Mother Explains the Aphorisms
Q: What is the meaning of “thought
awakes and becomes creative”?
No, Sri Aurobindo says at the beginning of the sentence: “Thought
thus smitten awakes...” What he says is that in order to
progress one must break up old constructions, buffet, demolish
all preconceived ideas. Preconceived ideas are the habitual mental
constructions in which one lives, and which are fixed, which become
rigid fortresses and cannot progress because they are fixed. Nothing
that is fixed can progress. So the advice is to break down, that
is, destroy all preconceived ideas, all fixed mental constructions.
And this is the true way to give birth to new ideas or to thought
—active thought — thought which is creative.
And a little further on Sri Aurobindo says that you must first
be conscious of yourself, then think, and then act. The vision
of the inner truth of the being must precede all action; first
the vision of the truth, then this truth formulating itself into
thought, then the thought creating the action. That is the normal
process.
And this is what Sri Aurobindo gives as the process of creation.
In the Unmanifest a thought began to play, that is to say, it
awoke and became active; and because thought became active, the
world was created.
And in conclusion 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.
And as an illustration Sri Aurobindo says that all that one thinks
one is, one can, by the very fact of that thinking, become. This
knowledge of the fact that all that one thinks one 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. It reveals the considerable importance of not allowing
what one 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 already a beginning of their realisation. From
every point of view it is bad to concentrate on what one 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 right 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 already to give them a power of realisation.
Sri Aurobindo 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.
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.
The Mother
