Tag / Tattva

by Sri

Your body, mind, inner space, consciousness, whatever you feel about you, go on expanding, expanding, expanding! That is the only way life can continue to ooze in you, overflow in you.

Kṛṣṇa says,

‘Act without attachment. Do not worry about success or failure in results. Center yourself in wisdom of completion that takes you beyond action and the desire for fruits of action. Once you are centered in wisdom of completion you will act wisely. Once you give up attachment to results, you will be freed from the cycle of birth and death and you will be beyond sorrow.’

In the next verse, Kṛṣṇa begins initiating Arjuna into yoga with the second tattva of authenticity or śraddha. Kṛṣṇa is the greatest strategist of life. Here, He begins revealing the truth of authenticity, the strategy of life, the strategy that will make Arjuna succeed and expand!

Every time inauthenticity is allowed in you, it leaves a powerful fear in you

Kṛṣṇa declares, ‘yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam.’

Please understand, I first want you to understand these words:

‘yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam—yoga is authenticity in action.’ Not just ‘perfection in action’ but I am translating it as ‘authenticity in action.’ Continue reading →

by Sri

Meditation technique to establish you in the awareness of the present moment

Mahamantra meditation

The Mahamantra meditation is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist technique to awaken the anahata chakra, located at the heart center. This meditation makes your mind firm and stable. Your mind is all the time oscillating with thoughts. This meditation makes your mind still by making it enter into the zone of no-mind. It is like a jumping board into infinity. It should be done on an empty stomach, preferably early in the morning, or two hours after any meal. It can be done either alone or with a group. When done with a group, it effectively energizes the place where it is done.

Instructions

Total Duration: 30 minutes Continue reading →

by Sri

Fourth state of Consciousness – turiya, is the space of thoughtless awareness where intuition and intelligence is expressed!

We have two levels of consciousness and two levels of thoughts.

In the waking state you have ‘I’ consciousness and thoughts, conscious state, called jagrat in Sanskrit.

In dreams you have thoughts but no ‘I’ consciousness. The frequency of thoughts is more than the frequency of ‘I’ consciousness. That is why in the dream state, called swapna in Sanskrit, you cannot control your dreams. The dreams will happen as they want. But in the waking state, you can control your thoughts.

In deep sleep you have neither ‘I’ consciousness nor thoughts, unconscious state, called sushupti in Sanskrit.

There is a fourth state which you have never experienced, what I call intuition or meditation. In this state, you have ‘I’ consciousness but no thoughts. There is no term in the domain of psychology to describe this state. In Sanskrit this state is called turiya. This is what I call meditation or intuition or thoughtless awareness. This state is also called the state of samadhi. If you can experience this zone, this fourth state, you can experience the consciousness, what I call beyond intellect. It is the state where there is bliss or peace or intuition. Continue reading →

by Sri

When you experience intuition, not only you get the intellectual clarity, but you also get enough power to execute it!

Let me now describe how a mind-body system that is free from samskaras will improve intuition and innovation.

Intuition is a wonderful subject. If you ask modern day CEOs, how they took major decisions in their lives, what caused the turning point in their lives, again and again their answer surprises us. Again and again they tell us that their success came from something beyond their intellect, something that gave them the energy or the guts to take the decisions. This is not just the case with successful CEOs, it is the same with scientists also.

The other day I had a chance to have lunch with Dr Charles Townes.

I asked him ‘Sir, how did your discovery happen? How were you able to do it?’

He answered in a beautiful way, ‘I was just sitting in a park in Washington DC; suddenly something happened. The conclusion was there in me. Suddenly the conclusion was revealed to me. I penned down what I experienced. Now I had a big difficulty. I had the conclusion but not the steps. I was not able to present this to anybody else because I knew only the conclusion, I didn’t know the steps.’

This happened not only with Charles Townes , it had also happened with Albert Einstein. He says, ‘Whatever new happened to me, came through intuition and not through intellect.’ He summed it up beautifully, saying, ‘ Continue reading →

by Sri

The more the number of engrams, the more clouded is our thought process, and the lower is the productivity!

So much has been written and said about productivity in organizations. Productivity has become the mantra in organizations for the last two or three decades. As a result of invention of computers and new communications technologies such as the internet and cell phone, the world has become a much smaller place. While there has been an increase in productivity in companies, it has often come at a huge price on the health (physical and mental) and well being of the employees.

Let us now start to understand what is productivity and how productivity can be enhanced without the side effects of stress.

In simple terms, productivity can be measured as:

Productivity = Output / Input

The measure of output may be certain number of tasks completed by a particular individual or team or revenue in the case of a manufacturing company. The measure of input may include the number of hours worked on a particular project, manufacturing costs etc. Billions of dollars are spent by companies globally to enhance human productivity. Most of these efforts are centered on providing new skills specific to training in a particular area of the organization’s focus or improving technology such as use of computers, internet or other forms of media and communications. Some companies also invest in developing ‘softer skills’ such as interpersonal skills, team building skills, etc. But most of these trainings tend to address the conscious mind, actions, behaviors and perceptions that are just on the surface. But over 90% of our emotions and behaviors reside deep under the surface of our mind. This is what the psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, calls the unconscious mind.

There is a whole range of emotions and experiences that are embedded in the unconscious level. This is where the samskaras or engraved memories reside.

Continue reading →

by Sri

Vacation or work, living or leaving, are both directly related to your consciousness. It is not related to what you are doing, it is related to your being.!

Let me share with you some very important truths. If you take decisions consciously, you will never have any stress. Stress happens only when you take decisions unconsciously, when engrams interfere with your decision making. If things are straightforward, you can take thousands of decisions and be completely relaxed. Your life will flow, just like a river! But if you are filled with engrams, even after taking two or three decisions, you will be completely tired. You don’t even have to work, just sit in your chair and think about work, and within half an hour, you will have shoulder pain! This means you are caught with engrams. They do not allow you to take decisions.

If you are continuously deciding without any clarity, and you sit in the leader’s chair, please be very clear, not only will you be suffering, you will be torturing others also!

When the file takes a quantum leap from the mind, each engram writes its opinion on the file! The more the number of engrams, the more the number of decisions, so when the file reaches the ego, it is completely confused! When three hundred opinions are there on that file, what decision will you take! Your ego says ‘Just do whatever you want, just leave me!’ You don’t have any patience to take any decision and decisions are taken in a very haphazard way, without any clarity. If you are continuously deciding without any clarity, and you sit in the leader’s chair, please be very clear, not only will you be suffering, you will be torturing others also! Continue reading →

by Sri

How does the mind work ? What are engrams or samskaras ? How do they influence our being ?

What do I mean by the word, ‘state of the leader’?

A true leader is a person who is ready to take responsibility consciously, who is ready to handle life consciously, who is not constantly dependent on the past or his memory. If you are dependent on your memory, if you are dependent on the past to take decisions, please be very clear, you will be a follower. You cannot be a leader. Responding spontaneously to situations is what I call responsibility. A responsible leader is a person who is able to respond spontaneously to situations, who is fresh and continuously keeps himself alive, who is not caught in the past.

Let us understand how the mind works – how we receive data, process it and make decisions.

For example, you are seeing something through your eye. Of course, you receive information through all the five senses – eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch. Continue reading →

by Sri

What is Leader Consciousness ?

In most organizations, those who have become leaders have achieved the status of the leader. They may not have necessarily achieved the state of the leader. What do I mean by this? To understand this, first let us understand the key ingredients that make a successful leader.

What do I mean by this term, ‘Leader Consciousness’?

Most of us achieve the status of a leader, but not the state. State is totally different from status. Status comes from society when you are leading a group of people, if you are forced to take the responsibility of some department or if you take the responsibility out of your greed, the status comes. But the state is totally different. When I use the word ‘state’ I mean your inner space or your being should be mature enough to handle what you are entering or the responsibility which you are assuming. When we just get the status without achieving the state, all the problems which exist in the corporate world start – stress and tension in the personal level, and backbiting and politics in the level of the team. All these problems start when you don’t achieve the state but just achieve the status. Continue reading →

by Sri

Leadership is not a quality, but an experience that can radiate from an individual who has experienced personal growth and transformation

When we become responsible for others, we no longer are focused on us. We move towards serving other people. Serving other people is leadership.Pandering to one’s own needs without a care about others is absence of leadership.

There are so many books these days about leadership and how it is an important part of making an organization successful. There are so many so-called leadership gurus who teach and train people in organizations to ‘develop’ leadership. Yet when we look at all organizations, whether they are doing business to make a profit, or in government service or in the area of social services, true leaders are rare. If you look at any organization you will find that less than 1% tends to become the so-called leaders in the organization. If you look at business organizations, we can say that there are probably only 1% of these organizations that can claim to be true leaders in their fields who are excelling in all areas of their business – making a profit, delivering good products and services, providing service to society, providing satisfaction to their employees, etc. So we can say, true leaders are actually 1% of the 1% of successful business organizations. It means just 0.01% of the overall working population actually has true leadership qualities in them! We can say the same about organizations in other fields. This is what I mean when I say true leaders are rare.

Everyone can become a leader and the quality of leadership arises from one’s ability to take responsibility for a particular organization, a situation or a particular group.

Let us now try and understand why this is the case. Continue reading →

by Sri

Working out of overflowing energy, overflowing compassion, and the overflowing feeling of responsibility for everything, is what makes a life spiritual

I always tell people, ‘Do not think you have a certain amount of energy and you will work according to that energy. No. Whatever work and responsibility you take up, the energy starts expressing accordingly. You will have energy according to the responsibilities which you take up. Whatever responsibility you take upon yourself, you will see that your inner space expands to that extent and energy flows through you!’  If you feel responsible for whatever is happening around you, you suddenly become a leader. You start transforming your life and others’ lives.

Responsibility is one of the ways to consciously grow.

You only need to do two things: trust that life is good and know that you can expand to the responsibilities that you take up. Another thing, when that expansion happens, just hold on and have patience during the transformation process. Patience during the transformation process is what I call tapas or penance. There is a beautiful phrase of the teachings of Shirdi Sai Baba : ‘Shraddha, Saburi’ – trust and patience. This is the essence of life. Continue reading →

by Sri

Being responsible does not mean becoming serious

Swami Vivekananda, the Eastern mystic, describes the motto for his mission as atmano mokshartham jagat hitaya cha – ‘For spiritual liberation as well as bringing good to humanity’. He implies that without taking up responsibility for the good of the world, you cannot talk of spiritual liberation.

A beautiful story:

In a place called Pandaripur in India, there was a boy who served his parents very lovingly and with great care. Bhagawan Sri Krishna took the form of Pandarinathar and came to see him. It was raining that day while the boy was attending to his parents. Krishna stood at the door of the boy’s house and asked to be allowed inside.

The boy asked Him to wait until he had finished attending to his parents. Krishna said that it was raining and slushy where He stood. So the boy actually threw a block of brick and asked Bhagawan Krishna to stand on it!

Even today in that region, Pandarinathar is worshipped standing on a brick-block! God Himself came down to see the consciousness and sense of responsibility of the boy. Continue reading →

by Sri

Cognitive shift happens when you stand up with responsibility

When you take up responsibility, a cognitive shift happens in you. Your mental setup changes.

Many of us live life like slaves. For example, if you work eight hours in your office just following orders you will feel dull and tired. Instead, if you take up responsibility and initiative, that same eight hours will become much easier and more enjoyable. For example, take the case of a person who is running his own business and another person who is working for a company. The owner of the business has the full responsibility of his business, but the person who is working for some other company does not really feel the full responsibility. If he does not feel the responsibility, the whole job becomes like a burden on him. There is little or no self-motivation. He keeps looking at his watch to see if it is time to leave! For him, only the first of every month is sweet, since it is payday! In a month, he sacrifices twenty nine days of his life for one day of joy.

A sense of personal responsibility can help turn around any situation. A sense of personal responsibility can achieve great things. When you stand up with responsibility, you become a solid force. Until then, you remain a burden for yourself and for others. Continue reading →