Does corporate life dehumanize the workers? || Acharya Prashant, at IIM Bangalore (2022)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information:15.09.2022, IIM-Bangalore, Karnataka  Context: ~ Are corporates dehumanising human lives? ~ Is our jobs sucking our lives? ~ Is corporate culture healthy? ~ What can fulfill us? ~ What is an abuse of consciousness? ~ Is your job life-friendly? ~ What should you know before sitting for placements?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 Namaste Acharya ji, Namaste Professor. I watched your recent video, "Loving your fake lifestyle".

00:11 In that video you used two words, one is abuse of consciousness and another was corporates

00:18 are dehumanizing the employees. In that context I wanted to ask you, this dehumanization actually

00:28 is not only happening in corporates, but I think it is something that starts with the

00:32 family itself. And the second thing is the abuse of consciousness. We are aware about

00:42 the gross forms of abuse of consciousness, but we don't know much about the subtle forms

00:47 of abuse of consciousness. This is one part of the question. Second part is, and this

00:53 is like little paradoxical. Now we see the world is moving towards destruction and climate

00:59 change. Now all the students who are studying in higher institutions, they are going to

01:06 join all the corporates that are part of the problem. So how do we help these students

01:16 to make them aware that where they are going and investing their life is actually pushing

01:23 their contribution of their life towards the destruction of the planet. And at the same

01:30 time we could also talk about the subtle forms of abuse of consciousness.

01:36 You see, to use human thought, feelings, energy, any resources available to the human being,

01:50 for any end objective other than liberation is actually abuse of consciousness. When you

02:05 are physically alive, you are said to be conscious. So abuse of consciousness is simply abuse

02:12 of life. To use your life for any final purpose other than liberation from various kinds of

02:24 bondages including your biological instincts and ignorance is what is abuse of consciousness.

02:37 What is gross abuse of consciousness? What is subtle abuse of consciousness? What is

02:42 gross, what is subtle? That which the eyes can easily perceive and the ears can easily

02:49 hear and the skin can touch is said to be gross. Whereas that which can only be imagined,

02:57 ideated or conceptualized is said to be subtle. So when you are using material in the hope

03:10 that material will give you lasting fulfillment, that is gross abuse. When you are dabbling

03:20 in theories and concepts and ideas and think that ideology is of some kind, that which

03:29 we call as love, that too is an ideology because that is not real love, that's a thought,

03:36 that's an idea, that's an image. So when you go about this usual business of love,

03:44 that is a subtle abuse of consciousness. And when it comes to the question regarding corporates

03:54 that students pass out and then they serve the same corporations that are directly or

04:00 indirectly responsible for much of the tragedy today unfolding on this planet. Well, the

04:08 answer should be obvious. Before the students sit for their placements, there has to be

04:15 a sufficiently long workshop or a trimester long course that deals with the various industries

04:28 and if needed takes up case studies pertaining to the regular employers. Why not? Don't

04:36 we take up case studies that deal with specific companies? But there we want to know how well

04:45 they are doing in their marketing strategy, how their SHRM is proceeding or what kind

04:54 of cost accounting or financial management systems do they use. We should also have case

05:03 studies that take up for example their environmental record. Students should know the firm that

05:11 they are opting for, to what extent is it life friendly, to what extent is your employer

05:21 consciousness friendly. Students should know that. But that kind of case study is neither

05:27 written or taught whereas that should be a very important thing. It is very possible

05:36 that if you open up the entire kundali of a very lucrative employer, the employer might

05:41 have to return empty handed from the placement cell. Or maybe I am just being wishful. Maybe

05:49 the students would still go for that company in spite of knowing everything.

05:53 Yeah, I mean I was coming to that the conflict of interest, my career versus my career goal

06:00 versus how to what extent I can actually accommodate the organization that is involved.

06:10 See in an ideal sense, obviously you should not spend a second at an improper place. But

06:19 then life is not ideal. Ideas are just thoughts. We might seek freedom from all our constraints,

06:30 but our immediate fact is that we are operating within constraints. So with all your honesty

06:36 and only you can answer it fully, with all your honesty, try your best to use your constraints

06:44 in a way that your constraints are loosened. Right now I am speaking in constraints. My

06:55 fellow professor, my friend here, he too is speaking in certain constraints. We started

06:59 at a specific time. We will have to end at a specific time. And there are thousand other

07:05 practical and worldly constraints at every moment wherever you are, whatever you are

07:09 doing. The goal therefore has to be to operate in a way within your constraints that you

07:18 make your way out of the constraints. As they say if you are lost in a thick dark jungle,

07:26 what do you do? You will have to move within the jungle. But you have to move within the

07:31 jungle in a way that takes you out of the jungle. The jungle is there. We cannot wish

07:38 it away. At the same time, we cannot turn this into an alibi. What do I do? I was born

07:44 in a jungle. So all my life I just kept wandering in the jungle. That's a poor excuse.

07:51 Okay, so last thing is dehumanization. It starts from the family, institution of family,

07:59 where the family only conditions the child saying you only belong to these people. Then

08:04 goes to the education where he is constantly told you have to only work for yourself. And

08:09 then when he comes in that kind of a state, it's like very difficult to even realize for

08:15 that person to what extent the conditioning has gone into.

08:20 No, then the ones who have realized must try to make it easier for the ones who have not

08:26 realized but have the potential to realize. So obviously the way the child is born and

08:34 brought up, it is very difficult for him to just know on his own. We said a while back

08:42 that even if you live for a thousand years, Vidya will not automatically come to you.

08:49 You will have to put in dedicated effort. But then if there are people who have begun

08:56 opening their eyes to whatever extent, it is then their responsibility to create conditions

09:05 in which the child, the next child born, have it easier than they had. So create institutions,

09:20 modify our habits, the curriculum. There is so much that the child goes through. Try taking

09:34 care of it. There is no other way. Otherwise the system is very much a closed and self-contained

09:46 system. The cycle of ignorance will continue for a million years and there is nothing within

09:54 the cycle that will disrupt it. It can just continue. You have tribesmen who have been

10:02 living in a particular way, completely unchanged since the beginning of civilization. Nothing

10:12 has changed. They are indigenous people. Not only have they not changed, many of them actively

10:19 and very aggressively resist any external contact. If you want to get in touch with

10:27 them, you will be met with bows and arrows. So that's the way of prakriti, physical nature.

10:37 The responsibility therefore belongs to those who have begun knowing. Those who do not know

10:48 are also free of responsibility. Just if I can just add one sentence on nature

10:55 and you know how the businesses are sort of assaulting the nature and all that. I was

11:01 only wondering, I keep saying this to my students all the time. This whole idea, let us protect

11:07 nature is a western lens to the solving the problem. If I keep telling my students, I

11:14 discuss also in my courses sometimes very seriously and so on. I think the only education

11:19 we need, nature needs absolutely no helping hand from ordinary mortals like us. My favorite

11:27 example is in three hours in 2013, a place called Kedarnath, the clock was on by 150

11:34 minutes. That's all nature can take its own. So I think the education that we need,

11:39 which we are also trying quite seriously. I think we should know that we need to be

11:44 very responsibly, that parasparabhava which in Gita they talk about, I think that's

11:49 the kind of thing that maybe Revayasa will just add that on the top of this conversation.

11:54 That's quite fundamental to the whole thing. You see, we have that ego and that ego to

12:02 address its own lack of contentment, wants to use the entire world. Everything exists

12:11 so that it can be used by me. So we use all the physical nature and the feeling is of

12:18 control. I will control it. I will control it for my own welfare. I am smart, I am wise.

12:28 I am not doing well, I am internally bankrupt and yet I am very smart and very wise. So

12:33 I will decide how to use the entire planet. But after a while it becomes very difficult

12:41 to avoid seeing that I have totally destroyed the planet. So what do I do? I still operate

12:50 from the point of my doership. I say I was the one who destroyed the planet and now I

12:58 remaining who I am, I will redress the destruction. You are the destroyer. How will you suddenly

13:10 become the savior? It's just that the doership knows no limits. Sometimes you say that I

13:18 am hacking the jungle down. Sometimes you say, oh I am now going for reforestation.

13:24 So deforestation and then reforestation. So he is saying here, you leave the forest alone.

13:33 You neither need to deforest nor reforest. You leave it alone, it will take care of itself.

13:40 Your reforestation, mind these words, is probably as bad as your deforestation or maybe even

13:47 worse. When you are such a drunkard in the internal sense, your consciousness is totally

13:57 deluded. Do you even know the right meaning of help or redressal of a grievance? Do you

14:06 really know what the forest needs? A fundamental question, have you ever known what you really

14:12 need? Do you know what you need in life? Then how do you know what the forest needs? But

14:19 the ego and its arrogance know no limits. So you say I do not know my own needs but

14:25 I know what the forest needs so I will go and reforest. Your reforestation might actually

14:31 be worse than your deforestation. Why can't you just keep your hands away, hands off.

14:40 That's what is needed. But that's something we cannot tolerate to live with. The realization

14:47 that I am a sick person and my first duty is to take care of myself. I am not someone

14:53 who should go about doing this and that in the planet, winning territories or helping

15:01 people or this. You are in no position to help anybody. Not that helping is bad. But

15:08 if the surgeon himself is in a drunken state, God save the surgery. Not even God can save

15:18 the surgery.

15:20 [Music]

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