“There is something in the word “Success” which differentiates the mighty from the mediocre” – that’s what I have always thought in my life. Success is different and it doesn’t come to one and all. It’s like that elusive lady very much there in the dreams but when you open your eyes everything is gone in a whiff. When I look back, I find that I have been true all this while about success, but what exactly the differentiation was, was elusive to me. I have always been thinking of the lady success right from my childhood. I remember my teenager days when I thought I have been godsend to do something great in this world. I needed to know what my success would be what my achievement of greatness would be and I looked around to find a clue about it from those whom the world admired, who was called successful by one and all. I came to a conclusion that one is successful when the rest of the world calls him successful.
In the quest for the same, I, being a poor student of anything but life, pulled out a miracle of IIT from a small town Bhagalpur, where the means are limited. I thought that was success, revered in the spirit for months and then came a revelation that I was wrong. There is something more to success than clearing IIT JEE. Next, I found the world around me craving and vying for the girls around them and somehow it struck me that that was the missing gem in the crown of success. I did all that too and became the prince charming of many. I paused and wondered if it was success? No it was not. I somehow felt miserable. In pursuit of professional excellence, I joined Infosys research labs while leaving ISRO. I was awarded with many accolades in professional life. I was the youngest member of Infosys to address the board, to question them and frame policies with them. Was it success? My answer was “no”-yet again. Then I joined SPJIMR Mumbai. This might have been the dream of millions in the country over the years. I should surely think I was successful. I yet felt like defeated. Then it was one long year with grades, competitions and praises and then I attended ‘Gita Shibir’.
Oh God! all this while I was right. Somewhere in me, there was a thought that said that success as happiness is internal and I was a fool all this while to look for it outside. This was the reason that I kept on discarding all the accolades that I got as futile, while they were revered by many. The inner self in other literature has also been called conscience and I still remember as a child I used to listen to it. It was taught in class that whenever you are in doubt; always ask your conscience as it is pure. However, I know-not when in the race of life, my conscience took a backseat in my thought process and I felt success to be what the other people thought it is, wealth, house, car etc. Although I have wrestled with the thoughts of the world around me for so long, I was failing to keep up in the past few years. I succumbed to vasanas and although I chose the right track for me, while working, I could not focus more on my efforts and also was prone to a negative mindset of failure. While satisfying the urge for success, I was left bewildered in the cycle of vasanas, vritti and karma. I feel that all this life I have been serving my vasanas in the name of finding success. The greed for external success or the objective success is itself a vasana that I had been savouring my whole efforts on.
I realized some vital things - By virtue of being born on earth we are in the state of incessant karma. To work is an inseparable truth from the existence of life form. Be it trees, be it single cellular animal, an ant or a man, we must go through the karma cycle. However, the choice of the karma and the way it is performed is very important. The origin of Karma for everyone arises from the duties that we must perform on this earth. Our duties towards our parents, teachers, the society, the universe and the forces of nature give us the basis to choose our karma. One might choose to serve the society or others might choose to spread the learning from his teacher. One could work for the environment or the universe. The origin of the karma should be from our duties and not from our rights. If one works thinking that I have the right to be the richest person on earth, believe you me, it shall be very unhappy realization when he has actually achieved it. The way or the spirit in which karma is performed is also very important. It must be performed as an act of worship. It should be performed as an important but small part of the cosmic equilibrium around us. The desire for the result is very important, however, the humility to accept the outcome with grace is the most important. It must be understood that we are just –‘nimit matra’ in this cosmos and there are other things in the equation of cosmos that determine the result. Some rationalize it as fate and some as luck. But the point is to accept the results as it comes.
So what now is success? Success is progressive realization of a worthy goal. It is a means of being happy. Success is a fleeting thought. Happiness on the contrary, is in living each moment meaningfully and in synchronization with the inner being. It is important to understand that if one is at ease with the inner core while doing work, he shall always be happy. The first step to be successful is to choose a worthy goal. A worthy goal is one which arises from the above duties mentioned above. Then the next step is to maintain a harmony between all the duties that must be performed above. The efforts put in should be in good faith and true spirit. It should be free from vasana of “Kama, krodh and lobh” and each step should be performed as an act of worship-‘yagna’. While doing the karma, one might hear applauds of the world and sometimes the curses of the same. While the praises around are nice to hear, to value the effort, one should always ask the inner core if the milestone reached is in line with one’s inner self or not. Any point in the karma-chakra should be analyzed with the inner self bhavana which is of ‘sattva’, for it alone is capable of giving true happiness. Any act, which is not in-line with the inner self, may give objective success but never the subjective success or inner success which results in happiness. Instead any such act which is not synchronized with the inner self is prone to creating a feeling of guilt within us.
It is my firm belief now that this guilt is the root cause of all the ailments that we have, somehow it is strongly related to the physical diseases as well. Although it’s yet unproven, if I look back at my life, I think it’s very true for me. Over the years the tasks I have performed in the chakravyuh of vasanas, I feel guilty of not doing my duties and somewhere deep inside; I have always had the realization of guilt. This feeling of guilt has made me weak inside. Although I show a lot of confidence on the face of it, I have almost lost my self-belief over the years. I have ceased to respect myself over the years and hence never really cared about my physique. Today I am obese and am prone to numerous diseases and when I look back, I understand today that, it’s all because of the chakravyuh, the vasanas, and the guilt which made me lose myself mentally and physically. All this was reflected in my psychometric test in PG lab as well (the science of the west). However, I was struggling to find the reason and it took me another nine months (Gita Shibir) to know the science exact science of self.
Now that I know all this about myself, the next challenge is to make things work for me. The last day while discussing with one of my colleagues, I remembered an interesting anecdote long forgotten – that we have two dogs (which now I understand as sanskars and vasana), I can choose to feed any one of them in order for the other to be weaker and the former to be stronger. Thus I am going to concentrate on developing sankars and pursuing goals in-line with my inner self and I firmly believe the vasanas shall fade away on its own. This thought was also reflected in one of the learning called ‘fake it till you make it’. Somehow all this time attending the sessions made me believe that I am not the only one facing these issues and it’s never too late to realize all these learning in life and I have noticed a couple of deliberate changes in me. I tend to talk to my parents much more than I did earlier. I also think about them more often and find more committed towards them. I have started to rethink my relationships with lot of people around and from the past. Now that I can see that people are essentially good inside and the same inside and that the ego of proving or disproving my success to others is futile, I would love to get back to my best friends whom I have long lost. I also understand that true goal is happiness and the role of success as “the progressive realization of the worthy goal” and am working towards finding a worthy goal for myself, of course in line with my inner self I think the end of this course has seen me walking on a new path, a path of self realization, true success and inner happiness and a different way of looking at things and I already like it.
