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"Simply Watch the Fish" · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  For most people, the experience of losing the sense of the ego
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  is unplanned, fleeting, and even unappreciated.
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  As it occurs, they simply shift their identification elsewhere
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  without recognizing what exactly is taking place with respect to
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  the seat and focus of their conscious awareness.
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  For the spiritual seeker, however, these glimpses provide
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  an insight to the eventual process of loosening the grip of
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  the ego and widening the individual ego consciousness to
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  join the universal consciousness with all of the liberating
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  effects and powers of knowledge and action that accompany that
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  shift. All of the techniques, whether
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  the focus on a single point of light or intense concentration
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  in reading, or the identification with some
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  external being, as was illustrated with the example of
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  the theater, or a deep silent identification with a piece of
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  music. Or, as noted here below, the
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  identification with fish in an aquarium, or indeed any other
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  techniques that shift the awareness out of the little ego
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  sense have their place in the spiritual growth process.
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  These are not things that one can achieve through mental
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  struggle. The mental struggle simply roots
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  the being more deeply into the ego awareness.
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  Rather, the struggle has to be dropped so that the
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  consciousness can expand and explore the wider possibilities
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  as it shifts its seat. Seekers sometimes start by
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  working to shift their awareness out of the brain center and into
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  the heart center, or even undertaking systematic
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  relaxation techniques such as starting with awareness of the
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  toes and then slowly shifting the awareness up through other
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  parts of the body. All of these practices can
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  prepare the individual to allow the consciousness to move
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  further away above the head or externally into other places or
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  beings, the mother writes. Quote These are phenomena of
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  self identification only they are involuntary.
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  And this is also one of the methods used today to cure
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  nervous diseases. When someone cannot sleep,
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  cannot be restful because he is too excited and nervous, and his
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  nerves are ill and weakened by excessive agitation, he is told
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  to sit in front of an aquarium, for instance.
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  An aquarium. That's very lovely, isn't it?
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  Before an aquarium with Pretty Little fish in it, goldfish.
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  Just to sit there, settle down in an easy chair and try not to
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  think of anything, particularly not of his troubles, and look at
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  the fish. So he looks at the fish moving
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  around, coming and going, swimming, gliding, turning,
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  meeting, crossing, chasing one another indefinitely, and also
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  the water flowing slowly and the passing fish.
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  After a while he lives the life of fishes.
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  He comes and goes, swims, glides, plays, and at the end of
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  the hour his nerves are in a perfect state and he is
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  completely restful. But the condition is that one
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  must not think of one's troubles, simply watch the fish.
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  End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Powers
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  within Chapter 13, Power of Identification, page 109.