The Mental Process and Developing Independence of Thought

We may believe that we create our own thoughts and ideas, but a close examination makes it clear that streams of thoughts, ideas, mental energies are constantly bombarding us, both overtly through what we read, what we hear, what we see and what we experience, and covertly through the subtle impinging force of thoughts in the “mental field” that is created through the action of the mental consciousness in its own plane and impinging on our earthly existence.

The Mother goes further in emphasizing that it is not just mental influences that impact the thoughts and ideas we come up with. There is an impact of the physical body and its balance, as well as the vital being and its force, which both affect the thoughts we have.

Another factor is the influence that health and wellness creates potentially cloudy or foggy conditions of mind and thus, reduce mental clarity. Similarly vital energies, passions, desires can impact the mental action strongly. In fact, the mind is frequently under the control of the vital and its desires, which uses its energies to influence and bend the mind to support whatever it is the vital being wishes to see done.

The Mother observes: “And now, in the mind… (Silence) If only you become conscious of your physical mind in itself… Some people have called it a public square, because everything comes there, goes across, passes, comes back…. All ideas go there, they enter at one place, leave by another, some are here, some there, and it is a public square, not very well organised, for usually ideas meet and knock into one another, there are accidents of all kinds. But then one becomes aware: ‘What can I call my mind?’ or ‘What is my mind?‘

“One needs years of very attentive, very careful, very reasonable, very coherent work, organisation, selection, construction, in order to succeed simply in forming, oh, simply this little thing, one’s own way of thinking!”

“One believes he has his own way of thinking. Not at all. It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or the books he has read or on the mood he is in. It depends also on whether you have a good or bad digestion, it depends on whether you are shut up in a room without proper ventilation or whether you are in the open air; it depends on whether you have a beautiful landscape before you; it depends on whether there is sunshine or rain! You are not aware of it, but you think all kinds of things, complete different according to a heap of things which have nothing to do with you!”

“And for this to become a coordinated, coherent, logical thought, a long, thorough work is necessary. And then, the best of the business is that when you have succeeded in making a beautiful, well-formed, very strong, very powerful mental construction, the first thing you will be told is, ‘You must break this so that you can unite with the Divine!’ But so long as you haven’t made it, you cannot unite with the Divine because you have nothing to give to the Divine except a mass of things which are not yourself! One must first exist in order to be able to give oneself. I am repeating what I said a while ago.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 3, Becoming an Individual, pp. 111-112