​Gita Leadership Sutras Intro & Sutra 1

​Seminar at Bhaktivedanta Hospital, Mumbai

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So today I will be discussing three topics.
Primarily we have this topic as ten leadership sutras from the Bhagavad Gita. And I will be talking about first the introduction about how the Bhagavad Gita relates with leadership. And each of these talks will be around 25 to 30 minutes.
After which we will have 5 to 10 minutes for question answers. So like that we will go till around 9 o’clock. And if you have any more questions, we will have time at the end of the last session.
This is tomorrow evening. So we will take one-one section. Actually we have 25 minutes, around 10 minutes question answers after that.
And then we will move on like this in our class today. So let’s begin. This is the overview of what I will be discussing.
How the Bhagavad Gita is related with leadership. So the Gita stimulates inner growth. What is the essence of leadership? The Gita is actually a talk between leaders.
And what is the approach that Gita uses for leadership? And I will look at the 10 sutras in overview. So the Bhagavad Gita is known to most people as a Hindu religious book. It’s especially in India.
Most of us have probably heard its verses being recited sometime or the other. You may also heard some verses quoted. So you may have some understanding of the Bhagavad Gita.
And whatever understanding we have that’s valuable. But here we will look at the Bhagavad Gita from the perspective of it acting as a guide for leadership. We will start with a quote from Aldous Huxley.
So he says that the Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of parallel philosophy ever read. Hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.
Three things he is saying primarily. The systematic statement of spiritual evolution. Now all of us want to grow in life.
Growth is not just biological. Growth is not just financial. But all of us want to grow spiritually.
Even if the word spiritual is not in our vocabulary so much. But still we all want to grow in terms of our understanding, in terms of our joyfulness, in terms of our maturity. And this is what spirituality is all about ultimately.
So we are all on a journey of spiritual evolution whether we know it or not. And the Bhagavad Gita is a systematic guidebook for different stages in spiritual evolution and how we can move forward by the most efficacious way. So it is the clear and comprehensive summary of parennial philosophy ever revealed.
Philosophy itself refers to the study of the nature of things. Often that which is not immediately apparent. Perennial philosophy refers to the truths that underlie and unify various philosophies in this world.
Perennial philosophy. So it is a statement of perennial philosophy. We will discuss how the truths that the Bhagavad Gita talks about are universal and perennial.
Universal means they extend across space. Perennial means they extend across time. So and lastly therefore the enduring value is not only to India but to all of humanity.
In fact the Bhagavad Gita was one of the first books that inspired in the West spiritual evolution of consciousness. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau were considered to be the Western transcendentalists. Many people consider them to be the founding thinkers of the American ethos.
And both of them were enormously inspired by the Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom. So it is a statement for our ongoing spiritual growth to direct it and to accelerate it. Now Bob Nelson is a leadership consultant and he stays over here.
You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them but by building a fire within. So lighting a fire beneath means people are just sleeping and you want to yawl them up. You put a fire, they jump up.
So like that we put deadlines, we give targets, we impose disciplinary action if people don’t meet the targets. That is one way a leader can get others to do work. And that is also required at times.
But the most enduring motivation is self-motivation. If people are themselves inspired to do something then they will take it up far more earnestly and enthusiastically than what can be done by any external characteristic approach. So the Bhagavad Gita talks about how we can build the fire within ourselves.
How we can become inspired with a vision that helps us to bring out our best contribution to this world. The essence of leadership is not designation but disposition. Leader is a person may be appointed to a particular post.
Just by the appointment to that post, just by the acquisition of that designation people don’t become leaders. Leadership is a matter of disposition. When people are inspired from within they have the attitude of offering their best and inspiring others to offer their best.
That is something which has to be cultivated. And the Bhagavad Gita talks about leadership as a disposition and how we can cultivate that as a disposition. Now in this connection there are two broad kinds of leadership.
Normally we think of leadership in terms of public leadership. Somebody is a public leader, there are political leaders, there are cultural leaders, there are educational leaders. So these are people who have some position and some influence by which they direct others.
So that is outer leadership. That is important, that is influential and that public leadership can be sustainable when there is personal leadership. Personal leadership means that we need to be able to lead ourselves.
Within us often we are not always united. That means we have different desires warring within us. We have different priorities competing within us and when there is cohesion, when there is harmony within what we wish to aspire for, then the impact that we can have externally is enormous.
So the public leadership that is founded on personal leadership that is the most impactful, that is the most transformational. And public and personal leadership is entirely a matter of disposition. No one can appoint anyone as their own personal leader.
No, we have to do it ourselves. In the 6th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, in the 5th verse, Krishna talks about this. uddhare dātmanātmānam nātmānam avisādayet ātmai vahyātmanobandhara ātmai variparātmanahā So he says uddhare dātmanātmānam Elevate, one should elevate oneself with the self.
nātmānam avisādayet And one should not degrade oneself with the self. ātmai vahyātmanobandhara That the self is the friend of the self. ātmai vahyātmanobandhara ātmai variparātmanahā And the self is also the enemy of the self.
Now, this verse might seem enigmatic with a 4 times repetition of self, self, self in two lines. So for totally 8 times the self comes. The idea is the Bhagavad Gita recognises that there are multiple forces within us.
And if the self that wants to be constructive, the self that wants to be creative, that the self wants to make a contribution, that has to take control and lead the lower self, the one which wants to be impulsive, the one which wants to be self-centred, the one which wants to be lazy. So the essence of leadership is cultivating a disposition by which we lead ourselves. And when we lead ourselves, we can become effective leaders for others.
There is often, whenever any discussion of leadership comes up, the question is, are leaders made or are they born? Some people say leadership is an inherent quality that just comes genetically. Now, certainly leadership can be cultivated. The extent of leadership that can be cultivated will vary.
But before we go into that, the fact is we are all born to be leaders. That means just by being born in this world, just by living in this world, we influence others whether we know it or not. This is another leadership consultant, John C. Maxwell.
He said that sociologists tell us that even the most introverted individual will influence 10,000 other people during his or her lifetime. So just by living in the world, we go around, we work, we are at home, we interact with people and every interaction that we have with others influences them, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ways. So in that sense, if we consider leadership as a matter of influencing others, then we all influence others.
And in that sense, we all are, just by being born, we are all leaders. Now, going to the specific question of public leadership and personal leadership, public leadership requires a certain set of skills, a certain set of talents, which all people may not have equally. Some people may be very fluent in speaking.
Some people may be very extroverted and easily they can attract people. Some people may be charismatic. These qualities everyone may not have.
But these qualities alone don’t make a person into a leader. The qualities of public leadership do vary. Some people may have them more from birth.
Some people may have less from birth. And although everyone can improve the qualities of public leadership by practise, by training, still there may be a difference that not everyone may become an extraordinarily eloquent speaker just by practise. So there may be some variation in terms of the qualities required for public leadership.
But what is required for personal leadership is something that everyone can develop. Personal leadership is something which depends on internal character. It depends on not so much an external skill like ability to speak, ability to speak eloquently or ability to be extrovert or whatever.
It actually depends on one’s own character. And people who have the qualities of public leadership, but they don’t have personal leadership qualities, often such people become misleaders. Such people often end up causing more harm than good.
Because they have the capacity to influence others, but they don’t have the character by which they will act in the right way or enable others to act in the right way. So in that sense, the most beneficial contribution will come from those who are personal leaders. And whatever qualities of public leadership they have, they will use it for optimising their public contribution.
So it doesn’t matter whether we are born leaders or whether we are made leaders. Just by being born in this world, we are all leaders. And the Bhagavad Gita guides us to improve our leadership skills.
Now as I said, we are all leaders and not just at the personal level. Personal leadership is the leadership that lays the foundation for public leadership. So in that sense, we are all leaders.
The Bhagavad Gita talks about our senses and our mind as forces within us which distract us. manaham shashthanendriyani prakritisthani karshati The senses and the mind are dragging us in different directions and they create fragmentation within ourselves. And the spiritual wisdom of the Gita brings integration within.
And when there is integration within, then there is maximisation of the outer contribution. So how is the Gita related with leadership? First of all, the Gita is a conversation between two leaders. The Bhagavad Gita is spoken between Krishna and Arjuna.
Now Krishna is considered in the broad Indian tradition, especially in the bhakti tradition to be God. The wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita is focused on principles. And those principles can be best assimilated if one accepts at least a theoretical level Krishna’s divinity.
But even if one is not ready to accept that the principles themselves are beneficial, even if one considers this as a theoretical model to be subjected to scrutiny, that way also one can benefit from the principles of the Bhagavad Gita. So Krishna, as most of you probably know, he was what we could call in today’s language as a self-made man. He is not a man.
He is God. But just for the usage, you know, he was born in treachery. His own uncle was out to kill him.
And he had betrayed and arrested his own sister. And he had to run away right from his birth and stay in obscurity. And even in obscurity when he was staying in a place called Vrindavan, there were many threats to his life.
Somehow he skilfully evaded all those threats. And then he came back and he overthrew the tyrant Kamsa who had terrorised society at that time. And he soon established himself as one of the foremost warriors of his times.
And although he had overthrown the tyrannical ruler, he never chose to become a ruler himself. So Krishna rose from obscurity and against adversity. Time and time again there were huge dangers that he faced.
But he lived through it all, grew through it all. And eventually when he gained power, he refused to take that power. He handed that power to his great-grandfather, Ugrasi, who became the king.
And Krishna demonstrated that he stressed contribution above position. That he did not look for the position of a king. Although he did all that was required in the role of a king.
Whenever the kingdom was in danger, he worked resourcefully to protect the kingdom. And not just his own kingdom, other virtuous rulers also he helped them repeatedly. But he himself did not acquire any position.
So actually this is in sharp contrast today to many of today’s leaders who are interested in position far more than in contribution. Sometimes in legislative assemblies, the legislators they quarrel about every single thing. And practically no resolutions pass.
But almost always unanimously pass one resolution during their tenure. That is to increase their post-retirement benefits. So they want to have their position and use that position for maximising their own gratification.
Irrespective of what contribution they are doing or not doing. So this ethos of putting contribution above position is a very valuable example for us in today’s society. So Krishna was exemplary leader in that sense.
And the Bhagavad Gita is spoken by Krishna to Arjuna. Arjuna was also another leader. Although he was not the king, he was among the five Pandavas, he was the middle brother.
He was not the king but he was the foremost archer of his times. So he was a leader both by dynasty and by his virtuosity. Dynasty was born in the Kuru dynasty which was the dynasty of powerful rulers of those times.
And his virtuosity was he was a brilliant archer, an archer par excellence. And there were many great archers at that time and he was a champion among champions. And he was the primary force as far as the fighting in the Kurukshetra war was concerned which led to the victory of virtue over vice.
So he was also a leader. And the Bhagavad Gita is a conversation between two leaders. And what is this conversation about? The Mahabharata has 18 paravas, 18 sections.
And in this, in the sixth section is called as the Bhishma parava wherein the Bhagavad Gita occurs as chapters 18 to 35. It’s 18 chapters which occur just before the Kurukshetra war is about to begin. At that time Arjuna is ready to fight the war and suddenly he gets an impulse.
He says let me see who is there. In the 22nd chapter of the first verse he says that I want to see who have assembled over here to fight. In the 21st verse he says Krishna please take the chariot between the two forces so that I can observe who are assembled over here.
And when he sees, he sees Bhishma, Drona, Pramukta, Sarvesham, Jivanishyam. So he saw on the battlefield there were many great warriors but among them was Bhishma and Drona. Bhishma was his grandfather.
Drona was his martial teacher. So then he became overwhelmed. He felt how can I fight with my relatives? How can I attack those who have trained me, those who have cared for me? How can I fight this war? So he faced an ethical crisis over here.
And at that time the Bhagavad Gita’s message was spoken. Although the Bhagavad Gita is spoken on a war field between two leaders both of whom were formidable fighters. It’s surprising that the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t even once talk about any martial strategy.
The Bhagavad Gita’s first chapter is the setting which describes the war field. But afterwards the Bhagavad Gita leaves the setting far behind and it rises to discuss universal questions. So what is the Gita’s approach to leadership? Leadership is centred on decision making.
Whenever there is any unit, people have their designated roles and they work according to the roles and things will move on. But then life throws some challenges. At that time decisions have to be made.
So leaders are defined by the quality of the decisions that they make. And Arjuna faced a decision at such a situation. What should I do? Should I fight this war or should I abandon this war? He was not sure.
The Bhagavad Gita goes to the fundamentals of decision making. Not just decision making but the foundation of decision making. It does not simply tell Arjuna, Arjuna fight.
No. The Bhagavad Gita reveals a vision of God who wants people to think for themselves. So Krishna does not just simply give Arjuna, do this, don’t do this.
The Bhagavad Gita is not so much a book of commandments as it is a book of choices and consequences. The Bhagavad Gita gives spectacles. You make this choice, this is going to happen.
If you make this choice, this is going to happen. And at the end it states, Now deliberate and decide what you want to do. So Krishna is asking Arjuna to think for himself.
Krishna gives Arjuna a framework on which to make decisions. And thus he informs his leadership skills. So here the Gita’s approach to leadership is an inside out approach.
Inside out in the sense that it goes to the core of the being, core of a person to understand what values animate that person. And once that is understood then one can move forward and make decisions. Once those values are right, the actions that people will do will automatically be right.
And the Bhagavad Gita focusses primarily on getting these values right. So the ten sutras that we will be discussing are Firstly, the universe is a university. Life, things don’t happen just by chance in life.
There is valuable wisdom to be learned in everything that happens. And second principle is, second sutra is redefine success. We all go through life with certain definitions of success.
And those definitions often damage our chances of success than the events of life themselves. So we will redefine success and then when we face difficulties we learn some insights by which we can be concerned without getting disturbed. We can address those issues maturely, not that we become indifferent to the issues but we don’t become overwhelmed by the issues.
Then we will discuss about the inner force that influences us tremendously, that is the mind. So mind, the mind, what the mind is, how it acts and how we can channel its power for our purposes is the fourth sutra. Fifth is assume accountability.
Now normally we talk about assume responsibility. Somebody assumes responsibility but assume accountability means actually we are all accountable for our actions but when we take responsibility for those actions ourselves not just our actions but our thoughts, our attitudes our emotions then we can bring about tremendous positive change in our lives. And we will discuss about the power of words.
Words shape worlds, watch your words. So leadership especially in today’s world is not so much about martial skills where a leader is leading an army. It is more of inspiring, guiding, motivating and for that words are extremely powerful force.
So how we can tap the power of words, that’s what we will discuss. Then life determines our problem, we determine their size. We will discuss some principles about how we may unwittingly be feeding our problems instead of feeding the solutions.
So by changing our disposition we will be able to not make problems bigger than what they need to be. And then we will discuss about how we can work as worship. This is different from work is worship.
Work is worship is the idea that work is intrinsically worship but rather it is certain consciousness that will make work into worship. So how we can do work as worship, that is what we will discuss in the 8th principle. Then retreat within to treat without.
We will discuss how when there are external problems by going within and healing ourselves from within by tapping into inner source of empowerment we can deal with external problems more effectively. Never lose heart, that is the last principle. Bhagavad Gita gives us a vision of life wherein we can have inexhaustible hope no matter how much reversals or challenges we face in life.
So this is the summary, we will start next with our first talk about the universe is the university. But before that are there any questions which anyone would like to ask? Do we have a mic? Or you can raise your hands or you can send chips whatever is convenient for you. Yes, please.
Yeah, do we have a mic? Yes, please. Is there any similarity between what I said and what Bhagavad Gita says? Oh yes, good point. So a leader, is it one who is followed by many? Yes, definitely.
If we look at the Bhagavad Gita in the 3.21 it talks about yad yad ācharati śreṣṭhas tattat eve tarojanā sa yad pramāṇam gurute lokas tad anuvartate So śreṣṭha, that is great people, as great people act, yad yad ācharati śreṣṭhas tattat eve tarojanā, others act accordingly. sa yad pramāṇam gurute, whatever standards they set, lokas tad anuvartate, people emulate those standards. So the Bhagavad Gita definitely acknowledges the people shaping potency of leaders.
So leaders are those who are followed by others. Now the real question is, where are the leaders leading people? So that principle in every society, there will be by default people who have some talents, people who have some positions, people who have some charisma, whatever, by which they will become leaders. So in a sense, even the most chaotic society has some leaders within that.
But often those leaders, if they are not mature, they may be aggravating the chaos. So when we say a leader is one who is followed by others, we are talking more in terms of descriptive reality. See, when we talk about descriptive, means we are telling how things are.
For example, newspaper describes things. Okay, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. So now descriptive definition is fine.
We are talking in the Bhagavad Gita when we are discussing this, we will be talking more in terms of a prescriptive definition. Now how a leader should be, by which the leader will not be a misleader but will become a proper leader. Yes, in terms of functionality, definitely it’s right that a leader is one who is followed by many others.
Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Yes. Yeah, we have a mic there also.
Krishna? Yes. Just, I think in all these comments, we have seen like, we heard Krishna and Arjuna both, at that time their name was Vidur. So, why, why after, as a leader, why Arjuna required all these Bhagavad Gita leadership qualities and Krishna as his name? Because he was already a leader as we have heard.
So why did he require these Bhagavad Gita leadership qualities? Okay, good question. So if Arjuna was already a leader, then why did he need the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita? Did he not have this knowledge already? Yes. He certainly had the basic knowledge by which he acted as a principal leader.
At the same time, life can throw a curved ball at us at any time. And even the wisest of us, we may be put in a situation of perplexity. So as I said, Arjuna what he faced was an ethical crisis.
There are two kinds of crisis, without getting into hair splitting. There is a moral crisis and there is an ethical crisis. Moral crisis means, one choice is moral, the other is immoral.
And then to go through a moral crisis, basically one needs moral strength. So somebody is tempted to do something, maybe cut some moral corners and may earn some more money or whatever. So moral choice in that what is right and what is wrong is not very difficult to do.
Although it may be difficult to act on it. But ethical crisis is a situation where actually there are two choices which are both moral. And then the question comes up, which is the higher morality? So Arjuna’s choice at that time was like that.
So he was not a person who was morally deficient in terms of a human being or in terms of as a leader. But he had a choice where there were two moral principles running in contradiction. What would he do at such a time? So to give an example of this, suppose there is a Supreme Court judge.
And that judge, he or she has to adjudge a case in which their own child is the defendant, is the accused. Now at such a time if the child is guilty, they have to sentence. The natural affection is where they would not want their child to suffer.
But their duty calls for something else. Now in real life, if such a situation comes, the judge would recuse themselves. Or the government would ask them to recuse themselves.
But Arjuna did not have that option. So he had a situation where, if we look at the context of the Bhagavad Gita, it is a dharma sankat. There is kulla dharma and there is kshatriya dharma.
Kulla dharma is the duty to his dynasty. It’s my own dynasty, they are my cousins. They are the sons of my uncle.
My uncles are also there. So normally we want to take care of our family members, our relatives, members of our dynasty. So he had a duty to his kulla that was to protect them.
And he had a duty to his kshatriya. Kshatriya is a martial guardian of society. And those who are aggressive, those who are disrupting the law and order in society, a kshatriya has to act against them.
And now what does one do if the disruptors of law and order are ones of relatives? So that was the ethical crisis for him. So there it was not so much a deficiency of leadership qualities that put Arjuna in a crisis. It was the complexity of the crisis that he faced himself at that particular time that put him in confusion.
And what the Bhagavad Gita illustrates through Arjuna’s confusion is that we all need friends, we all need guides, we all need mentors. We may be put in situations in our life where no matter how reflective we are, how wise we are, but still we will not be enough ourselves. So at that time Arjuna turns to Krishna and takes guidance from him.
Does it answer your question? Any other questions? Yeah, please. A leadership before Bhagavad Gita, pre-Bhagavad Gita, pre-Bhagavad Gita and post-Bhagavad Gita, should we differentiate them? Okay, good point, nice point actually. Should we differentiate between, yeah I will repeat the question.
Should we differentiate between pre-Bhagavad Gita leadership and post-Bhagavad Gita leadership? Yes and no. No in the sense that the Bhagavad Gita itself states that it is repeating the knowledge that has been given in the past. So, sa eva maya tedya yoga prokta puratana bhakto silesa ka cheti rahasya kirtanam In 4.3 the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna that this knowledge that was spoken in the past long ago, I am repeating this to you.
So in that sense the Bhagavad Gita’s knowledge is itself not new. Normally, nowadays we give a lot of emphasis on originality. Now what is your original contribution? Somebody said as a PhD that we should add to the existing body of knowledge.
So what is the original? Now we use the word original in the sense that something new is to be added. What is the new thing coming from you? So when we use the word original, we use it with ourselves as the reference point. The Bhagavad Gita talks about originality in a different sense.
Where it talks about originality in the sense of origin. What was it meant to be originally? So for example, if I am going on a road and say I am in Greece or somewhere where the road signs I am not able to figure out. Now if I want to figure out the road signs, I need originality not in the sense of coming up with some new meaning for the road signs.
I need originality in the sense that what was the original meaning of those who put that road sign over there. Go left, go right, go this way, go that way. So the Bhagavad Gita’s originality is in this sense.
That life is a journey. And there are some timeless principles that can guide us in our life journey. But because life itself is never static.
Circumstances change. And when circumstances change, the same principles need to be re-understood and reapplied. The principles remain the same, but they cannot be applied literalistically in the same way.
So what the Bhagavad Gita gives us is a new vision of the old. So in that sense, the post-Bhagavad Gita leadership is a growth from the pre-Bhagavad Gita leadership. But it is also a development.
It is a new application. So although the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita was given earlier, Arjuna starts with a dialectic. He talks about either I have two options, action, I act in this world or renunciation.
These are the two options for Arjuna, action or renunciation. The Bhagavad Gita gives a third option. Not renunciation of action, but renunciation in action.
It acts with selflessness. So in that sense, the Bhagavad Gita gives a new vision of the perennial. And that pragmatic approach to being in the world without being attached to the world.
Highlighting that is the distinctive contribution of the Bhagavad Gita. Any other questions? Yes. So you said that all of us are leaders and this is also a development.
Whenever we start an activity, so now you are asking us to be leaders, to become better leaders. So why should one, what is the motivation behind it? What is the impetus of starting this journey? How can you be the leader of a small group? Yeah. So what is the motivation for becoming a leader? We may be leaders at our own position and we can be satisfied with that.
Yes, certainly. We are already leaders at a particular position in our life. And the Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom can enable us to become more influential wherever we are.
That means if a person is in their home, if a person is in their home, even in a home the parents would like to have more influence in their children, not in terms of dominating their children, but helping their children see their best interests and grow in terms of those interests. So even in our home we need to be leaders. Even in our offices.
Nowadays we work, most of us we work in teams. Even if we are solitary artists, still we cannot just, we have to take the product of our art and share it with others. So nobody lives in isolation.
So we all, for doing whatever it is that we are inspired to do, we need to influence others. And we are influenced by others. So we live in an interdependent world.
And whatever position we are in, even if we don’t envision rising to a higher position, even if we don’t have any motivation for that, we are leaders at a particular level, but at that level itself we can have greater penetration, we can have greater influence. So if we are, if we learn the principles of the Bhagavad Gita, then whatever we are doing, we will be able to do it more effectively, more transformational in terms of the impact it has on others and in terms of the contribution that we make to the world. The Bhagavad Gita’s vision helps us to discover the best within us and to bring out the best for the, for contribution in this world.
Does that answer the question? Okay. Any other question? My last question was there. Then we will move on.
I have a question. So you say, before Mahayana, there was a change in Mahayana. Every leader is associated with that change.
So the impact is that we all have manner of fear. It indicates that we want to become better or change ourselves. If not leader, at least it has real recognition that we all are leaders.
So we all need to feel inspired to become leaders because we all need to manage change and change is something which happens and we all come here. That itself indicates we want some kind of change. Yes.
Actually it is said that change occurs when the cost of not changing is seen as more than the price of changing. So we do not feel like changing because normally whatever we are going to ride along, change costs something. But when we have to pay for it, we do not feel like paying for it.
But when we see by staying here itself, I will be paying so much. So for example, if we are staying in a house and we are staying in the house and we have tenants over there and the landlord keeps hiking up the rates, hiking up the rates. You think now I am settled in this house, why do I need to change my house? But then if you may think you have to change my house, there is so much inconvenience, so many logistics, find a new place, shift over there, develop relationships.
There is so much trouble over there. But if you find the price of being here is going up and up and up, you feel I am not going to pay so much. So when the cost of being where we are becomes much more, becomes more than the price of going somewhere else, then that is when we change.
So quite often it is already true that the cost of where we are is much more than the price of going somewhere else. But we don’t realise it. So when we get some fresh perspectives on life, then we understand how we can change, where we can go and how actually by not changing also we are paying a heavy cost.
So that way when we appreciate that, then the Bhagavad Gita gives us a vision of transformation and how transformation progresses, especially in the 18th chapter, it talks about different kinds of pleasures. So in 18.37, 38, 39, it talks about different kinds of pleasures. And here some kinds of pleasures they feel good initially, but then after that they lead to misery.
That is the pleasure of staying the way we are. It seems comfortable, but it leads to perpetuation of under-contribution, of under-utilisation. As it talks about some pleasures are like poison in the beginning, yatta dhagre visham eva parinamaya mrutopamam, but eventually they look like poison.
So there is a price of changing, but once we change, there is an enormous amount of enrichment awaiting us. So yes, the Bhagavad Gita guides us very powerfully for change management. And irrespective of whether we want to be leaders or not, the world around us keeps changing.
And we need to know how to move forward, how to manage such a changing world. So thank you for that comment and let us move on. We will discuss the, if any of you have any more questions, you can note them down and we will discuss them at the end of our course.
So we will discuss, this is the sutra one over here. So the sutra was universe is a university. Things don’t happen by chaos or chance.
There is a purpose and lessons to be learned over there. So the Bhagavad Gita itself demonstrates how the universe is a university by transforming a battlefield into a classroom. And then the practical application of this is that life will teach, but we have to learn.
So we have to learn to learn from life. And then how the sutra is universal, we will discuss that in terms of how, the same principle, sometimes people think of a conflict between science and religion, science and spirituality. But actually whatever surface conflicts might be there, the underlying principles, they are similar.
There is a common faith that underlies both science and spirituality. And then we will discuss about the Gita’s setting itself. You know the battlefield setting of the Gita that often leads to disturbing questions.
Does the Gita call for war? What is the setting? And what is its significance? That we will discuss towards the end of the talk. So the first point is that the Bhagavad Gita itself demonstrates experiential learning par excellence. Now a days if people want to say teach anything, then there is experiential learning.
If you want to teach something about farming, take children to a farm. If you want to teach something about nature, take them close to nature. So like that what Krishna does is, he wants to teach principles of living and rather than taking a student to a field trip, actually there is a crisis that erupts on the battlefield.
And practically very few occasions in the history of the world will a battlefield be transformed into a classroom. And how does Krishna do it? He does it by his presence and his presentation. His presence, he has a calm, composed, focused presence.
And the words he speaks, he is not passionate. He is not inflammatory. He is not agitated.
If you look at the tone of the Bhagavad Gita, if you did not know the context, we would not even notice, we would not even guess that this was actually spoken on the battlefield. So he is completely cool and composed. So especially in India cricket is very popular.
In cricket we know that there are some players who just get an attack of nerves and they crumble under pressure. So one cricket team is known as chokers because whenever there is pressure, they have the potential, they have the talent, but they just crumble. So this capacity to stay composed under pressure, that is what enables us to tap hidden opportunities.
So that’s what Krishna does. This is a crisis for him. Krishna is acting as the charioteer cum counsellor for Arjuna.
Krishna has chosen in this war to have the role of a non-combatant. He is a charioteer, but still he is a leader. And when his prominent friend and student Arjuna suffers a breakdown, Krishna doesn’t break down, Krishna stays calm.
So actually there could be double agitation. One agitation is the big war itself that is happening that itself keeps people, can give people stress. And on top of that the top man faces an emotional breakdown.
Say there is an India-Pakistan match, that time itself there is a big stress. And just before the India-Pakistan match, say India’s top batsman starts getting a nervous breakdown. But the captain will already be under stress, it’s such a big match.
And on top of that if their player also, their top player starts getting a breakdown, the stress can become too much. But Krishna stays composed. And what does he do? By the message of the Bhagavad Gita, three things, he becomes intellectually illumined, spiritually strengthened and emotionally enlivened.
There is a physical side of our being, beyond that there is the mind, there is the intelligence and there is the soul. I will discuss about this elaborately later. But at this point it is the internal transformation that the Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom brings about.
And that transformation happens as Krishna speaks the Gita. So he demonstrates experiential learning par excellence by transforming a battlefield into a classroom. And now Krishna teaches Arjuna something but what Krishna teaches also is this mood of learning.
So learn to learn from life. What Krishna taught Arjuna that same we can learn today from life if we understand the principles of Gita. So it is not just a matter of, learning from life is not just a matter of individual dexterity.
Individual dexterity means some people are good at learning, other people are not good at learning. So sometimes we may feel that if something happens in my life and I learn something from it and there are other people who just go through life. You know they said that there are three kinds of people.
Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen and some people wonder what happened. So some people just bungle through life. So we may wonder is there actually some lesson really to be learned through life or is it just a matter of one’s own subjective conceptualisation.
Things are chaotic but somehow I learn something from them. No, it’s not like that. Actually there are lessons to be learned in life.
And we do need our individual dexterity, we need to sharpen our observation and awareness by which we can learn from life. But there are lessons truly to be learned from life. So it’s a universal reality that the world is pregnant with wisdom.
The universe is a university. And here we will discuss, this may sound excessively theistic or religious but we will see surprisingly this principle applies to spirituality also. Normally we talk of the word faith in terms of religion.
But actually faith is a foundation even of science. How is that? Most of us know the incipient moment of modern science when Newton saw a fruit falling. Now millions of people before Newton had seen the fruit falling.
Most of them would have just picked up the fruit, eaten and gone their way. Newton did not do that. He observed the fruit falling and asked the question, what made the fruit fall? And from that question came the answer of gravity.
And that started off as the engine of scientific progress. So now here we can appreciate at an individual level the brilliance of Newton in postulating gravity through a commonplace observation. But going deeper, when Newton asked this question, what made this apple fall? Or what made this fruit fall? There is an assumption underlying this question.
And that assumption is, things don’t happen by chance. If this fruit fell, there must be some rationale, there must be some reason that the fruit fell. So science itself operates based on the faith that things that happen in nature have an order to them.
And the whole purpose of science is to try to uncover the order of nature. Now there is no guarantee in the beginning that there is an order in nature. If Newton or any of the pioneering scientists of the last 4-5 centuries, if any of them did not have the faith that there is an order in nature to be discovered, then they would not have investigated at all.
And if they had not investigated, they would not have found the order. So science also operates on faith. The faith that the events in nature are orderly.
And this is not just what I am saying. This is not Paul Davies. Paul Davies himself is not a theist.
He is inclined, he is more like an agnostic, a waverer. But he says, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a law-like order in nature. Without this faith that there is order in nature, no science would have been possible.
It is only when, even when what we thought of as order doesn’t work out really. That means Newton, Newton laid the foundation for classical physics. And then by the start of the 20th century, the black body radiation came out and then basically there are certain developments in science led to the recognition that Newtonian classical physics was severely limited.
So at the subatomic level and at the cosmic level, it seemed as if there was no order. Because it did not follow Newton’s laws. At that time again scientists had the faith.
There must be some other order. So even when there is perception of disorder, science operates in the faith that there is some deeper order which we need to uncover. And then that led to the development of quantum physics for dealing with subatomic particles and it led to the development of relativity physics for dealing with the cosmic level of reality.
So science operates on this faith. So moving forward, India’s own Srinivas Ramanujan. Mathematician, what does he say? An equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a thought of God.
A thought of God. E is equal to mc square. F is equal to gm1m2 upon r square.
Now it is the brilliance of scientists and mathematicians that they have come up with these equations. But these equations reflect some reality in nature. They did not put that reality there.
So who Einstein discovered is equal to mc square. But how did these two discrete quantities, mass and energy, how did they become related by a mathematical equation of such precision? He says equation for me has no meaning. Why should these two discrete quantities be equal at all? There is no meaning unless it represents a thought of God.
So science itself is a quest for knowledge which operates on faith. It is not that science operates from faith in God. Science operates on faith in the existence of order in nature.
Now these two quotes are different. What Paul Davies says is that even atheists have to accept that there is order in nature. And that is their faith.
Now what Srinivas Ramanujan is saying, he is taking one step forward. He is saying where is that order coming from? So he is saying that order comes from God. So the point is that everybody has to operate, even every scientist has to operate based on the assumption of order, on the faith of order in nature.
And that principle of looking for orderly principles amidst disorderly data, that is what spirituality is also all about. There are different events that happen in our life. They all have wide, some of them just seem chaotic, some of them seem tragic, some of them seem positive.
But there is an underlying factor. There is something to learn. Those common principles of searching for order amidst apparent disorder that applies both to science and spirituality.
Now going to the setting of the Gita. Can this be made zero or as low as possible, as high temperature as possible? Or it can be switched off. So the Gita’s message is not about either violence or silence.
It is about transcendence. So the Gita talks about a war. And nowadays when there is so much threat of violence in the name of religion, so many of us may feel uncomfortable that the Bhagavad Gita is also spoken on the battlefield and apparently it is spoken to, as some people put it provocatively, to goad a peace-loving warrior to fight, a peace-loving person to fight.
Well, that is an oversimplification to the level of misrepresentation. But the reality of the Bhagavad Gita is much more subtle and complex. So before we can look at the purpose of the Gita’s call for action, we need to firstly understand the principle that actually, let’s take this first.
So what happens is that why was the war fought? If we look at the Bhagavad Gita in the context of the Mahabharata, we see that the Pandavas did everything possible to avoid the war. Although there were repeated provocations, there were repeated atrocities they were subjected to. They were attempted to be poisoned.
They were attempted to be burned alive. Their wife was dishonoured. They were dispossessed of everything.
Through it all, they tried for peace. Actually, even before, most of you probably know the story of the Mahabharata, the Pandavas attempted to be burned alive and they fled to the forest. And they lived in the forest, that’s why they married Draupadi.
So at that time, they knew it was the Kauravas who had set fire to them and planned the arson. But they did not point any fingers. They did not tolerate it.
But eventually, when Draupadi was dishonoured publicly, a line was irrevocably crossed. And even after that, at Krishna’s behest, the Pandavas said, let us try for peace. And they tried for peace in the most accommodating of terms.
Now Krishna, choosing to himself go as the Shanti Duta, as an envoy for peace, is an extraordinary gesture, even in its symbolism. Now there are now currently heavy tensions on the Indo-Pak border. And sometimes there are peace talks, sometimes the peace talks are stalled.
So probably sometimes the defence minister may go, or sometimes the defence secretary may go, or some military officers may meet. But suppose the head of the Indian state, the Indian prime minister goes for a peace talk. That indicates that the position of the person who is going for a peace talk, that itself indicates the gravity of the effort.
So when Krishna went for peace talks, several others, Vidura and others told him that, you know, Krishna, you know Duryodhana is not going to listen to you. In fact, he will try to dishonour you. Duryodhana’s plan was to have Krishna arrested.
He says, why are you doing this, Krishna? Krishna tells that, I know in advance that this peace mission is not going to be successful. But still I will try my best. And if you look at the Mahabharata, Krishna uses the standard four strategies of negotiation.
All four of them expertly, Saam, Daam, Ved and Dandam while dealing with Duryodhana. And at one particular point, it happens that Dushyasana, Duryodhana’s brother, she becomes convinced by Duryodhana. Dushyasana says, if Duryodhana does not listen, then I will tie Duryodhana and hand him over to Krishna.
And Krishna can arrest him and take him away and we can have peace after that. So, at that time, Duryodhana gets alarmed at this dissension brewing up in his ranks. And he stages a walkout.
And when he stages a walkout, then all his other brothers start thinking, 90th brothers, what to do? And they are torn between Duryodhana and Dushyasana. They think Duryodhana is the leader. So, they go walk out with him.
Dushyasana is left alone. He also walks out. So, basically the point I am making is Krishna influences even Dushyasana at that.
He tries his best. But Krishna tells Vidura in advance that I know I am not going to be successful. But I have come here to petition for peace simply to demonstrate to the world that the Pandavas were not the instigators of war.
The Pandavas tried their best for peace on the most accommodating of terms. As we know, Krishna told Arjuna, Krishna told Duryodhana, just leave five villages. And even that, Duryodhana replies, there are different ways of saying no also.
Duryodhana’s reply, there are sometimes when some people say no, but they don’t want to say no. They say I am helpless because of which I have to do this, do this. So, I can’t come here.
There are some people who say no in a way in which not only are they saying no to the particular request, they are actually rebuffing the person also. So, the way Duryodhana said no was, he said I will not give enough land to stick even the tip of a needle through. That means he was not only rejecting, but he was insulting.
And that indicated that there was just no chance for peace. So, they saw their efforts disdainfully rejected. Now, Duryodhana was such a person that he was ready to dishonour, disrobe a woman in a public assembly.
It’s horrendous. Even from today’s standards point of view, this is horrendous. And such a person had unfettered power.
During the 12-13 years Duryodhana ruled, he always had that spectre hanging over his head that the Pandavas are going to come. So, he exercised some restraint during his rule. He was not very atrocious during his rule.
But if the Kauravas, if the threat of the Pandavas had been removed, then there would have been no limit to the kind of depravity that Duryodhana would have indulged in. And for such a person to be allowed to stay in power would mean abdication of responsibility for the Pandavas. The Pandavas did not want the kingdom for themselves.
The Pandavas wanted to lead their citizens in a responsible way, on the path of virtue. And they knew that Duryodhana, by his brazenness, by his depravity, would lead the citizens into vice, would lead the state to chaos. And when they fought, it was not for their selfish gains.
It was for their service to society. As Edmund Burke, the British statesman, he has said famously that the only thing needed for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. If good people do nothing, then evil people are anyway going to do a lot of things.
And they will take over. So, actually speaking, what the Bhagavad Gita demonstrates is, so earlier I said the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t talk much about war. After the first chapter, if you look at the whole Bhagavad Gita, there are barely five or six references to the war in the whole Bhagavad Gita, 700 verses.
But, so it is not a call for war. It is a call for spiritual, for transcendence, as I said earlier. It is a call for raising one’s consciousness and empowering oneself with spiritual wisdom.
But, pertinently for us, that some people think spirituality is running away from the world. People feel that spirituality means you just leave the world and get into your own thing for your own liberation. Yes, that is one model of spirituality.
But the Bhagavad Gita does not recommend that model of spirituality. It is a spiritual book, but it is a vision of spirituality that engenders social responsibility. So, for the Pandavas, they were spiritual.
Arjuna was a very deeply spiritual person. He fought the war because he knew that his sense of spirituality engenders social responsibility. So, it is a call for engaged spirituality that is very socially responsible.
So, the setting of the Bhagavad Gita, some people say it is metaphorical. That actually Krishna, that the Kurukshetra is the body and Krishna and Arjuna are like the good, Krishna is like the advisor within us. Arjuna, the Pandavas are the virtuous forces.
The Kauravas are the wisest within us. Now, this metaphorical reading of the Bhagavad Gita is fine as long as it is an addition to the historical setting. If it is a substitution for the historical setting, then actually it damages the pragmatism of the Gita.
The Gita is demonstrating an ethos of social responsibility. And we back. Another point of this war is, see the Bhagavad Gita is spoken on the battlefield and what does it demonstrate? There are many urgent things that we have to do in life, but few things are as urgent as when a battle is about to begin.
So, the fact that if a person on a battlefield spare time for gaining spiritual wisdom, no circumstances needs to warrant relegating that message to be the done later category. Now, many of us get some moments of spiritual awakening. I must be looking for something.
There must be something more in life that I want. But then those moments, they are more moments of lightning than moments of light. So, they come as lightning, they stay for some time and then they go off.
But if we look at the Bhagavad Gita’s example, we feel there are so many urgent things in my life which I have to do. And after I do those things, maybe then after that I look at spirituality. But the Bhagavad Gita certainly demonstrates that this wisdom is to be done right now.
It is not something which can be postponed. Arjuna did not do that. He knew that if he had to act, he had to have the right vision to act.
There is a vision without action is a dream. I am just thinking, I will do this, I will do that, but I don’t do anything. Vision without action is a dream.
But action without vision is a nightmare. I just act without knowing what I am going to do, why am I doing it, I create trouble for myself. So, Arjuna recognised that if he acted without vision, action without vision, he would make things worse for himself.
So, quite often we may feel that I don’t have enough time to do things. We will discuss about time later more in detail. But the point is this can empower us to act better in our lives, Gita’s spiritual wisdom.
And a third thing that is, so, the Bhagavad Gita demonstrates when corrupt elements within an organisation. So, how is it applicable to leadership today? In today’s setting, when corrupt elements within an organisation try to misappropriate resources and victimise innocent people, leaders need to firmly take disciplinary action without succumbing to nepotism or any other kinds of partiality. We will all see that as in whatever positions we are, we have to make choices.
And the Bhagavad Gita guides us towards making the best choices. And as in the Bhagavad Gita can be read metaphorically, but not at the cost of its historicality. Historically, the Bhagavad Gita talks about events that happened long ago.
But along with that, the enduring relevance of the Bhagavad Gita comes from its substance which transcends its setting. The Bhagavad Gita’s essential message is a timeless message. It talks about the external war is real, the inner war is also real.
In the sense that it has real consequences. So, the Bhagavad Gita was spoken at the scene of external war. And its message is about inner war.
In fact, later on in the Bhagavad Gita in 3.37, Krishna tells Arjuna, कामेश क्रोधेश रजो गुण समूपवा महाषलो महापाप्मा विद्धि एनमिहवैर्यम् Vidhi enam, know this to be your enemy. Krishna and Arjuna are situated on the war field. But Krishna doesn’t point to say Karna, Duryodhana and say they are your enemies.
Krishna points Vidhi, know your inner selfishness. Our own selfish desire, that is our enemy that we need to conquer. So, in that sense, the Bhagavad Gita is spoken on an external war setting.
But its message is about the internal war. And what is the internal war? You know, there are lofty aspirations and there are petty weaknesses. Now, we want to do wonderful things in our life, but there are negative thought processes that victimise us.
So, I’ll talk about all these elaborately. But in a corporate setting, we may have this inertia. You know, if I want to do something, if I want to do anything new, so much work to do.
I won’t be able to do all this work. So, therefore, let things stay as they are. Or sometimes we imagine problems.
If I suggest something, if I try to implement it, everybody will oppose me. They will oppose, they will oppose. How will I do it? Better let me not try to do it.
Or there is cynicism. Things will never improve. So, actually, when we start thinking things will never improve, the sure thing is that we will never improve.
You know, whether things improve or not, this attitude that things will never improve will ensure that we will never improve. So, that is something which definitely need to change. And the Bhagavad Gita talks about how we can overcome these negative thought processes.
So, this negative self-talk can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, I think that I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t do it. Then we end up not being able to do it.
We sabotage ourselves. And then we get pessimistic prognosis from others. Oh, you know, none of this thing works.
So, maybe it is people have not made it work well enough, people have not made it work hard enough. And they project their pessimism on ourselves. And when we let the temptation to let the status quo go on, then we cheat ourselves.
We can’t make the appropriate constitutions. The Bhagavad Gita is a source of unlimited positivity filled with timeless truths that can dissipate the gloom of negativity. Whatever negativity is there in our life can be disseminated by the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and can illumine us with spiritual wisdom.
So, there are, whatever is happening, even if things are going wrong in our life, it’s not just going wrong. There is some right lesson underneath it to be learned. And for that we need to see beyond the material to the spiritual.
And we need to redefine success, expand our conception of success. That is the next session. So, what is there to be learned when I say universal university and how do we learn that? That is the journey we should be taking in our future sessions.
And at this stage I will summarise what we discussed in this and we can have some question answers. Started by talking about how this principle of the universe is a university. This the Bhagavad Gita demonstrates by taking a real life setting, a battlefield and transforming it into a classroom.
And this principle is, it’s not just a matter of individual imagination. Things are just going on somehow. I can learn something from it.
No, things are going on by plan and there is something which we can all learn. That there is order amidst seeming disorder, this is not just the faith of spirituality, this is the faith of science also. We discussed how Newton, when he asked the question, what made this fruit fall? That indicates a faith that things don’t happen by chance, there is an order to it.
We discussed Paul Leibniz and Ramanujan’s course in that connection. So just as science looks for order amidst the complex phenomena that we observe in nature, spirituality also looks for underlying orderly principles amidst the various kinds of events that happen in our life. And then, so how to learn from life, that we apply the principle to the Bhagavad Gita setting itself.
And then we discussed three points over there. The Bhagavad Gita is spoken on a battlefield. And that demonstrates firstly that actually the message is so urgent that Arjuna, even in the war field, felt I cannot push it further.
So action without vision is a nightmare. So spiritual wisdom, it may feel I don’t have time for it, but it will save us a lot of time and trouble if we assimilate it in our lives. The second is the Bhagavad Gita offers a vision of spirituality that is imbued with social responsibility.
Arjuna doesn’t think that to be spiritual I just renounce the world. No, he has to act in a socially responsible way and for that he had to fight the war. So this was not a, this is not just a call for war and goading a peace loving person to war.
Actually both Krishna and Arjuna were peace loving. But Krishna went to the ultimate extreme to petition for peace. Himself going as a peace envoy.
But when his proposal was disdainfully rejected. So it was the responsibility of Arjuna to ensure that people did not have a vicious leader. And that’s why as a martial guardian society he fought the war not just for gaining property for himself, but for protecting his citizens from a misleader.
Discuss how good people do nothing and evil will automatically triumph. So the Bhagavad Gita is not primarily a call for violence. Neither calls for violence nor for silence.
It calls for transcendence, for becoming spiritually aware and then taking appropriate action in this world. And lastly we discuss how the Bhagavad Gita also talks about the inner war. It is spoken on a war field and it guides us with wisdom so that the negative negative thought patterns that are there within us which sabotage our aspirations, they can be overcome.
We can combat them and overcome them. So thank you very much. Are there any questions about this till now? Question from audience.
So science is based on curiosity about what we observe. Where does faith come? Yeah, good question. See even when there is curiosity, there has to be some faith that there is something to be learned over here.
Isn’t it? I’ll give an example. Suppose somebody just comes and gives me a chit and I see some ink patterns which make no sense to me. Now it may well be if that pattern has been sent by someone, I saw somebody who sent the paper to me.
I know that person is an intelligent person. It’s not just scribble over it. Then what that would mean is maybe they have written in some language that I don’t understand.
Maybe it’s written in some code that I don’t understand. Then I will enquire about that code. But if I didn’t have that faith that there is something meaningful over here, I would just tear the paper and throw it away or discard the paper.
So that even when I see some ink patterns on paper, I may have curiosity about what those patterns mean. But that curiosity itself is based at least on the consideration of the possibility that those patterns have some meaning. And there is no guarantee in advance that those patterns have meaning.
So what is the basis for my assumption that these patterns may have some meaning? That is faith. So by faith, I’m not talking about faith in God. I’m talking about faith in the principle that there is something beyond the apparent, beyond the visible, there is something more over here.
So science, the curiosity is definitely the engine of scientific progress. But that curiosity is itself based on the faith that there is something to be learned. So when Newton observed the fruit falling, he was curious.
What made this fruit fall? But that question, what made this fruit fall, that is based on a faith that things don’t just fall by themselves. There must be some reason why this is happening. So in that sense, curiosity and faith are not contradictory.
Sometimes people say our religion is based on faith, science is based on curiosity. It’s not true. Actually, both are there.
In science also, curiosity is there. In science also, faith is there. And spirituality also, there is faith, but there is curiosity also.
Athato Brahma Jijnasa. The Vedanta Sutra, which is one of the most prominent books among the spiritual literature of India, it begins with Jijnasa, which is enquire. Enquire.
It talks about Brahma Jijnasa. Enquire about ultimate principles. Enquire about the ultimate truths of life.
So in any branch of knowledge, if there is to be progress, there has to be this combination of curiosity and faith. To put more in simple terms, curiosity is the eagerness to learn and faith is the assumption that there is something to learn. So only when both are together, then learning happens.
I have to have the desire to learn and I have to feel that there is something to learn over here. Then learning happens. And this applies, this combination of curiosity and faith are the operating principles for the growth of knowledge in all fields of knowledge, be they scientific or spiritual.
Does it answer your question? Any other questions? Yes, please. One behind. Okay.
There is a different kind of curiosity there. Yeah. Okay.
So if I say that science also progresses by combination of curiosity and faith, how would we apply this to Darwin’s theory of evolution? Yes. When we talk about curiosity and faith, now this does not necessarily mean that this combination will always lead to right conclusions. I may see some pattern of ink on a paper.
It might just not be the language at all. There might be nothing to learn over there. That possibility is also there.
So like that when I start exploring something, I may not always come to the right conclusions. So yes, Darwin observed certain similarities. When he went on his famous shipping tour in the Beagle, he observed certain similarities between humans and simians.
And based on those similarities, he made certain inferences. So there is observed data and there is extrapolation from that data. So there are certain observed similarities between humans and animals, humans and monkeys.
But there is extrapolation from that data. So to a large extent, the science itself is, the technical word is amoral. Science does not talk about morality.
Science does not talk about immorality. Science is amoral. It is basically a mode of acquiring knowledge.
Now from that, various strands of thought can be extrapolated. So Hitler used the science of his time to justify the Holocaust. That was what is, it was the outgrowth of what is called as social Darwinism.
He had the idea that the Nazis are the topmost race and the Jews are the lowermost race. And anyway, according to evolution, the fitter races are going to eliminate the unfit races. So he says, what we will do is, we will help evolution on the way.
So this was his idea. In fact, his whole autobiography, Mein Kampf, My Struggle, that’s a direct derivation from the Darwinian struggle for existence. I’m not saying that Darwinian evolution naturally leads inevitably to Nazism.
That’s not my point. The point I’m making is, this was one thread of thought which evolved. And evolution, so Hitler at that time justified his pogroms against the Jews by saying that actually they are unfit race and they are meant to die and we will help nature along the way for them to die.
So science itself is a value neutral way of acquiring knowledge. But different people based on their ideologies can interpret science in different ways to support their ideologies. So the interpretations that they make, they themselves are not scientific.
They are extra scientific. So the methodology of science of curiosity and faith combined together that can lead to right conclusions or if people are ideologically having certain biases, they may misappropriate the methodology of science to try to promote their own schools of thought also. So that’s why science as a mode of knowledge can be used to lead to a lot of progress in society or it can be used, misused to cause a lot of destruction in society also.
Does that answer your question? Thank you. Yes, please. What exactly in an organisation are you talking about? You mentioned one of the slides.
Yeah. Okay, there are certain people who are abusing power. So now I said that in an organisation if there is some abuse of power, people should not stay passive.
Especially leaders have to be responsible to take action and remove such people. So this can apply in a material organisation. How would this apply in a spiritual organisation? Actually here you have to recognise that when you talk about organisation and spiritual, what makes the organisation spiritual is its purposefulness, its purpose is spiritual or at least its purpose should be spiritual.
But at times even in a spiritual organisation there can be people who come up who don’t have spiritual purposes. They want to use the resources that are there in a spiritual organisation for gaining position, for gaining power, for gaining prestige and that vigilance is required everywhere. In fact there is a great opposition in today’s thought towards institutionalised religion.
Religion is good but any kind of institutionalisation is bad. That idea is there. Now there is some truth to it.
But that is not the only truth to it. Ultimately what is an organisation or institution? When we talk about spirituality, see all of us have some spiritual interest, some spiritual urge and we may act on it to some extent. But our spiritual urge is often quite moderate.
So there is this famous metaphor in the Upanishads of how water from the skies falls down, goes through the mountains, through the plateaus, through the plains and reaches the ocean. So we are all like the drops of water. And now a drop of water from a top of mountain for it to go all the way to the ocean.
Then several drops have to come together to make a tributary. Several tributaries have to come together to make a river and then that river will move much faster to the ocean. So what is a spiritual organisation essentially is that there are a number of people who have spiritual urges and they pool together their spiritual urges.
So they are like drops coming together to form tributaries and tributaries coming together to form a river. And then they all by their cumulative momentum have a much greater chance of reaching the destination. So spiritual organisation means that there are group of people who are spiritually inspired and they come together and for moving forward they create whatever resources are required.
Just like if a water keeps moving along towards the ocean then it creates a bed for itself. Now what may happen is when the bed is made, when the river is flowing, there are some people who may come and they may dam the river because they want to use the water for their own purposes. So like that even in a spiritual organisation sometimes people may come up and they may want to take all the resources that are there.
They have no interest in going towards the ocean. They have no interest in spiritual growth. They are interested primarily in material aggrandisement and they want to misappropriate the spiritual organisation’s resources for their own purposes.
And there has to be vigilance to prevent this. So that’s why in one sense when I wrote responses to both the movies OMG and PK I appreciated the point that there is a lot of wrong that goes on in the name of religion and spirituality. The problem is with especially PK and to some extent with OMG also was, the problem was blanket generalisation.
Now the whole movie PK was based on a, there is a romance and there was a religious exposé in that movie. The romance was based on the premise that we should not consider all Pakistanis as bad. All Pakistanis, all Muslims as bad.
And that was the presumption that all Pakistanis are bad. And by the end of the movie it was shown that this particular Pakistani was not bad. That was the presumption of the movie.
So I said don’t have stereotypes. Don’t make stereotypes that all Pakistanis are bad, all Muslims are bad. But then that same movie imposes a stereotype that all spiritual leaders are bad.
Because it depicts only one kind of spiritual leader who is opportunistic and exploitative. So essentially they are, the movie protested against generalisation in one area but it perpetuated generalisation in another area. So the mistake is, if people just have a very naive view of religion or spirituality where they think everybody in this field must be good only.
That is not good. That is not healthy because we may get exploited. There are people who are power hungry and who can disappropriate things even in the religious, spiritual realm.
So vigilance is required but blanket generalisation is not. That’s why when Shri Prabhupada who is the founder Acharya of ISKCON, he said that when we approach a spiritual teacher there is a process of mutual testing. The disciple or the aspiring, the seeker should test the spiritual teacher to gain, to see what is their understanding, what is their living and then based on that decide to adopt or not adopt a particular path.
And similarly the spiritual master also tests. How is, what is the sincerity of the disciple? And then that is how when through intelligent scrutiny when one adopts spirituality then the chances of a person getting misled are far lesser. So there can be blind faith which is sadly present in wide pockets of society today.
But movies like PK or OMG they go to the other extreme and they recommend blind faithlessness. That means blindly rejecting everything which is in the name of organised religion. But the organisation has a purpose and if there are people who are aware of that purpose then they can use the infrastructure of the organisation for effective purposes.
So organisation is simply a tool and that tool can be used, it can be abused. And spiritual organisations to the extent the leaders and the members are vigilant, the tool of the organisation will be used properly. Does it answer your question? Yes, but the concept of removing exists in terms of sidelining rather than in terms of removing, removing.
Okay, that’s a good point. Okay, I understand now. So the concept of removing people may not, doesn’t apply in a spiritual organisation.
Yes, that’s true. Now in that particular context when Arjuna was fighting the war, you know, he had, the removal means that he had to fight against those elements and he had to remove those elements. But in a spiritual organisation that kind of action is not required.
There may be sidelining as you said or we basically disempower the people. There is no, see the Bhagavad Gita is not a universal call for martial action for everyone. It’s basically talking about action.
All of us have to be activists for changing ourselves and doing what we can to change the world. But how we change the world, that will vary according to our time and place circumstances. So the Bhagavad Gita definitely doesn’t ask everyone to become martial activists.
Because Arjuna was already a martial guardian of society, so his spiritual activism manifested through his martial activity. But we may be teachers, we may be engineers, we may be doctors, we may be architects, whatever. So spirituality can guide us in whatever we are doing.
So the spiritual wisdom is not so much of resorting to a particular course of action, but rather it is of animating whatever course of action we are following with spiritual wisdom. Did I answer your question? How can we understand that our thoughts are rational or are just mind speculation? Yeah, actually this broadly refers to when we look at our thought process then there has to be some level of coordination between our thinking and the external reality. So if there is no coordination between the two then it is just speculative.
So for example, if I look at a traffic signal. Okay, this is green, this is yellow, this is red. Now if I imagine that the red means I should move ahead and the green means I should stop.
I have openness to interpret it like that. But that interpretation doesn’t agree with reality. And I will get consequences.
I might get a ticket or I might meet with an accident also if I walk through a red signal. So there is, when we talk about analysing things to understand them, there is, when we talk about rationality, what does rationality mean? That there is a reality out there and we try to understand the nature of that reality. And we try to understand in an orderly systematic way, that is rationality.
Speculation means we think that basically life is just a free for all. Anything can be interpreted in any way. But whatever interpretation we do, ultimately it has to stand the test of reality.
Does it work in life? So I will take this question beyond the specific. Say for example, we may be encountering different spiritual organisations, different paths, different teachers. Now how do we know which one should I follow? So there is blind faith and then there is reasonable faith.
The difference between the two is that reasonable faith is sensible and verifiable. It’s like when I go to, if I am sick and I go to a doctor. First of all, if I am sick, I won’t go to a cobbler on the street and ask for treatment.
I will go to a person who has qualifications. So I use my intelligence to decide whom I go to, first of all. And then when I go to a doctor, if I say I have leg, if I have stomach, if my stomach is upset and the doctor says we have to amputate your leg.
What? Stomach is upset, why do you have to amputate the leg? This doesn’t make sense. So when the doctor also gives some diagnosis, we use our intelligence to evaluate whether it makes sense or not. And then we have to put faith.
When we go to a doctor and the doctor gives a particular prescription, we can’t know in advance whether that prescription is going to work or not. You know, even if you go to the best doctor in the world, we tell the doctor, doctor, I can’t have faith in you. So first you cure me, then I’ll take your prescription.
So a doctor will say, please don’t work like that. So we have to put faith. It’s not a leap of faith, you could say it’s a gulp of faith.
I could drink something or eat something, that’s an act of faith when I take a medicine. So now when we do that, first we evaluate, does it make sense? And then after that, we verify. The doctor says, OK, you have stomach upset, take this tablet three times a day for three days, your stomach upset will go away.
And I check after three days, what happens? Is there any change? If the predicted change happens, that means it’s verifiable. So now if something is sensible and verifiable, then that thing is reasonable. We accept that as reasonable faith.
So reasonable is more or less synonym of rational. So when we are going to choose some, we’re going to decide some thought, analyse some thought, whether this is right or wrong, first of all, we have to see whether it makes sense or not. When we come to and hear some spiritual knowledge, we hear about the Bhagavad Gita.
Does it make sense? The Bhagavad Gita, if you study it, not only does it make sense, actually it helps us to make sense of life. It helps us to make sense of what all things are happening in life. That’s sensible.
And verifiable means that the Bhagavad Gita gives us some practical things which we can do in our life. So the Bhagavad Gita says that if we connect with God, In 6.27, the Bhagavad Gita says that by the practise of its principles, we will get a peaceful mind, we will experience higher happiness. And then we can see for ourselves, if we apply the principles of the Bhagavad Gita in our life, do we experience a higher peace? Do we experience a higher joy? So whether it is? If it is, then we continue it.
If it doesn’t work, then we leave it. We do something else. It says we go to some other doctor for trying out.
Trying things out. So like that, the Bhagavad Gita is offering us a call for reasonable faith. That is sensible and verifiable.
So the mind speculation means we think that there is no reality at all. And whatever feels good to our mind, we accept it. But when something is rational, that means it makes sense in terms of being intellectually coherent.
And then it is also verifiable. It makes a practical change in life. Any other questions? So where are the organisers here? Anyone? So should I be supposed to finish at 9 o’clock? So we have five more minutes.
I am not sure whether I should start the next session now. Probably we will start it tomorrow. Yeah, please.
Okay, fine. Good question. So in science, whatever we have is proven.
Okay. So whatever we have in science is proven. So what about spirituality or leadership, other fields, is it proven? See, first of all, even when we talk about proof, there are different levels of proof even in science.
For example, mathematics, there is what is logic, from mathematics logic point of view, there is a strongest proof. So when we talk about science and proof within science, it is not mathematical proof. It is, there are basically three forms of reasoning.
There is reductive, there is inductive and there is abductive. So mathematics alone, we can, mathematical level of proof we cannot have in any field except mathematics. There is reductive.
Science is based on inductive reasoning. So when we say something is proven in science means that till now it has not been disproven. That is what we mean when we say it is proven in science.
So we had certain set of observations. Based on that, we postulated some hypothesis and then we did some further experiments which have confirmed the hypothesis. But it can any day work out that a future observation may come which may disprove existing theory.
So when we say something is proven in science, it is not at the same level of deductive finality that is there in mathematics. It is basically to the scope of the experiment that we have done, it has been proven right. So that is the level of proof in science.
Now when we come to, even in science there are different fields. So for example, when science goes to, talks about the past, science cannot really do experiments. Now what happened 100 years ago, 1000s of years ago, what happened at the beginning of the universe, there is no experiment done over there for that.
So there we cannot even use deductive reasoning. So the form of reasoning that is used, that is called as abductive reasoning. Abductive, this has got nothing to do with abduction in terms of kidnapping.
Abductive is a form of reasoning where it is basically inference to the best explanation. So for example, if we find that okay, this star, say the universe is expanding. And if the universe is expanding, expanding, expanding, for as many years we have observed the universe is expanding.
And from that we infer that okay, universe has been concentrated as one point in the past from which it expanded. Now this is an inference. There is no experiment done to verify it.
Basically, this form of reasoning is relatively speaking a much weaker reasoning. Then because there is no repetition possible. So when science works, especially with respect to history origins or with respect to anything that is non-repeatable, event that happened long ago, we cannot repeat them to subject them to scientific experimentation.
So here science is on much weaker ground. That is why when science talks about say, science develops electronic items, it develops mobiles, emails, it is on a much solider footing than when science talks about how the universe came or how life came. They are basically inferences to best explanations.
They are like a crime whodunit mystery solution. There is a room in which a person has been murdered. Now who murdered him? You cannot call the criminal back and do the murder again so that we will catch you red-handed.
No, what we have to do is we will look at the evidence and find out what is the best explanation for it. Okay, we saw this person alive at 9 o’clock and somebody went at 3 o’clock at that time he was dead. So who all went between 9 to 3? There is one boy who went, one small boy who went, one elderly lady who went.
And neither of them could have had enough strength to push the knife with the force that has gone in. So who was the third person? Oh, maybe there was a butler inside, the butler killed. So now this is inference.
So basically this is not necessarily true. It could well be that in that same house there is a trap door somewhere and the murderer came into the trap door and went in and killed and went out. So when we talk about abductive reasoning it is never conclusive.
So even within science there are degrees of proofs. So deductive reasoning is the most authoritative. Inductive is relatively more authoritative and abductive is quite speculative.
So when abductive is the inference based explanation is quite speculative. So that’s the science when it talks about origins. It is something which is not all that authoritative.
So when we come to spirituality and we talk about spiritual principles. The experiment is not just done by the performer. The experiment is done on the performer.
So we are not just the doer of the experiment. We are also doing the experiment on ourselves. Spirituality talks about transforming our consciousness.
And as I said if we practise spirituality we will experience a higher peace. We will experience higher happiness. And this is something no one else can experience for us.
So we have to do the experiment on ourselves. And Krishna talks in the Bhagavad Gita. Bahavo jnana tapasa putamad bhavamagata.
Many in the past have practised this and they have become purified. Bahavo, many in the past. And therefore, evam yatma krutam karma purvair api mokshmi.
Kuru karmai vata smaakram purvai purutaram krutam. So the past in 4.10, the past many have done. In 4.15 he says in the Gita that as people in the past have done, you too do it.
So you try the experiment out for yourself. So rather than having some faith on some people may say oh I have seen God. And then we have to have faith that they have seen God.
That is not what the Bhagavad Gita talks about. Yes, there are supernatural visions to be had. But they are not the basis of the Bhagavad Gita’s message.
The Bhagavad Gita talks about practical transformation. And this practical transformation can happen in every one of us. So if we connect with people who are spiritual, we can see whether they are getting transformed and we can practise the spirituality ourselves and see whether we are transformed.
So some of us, for most of us in India, Bhagavad Gita is just a part of our culture. So we may feel it’s good, I want to go back to my roots, I want to practise my culture. But there are today millions of people all over the world who are practising the principles of the Bhagavad Gita.
They had no cultural affinity to the Gita’s teachings. They were attracted to it because it transformed them. So the Bhagavad Gita’s teachings have transformed people positively throughout history and they are transforming people positively even now.
And so here the proof is in the laboratory of our own heart. And that’s why we can see the transformed lives of others. But this is not like deductive proof.
So it is more of experiential proof. Material science is experimental. Spiritual science is experiential.
It’s experiential. So we have to experience it ourselves. Bhakti, Pareshanbhav, Viraktiranjan Trucha.
The Bhagavad Gita describes that Bhakti is a process. What does it do? Paraishanbhav. Isha is God.
Para is transcendental. Anubhav is experience. Bhakti gives us experience of God.
And what is the result of this experience? Viraktiranjan Trucha. That one becomes detached from other self-centred experiences. So how do we know that somebody has experienced God? I may say I have experienced God.
But how do you know that? Or you may say you have experienced God. How do I know that? The point is there is an inner test of Bhakti and there is an outer test of Bhakti. Inner test is that I experience God.
The outer test is that those who experience God they will no longer crave for self-centred experiences. Because they have experienced higher fulfilment. So if you look at spiritualists and we can see not just the coherence of their teachings but the congruence between their teachings and their life.
So if they are also living not for selfish pleasures. If they are living for higher purpose in life then we can understand that they have, we can at least make an inference to a best explanation that yes they must have experienced something higher. When I was introduced to spirituality for the first time I was, I had just given my GRE and I had come, as I mentioned in my introduction, I had come first in Maharashtra, I had come not just first in my college, I had come first in the history of my college.
So since my childhood my aspiration was always I wanted to be number one. And I was always among the top but I was never the number one. It was joint number one I was, maybe second, third.
And this was an exam where I was just way above. The second in my college was 2250. So 100 marks below.
So I thought I will be so delighted. And I was delighted. But then after some time I realised that just looking at the marks doesn’t give any happiness.
And I had to, you know, I meet friends and my friends congratulate me and then I feel happy. And then every time I would meet a friend, I realised that I was waiting for them to congratulate me. And if someone didn’t congratulate me, I would say why? Don’t they know what I have achieved? Are they envious of me? I felt as if rather than becoming happy after cracking GRE, I had become more dependent on happiness for others.
It’s only when others congratulate me that I feel happy. I felt that there must be some higher happiness which does not depend on extremes. I can crack my engineering, I can go to America, I can crack another exam.
But all of it is that it’s all going to follow the same old pattern. I achieve something, but I depend on others for happiness. So is there some higher happiness in life? I felt that there must be something higher.
So it was, you could say, I was frustrated by success. So the success did not live up to my expectations. And then I started exploring something higher.
And then I met spiritual teachers. Now, one of my spiritual teachers was an MTech IIT. Another was a person who had gone to America and returned back.
And those were two of my prominent teachers. So then basically they had achieved what I was planning to achieve. And then I felt that if they had achieved this and they had turned towards spirituality, why did they do that? They must be experiencing something higher in spirituality.
Nobody is forcing anyone to be a spiritualist. I am a monk right now. If I choose to, I can give up my monkhood and go elsewhere.
So only because I am finding this way of living fulfilling, that’s why I am continuing it. So when I observed them, I felt that they had achieved what I was going to achieve. And they have turned from that to spirituality.
Therefore, it was an inference to what I felt was the best explanation. That the best explanation is they must be experiencing something higher. And then I started practising spirituality.
I had certain weaknesses, certain negative thought patterns. I found that they just dropped dramatically. Dropped dramatically just by a little practise of spirituality.
And I was going to a social service organisation, as a part of a social service organisation, where we would go and teach slum children. Since my childhood, I had a lot of faith in the power of education. So I felt that if I could go to these children and teach them, then they would have a bright career.
Since I was in the Women’s Engineering College in Pune, just behind that we had some slums. So I would go there. And then one of my friends was much more into social service.
So I was doing it a little bit, not that much. And he had gone to a village and he had started a huge literacy, led a huge literacy drive in that village. So then one day he came back completely shattered.
I said, what happened? He said, what we had observed at that time when we were going to these slums is that the men in these families were mostly drunkards. And they were a lot of domestic violence with their wives and their children. And the children were ravaged by that.
So I had this growing doubt at that time itself. You know, am I teaching them maths or science or English? How much is it really going to help them? But that was all that I knew. So I did that.
And then I also noticed that the fathers of these boys, of these boys and girls, they were not bad people. When I would go there, they would be grateful that you are coming and teaching our children. But then these children would tell me, and mothers would also tell that, once they would drink, it was like they would become a different person.
And what had happened was, so we also got from there in our organisation, not just doing education, but trying to get people to give up alcohol. So we would talk about that. And my friend had gone much more in this.
And he had gone to this village and he had encouraged many of the parents, many of the fathers to give up alcohol. And that village had become like the model of our organisation’s success. You know, we had transformed so many people.
But this boy came, my friend came back and was completely shattered. He said, what happened? He said, just day before yesterday, there was elections over there in the local panchayat. And the local politician came and he brought five truckloads of free liquor for everyone.
And not only the fathers, but even their children had drunk alcohol. He was completely shattered. I also started thinking at that time that what, okay, I am giving all this knowledge, but unless people are empowered to use this knowledge, it is like pouring water into a leaking bucket.
I may go on pouring water very diligently, but unless people have some basic level of self-mastery, then it will not really be helped. So that was it. All this was happening.
At one time I just gave my GRE and succeeded. I was doing social service organisation. That was the time when I was introduced to spirituality.
And then in my colony itself I started sharing spiritual wisdom with my friends. So my room partner at that time, he was a nice boy, but he was getting into bad habits. He started smoking, started drinking once or twice.
I could see that he was gliding down. Fortunately, my parents had brought me up well, so I had not gotten into such things. And I was trying to persuade him to give it up.
But he was not interested. But then when I started practising spirituality, I asked, I arranged some programmes in our college. Somehow he also came for the programme, just because I pulled him along.
And then it was just one day, he just told, now I have given up all this. He said, I know all this. You are told many times I have given it up.
Many alcoholics say I have given up alcohol and then a few days later they drink. It’s not so easy. But then one day he said it and he just gave it up completely.
Never went back to it again. So then I felt this really works. There is something in this process that transforms people.
That people, if they have some bad habits, they can give up those habits and they can become better human beings. They can become better and they can contribute better. So for me it was, and then one of my biggest inspirations was a student, I was in Electronics Engineering.
He was a consistent topper throughout. From the first year to the last year, he would be number one all the time. And he had got the highest paying job in the history of our college.
So in every way he was successful. But he was a chain smoker. He said I can’t study without smoking.
And then in the first year of his working in a big MNC, he got lung cancer and died within one month. It’s horrible. So at that time all these events just jolted me.
So on one side I saw that material achievement did not give me satisfaction. On other side I saw that material social service, it does not really lead to transformation. But sharing spiritual knowledge, it does seem to give people higher happiness.
It seems to change me. It seems to change others. So I made an inference to the best explanation at that time.
That there is a higher dimension to life. There is spiritual wisdom and the spiritual wisdom brings about spiritual transformation. So I would suggest that you can also experiment.
But this is an experiment we cannot do in a detached way. Putting some chemicals together. We have to do it in ourselves.
And ultimately in life no one can have absolute certainty. Even when we go to college, we don’t know for sure that I am choosing a particular vocation. Yes, this gives good jobs now.
But four years down the line the market may change and this may not give good jobs. So we do act on faith in all walks of our life. When we choose a career, we act on faith.
When we get married, we act on faith. So we do use our intelligence to choose but still we have to put faith. So one definition of faith is to take one step forward even when you don’t have a light for the home room.
If I just have a torchlight, I see one step forward, my torchlight can show me one step forward. I take one step forward. And then I still have a torchlight.
If I look far ahead, the torchlight is not bright enough to show the whole road to me. You have to take one step forward, take one step forward. And if I see it, there is a good road over here, I will keep moving on.
So like that when we practise spirituality it is we use our God given intelligence and take one step forward, one step forward. And we will see that this spiritual wisdom is a living reality. So as we keep experiencing more and more, we will keep moving higher and higher.
So the proof is something which we will experience in our own hearts. So thank you very much for your kind attention. We will continue our discussion tomorrow.
I can make an announcement as you spoke about it earlier. I can respond to that. What happens is 4 to 8 is the session.
And 8 o’clock we will come. So the whole session is at 4 o’clock. When it is your time and Of the other more one, no? Presentation? So kindly you can send an SMS.
Join J O L B E T A 1 9 W 2 0 9 W 2 0 0. And 4 p.m. the session starts. It ends at 8 p.m. And then it was delayed for at least 4 hours.