Thought-Forms and Their Results

We take the chatter in our minds for granted and do not attribute any real significance or power to it most of the time. The constant influx of thoughts is just a lot of background noise, for the most part. When we concentrate on something and focus the thoughts, we recognise that we can actually accomplish something with thought, but even then we do not generally recognise either the mechanism or the actual power of thought or the creation of thought-forms.

A thought is a vibration that goes out and moves through the universal ether. A weak vibratory pattern may be disrupted or dispersed, but to the extent that it is focused, or combined with a force of will, it may continue on. To the extent that a thought is focused on a specific individual, it reaches out to that individual and, if he is receptive to it, will have its influence or impact. To the extent that a thought is more general, it may be picked up by those who have a general receptivity to it.

Thought does not only affect other people and their actions, however. There is the impact of thought on the body. We now recognise the connection between the mind and the body and the potential impact for health and wellness of a positive thought strengthening the body. We also recognise the power of thought in terms of the fulfillment of desires, for good or ill!

Thought-forms can be systematically developed and powered by use of techniques such as detailed visualisation. For instance, athletic competitors have learned the value of visualising the race or event they are participating in, with detailed sense of how and when they will respond and what position they take in the race. Others have learned that visualisation can move them into a space that they find to be peaceful or uplifting.

In some cases, thought-forms have an immediate result; in others, they may time to work out all the details in the external world. For example, the power of imagination, the visualising of something not yet existent in the physical world, may take decades or centuries to work out. Consider that writers imagined travel to and landing on the moon many decades before the capacity existed. This thought-form, however, caught the imagination of receptive other individuals, who then worked out the methodology and over time, the imagination became a reality.

Spiritual seekers frequently utilise the power of thought to connect them to their spiritual purpose and object of their aspiration. Prayer, aspiration, consecration utilise thought-forms to enhance the connection between the seeker and the goal. The power of the mantra is enhanced when the seeker focuses on the deeper meaning or sense behind the sound.

The Mother notes: “Thoughts are forms and have an individual life, independent of their author: sent out from him into the world, they move in it towards the realisation of their own purpose of existence. When you think of anyone, your thought takes a form and goes out to find him; and, if your thinking is associated with some will that is behind it, the thought-form that has gone out from you makes an attempt to realise itself. Let us say, for instance, that you have a keen desire for a certain person to come and that, along with this vital impulse of desire, a strong imagination accompanies the mental form you have made; you imagine, ‘If he came, it would be like this or it would be like that.’ After a time you drop the idea altogether, and you do not know that even after you have forgotten it, your thought continues to exist. For it does still exist and is in action, independent of you, and it would need a great power to bring it back from its work. It is working in the atmosphere of the person touched by it and creates in him the desire to come. And if there is a sufficient power of will in your thought-form, if it is a well-built formation, it will arrive at its own realisation. But between the formation and the realisation there is a certain lapse of time, and if in this interval your mind has been occupied with quite other things, then when there happens this fulfilment of your forgotten thought, you may not even remember that you once harboured it; you do not know that you were the instigator of its action and the cause of what has come about. And it happens very often too that when the result does come, you have ceased to desire or care for it. There are some men who have a very strong formative power of this kind and always they see their formations realised; but because they have not a well-disciplined mental and vital being, they want now one thing and now another and these different or opposite formations and their results collide and clash with one another. And these people wonder how it is that they are living in so great a confusion and disharmony! They do not realise that it is their own thoughts and desires that have built the circumstances around them which seem to them so incoherent and contradictory and make their life almost unbearable.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter II Power of Thought, pg. 9