Thursday, November 4, 2010

Spiritual Evolution

The root of this discussion was during a session we had on spiritual leadership. I am surprised ...... Why have we come to the point that we think ethical leadership is innovative or radical? Isn't it something that should come naturally? Weren't we born to be ethical? Why should we have a lecture on this? And besides .... what is the new fad that "I have guru" and "my life changed after I met my guru"?
I believe these gurus are doing a decent job of at least getting people aware of the essence of life. One could agrue that most of these spiritual teachings are more about day to day living and really do not lead to moksha. Then what is so spiritual about these teachings? But then remember all humans (or for that matter creatures) are in different stages of spiritual evolution.
As I see it there are 3 stages of spiritual evolution -
1. Regular dialogue between two atmas - Here you accept that you are the soul and not the body. This awareness is essential before u emabark on the path to self realization. The dialogue happens between two people.
2. Dialogue between the atma and the perceived parmatma - Now you find a guru whom you look upon as parmatma. You get closer to the "Truth" if you would like to call. But according to me at this point too, the guru is an atma who probably is closer to the parmatma.
3. The last and the most diffcult part is realization that atma and parmatma are the same. Now the dialogue is more internal and you are well on the path to self realization. I do not know where it ends.....
These are purely my thoughts and I consider myself very low on the spiritual evolution path. It may also seem to be an oversimplified path to self realization. Again I am no expert. And of course I do not subscribe to any school of thought. I am after all a free spirit in this vast universe that was created just for me to question and find answers naturally!

2 comments:

Dr. L. Ramakrishnan said...

Good. Keep it up. Your questions are valid. As far as we have Jack Welches the question of Management - ethics will always be discussed. There are examples of unethical CEOs doing well; that is enough for the younger ones to follow. Finally it YOUR value system that is going to determine who you are and how you would conduct yourself.

All the best

Ashwin said...

Good One.

I remember a guest article in HBR, where the columnist talks to the ivy school students about "avoiding jail". Then he points out that nearly a third of ivy league grads end in jail and that surely was not their plan for careers. There is one moment of defection from ethics and that takes you to point of no return without even you realizing it(Sanford, Madoff etc).