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The Imagination: a Tool for Development · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Imagination is a window to the future.
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  People who are stuck in their past or the present tend to
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  close themselves off from development.
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  They insist that things have always been done a certain way
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  and that is how they are going to be done.
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  Change is anathema to them. They have little, if any
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  receptivity to progressive views, to new directions, to
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  development off of their fixed ways of seeing and doing things.
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  They even fight to maintain their status quo rather than
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  face the reality that change is inevitable.
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  Those who take up spiritual development naturally have to be
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  receptive to new influences and insights coming to them.
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  They need to have the imagination that things can be
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  different, truer, more beautiful, more harmonious than
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  what they see around them in the world.
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  Imagination helps them see beyond the limits of the present
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  darkness. A disciple asks what is the
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  function, the use of the imagination?
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  The mother notes quote. If one knows how to use it, one
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  can create for oneself his own inner and outer life.
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  One can build his own existence with his imagination if one
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  knows how to use it and has a power.
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  In fact, it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things
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  in the world. I have always felt that if one
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  didn't have the capacity of imagination, he would not make
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  any progress. Your imagination always goes
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  ahead of your life. When you think of yourself,
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  usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you?
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  And this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go
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  ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the
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  path of realization. People who are not imaginative,
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  it is very difficult to make them move.
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  They see just what is there before their nose.
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  They feel just what they are moment by moment, and they
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  cannot go forward because they are clamped by the immediate
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  thing. It depends a good deal on what 1
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  calls imagination. End Quote Reference Sri Orobindo
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  and the Mother Powers within, Chapter 3 Imagination, page 31.