Empowering Thought Forms Through Linking of Will and Emotion

Perhaps the biggest impediments to the exercise of the occult powers native to the human condition is our lack of willingness to acknowledge these powers for what they are, and our lack of attention and focus on understanding, developing and exercising them. When extraordinary circumstances arise, and we actually concentrate our minds, things may take place that we do not associate with the direct action of our minds. Perhaps they occur out of sequence with our action, or at a distant place, or in an unexpected manner. One way or the other, we fail to see the “cause and effect” relationship and thus, we deny the reality of the action itself. It takes serious effort of observation and training to both identify and employ these powers in a fully effective and powerful manner.

Written questions put to the Mother, then a sub-question: “Without conscious occult powers, is it possible to help or protect from a distance somebody in difficulty or danger? If so, what is the practical procedure? … What can thought do?

The Mother responds: “We are not going to speak of occult processes at all; although, to tell the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by definition. But still, practically, there are two processes which do not exclude but complete each other, but which may be used separately according to one’s preference.”

“It is obvious that thought forms a part of one of the methods, quite an important part. I have already told you several times that if one thinks clearly and powerfully, one makes a mental formation, and that every mental formation is an entity independent of its fashioner, having its own life and tending to realise itself in the mental world — I don’t mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but it exists in the mental world, it has its own particular independent existence. If you have made a formation with a definite aim, its whole life will tend to the realisation of this aim. Therefore, if you want to help someone at a distance, you have only to formulate very clearly, very precisely and strongly the kind of help you want to give and the result you wish to obtain. That will have its effect. I cannot say that it will be all-powerful, for the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it.”

“Now, what is it that gives strength and persistence to mental formations? — it is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, affection, tenderness, love, and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have a much greater chance of success. That is the first method. it is within the scope of all those who know how to think, and even more of those who know how to love. But as I said, the power is limited and there is great competition in that world.”

“Therefore, even if one has no knowledge at all but has trust in the divine Grace, if one has the faith that there is something in the world like the divine Grace, and that this something can answer a prayer, an aspiration, an invocation, then, after making one’s mental formation, if one offers it to the Grace and puts one’s trust in it, asks it to intervene and has the faith that it will intervene, then indeed one has a chance of success.”

“Try, and you will surely see the result.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter II Power of Thought, pp. 18-19