“ Now employers look more for spiritual quotient in employees”
Osho Siddhartha, a spiritual master in Osho philosophy, was formerly known as Dr. Birendra Kumar Singh when he was the General Manager of South Eastern Coalfields Ltd., a subsidiary of Coal India Ltd. A geologist by education, he studied in Manchester Business School as well and led the introduction of Kaushal Chakra (Quality Circle) in the company in 1995. He frequently conducts Ananda Pragya, a specially designed programme under Osho philosophy for the corporate people. In connection with one such programme, he was recently in Kathmandu . Excerpts from an interview:
More and more of managers and entrepreneurs are attracted to Oshoism. What is the reason?
Management is a science of motivation. Nowadays more and more people work to fulfill the self-actualisation need, the highest level of needs that Abraham Maslow, the architect of motivation theory, talks about. The self-actualisation need can be fulfilled only when one realizes the potential he or she has within. The more we want to fulfil our self actualization need and the more we want to help our people to fulfil their respective self-actualisation needs, the more we need the help from Osho. One can put up his best in the organization only when he can work in peace and bliss. Osho’s entire teaching is about how to live a life in peace and bliss and He says that for achieving peace and bliss you need not go to the jungle and hide from society. So, naturally more and more people including from management are going for Osho.
There are several efforts being made to combine spirituality with management. How successful are these efforts?
Initially people used to worry about the intelligent quotient. Whenever managers were selected, their intelligent quotient was considered first. Later on the emphasis shifted from the intelligent quotient to the emotional quotient which measured how capable a person was to make a decision based on his feelings and intuition. But nowadays, even the emotional co-efficient is outdated. Now more employers are looking for spiritual quotient in their employees. They are concerned about how much the person in question is grounded in his Being. So many books have come out in the west on the subject of ‘Being”, such as The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and The Power of Intention by Wayne W Dyer. Such books emphasize the need to get connected with our subjectivity, because we are not only objectivity. We are not only mind, our existence is beyond mind. If we want to realize our full potential, we have to involve our subjectivity in the working environment. When we involve our subjectivity, our spiritual quotient will go high. Unless you are connected to your ground or soul, whatever you do will not be of very high order or quality. As Lord Krishna says in Gita, “Yoga Karmasu Kaushalam” which translates that Yoga brings excellence in work. And as you know, Yoga is a science of meditation. Through meditation, you are grounded in your subjectivity or space. Very few people know that there is a very big sky inside you, much bigger than the outside sky. When you go deeper within yourself, you see that vast sky and that is your subjectivity. Our body, our senses, our vital force, our heart, our mind are all parts of our objectivity.
It is observed that people oriented towards spirituality believe in luck. Does not that come into conflict with the manager’s concern of meeting the targets?
What is luck? It is the result of our actions. When someone asks me about the difference between efforts and luck, I say there is no difference. If you say it is God who writes the luck, then there must be a law which He follows when writing the luck. Because in His creation, everything is so perfect – the sun rises at a particular time and sets at a particular time. Everything is so systematic. Then do you think that the writing of luck can be unsystematic ? I say that God has given a pen in everybody’s hand to write the luck for himself or herself. That pen is the effort. So you cannot separate luck from your efforts. Yes I believe that what you get is according to your luck. But that luck is also written by you. Whatever efforts you are making, whatever actions you are doing, your planning, your design, your excellence, your work, all these culminate in your luck. Luck is not a separate phenomenon. It is natural climax of the action.
There are so many spiritual Gurus these days and they all seem to be focused on the corporate world. Why is this so?
Every spiritual master knows very well that management can be divided into two parts. One is the system management and the other is personal management. The best masters have given emphasis on improvement of the system. But in India or even in Nepal, we have not given the importance to the system. In this part of the world, we believe in the excellence of the person. If the person is excellent, then he can improve the organization, the company, the party. So in our part of the world if some organization is not functioning properly, they go for changing the CEO. In the west, they try to find out what is wrong in the system. They correct the shortcoming and thus go on changing and improving the system. However, excellence is the combination of the two. We have to improve the system and at the same time also improve the people. The spiritual masters are approaching the corporate sector because they want to contribute a lot in the improvement of the quality of the people though they cannot contribute much in the formulation of the system. The more people are meditative, silent, and full of wisdom, in peace and bliss, the more they can give their best. For example, if we are fighting in our family – the husband is fighting with the wife and the wife is fighting with the husband, when they go to work they carry the same stress with them and cannot work properly. But when such persons are connected to some masters, they will get some guidelines. For example, in the families of people connected to Oshodhara, there is peace and bliss. The fighting is minimized.
Recently one Indian spiritual guru was gracing the launch of a motorbike. How do you comment on such commercialization?
These days everything is commercialized. We have to learn one important thing from the West. Especially in Britain and in USA, they say what they do, and do what they say. In India and in Nepal I have found two extreme types of people – one, they talk a lot but do nothing and the other who do a lot but talk little. We should follow the West in this particular respect and do what we say and say what we do. Yes, we must not overemphasise anything when saying it but whatever we do must be communicated to the people. I don’t consider such communication as commercialization. This is part of the game. If I’m teaching meditation, I must let the people know about it. Otherwise, how will they come to know? Yes, some people say that a spiritual guru should not bless one particular brand of commercial product. But the values are changing.
How can one select a guru from among so many?
There are six billion people living on earth now. Three hundred million may be unmarried and out of them around one hundred million must be below marriage age and one hundred million may be old. Thus there are around one hundred million bachelors of marriage age. Among them roughly 50 million may be girls and fifty million boys. None of these fifty million boys or girls has asked me about how to select his or her life partners.
How many spiritual gurus may be there in India and in Nepal? One hundred? Five hundred? Or one thousand? If you can select one life partner from among 50 million, why can’t you select one guru out of one thousand?
If you are looking for your master, you are helped by your guiding spirit. Very few people are aware, but it is true that every individual is supported by a guiding spirit.
What are the differences among the different gurus?
They are all complementary. Some may be focusing more on health or at the lower level which is the immediate concern of an ordinary person. Others may focus on a higher level, or an intellectual level. Any intelligent person will ultimately move up to the intellectual level after fulfilling the lower level needs.
But these gurus are labeling accusations on each other?
Then they are not gurus.
What suggestions can you offer to a modern, busy business person interested in improving his or her spiritual quotient?
Twice a year, we hold a three-day Anand Pragya programme, which is a special programme for people in the corporate field. In this we teach the Asthangik Marg (eight paths) of Lord Buddha. The teachings are related with how to live with family, how to be meditative, how to be nice to your boss and others in the office etc. The people who came and participated in this programme have given me feedback that their whole life changed totally after attending it. Beside Oshodhara, other organizations too are organizing this programme. One such organization is Landmark Forum. Also Stephen Covey (famed for the book 7 Habits of Highly Successful People) conducts similar workshops. Companies in India, such as Oil and Natural Gas Commission, Coal India etc. organize such programmes themselves or send people to programmes organized by us.
Normally what happens is that while attending such a programme one feels changed, but when they come back to real life it is difficult to practice it. What about it?
Anand Pragya is more practice oriented.
Where should we focus more? Duty or Devotion?
We have one more word between duty and devotion. We are teaching responsibility. The difference is that duty is designed by someone else and you have to follow that. Responsibility is what you feel like doing in addition to your duty. Even if we carry out only our assigned duty, the organization will grow. In the whole of Britain I saw only one slogan on the walls and that was only in Trafalgar Square and that is followed by everyone in Britain whereas we in India and Nepal have so many slogans written all over the walls but no one seems following these slogans. The Trafalgar Square slogan says: “ England expects from its citizen that they will do their duty”. And the whole of Britain developed just by abiding it. Therefore, just following the duty is a great thing. But in higher management, following duty is not enough. For excellence, you should go beyond your duty and reach the level of fulfilling your responsibility.
For improving the overall efficiency in the system, what is the best way?
In my opinion, the best tool in management is Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM has two parts. First, your system should improve and second, the quality of your employees should improve. For improving the system, Japan developed Quality Circle (QC) in 1962. Unfortunately, Japan later started following the USA and the quality management of Japan got destroyed. The QC system’s excellence lies in the fact that every employee is party to the decision and the function of the management is to simply implement these decisions. Since you are party to the decision, you will give your three H’s - hand, head and heart. If you are not party to the decision, you may give only your hand or maybe your head also, but you are not likely to give your heart for the implementation of the decision. High level managers are not supposed to be bogged down in the grassroots problems.
Therefore, for improving the system, I suggest TQM and for improving the life of the individual I suggest programmes like Anand Pragya or Landmark Forum. An organization that follows this two-pronged strategy will have an edge over all the other organizations. When Alexander was thinking of conquering the world, he studied and found out that the length of the spear in all the armies of the enemies was five feet and six inches. So, he increased the length of the spears of his army by six inches making it six feet. And he conquered the whole world. Similarly, any organization that wants to supercede the competitors must have TQM.
How far can you take the disciple?
As far as you are ready to travel.
After one gets enlightenment, he may think of all earthly things as useless. Therefore, will not the enlightenment encourage people to shun all efforts?
As you may know, after experiencing enlightenment Buddha, Krishna or Jesus did not stop working. The only difference was that after the enlightenment, they did their work out of joy, not out of desire.
What should one do when he does not like his current profession?
You have to be happy, you have to be respectful towards whatever you are doing until you find a job you love. This is
the lesson given by all the sages. You may not like your present job, but you still can respect that job. Meanwhile, you
should go on searching for your perfect job. One day you will get it.
