Know Not God But Know Yourself

You know, India is the only country where spirituality was honored without having any concept of God.
In the Jain school, there is no concept of God sitting somewhere outside. And it is the same in Buddhism as well. So, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what God is, or where God is. don’t need to believe in God, at least you believe in yourself. Then you will know who you are.
Who are you? Are you the body? Are you the mind? Are you the thought? Who are you! Know who you are, that is good enough.
On the path of wanting to know who you are, your integrity, your honesty, your compassion and love for everybody, your sensitivity – all these will come up. And this is godliness!

In India, in the Upanishads it is not said to first believe in God. The Upanishads say, 'Know Yourself”. This is what is emphasized.

If you say, I don’t believe in anything, I am an atheist, then you know, atheists have a very big problem. There is fear inside them.

There are two types of people, one who believe in God, and one who don’t believe in god and have terrible fear because they don’t know what is going to happen to them. Lack of confidence, lack of compassion, all these come up.
I would say, it is immaterial if you believe in god or not. What you need to know is who you are. You need to have some spiritual practice, some way to log on to what you are.
If you say that you don’t believe in anything, at least you believe in what you are saying, right? What you should say is, 'I don’t believe in anything except myself'.
You cannot say, 'I don’t believe in anything', then you are not even believing the words that you are saying!

What I would say is that, religion or a concept of God has its own value. It helps people in distress, it uplifts the spirit of people, and it keeps the ethical and moral responsibility. But I don’t see it is a must in order to be a good human being, or to progress in spirituality. That will come automatically.

Tell me, what do you need for business? You need intuition, you need innovation, and you need inspiration.
How would you move forward if there is no competition? Competition inspires you.
So, intuition, innovation and inspiration, all three things come from spirituality.

Spirituality means what? Calming yourself down, centering yourself, and seeing life from a bigger perspective. This is what brings a pleasant environment around you. With spirituality, your quality of communication also improves. Don’t you want better communication with people? Communication, compassion, good character, consistency – all these are gifts of spirituality.
So, not directly, but indirectly these aspects enrich your life. When your life is enriched, you’d be a better communicator, better negotiator (good communication is necessary for negotiation), your intuition works better, you become more innovative and you’ll be an inspiration to others. So in these ways spirituality helps you with business.

Another thing is ethics. Spirituality also brings in ethics in business.
Nobody wants others to be unethical towards them. Do you want your customer to be unethical towards you? No!
Not doing something which you don’t want other to do to you is ethics. And it is spirituality that gives sustenance to ethics in business.

Business always goes up and down. When there is a down trend in business, it is spirituality which gives you immense strength to hold on and to move forward.

To let go of stress, do some meditation, some breathing exercises and pranayama; this is the first thing.

Second, look back and see, haven’t you had some challenges in the past? You have had, isn't it? If you are anxious today (because of something), the same situation you have faced before also, haven’t you? This is not the first time. And you have overcome that situation. So remembrance of a stressful situation in the past which you could overcome will give you confidence to let go of stress now.

Third is faith; faith that there is a higher power that is going to help me, I am not alone. And this stressful situation is nothing, this is going to go away.

Fourth option is you look around and you see people who are more stressed than you! If you are at a loss and someone is at a bigger loss, you get some sort of consolation!
So I would say, this would be the last option to make you feel better.
Say you have some problem happening in your area, then you remember what is happening in Egypt! You will feel that at least your situation is better than theirs.

Those who experience lot of failure at home, or someone troubles them, they often do this. They start counting the failures of others to justify their own.
So in these ways we can get rid of stress.

Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, has said, 'Santosha Anuttamah Sukha Labhah'. A determination that 'no matter what I will not lose my smile' will help you. You may lose it, but a time will come when you will not lose at all.

Tell me, why do want to focus?
(Ans: It’s a question of my job and livelihood!)

That is it! This awareness that this is a question of your livelihood is enough to make you focus!
See, focus is needed when there is no love and passion. If you have a passion for something, then you don’t need to focus on that. This is the first thing.
Secondly, by owning it, by thinking, 'This is my own business', focus automatically come. If it’s an uncle’s business, or your father’s business then the focus is less! But if you own it then you don’t need to focus at all. The focus comes by itself.

Yes, often people come to the spiritual path when they have undergone a relationship failure, or they have undergone a huge loss in business. Then they leave everything and come here. No such thing has happened with me! Right from childhood I had this desire in my mind to do something. It just kept unfolding on its own.

I also did all these things, studied at a college, got a degree, etc., but in mind there was always this feeling that something awaits me.
In school I used to say that the world is waiting for me, I have to go everywhere. My classmates used to think I was kidding, and that I was just saying something, and I was ridiculed for it. When they would come home and ask, my mother would say that we don’t have any relatives outside India at all.
So my classmates wrote on the door of one of the toilets all the names of the places, London, 'New York', etc., and said that the toilet is only where I was going to go, not anywhere else.
I wasn’t lying, but I just kept saying what came to my mind, what I felt at the time, that my family and my people are everywhere.

So, sometimes, at a given time, we are not able to explain certain things because life is much more than what we think it is. There are so many mysteries to life. Life itself is a mystery and we have to live it, that’s all.

When I took the journey of The Art of living, when I took it all over the world, there were many challenges. People would say, 'Oh, some holy man having a beard and all has come', and would ridicule that what can such a person teach me.
They had these preconceived notions that Yoga means standing on a bed of nails or something; that you have to grow your hair and be unhygienic.
The image of India and Indians was filled with many notions. I’m talking about 30 years ago. It is not the same today, but back then, there were a lot of prejudices I had to face.
Not just me, many people from India had to face this in those days. People would even change their names, so that one do not know that this person is from so and so country.

But today that is not the case, the world has dropped a lot of prejudices. They have become much more open minded in embracing the culture of the whole world, and there is a larger sense of belongingness.
But it’s very interesting, some other time I will tell you how we had many events which are amusing.

Don’t run, stop. We need to move forward with confidence. There is no problem which you cannot resolve.
Growing weary of everything is not a bad thing, but don’t let it take you to depression. It should take you towards enthusiasm.

Skillfully, you need a skill.
If you are dealing with your boss, never make him feel that you have a better idea than him, and impose your idea. He is not going to accept it. You should always give a light suggestion, like, 'Sir, I think like that, but you know it better'.
These few extra words, 'You know it better', makes the boss pick up your point.
If you tell him, 'Sir, what you are saying is not correct, this is correct', if you emphasize too much that you are correct and he is not, whether it is your boss or your father or your father-in-law, he is not going to take it.

So, you need to have the skill in communicating with your elders. You need to also have the skill to communicate with people who are your equals and a completely differently skill to communicate to those who are younger to you.
This is where you have to think – how skillfully are you conveying to them what you want to say.