The Dreams of Childhood Are the Realities of Mature Age

Most individuals wind up having to abandon their childhood dreams and aspirations. They follow the career path set before them by their society, their family, their teachers and their peers. Yet, in most cases, they never fully lose their deeper aspiration which surfaced in their childhood before they were fully indoctrinated in the ways of the world. This may rise as a ‘mid life crisis’, as a sense of failure, regret, loss or lack of meaning for their lives, or a turn to alcohol or drugs to dull the inner sense of meaninglessness of how they have invested their lives, or a feeling of emptiness when they realize that happiness eludes them despite the career, the family, the house, the cars, the bank accounts. In some instances, it leads to a new direction, a new inspiration and a new birth, so to speak, when they realize that they have strayed from their dreams as a child.

One individual case we witnessed in the recent past involved someone who came from a highly political family. He was pushed to high office, eventually succeeding to one of the highest positions in the political world. He was not cut out for that life and struggled with it. Eventually he retired and took up art and painting and one could see the joy he could now express once he could follow his artistic dreams.

Not every childhood dream, imagination or aspiration is for spiritual knowledge. Many come with specific dreams to focus on music, art, dance, sports, science, exploration, etc. etc. Those who are circumstanced to follow their line of approach with the support of their family sometimes can take a very direct route to accomplishment. In other instances it takes time and much suffering to eventually come back to the vision of youth.

The Mother observes: “… one must have a lively power of imagination, for — I seem to be telling you stupid things, but it is quite true — there is a world in which you are the supreme maker of forms: that is your own particular vital world. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, if you love harmony, beauty, you will build there something marvellous which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation.”

“When I was small I used to call this ‘telling stories to oneself’. It is not at all a telling with words, in one’s head: it is a going away to this place which is fresh and pure, and… building up a wonderful story there. And if you know how to tell yourself a story in this way, and if it is truly beautiful, truly harmonious, truly powerful and well co-ordinated, this story will be realised in your life — perhaps not exactly in the form in which you created it, but as a more or less changed physical expression of what you made.”

“That may take years, perhaps, but your story will tend to organise your life.”

“But there are very few people who know how to tell a beautiful story; and then they always mix horrors in it, which they regret later.”

“If one could create a magnificent story without any horror in it, nothing but beauty, it would have a considerable influence on everyone’s life. And this is what people don’t know.”

“If one knew how to use this power, this creative power in the world of vital forms, if one knew how to use this while yet a child, a very small child… for it is then that one fashions his material destiny. But usually people around you, sometimes even your own little friends, but mostly parents and teachers, dabble in it and spoil everything for you, so well that very seldom does the thing succeed completely.”

“But otherwise, if it were done like that, with the spontaneous candour of a child, you could organise a wonderful life for yourself — I am speaking of the physical world.”

“The dreams of childhood are the realities of mature age.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter III Imagination, pp. 34-35