“Simply Watch the Fish”

For most people, the experience of losing the sense of the ego is unplanned, fleeting and even, unappreciated as it occurs. They simply shift their identification elsewhere without recognising what exactly is taking place with respect to the seat and focus of their conscious awareness.
For the spiritual seeker, however, these glimpses provide an insight to the eventual process of loosening the grip of the ego and widening the individual ego-consciousness to join the universal consciousness with all of the liberating effects and powers of knowledge and action that accompany that shift.
All of the techniques, whether the focus on a single point of light, or intense concentration in reading, or the identification with some exte
al being as was illustrated with the example of the theatre, or a deep silent identification with a piece of music, or as noted here below, the identification with fish in an aquarium, or indeed, any other techniques that shift the awareness out of the little ego-sense, have their place in the spiritual growth process.
These are not things that one can achieve through mental struggle. The mental struggle simply roots the being more deeply into the ego awareness; rather, the struggle has to be dropped so that the consciousness can expand and explore the wider possibilities as it shifts its seat. Seekers sometimes start by working to shift their awareness out of the brain-center and into the heart center, or even, undertaking systematic relaxation techniques such as starting with awareness of the toes and then slowly shifting the awareness up through other parts of the body. All of these practices can prepare the individual to allow the consciousness to move further away, above the head, or exte
ally into other places or beings.
The Mother writes: “These are phenomena of self-identification. Only, they are involuntary. And this is also one of the methods used today to cure nervous diseases. When someone cannot sleep, cannot be restful because he is too excited and nervous and his nerves are ill and weakened by excessive agitation, he is told to sit in front of an aquarium, for instance — an aquarium, that’s very lovely, isn’t it? — before an aquarium with pretty little fish in it, goldfish; just to sit there, settle down in an easy-chair and try not to think of anything (particularly not of his troubles) and look at the fish. So he looks at the fish, moving around, coming and going, swimming, gliding, turning, meeting, crossing, chasing one another indefinitely, and also the water flowing slowly and the passing fish. After a while he lives the life of fishes: he comes and goes, swims, glides, plays. And at the end of the hour his nerves are in a perfect state and he is completely restful!”
“But the condition is that one must not think of one’s troubles, simply watch the fish.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XIII Power of Identification, pg. 109rnâ