Spirituality and Professional Excellence

Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

Today my purpose is to present before you the relevance of spirituality so far as professional excellence is concerned. Any person in a profession wanting to gain professional excellence must have fairly good mastery of the branch of knowledge he deals with. And I am sure that you professionals are performing well in this level. I compliment all of you for the object knowledge, professional knowledge that you have. Mark my words – object knowledge.

But mind you, a professional is primarily a spiritual person. In as much as you are a spiritual person, you must have spiritual knowledge also, i.e., the knowledge of the ‘Subject’ the ‘Knower’ in you. Do you know the difference between the object and the subject? Whenever I look at the wall, the wall is the object of perception for me. The perceiver is the subject. In all the interactions that you have, sensorily, mentally, intellectually, personally or professionally, are you the interacting subject or are you the interacted object? Have you ever undertaken an examination of this nature? If you want to achieve professional excellence you must know the Subject in you.

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. You will always be obsessed by failure. Ambition will overrule your mind, fear will suppress you. Either ambition, fear, 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 origin in the subject spirit, it has its terminus and destination also in the subject spirit. The moment you understand it, your view would be widened, deepened and elevated.

[Poojya Swamiji was invited on 22 Jan 2000 by the Trichur Management Association to address its members. The association felt the need of expert advice on achieving professional excellence and sought Poojya Swamiji’s guidance. Here is an extract from the talk. The talk had been titled - 'Spirituality – The Missing Dimension in Professional Excellence']

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