In this life you have also been altering your destiny afresh, also making your destiny for future lives. We can change the direction of our individual and collective sankalpas. That is the secret for your future a year hence and a millennium hence. It is your sankalpa that determines the course of your destiny. You sow an intention, water it, make it grow; your actions follow from a determined and concentrated mind and create your surroundings as you wished for them to be. But you must learn the art of sowing the seeds of sankalpa.

Something happens in the subtle world around your soul six months before an event occurs in the visible world. The thoughts you are planting at this moment will show their result six months, or longer, from now.   Have you, with a well groomed intent, chosen the thoughts you are planting? Did you choose them two years ago so that you would not have had to regret the results of your thoughts today? Bear this principle in mind, and as my Gurudeva Swami Rama of Himalayas said: “You are the architect of your destiny.”

A sankalpa is not a fleeting wish followed by a whole different wish and a chain of all and sundry wishes. At the moment of sankalpa there is no anxiety.

1) Count your breaths for a few minutes (there is an art to it that you need to learn);

2) Let the mind thereby become totally calm, soothed, wrinkle-free, a chamber of silence and stillness;

3) Then send a quiet, yes, very quiet, message to the forces of the subtle world;

4) Having done so, leave it there, surrender it to the forces, to the divine will, and do not struggle.

5) You may repeat this process daily.

6) You will begin to sense what your course of action should be. You will find yourself taking that course of action. The ‘forces’ will send you unexpected helpers and help from unknown sources.

7) Stay calm all the way through: an observer, not a doer.

Another fact of cosmic reality you need to learn is the harmony of the forces of the opposites. Every force carries its opposite in its womb and nurtures it, supports it, makes it manifest.   [Even recently in world economics] the fall is the result of the rise. Now, we need some wisdom to control the upward cycle of the economy that will begin soon as the wheel has to keep turning, the present ‘low’ situation carries in its womb the principle of the ‘high.’

So, keep to the ancient tradition of a-pari-graha, keeping desire under control. If you have not the money to buy a larger car, make-do with the smaller one, and, more important, be contented with it: santoshād anuttamah sukha-lābhah – “From contentment one receives unexcelled comfort” — Yoga-sutras of Patanjali 2.42

What will save America is the American habit of charity. We do not have figures for this phenomenon in India but during the present slump in the U.S. economy, the level of charity has increased; people are giving away more. Those who have are sharing with those who do not have. The statistics for that have been published. This again demonstrates the harmony of the forces of the opposites. During economic difficulties, people give more to others. The forces of the subtle world are turning the cycle around from the philosophy of ‘me’ ‘me’ ‘me’ to sharing and thereby evening out the gap between those who have and those who have not.

·         Practice a-pari-graha by way of (a) desiring less for oneself and (b) sharing with others at individual and at corporate/collective level, so that the subtle forces may bring about not an artificially heated economy and such but one that is steady and stable in the long term. This applies to ‘restrained’ individual temperament being maintained, being applied to national economy, to influence the world economy.

Remember, an anxious mind cannot make right decisions. Above all else, learn the art of becalmed mind.