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

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 modern world. We now are 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. 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 of and support of harmony, compassion, good will, light and clarity of purpose, rather than directing them into negativity, hostility, hatred, division and the pursuit of mindless distraction.

Sri Aurobindo notes in his Thoughts and Glimpses: “Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man’s unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.”

The Mother elaborates: “… 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 illustratio
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 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.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter II Power of Thought, pp. 23-25