Assess Success with Internal Auditing

Aug 4, 2004, 12.00pm IST
Akhil Chandra.

Often what you call success is judged by others as failure. This was G D Birla's philosophical reply to reporters who asked him to comment on his success in building one of the largest business houses in the country.


When you look back and attempt to analyse what you really achieved in life and whether you could call yourself successful, you will find that you are unable to define "success". That's because with every new stage in life, your perception of success changes. When young, most of us are engaged in pursuit of material comforts and money. But after a point, when our basic needs are satisfied, money only breeds dissatisfaction. Arrogance, fear, greed and disharmony affect our mental and physical well-being.


As we grow older, we start becoming more conscious of our other needs in society related to love and belonging, and in building relationships. Finally, we feel the urge for self-actualisation. The overall success of a man can possibly be measured by summing up the total of everything including achieving material comforts, health, social recognition, mental satisfaction and spiritual achievements.


Abraham Maslow, in propounding a theory of hierarchy of needs, has analysed human behaviour by categorising various needs on a lower to higher scale. The lowest are physiological needs — for sleep and rest, food, drink, shelter and sex. This is followed by the need for safety from any harm; the need to be loved and to feel wanted; esteem and social acceptance, recognition, reputation, appreciation, status, prestige; understanding and knowledge to satisfy curiosity, explore, discover, find solutions, look for relationships and meaning, and seek intellectual challenges; the need for growth, development and utilisation of potential — towards self-fulfilment and attaining to higher consciousness and self-actualisation. Self-actualisation is the topmost end of the hierarchy. Since our behaviour is controlled by both internal and external factors, Maslow says that we have the unique ability to make choices and exercise free will. Hence we are faced with multiple choice every now and then.
We are bound by our own actions as they define the future. This will also decide whether you achieve overall satisfaction and fulfilment in the end. Choice of means play a key role in deriving fulfilment of happiness and satisfaction. Means adopted with right conduct coupled with goodness, truthfulness and fearlessness is what most scriptures recommend.

Over-indulgence in the lower order needs should be avoided as one may lose out on other fronts. There is a law of equilibrium in nature and a price has to be paid for every achievement in life. If you are overly career-oriented, you might have to spend less time at home. Pursuit of money to satisfy only lower order needs may not bring peace and harmony.
Emperor Ashoka, initially, was in hot pursuit of materialistic comforts and self-esteem. But just this did not give him the satisfaction he was yearning for. He realised his folly only after the Kalinga "victory" — and then he turned his thoughts to self-actualisation by fulfilling his spiritual needs.


Opportunities there are aplenty. The onus is on you to make the most of it while fulfilling the needs through rightful means. Ideally all material needs can be achieved with limited time and energy. The rest is up to you — to balance your objectives and create a suitable policy of life. Periodically, you could take stock and check if your achievements are balanced in fulfilling your needs in all walks of your life. This kind of internal auditing can help take one closer to self-fulfilment and realisation.

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Life's a Bubble, It Could Burst

Aug 16, 2004, 12.00am IST
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

If you look up in the sky during the day, you see the Sun. That becomes the most dominant in your experience. In the night, if you look up, the stars become very dominant in your experience, but both the Sun and the stars — in fact, the Sun happens to be a star, too — look like puny little things when compared to the immense vastness of the sky. Generally, though, the sky is never in your conscious perception. So, true existence can be likened to the vastness of the sky. The Sun, the stars, you and me, are all just small happenings, very brief happenings, really.



Today, science is telling you that even the Sun has a lifespan. Eventually, it will burn itself out. As you are burning your life out, similarly, the Sun is burning his life out, too. Your normal temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit; the Sun's normal temperature is some 98 million degrees, but he also has a lifespan and, one day, he will exist no longer. So whatever you see as physical existence is just a small happening. The true existence is the vastness, the emptiness that is there, the space.


What you call a person is just like a bubble. This bubble doesn't have any substance of its own. The air was there, all around. It just created a shell around itself, so suddenly it has a different quality of its own. There are thick bubbles, there are thin bubbles, there are strong bubbles, there are weak bubbles, big, small, just like people. Just like every other creature too, but when the bubble bursts, the substance that is inside the bubble, where is it? The air has reclaimed it; the atmosphere has reclaimed it. Similarly, a bubble is formed in the form of an etheric body, in the form of a pranic body, a mental body and a physical body. The physical body we can shoot down any moment we want to. It is within our power to just cut the physical body in two if we want to, but the other bodies we are not able to cut. Only what you call as existence, only that can do it.

What you are calling the spiritual process is just that. It is a deeper way of ensuring you don't exist anymore. This is not about killing the physical body. You are trying to destroy the very fundamentals of creating the body within you. You are trying to destroy the very fundamental structure over which a body can form. The physical body is possible only because of the necessary karmic substances that are there in the form of etheric, pranic and mental bodies.


So you are trying to destroy that through the spiritual process. With your awareness, practices, love, and with your devotion, all you are trying to do is destroy the possibility of taking on another body, destroy the very foundation over which the physical body can happen. Or, in other words, we are trying to take away the possibility of you going through the recycling bin over and over again. A mother's womb is only a recycling bag. Again and again... we're going through the same process. So we want to take that away.

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Make Friends Now With Your Self

Aug 19, 2004, 12.00am IST
Swami Kriyananda.

When Jesus said: "The kingdom of God is within" what He meant was that heaven itself would be a disappointment to restless, worldly people. If a person has no true joy in his heart, he will not find true joy outside though he be in heaven itself, and in the company of angels. Heaven must be experienced right here, right now, within ourselves if we are to experience it ever.


A stream extending itself too far into a desert will go dry. Man too dries up inside, spiritually and emotionally, when he extends himself too far in his search for outward pleasures. The wellspring of enjoyment lies in his inner Self. What he is, inwardly, that he will find without. The more truly he lives in himself, the more rewarding will his outer life be, also.


Man's inner Self is the spring that feeds all his knowing, all that he can enjoy on earth. If he neglects it, all his perceptions must wither and die. If one neglects a spring, it may clog up and stop flowing. You have only to look into the eyes of spiritually unaware people, especially as they grow older, to see what has happened to them. Is it with enthusiasm and dynamic energy that they pass their leisure time? Watch them sitting idly, staring at the TV, or peering vaguely at you to ascertain whether that was really a joke that you just finished telling.

Man's mistake is to run from the one fact which alone can be completely real to him. It is only by making friends with his inner Self first that he can ever make friends with the world.

Scientists are always trying to perfect their instruments. But we, too — our bodies, our minds, our nervous systems — are "instruments" in need of perfection. Can we observe anything intelligently through telescope or microscope beyond our own capacity for observation? It is only as this instrument, the mind, is made more perfectly sensitive that we can ever hope to penetrate deeply to universal mysteries.

Will it cut you off from an understanding of others if you seek truly to under-stand yourself? Not at all! You can understand others only to the extent that you have understood yourself. But will it make you less sensitive to their needs, less sympathetic, less outgoing and eager to help them?

Again, No. For it is only as one becomes aware of his own weaknesses and overcomes them that he develops compassion for others in their sorrows.

Today's theme is international unity. But the kind of unity politicians seek is only a patchwork job. Unity that lasts cannot be created; it must be realised. The point is, we are already One. We have imagined distinctions that do not really exist. So we need to work towards greater development of personal conscience, of personal awareness.
A friend, young and restless, once planned to go around India to visit various saints. This might have been a laudable purpose, except that, so far, this boy had put forth very little effort to improve himself; his real hope was to find someone who would consent to do all his spiritual work for him. (I could imagine him rushing from ashram to ashram, collecting blessings like pine cones!) I said to him, "If you take a thimble to the ocean, you'll only get a thimbleful of water. No doubt those great saints have much to give you. But what of your own capacity to receive what they give?"


If you would change the world for the better, first of all be better yourself. You are the greatest responsibility the universe has placed in your hands.

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