We have just finished an uplifting “Inner Renewal Week,” which we do annually in February at Ananda Village. In preparing for these classes, a formula for success clarified for me. These are not so much new ideas as they are a clear and simple presentation of them.
You will achieve success in everything you do you when you apply this formula:
Will + Concentration + Intensity + Duration = Success
Let’s look at each of these elements more closely.
Will: Paramhansa Yogananda defined “will” as “desire plus energy directed toward a goal.” We can fantasize about a goal, or desire a certain outcome, but until we apply energy nothing will happen. Consider the very simple example of closing your fist. You must first want to do so, but until you send energy to the muscles, your fingers won’t close. It is will that produces that flow of energy. In fact, Yoganandaji gave us the rule, “The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.”
Concentration: We must next concentrate the flow of energy if we are to produce worthwhile results. A perfect example is a laser, which so concentrates light that it can be beamed all the way to the moon, or used to cut through a thick metal plate.
Intensity: Intensity is similar to concentration, but also different. It involves not just focusing of a flow, but increasing the power behind it. A laser powered by a single battery will not work as well as one plugged into a high-voltage power source. An important skill to learn is to relax while still keeping the intensity high. Tension obstructs the flow in much the same way that impurities in a wire will inhibit the flow of electrons through it.
Duration: Finally we must hold the flow, focus, and the intensity on the goal for as long as it takes to accomplish our purpose. Big projects, especially, require a lot of endurance.
When you apply this formula to a truly worthy goal, you attract powerful universal energies to help you.
This formula can be applied anywhere, in any endeavor: in the classroom, at work, in athletics, for healing yourself or others, or for anything else you might imagine. We observed Swami Kriyananda work miracles in his writing projects through the application of these principles. He wrote the entire 600 pages of The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita in only two months. A further secret is that when you apply this formula to a truly worthy goal, you attract powerful universal energies to help you.
Most importantly, this is the formula for success in achieving our spiritual goals. Let’s take, for example, the common desire to purify the mind. The aspiration itself will start a flow of energy. A very good way to concentrate and strengthen the flow is to memorize and inwardly repeat Paramhansa Yogananda’s prayer demand:
“O Father, Thou art in my mind: I am clear and pure! O Father, Thou art my strength; Thou art my power—I am all Thy strength and power. I am whole!”
If you can focus entirely on these words, your mind will gradually become deeply concentrated. Then, intensify the flow with faith and devotion. Finally, you must hold your focus for a sufficient period of time for the thoughts to permeate your subconscious and superconscious minds.
When we are able truly to follow this formula, miracles can and will happen—I have seen it work many times in my own life. Try it for yourself!
In God’s flow,
Nayaswami Jyotish
11 Comments
Dear Ji’s Pranam
Wonderful Formula, Thanks for Educating us into the Profound Knowledge with Your Frequent Inputs.
with Gratitude
R. Sundararajan
Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of 20th century, said this about life and destiny:
““Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” (source: “Einstein- life and times” by Ronald W. Clark).
What Einstein said has been echoed by many spiritual giants.
Ramana Maharishi was once asked (Source: “Talks with Ramana Marharishi” by Arthur Osborne):
“Are only the important events in a man’s life, such as his main occupation or profession, predetermined, or are trifling acts also, such as taking a cup of water or moving from one part of the room to another?”
His answer was: “Everything is predetermined.”
When everything is predetermined, the question is: can destiny then be changed with strong one pointed laser-like effort directed with great energy and over a long duration?
I think not.
I don’t think that Einstein meant that the course of one’s life is predetermined. I think he meant that the context, the principles of the universe, the room in which we live is all set up. Here’s an analogy. I used to be a pre-school teacher. We set up the classroom with different centers for the children to play and learn in: imaginary play, sand play, blocks – you get the picture. But when we let the children into the classroom, we didn’t determine where they would go and how they would play. The sand pours the way it pours and children start to learn how it reacts. When they put on the costumes and held up play crowns and other props, they learned about story telling and how to creatively collaborate and get along. There are principles underlaying all of this but it is only the context, the classroom.
It is up to us to decide where we go, how we play and what we learn.
@ Amala Hyrdaya,
Thanks for your response.
I think Swamiji once gave the analogy of train compartment and the passengers. Passengers get to move from one compartment to another but have no free will beyond that. Not even the freewill to decide which station to get down!
It is a fascinating and at times a very confusing subject.
I would have to respectfully disagree with Swamiji’s analogy. We do have the ability to choose the direction of our lives – if not for this ability to choose – we could expect that many great people would be victims of circumstance and not have risen to great heights. Harriet Tubman for example is one who comes to mind. I often find that mystic philosophies/world view ignore the impact and importance of social systems and the individual abiity to counteract that influence. We live in a changing, temporal but very real world with societies and communities. The cultures within them effect how we behave as does how we are raised. But there are many people who have managed to rise above tremendous difficulty to find a way towards a meaningful life. This is due to their will power, focus and all the things that were described in the article we are responding to.
So we do have a choice what stop to get off at. Or on.
Thank you so much for this! It’s excellent! It is easy to get caught up in the tangles of obstacles but remembering the core of Spirit helps one to generate creativity and solutions. I have a very stressful job that relies on technology. Sometimes I think the only purpose of this job is to try my patience to the limit. Then I realize the purpose is to remind me to remember the Great One, the Christ within. That all frustrations and successes come and go but only Christ, the Great Mystery, the One is lasting.
And that helps me to have the will, focus and endurance to deal with these obstacles, usually always resulting in something positive.
Dear Amala and Sridhar,
The question of free will vs. determinism has puzzled wiser heads than ours. I believe this is one of those questions to which Sri Yukteswar referred when he suggested, “Leave a few mysteries to be solved after you reach the Divine.” And yet there have been some quite helpful things said and written about it. I wanted to recommend to you, in particular, a talk of Swami Kriyananda’s called “The Book of Bhrigu and Free Will.” It’s a fascinating (and highly entertaining) talk that gave me a satisfying clarity on this subject that I’ve never found anywhere else. The talk is available for purchase through https://www.treasuresalongthepath.com/, but the Treasures director, Nayaswami Krishna, has kindly made it available now for our viewing here.
If you haven’t read Jyotish and Devi’s Touch of Light blogs on this subject (or, as it was for me, aren’t remembering them clearly), you may find them very helpful as well: How Free Are We? and Free Will.
Thank you for sharing these outstanding words of wisdom. I look forward to applying them in future endevers.
Dear Nayaswami Jyotish Ji,
Thank you for sharing this :)
We will follow this to achieve the goals that we have set with Divine blessings :)
JAI GURU
Dear Jyotish:
My family and I truly appreciate your crystal clear intuition, wisdom and articulation. Thank you for being our lighthouse in the tumultuous sea!
Dear Nayaswami,
Thank you for the article. I am also interested to know that it is said that for success we should not attach ourselves with the goal. How this “Will + Concentration + Intensity + Duration” framework works without detachment to the goal.
Or are these two different paths?