Noemuyeopu

in Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda describes Sri Yukteswar seemingly manifesting an orange out of thin air while they were talking, as if it just appeared with no obvious physical cause, and everyone treated it as something completely normal.

people are fascinated by that story and understandably so. it immediately pulls attention toward the idea of physical reality bending, of something “impossible” becoming possible.

but the moment we focus on whether the orange became physically real, we miss something else entirely.

why is the orange in imagination considered less “manifested” than the orange in a hand?

when you picture an orange vividly, it appears in experience. when you hold an orange physically, it also appears in experience. both are known in the same place: awareness.

the difference is not in the appearing, but in how we’ve been conditioned to label it. one is called “imaginary,” the other “physical,” and we assign reality accordingly.

so when people ask whether it’s possible to manifest a physical orange, i find a different question more interesting: why do we dismiss the orange that has already appeared in imagination?

if consciousness is where all experience is known, then both oranges are already manifestations within it. one is simply interpreted differently.

experience is experience no matter the form.