INTRODUCTION🔗

Here, Kṛṣṇa talks about the practical aspects of why a leader needs to act in a responsible manner. There is a difference between the state of a leader and the status of a leader.

• Most of us want to attain the status of a leader but not the state. When you achieve the status of the leader, it is ego-fulfilling and you feel great. Some politicians are good examples for this.

They exert the power of their position on others without even feeling responsible. They were a little more dominating and convincing than the people whom they were trying to dominate, that’s all.

The state of the leader is something totally different. It is the state of the leader born from the principle of responsibility that enriches people to become responsible.

A leader with the status remains only as a slave. A leader with the state takes the responsibility to create more and more responsible leaders. Only when you express all the possibilities out of liberation cognition, are you living your life. Life is lived when jīvanmukta sambhAvana, the space of possibility, the space of leadership becomes your lifestyle.

Nothing else is required for you to be a leader; just leadership consciousness is enough. When Vivekananda walked the length and breadth of India, he did not have anything other than leadership consciousness in his life. But wherever he went, kings washed his feet, gave their own thrones for him to sit on, received his blessings and guidance, and requested his spiritual support.

It is responsibility that makes you realize all possibilities. It is leadership consciousness that brings not just success, but fulfillment in you.

When you do not carry the consciousness of a leader, even if you get the powers of the leader, you are bound by it and you also bind the people who accept you as leader and follow you.

Leadership consciousness is an independent intelligence; it cannot be hidden from others. Once you have it, the whole world will know that you have it; the world simply listens to you! You do not need any power, political strength or infrastructure for the world to know that you are a leader. Even if you walk on the street, you will stand tall. And the world will respect you!

I am talking from the context of being responsible for making you responsible. Be very clear, the person who talks has only one reason — making you responsible. I am responsible to make you experience responsibility as I have experienced it. A person with wealth is responsible to guide a poor man to wealth.

A person with knowledge is responsible to make ignorant people knowledgeable! When you own, you become responsible to make everyone own. Because I own responsibility, I own the responsibility of making everyone own responsibility. Kṛṣṇa, who owns responsibility, the space of leadership consciousness, Īśvaratva, is making Arjuna own responsibility.

- The SPH Nithyanand Paramashivam

Plan for success! Don't plan for failure. Right when you start planning, if you wonder 'If this fails what do I do?', you immediately think, 'I will hold him responsible!' But holding the other responsible is not going to bring you success. Even as the thought — 'I will hold him responsible' arises, cut it.

In the words of The SPH I always tell my disciples, 'Take responsibility for practicing what I teach you by bringing authenticity into every action. Don't just preach what I teach. Only by example can you cause others' reality and radiate the teachings powerfully.'

Deep understanding and experiential expression of the truth happens only with taking responsibility for all your actions. Only when the space of leadership becomes your own experience does the responsibility become complete.