A Podcast Featuring Sri Aurobindo Studies
Sept. 30, 2024

Imagination Can Help or Harm Depending on the Intention Behind Its Use

Imagination Can Help or Harm Depending on the Intention Behind Its Use
Imagination Can Help or Harm Depending on the Intention Behind Its Use
Sri Aurobindo Studies
Imagination Can Help or Harm Depending on the Intention Behind Its Use

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter III Imagination, pg. 34

This episode is also available as a blog post at https://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/2024/09/26/imagination-can-help-or-harm-depending-on-the-intention-behind-its-use/

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0:01 Every great power that humanity discovers and wields in the world has both its negative and its positive side. It can either be utilized to destroy or to support, benefit, and create. For example, humanity has harnessed the use of fire. Fire can burn down the house, or it can cook one's food. Rocket technology can be used to create weapons or to explore the solar system. Certain medicines can be used to poison an individual.

0:41 This truth about the powers of the external life also applies to the inner powers that we develop and wield as human beings. Each emotion has the power to uplift or to oppress. We can either encourage growth or destroy the opportunity for growth depending on the mood, energetic stance, emotional vibration and the thought we harbour about anything. We think we are, we do, we should be, or we can do. Much of the trauma that individuals suffer is due to harsh words and energy that they internalize from others and then accept that about themselves.

1:25 Emotional bullying is one such misuse of the power of emotion. For instance, on the level of thought, we can either think of positive things or negative things, positive growth. Or we may simply focus on our limitations, our inabilities, our weaknesses and deficiencies, and use that line of thought as an excuse for inaction, or even worse, for taking up things we know to be counter to our ultimate goal. The same thing works with respect to the power of imagination. We can imagine all the possible negative consequences of something.

2:07 We can imagine darkness, despair, destruction and become not just pessimistic but fatalistic about our own lives as well as about the future of humanity. How many people today imagine that we have created for ourselves a doomsday scenario, whether nuclear weapons, greed, pollution, climate change, or even alien invasions or catastrophic meteor strikes? Yet we can also see that there are signs of real progress in a number of areas. More and more people are paying attention to achieving a change of consciousness that can harmonize and solve the crises we are facing, and that the fact of the crisis is a sign of the pressure of nature for humanity to change and evolve beyond the limitations that have created these crises.

3:06 For these people. The glass is half full rather than half empty, the mother writes. Quote 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 the dejection and bewailed that you are not fit or that you are incapable of realization, you poison your own being. End Quote. Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother Powers within, Chapter 3, Imagination, page 34.