Life is Pure Existence

Life is pure existence. It is pure consciousness at the bottom of the V in V-theory of Transcendence (Figure below). The top of the V is the dynamic manifestations of life. These manifestations arise and transform and disappear at different time frames. Human beings appear at the ~ 80-year time frame. Other entities appear at longer or shorter time frames. Trees last 100s of years. Bacteria last just a few days. Longer life span is not a sign of greater intelligence or success. Attachment to this human body and its perpetuation is the ultimate mithya or illusion. We should detach from our human body (and near and dear ones’ bodies etc.) as it goes through its cycle of maturing and dissolving.

So, what are we to do with our individual short gross physical bodily existence? Doing is manifesting. We can create things and situations but should not be attached to those manifestations. Objects such as houses and cars and jewelry are a very low life form. The higher life form is that which is free from illusions and boundaries and is intent on accomplishing its assigned task of manifesting ever greater reality. Our hearts should be open to receiving guidance from higher life forms, or from pure life itself. We should be aware of our own divine powers and be a channel for creation as the time and situation demands.

Why do we manifest gross physical forms? Why do we take pleasure in creating such low-level toy forms? Why are we attached to these less significant creations? The answer may lie in social conditioning and legal structures. Such attachments provide a handle to any powerful evolved entity to manipulate us. Why do we fall for such manipulations? Some call ii God’s lila or divine play. It sometimes takes up to fag end of the individual human life span to realize the futility of attachments to manifestations. The young are mostly unable to learn this lesson from the elders. For the young, these toys are seductive. That is just the way it is!

There is enormous seduction of numbers, words, and language. Everything important should be measurable and comparable. By dividing, discretizing, and abstracting everything into tokens, the intellect allows the creation of new toys with ease, especially using machines and more recently Artificial Intelligence. Analog processes such as feelings vanish. Hearts close to what one does not already know. Awe and wonder vanish from awareness. The notion of an open divine unbounded invincible self seems ludicrous. This continues till some misfortune such as cancer or pandemics strikes and breaks that spell. Then the wisdom shines, and life appears valuable for its own sake!  

Be the god we are

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 ….

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!

Live and Work Successfully and Blissfully in 21st century

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!

Everything is perfect!

Everything is perfect!

I believe that there is no purpose of evolution, except to get better at being ourselves, and escaping from the physical manifestation and its pains from contact with objects.

I have been off tea and coffee for the last almost 20 years since I first went to a Vipassana 10-day retreat, and the teacher asked us to eschew these and other intoxicants for the ten days and ideally forever. I think from there and my decade long practice of Vipassana brought me to the understanding that we are ourselves the ultimate reality. Then during the last decade, being in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s University, brought for me the idea of unbounded unified consciousness as the Vedantic nondual reality. It made complete sense during progressively deeper and longer and advanced sessions of Transcendence. All this while we have been eating and drinking non-agitating foods to purify our nervous systems to experience the oneness within our own selves. I have been amused by the growth in these soft-toxin businesses such as coffee and tea. I heard about the Oxford Circle of scientists using Assamese tea and then creating the dominance of the Scientistic Revolution in the service of the British East India company. The poor tea-pickers from Darjeeling will be tickled to learn that their tea was instrumental in creating the scientistic paradigm as we know it.

Just a few days ago, I chanced upon a young Argentinian man named Mattias de Stefano, who speaks about the unbounded consciousness as being the ultimate dimension, and then goes on to describe up to 9 dimensions. The second dimension produces a duality, which is mostly a thought system. The third dimension provides a neutral level also, and physicality appears. Time appears when we rise to perceive the fourth dimensions. Our 3-4 dimensional (space-time) body is a projection of our high-dimensional self. This is like a small 2-dimensional picture is a projection of our 3-dimensional body. At the fifth and sixth dimension we are pure energy, and later on pure vibrations that are the creator of all reality. At the seventh dimension, there are seven laws of existence represented through the seven chakras. At the eighth dimension, existence is the field of infinite correlations, the unbounded universe that contains everything. We are not of the universe, or in the universe, … we are the universe. A the ninth dimension, we are pure void, like a black hole, which provides the context in which the universe appears. That resonates so much with Buddha’s teaching.  

Two things from here: The first thing is that I find Mattias’ message very similar to that of Maharishi’s. Maharishi also had the baffling ability of speaking about the dynamics of the unmanifest consciousness. ‘How did he know?’, the world wondered. But that did not stop people from following him and using his descriptions of reality, that was tested through thousands of experiments published in over 700 scientific publications. In particular, I am extremely interested in Maharishi’s theory of collective consciousness. This Super-Radiance effect, that can only be understood from a consciousness-as-a-field paradigm, has been statistically proven and published beyond reasonable doubt (over 50 journal publications).

The second fascinating thing from this Argentinian young man is to hear what else he says. He speaks about his past lives, going back thousands of years, in great detail, with specific locations and names and what happened. He reports living in civilizations from across the various galaxies, tens of thousands of years ago. He is reporting solar systems with 2 or 3 suns with planets facing a night-time of only 2 or 3 hours. That means a lot of what we see and do could be biologically different in a different solar system. Many civilizations arise and die, and this one too will die, he says. The important thing from us is to raise our perceptions to the highest levels. If we die of consciousness (nothing left to do) then we do not return to the lower dimensional existence. Instead if we die of time, we will be back. One particular metaphor caught my attention: We are the spider that creates the web. We are not the web. We certainly are not an object caught in the web. The day we realize that we are totally liberated. We are the creator.

He says, that everything is perfect as it is. There is no purpose to existence. The path is the way. Have fun!

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

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

Mind Without Fear – A Book Review

I finished listening to Mr. Rajat Gupta’s [photo credit: Wikipedia] memoir ‘Mind without Fear’ in just two sessions. It is a compelling story of the Mind and the Times of an exceptionally accomplished person. He had the good luck to be the right person in the right place to become first non (white) American managing director of McKinsey & Co, when the firm was ripe to go global. He was the wrong guy at the wrong time when he entered the financial markets with the wrong guy, and got the wrong overzealous prosecutor thus getting jailed for two years. He draws inspiration from his father who was an Indian Civil Services officer during the British rule but resigned Mahatma Gandhi’s call for freedom and was jailed and beaten mercilessly with permanent damage. He also draws inspiration from the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whose beautiful poetry threads the book and gives it the title of Mind without Fear. He also draws solace from his strong family and the many friends who stood with him and believed his story. He however deeply regrets not taking the stand and testifying in his own trial, as he received overwhelming advice from his lawyers and his loving family that allowing the prosecutor to question him directly will be too risky. At the end of it all, he comes out of the ordeal with his head held high, without much bitterness for those who deserted him including the McKinsey firm who dismissed him summarily and took his name off their alumni list.

I believe Rajat Gupta’s story, as I have done over the years. He is a fellow IIT-Delhi alumnus ten years my senior. I met him at Pan-IIT meets in 2007 and 2009. He looked handsome and seemed very honest and a good listener. I do remember some of the stories of the next few years as the attorney Preet Bharara with political ambitions set his sights on a fellow successful Indian. There was a story in the Indian press about Preet Bharara and Dr Sanjay Gupta, whose moms knew each other from India, about whose son is doing better in the US. I recall a feeling of a certain revulsion at that approach to achieving success by beating down an iconic fellow Indian. Some of my well-meaning friends however felt at that time that greed and power had gotten the better of Rajat Gupta.

Rajat Gupta has done much good work including seting up Indian School of Business and starting the Public Health Foundation of India. He also started the Global Fund against three major diseases. These inspirational stories are laid out in great detail in the book. That alone makes the book worthy of attention. What the book does not tell is that none other than Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, compared Rajat Gupta with the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru for having started two world class organizations in India. I also salute Rajat Gupta for his great work. May God grant him strength to continue his good work. He wants to work on the American penal system which he observed from the inside and found deeply lacking. He should also write a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the book that he read during his incarceration and which helped him come out stronger, with malice towards none and with his head held high!

Conversations with God: Bernie, Biden, & Tulsi

Conversations with God: Bernie, Biden, & Tulsi

GOD: Welcome my children. You all want to be leaders of the free world. Tell me why.

Biden: I have given whole my life to this country. I have served Obama for 8 years. That is a BFD (Big uh …you know). I love the Clintons. I followed her on the Iraq war vote. I can finish her unfinished work. I can beat Trump. I have been accused of plagiarism, but that was long ago. I supported Clarence Thomas, though I should not have bought his malarkey and should have supported Anita Hill. Look, the black people are supporting me. I will be the next black president. @joebiden

Bernie: The current system is not working for the majority of the American people. We need universal health care, and free college. We need Green New Deal.  I am consistently social democratic. My campaign is fueled by ordinary people and their small contributions. There is a revolution brewing in this country. I can beat Trump by bringing young people into the campaign. @berniesanders

Tulsi: I am young, healthy, fit, woman of color, and represent the future. I am a veteran put service above self by volunteering for defense services for 16 years, and deploying twice in the middle east. I have been on the right committees related to war and foreign affairs in Congress for over 7 years. We need to stop the wars, and invest at home.  I had the foresight to not vote for impeaching Trump, as that only played into energizing his base. I am not afraid of Trump. @tulsigabbard

GOD: Excellent. Some of you are like Mt Rushmore, as you have been around for a very long time. Why should health and age of your body not be an issue for this campaign?

Biden: I am fit, and thin. I usually remember what I am saying.

Bernie: I had a heart attack. But I am fit again. I am keeping a strenuous pace.

Tulsi: (smiles) It is the age of ideas I am most concerned about. We should reinvest savings from wasteful foreign wars into this country.

GOD: Will you support the eventual nominee of your party?

Biden: That would be me.

Bernie: It is up to the American people.

Tulsi: I think so. I am in this campaign to raise the right issues. I supported Bernie four years ago, and resigned from DNC to protest their favoritism towards the Clintons.

GOD: What would you do about Coronavirus?

Biden: Huh ? Corona … what? Whatever it is we can bring it under control.

Biden: We need universal health care. No one should live under the fear of not being being able to get the care they need.

Tulsi: This is a test of leadership. We need to be proactive in testing for this and other potential conditions, and then preventing it from spreading.

GOD: You are all doing well. Have a good time on the campaign trail. Stay healthy. Wish you all the best!

 

Why Tulsi Gabbard is the best candidate in this 2020 Presidential race

Aloha! I believe that Ms. Tulsi Gabbard is the best candidate in this 2020 presidential race.

First, Tulsi holds the bigger picture in mind. She focuses on World Peace. She focuses on the global environment. Her message is about humanity as a whole, even though she focuses first and foremost on the health and welfare of the American people.

Second, she is against wasteful unending regime-change wars that serve mostly commercial interests of the military-industrial complex. She volunteered for two tours of active military duty. She is fearless and can meet just as calmly with foes as with friends. Those foes include the vested interests inside the country. She wants a government truly of, by, and for the people.

Third, she is determined and takes initiative with a fierce sense of urgency. She does not take anything for granted. Coming from the island state of Hawaii reminds her of the constant dangers of nuclear wars, environmental disasters, and the devastation of the local people and cultures. She introduced a comprehensive bill against use of fossil fuels, which can become a cornerstone of the Green New Deal!

Fourth, she is an excellent communicator. She is an active listener and, surprisingly and refreshingly, answers the questions that are asked of her. She speaks truth to power. She is a good debater and brings out the truth in the most accessible way while cutting through other people’s circumambulations.

Finally, as a person, she is remarkably talented and attractive. Tulsi Gabbard has the temperament of a centered and experienced leader, and the warmth and innocence of a girl next door. She is a friendly and compassionate person who hugs easily and warmly. She speaks of service with love. Her voice is measured, and her speech is to the point.

Truth will win, ultimately! Truth and Non-violence go together and win, as Mahatma Gandhi showed! Tulsi is committed to truth-telling and to promoting World Peace. No other candidate comes even close! That is why Tulsi IS the best candidate in this race.

One last thing …. she is very young and has a lot of time ahead of her. So, irrespective of what happens in 2020, she has a tremendous opportunity to make impact on this country and the world. Like the other young Hawaiian-born candidate before her, she is destined for the White House!!

 

 

Aloha! President Tulsi Gabbard!

Aloha! President Tulsi Gabbard!

I support the young beautiful Hindu liberal veteran Congresswoman from Hawaii for President of the United States of America in 2020 and beyond.

  • She has the inclusive compassionate leadership style to guarantee basic rights of health and education for all people, and to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
  • She has a veteran’s courage to call out the futility and indeed the mistake of costly regime-change wars that produce no benefit for America or the people of those countries.
  • She is guided by the authentic perennial Vedic values of Bhakti (love) and Karma (service).
  • She commands presence and answers the audience’s questions calmly, directly and succinctly.
  • She has the youthfulness to be playful and engage the attention of young generation itching to take charge of the destiny of the planet and the country.
  • And … she has the right amount of national political experience to understand the game and come out victorious!

Maheshwari family with Tulsi

I met her on campaign trail a few times in different towns of Iowa recently. She is the new Obama. I feel that she is the right one to usher in world peace and joy for all in this country and beyond! I plan to volunteer for and contribute to her campaign like I did for Obama in 2008.