Sadhguru speaks at London Business School on March 8, 2012:
"In the last few centuries, leadership has moved from one segment to another. Maybe a few hundred years ago, religious leadership was the most dominant leadership. Then the military leaderships took over. Then in the last hundred years, democratically elected political leadership took over. It’s beginning to happen, in the next 10-15 years’ time, you will see the economic leaders will be the most influential leaders. Already they are beginning to be, but in the next 15 years’ time for sure they will be on top of the leadership. And that’s why I speak at business schools (laughs). The future leaders are being manufactured here. They better get it right.
We have known the absurdity of religious leadership, tyranny of military leadership, the confounding status of democratic leadership. We hope the business leadership of the future, the economic leadership of the future, will be a more sensible leadership for this planet.
Because being a leader means everything that you do, every thought that you generate, every emotion that you generate, every action that you perform has an impact on millions of people. It’s a certain privilege and responsibility that one has to conduct properly. We haven’t seen much of that on the planet. We have seen a few, but largely leadership has been driven by personal ambitions.
So what is ambition – something wrong with it? No, nothing wrong with it, it is just that ambition is just an exaggeration of the existing. If you have this much money, you’re thinking about that much money, if you have this much wealth, you’re thinking of that much wealth. If you have this much power, you’re thinking of that much power. So ambition is just an exaggeration of what is existing right now. Vision is essentially, as the word itself suggests… it is a new possibility. Ambition, or the expression of ambition, is always forceful in its fulfillment. Vision is always inclusive. Ambition is aggressive. It’s a conquest. Vision is an embrace.
If we go ‘business as usual’ people say we have only 15-20 years left on this planet. The only thing that is saving the planet right now is 50 % of the population is lazy. It is not human intelligence that is saving the planet, it is not human love that is saving the planet, it is not human compassion that is saving the planet – it is human lethargy. It’s a shame. It’s only human lethargy that is saving the planet. If all the 7 billion people get busy and start using all the modern technology, I think we’ll eat it up. In 15-20 years, they’ll be no planet left for us.
So the leadership has to evolve into a visionary position. To be in a state of vision means – first of all why does somebody select or elect a leader is, he is supposed to be capable of seeing something that other people are not able to see. That means he has a vision. Something is coming, he is able to see, he’s got binoculars. Others have simple eyes or spectacles, or they’re blind. So there’s one man sitting on top and able to see something that everybody else is not able to see. If he’s not able to see that, he’s a blind leader, and there are too many blind leaders, because they’re blinded by their own ambition.
Once you have fixed your ambition, you’re like a fixed entity. You have to go there. Vision is not like that. A Vision is flexible, always relevant to the situations in which we exist. The vision is about the realities in which we exist, not an exaggerated version of what we have in our minds. There is a beautiful story in the Indian lore. A monkey wanted to get some nuts which were in a jar. Put his hand inside, picked up a fistful, but the neck was so narrow, he couldn’t pull it out. He struggled and struggled, but he’s not willing to let go of even one single nut. This is ambition. You’re stuck there, it
doesn’t matter, you have a fixed ambition, you have to get there, you have to get there.
Then another wiser monkey came. You know monkeys, there are some with some wisdom, you know? The scientific studies say human DNA is only 1.23% ahead of that of a chimpanzee. 1.23% percent – you can ignore the percentage isn’t it? Not much of a difference. So another monkey came and told him to let go. The jar was big, so both of them together turned it over, got all the nuts out. That’s vision.
Ambition is a fixed state of mind, and, no matter what, you want to get there, whatever the consequence, you want to get there. This is what is destroying the world. So leadership – as I said earlier, leadership means every thought that you generate has an impact on many, many, many people. When such a privilege has been given to you, when your work has become that important, at any time, if any of you feel your work is important, that means the first thing you need to work upon is yourself. Because no human being is going to produce anything that is beyond himself. Whatever you do, in some way, is only going to be an expression of who you are, nothing more. Nobody can do anything more than himself.
So if we want to enhance our activity, first thing is, we’ve got to enhance ourselves. But in modern education systems, such ideas are completely absent, because we’re only trying to enhance our skills by knowledge, we’re not trying to enhance this being the way he is.
What does it mean by enhancing this being? As you sit here, when you were born, you were only this much isn’t it. When you were born, were you like this, or were you small? (Small) You became like this– how did this happen? (Natural growth) No, it didn’t happen naturally, you’ve been stuffing it every day! It didn’t happen naturally, isn’t it? So, you eat a piece of bread, you eat a banana, it transforms it into a human being. What you call as my body right now is actually a heap of food, isn’t it. If you eat a banana, over the afternoon, it becomes a human being. By eating bananas, you don’t go bananas. So there is an intelligence here, there is a competence here, that is capable of transforming a banana into a human being. Does it exist within you or no?
If this intelligence which is capable of transforming a banana into a human being, if this intelligence found a conscious expression in your day to day life of you being a leader or a business person, you would function magically, not miserably, isn’t it? Your body, you accumulated. What you call as my mind is an accumulation of impressions. Beyond these things there is intelligence that is universal in nature. Beyond this is an intelligence which is all-inclusive. Beyond this is an intelligence which is functioning in tandem with everything else is the existence. Today it’s a scientific fact that every cell in your body, every atom in your body, right now is in communication with everything else in the existence.
So once a person comes to an inner experience where it is no more a concept, but it is a living experience for him, that is he sits here, he’s in an all-inclusive state, if this dimension of experience is brought into leadership, the very way they think and feel and act in the world will transform in a tremendous way."
