The Best Way of Widening One’s Thought

If we observe carefully our interactions with others, we may note that when another person is describing or explaining something, our minds are eager to jump in, express a different point of view, or simply remain fixed in our own ideas and mindset; in other words, ‘hearing’ without ‘listening’. This standpoint keeps us locked into a very narrow view of existence, expressing the habitual stance of the mental consciousness which sees things in a ‘linear’ fashion generally.

There is another way, which is based on a more global, wider view of our reality. The Mother describes this option in detail. By following this method, an individual puts aside, for the time being, his own viewpoint and the rajasic impulse to express it, and puts himself in a receptive mode to gain a deeper understanding of the standpoint and view of the other individual. At some point, this process coalesces into a new synthesis of understanding that incorporates the essential truth underlying both positions.

The Mother notes: “For instance, you are with someone. This person tells you something, you tell him the contrary (as it usually happens, simply through a spirit of contradiction) and you begin arguing. Naturally, you will never come to any point, except a quarrel if you are ill-natured. But instead of doing that, instead of remaining in your own ideas or your own words, if you tell yourself: ‘Wait a little, I am going to try and see why he said that to me. Yes, why did he tell me that?’ And you concentrate: ‘Why, why, why?’ You stand there, just like that, trying. The other person continues speaking, doesn’t he? — and is very happy too, for you don’t contradict him any longer! He talks profusely and is sure he has convinced you. Then you concentrate more and more on what he is saying, and with the feeling that gradually, through his words, you are entering his mind. When you enter his head, suddenly you enter into his way of thinking, and next, just imagine, you understand why he is speaking to you thus! And then, if you have a fairly swift intelligence and put what you have just come to understand alongside what you had known before, you have the two ways together, and so can find the truth reconciling both. And here you have truly made progress. And this is the best way of widening one’s thought.”

“If you are beginning an argument, keep quiet immediately, instantaneously. You must be silent, say nothing at all, and then try to see the thing as the other person sees it — that won’t make you forget your own way of seeing it, not at all! but you will be able to put both of them together. And you will truly have made progress, a real progress.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XIII Power of Identification, pp. 105-106