What does it mean to be superconscious? || Acharya Prashant
Video Information: 02.07.21, XLRI- Jamshedpur (an Online discourse), Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
Context:
What is SuperConscious Leadership?
How to balance personal and professional life?
How spirituality and meditation related to leadership?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#XLRI #AcharyaPrashantwithXLRI .
Context:
What is SuperConscious Leadership?
How to balance personal and professional life?
How spirituality and meditation related to leadership?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#XLRI #AcharyaPrashantwithXLRI .
Transcript
00:00 I had a question just to start off with the topic that we have in hand of super conscious
00:07 leadership. So I had a question like, you know, it is very difficult for an individual
00:14 like me. If I talk about myself, then for me, it is a very difficult thing to achieve
00:19 consciousness in the entire lifetime. Now, how practical or how difficult is it for me
00:26 as an individual to even think about super consciousness when I find attaining consciousness
00:32 even difficult? I might say that I am conscious on paper, I will write my consciousness on
00:37 paper, but I might not be and I think I am not even conscious about myself in the real
00:41 life. So how to travel that journey from consciousness to super consciousness?
00:46 Nitesh, there is no solid line of distinction between consciousness and super consciousness.
01:00 The word super consciousness has been used by me and has been traditionally used just
01:07 to emphasize the fact that it is possible to rise above ordinary consciousness. So consciousness
01:16 has several levels and we all experience those levels in our daily lives. Sometimes you are
01:26 angry and you very well know that you are not as conscious in that moment as let's say
01:33 when you are concentrating on something wonderful. You might be drunk and you very well know
01:39 that your consciousness is then drowned in liquor, it's not operating properly. So it's
01:47 just levels of consciousness and you could say that the higher levels of consciousness
01:53 are just being for the sake of emphasis called as super consciousness. Now, being a human
02:03 being, you anyway will not feel easy if your consciousness is at its lower levels. What
02:12 is meant by these lower levels? Freedom is our nature. No creature in the world really
02:23 enjoys bondages. Lower levels of consciousness are related to a state of mental slavery.
02:37 The more heavily conditioned one is, the lower is his or her state of consciousness and the
02:45 more liberated one is internally, the higher is said to be the state of consciousness and
02:55 beyond a point, we do not know what that point is, there is no real formula to put your finger
03:02 on that, but beyond a certain point, you kind of become entitled to say the fellow is super
03:10 conscious, just as you sometimes say super man. But again, all those super men and super
03:21 heroes, they have unbelievable powers and stuff that normal human being cannot do. In
03:29 case of super consciousness, it's just the degree of internal cleansing, internal freedom
03:40 that has increased. It's not as if it's a different dimension. The difference you must
03:50 take as that of degree because if you start taking super consciousness as another dimension,
03:58 then you make it inaccessible to yourself. You say well it is something that belongs
04:03 to another realm, another world and maybe I am not entitled to be there, but it does
04:12 not belong to another realm. It belongs right to the world you and I are in. As we keep
04:19 on unchaining ourselves more and more, as we keep on allowing that inner revolution,
04:32 as long as we keep allowing our inner discontentment to be expressed in the form of demolition
04:45 of the walls that encage us, we are moving from consciousness to a higher degree of consciousness
04:53 which you can call as super consciousness. And it's not a moral or a spiritual imperative.
05:01 It's an inner demand. Who would like to be fettered, caged, enslaved? Just nobody. But
05:14 still, almost all of us live that way. For two reasons. First, we are often ignorant
05:25 of how the mind operates, what its nature is and we keep assuming that the stuff of
05:31 the mind is its own. We do not realize that the stuff that the mind is carrying are external
05:38 bondages imposed upon it. Our thoughts for example are not really our own. Even our feelings
05:46 are really not our own. All this stuff is heavily conditioned. So that is one reason,
05:52 ignorance and the second reason is fear. Even if you come to know that there is a state
05:58 of slavery inside, it requires courage and sacrifice to stand up and pay the price. We
06:10 do not want to stand up. We fear, we don't want to pay the price and that's the reason
06:17 why this beautiful opportunity of life is often wasted.
06:23 And one more thing sir, so do you believe like if this is an important subject of talking
06:30 about super conscious leadership, so do you think it as a need that this should also come
06:35 as curriculum, as part of curriculum in B-schools?
06:38 This should be the first thing that should be taught. This is the foundation of everything
06:42 you see because you can teach so many skills in B-school and you can give formulae and
06:51 theory and models and cases and one is loaded with knowledge. But who is the one who would
06:59 apply that knowledge? Who is the one who would practice those skills and towards what ends?
07:07 There are so many leadership courses, but lead towards what? I mean even a Pied Piper
07:17 is a leader. The question is what must the others look up to you for and what is really
07:29 your intention in standing before others and talking to them and occupying their mind space
07:37 and influencing their lives. Why do you want to do that at all? And in answering that question
07:43 you have to look at yourself. What is my relationship with the world? What is my relationship with
07:49 these people I am calling as my followers? What will be the influence of my relationship
07:59 with them, my several interactions with them? And when you are clear of these questions,
08:06 then your influence on the world in general is healthy. Otherwise a majority of the leaders
08:14 in every sphere of life have been just mischief makers, have they not been? We know that,
08:20 right? And in fact it is far easier to relate to a set of followers using some mischief.
08:34 You can probably connect easily to the point of slavery within the other because that's
08:45 the point where comfort lies, that's the point where habit lies and it's difficult to relate
08:54 to the other telling the other of freedom, telling the other to stand up and pay the
09:02 price and work hard and take the blows. Therefore majority of leaders and their listeners or
09:13 followers or whatever, they are in a state of bad relationship. Leaders hardly have the
09:22 courage to tell the followers the truth, if at all they know the truth firstly and secondly
09:33 followers are not at all looking up to the leader to be told the truth. Both are in a
09:43 shallow relationship where both are just entertaining each other, both have their very limited objectives
09:51 that really help neither party. So that's the reason you have to differentiate a healthy
10:03 relationship from that kind of a rot. So we use the term super-conscious leadership.
10:10 [Music]