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<p class="paracenter">THOUGHT AND IMAGINATION
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When you think of a person or a thing you are immediately there and come into contact with the object of your thought. But this happens in the thought world only; you know nothing of the vital or physical context of the object. Thought is conscious of thought only in the mental world; by your thought you can be conscious of the mental atmosphere of the distant object, of the thought of the person to whom you go, but nothing else, absolutely nothing of his vital or physical.
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If you want to know of the vital you must go to the object vitally; it means an exteriorisation that leaves the body at least three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically, you will have to go out in your most material subtle physical; that leaves the body in an entirely catalyptic condition. These things cannot be done without someone by your side who has the right knowledge and who can protect you.
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But the mental exteriorisation happens constantly. It puts you in relation with the mental world. If you are very conscious and the person you see in thought is also very conscious, then you can know of the ideas and opinions which the person might form at that time, but even then only indirectly, you do not know directly.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-47</p>
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When you imagine a thing, it means that you make a mental formation which may be near to the truth or far from it according to the quality of your formation. There are people who have this power of formation to such an extent that they are capable of realising what they imagine. They imagine some thing and they make such a strong well-shaped formation that they succeed in materialising it. They are truly creators. There are not many like that, but there surely are a few.
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You can meet a dead person also in your thought if he continues to be in the mental world; you can be in contact with his mind and have a sort of mental vision of his life there. But if he is gone to the psychic world, then thinking of him is not sufficient; you must know how to go into the psychic world and meet him there.
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The mind has its own power of vision; it is not the vision of the physical eyes, but it is yet vision, perception through forms. It is not imagination which is a quite different faculty. Suppose you figure to yourself an ideal being to whom you attribute all conceptions of ideality you have. You say he must be like this, he must be like that, his thoughts are like this, his character like that; you fill up all the details and build up the being. Well, that is the work of imagination. Literary men, novel-writers, always do this kind of construction. Of course, there are writers who take up things from life; but there are others who imagine things and impose them upon life. A character, a concourse of circumstances, a whole chain of events, they spin out of their head.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-48</p>
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<p class="para">And if they are powerful and possess sufficient creative force, it is quite possible there may be one day actually a physical human being embodying the type imagined.
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You can make use of imagination for a high purpose. With its help you can recreate your inner and outer life. You can wholly build your life if you know how to use it and have the power. As a matter of fact, it is the most ordinary and primary way of creating and forming things in the world. I had always the impression that if one had not the capacity of imagination, one would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you would like to become —that comes first, the prevision, and then you follow it up; you continue to imagine and realise, realise and imagine. Imagination opens the way to realisation. It is very difficult to move unimaginative people. They see only what is just in front of their nose, they feel only what is there at a given moment. They cannot advance, they are blocked by the immediate present. It is imagination that makes the whole difference.
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Men of science also have and should have a large power of imagination; otherwise they would discover nothing. Imagination, is in reality, the capacity to project oneself out of realised things towards things realisable and pull them in by the very power of projection. It is true there is a progressive and there is a regressive imagination. There are people who always imagine all possible catastrophes and have the power even to make them
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-49</p>
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<p class="para">come. However, imagination has its good use. It sends out, as it were, <i>antennae </i>
into a world that is not 
yet realised, and they catch hold of something there and draw it here. 
Naturally, it means an addition to earth's atmosphere, addition of things that 
tend towards manifestation. Imagination then is an instrument that one can train 
and discipline and use at will. It is one of the principal faculties that should 
be developed and made serviceable.</p>
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Even, you can imagine the Divine and come into contact with Him. You do in fact come into contact with that which you imagine. Do you know you cannot imagine anything that is not somewhere? It may not exist here upon earth, but it is and must be elsewhere. As I say, it is impossible to imagine anything that is not contained in the universe in principle at least. Otherwise it would not be there even as an idea.
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The universe is progressive. That is to say, more and more things constantly manifest themselves there. Now, imagination is a faculty by which you go beyond the range of manifested things; if you have progressed so far as to imagine things that are not yet manifested, you already help in bringing down these things and making them part of the manifested reality. Naturally, you must know how to go beyond the manifested universe in order to be able to imagine what is not there. And there are many, many such things.
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First of all, you must know how to get beyond the terrestrial manifestation, in order to be able to imagine
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-50</p>
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<p class="para">a new thing in it. And how many millions of years has earth existed! What has been the output of new things there? Countless, for no two things upon earth are exactly the same, although they may be very similar. It is not easy with your mind to get out of the earthly atmosphere. But if you have succeeded in doing that, you have to get out of the universal life. To enter into contact with all that has been here upon earth since the beginning of its appearance till the present day and then to enter into contact with the universal of which the earth forms only a tiny particle from its beginning to its formulation today—this is not sufficient. You have still to go beyond, beyond the universal, into the transcendent, the unmanifest. Then you can think of imagining and bringing down something new into the manifestation and upon earth. Not that one cannot do this. But it is not so easy.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-51</p>
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