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Mental Formations Can Create Experiential Domains · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The gross physical forms result from the subtler levels that are
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  either the immediate effective means or the causal level that
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  has formulated the result. If we look at the construction
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  of a bridge or a building, we see that first there is an idea
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  that develops. The idea turns into a formulated
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  mental process of design. Then there is an organizational
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  phase whereby the various designed elements are acquired.
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  What happens next is a step by step process to bring the design
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  into being. Eventually the building or
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  bridge results. It is the same way with all
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  things that humans create in the world.
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  Some things do not have specific physical forms such as described
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  here, but have either mental or vital forms that never reach the
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  stage of physical manifestation, yet impact things on these other
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  planes or levels. We find that frequently people
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  create in their minds various images about what may happen in
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  the future, what will happen to them after death, what results
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  may occur as they proceed through their lives.
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  Depending on how they formulate these images of the future and
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  how strongly they organize them, they set a direction, a
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  trajectory, and an impulsion in that direction, which then tend
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  to attract the circumstances and forces to carry out that
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  intention in their minds. One of the things that people
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  tend to dwell on is how they will experience life after
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  death. Regardless of the actual reality
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  of life and death, they imagine that they will attain to heaven,
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  that they will rejoin their loved ones in heaven, or else if
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  they have done things that caused them to carry guilt and
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  fear around with them, they will tend to see their future
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  existence in a sort of hell. Some people actually create
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  these ideas with so much intensity that they live in a
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  heaven or a hell of their own making right here in their
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  earthly life. The Tibetan Book of the Dead
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  describes the process of the dissolution of the tie of the
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  consciousness to the physical body and the actual trajectory
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  it follows as it traverses the intervening zone, which is
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  called the bardo. Subject to the directions set
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  during the life and at the time of departure from life, past
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  causal energies propel them forward along the lines they
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  previously created and based on their spiritual development,
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  their clarity of mind, their vital purity, they will wind up
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  taking birth in either another body that is either destined to
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  various forms of enjoyment or suffering.
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  As they work through all the past influences and achieve
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  enlightenment, the Mother observes.
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  Quote. In these invisible worlds there
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  are also regions which are the result of human mental
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  formations. One can find their all one
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  wants. In fact, one very often finds
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  their exactly what one expects to find.
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  There are Hells, there are paradises, there are
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  purgatories, there are all sorts of things.
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  In accordance with the different religions and their conceptions.
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  These things have only a very relative existence, but with a
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  relativity similar to that of material things here.
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  That is to say, for someone who finds himself there, they are
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  entirely real and their effects quite tangible. 1 needs an inner
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  liberation, a wideness of the consciousness and a contact with
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  a deeper and higher truth to be able to escape from the illusion
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  of their reality. But this is something almost
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  similar to what happens here. Human beings here are mostly
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  convinced that the only reality is the physical reality, the
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  reality of what one can touch, can see.
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  And for them all that cannot be seen, cannot be touched, cannot
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  be felt, is, after all problematical.
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  Well, what happens there is an identical phenomenon.
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  People who at the moment of death are convinced for one
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  reason or another that they are going to paradise or maybe to
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  hell do find themselves there after their death.
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  And for them it is truly a paradise or a hell.
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  And it is extremely difficult to make them come out of it and go
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  to a place which is more true, more real.
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  End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The
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  Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter 5, Occult Forces, pages 110 to
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  111.