Man cannot remain ordinarily without imagining constantly in his exuberant fancy. And, in his imagination, he invariably tries to pull down the beautiful veil thrown over the face of the future. Ripping open this veil over the Unknown, everyone of us, on all occasions in our imaginations, fix for ourselves a goal to be fulfilled by us in the near future.

Having fixed up the temporary goal, our mind plans and creates a method of achieving that hazy goal. But ere we execute our plans and enter into the field of effort to carve out success for ourselves, the never-tiring and everactive power of imagination in us would have already wiped clean the earlier-fixed goal for achievement and rewritten a modified destination to be gained in the future.

Again, by the time we prepare ourselves mentally and start executing our ideas in our life, our mischievous fancy would have already wiped clean the distant goal. Thus, each time the goal remains only so long as we have not started our pilgrimage to it; and the moment we start the pilgrimage, the goal fades away from our vision!

In short, when we have got a goal, we have not started acting, and the moment we start the strife, we seem to have no goal to reach. The subtle force in our inner composition, which unconsciously creates this lunatic temperament in us, is called the unbridled SANKALPA SAKTI.

Swami Chinmayananda
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