| Spirituality - The Missing Dimension in Professional Excellence |
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In all your talks, you are the talker; in all the thoughts,
you are the thinker; you are the subject personality and whenever
we refer to any quality like excellence, honesty, integrity,
etc, they refer to the subject part of man, and not the object.
A technically skilled engineer can become a failure in practical
terms. What is the reason for his failure? Why is it that
he is not able to bring forth efficiency from within him?
Wherefrom will it come? Certainly not from the merely inert
biological body! It has to come from the deeper levels - the
Subject - of his personality.
Until you are able to understand yourself as a subject personality,
as a spiritual personality and then the spiritual part is
reflected upon, your excellence will not bloom forth. Always
you will be obsessed by failure. Ambition will overrule your
mind, fear will suppress you. Either ambition, or fear or
doubt or an undue fascination for something or the other will
be acting as a constriction in your mind.
The mind must be able to work without constrictions. If ambition
is the constriction, it has to be dispensed with. If fear
is subduing we must be able to say good-bye to it. The mind,
the spiritual factor, has to be made free, flexible, light
and ever enthusiastic. How to accomplish this feat?
My dear Souls, all growth is from inside to outside. Even
in a plant or seed, there is no growth that ever takes place
from outside to inside. Any kind of interaction, even professional
interaction, proceeds from the subject, the interacting spirit
and the consequence and outcome of the interaction also falls
on the mind, on the interacting subject. Everything whatsoever,
has its origins in the subject spirit, it has it terminus
and destination also in the subject spirit. The moment you
understand it, your view would be widened, deepened and elevated.
We generally speak of stress, strain and tension. With any
kind of activity - even if you perform it successfully - you
will find that, before performance, while performing and after
performance, the activity is associated with stress and strain.
What is this tension and stress? Is it something objective
or material, or is it something psychological and inward?
The tension being psychological, the way to deal with it and
dissolve it should also be psychological and inner. Therein
comes spirituality. The more and more you know that you are
a spiritual being, the dimensions, the potentials, and the
prospects that open up are infinite. You have to draw on this
wonderful spiritual treasure, spiritual store house. Then
you will find that the tensions produced by the interactions
are correspondingly dissolved in your mind.
Who is a spiritual man? One who is able to live and interact
with this world harmoniously, with sufficient integration,
without finding any interaction to be troublesome, tormenting
or producing imbalance or tension. That is the successful
man. We describe him as a
stable-minded
person.
In this limited time, I will briefly explain the way spirituality
works. In all your interactions you will find a number of
inputs coming to you - and the inputs come from persons, places
or events. Am I clear? In interpersonal relationships you
will find a number of inputs - some pleasant and some unpleasant.
You may have a very arrogant boss or a very difficult subordinate;
you may have some intolerant or jealous colleagues. All these
are possible. At home, sometimes, the wife goes on murmuring,
creating troubles or the husband goes on picking quarrels
or the children do not behave the way you want. Everywhere
you will find interpersonal interactions causing tensions.
Whenever these inputs come, you must have the power to assimilate
them. No input whatsoever should make your mind feel helpless
and subdued. You should be able to declare: "My dear
world, throw any kind of an input to me, I will dissolve it,
I will harmonize it, I will integrate it and get enriched
by it." This kind of approach you must have. I call this
confidence, spiritual confidence and spiritual assurance.
Your mind is not inert - it is nature's product and its capacity
is infinite. I say:
"The
sky is the limit of the mind."
The body completes its growth at the age of about 21 and you
become an adult. And as an adult you have to live for many
decades. In all the decades of life after the body has completed
the growth, tell me, my dear managers, what part of your personality
is going to grow, if it is not the mind and the intelligence?
They are the spiritual components.
Suppose an image is formed in your mind. Is this image mental
or is it something else? When an elephant is perceived by
you and the perception forms an image in your mind, in the
mind is it an elephant or is it a
mental image of
an elephant? Am I clear?
Your mind is imprinted with a number of images. Whatever is
the nature of the images, it is your mind, the image is mental.
If it is mental, like a wave in the sea, why should you be
ruffled? Can you not assimilate it? Can you not understand
it? Why are you fretting and fuming?
Somebody told you something three years back - it was a very
harsh word, unfriendly remark. Agreed that he should not have
made such a remark - but he did make it. Now, the person has
forgotten the episode and is living happily. But you, on the
other hand, even now suffer for no reason. What is the cause
for that? It is your ignorance - not knowing the capacity
of the mind. You are not prepared to assimilate the inputs
from the world.
After assimilating, you must also start expressing it. Whenever
necessary, outputs should be generated. Wherever commitment
is called for, you should be able to generate and radiate
commitment. Where integrity is called for, you must be able
to generate it and manifest it to any extent. If there is
a duty or demand, never hesitate to meet it. Bodily you may
be short or weak, but mentally you are larger than the mountain.
Will you admit it when I say this?
