More and more I see that by giving ourselves entirely to the Divine, all our personal problems – problems of the collective life, even the problems of the world – are practically solved, for by our act of surrender we become aware of the Divine, we become aware of our soul and its line of work and development, how it can take part in the divine plan, in the world plan.  In our mind, our thoughts have different worlds.  By careful observation we can gra­dually separate and classify the thoughts.  We may say there are purely bodily thoughts, then vital thoughts, then mental thoughts from mind regions, then soul thoughts or psychic thoughts:  but these too are often mixed and cannot be put in a clear-cut way in one class or another.  The aspiration, which is like a wordless need for something higher, truer, durable, eternal, comes from the soul.  The speculative mind trying to pierce the mystery of existence through thought process can also become an aspiration.  The impulses, feelings which seek a more refined pleasure or delight or search for a durable love can be the beginning of a true vital aspiration.  The body itself, in a mute way groping and longing for a perfect and painless existence, can participate in the aspiration.  The mind can watch as a witness over all the activities going on in it.  This sepa­ration of the witness, the observer, is a very important step in this yoga.  When we discover the true witness, self, in the mind, we find that it is truly impartial, but has a deep view of things and is not attached to our personal way of thinking.  It is a true outsider in the sense that it cannot become accomplice of our thoughts.  It is the represen­tative of the Divine in our mind.  We have to become more and more quiet and detached in order to disengage it and distinguish it from the flux of thoughts.  What you call fan­tasy or imagination or dreaming comes from different regions. For instance, a chocolate mountain is a vital imagination, or a push-button organisation is a mental imagination, peace and harmony among the nations is a psychic imagination.  The nearer we come to the soul and its perception, the truer are the images, fantasies and dreams.  Many of the imaginations could be a direct or slightly veiled and indirect perception and feeling of some reality in this world or in other subtle worlds.  Morbid people have an unconscious access to many un­pleasant and dangerous and ugly ranges of consciousness in the vital worlds.  Optimists are forward-looking people – they live in tomorrow in a better world.  To be an optimist is a sign of wisdom.  The spiritual optimism comes from a true and deep perception of our deliverance in the Divine, in His Beauty, Joy and Harmony.  So, all you have to watch is:  that you do not harbor any unhelpful, sad, gloomy, tragic, danger­ous and destructive imaginations.  Instead, you should always imagine happy, beautiful, harmonious, helpful thoughts. They have a tremendous power of creation. The dreamers create the new world. Sri Aurobindo says something like this” God dreams and Time realizes His dreams.” So let us find our soul which is always one with the divine, then dream. In any case, we will not be able to do anything else for we will be constantly dreaming God’s own dream. God is never unhappy. Tragedy is the lot of the broken pot, not of the potter. We must cease to be the pot and become  one with the Creator and His marvelous rapture.

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N.Guha Roy 1978