Tell me something really useful to change my life for the better...” — excerpt from a letter from a teenager.

If you learn just this one truth clearly, your life will change forever. Intention creates reality. This fact has been known throughout history, across all cultures. It was mentioned in Vedanta 3,500 years ago, in the immortal statement “Yad bhavam, tad bhavati”, which means whatever you feel deep inside manifests as your personal reality.
Resist the temptation to instantly trivialise this. This isn’t a magic wand to wave about. Even if you intend deeply to win a lottery, you won’t hit the jackpot. Even if you gaze at a photo of Katrina Kaif for a whole year, you still won’t become her boyfriend. Intention doesn’t work that way. Intention does not and cannot bend the laws and rules of nature or the world and produce instant results. It isn’t a genie you found in a bottle.
To harness the power of intention, you need to understand the difference between gross power and subtle power. All the things that fill your material world as reality are examples of gross power. Your father’s financial status, your grades in school, the bike you ride, the clothes you wear are examples of gross power. Intention can bring changes to those things, give you more money, a better job, more opportunities and things like that — but not immediately, because intention is a subtle power which exists in the realm of spirit. Eventually, all gross power will submit and bend to the influence of subtle powers, but it’s a process that takes time and effort. The journey of intention from the realm of pure spirit to the tangible material world is a complex process that no man has yet understood, yet it is something that happens billions of times everyday. I have no doubt that in the near future, some great scientist will unravel and explain this baffling process for all of us.
Intention can however, instantly influence any subtle power around you. Your “mood” or state of mind is a subtle power. Intention can instantly alter your mood. “Happiness” is a subtle power, so is “love” and “friendship”. Intention can quickly alter these things. Try this experiment today and see for yourself. Intend for yourself to feel happy. Don’t say “I am happy!” That will immediately produce a counter reaction inside that will say, “Dude, what’s there to feel so happy about?” and you will get bogged down in mental arguments with yourself. Instead say to yourself, “I want to feel happy today”, and then tell yourself, “Please make it happen”.
Keep this going. It will be tough in the beginning because your mind has been hardwired into accepting a resigned, semi-depressed state of being as normal and cannot sustain too much happiness for too long. Keep at it. Constantly push yourself and remind yourself that you want to be happy today and nothing must disturb your happiness.
After a while, if you have genuinely persisted in the effort, you will feel a perceptible change around you. Something unexpected will happen. Someone will call you and say something that will excite you and make you happier. Or you will get a new idea that will trigger a whole new situation in your life. Or you will meet someone who will take a sudden liking for you. Or any of a million other things. Whatever happens, you will just become more and more delighted, more and more happy with the result. Keep at this for a week and the results will be magical, simply magical.
Now I am certain you want to know how to apply the power of intention to get material things like grades, money and stuff. But nothing I say will make any sense unless you apply it practically in your life. I am not going to say anything more until you have tried the experiment.
Do it and write to me. Based on the number and kinds of mails I get, I will respond. That’s the power of intention at work too. You intend, I respond.

The writer is a filmmaker