A summary of the talk on ‘The Science of Self Management’ delivered by Shri K Sudarshan, Vedanta Management Exponent, held on 7 July 2008 at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai.

The topic chosen for today is “THE SCIENCE OF SELF MANAGEMENT.” Self Management is such a vast subject and I have been in this field for almost 20 years now. It is impossible to explain everything in just 1 hour. So, what I’ll do is give you all an introduction – an insight about the concept. I’ll try and answer 2 questions - “What is Self Management?” and “How is it relevant in your life?” because self management may be a wonderful subject perse, but unless and until it is helps you in your practical living - in your homes, work places, etc. there is no use studying it. I’ll speak for 45-50 minutes and then keep it open for questions. Do feel free to ask anything you want. I am one who always believe in interaction rather a monologue because the word “education” is derived from 2 Latin words – “edu” and “kate”. “Edu” means to “draw out” and “kate” means “from within.” So education means to draw out from within – not something to be pushed from outside.

Now, what is self management? Self management as the name itself suggests is a technique to manage yourself – manage your mind. Basically management should start from you. Long back - more than 10 years back I had delivered a talk on “Secret of Success” in Delhi. Around 200 CEOs had attended. After the talk a young man came to me and said “Sir. I want to join the Vedanta Academy where you have completed a 3-year residential training programme.” I asked him about his background. He was a brilliant guy who had topped IIM that year and had received a very prestigious offer from Harvard Business School of Management to do further research and teach. So I asked him as to why he wanted to leave all this and join the Vedanta Academy. His answer was very interesting. He said, “Sir. In my management studies till now they have practically taught me to manage everything. Everything except myself (Laughter) – and I understand from your talk that management essentially starts from yourself and that the academy teaches exactly this.”

Now please don’t get me wrong. I am not against getting degrees. I myself have done post graduation in business management. But the fact is that there is so much focus on the world today that the individual has been neglected.

If you were to analyse the world today you’ll find one class of people extremely dynamic, active and productive. A typical example of this would be the Unites States of America or the urban areas of the east. There is a lot of action there, but in their own admission they have lost their peace of mind. What is the highest selling drug in USA? Does anyone know?.

Exactly, it is Prozac. I think it is an anti-depressant. Now what is the highest selling drug in India? I don’t know, but it would definitely not be an anti-depressant. Probably it would be some headache pill like Saridon. We have not yet come to “Prozac level.” The day we come to Prozac level we will also be given a status as an advanced nation! (Laughter). You would have observed that when you take up a few responsibilities you immediately get stressed. On the other hand there is another class of people who are relatively stress-free, like the rural areas of the east. If you go to a village here you’ll find them very relaxed. But the dynamism, productivity is missing. For example – if you organize a seminar for me on stress management in a place like say Arakkonam, the first thing is I’ll be extremely stressed! (Laughter) because no one is really stressed there. So on one hand you find whenever we get into action we get stressed and whenever we are stress-free we are not active. So, the obvious question now is - Is there a technique by which you can combine these two? – i.e. Can you be extremely dynamic, productive and active outside and at the same time maintain your inner poise, your calmness amidst all the external challenges? The answer is an emphatic yes and that is the philosophy of self management. So self management is a technique by which you combine external dynamism and inner peace.

In life your talents desert you at the time of a crisis. Yesterday the Wimbledon final took place. I watched the first few sets. Who won the match? (Some one from the audience says Nadal). Ok it is Nadal. If you had observed Federer’s game it was really not up to the mark. His first serves were not going through as usual. Not to take away any credit from Nadal who played brilliantly. The question is why did Federer not play up to his potential. The reason is that right from the beginning of this year there had been this talk about his creating an all-time world record by winning the Wimbledon for the 6th consecutive time breaking Borg’s record which had caused an unnecessary stress in him.

I still remember the match between Goran Ivanisevich and Andre Agassi. I don’t remember the exact year – probably 1991 Wimbledon final. You all know that Ivanisevich was famous for his aces. Usually those days if a person served around 16-18 aces it was considered very good. Ivanisevich used to effortlessly serve around 30 aces per match. On that final he served 41 aces. There was a crucial point in the 5th set. He was serving and that was his strength. He served once. It was a fault. He served again and it was a double fault. He lost the point, lost the game and lost the trophy.

I was told about a neurosurgeon in Chennai many years back who was a genius and who used to perform a particular operation with cent percent success. One day his wife got the same disease. When he went in to operate her, his palms started trembling out of fear. He handed over the knife to his assistant and walked out. His wife died. Now my question to you is what is the use of all his degrees like MBBS and FRCS from London and all that if he was not able to use his talent when he wanted it the most. This is exactly where self management comes in.

All of you are already technically very much qualified. But the question is how much of your mind is present where your body is. Once a man came to me and said “Sir, I have a big problem. When I go to office and open the file I can’t see anything.” I told him to consult an ophthalmologist to which he said that that was not his problem. He said that whenever he opened the file his wife’s face came in front. She had given him a list of things to be done. If he did not do all that he would literally be made a mince meat at home. The result of this was he got a firing from his boss. But when he went home he was all the time thinking about his boss and office commitments. The result was his wife was angry with him. The first thing I told him was that “Sir. You really need not worry because this is a universal problem!”. Whenever you sit on your chair you usually find 25% of your mind is worrying about the past. Another 25% is worrying about the future. Another 25 % is tense about the present action itself. Then not to talk of other negative emotions. You hardly use 10-15% of your potential. Probably this itself is a compliment! (Laughter). Doctors say that you use only 4% of your DNA. The remaining is called junk DNA. They say that even if one uses 10% it would be phenomenal. Even here how many of you can focus 100% on this talk for an hour. After a while your minds go for a walk even though your bodies are here. It may go home or to office - anywhere. After my course in the Vedanta Academy I went to Delhi for some talks. My teacher Swami Parthasarathy called me to give a very important piece of advice which he said was given to him by his Guru. He asked me never to concentrate on any one individual for more than a minute or two while giving a talk to an audience. For example if I focus on him (pointing to a gentleman in the first row of the audience) for 2 minutes, after that his mind goes away. So now my teacher’s advice was to focus on another person, say him (pointing to another person from the audience). Not that he is concentrating but his mind has just come back after a walk (laughter). I first laughed thinking my teacher was joking but then when I started giving talks and reading people’s minds I found it was absolutely true. This is where self management comes in. It is the art or science of living.

Life consists of two factors – You, the subject and the world which is the object. In order to make life better thinkers have been improving the world. What was the world 50 years back and what is it now? We have more comforts, facilities and amenities but are we really happy? I was reading an article which came out in the papers that the suicidal tendencies in the IT industry is very high. The question is why?

The world itself can be broadly divided into wealth, nature and people. One set of thinkers focused on wealth and formulated various laws pertaining to wealth. They are the economists. Similarly another set of thinkers focused on the people. They are the politicians. I am not talking of the modern-day politicians. (Laughter). The subject of politics deals with the betterment of people and society. Similarly another set of scientists focused on nature. They are the natural scientists – physicists, biologists, etc. But then the stress factor also started increasing. So another set of thinkers investigated this and found out that the world was improved but the individual was neglected completely. It is like having the best of food before you but you have a stomach-ache (laughter). So these thinkers studied and discovered various laws pertaining to the individual and that is self management or Vedanta. So spirituality is really the art of living.

Once when I was talking to an American audience a top lady psychiatrist from USA questioned this point. She said that an art is something which you learn, practice and then perfect like car driving or playing an instrument. How can it be said that living itself is an art when all of us have already lived so many years? Then I pointed to her that Vedanta or Self management distinguished between living and existing. She was very intelligent and immediately understood. Animals exist. We as human beings alone have the capacity to really live. What are the ingredients of whole living or positive living? There are so many qualities but I’ll just cover a few to give you an idea.

You all can see the slide there. The first quality of positive living is Cheer. The question is - Are you laughing your way through life or mourning your way? Are you bubbling with cheer, joy and enthusiasm? Otherwise life is really not worth it. Every day when you get up from bed in the morning you should have so much of energy to give a punch to the person next to you. Today I know you may want to punch for other reasons (Laughter). My teacher who is a very practical man once took us to Marine drive in Bombay and asked us to stand on the road and check people and tell him how many had smiles on their faces. We had taken note books to mark the numbers and to my horror I found my note book was empty after an hour (Laughter). I checked with my colleague and his was also empty (Laughter). Everyone was passing by like this (with a frown) as if they were going for a funeral (Laughter).

Once a businessman, who was a chairman of around ten companies approached my teacher for advice. He said, “Sir. I have everything in life. But my problem is I don’t seem to have any energy or enthusiasm any more. Sometimes I even have thoughts of committing suicide. But even for that I don’t have any energy.” (Laughter). Then he was asked to find out whether anyone in his family had energy. He said, “First of all myself. I am the head and I have come here because I don’t have any energy. My wife has energy but only to fight with my mother (laughter). The same is with my mother too. My father is no more. Therefore no one in my family has any energy.” Then he was asked about his child. The moment he thought of his 5 year old son his face brightened. He said “Oh yeah. My boy is full of energy and cheer. Actually I just get tired by merely watching him jumping around the whole day (Laughter).” Then he was asked how big is the child and how much does he eat. He said he is small and eats little. Then he was asked about himself. He was a fat guy and he admitted openly that he ate a lot (Laughter). Isn’t this a paradox? The child is so little and eats little but has so much of energy. He was huge and ate so much yet no energy. So what is the secret of a child? How is a child always cheerful? (Many answers were given by the audience. One answer was - “no worries”). Exactly. A child has no worries about the past or future. It just enjoys its present moment without any hang ups. Usually you are calm and cheerful when everything around you is going on well. The moment something goes wrong you lose your cheer. The cheer which I am talking about is about being cheerful always. I think it was Mahatma Gandhiji who said that any fool can find shanthi in shanthi i.e. peace in peaceful circumstances. But, if you wise try to find shanthi in ashanthi i.e. amidst challenges.

The mind goes through 3 stages of calmness. You all can see this pen. Supposing I place this pen like this on my palm (the pen is placed vertically on the palm) it constantly needs an external support. The moment I don’t hold the pen it falls. Why does it fall? We have studied this in physics. It is because its equilibrium is not stable. We can call it restless equilibrium. Your mind may be at the restless equilibrium stage. Such a person would need everything around him to go on fine to be happy. The moment anything goes wrong he falls like the pen. This is the lowest stage – restless equilibrium. Higher than this is what we can call as imperfect equilibrium. If you take a pendulum for example normally it is at rest. The moment you tap it, it starts oscillating. The tap is for a split second but the oscillations may go on for a long time. Similarly your mind may be calm normally. But the moment there is a tap, say someone insults you it gets disturbed. It may not even be an explicit insult - it may just be that someone did not wish you back in the morning. The interesting part is that the insult is just for a few seconds but the mind may oscillate for hours, months or even years (Laughter). I know a man who wakes up in the middle of the night and shouts “I will finish him” (Laughter) and he is talking about an incident which happened 25 years back (Laughter). This is the second stage called imperfect equilibrium. The best state of mind is called stable equilibrium. When we place the pen horizontally like this it cannot be unsettled. Why? It is because it’s equilibrium is stable. Self Management or Vedanta helps you to move from restless to imperfect and then to perfect equilibrium. Once your mind reaches this state it is always happy and cheerful. Nothing can disturb such a person. You may take away everything away from him but you can never take away one thing – that is his smile.

The next ingredient of positive living is, as you can see in the slide, Clarity. Clarity means the ability to think originally – the capacity to pause, judge and then act. In technical language what we call as X-ray vision. An x-ray machine has the capacity to wade through your body and read the bones. Similarly once you develop clarity you can wade through any problem and get to the right solution – you can pierce through any person and read him or her. Actually a time would come where you meet the person for the first time and you would know what is exactly in his or her mind. This I am telling you from experience. Clarity is not scholastic knowledge.

I’ll give you a few examples to illustrate clarity. This incident happened in 1988 in Madras IIT. Those days ragging was not banned in universities. In IIT they used to have what is called as intelligent ragging. For example, they will show you a doorway which has 2 doors with one open and the other one closed. They will ask you whether the doorway is half open. You will say yes. Then they will ask you whether the doorway is half closed. You will say yes. The door way = ½ closed. The doorway = ½ open. Since the left hand sides are equal ½ open = ½ closed. Cancel ½ on both sides. You get open = closed. Therefore they will close the doors and say now you have to walk through (Laughter). You will have to solve this. This was the kind of ragging they used to do. My colleague joined IIT Madras that year. As soon as he entered the campus on the first day around 50 seniors surrounded him. They asked him, “Do you want 100 foolish questions or one intelligent question?” My friend said he wanted one intelligent question. The question was “Did the chicken come first or the egg?” (Laughter). I really don’t know how many of us would have managed to get out of this situation. My friend immediately answered, “Egg.” They asked him, “How do you say that?” He said, “You said one question. If you ask how then it would become the second question.” (Laughter). They all lifted him and said, “You are our Guru.” He requested them not to rag anyone that year. In the history of IIT it was the first time that there was no ragging when ragging was not banned.

I’ll give you another example. This was told by my teacher. I believe there was an interview for a prestigious post in the company Mahindra & Mahindra. Four directors interviewed every candidate and literally ground each one for an hour and then sent them out. There was a guy called Nallaseth who also attended the interview. He went in and they asked him one question and he gave a one-line answer. All the directors instantly stood up and said he could join. The question was a routine one –“Mr.Nallaseth. What is your aim in joining our company?” He said, “My aim in joining your company is to one day make Mahindra & Mahindra into Nallaseth & Nallaseth. (Laughter). That one line showed tremendous clarity.

In this context you should understand the difference between intelligence and intellectual clarity. When you gather a lot of information about a subject from external sources you become intelligent in that particular subject. You may even get a degree in that field. But you may still lack the ability to control your mind and think with clarity. My teacher has written a book called “The fall of the human intellect.” I think it is available in the counter outside. Those who want to develop can start with that book. Don’t rush it through like a novel but read a paragraph or two every day and reflect deeply.

The third principle is that you should never compartmentalize life. Life is one whole unit. We carry the same mind everywhere. Today people are dividing it into personal, official, social, etc. and want to be productive in one area alone. This is not the right approach. If you are sane you will be sane at all times. Supposing a person here says, “I am normal throughout the day but between 5-6 pm everyday I become very violent and mad. Otherwise I am ok.” (Laughter). Will you call him sane or insane? Long back a CEO came to meet me at my residence. He left his shoes outside and came in. I was at my desk doing some writing work at that time. He said his company was in the top 5 and wanted to learn some quality techniques to increase productivity so that his company can become no.1. I said, “Ok. Lets go out and look at your shoes.” We went out and I pointed at his shoes. One shoe was straight and the other one was turned and slanted. I asked him whether anything was wrong and he said no. What do you think this signifies? Can anyone tell me? (Many people from the audience tried answering.) See, he had kept his shoes like that. It means his mind is also slanted like that (Laughter). He laughed and said, “What is the big deal? It is after all the shoes.” I told him I too understand that the shoe incident is very trivial. But the concern is about the mind behind the action. It is that same mind – same attitude which he will be carrying to office, homes, everywhere. So never compartmentalize life. Self Management helps you to handle life as a whole.

As I told you, this a vast subject and time is very limited. I just want to mention one more point after which I’ll leave it open for questions. You have infinite potential within you. There was an article which I read in the science digest where it was mentioned that a person like Albert Einstein had used only 10% of the total human potential. A normal person uses hardly 3-4% and that too is frittered away in negative thought and emotions like fear, anger, etc. So hardly does anyone use half a percent of his/her potential. The article concluded with a sad note. You have so many hidden powers in your mind. Every one of you sitting here is not an ordinary person. You are all extra ordinary. You have tremendous potential. Spirituality helps you to bring it out.

Shri K Sudarshan conducts classes on Bhagavad Gita every Sunday (7.30 - 9.00am) at Gita Bhavan Hall (II floor), 332, Lloyds Road, Gopalapuram, Chennai.