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Imagination Is a Power of Formation · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Most people tend to respond to life circumstances and
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  opportunities based on past experience, training, education,
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  and any guidelines or rules they have imbibed from their past,
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  All combined with their basic outlook on their lives, their
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  desires, their needs and their circumstances.
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  We can say that they are focused primarily on the past and the
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  present. They do not attempt to develop
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  the power of imagination to any degree as they do not see how it
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  fits their day-to-day lives. They tend to repeat habitual
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  patterns and live their lives and carry out their responses
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  along predetermined and highly predictable lines.
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  There are others, however, who value and utilize the power of
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  imagination. Imagination can take several
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  forms. It can be inventive to develop
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  advancements, progress, or otherwise potentially
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  foreseeable steps forward in a progression.
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  In that instance, it is more an extension of the use of reason
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  and the logical intellect to assess what next steps may
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  result from a present that is based on a sequential series of
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  past steps. Progress in this case is based
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  on incremental development, and the use of imagination is
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  focused on trying to understand the trajectory and line of
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  development. Another type of imagination is
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  essentially a process of visualization of what we would
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  like to see as a result of some activity.
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  Thus, runners are asked to visualize the running of their
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  race so that when the actual event takes place, they already
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  have a formation in their minds. This type of imagination also
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  has a role in healing. The placebo effect is very much
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  based on the imagination of the individual anticipating they are
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  getting real medical support for a condition from which they are
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  suffering, and that imagination actually sets processes going in
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  the mind and body to undertake the necessary healing.
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  It is claimed that the placebo effect accounts for as much as
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  30% of the results in studies that utilize a placebo.
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  Yet we can also speculate that even for those who get the
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  active drug, a considerable amount of the actual healing is
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  due to the same effect working in conjunction with the drug's
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  specific action. When we refer to imagination,
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  however, we primarily refer to the ability to envision
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  something that does not exist and is not simply a next step in
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  a sequence, but something new and unexpected.
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  People have watched birds fly and dreamed of flying.
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  They work to understand the principles of aerodynamics, air
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  currents, lift and gravity and forward momentum, et cetera.
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  Eventually, this led to the development of numerous forms of
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  machinery you we use for flying airplanes, dirigibles, rocket
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  ships, helicopters, and even personal jet packs, with further
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  advancements sure to follow. Similarly, someone envisioned
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  landing on the moon at a time when there were no technological
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  capabilities that would support that idea.
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  Eventually, however, that imagination led to the
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  development of a space program and the moon landings that have
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  occurred. Imagination may be a fanciful
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  recombining of elements that ordinarily do not belong
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  together. It may be a vision that an
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  individual has that leads to some creative result.
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  Nikola Tesla described how he saw the vision of the
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  alternating current motor and later was able to realize that
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  in a practical form. He similarly was able to
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  envision wireless communication, wireless transmission of energy,
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  protective Shields, et cetera, that clearly represented and
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  advanced use of imagination. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition
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  makes considerable use of imagination through training of
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  practices in visualization that aid the practitioner in the
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  achievement of the spiritual intention in their own lives and
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  experience. When we envision a world of
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  peace, a world of harmony, A world of sharing and caring, we
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  are practising another form of imagination that differs from
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  the reality of the external world as most human beings
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  experience it. As more people undertake this
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  form of imagination, it gains power of effectuation, so that
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  at some point in the future we shall have overcome the forces
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  of darkness and division that destroy, pollute, breed
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  separation and hatred and create thereby massive suffering, wars,
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  mass migrations and terrible painful diseases and deaths due
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  to pollution and other mismanagement of our lives
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  collectively on this planet, the mother writes quote.
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  Imagination is a power of formation.
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  In fact, people who have no imagination are not formative
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  from the mental point of view. They cannot give a concrete
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  power to their thought. Imagination is a very powerful
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  means of action. For instance, if you have a pain
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  somewhere, and if you imagine that you are making the pain
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  disappear or are removing it or destroying it, all kinds of
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  images like that, well, you succeed perfectly.
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  There's a story of a person who was losing her hair at a
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  fantastic rate, enough to become bald within a few weeks.
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  And then someone told her, when you brush your hair, imagine
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  that it is growing and will grow very fast.
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  And always while brushing her hair, she said, oh, my hair is
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  growing. Oh, it will grow very fast.
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  And it happened. But what people usually do is
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  tell themselves, ah, all my hair is falling again and I shall
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  become bald. That's certain.
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  It's going to happen and of course it happens.
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  End Quote reference three are open to and the mother powers
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  within Chapter 3 Imagination page 26.