On Education, Corporate Life and Career Progress

Questioner: Good evening everyone, my name is Saurabh Sardana and you are watching the first episode of season 2, ‘Recast.’ I’m so glad to have you with me today, Acharya Prashant Ji. I’m pretty sure, that most of you that most of you sort of follow him on one of the social media channels. Acharya Ji, I have done my research and I know that you have been to the best engineering college in India then you went to one of the best business schools that one can go to, then after that, I think you probably cracked you know the toughest exams in the world, which is our Indian civil services. Now, for somebody who has that kind of an achievement, you know taking the road less traveled, you know sort of going down, you know the route of spirituality, if I may say. I think is a very unique decision. So, if you can just spend a couple of minutes in understanding for our audience what really triggered this, you know how you, you know sort of traveled from best engineering college to best business school, you cracked the toughest exam in the world and then I think you started your own foundation. Just give us a gist of this journey because this journey in itself sounds fascinating.

Acharya Prashant: Saurabh, do we see that first of all, there is a strong assumption in the question and the assumption is that one’s life should be directed by even dictated by his or her education? That one’s educational qualifications should be at the center of one’s life. And I would say ‘life’ not ‘career’ because career is at the center of one’s life. Right? You are what you do.

So, what we are saying is that my degrees and my educational pedigree, which I might have obtained at the age of twenty-four, twenty-five, or twenty-eight, should then go on to drive the rest of my life.

But, think of it — Education is something I have. Education is not who I am.

Questioner: That sounds true.

Acharya Prashant: Education, my education is for my sake. So, education is something in my hands, it’s a resource. I have it with me now, it’s knowledge or skill. I have knowledge, I have skills or I have a certain exposure, these are important resources in my hand. Now, my resources cannot take the place of who I really am. My resources cannot become my central identity.

Those things were there, right — the IIT education, the IIM education, and those things were used for the best purposes possible, just as important resources should be dedicated to the highest purpose possible. So, those resources, that knowledge, that exposure is now being put in the service of a very worthy goal, a very important mission. That’s what is happening, there is really no dissonance there.

In fact, maybe we should just turn the question around and ask ourselves — “Why do we tend to use our resources, not as our resources, but as our drivers?” A resource should be something that I own, instead, why should I allow my resource to own me?

I saw a very important thing waiting to be done and I put all that I had in its service and I continue to do that. And I advise people to do the same thing.

If you have ten rupees, don’t you want to invest it in the best place possible?

Questioner: Absolutely.

Acharya Prashant: You don’t want to misspend even rupees 10 or rupees 100. Then, why should you misspend or rather not optimally spend; if I say ‘misspend’ it becomes a very tight or harsh statement kind of statement, so, why should one not optimally spend the highest resource that one has? Among the highest resources that one has are one’s time, one’s knowledge, one’s intellect, and one’s very self.

Questioner: I think that’s a very very unique and very interesting take on how you responded to that question. And I think it sort of immediately said the context for me that probably the way I asked that question was sort of loaded with that assumption that because your journey looked very typical, to begin with, so I think it should have continued in the same way whereas I think we as individuals are free to choose the route and the purpose that we want to deliver something in the world.

So, I think this beautifully sag ways into the question that I had in mind. I think this is the one question that I have to ask you. I actually come from the world, which is the world of business and you have been to a business school and you have studied business and you have seen a lot of businesses operating around you. The sole purpose of a business, as it is been taught to us or as we practice is to make profits. Right?

Whereas you spoke about knowledge, knowing oneself more than the other, talking about intellect. If I just do that, let’s use the word ‘Spirituality.’ I mean it’s huge and it’s a vast term, and it has different manifestations but I think spirituality is everything it will not focus on materialism, the material aspects of what humans really want to achieve

Is there space for spirituality in business? How do you look at it?

Acharya Prashant: Spirituality is the space Saurav, in which everything operates. You cannot have space for spirituality. Spirituality itself is the space in which all human activities and all actions of consciousness take place. Spirituality is the space!

I will elaborate, I know I have not been very clear on this.

You see, what does one engage in any kind of activity including business activity? One engages for one’s welfare. Right?

Questioner: It’s true.

Acharya Prashant: What does one want even material profits or benefits for? One wants material profits or benefits for his well-being. Right? And as long as you are operating in this world as a body, which we all are, obviously, we are dealing with the material continuously. I mean even the air we breathe in, is material. Right? These sound waves that connect the two of us right now are material. The laptop in front of me, and the gadgets on your body right now, are all material stuff. Even without this material stuff, even this so-called spiritual conversation cannot take place. This very body that’s talking of Spirituality right now, is a material thing. So, you cannot have that kind of division where you put life on one side and Spirituality on the other side or you put Spirituality in just one small remote corner of the domain called one’s life. Let me say there is this vast domain called one’s life and there is that big space called personal life, then there is another big space called professional life, then there is a space called interests, there is the space called relationships, there is the space called this-that. And there is also the space called the spiritual space, it’s not that way, that very model is flawed.

Spirituality is about man’s consciousness.

We are conscious beings, we are sentient beings.

Spirituality is about taking the right decisions with respect to the material.

If you want to start a firm, equally you have the option of accepting a lucrative job offer from somewhere, it is a Spiritual question. The decision that you will take falls very much in the zone of Spirituality.

Similarly, the question of relationships: “Do I go with this? What connects me to the other? Do I settle down? Do I marry? Do I have kids?” These are all essentially Spiritual questions.

How will one live without Spirituality?

You know, if the world is material, Saurabh. Spirituality is the light that enables you to walk down all the material routes. Spirituality is the light that enables you to choose rightly between one material and the other. Material by itself is just material. Don’t you require Light?

The way, the sense in which I am using the word ‘Light’ I mean it to be immaterial or beyond material. So, we need material, but we also need something in which we can know clearly the reality of the material. And that’s what I am calling ‘Light.’

So, you can have Material A, Material B, Material C, Material D, and Material E. But what if all those materials are in front of you, but in darkness? Spirituality is the light that will enable you to operate intelligently on material.

So, you require spirituality all the time, in all the ways, every moment. Right now, you could either listen carefully to me or isn’t it possible that you get distracted? You know all of us are ridden with so many diverse affairs and issues. Similarly, at this very moment, it is possible for me to dedicate myself totally to this conversation with you or I could get a bit distracted?

Spirituality is that which allows me to remain centered, at the right place all the time.

I must know what is important at this time.

It’s not a bad definition if we say:

Spirituality is the art of knowing the important and dedicating yourself absolutely to what is important.

So, you require it at all times, business activity is not at all separated or divorced or insulated from Spirituality. The only thing here is that the way we usually look at religion and even Spirituality is that these are things that deal with the occult, with the esoteric, you know with something that is transcendental, mystical, mysterious, and these all words that point towards something that is not related to the material. The moment you say occult, you mean something that is not very much within the usual laws of physics. The moment you talk of the transcendental or the mystical, again you are referring to something that is not within the usual domain of the material.

So, Spirituality has come to acquire a very hazy kind of shape and notion in our minds. We have ostracized Spirituality from our moment-to-moment life. And we have limited or consigned it or just bounded it within some very unreasonable boundaries, you know? A temple is a spiritual place for example, in a temple you ought to be spiritual or you can have a spiritual place within your household or you can have a half-an-hour slot in the morning, in which you sit down to meditate, so that half an hour is a Spiritual slot. And what about the remaining twenty-three and half hours? How will you operate without Spirituality in those hours? I mean, can you operate without light at any point in time?

So, Spirituality is that light, that you would need continuously. I say, “It is like a heartbeat, it has to be continuous. Continuous, quiet, and central!”

Questioner: That’s a very interesting take, I have sort of never thought about Spirituality in that sense, because I think what’s been fed to us all the time is that spirituality is the mindset. Right? “Can businesses be spiritual?” Which sort of makes it sound like it is an acquired state rather than something that we live with. So, if I understand what you have just explained and if I just paraphrase that, are you really saying that spirituality is something that we live with every moment and every decision that we take?

Acharya Prashant: It must!

Questioner: Okay. This means that not everybody lives with spirituality every day.

Acharya Prashant: Of course. It’s like your eyesight.

Questioner: Okay

Acharya Prashant: No, No, that’s obvious.

Look at the state of the world, look at the way we human beings operate and suffer, it is obvious that people are not living in a spiritual way. Look at the destruction we have brought about on our ecosystems and even on our private lives. It’s obvious that we are not living spiritually. But that’s something we ought to do, for our own sake. Not as a moral obligation, not because of some religious injunction but very reasonably, very sensibly, for our own welfare we ought to be Spiritual.

And to be spiritual, again I repeat, it’s just like, I was just saying that take the analogy to its conclusion — One just cannot move without light. It doesn’t matter whether one is moving in a factory or one is moving about in a stadium or even if one is just sitting comfortably on a sofa set. We require light, don’t we?

Similarly, we require a heartbeat. So, what heartbeat is to the body, spirituality is to the consciousness or mind. The only problem is when the heartbeat ceases, then the results are very gross and very evident, you will know something extremely catastrophic is happening to the body because the heartbeat is going wrong or the breath is going wrong. And it’s very, very detectable. Unfortunately, consciousness is not something material, so you cannot look at consciousness in the same way you look at the body and immediately know that there is something wrong with consciousness. Right?

So, the body misses a heartbeat, and you know something has gone wrong, the mind, and the consciousness misses spirituality and we do not come to immediately know that something horrible has happened. And so, we are able to continue even in our distorted state for long and that’s what is happening to most of us, unfortunately.

Questioner: I think, this is going in a very, very interesting direction because one way to talk about spirituality is A, which I think we won’t be able to cover the length and breadth of this topic because it's vast, it’s huge. Right? But let me take a Queue from what you just explained and let me give you a hypothetical situation. In fact, this can be an actual problem with many businesses that operate in India, Singapore, or even in the world. So, for example, you get a call from an HR manager from a particular business and she comes to you and says, “You know, we are missing that heartbeat, because people are fighting with each other, there is a lot of toxicity within the culture, there are very differing opinions and point of views and as an HR, I’m struggling to converge, to bring all of that together. Can you as a spiritual facilitator, as a spiritual knowledge expert, give me some very practical advice, or if you can come to my office and talk to everybody?”

How would you go about implementing or solving that particular business problem using something that we already have within us? And I think why I’m asking this question to you because it will give us a little bit of flavor to our audience and to our listeners, as to you know, what is practical implementability, of what we call a spirituality, which is a very vast topic to be covered in about thirty minutes.

Acharya Prashant: You have to start with what connects people and build on them. The HR manager has come to us with the differences she sees. She is seeing what separates people. But, it’s very important to remember what connects people, and what connects people is so obvious, so evident, that we just miss it.

What is it that connects people?

Each of us wants his or her welfare. At our center, we are people who love Joy. At our center, we are people who do not want to live in fear or distrust. We do not like these things. And that’s what is common among all of us. So, I’ll start from there. I will ask, “Does this entire group or department or company or unit have a central theme to bind them together?” If there does exist something centrally important, something to which each of them can be individually devoted, then there is going to be no serious problem. Because then the differences can be ironed out or even if they cannot be ironed out, they can simply be left behind. Please understand: Because at the center sits something so important that each person will give that important thing the first priority, which means all those things that were causing differences and divergence among people would then be accorded a lower priority. And differences are bound to be there because, at the surface level, we are all different. We talked about what is common amongst us.

What is common amongst us is at a deep level, at our core, we all have something in common irrespective of our age or nationality or economic status or gender or political orientation or whatever. So, at the core, we all have something in common but at the surface all we have is differences. So, then the question obviously is, “Is the relationship superficial, or is the relationship deep enough to allow the deep commonness to take over?”

If the relationship is merely superficial, then we know that at the surface there are only differences. So, the relationship, the entire network of people who are there in that business, all they will have with them is differences and it would be a chaotic kind of place that won’t go very far. If you want the whole thing to go far, then you have to find out what central purpose this business serves. What do you have to tell your employees? Why do they exist? Why do they come to the office every morning? What’s the net output of their effort, their labor beyond the salary check that they get?

There has to be an overriding mission, I say overriding because it should be able to override the differences among people that should be the strength of the mission, of the company. And if that kind of a mission does not exist then I don’t want to just offer a superficial consolation. Then, the only way to keep the group intact is by offering superficial allowances or imposing disincentives, that’s what businesses usually do. But all that is needed principally because the group does not know what they are working for. You cannot have a business whose only aim is to maximize shareholder value. No sane person, no loving person can work all his life or all her life just to maximize the money in somebody else’s pocket. And that too a stranger’s pocket. You know the group of shareholders is often not even known to the group of employees, even if they are known, at least there is no intimate bonding between these two groups, the shareholder, and I’m talking of about a closed company in which there are a limited number of shareholders, there is no intimate bonding between these two groups: there are the shareholders, there are the employees. And, what are we trying to say?

We are saying, “The employees exist for the sake of the shareholders” probably in the legal sense they do. But then all you have is chaos, and differences and conflicts and that’s what we often find in so many organizations. If you want to avoid that first of all you’ll have to figure out the very nature of the business.

“What does my business exist for?”

And, then you need to have people who identify with what your business exists for.

And that should be the central devotion of every single person in the organization. Then you will have the commonness triumph over the divisions.

Questioner: That’s a very, very useful perspective, dear sir.

I think you have shared a couple of points that sort of led me to my next question. And I think that’s about, you know there are new buzzwords within business circles, you know it’s called sustainability. And everybody is now talking about business sustainability because I think everybody wants to work in favor of the planet, for people, for peace, for prosperity. And I think this is sort of a newer concept in its previous Avtar, I think the word that was getting used more and more around the globe, within business circles was corporate social responsibility. Now, somebody who has done extensive reading, who is trained, who has acquired knowledge or who has acquired Vedantic knowledge, what do you think, the ancient scriptures from India can offer to these Western philosophies because you know business sustainability, brand sustainability, all these concepts really come from West and I think East just ends up acquiring them. What would you say, what can be a contribution from Vedantic knowledge that even the Western world or Western businesses can learn?

Acharya Prashant: You know, It’s a good thing to begin with — Sustainability.

Let’s go into this word — “Sustainability.”

What does one want to sustain? What is it that one wants to sustain?

Obviously, one wants to sustain things as they are. One wants to sustain a state in which you are able to take from the planet without impoverishing or hurting the planet so much that the planet is in no more a condition to give you. So, we are talking about the sustenance of the human being and because the human being cannot sustain for long without the planet, therefore we are thinking of the planet because we are now being forced to do that. Had it been possible to draw infinitely from the planet we’d probably not have talked of sustainability.

And that’s the difference between the Western and the Eastern approach. The Eastern approach will not say that sustainability is an obligation. The West has come upon sustainability only because it found its ways unsustainable. Had those ways not been unsustainable, the West would have said Carry on! Carry on! Carry on!

But, that kind of consumption that’s happening at per capita level in the US or in France, Canada, or such places, won’t be possible for long. So, it’s out of mercy for vanishing species of flora or fauna or because of love for the ecosystem that the word sustainability has come? It’s not because we have suddenly become better human beings therefore, we are talking about sustainability. We are talking of sustainability for our own sake. And that’s the difference.

Vedant says, “Your welfare has to be clearly understood before you start doing something for the sake of your welfare. You must know where your real welfare lies before you jump the gun and start acquiring material or start consuming material feeling that material will give you joy, happiness, contentment, whatever you want from it.

So, Vedantic wisdom at the very beginning says, not at the end, that the West has come to the very climax of consumption and is now talking about sustainability. Vedant says, right at the very beginning: “Will consumption give you what you really crave for?” Because you do not crave consumption as such, you want something else through consumption, via consumption.

Now, will consumption ever give you that which you so desperately want?

And each human being is just a bundle of wants, aren’t we?

We want! We want! We want!

When you say, “You do not want anything more”, it means you are no more, you are dead, physically dead.

We keep wanting, that’s our central identity, we keep wanting! We keep wanting! We keep wanting!

We could say, “A human being is a wanting animal, an animal with desires, an infinite desire.”

We keep wanting! We keep Consuming! We keep Consuming!

Vedant says, “Figure out before you run this mad and infinite race of consumption.”

How important really consumption is in life?

Obviously, we cannot live with zero consumption. Obviously, we need shelter, we need clothes, we need food, we need transport, we need technology, we need these things. But what is the place of these things in life? That’s the moot question.

So, when you address that question then sustainability is automatically taken care of. We are asking, “What is my nature and how does that nature relate to the material around me?”

There is me and there is money and there is a huge building and there is a great car or Yacht and there is that massive Jumbo jet and there is the island that I can buy and there is that prestigious position that I can acquire. Will that which is me be really satiated by all that? And that’s a question, we have no answers here.

Vedant is not about beliefs, so it does not provide you with easy answers. It does not ask you to believe in the answers that are given in some holy scripture.

Vedant asks questions, Vedant is an enquiry: Asks!

So, what are you here for?

And, if there is a continuous dissatisfaction in mind, will you ever be able to plug that dissatisfaction using what you are currently doing?

And once you are asking that question, you know this mad race for consumption, loses its steam on its own.

Questioner: Right.

Acharya Prashant: The moment you ask, what is my relationship with other beings, other human beings, other animals, hills, rivers, birds, you are no more in a state to just slaughter them and consume them and finish them off. It’s not possible anymore because now you are firstly asking, “Who am I doing that?” Not as a matter of rights but as a matter of identity. How does that even benefit me to do that?

So, Sustainability comes right at the beginning not at the end. Sustainability comes as wisdom, not as an obligation, not as something that is enforced upon you by what you now see around you or by science or legislation.

Today you talk about CSR, it came about due to legislation.

Vedant says, “Individual responsibility is enough, and individual responsibility comes from individual understanding.”

And what is to be understood?

The first thing to be understood is who am I?

If I know, who I am, then I know what my central responsibility is. And I also know what I need to do, how I need to act.

And how do I need to act?

Certainly not in the direction of blind, unmitigated consumption. So, sustainability is automatically taken care of. The way the West is going, you know you will care for sustainability only as long as you probably do not have another planet to inhabit. If the point comes that entire humanity or at least the privileged ones can emigrate to another more hospitable planet, then people will say, “We give too hoots to sustainability on this planet.” So, this is just an enforced sustainability. It’s better than not caring for sustainability at all obviously but it won’t go a long way.

Questioner: That’s a very, very interesting take and are you saying that the Western philosophy or the Western way of looking at sustainability is completely flawed?

Acharya Prashant: Obviously, at the center, it is quite flawed. Obviously.

What you are saying is, to use resources in a way that they last, they last for you. You still keeping your own little, petty, self-interest at the center. I’ll give you a smart analogy, Saurabh. Here in India, you know about the alarming sex ratio. The sex ratio at birth and at three years of age, five years of age, you know of that. Right? And it’s the worst in the Northern states — Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, even in Delhi. So, one of the things that the Governments are doing is, saying, “Please take care of the girl child, don’t indulge in feticide or infanticide, else how will you get brides?” Now that’s the kind of sustainability that the West is talking of. That’s the kind of sustainability, the ego always talks of. “Save the girl child for the men!”

Save the girl!

That much is said, and What is not said?

For the men.

Similarly, the West is saying, “Save the planet, within brackets, for human beings!”

For human beings!

Now, does the planet have no right to be saved on its own, for itself?

No.

But in the consumption-centered mind, everything exists for its own sake, for the sake of its own consumption. So, save the girl otherwise how will we have women to consume? Save the planet otherwise, how will we have places to consume?

Now, this won’t work. This won’t go far.

Questioner: Dear sir, what I liked about how you described the whole Vedantic knowledge in one sentence. Would it be right to say, “Just understand why you do before what you do?”

And I think that the quest, for exploration will make you take better decisions in life.

Acharya Prashant: Obviously.

And it’s a little deeper than that. See, who the doer is? See, where does he come from? See, what within you is so eager to do what you do? See, what within you drives you to your workplace every morning? See, what within you is afraid of that particular thing or happening? See, what within you keeps looking at the future? That thing!

Who? Who exactly is it within operating like that?

Questioner: Right, right.

This is a very exciting conversation, from the way you explained, that it’s important for every organization, whether they are in business, or they are in any of the other allied activities. To freely ask, this and introspect. As to knowing why they do what they do and who the doer and then I think it sort of really talks about the deeds. I think this brings me to the question about your foundation, you work towards humanity, but can you just give a very quick, brief discussion of what your foundation does and what its goals and the point I would be interested in knowing is for like a foundation that works in this space, do you have a finite goal or do you have infinite goals? This means that there is no finiteness to what you do and you will sort of keep going and keep doing just for the sake of pleasure, joy, or whatever your outcomes are. So, just explain to us a little bit more and we will then take this discussion forward.

Acharya Prashant: At the level of people who have devoted everything to this work and are involved full-time, the number is not very large around Twenty-Five. Much larger is the number of volunteers who contribute in whatever way they can. Somebody is contributing for half an hour a day, somebody a couple of hours a day and they are scattered across the world. So, we receive help from them, somebody is helping us in the technical zone, somebody just says proofreading of books. So, those kinds of things are there.

Yes, we do have very strict, very tangible day-to-day goals for ourselves and it’s a very intense workplace, requiring a very high degree of discipline and devotion. Actually, life and work converge at the Foundation. So, we really do not even have any fixed work hours and there are people who work even up to fifteen hours, eighteen hours a day when needed. But then nobody counts it as work, because parallely it is recreation, it is entertainment as well.

Finally, the goals are infinite. I cannot see a point where we could say that the work is done and I can disband the whole thing. I do not see that. So, that’s what keeps us going. The whole thing is so enormous, so huge, so massively important that it’s just not possible to shy away from it. Once you have seen the importance of it you cannot not do it. So, then everything gets aligned, around the one central thing in life which is the work.

And the work is to take care of the unnecessary bondages we all are in, the unnecessary darkness we espouse. That’s what the challenge is, that’s what we fight. Obviously, it is such a huge thing that we do not even expect to reach anywhere in our lifetimes, we are contented with that realization. We do not expect to have to move one particular mountain in the next twenty years and then celebrate it. Having said that, as I said, we do have a very, very critical day-to-day goal. Somebody has to publish a video, somebody has to finish off a book, somebody has to arrange for a seminar, somebody has to fly to Bangalore to arrange for the upcoming camp, and all of those things operate on very tight leaches and sacred timelines. So, both things are there. On one hand, we do not know what we are going towards, on the other hand, when it comes to day-by-day functioning week-by-week functioning, or a monthly thing, we have tight targets.

Questioner: So, if businesses have to approach you, then on what kind of partnerships they can approach the Foundation? And how can there be synergy between what you do and different kinds of businesses that might need from the foundation? Is it just about voluntary work or are there potential synergies between different institutions and the foundation?

Acharya Prashant: See, irrespective of what the entity is, the entity could be an individual, or the entity could be a couple, the entity could be a family or the entity could be a huge organization, if the entity is interested in knowing the facts of its existence and living more harmoniously then probably we can assist. We exist for the sake of such assistance.

Questioner: Dear sir, I think, it was a fantastic 44-45 minutes Chat with you. I wish I could have done this longer but probably there is always the next time. And we should keep your knowledge and wisdom reserved for when we meet next. So, thank you so much for coming on recast and I had an absolutely enjoyable time.

Acharya Prashant: Thank You so much Sourabh. Same here Sourabh.

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