and delight of self-presentation. But it is to be noted that through the imagination it does receive prepare a figure of truth, does summon possibilities which are afterwards realised, does often by its imagination exercise an effective pressure on the world's actualitiesnew age. </spanref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2109/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream3-andseptember-hallucination1958#p24p7</ref>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Imagination itself Men of science must be having imagination! A lot. Otherwise they would never discover anything. In fact, what is called imagination is in its nature a substitute for a truer consciousness's faculty of intuition of possibility: as the mind ascends capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards the truth-consciousnessthings realisable, this mental power becomes a truth imagination which brings and then to draw them by the colour projection. One can obviously have progressive and light of regressive imaginations. There are people who always imagine all the higher truth into catastrophes possible, and unfortunately they also have the limited adequacy or inadequacy power of making them come. It's like the knowledge already achieved antennae going into a world that's not yet realised, catching something there and formulated and, finally, in the transforming light above drawing it here. Then naturally it gives place wholly is an addition to higher truth-powers or itself turns into intuition and inspiration; the Mind in that uplifting ceases to be a creator of delusions earth atmosphere and these things tend towards manifestation. It is an architect of errorinstrument which can be disciplined, can be used at will; one can discipline it, direct it, orientate it. Mind then It is not a sovereign creator one of things non-existent or erected the faculties one can develop in a void: himself and render serviceable, that is, use it is an ignorance trying to know; its very illusions start from a basis of some kind and are the results of a limited knowledge or a half-ignorancefor definite purposes. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2107/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream6-andjuly-hallucination1955#p25p40</spanref>

<div style="color:#000000;">… people with imagination turn it upwardIf you imagined something more beautiful, a more beautiful life, because up above there that would be worth the trouble. People who take pleasure in writing ugly things show a great poverty of mind—it is everything, you know, all inspirations always a sign of a poverty of artistic and literary things: this comes from another domainmind. It comes is infinitely more difficult to tell a story beautiful from beginning to end than to write a story ending with a sensational event or a catastrophe. Many authors, if they had to write a much more subtle domainstory which ends happily, beautifully, much less material. So these turn upward and want would not be able to receive the light from abovedo it—they do not have enough imagination for that. But it is the same instrument. The others turn it downwardsVery few stories have an uplifting ending, almost all end in a failure—for a very simple reason, and it is just a lack of gymnastic skillmuch more easy to fall than to rise. It is the same instrument. It is the same power of a luminous ray upon something. But as much more difficult to end one has made it 's story on a habit note of concentrating it in greatness and splendour, to make one's hero a certain directiongenius seeking to transcend himself, because for that one must be a genius oneself, and this is no longer supple, one loses the habit of doing things otherwisenot given to everybody. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-february-1951#p23</divref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/24-june-1953#p59~</divcenter>

<div style="color:#000000;">All human imaginations indeed correspond to some reality or real possibility, though they may = Importance in themselves be a quite inaccurate representation or couched in too physical images and therefore inapt to express the truth of supraphysical realities.</div>Yoga ==

The imagination is like a knife which may be used for good or evil purposes. If you always dwell in the idea and feeling that you are going to be transformed, then you will help the process of the Yoga. If, on the contrary, you give in to dejection and bewail that you are not fit or that you are incapable of realisation, you poison your own being. It is just on account of this very important truth that I am so tirelessly insistent in telling you to let anything happen but, for heavens sake, not to get depressed. Live rather in the constant hope and conviction that what we are doing will prove a success. In other words, let your imagination be moulded by your faith in Sri Aurobindo; for, is not such faith the very hope and conviction that the will of Sri Aurobindo is bound to be done, that his work of transformation cannot but end in a supreme victory and that what he calls the supramental world will be brought down on earth and realised by us here and now? <div style="color:#000000;"ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2303/the-planespower-of-our-existenceimagination#p10p2</divref>

<span style="background-color:transparentIf one knows how to use it, as I said, one can create for oneself his own inner and outer life;color:#000000;">The source from which these imaginations come has nothing one can build his own existence with his imagination, if one knows how to do with the reason use it and does not care for any rational objectionshas a power. They come either from the vital mindIn fact it is an elementary way of creating, the same source from which come all the fine imaginations and long stories which men tell themselves of forming things in which they are the heroes and do great things or they come from little entities attached to world. I have always felt that if one didn't have the physical mind which pick up capacity of imagination he would not make any random suggestion anywhere progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you, and present this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the mind just path of realisation. People who are not imaginative—it is very difficult to make them move; they see whether it will be accepted. If one watches oneself closely one can find the most queer just what is there before their nose, they feel just what they are moment by moment and extraordinary or nonsensical things crossing they cannot go forward because they are clamped by the mind or peeping in immediate thing. It depends a good deal on it in this waywhat one calls imagination. However.. Usually one laughs or hardly notices and the thing falls back to the world of incoherent thought from which it came.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/span><span style="background6-july-color:transparent;color:1955#000000;">
p38</spanref>

== = In the Vital Mind and Imagination ===

<div style="color:#000000;">By the higher vital parts of the nature I mean the vital mind, the emotional nature, the life-force dynamis in the being. The vital mind is that part of the vital being which builds, plans, imagines.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-vital-being-and-vital-consciousness#p16</divref>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#d9d9d9;"center>.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-vital-being-and-vital-consciousness#p16</spancenter>

<div style="color:#000000;">… an unbalanced vital and a weak nervous system apt to follow its own imaginations and unruled impulses without any true mental will or strong vital will to steady or restrain it, and so at the mercy of the imaginations.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/accidents-possession-madness#p32</divref>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/accidents-possession-madness#p32</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">

~</spancenter>

<div style="color:#000000;">This at once raises the question of the nature of Mind, the parent of The source from which these illusions, and its relation imaginations come has nothing to do with the original Existencereason and does not care for any rational objections. Is mind the child and instrument of an original Illusion, or is it itself a primal miscreating Force or Consciousness? or is the mental ignorance a misprision of the truths of Existence, a deviation They come either from an original Truth-Consciousness which is the real world-builder? Our own vital mind, at any rate, is not an original and primary creative power of Consciousness; it is, and all mind of the same character must be, derivative, an instrumental demiurge, an intermediary creator. It is likely then that analogies source from the errors of mind, which are the outcome of an intermediate Ignorance, may not truly illustrate come all the nature or action of an original creative Illusion, an all-inventing and all-constructing Maya. Our mind stands between a superconscience and an inconscience and receives from both these opposite powers: it stands between an occult subliminal existence and an outward cosmic phenomenon; it receives inspirations, intuitions, fine imaginations, impulsions to knowledge and action, figures of subjective realities or possibilities from the unknown inner source; it receives long stories which men tell themselves in which they are the figures of realised actualities heroes and their suggestions of further possibility from the observed cosmic phenomenon. What it receives are truths essential, possible do great things or actual; it starts they come from the realised actualities of little entities attached to the physical universe mind which pick up any random suggestion anywhere and present it brings out from them in its subjective action to the unrealised possibilities which they contain or suggest or mind just to which see whether it will be accepted. If one watches oneself closely one can arrive by proceeding from them as a starting-point: it selects some out of these possibilities for a subjective action find the most queer and plays with imagined extraordinary or nonsensical things crossing the mind or inwardly constructed forms of them; peeping in on it chooses others for objectivisation in this way. Usually one laughs or hardly notices and attempts the thing falls back to realise them. But it receives inspirations also from above and within, from invisible sources and not only from the impacts world of the visible cosmic phenomenon; incoherent thought from which it sees truths other than those suggested by came. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the actual physicality around it, -vital-being-and here too it plays subjectively with transmitted or constructed forms of these truths or it selects for objectivisation, attempts to realise.-vital-consciousness#p20</divref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream-and-hallucination#p21~</divcenter>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Thus the mind's imaginations are not purely and radically illusory: they proceed on the basis of its experience of actualities or at least set out from In fact I can assure you that, are variations upon actuality, or they figure the "may-be"s or "might-be"s of pain in the Infinite, what could be if stomach as well as many other truths had manifested, if existing potentials had been otherwise arranged or other possibilities than those already admitted became potential. Moreover, through this faculty forms discomforts are due 90% to wrong thinking and powers of other domains than strong imaginations—I mean that of the physical actuality communicate with our mental being. Even when the imaginations are extravagant or take the form of hallucinations or illusions, they proceed with actuals or possibles material basis for their basis. The mind creates the figure of a mermaid, but the phantasy them is composed of two actualities put together in a way that is outside the earth's normal potentiality; angels, griffins, chimeras are constructed on the same principle: some times the imagination is a memory of former actualities as in the mythical figure of the dragon, sometimes it is a figure or a happening that is real or could be real on other planes or in other conditions of existence… &nbsp;Again, when we look into the origin of mental error, we find normally that it is a miscombination, misplacement, misuse, misunderstanding or misapplication of elements of experience and knowledgepractically negligible. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2115/the-cosmic-illusion-mindwrong-dreamthinking-and-hallucinationillness#p25p1</spanref>

=== TruthHe may find out that it is all his imagination, for it is his imagination that makes him sick or rather gives him the impression of sickness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wrong-imagination ===thinking-and-illness#p23</ref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>There are higher geniuses still. They are people who can open to a higher region, a higher force which, passing through the mental layers, comes and takes a form in a human mind and reveals itself in the world as new truths, new philosophical systems, new spiritual teachings, which are the works and at the same time the actions of the great beings who come to take birth on earth. That is an imagination which can be called "Truth-imagination". These higher forces, when they come down into the earth-atmosphere, take living, active, powerful forms, spread throughout the world and prepare a new age.~</divcenter>

That [repetitive imaginative thinking] is the ordinary activity of the vital mind which is always imagining and thinking and planning what to do about this and how to arrange about that. It has obviously its utility in human nature and human action, but acts in a random and excessive way without discipline, economy of its powers or concentration on the things that have really to be done. <div style="color:#000000;"ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0928/3the-vital-being-and-septembervital-1958consciousness#p7p18</divref>

=== Mental Imaginations Arising from an Ordinary Level ==How to Enhance the Faculty of Imagination? =

<div style="color:#000000;">And nowI have known people with such opposite sides in their nature, so contradictory, to come down to that one day they could make a more ordinary levelmagnificent, everyone has in himluminous, powerful formation for realisation, in and then the next day a greater or lesser measuredefeatist, dark, the power black formation—a formation of despair—and so both would go out. And I was able to give form to his mental activity and use this form either follow in his ordinary activity or to create and realise something. We are all the timecourse of circumstances the beautiful one being realised, alwaysand while it was being realised, creating images, creating formsthe dark one demolishing what the first one had done. We send them into And that is how it is in the atmosphere without even knowing larger lines of life as in its smaller details. And all that we are doing so—they go roaming aboutbecause one does not watch oneself thinking, pass from because one believes one person to another, meet companions, sometimes join together and get on happily, sometimes create conflicts, and there are battles; for often, very often, in these mental imaginations there is a small element the slave of will which tries to realise itselfthese contradictory movements, because one says, and then everyone tries "Oh! Today I am not feeling well. Oh! Today things seem sad to send out his formation so that it can actme", so that things can happen as he wants and, one says this as everyone does this, if it creates were an ineluctable fate against which one could do nothing. But if one stands back or ascends a general confusion. If our eyes were open to the vision of step, one can look at all these forms in the atmosphere, we would see very amazing things: battlefields, wavesput them in their place, onsetskeep some, retreats destroy or get rid of a crowd of small mental entities which are constantly thrown out into the air and always try to realise themselves. All these formations have a common tendency to those one does not want to materialise and realise themselves physically, and as they are countless—they are far too many for there to be room enough on earth to manifest them—they jostle and elbow put all one another, they try to push back 's imaginative power—what is called imaginative—only in those one wants and which do not agree conform with them or even form armies marching in good order, always to take up the available room both in time and space—it one's highest aspiration. That is only a very small space compared with the countless number of creationswhat I call controlling one's imagination. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/3-september-1958#p1</divref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/3-september-1958#p9~</divcenter>

=== Luminous Formations ...a good deal of our life embodies the products of our imagination. Every time you indulge your imagination in an unhealthy way, giving a form to your fears and Dark Formations ===anticipating accidents and misfortunes, you are undermining your own future. On the other hand, the more optimistic your imagination, the greater the chance of your realising your aim. Monsieur Coué got hold of this potent truth and cured hundreds of people by simply teaching them to imagine themselves out of misery. He once related the case of a lady whose hair was falling off. She began to suggest to herself that she was improving every day and that her hair was surely growing. By constantly imagining it her hair really began to grow and even reached an enviable length owing to still further auto-suggestion. The power of mental formation is most useful in Yoga also; when the mind is put in communication with the Divine Will, the supramental Truth begins to descend through the layers intervening between the mind and the highest Light and if, on reaching the mind, it finds there the power of making forms it easily becomes embodied and stays as a creative force in you. Therefore I say to you never be dejected and disappointed but let your imagination be always hopeful and joyously plastic to the stress of the higher Truth, so that the latter may find you full of the necessary formations to hold its creative light. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/power-of-imagination#p1</ref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>I have known people with such opposite sides in their nature, so contradictory, that one day they could make a magnificent, luminous, powerful formation for realisation, and then the next day a defeatist, dark, black formation—a formation of despair—and so both would go out. And I was able to follow in the course of circumstances the beautiful one being realised, and while it was being realised, the dark one demolishing what the first one had done. And that is how it is in the larger lines of life as in its smaller details. And all that because one does not watch oneself thinking, because one believes one is the slave of these contradictory movements, because one says, "Oh! Today I am not feeling well. Oh! Today things seem sad to me", and one says this as if it were an ineluctable fate against which one could do nothing. But if one stands back or ascends a step, one can look at all these things, put them in their place, keep some, destroy or get rid of those one does not want and put all one's imaginative power—what is called imaginative—only in those one wants and which conform with one's highest aspiration. That is what I call controlling one's imagination.~</divcenter>

Stop imagining wrong things and your miseries will stop at the same time. <div style="color:#000000;"ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0915/3wrong-thinking-septemberand-1958illness#p1</divref>

=== Acts Imagination, for instance, is when you begin to picture to yourself an ideal being to whom you apply all your conceptions, and when you tell yourself, "Why, it should be like this, like that, its form should be like this, its thought like that, its character like that," when you see all the details and build up the being. Now, writers do this all the time because when they write a novel, they imagine. There are those who take things from life but there are those who are imaginative, creators; they create a character, a personage and then put him in their book later. This is to imagine. To imagine, for example, a whole concurrence of circumstances, a set of events, this is what I call telling a story to oneself. But it can be put down on paper, and then one becomes a Random novelist. There are very different kinds of writers. Some imagine everything, some gather all sorts of observations from life and Excessive Way Without Discipline ===construct their book with them. There are a hundred ways of writing a book. But indeed some writers imagine everything from beginning to end. It all comes out of their head and they construct even their whole story without any support in things physically observed. This truly is imagination. But as I say, if they are very powerful and have a considerable capacity for creation, it is possible that one day or other there will be a physical human being who realises their creation. This too is true. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/6-july-1955#p32</ref>

<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm;">That [repetitive imaginative thinking] is the ordinary activity Yogic Understanding of the vital mind which is always imagining and thinking and planning what to do about this and how to arrange about that. It has obviously its utility in human nature and human action, but acts in a random and excessive way without discipline, economy of its powers or concentration on the things that have really to be done.</div>Imagination =

All human imaginations indeed correspond to some reality or real possibility, though they may in themselves be a quite inaccurate representation or couched in too physical images and therefore inapt to express the truth of supraphysical realities. <div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm;"ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2823/the-vitalplanes-being-andof-vitalour-consciousnessexistence#p18p10</divref>

<div style="margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm;"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">...Imagination itself is in its nature a substitute for a good deal truer consciousness's faculty of our life embodies the products intuition of our imagination. Every time you indulge your imagination in an unhealthy way, giving a form to your fears and anticipating accidents and misfortunes, you are undermining your own future. On possibility: as the other hand, mind ascends towards the more optimistic your imaginationtruth-consciousness, the greater the chance of your realising your aim.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#d9d9d9;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Monsieur Coué got hold of this potent mental power becomes a truth and cured hundreds of people by simply teaching them to imagine themselves out of misery. He once related imagination which brings the case of a lady whose hair was falling off. She began to suggest to herself that she was improving every day colour and that her hair was surely growing. By constantly imagining it her hair really began to grow and even reached an enviable length owing to still further auto-suggestion. The power light of mental formation is most useful in Yoga also; when the mind is put in communication with higher truth into the Divine Will, the supramental Truth begins to descend through the layers intervening between limited adequacy or inadequacy of the mind knowledge already achieved and the highest Light formulated and if, on reaching the mindfinally, it finds there in the power of making forms transforming light above it easily becomes embodied gives place wholly to higher truth-powers or itself turns into intuition and stays as a creative force inspiration; the Mind in you. Therefore I say that uplifting ceases to you never be dejected a creator of delusions and disappointed but let your imagination be always hopeful and joyously plastic an architect of error. Mind then is not a sovereign creator of things non-existent or erected in a void: it is an ignorance trying to the stress know; its very illusions start from a basis of some kind and are the higher Truth, so that the latter may find you full results of the necessary formations to hold its creative lighta limited knowledge or a half-ignorance.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/span>cwsa/21/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream-and-hallucination#p25</divref>

<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm;"center>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/power-of-imagination#p1~</divcenter>

== Wrong Thinking Our mind is an observer and Illness ==user of actualities, a diviner or recipient of truths not yet known or actualised, a dealer in possibilities that mediate between the truth and actuality. But it has not the omniscience of an infinite Consciousness; it is limited in knowledge and has to supplement its restricted knowledge by imagination and discovery. It does not, like the infinite Consciousness, manifest the known, it has to discover the unknown; it seizes the possibilities of the Infinite, not as results or variations of forms of a latent Truth, but as constructions or creations, figments of its own boundless imagination. It has not the omnipotence of an infinite conscious Energy; it can only realise or actualise what the cosmic Energy will accept from it or what it has the strength to impose or introduce into the sum of things because the secret Divinity, superconscient or subliminal, which uses it intends that that should be expressed in Nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream-and-hallucination#p22</ref>

<div style="color:#000000;"center>In fact I can assure you that the pain in the stomach as well as many other discomforts are due 90% to wrong thinking and strong imaginations—I mean that the material basis for them is practically negligible.~</divcenter>

Thus the mind's imaginations are not purely and radically illusory: they proceed on the basis of its experience of actualities or at least set out from that, are variations upon actuality, or they figure the "may-be"s or "might-be"s of the Infinite, what could be if other truths had manifested, if existing potentials had been otherwise arranged or other possibilities than those already admitted became potential. Moreover, through this faculty forms and powers of other domains than that of the physical actuality communicate with our mental being. Even when the imaginations are extravagant or take the form of hallucinations or illusions, they proceed with actuals or possibles for their basis. The mind creates the figure of a mermaid, but the phantasy is composed of two actualities put together in a way that is outside the earth's normal potentiality; angels, griffins, chimeras are constructed on the same principle: some times the imagination is a memory of former actualities as in the mythical figure of the dragon, sometimes it is a figure or a happening that is real or could be real on other planes or in other conditions of existence… Again, when we look into the origin of mental error, we find normally that it is a miscombination, misplacement, misuse, misunderstanding or misapplication of elements of experience and knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1521/wrongthe-thinkingcosmic-illusion-mind-dream-and-illnesshallucination#p1p2</ref>

<div style="color:#000000This at once raises the question of the nature of Mind, the parent of these illusions, and its relation to the original Existence. Is mind the child and instrument of an original Illusion, or is it itself a primal miscreating Force or Consciousness? or is the mental ignorance a misprision of the truths of Existence, a deviation from an original Truth-Consciousness which is the real world-builder? Our own mind, at any rate, is not an original and primary creative power of Consciousness;">He may find out that it is , and all his imaginationmind of the same character must be, derivative, an instrumental demiurge, for it an intermediary creator. It is his imagination likely then that makes him sick analogies from the errors of mind, which are the outcome of an intermediate Ignorance, may not truly illustrate the nature or rather gives him action of an original creative Illusion, an all-inventing and all-constructing Maya. Our mind stands between a superconscience and an inconscience and receives from both these opposite powers: it stands between an occult subliminal existence and an outward cosmic phenomenon; it receives inspirations, intuitions, imaginations, impulsions to knowledge and action, figures of subjective realities or possibilities from the unknown inner source; it receives the impression figures of realised actualities and their suggestions of sicknessfurther possibility from the observed cosmic phenomenon.What it receives are truths essential, possible or actual; it starts from the realised actualities of the physical universe and it brings out from them in its subjective action the unrealised possibilities which they contain or suggest or to which it can arrive by proceeding from them as a starting-point: it selects some out of these possibilities for a subjective action and plays with imagined or inwardly constructed forms of them; it chooses others for objectivisation and attempts to realise them. But it receives inspirations also from above and within, from invisible sources and not only from the impacts of the visible cosmic phenomenon; it sees truths other than those suggested by the actual physicality around it, and here too it plays subjectively with transmitted or constructed forms of these truths or it selects for objectivisation, attempts to realise. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-cosmic-illusion-mind-dream-and-hallucination#p21</divref>

<div {|class="wikitable" style="background-color:#000000efefff; width: 100%;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wrong-thinking-and-illness#p23</div>|Read Summary of '''[[Imagination Summary|Imagination]]'''

<div style="color:#000000;">Stop imagining wrong things and your miseries will stop Dear reader, if you notice any error in the paragraph numbers in the hyperlinks, please let us know by dropping an email at the same timeintegral.edu.in@gmail.</div>com|}

<div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wrong-thinking-and-illness#p1</div> References= Imagination and Yoga = <div style="color:#000000;">The imagination is like a knife which may be used for good or evil purposes. If you always dwell in the idea and feeling that you are going to be transformed, then you will help the process of the Yoga. If, on the contrary, you give in to dejection and bewail that you are not fit or that you are incapable of realisation, you poison your own being. It is just on account of this very important truth that I am so tirelessly insistent in telling you to let anything happen but, for heavens sake, not to get depressed. Live rather in the constant hope and conviction that what we are doing will prove a success. In other words, let your imagination be moulded by your faith in Sri Aurobindo; for, is not such faith the very hope and conviction that the will of Sri Aurobindo is bound to be done, that his work of transformation cannot but end in a supreme victory and that what he calls the supramental world will be brought down on earth and realised by us here and now?</div> <div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/power-of-imagination#p2</div> = Imagination and Children = <div style="color:#000000;">Children are not as "concretised", materialised in their physical consciousness as older people—as one grows up, it is as though one is coagulated and becomes more and more gross in one's consciousness unless through a willed action one develops otherwise. For instance, the majority of children find it very difficult to distinguish their imagination, their dreams, what they see within themselves from outer things. The world is not as limited as when one is older and more precise. And they are extremely sensitive within; they are much closer to their psychic being than when they are grown up, and much more sensitive to the forces which, later, will become invisible to them—but at this moment are not. It is not unusual for children to have some sort of fits of fear or even of joy in their sleep, from dreams. Children are afraid of all sorts of things which for older people don't exist any more. Their vision is not solely material. They have a kind of perception, more or less exact and precise, of the play of the forces behind. So, being in that state they are influenced by forces which otherwise have no hold over people who are shut up in themselves and more gross. And these forces—the forces of destruction, for example, or forces of cruelty, forces of wickedness, of ill-will—all, all these things are in the atmosphere. When one is more conscious and well-formed within, one can see that they are outside oneself and deny them any expression. But when one is very young and lives in a half-dream, these things can exercise much influence and make children do things which in their normal state they would not do. I believe it is due to that above all.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">h</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-december-1953#p3</span> = Practices = === You Can Make a Marvel of Your World === <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">...one must have a lively power of imagination, for―I seem to be telling you stupid things, but it is quite true―there is a world in which you are the supreme maker of forms: that is your own particular vital world. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, if you love harmony, beauty, you will build there something marvellous which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#d9d9d9;">.</span> <div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/18-april-1956#p55</div>  <div style="color:#000000;">If one knows how to use it, as I said, one can create for oneself his own inner and outer life; one can build his own existence with his imagination, if one knows how to use it and has a power. In fact it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things in the world. I have always felt that if one didn't have the capacity of imagination he would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you, and this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the path of realisation. People who are not imaginative—it is very difficult to make them move; they see just what is there before their nose, they feel just what they are moment by moment and they cannot go forward because they are clamped by the immediate thing. It depends a good deal on what one calls imagination . However...</div> <div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/6-july-1955#p38</div>  <div style="color:#000000;">''Men of science must be having imagination!''</div> <div style="color:#000000;">A lot. Otherwise they would never discover anything. In fact, what is called imagination is a capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards things realisable, and then to draw them by the projection. One can obviously have progressive and regressive imaginations. There are people who always imagine all the catastrophes possible, and unfortunately they also have the power of making them come. It's like the antennae going into a world that's not yet realised, catching something there and drawing it here. Then naturally it is an addition to the earth atmosphere and these things tend towards manifestation. It is an instrument which can be disciplined, can be used at will; one can discipline it, direct it, orientate it. It is one of the faculties one can develop in himself and render serviceable, that is, use it for definite purposes.</div> <div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/6-july-1955#p40</div> <div style="color:#000000;">''Sweet Mother, can one imagine the Divine and have the contact?''</div> <div style="color:#000000;">&nbsp;</div> <div style="color:#000000;">Certainly if you succeed in imagining the Divine you have the contact, and you can have the contact with what you imagine, in any case. In fact it is absolutely impossible to imagine something which doesn't exist somewhere. You cannot imagine anything at all which doesn't exist somewhere. It is possible that it doesn't exist on the earth, it is possible that it's elsewhere, but it is impossible for you to imagine something which is not already contained in principle in the universe; otherwise it could not occur.</div> <div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/6-july-1955#p42</div> === Seek Beyond the Manifestation === <div style="color:#000000;">The universe is progressive; we said that constantly things manifest, more and more. But for your imagination to be able to go and seek beyond the manifestation something which will be manifested, well, it may happen, in fact it does—I was going to tell you that it is in this way that some beings can cause considerable progress to be made in the world, because they have the capacity of imagining something that's not yet manifested. But there are not many. One must first be capable of going beyond the manifested universe to be able to imagine something which is not there. There are already many things which can be imagined.</div> <div style="color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/6-july-1955#p44</div> === For Writers === <div style="color:#000000;">Imagination, for instance, is when you begin to picture to yourself an ideal being to whom you apply all your conceptions, and when you tell yourself, "Why, it should be like this, like that, its form should be like this, its thought like that, its character like that," when you see all the details and build up the being. Now, writers do this all the time because when they write a novel, they imagine. There are those who take things from life but there are those who are imaginative, creators; they create a character, a personage and then put him in their book later. This is to imagine. To imagine, for example, a whole concurrence of circumstances, a set of events, this is what I call telling a story to oneself. But it can be put down on paper, and then one becomes a novelist. There are very different kinds of writers. Some imagine everything, some gather all sorts of observations from life and construct their book with them. There are a hundred ways of writing a book. But indeed some writers imagine everything from beginning to end. It all comes out of their head and they construct even their whole story without any support in things physically observed. This truly is imagination. But as I say, if they are very powerful and have a considerable capacity for creation, it is possible that one day or other there will be a physical human being who realises their creation. This too is true.</div> http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/6-july-1955#p32 <div style="color:#000000;">If you imagined something more beautiful, a more beautiful life, that would be worth the trouble. People who take pleasure in writing ugly things show a great poverty of mind—it is always a sign of a poverty of mind. It is infinitely more difficult to tell a story beautiful from beginning to end than to write a story ending with a sensational event or a catastrophe. Many authors, if they had to write a story which ends happily, beautifully, would not be able to do it—they do not have enough imagination for that. Very few stories have an uplifting ending, almost all end in a failure—for a very simple reason, it is much more easy to fall than to rise. It is much more difficult to end one's story on a note of greatness and splendour, to make one's hero a genius seeking to transcend himself, because for that one must be a genius oneself, and this is not given to everybody.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-february-1951#p23</span> <div style="color:#000000;">&nbsp;</div>