Category: spirituality

Mental Health for the whole world

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Ayurveda, Bhagavada Gita, Bliss, Climate change, consciousness, Covid-19, Enlightenment, Friends, Happiness, Health, Love, Maharishi Vastu, Mahatma Gandhi, meditation, Moksha, Music and Poetry, Nature, Positive Psychology, Positivity, self-development, spirituality, Transcendence, Transcendental Meditation, Veda, world peace, yoga, Yoga Sutras

I appreciate the discussion about mental health. In my next avatar or phase of life, I want to become some kind of a mental health practitioner.  A big cause of mental health may be financial insecurity in a capitalist world. …And the social inequalities and pressures and heartburn that causes. The pharma lobby and DSM lobby and many other money-making machines in the West are hard at work to not fully cure but mostly contain the problems. The Federal government has created a strategy to combat mental health issues, however it remains to be seen how effective it will be.

The human body and mind have many ailments arising from whatever thoughts or beliefs or practices etc. Patanjali’s yoga sutras provide the 8-limbed formula to get away from it all.  Different practitioners or gurus have emphasized different limbs to suit the times and their purpose. Mahatma Gandhi emphasized Yama and Niyamas to uplift hundreds of millions of Indian people out of colonization. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used dhyana and samadhi to uplift millions of people from deep stress and anxiety of nuclear annihilation towards a vision of a permanent peace. Ramdev used Asana and Pranayama to uplift a billion people from all sorts of ailments.  But from personal stories one knows that any combination of these could cure eyesight, hypertension, and backache etc. Add to it Bhagavad Gita’s message that ‘you are neither born nor do you die’ that also reminds us of our true higher / Yogic self. That is the Truth (capital T) that alone can deliver strong healthy minds.

The language of health needs to change. We are becoming self-educated semi-experts at cancer and hypertension and diabetes and an infinite number of specific diseases and disorders and syndromes that may afflict us. The solution may lie in the language of Chitta vritti nirodha (yoga sutras) and balance of doshas and vikritis (Ayurveda) and harmony (classical / Gandharva music), … and activation of chakras and kundalini and more such vibrational and energetic constructs. The dualist and disease-naming language could be replaced by a more holistic joy-feeling language. As Chomsky famously said that the primary role of language is the self-talk or inner chatter, and not so much communication with others. If the inner monkey-mind chatter could be transformed to coherent silence and awareness, health will be a natural outcome. If health is what we want, a health-ful language may be a starting point.

A health-ful language should be beneficial to the health of body or mind. It should describe something corrective or beneficially effective, even though it may be unpleasant. It should speak to the helpful effects of clean air and water and surroundings. It should speak to what benefits and sustains life physically, mentally, and spiritually. It should make a positive contribution to a healthy condition.

With gratitude to all of you for reading it! 

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Be the god we are

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Bliss, consciousness, Enlightenment, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Love, meditation, Moksha, Music and Poetry, Nature, Quantum Computing, self-development, spirituality, Sustainability, Transformation, Veda, Vedic Technology, world peace, yoga

Some day everyone will be able to see the god in themselves. Channels will open for god to act through them. Then they will become net exporters of happiness. Till then they will plod on in a desert view of life.  No one else can save anyone. Just turn on the light, and see that the riches of the kingdom are all within ourselves. A gu-ru helps drive away the darkness by turning of the light. Thus there is an infinite gratitude to them for providing the man-tra to roo the goo (make the darkness run away).  Thus also the saying: guru bin gyan kahan.  A most famous couplet says: whose feet should I touch if the guru and god are both standing on front of us? We should touch the feet of the guru because they help find the path to god. 

Read this over and over till the fever / fear breaks.  Western philosophy and psychology were born as reaction to the totalitarian vise of the Catholic Church on social and spiritual life. Throwing out Christ along with the church from western life has created a most devastating crisis of meaning in life.  The reduction ad infinitum to the ‘me and my’ as the sole domain of one’s Self is a mirage. Separation is a myth, says Ssdhguru. Western psychology is foundation-less, says Maharishi. 

Three quantum physicists won the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics for proving that there is no reality.  Some authors call Consciousness as the mother of all capital. That is an indirect compliment from the economic world to the real foundation of life. There is no ‘Me’.  Commercial forces will continue to do their magic of selling fool’s gold. Wisdom traditions of the East are a powerful antidote to the godless meaningless commercial world of the primacy of ‘individual’, realizing that the notion of an indivisible individual is a mirage that too will dissolve into a universal field just as the notion of an atom dissolved into a unitary Schrodinger’s quantum equation. Now there is another Nobel Prize for explicitly stating that there is no reality.

This is cause for celebration.  We have a serious responsibility to not take ourselves too seriously, quips Maharishi.  Just let the mind settle and it becomes consciousness. मन becomes आत्मन। Consciousness is everywhere, so it knows everything, and that makes it omnipotent and invincible. Its manifestation is unpredictable, uncertain and probabilistic.  Franklin quipped that the only two certainties as death and taxes. Let’s accept both equally. Let god flow freely through ourselves while we are still having this earthly manifestation.  We are just this moment. Have fun in this moment!

Thanks for reading. Comments are welcome 🙏

I am Inspired ….

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Enlightenment, Friends, Happiness, Leadership, Love, Maharishi Vastu, Mahatma Gandhi, Moksha, MUM, Positive Psychology, Positivity, Sef-awareness, self-development, spirituality, Sustainability, Veda, Vedic Technology, Yoga Sutras

Inspiration is more important than motivation. The former pulls while the latter provides a reason. That is what set me thinking about who or what inspired me. So, I listed some of my major inspirations in life, and what they meant.

I was inspired … 

  • By my paternal uncle who was a terror and yet  jolly as President of our ethnic community in our native town in India, and who said that I could achieve anything 
  • By my maternal uncle who was an excellent teacher always suggesting do what you like 
  • By my father for his disciplined hard work, unshakable confidence, work ethic,  commitment to excellence and financial prowess 
  • By Mahatma Gandhi whose life inspired the whole country of India, and whose thoughts were lofty and  formed a central component of Indian Administrative service exams
  • By Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for his ability to see the unmanifest Vedas and make enlightenment accessible through a great movement and a Vedic university
  • By Swami Ramdev for the size of his ambition fearlessness and boldness in bringing well being at all levels 
  • By my friend and IITD / IIM classmate the perfect student and gentleman now at Harvard 
  • By my friend and IITD classmate the magical perfect student who did Ph.D. at Stanford 
  • By my friend and IITD / IIMA  classmate and free soul who did Ph.D. at MIT and is a great seeker and social reformer and entrepreneur 
  • By my mom for her deep investment in and ferocious defense of her children, and great tolerance 

I am also inspired …

  • By my colleague and mentor at MIU who is here to pursue moksha and which made me get it 
  • By my colleague and mentor who is the foremost  researcher on collective consciousness and led me to organize international conference on consciousness based leadership and management 
  • By my students who said that they loved my data analytics course and for whom I wrote the data analytics book that is globally #1 recommended book 
  • By my student and colleague who is ultra-blissful and does soft thinking and is a trail blazer
  • By Vastu architecture for its ability to create de-stressing and high creativity 
  • By my bold and beautiful wife who is unafraid and a creative entrepreneur 
  • By my beautiful daughter who is a fanstastic English editor, and holistic health practitioner and communicator
  • By my other beautiful daughter who is a smart engineer and a great packer 
  • By my brother who knew about group dynamics, yoga, and Vipassana way before me and which all I spontaneously followed into. 
  • By my book club community especially its founder and coordinator who is a cool, creative and compassionate architect.

Question for you: What inspired you in life? What continues to inspire you?

Do you inspire yourself? Do you inspire others? Chances are that you are proud of some of your own accomplishments. And they probably inspire many people close to you!

Maharishi International University (MIU): Epicenter of Peace

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Bliss, consciousness, Enlightenment, Health, Leadership, meditation, MUM, Nature, Positivity, Sef-awareness, self-development, spirituality, Sustainability, Transcendence, Transcendental Meditation, Veda, Vedic Technology, world peace, yoga, Yoga Sutras

MIU’s Global Country of World Peace is a beautiful organization that embodies what we are:  peace-loving citizens of the world, who are not divided by political or governmental surface levels of difference. As Maharishi said: What we put our attention on grows stronger. We are coming together and experiencing that field of life which is the field of unity consciousness – the unified field of natural law. Vedic technologies of consciousness, that operate from this deepest level of natural law, are a million times are more powerful than nuclear technologies.

MIU launched an Institute for Permanent Peace (IPP) this month, for applying a scientifically validated Vedic approach to creating an environment for permanent world peace. It is urgently needed to mitigate an existential risk from local wars evolving into an uncontrollable global conflagration. The purpose can be achieved by the sustained group practice of Vedic technologies, including Transcendental Meditation™ and TM-Sidhis, to create coherence in global collective consciousness.  The square root of 1% of any population—about 10,000 for the world– practicing these technologies in a group is sufficient to form a lighthouse of peace and prosperity for the whole world. Over 50 demonstrations and 23 scientific published studies have documented the benefits of large group practice of TM and its related advanced techniques on society as a whole. In every case, this approach produced marked reductions in crime, social violence, terrorism, and war, and increased peace and positivity in society.

IPP is proposing the creation of a permanent coherence-creating group comprised of 10,000 specially- trained Vedic experts to perform yoga and yagya. Results will be measured and monitored by an independent board of scientists.  Global celebrities have expressed support for the project. IPP broke ground on a project to create Vastu housing for thousands of such Vedic experts to live on MIU’s campus in Fairfield, Iowa. 

Meeting with India’s finest actor Anupam Kher

Noted filmmaker David Lynch, founder of an international charity that has brought Transcendental Meditation to more than one million under-resourced children worldwide, has issued a challenge to the world’s philanthropists: use a fraction of your wealth to establish large groups of advanced peace-creating Vedic experts in Ukraine and other critical hotspots, and leave a legacy of world peace that will last for generations.  https://davidlynch.gusp.org/

Live and Work Successfully and Blissfully in 21st century

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Business, consciousness, Creative Writing, Friends, Happiness, Love, meditation, Positive Psychology, Sef-awareness, self-development, spirituality, Transcendental Meditation, world peace

Here is a 15 minute opening speech, as the chief guest at a management conference in Dehradun in India. Building on the colorful theme of Holi festival just gone by, and the onset of a popular cricket season just coming up, I paint a big picture for life and work in 6 colorful charts, like six balls in a cricket over.

The key messages are:

1. Know thyself, as a specific person, and as the most unbounded being.

2. Human beings have complementary sets of needs at the global, interpersonal and the spiritual levels.

3. We need six capabilities of confidence, compassion, creativity, collaboration, courage, and consciousness to flourish in 21st century

4. Do the actions using SEAMS model – Straight, Strong, Enough, Adequate, in the Moment, and Wholeness on the move.

5. The life must be balanced with peace in the world and peace within

6. Finally in the last chart, I exhort the audience to paint life colorfully on the biggest canvas. Live life not just for yourself, but for the civilization and the universe.

Comments are welcome!

Fall Like A Feather

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Bhagavada Gita, Bliss, consciousness, Enlightenment, meditation, Nature, Positive Psychology, Positivity, Sef-awareness, self-development, spirituality, yoga

I met an elderly gentleman, Alan, who is an awakened soul. He told me that not too long ago he slipped on black ice, and fell like a feather. His whole body fell down on concrete, but he was not hurt at all. He fell flat softly in a way that all the parts of his body touched the ground together. Only the phone in his hand suffered a minor scratch. That seems like a miracle.  

On the other hand, an elderly close relative of mine, recently fell and broke his hip. It took him more than an year to recover from the surgery. Similarly, a good friend of mine, who is much younger than me, slipped on black ice a few years ago, and hurt the back of his head. He was taken to hospital in time to stop the bleeding from the back of his head. He is doing fine.

Is there an art to falling? That sounds like a silly question. However, I hear some wise people advising that falling is a given, and the important thing is whether one will dust up and get up and going again. Do some people perhaps fall at the wrong angle, or do they try to protect himself while falling? Do they panic while falling? It is hard to tell, unless one is present on the scene. Falling happens in a flash, in a split second with the full force of gravity.

I ask myself again, is there an art to falling? AARP says that the ‘world is full of banana peels’. So, avoiding a fall is a primary goal. However, they advise a few things on how to ‘fall safely’. Stay bent, protect your head, land on the meat, and keep falling. “Spread the impact across a larger part of your body; don’t concentrate impact on one area,” it says. The more you roll with the fall, the safer you will be. Their tips for preparation are: Be here now, get your eyesight checked (remember, … banana peels), and boost your balance with appropriate exercises.

So, yes, I think that there is a way to fall softly like a feather. The way is to be mindful and roll with the fall. Accept it. Let it be. Resisting a natural fall can be more dangerous than simply falling. Accept falls. I have fallen many times in life. Most times, till about a decade ago, the falls in life and career felt like personal failures and were devastating to mind and body. But in the last decade I can hardly remember a fall. A fall is a fall if we pay attention to it, and try to prevent it. The trick to falling like a feather is to become soft and light as a flower.

Live lightly!

International Conference on Consciousness-Based Leadership and Management – summary report

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Ayurveda, Bhagavada Gita, Bliss, Business, Climate change, consciousness, Happiness, Health, Leadership, MUM, Music and Poetry, Positive Psychology, Quantum Computing, Sef-awareness, spirituality, Sustainability, Technology, Transcendence, Vedic Technology, world peace, yoga

Maharishi International University (Fairfield, Iowa, USA) organized a three-day International Conference on Consciousness-Based Leadership and Management, from May 21-23 2021, for mapping the path to Oneness and a flourishing humanity. The event was co-sponsored by the International Academy of Management through its Management, Spirituality and Religion (MSR) interest group. More than 1100 attendees from almost 400 cities around the world registered for the event. The event had 90+ speakers including Dr Tony Nader, Dr Robert Quinn, Dr. Subhash Kak, Dr. Anil Gupta, and other reputed professors from top institutions from the US, India, UK, Germany, Europe, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Indonesia, Equador, South Africa, and more. They also represented a wide range of fields including Management, Leadership, Music, Medicine, Computer Science, Quantum physics, Vedas, Ayurveda, Arts, Psychology, Consciousness, Sustainability, and more. They participated in 15 sessions of integral conversations and research presentations of 90 minutes each over three days. Our feedback surveys showed consistently high ratings and comments. Every session aimed to produce one or two principles towards a flourishing humanity.  We sincerely thank our board of advisors, which included Drs. Chris Laszlo, Judi Neal, Sharda Nandram, Satinder Dhiman, Kathryn Pavlovich, and Cathy DuBois, for their guidance and counsel in making this event a great success. We also wish to thank all the speaker and presenters for being a part of this journey.

There is a great demand for videos for replays and we have been working on editing them and making them available. Here is a wonderful playlist called Consciousness-Based leadership @ MIU, comprising of seven keynote and panel conversations, each of which is about 60-90 minutes long. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs4GvULvBU44jIFWP4IaDCXb61lgLMk3Y

Here is a brief summary of the videos. The opening keynote conversation with Dr. Tony Nader lays out how consciousness is primary, which is a new paradigm with increasingly greater explanatory power. Then there is the transcendental keynote conversation where they lay out the benefits of transcendence, its neuroscience, and the path ahead.  Then there is the quantum and technological conversation where we discuss how quantum world leads us to different ways of leading and organizing, from an unboundarized and uncontainerized view of ourselves as the field of consciousness. Then there is the organizational cultural conversation where we discuss positive scholarship away from deficit and towards flourishing, and from workplace spirituality to global consciousness, as the organizing metaphors.  Then there is the panel conversation on Dialogic approaches where we begin with asserting that our words have more power than we think, in bringing about a harmonious world.  Then there is the panel conversation on the future of management education, where we agreed that the future is consciousness-based education, based on empathy and fairness and justice.  Then there is a panel on Vedic approaches to Oneness, beginning with Bhagavad Gita, and including other traditions towards unboundedness and self-transformation.

In addition, Here is the play list of about 25 pre-recorded short (7-8 minute each) research presentations by the authors themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io4mRLsEMjg&list=PLs4GvULvBU44ng3DX6qbDegNsS9lzzCCm

 Would appreciate if you could enjoy these videos, and post your comments.

Wish you a blissful and flourishing life!

Anil Maheshwari, Conference Organizer and Co-Chair

High Consciousness Leader and Manager

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Bliss, Business, Climate change, consciousness, Happiness, Health, Leadership, meditation, MUM, Positive Psychology, Sef-awareness, self-development, spirituality, Sustainability, Transcendence, Vedic Technology, world peace

High Consciousness Manager:  through Transcendence and Development of Consciousness

Spring is in the air, and that means time to experience the beauty of the flourishing environment as we wake up from winter. What things are fresh in your mind?

Grand challenges facing the world require a higher level of consciousness to experience and operate from a level of total inter-connectedness of life. Business organizations are undergoing revolutionary changes from exponential development of technologies of production distribution and consumption. Managers need to adapt to Artificial Intelligence systems that have been doubling in capacity every 3-6 months. Managers need to evolve rapidly to engage with the opportunities and threats posed by this rapidly evolving socio-technical environment. They need to develop the capabilities of empathizing and synergizing, visioning and transforming. Managers need to rapidly unlearn self-limiting beliefs and tap into their own unbounded potential and that of their teams. 

In essence, managers need to develop a higher level of consciousness, beyond that of the superficial and the observable. They need to learn to transcend their ordinary states of consciousness (waking, dreaming and sleeping) and access the higher states of consciousness where one can experience the pure unbounded Self, the source of infinite potential, within oneself. Our V-theory of Transcendence models a wide range of techniques to transcend surface reality. Research has shown that through transcendence, individuals can experience expanded awareness, along with creativity and bliss for more effective action and well-being.  The ability to raise consciousness around themselves will be a key role for the new manager. Research has also shown that transcendence by groups can create coherence in collective consciousness. This may be key to development of pro social and environmental behaviors towards Oneness and Flourishing in the world. 

We are organizing a conference on Consciousness-Based Leadership and Management to bring together diverse perspectives for Oneness and a flourishing world. We welcome you to join almost 100 academics and globally renowned speakers in this incredible 3-day AOM-MSR-cosponsored leadership event, focused on  Mapping the Path to a Flourishing Humanity. Be a part of conversation while creating meaningful connections with other global leaders.  Sign up for the conference for FREE today: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/international-conference-on-consciousness-based-leadership-and-management-tickets-139942478721

#leadership #consciousness #management #flourishing

Life is a donut!

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Ayurveda, Bliss, consciousness, Enlightenment, Happiness, Health, meditation, Moksha, Positive Psychology, Positivity, Sef-awareness, self-development, spirituality, Transformation, Vedic Technology, world peace, yoga, Yoga Sutras

Life is a donut. 🍩 (or doughnut).

We are donuts. Our bodies are donuts. Bodies have a hollow tube running through them. When the hollow tube remains flowing and clean, our bodies are healthy. The moment it clogs, diseases appear. Our life is also like a donut with a hollow hollow tube through it.  The upper side of the donut is the absolute, the unbounded cosmos. The bottom part of the donut is the relative, bounded by resting on the earth. Both sides are essential. So long as the hole in this donut connects the absolute with the relative, the mind functions well and remains healthy. Life gets into unbounded flow at some times, while remains engaged in specific chores at other times. 

When we eat too much or eat junk stuff, our body’s hollow tube begins to clog. When we don’t flush it down it with enough water the tube clogs. Similarly if we take in too much data and information we need time and energy to digest it. Undigested information clogs the hollow tube. The connection between the top and the bottom of the donut gets clogged. The donut becomes more like a pancake. At that point, the view is mostly of the relative side of life, the bottom of the pancake, and the view of the top is totally obscured.  Yogic techniques such as pratyaahara are ways to unclog our mind. Meditation helps to reopen the hollow tube of the mind and makes the pancake back into a donut. Attention of the mind goes round and round in the donut in a self-referral manner, even as it connects with the infinity above and the minuscule stuff below.  

A donut can be fresh thick soft and sweet. It can be glazed and have toppings, and be of different sizes. Similarly our life can be fresh expansive smiling joyful and grateful. It can have its idiosyncracies and passions and wisdom. OR else life can be short brutal nasty dour fearful stale and putrefying. 

Be a fresh donut 🍩everyday.  

Quantum Sciences, Consciousness, and Manager

by Dr. Anil K Maheshwari, posted in Bhagavada Gita, Bliss, Creative Writing, Enlightenment, Happiness, Leadership, meditation, Quantum Computing, Sef-awareness, self-development, spirituality, Transcendence, Transcendental Meditation, Transformation, Veda, Vedic Technology, world peace

Quantum sciences are an all-inclusive way of knowing the self-referral world at various levels of discrete quanta with different observable properties at different levels of granularity and aggregation. Nanoscopic reality at near absolute zero levels of temperatures exhibits multiple modes such as a wave and a particle, which is different from the solid reality perceived at a human scale, which is again different at the cosmic level where super large black holes create singularity fields that collapse space-time and light. The unified field of all the laws of the universe manifested in the interconnectedness and the confusing nature of all existence, can however be experienced by human beings in their own selves as pure consciousness.

Consciousness is all there is. It is the knower, the known and the process of knowing. Mass and energy, solid and vibrations, are all interchangeable manifestations of this consciousness. Through techniques of meditation, by settling the mind enough to exclude all the human scale objects, Vedic seers have been able to cognize the multidimensional truth about existence as pure vibrations. Major quantum scientists such as Schrodinger, Oppenheimer, Planck, Heisenberg, Bohm and more have suggested and acceded to the idea of this Vedic unified reality. These Vedic cognitions have an unfolding quality, in that consciousness can be known at increasingly granular levels of detail and manifestation.

Human managers can be different levels of consciousness from the ordinary waking state of consciousness to transcendental and unified non-dual states of consciousness. Knowledge is structured in consciousness; and knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. Effective managers of people will likely need to have a higher state of consciousness from where they can perceive a higher moral reality of a team or an organization. The accumulated human knowledge can also be abstracted to be manifested in non-human information-processing systems such as computers or gene editors. Artificial Intelligence systems can learn from human interactions and develop abilities to achieve human levels and beyond. Increasingly robotic systems are being deployed in organizations to accomplish a range of functions and activities. Human beings at higher states of consciousness may also experience quantum empathy as a useful construct to potentially experience total interconnectedness even with strangers at a distance. To build on Einstein’s famous phrase, action at a distance may be blissful, not necessarily spooky!