At the Feet of the Master🔗

After working in corporations for all my adult life, I wanted to share Swamiji’s teachings as it relates to around human mind and productivity. This is a very important topic for companies since all companies constantly face the need to lower costs as global competition is constantly driving the need to improve productivity of human capital in companies.

The charts presented below are self explanatory. The basic premise is the conscious mind which really represents our actions is really the output. This output differs based on our deeply embedded emotions and engraved memories. The way we respond to a particular situation really depends on our past experiences. For example if a dog bit us in our childhood, whenever you see a dog, even after thirty years, there can be a sense of fear. We fail to realize that organizations are simply a collection of individuals. Each individual has a unique set of engraved memories. Their response to a particular situation at work is a function of their engraved memories.

● Just 10% is above water

As a corporate executive, I have attended numerous training sessions, often with some of the most well known corporate trainers and inspirational speakers. I also attended numerous skill building and team building exercises. All of these exercises normally address two areas: 1. Development of particular technical skills. For example, taking a course in project economics to understand an income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, Net Present Value etc would fall into this category. 2. Then there are courses for leadership, team building. 3. There are courses that corporations offer on stress management, work/life balance and some of the more progressive companies may provide wellness programs.

As a senior executive too often I would get frustrated at why, despite all the training and investment in an individual, he or she is not performing or he/she is a difficult team player, he/she is not "committed" to the business. I believe that until we help the individual at the root level of the emotion and take it one step further to relieve them of the root of these problems, we are just doing "cosmetic surgery". By attending a two day course on team building where we climb a rock or work together on team building exercises we feel good for a day or a week. Then we are back to our good old self. The training manual that we picked up at the event or the certificate of completion for this course just gathers dust as a memento in our offices. Little did I realize then that we are indeed not helping the employee with their deep rooted engraved memories causing problems. It is these samskaras causing him/her to behave in a particular way. After having undergone this deep personal transformation myself, I now believe that if corporations can understand and appreciate the deep rootedness of our emotions they can provide holistic solutions to individuals. A one size fits all strategy of training and development will not work. It has not worked in companies for decades. In fact it is interesting when I get back to my old employer to meet with friends I worked with they are speaking of the same issues we grappled with five years ago – this manager is not a team player, that particular department does not coordinate, we are still a very siloed organization, etc. It almost feels like time has stood still in these organizations.

On the other hand, I am living in this spectacular living laboratory called the Bidadi Ashram, where you can see hyper-efficiency in overdrive, but with no stress. People’s root emotions are being worked on and addressed and you can see the people are working in a blissful manner, with tremendous confidence and maturity. I would sincerely hope you will think about this aspect when you are planning on your training programs in your organizations. I am not trying to push our meditation programs, but I would urge you to read the book, “Guaranteed Solutions” in the privacy of your home and understand how our basic emotions are causing us from exploding in all dimensions in our personal and professional lives.

In this slide we can see that most conventional training programs work on the surface or at shallow depths of our being. Yet in the unconscious mind we are boiling with a lot of emotions and below this layer are experiences we have undergone in our life (or lives as the eastern mystics tell us). It is based on these deep engraved memories or Samskaras that each one of us respond to a particular situation so differently.

Productivity = Output Divided by_Input

Output is something that is "valuable" for the organization, business unit or society

Input is the resource required (i.e., number of people, capital investment, etc). Whereas, output = Function of knowledge, job skills and the state of mind of the individual. The state of mind is often the most ignored aspect in a corporation. In USA especially, one could argue that this is getting too close for comfort in terms of getting into the "personal space" on an individual or employee. However I will argue that 90% of one's problems stems from the deep layers of the mind, from the deeply embedded engraved memories or samskaras. Unless we address these deep rooted issues, all we are doing is cosmetic surgery.

I hope the corporate executives reading this appendix realize we are really not helping our employees reach their fullest potential if we do not address the root of the problem which lie deep in the unconscious layers. They are deep engraved memories and emotions. We normally tend to address the end result of these emotions (stress, anxiety, obesity, etc) and not the root problem. I realize addressing the root of the problem can be tricky, especially in US and other western countries where individuality and privacy are important.

The Life Bliss Program I is one such program where we try and address these deep rooted problems in two ways: 1. By providing an intellectual understanding of each of the core emotions of fantasies, fear, worry, attention need, comparison, ego and gratitude. 2. This is then supplemented by meditation techniques to cleanse our body/mind of these deep rooted emotions. Those who can internalize this program have seen significant benefits in their physical and emotional problems.