The Power of Thought to Shape Our External Existence and Its Significance

0:01 When we begin to reflect on the role of thought in the creation of forms in the world. It becomes clear that it is an important part of the process of converting pure conscious awareness into the world of vital action and physical substance. Thought is a tool of consciousness. When properly utilized, it has the power to shape matter and life. We see this in the way we manipulate material substance in the world. We are now able to edit genetic sequences as well as liberate energy from matter. The basic building blocks of material forms and living beings are being harnessed and redirected.

0:47 The power of thought, however, is not necessarily always beneficent. It can be applied for negative or positive aims based on the intention and the care taken in applying this tool. As we become aware of the power of thought to shape the direction we take in life, it becomes ever more evident and important to us to choose our thoughts wisely, to focus them on creation and support of harmony, compassion, goodwill, light and clarity of purpose, rather than directing them into negativity, hostility, hatred, division and the pursuit of mindless distraction.

1:35 Sri Orobindo notes in his Thoughts and Glimpses quote, thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming. I become what I see in myself. All the thought suggests to me I can do. All the thought reveals in me I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him. End Quote. The Mother elaborates. Quote. Sri Aurobindo declares that thought is not essential to existence. It is not the cause of existence, but is just the process, the instrument of becoming. For thought is a principle of precise formulation which has the power of creating forms.

2:28 And as an illustration, Sri Aurobindo says that all that one thinks one is 1 can, by the very fact of that thinking, become. This knowledge of the fact that all that one thinks 1 can be is a very important key for the development of the being, and not only from the point of view of the possibilities of the being, but also from that of the control and choice of what one will be, of what one wants to be. This makes us understand the necessity of not admitting into ourselves any thought which destroys aspiration or the creation of the truth of our being.

3:11 It reveals the considerable importance of not allowing what 1 doesn't want to be or doesn't want to do to formulate itself into thought within the being, because to think these things is the beginning of their realization. From every point of view, it is bad to concentrate on what 1 doesn't want, on what one has to reject what one refuses to be, for the very fact that the thought is there gives to things one wants to reject, a sort of rite of existence within oneself. This explains the considerable importance of not letting destructive suggestions, thoughts of ill will, hatred, destruction enter, for merely to think of them is all ready to give them a power of realization. Fioro Bindo says that thought is not the cause of existence but an intermediary, the instrument which gives form to life, to creation, and the control of this instrument is of foremost importance if one wants disorder and all that is anti divine to disappear from creation.

4:26 One must not admit bad thoughts into oneself under the pretext that they are merely thoughts. They are tools of execution and one should not allow them to exist in oneself if one doesn't want them to do their work of destruction. End Quote Reference Sri Oro Bindu and the Mother Powers within, Chapter 2, Power of Thought, pages 23 to 25.