EVERY CHILD WHO has ever heard the story of Aladdin dreams of finding a magic lamp that, when rubbed, would deliver a genie who could grant every wish. As adults, we understand that there are no such lamps and no such genies, which leaves all those wishes bottled up inside us. But what if wishes could come true? What wishes would you make for yourself? What would fulfill your needs at the deepest, most basic level? What would allow your soul to complete its destiny?
Everything that happens in the universe starts with intention. When I decide to wiggle my toes, or buy a birthday present for my wife, or drink a cup of coffee, or write this book, it all starts with intention. This intention always arises in the nonlocal or universal mind, but it localizes through the individual mind. And having localized, it becomes physical reality.
In fact, physical reality would not exist were it not for intent. Intent activates nonlocal, synchronized correlation in the brain. Whenever there is cognition or perception of physical reality, the brain’s disparate regions show a “phase and frequency locking in” of the firing patterns of individual neurons in different parts of the brain. This is nonlocal synchronization around a frequency of forty hertz (forty cycles per second). This synchronization, also called binding, is a requirement for cognition. Without it you would not see a person as a person, a house as a house, a tree as a tree, or a face in a photograph as a face. You might just observe dots of black and white, scattered lines, patches of light and dark. In fact, the objects of your perception register only as on-off electromagnetic signals in your brain. Synchronization organized by intent converts dots and spots, scattered lines, electrical discharges, patterns of light and darkness, into a wholeness, a gestalt that creates a picture of the world as a subjective experience. The world does not exist as pictures, but only as these patches of on-off impulses, these dots and spots, these digital codes of seemingly random electrical firings. Synchronization through intent organizes them into an experience in the brain—a sound, a texture, a form, a taste, and a smell. You as nonlocal intelligence “label” that experience and suddenly there is the creation of a material object in subjective consciousness.
The world is like a Rorschach blot that we convert into a world of material objects through synchronization orchestrated by intent. The world before it is observed and the nervous system before the desire or intent to observe something both exist as a dynamic (constantly changing), nonlinear chaotic field of activities in a state of non-equilibrium (unstable activity). Intent synchronistically organizes these highly variable, seemingly chaotic and unrelated activities in a nonlocal universe into a highly ordered, self-organizing, dynamic system that manifests simultaneously as an observed world and a nervous system through which that world is being observed. The intent itself does not arise in the nervous system, although it is orchestrated through the nervous system. However, intent is responsible for more than cognition and perception. All learning, remembering, reasoning, drawing of inferences, and motor activity are preceded by intent. Intent is the very basis of creation.
The ancient Vedic texts known as the Upanishads declare, “You are what your deepest desire is. As is your desire, so is your intention. As is your intention, so is your will. As is your will, so is your deed. As is your deed, so is your destiny.” Our destiny ultimately comes from the deepest level of desire and also from the deepest level of intention. The two are intimately linked to each other.
What is intention? Most people say it’s a thought of something that you want to accomplish in your life or that you want for yourself. But really it is more than that. An intention is a way of fulfilling a certain need that you have, whether that need is for material things, for a relationship, for spiritual fulfillment, or for love. Intention is a thought that you have that will help you to fulfill a need. And the logic is that once you fulfill that need, you will be happy.
Seen this way, the goal of all our intentions is to be happy or fulfilled. First, if we are asked what we want, we might say, “I want more money,” or “I want a new relationship.” Then if we are asked why we want that, we may say something like, “Well, so I’ll be to spend more time with my children.” If we are asked why we want to spend more time with our children, we might say, “Because then I’ll be happy.” So we can see that the ultimate goal of all goals is a fulfillment at the spiritual level that we call happiness or joy or love.
All the activity in the universe is generated by intention. According to Vedantic tradition, “Intent is a force of nature.” Intent maintains the balance of all the universal elements and forces that allow the universe to continue to evolve.
Even creativity is orchestrated through intent. Creativity occurs at the individual level, but it also occurs universally, allowing the world to periodically take quantum leaps in evolution. Ultimately, when we die, the soul takes a quantum leap in creativity. In effect it says, “I now must express myself through a new body-mind system, or incarnation.” So intent comes from the universal soul, becomes localized in an individual soul, and is finally expressed through an individual, local mind.
From experience in the past we create memories, which are the basis of imagination and desire. Desire is the basis of action, once again. And so the cycle perpetuates itself. In Vedic tradition and in Buddhism this cycle is known as the Wheel of Samsara, the basis of earthly existence. The nonlocal “I” becomes the local “I” as it filters through this karmic process.
When intention is repeated, that creates habit. The more an intention is repeated, the more likely it is that the universal consciousness will create the same pattern and manifest the intention in the physical world. If you recall the physics discussion earlier, a wave-particle in an unobserved box is simultaneously a wave and a particle, and takes on definite shape only once it is observed. At the moment of observation, the probability collapses into a definite form. This is the same idea, only with repeated intention the pattern in the nonlocal mind is more likely to collapse in the direction of your intention and therefore will manifest as physical reality. This creates the illusion of what is easy and what is difficult, what is possible and what is impossible. That’s why, if you really want to break out of the mundane, you must learn to think and dream the impossible. Only with repeated thoughts can the impossible be made possible through the intention of the nonlocal mind.
The nonlocal mind in you is the same as the nonlocal mind in me, or, in fact, in a rhinoceros or in a giraffe or in a bird or in a worm. Even a rock contains nonlocal intelligence. This nonlocal mind, this pure consciousness, is what gives us the sense of “I,” the “I” that says “I am Deepak,” the “I” that says “I’m a bird,” the “I” that says who you are or who you believe you are. This universal consciousness is the only “I” there is. But that single, universal “I” differentiates; it morphs itself into an almost infinite number of observers and observed, seers and scenery, organic forms and inorganic forms—all the beings and objects that make up the physical world. This habit of the universal consciousness to differentiate into particular consciousnesses exists prior to interpretation. So, before the “I am” says “I am Deepak,” or a giraffe, or a worm, it is simply “I am.” The infinite creative potential of the “I” organizes the communal “I” into the “I” that is you, or me, or any other thing in the universe.
This is the same concept as the two levels of the soul, the universal soul and the individual soul, but put into a personal context. As human beings, we are used to thinking of our individual selves as “I,” without noticing or appreciating the greater, universal “I” that is also called the universal soul. The use of the word “I” is merely a clever reference point we use for locating our unique point of view within the universal soul. But when we define ourselves solely as an individual “I,” we lose the ability to imagine beyond the boundaries of what is traditionally considered possible. In the universal “I,” everything is not only possible, it already exists, and simply requires intent to collapse it into a reality in the physical world.
The differences between the individual “I” or local mind and the universal “I” or nonlocal mind can be clearly seen in the following chart:
The difference between local mind and nonlocal mind is the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. The local mind is personal and individual to each of us. It holds our ego, the self-defined “I” that wanders through the world a slave to our conditioned habits. By its very nature, the local mind separates us from the rest of creation. It puts up thick, artificial boundaries that many of us feel compelled to defend, even when this means cutting ourselves off from the deeper meanings and joyous connections that come from feeling part of the universal. Local mind is plodding, exhausting, and rational, with no sense of whimsy or creativity. It requires constant attention and approval, and is therefore prone to fear, disappointment, and pain.
Nonlocal mind, on the other hand, is pure soul or spirit, known as universal consciousness. Operating outside the boundaries of normal space and time, it is the great organizing and unifying force in the universe, infinite in scope and duration. By its nature, nonlocal mind connects all things because it is all things. It requires no attention, no energy, no approval; it is whole unto itself, and therefore attracts love and acceptance. It is imminently creative, the source from which all creation flows. It allows us to imagine beyond the boundaries of what local mind sees as “possible,” to think “outside the box,” and to believe in miracles.
The creative leaps taken by nonlocal mind have been supported by science. Gaps in the fossil record during evolution suggest creative leaps of imagination in nature itself, a hypothesis known as punctuated equilibrium. For example, there are ancient fossils of amphibians, and ancient fossils of birds, but there is no fossil record of a connecting creature between amphibians and birds. That suggests a quantum leap of imagination, where amphibians wanted to learn how to fly, and birds manifested as a result of that intent. Scientists believe primates evolved into humans, but there is no fossil record of the phase in between, the “missing link.” First there were only primates, and then suddenly human beings appeared. In between? Nothing.
These leaps of imagination are constantly evolving into what we see as the universe. In our lifetime, we’ve seen the development of television, the Internet, e-mail, nuclear technology, and space exploration. Imagination leads wherever we go. And although imagination is a property of the universal consciousness, it gets conditioned through all these localized expressions. Human beings have the ability to go beyond that. They have the ability, through the local mind, the local “I,” to make choices through intention. And the nonlocal mind, the nonlocal “I,” takes care of the details synchronistically to fulfill the intention. That is how dreams become reality.
Let me explain this with an example. The local “I,” which is Deepak, wants to feel good by exercising and losing weight. So, Deepak, the local “I,” goes running every day, either on the treadmill or by the beach. The nonlocal “I” in Deepak makes this possible by making Deepak’s body perform many functions simultaneously: The heart has to beat faster and pump more blood, the tissues have to consume more oxygen, the lungs have to breathe faster and deeper, and the sugar, which is the fuel in my system, has to quickly burn into carbon dioxide and water so that energy can be generated. If the fuel supply gets low, then insulin has to be secreted so that glycogen stored in the liver can be used as fuel. Immune cells have to be stimulated so the body mind becomes resistant to infection as I’m running through the environment. This is only a very abbreviated list of things that must happen simultaneously and synchronistically so that my intention to run can be fulfilled. In fact, trillions upon trillions of activities have to happen nonlocally, simultaneously, in order for Deepak to enjoy running.
As we can see, the operation of the body is being organized by the nonlocal mind. And while all these activities are being synchronized, Deepak is enjoying his run. He’s not worrying about whether his heart will pump the right amount of blood, or whether his liver will forget to metabolize glycogen into sugar. That’s the job of nonlocal intelligence. The local “I” intends, and the nonlocal “I” organizes all the details synchronistically.
But the local “I” does not always cooperate, and sometimes makes bad decisions. Imagine a man named Jim Smith. He’s at a party and the local Jim Smith says, “I’m having a good time at this party.” He sips a little champagne, loosens up, and makes new friends. The nonlocal Jim Smith at the party is also having fun, connecting and enjoying the moment. But what if the local “I” says, “This is a lot of fun. Maybe I should drink more and get drunk.” Getting drunk is a way of disconnecting; therefore the nonlocal “I” lets the local “I” know that that decision has a price. The nonlocal “I” gives the local “I” a headache and a hangover the next morning. This is its way of communicating with the local “I,” saying in effect, If you abuse yourself, you’ll get sick.
If the local “I” ignores the nonlocal “I” in its efforts to dissuade it from that decision, it will face worse repercussions. If, for example, the local “I” ignores that message and gets drunk every day, then the local Jim Smith might lose his job, lose his income, disrupt his family relationships, and perhaps get cirrhosis of the liver and eventually die. Why? Because the decision to drink was not serving the interests of both the local and the nonlocal Jim Smiths. It was not a pure intention because the local “I” warped it. It changed form as it moved from the nonlocal mind to the local mind. An intention can be fulfilled synchronistically only if it serves the needs of both the local and the nonlocal “I.” The nonlocal intention is always evolutionary and therefore moving in the direction of harmonious interactions that serve the larger good.
Intention always originates in the universal domain. Ultimately, it is universal intention that fulfills the local intention, as long as it serves the needs of the local mind (me) and the nonlocal mind (the universal spirit). Only then will both local and nonlocal minds cooperate. But there is a confounding factor at play. There are billions of human beings and trillions of other entities on earth, all with local intentions. Let’s say I’m going to have a party, and I plan to bake lots of pastries and lots of cakes. In preparation I have bought sugar, flour, and all the other items that I need. All of this is stored in my pantry, where it attracts ants and mice, whose intention is to consume the sugar and the flour, too. When I discover the activity of the mice, I buy rat traps and insecticide. Some of the mice die. Bacteria arrive and start breaking down their bodies.
If we step back and take a wider look at this scenario, we see a conspiracy of related events. They all co-arose and co-created each other. In order for this drama to occur, wheat and sugarcane must be grown. That involves farms, farmers, rainfall, sunshine, tractors, consumers, retailers, wholesalers, truckers, railroads, financial trading markets, grocery stores and their employees, investors, insecticides, chemical factories, knowledge of chemistry, and on and on. The number of individual local minds involved is enormous.
The question might fairly be asked, then, Who is influencing what? Whose intention is creating the events? My intention was to bake pastries and cakes. Is my intent influencing the behavior of the entire planet, from farmers to stock market analysts to wheat prices—not to mention the behavior of the ants and mice in my pantry, and the activities of other elements and forces in the universe? Was my intent to serve pastries and cakes the only intent in which the whole universe has to cooperate? A mouse, assuming it was able to consider its intent, might believe that its intent was responsible for creating this series of events, from the activity of grain traders to weather conditions to my decision to make cakes. In fact, the bacteria could just as easily believe that their intent orchestrated the activity of the whole universe, including my decision to buy the poison that created the protein for their consumption. It can seem very confusing when you start to ask whose intent orchestrated any given event.
Whose intent is creating all this activity? In the deeper reality, the “I” that orchestrates all these events is the nonlocal, universal “I.” This organizing force is coordinating and synchronizing an infinite number of events simultaneously. The nonlocal mind constantly turns back into itself, renews itself and its creativity, so that the old never gets stale but is born afresh every moment. Even though intent comes from the single nonlocal “I,” from my perspective and that of the cat, the mouse, the ants, the bacteria, and the people who are coming to the party, it appears to be the intent of a personal “I.”
At every location, every organism could be thinking “It’s my intent!” Each and every one believes it is their personal local “I” that is doing something, but in the larger scheme, all these different local minds are actually co-arising and co-creating each other, through the intent of the nonlocal mind. The trees must breathe so I can breathe. The rivers must flow so that my blood can circulate. In the end, there’s only one exuberant, abundant, eternal, rhythmic, inseparable “I.” All separation is illusion. The local “I” only realizes itself as the nonlocal “I” when the two connect. Then you start to sense that there’s only one universal “I.” And when you connect, you start to experience trust, love, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, surrender, nondoing. This is how prayer works. The great poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, once said, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” But it’s not prayer through forced intent; it’s finesse, timing, surrender, gratitude, trust, love, and compassion that allow me, the local “I,” to experience and become the nonlocal “I.”
We are so attached to our local, individual, personal “I” that we are blinded to the magnificence that lies beyond it. Ignorance is constricted awareness. In order to notice something, you have to ignore everything else. That’s how nonlocal becomes local. When I notice anything, I ignore everything else around it, which nevertheless contributes to its existence and is therefore a part of it. When the “I” that is my ego observes, it observes only the particular and ignores the universal. But when “I” the spirit sees, it sees the flow of the universe that makes the particular possible.
It is this interconnection, this inseparability, that makes life not only possible, but miraculous. The world’s sea of interrelatedness collapses into individual waves that scatter into foaming drops that sparkle like diamonds, reflecting one another for a moment, only to subside back into the ocean’s depths. There is only one eternal moment—an eternal love, spirit, or consciousness—that constantly becomes seer and scenery. We are those crystalline drops, each of us beautiful and unique for a moment, each a part of the other, each reflecting the other. We all derive from eternal love, spirit, or consciousness, an imagining of the universal “I.” While interpretation, memory, and habit create the illusion of familiarity or sameness, of our continuation from minute to minute, in reality, there are infinite possibilities at our core, infinite possibilities that need only intent to make them real.
Intention orchestrates infinite possibilities. You might wonder what kind of intent is ideal. What would you ask if your intention could be fulfilled right now? If your intent is a mere personal wish, and serves only personal gratification, the local and nonlocal “I” might be out of sync. How many times have you heard people wish they might win the lottery? It might happen, but only if the fulfillment of that intention serves both you and the larger purpose. You might say to yourself, “I want to win the lottery so I can get myself a new BMW.” Even that intention serves many people: you, the car manufacturer, its employees, investors, and the economy. However, it is not as powerful as the intent of someone like Mother Teresa, because her desire to raise money was the result of a desire to bring fulfillment to others, to give and receive at a deeper level—to serve the great chain of being. When the intention of the nonlocal mind is served by the local mind, it is more holistic, and therefore more effective.
For every intention, we might well ask, “How would this serve me and how would it serve everybody I come into contact with?” And if the answer is that it will create true joy and fulfillment in me and all those affected by my actions, then my intention, together with surrender to the nonlocal mind, orchestrates its own fulfillment. There are techniques for discovering the pure and proper intention that is your life’s destiny, which we will discuss in detail later on. But the core technique is to start from a place of quiet and settled awareness, to create a proper intention in your heart, and then to let your local “I” merge back into the nonlocal “I,” allowing the will of God to be completed through you. I have taught this technique to many thousands of people and they tell me that it works for them, as it works for me.
Part of the difficulty is forming an intention that doesn’t interfere with the intention of the universal. In developing countries with a food shortage, scientists recently attempted to introduce “golden rice,” a genetically engineered variant that contains natural insecticides so that the rice grows abundantly. But there were problems. The genetically engineered rice doesn’t have natural odors that attract various insects important for maintaining and propagating the food chain. Ecologists fear that this rice might upset the local ecosystem, eventually disrupting the weather, which could have dire consequences for the entire planet. Constricted or local awareness, looking only at a particular situation, tries to solve it locally. Expanded awareness, the nonlocal “I,” looks at the relationships, the birds, the bees, the squirrels, the groundhogs, and the weather (there has to be a given population of trees and flora and fauna to enable a certain type of weather to arise). A good intention can backfire if the intent of the nonlocal “I” is ignored. The intricate bonds of interconnection require not only selflessness but coordination with all other individual “I”s that stem from the universal “I.”
Intent cannot be pushed or forced or bullied. Think of it as catching soap bubbles in the air. It is a delicate endeavor that cannot be rushed or pushed. The same is true of meditation or sleep. One cannot try to meditate or sleep. These activities require letting go, and the harder you try, the less successful you will be. Meditation happens; sleep happens. It is the same with intention. The less we interfere with it, the more we see that it has its own “infinite organizing power.” Intent has within it the mechanisms for its own fulfillment, like a seed has within it everything it needs to become the tree, the flower, and the fruit. I don’t have to do anything with that seed. I just have to put it in the ground and water it. The seed itself, without any prompting from me, will create everything thereafter.
Intent is a seed in consciousness, or spirit. If you pay attention to it, it has within it the means for its own fulfillment. Intention’s infinite organizing power orchestrates countless details simultaneously.
Intent creates coincidences; it is the reason why, when you’re thinking of something, it happens. Intent is the reason why some people have a spontaneous remission or heal themselves. Intent orchestrates all the creativity in the universe. And we, as human beings, are capable of creating positive changes in our lives through intent. So why do we lose that ability? The ability is lost when the self-image overshadows the self, when we sacrifice our true self for the ego.
The realization that “I” am separate from “you” starts to happen at around age two or three. At this stage a baby starts to differentiate between “me” and “mine,” and “not me” and “not mine.” This separation creates anxiety. In reality the world is not separate from us, but part of the continuum of consciousness. Intent works by harnessing the creative forces inherent in the universe. Just as we have our personal creativity, the universe also displays creativity. The universe is alive and conscious, and it responds to our intent when we have our intimate relationship with the universe and see it not as separate but as our extended body.
We can restore the power of intent through a return to the true self, or self-actualization. People who attain self-actualization reestablish their connectedness to the nonlocal mind. They have no desire to manipulate and control others. They are independent of criticism and also of flattery. They feel beneath no one, but they also feel superior to no one. They are in touch with the internal reference point that is their soul, and not their ego. Anxiety is no longer an issue, because anxiety comes from the ego’s need to protect itself. And that anxiety is what interferes with the spontaneity of intent. Intent is the mechanics through which spirit transforms itself into material reality.
Mature spirituality requires sobriety of awareness. If you are sober, you are responsive to feedback but at the same time immune to criticism and flattery. You learn to let go and you do not worry about the result. You have confidence in the outcome, and you start to see the synchronicity that is always organized around you. Intention provides opportunities that you have to be alert to. Good luck is opportunity and preparedness coming together. Intention will provide you opportunities, but you still need to act when the opportunity is provided.
Whenever you take action, have the attitude that you are not performing the action. Have the attitude that your actions are really the actions of nonlocal intelligence, the organizing universal spirit. You will begin to notice a great diminution of anxiety. You will also be less attached to the result.
Stress is a form of anxiety. If you’re stressed, then you can’t even begin to think about synchronicity. Synchronicity is a means of getting in touch with God. It’s a path to meaning and purpose in your life. It’s a means of having the experience of love and compassion. It’s a means of connecting to the nonlocal intelligence of the universe. If my attention is on situations that generate stress, then it is difficult to access synchronicity. To do so effectively you have to have an attitude of surrender to the universal domain, which is much grander than anything you could imagine. Surrender requires a leap of faith, a jump into the unknown. Your inner dialogue can support this by saying, “Things are not going my way. I’m letting go of my idea of how they should. My sense of ‘me and mine’ has to expand.” If you take this leap of faith, you will be richly rewarded. If you find yourself worrying about next month’s bills, it would be appropriate to remind yourself that it is your intent not only to fulfill your needs but also to send your children to school, to contribute to your community. All people want to fulfill these needs in their lives. However, having articulated and expressed your intent to fulfill them takes them to the infinite mind, and in effect says, “I put all this at your disposal. I’m not going to worry about it because you, the nonlocal intelligence that resides within me, will take care of it.”
Great artists, jazz musicians, writers, and scientists talk about having to transcend their individual identities when they create. I’ve worked with a lot of musicians and songwriters and I’ve never known any who are thinking about royalties when they are writing a song. A new song or a new piece of music involves letting go, and incubating in the nonlocal domain, then allowing the music or song to come to you. All creative processes depend on a phase of incubation and allowing. Synchronization is a creative process. In this case, however, the creative mind is the cosmos itself. When self-concern departs, nonlocal intelligence enters.
Remember, your thoughts must not conflict with the designs of the universe. Wishing to win the lottery can magnify your sense of separation from the universe. Frequently lottery winners report alienation from friends and family and no greater happiness. When money alone becomes the goal, it alienates you.
How do you know which of your intentions is likely to be fulfilled? The answer lies in paying attention to the clues provided by the nonlocal mind. Notice the coincidences in your life. Coincidences are messages. They are clues from God or spirit or nonlocal reality, urging you to break out of your karmic conditioning, your familiar patterns of thinking. They are offering you an opportunity to enter a domain of awareness where you feel loved and cared for by the infinite intelligence that is your source. Spiritual traditions call this the state of grace.