Author: ahymsin

I heard this story in 1950 when I was living briefly in the holy twin cities of Mathura-Vrindavan.

Before the western banking system took over in India there used to be banking houses in which the business went on from generation to generation. They were true power houses of the city.

The story is about a scion of one such banking house in Mathura. He was known as Lala Babu. He was spiritually inclined and the Guru claimed him.

Slowly, slowly, as is usual with the Gurus, he was dragged over the hot coals of purification. After his duties were done for his family he began the process of renunciation, spending his time in spiritual pursuits and meditation.

He built himself a small mendicant’s hut and lived like a monk begging for alms for his daily food.

All this, because he kept on asking his Guru for the next steps for his progress, and each time he was told ‘you are not ready. You have not done the required ascetic practices’, but, as it often is with the Gurus, no practices were defined!

So the poor disciple was left to his own devices, devising his own level of asceticism and renunciation, perhaps keeping only one set of clothes instead of two. Perhaps eating once a day instead of twice or whatever.

Like all disciples he kept racking his brain as to what more purification or ascetic practices were required of him.

You see, there had been two powerful rival banking houses in the city, and they were not on speaking terms with each other.

When Lala Babu took to the life of an ascetic mendicant begging for his alms for daily food, he begged at all homes but that of the owner of the rival banking house. How could he appear at the door of the owners of the rival banking house begging for food!

After a long hard struggle he finally decided to renounce this last bit of arrogance and pride and one fine morning he actually went and begged at this home.

He was, of course, received not as a scion of a rival banking home but as a mendicant and given all due honours.

That not only ended the rivalry but that afternoon the Guru came to the disciple’s hut and said “Son, you have passed all the tests. You are now ready for the next initiation”.

That’s a true story I heard.

Swami Veda Bharati

18 April, 2015

On the First Maha-samadhi Anniversary of H.H. Swami Rama
Phone Address by Swami Veda
The Meditation Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
November 2, 1997

OM! OM! OM!

The days become sacred when a sacred being imparts a special grace or energy to the forces in the universe. All the annual cycles of celebration and commemorations are built around those occasions. In our present day society and thinking, the human being is no longer a unit in the universe; he views himself as something outside the universe, trying to control the universe as an outsider. This view is incorrect, we are part of the universe, the energy and life that flows through us is the same one through whose rhythms and waves, all the planets, stars, constellations, breath patterns, respond. That enlightenment is not an individual event; it is a cosmic or ultra-cosmic event. The coming into body of a sacred being, an enlightened being, also is not an individual event. It is not something over which only the immediate physical relatives rejoice; it is something of universal importance. It is a universal event. It is beyond the category of the birth of planets. It is said that when an enlightened being sits for his final enlightenment session all the saints, past Buddhas, and enlightened ones attend upon him. And thereafter, his rhythms are not the rhythms of an individual. Those of us who were fortunate to see the Master walking, who recall at times walking with him and feeling as though we paced together with the universal force, with some unseen, unknown magnet – those of us who experienced that phenomenon will never forget it, because it was not an individual but the condensation, the convergence of an unknown number of universal forces passing through that particular space, time, matter coordinate that we call an individual.

I’ve said, “The days become sacred.” Those of us who have been taught to be in tune, even to a minor degree, to be attuned to those rhythms, to the beat to which a master walks, find that on those sacred days, certain special waves touch us. These are not the waves of a physical energy, but rather something happens within the consciousness. We do not realize that it is all synchronized, that the events of consciousness are synchronized with the events in the universe. Or rather, to put it more correctly, the events in the universe are projections of the events in consciousness.

Some of us who are sensitive to these rhythms, have chosen to commemorate this occasion here on this date, on the 3rd of November, 1997, because, as I said in my letter, published in the Newsletter of the Sadhana Mandir, Rishikesh ashram over the Web, the Julian calendar that you all follow is the least scientific contribution of the West. Neither Julius nor Augustus were constellations. Nothing happens on the first of January. In planetary events, we note exactly what the position of the planets and the constellations are on a sacred day and we expect that when that position is again achieved after a year, certain rhythms will be felt, certain waves will touch us. This year, the commemoration is on the 3rd of November by the Julian calendar. Next year it may be on a different Julian date according to the positions of the planets and the constellations at that time, because as I said, the events of consciousness are not individual events.

Now this brings us to a question that so many of us have been asking. Where is he? Where is the Master? Soon after his departure, I said there would be many, many, many, many tall claims. People always ask, “What happens to the soul after death?” And I’ve always said that the question does not apply. “Where” means a place, a limitation of space. The soul has no limitation of space. “To go” is movement; the soul has no such locomotion. “After” indicates time; the spiritual forces are not subject to time. “After death” – whose death? That remains a puzzle because a spiritual being never dies because it is never born. Those who understand this elevate themselves to that consciousness, to that realm of awareness where these kinds of questions really become irrelevant, not merely in theory, but in their very being. The question, “Where does a Master go after he leaves the body?” Such a question is irrelevant.

Today I’ll share a secret with you. In your study of the subtle body and the causal body, in your study of the constituents of personality, you have heard that corresponding to the individual subtle body, linked to the individual subtle body, is the universal subtle body. “Corresponding ,” “linked to,” these are all incorrect terms. The individual subtle body is a wave in the universal subtle body. The individual causal body is a wave in the universal causal body. We who are so attached to being waves cannot comprehend the extent, the depths, the joy, the completeness, the bliss of the entire ocean. So we keep thinking of the fate of this little wave that arose and that subsided. But it is not so in the case of the master. A liberated soul may choose to keep a subtle body, may choose to drop the subtle body and remain only in the causal body. The Master may choose to drop the subtle body and the causal body the same way that he chooses to drop the physical body and, thereby, let the wave of the soul merge into Brahman. So the soul may merge into Brahman, or may remain a wave wrapped only in the causal body which is merged into the universal causal body, or that may remain wrapped in the subtle body which merges, as a wave merges, into the ocean of the universal subtle body. And it is in that universal subtle body that they dwell as universal subtle beings. That is why, in so many religions, saints are asked to intercede with the divine spirit. And that being the case, being one with the universal subtle body or universal causal body, they are free to make an appearance anywhere: in your wakeful state, perhaps – if any of us can be that fortunate – in your dream state, in your sleep state, in your consciousness, or in your super-consciousness.

Those who have been blessed with a mantra or a higher initiation within the tradition are linked to such a universal subtle body. They are linked to the entire lineage of saints, sages, rishis and beings, the chain consisting of these links reaching up to infinity. And whether the individual master is in the physical body or not, through the agency of the little particle of the universal mind, the tiniest possible particle, your mantra, they have left their presence in you. They will guide you. A wave will come occasionally when you least expect it. And, that wave will leave an indecipherable samskara, an indecipherable impression. And, over the next months or years, you will find yourself doing something. But watch out. Watch out. The great temptation in the ego is to say, “I am guided by the master” when you are being guided only by your own unconscious desires, impressions, samskaras. Therefore, be careful not to make claims to the rest of the world. The masters, by their signs, let themselves be known.

Many of you might recall seeing him play tennis on the lawn in Honesdale. Many of us, who did not have the opportunity of having his individual instruction at that time, would rush and gather around the tennis court. Richard Kenyon tells me that one day, as he played tennis, after taking a stroke, he turned around to a bunch of people standing in one corner. Very angry, looking at them, he said, “Stop thinking of me as a sexual being, I am neither a man nor a woman.” He went back to his next stroke.

I recall in the very early days of my sitting at his feet, one day he asked me to shut the door of my meditation room, and he sat on the seat and said, “I will show you something.” He lifted his garment and said, “I will withdraw the entire prana from the right leg.” Within a fraction of a minute, the leg was dead. It was cold to the touch, like that of a dead body. It was white flesh. He said, “I have transferred all of the prana to this leg.” And the other leg was cherry red. He said, “I will reverse it now.” The other leg went deadly white and the right leg became cherry red. And, then he said, “changing bodies is only the next step from here.”

Now are we going to just sit back and, once a year, be satisfied with commemoration? There is work to do. We have become students and disciples to be instruments of divine will that comes through the saints. We have work to do on ourselves. How many of you, in honor of the bequest passed on from the lineage, made your next five year spiritual plan? Where do you wish to be spiritually five years from now? That is one question.

And in the process – all the work that the master has left behind; do we find in ourselves the dedication to serve, to complete that work, to help complete that work, the work that is to be done within ourselves, and, as an extension of that, in our surroundings. I wish and I pray that each one of us not merely become a vessel recipient of the grace, but an active participant in the grace, to respond to the presence of grace, to respond to that deep inner guidance that comes in response to our own internal urge toward divinity. And, I pray that your wish to become a pure being in this very life be fulfilled by that grace. Our homage to that grace that once walked on earth in flesh, and, now is, perhaps, merged with the universal subtle body or the universal causal body which continues to guide us. I pray that our response to that grace will be in the form of our daily turning toward the Source, to the daily attuning of ourselves.

Once more, please, let me remind you, especially as the master is no longer in the body. Let me remind you. We spoke of the universal rhythms; those universal waves do not return only once a year on a specific sacred day. For you, they may return each day. Each day become the recipient of a wave. If the wave knows, if the wave of grace knows where to find you, at what hour to find you, and you are there to keep that appointment, over a period of time, you will begin to feel a response arising within you. Receive the wave. That will elevate you, uplift you, guide you, purify you.

Now that the master is no longer in the body, it is even more important that we keep that daily appointment in commemoration, in celebration, in reception of the wave of consciousness that is ever, ever passing through you, but whose presence we neglect to respond to because we have drawn dark curtains over our minds. Pull the curtains apart, sit there daily, and remember to serve, remember to serve. May your spiritual journey continue to work under that guidance. He is not physically visible, but very, very much present – very much so.

Once again, I extend an invitation to you to come to this ashram in Rishikesh. Those of you who have been here, I assure you, the presence is still here. The energy is still here. The sanctity remains, the flowers bloom the same way. The Ganga flows with the same rhythm. And, those who come, do not feel that they want to leave. Right now, the ashram is full. And, those who are here tell me they do not wish to leave because the presence that heals the body and the mind is still very much here. I hope to see you here on one pretext or another. And, I am sure the master hopes to see you daily in the subtle body of the universe, wishes to commune with your subtle body daily at your meditation seat. May all the saints continue to bless us and may we remain ever linked with him. Thank you. God bless you. God bless you all.

Om! Om! Om!

Here is another story.

As a child I never enjoyed good health. There was always a sense of fatigue through all the studies and meditations.

We moved from Dehradun to Ludhiana. I was then about 12 years old. Waking up in the morning I always felt tiredness and no desire to move about. We had the family system that each person waking up would roll up the night’s quilt and place it on a cot in the room to make living space for the day.

I did that daily and always felt it a chore of heaviness. One morning as I put away my quilt I felt so tired, I really did not want to move. I reclined against the pile of quilts and felt good support!! Suddenly a change of consciousness came over me. I felt some kind of a wave touch me. My whole body went into a state of deep relaxation; my breathing changed as though the whole body breathed; there was a restfulness in the mind and the heart centre.

I ‘knew’ that ‘they, the rishis from the Himalayas, had sent something my way’. I did not mention this change to anyone; obviously, as it seemed to me, everybody receives this state.

From that day, each day upon waking up, I tried to capture the same feeling and often succeeded. I did not know this was called ‘relaxation’ (shithilikarana), whole body breathing, yoga-nidra and so on but I had learnt a non-technique method of being there.

At that time my reputation as a ‘child prodigy’, who could render three-fold translations of each of 20000 Veda-mantras, had already begun to spread.

The experience of that morning’s revitalization remained with me namelessly until I met my master at the age of 36. Through all those years of long travels, lecturing, greeting and serving thousands of people (I recall giving 49 lectures in one week in one city at the age of 17). The repeat of that early experience always saw me through.

When our Master Swami Rama of the Himalayas finally guided us through the ‘technique’ then I knew what each of these steps was called.

Editor’s Note

This is a short excerpt from a book/booklet that will soon be published by AHYMSIN Publishers. For more information, please write to ahymsinpublishers@gmail.com

This principle of the subtle body is very, very closely related to the doctrine of karma because the actions that we perform are not performed with the physical body. Here you will have to change your entire world scheme. You cannot go into yoga and meditative philosophy unless you change your entire world picture. And as you go into yoga experiences, your picture changes automatically anyway, slowly it changes. You begin to find inside you what you were looking for and what you are experiencing outside – take, for example, sex. So the subtle body is the source of all your activity because all of your actions begin with the mind. And then the mind looks for things, not outside your body, it looks for things first inside. When you are searching for something, you should search right where you are, in the place closest to you.

There was an old woman who had been a seamstress, and her eyesight was failing. And in India, in villages, you don’t have electric lights as yet. Sometimes in the homes they don’t, and you have outside. This woman was looking under a lamp on the road, bending down and looking in the dirt for something, and somebody passed by and said, “What are you looking for, Lady?” She said, “My needle is lost. I’m looking for the needle.” He helped to look because he realized that the woman couldn’t see very well. He looked all over and he couldn’t find any needle around there under the light by the road. He said, “Are you sure that’s where it fell?” She said, “No, no. It fell in my house, but there is no light in the house, so I am looking for it where there is light.”

So the subtle body is where everything happens. But we look for things in the external light outside the house. But the mind whenever it wants to move, for the smallest thing, it moves first into the subtle body, in the realm of the subtle body. It connects its fragrance potential before it sends out a command to the nose to recognize a fragrance outside. For this reason also some of the Sanskrit language words for sex are ananga, “the bodyless,” the nonphysical urge. Another one is manoja, “the mind born one.” Things first happen in the mind, in the subtle body. There are certain currents of energy that become awakened that are then projected outwards. So if you want to understand the principle of karma, our actions and the reactions, you have to understand the subtle body.

Now, there are certain laws in the universe which I call the cosmic laws. These are laws applicable to all branches of knowledge, metaphysical or physical. Those laws are true in all branches of knowledge in all sciences. For example, Newton’s Third Law of Motion: for every motion in one direction there is a movement in the opposite direction. The first principle in aerodynamics, the first principle in running your ships. For every motion in one direction, there is a motion in the opposite direction. It is actually a variation on the cosmic law of karma. For any action in one direction, there is a reaction in the opposite direction. And this is applicable to motion, it is applicable to psychology, it is applicable to meditation, anything. For any action in one direction, there is a reaction in the opposite direction. It’s very simple.

So how does the law of karma work? We know that everything, absolutely everything we have ever done in life is present somewhere inside us. Absolutely everything we have ever done in life is present inside us. Everything we have seen with the corner of your eyes, fleeting glances; everything you have heard, absolutely everything you have done, each time you have moved your hand; somewhere an impression of that experience or impression of that action is left in your subtle body. Actions are those movements that go from you towards others. Experiences are those things that come from outside towards you – actions with the active senses, experiences through the cognitive senses.

Samskaras are those processes that take place in the subtle body as a result of all your actions and experiences. You may have a short-term memory in the brain, but there is something deeper than that. Now you would say, is then subtle body synonymous with the subconscious mind? The answer is no. The subconscious mind is a part of the function of the subtle body. What is the difference between samskaras and karma? The word karma literally means action. Samskara means the impressions left inside. The impressions of your actions and experiences left in the subtle body are called samskaras.

Actions, the karmas, are of three kinds. This is from the point of view of a belief in reincarnation. People ask me is there life after death in your philosophy? I say, there is not only life after death, there is a life before birth. There couldn’t be life after death unless there was life before birth. Where did it come from? If something is to continue into the future it had a continuation in the past. You cannot have infinity in one direction only. You can’t say infinity began here because then it is not infinity. If I am born here and I shall remain forever into the infinite that is not possible because that is not infinite, it has a beginning. So if you do believe in an infinite life, then you have to believe into the future and into the past forever. Otherwise, it is illogical to think that it started yet it is infinite. Infinite things cannot start. Things that start cannot be infinite. So when we speak of reincarnation, we speak of it in association with the doctrine of karma. The two are one and the same.

So you have three kinds of karma. The first kind is known as prarabdha, which is the sum total of the karma performed in your previous lives on the basis of which your current life was determined. For example, at the hour of death, it is the sum total of your karma that comes before your eyes. You know people become incoherent at the hour of death. It’s not incoherent. It’s like moving from a house where you have lived for 70 years. Now if you’ve lived in a house seven years, just seven years, and you move, what happens? A little broken down doll of your child’s is found somewhere, a kerchief you had lost, beads of a necklace you liked so much, and God knows what happened to it, all those things come out. All the samskaras, all the hidden things from the basement, they all come out. At the hour of death, the sum total of all your actions come in a flash like a film before your eyes. So, if you want to decide what kind of a death a person will have, see what the sum total of his whole life is.

[Answer to a question]: All the lifetimes. But, of course, at the hour of the death of this present body, it is the impressions of this life that are the strongest. If you want to decide what kind of death, make up your mind what kind of death you want to have; plan it from now by changing
the sum total of the impressions and actions of your daily life.

[Answer to a question]: I am not sure. I think that death in some ways is also a traumatic experience for a large number of people. But the actual process of death can be very peaceful. So on the basis of the sum total of your current life, you determine what the next life is going to be like, meaning what species you would be born in; what life span you will have in that particular type of body; and third, during that life span what sort of pleasure or pain will be yours.

[Answer to a question]: Yes, some of the unfulfilled hankerings, good or bad, leave very strong samskaras. Because when we are talking of actions and experiences, in fact, primarily we speak of what happens in the mind. So if you have a craving or a strong desire it must come out in one way or another, in this life or in the next life. Because every time you think a thought, you sow a seed and that seed must bear fruit. Every time you think a thought, no matter how faintly you have sown a seed. And the sum total of your garden bears the sum total of your fruits.

Now the three types of karmas. Prarabdha, actions in a previous life as a result of which you have come into this life, which you now cannot change. Then you have the second kind of actions known as sanchita, which are the actions you have performed or experiences you have gathered or the samskaras you have gathered in the current life so far up to this day. Now, what you have done you have done, that cannot be canceled, although there are contradictions to that too. There are some ways of canceling it. But you can do one thing: for the sum total of this life you can make changes from now on. If you have got muddy water in a gallon container, half a gallon of muddy water, but now you add to it clean water, you naturally change the sum total of the contents. So from this moment now, you can decide what sort of samskaras you are going to gather for your personality.

So all of these samskaras are gathered in the subtle body and everything that happens in the gross body happens first in the subtle body. The subtle body serves as the mold for the gross body. So whatever you have in the subtle body, that comes out in the gross body. Let’s say you are matching a marriage. The lines on the palms of your hands, your facial expression, your sickness or health is all from the sum total of the subtle body. Somewhere the energy field gets warped, you get sick. That’s the only diagnosis of all sickness. The medical doctors may or may not agree with me, but the first principle in the yoga system of medicine is that sickness comes from a warped energy field and it occurs from the subtle body. Every line of your body is an expression of something happening in the subtle body – in your shape, form, configuration, your personality is visible.

Now I’ll give you one example of the way karma and the subtle body work together.

Remember these three things:

(1) All my actions, all my thoughts leave an impression, leave a samskara in the subtle body,
(2) for every action in one direction, there is a reaction in the opposite direction,
(3) that everything we have outside is first in the inside – all our senses and so on, their potential, their consciousness is all inside us.

So now I go and shoot an arrow at someone and blind him. What have I done? I think that I have physically blinded him, which is true, I have physically blinded him, but I think that I have gotten off scot free because I was hiding in the bushes and shot an arrow. But I have not gotten off scot free, because from that action in the direction of the other person, there must be a reaction in my direction. And if it is not a tangible reaction, there must be a reaction in the subtle body. What I have done, says the doctrine of karma, is blind myself in the subtle body. I have created a blank area in the “sight aspect” of my subtle body. And this also applies even to any bad thought I think of others.

So you have to decide on your responsibility to fellow human beings. You have a certain karmic responsibility to others. The greatest karmic responsibility you have towards others – and that is the one on which the entire society and family and your relationship with your children is based – is to educate them towards liberation and not towards bondage, negation, negativity and self-destruction but to help them utilize the means that are at their disposal towards positive ends. And wherever you fail to do so, you add a negative karma to yourself.

Now, very roughly speaking here, from such an action of placing a blank on my subtle body concerning my sight potential, I have harmed myself. And sooner or later, somewhere along the line, that karma will visit me. It has become a part of the sum total of my actions. Similarly, a purification of the subtle body may also take place.

Editor’s Note

This article is a transcript and excerpt from the lecture entitled The Subtle Body (1976) by by Swami Veda Bharati before he took Saṃnyāsa, when he was known as Pandit Usharbudh Arya.

Disappointments, anxieties, fears.
Fulfilments, hopes, faith.

These alternate in our lives, or the two sets even remain on parallel tracks of the mind at all times, rendering some joy and some sorrow.

These days people are often heard talking of their anxieties and fears. Why not enjoy that which you have achieved instead of regretting what has been just so far beyond reach?

Make a list of all the fulfilments, pleasures, moments of laughter, causes for smiles you have had; savour them all. Enjoy what is there to enjoy; refuse to suffer what is there to suffer.

Do not feel so helpless. Your destiny was not made by God, nor by stars, nor by tarot cards. Your sankalpas, intentions and resolves make your destiny. In last lives you made your destiny for this life. In this life you have also been altering your destiny afresh, also making your destiny for future lives.

We bear and hear of so many anxieties and complaints about these ‘modern times’, about what is happening to ‘all of us’ ‘these days’. The cycles and parallel journeys of joys and sorrows are perennial. They have never ceased. Read the ancient story books, the Jatakas, Katha-sarit-sagara and all the rest that narrate the lives of ordinary people in the olden times. They all enjoyed the same things we do; they all suffered the same things we do, and had the same anxieties. This will be so ten thousand years hence when people will feel nostalgic for our present times as ‘those good old times’. It will be so, if you are planting the sankalpa for it to be that way. Or, 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.

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

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

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

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

You may repeat this process daily.

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.

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. Take an aeroplane from Delhi, fly westwards, keep flying, you end up in the east – in China, and back to Delhi. Every force carries its opposite in its womb and nurtures it, supports it, makes it manifest.

The same applies in economics, as has happened in USA, and then adversely affecting the world economics. People and the banking systems created faux wealth. Then they could not keep up with the façade. The economy crashed. The price of petrol fell from $150.00 a barrel to $60.00 a barrel. The prices of homes and properties fell. 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’.

How do we balance these lows and the highs so that we are not again falling in the same trap? The answer is wisdom. Learning to balance the forces.

This requires a fresh sankalpa, that of keeping desires under control. The reason the Indian economy has been the one least affected by the worldwide slow down, started in USA, is that people here are not prone to economic extremism. The present day prevalent Charvaka philosophy of world economics is ‘rNam krtvaa ghrtam pibet’, that is, ‘borrow money and drink ghee’, ‘take international loans and build skyscrapers’. What is the reason that America’s national debt is ten trillion dollars, and the total of US citizens’ debt is fourteen trillion! It is simply this Charvaka philosophy. It was recognized by the ancient Indian sages and was rejected by them in helping develop the minds of the masses. The average Indian, unlike an American or European, considers it an ignominy to be indebted. So there is a certain amount of ‘conservatism’, a withholding, a self-restraint built into the Indian temperament and consequently in the Indian economy. The world needs to learn from this.

If we do not fall into the trap of the Charvaka philosophy on which the present world economy runs, India will sail through the current slowdown. Indian economy is affected only in the areas which are dependent on the Euro-American systems; where it is independent, it is balanced.

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:

santoShaad anuttamah sukha-laabhah
From contentment one receives unexcelled comfort. — Yoga-sutras of Patanjali 2.4

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.

If Indians follow the same principle, the economy will turn around faster. [For example, if the companies can manage it, let them keep surplus staff till the economy turns around; the staff will pay for itself by hard work later.]

To summarise,

• Savour your fulfilments, not suffer your deficiencies
• Remember that you are the maker of your destiny, no other
• Learn the special art of effective sankalpa
• Learn how the subtle world shapes the manifest world and how we can reshape the subtle world so it would shape the manifest world to fulfil our wishes
• Learn how to use the principle of the harmony of opposite forces for our benefit
• 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.