JOURNAL-November 14, 2005

Living Fully

By Ravi Krishnamurthy

This article is based on the learning that occurred during a talk at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras on September 27, 2005 in a forum called Relections. The purpose of this forum is to introduce the students to different viewpoints and broaden their outlook beyond the engineering education offered by IIT.

IIT is my alma mater and is one of the top engineering schools in the world. This talk was mainly attended by students with a few faculty members being present. While the examples used here are somewhat specific to IIT, the principles that emerged are relevant to all people, especially youth, who wish to be happy and successful in their lives.

This "talk" took the form of an interactive discussion. As the speaker, rather than give a lecture, I asked questions, elicited responses and then shared my insights and views on the respective topics. Through this collective inquiry, many insights emerged that have great relevance to our day-to-day life. I wish to thank everyone who contributed to this discussion; many things emerge in cooperative learning that are difficult to see by individual learning alone.

In this article, I have attempted to capture the spirit of the discussion, as it would be impossible to capture everything that went on. In the spirit of inquiry, it mostly takes the form of questions and answers. Wherever appropriate, I have added more insights and explanations to provide clarity.

We begin the article with an inquiry into the title of the talk that led us on to more self-awareness and knowledge. Interestingly, and fittingly, this title was chosen by the students themselves from a short abstract of the proposed talk that I had sent to them.

What is Living Fully?

Viewpoints that were expressed included being successful, having what we want in life, and being free. Out of these, the one that stood out for me was "to live fully is to be at ease".

From my perspective, living fully is to experience life completely and naturally. It is to experience the senses fully, when everything is joy, including the simplest things like drinking water, eating a banana and taking a morning walk. A fundamental component of living fully is to have harmonious relationships; relationships with our loved ones, friends, colleagues, bosses, nature, career, nation, and so on. One of the best ways to characterize a harmonious relationship is “being at ease”, which is why I love that viewpoint expressed.

Digging into this further, we can say that life is relationships. You arise in relationships with the persons and things mentioned above. Thus, when your relationships are harmonious, you have a harmonious life. In other words, you are beginning to live fully.

When you are living fully, if you choose to focus on being successful in the world, you will be extremely successful. That has been my experience and the experience of many others.

When you say Life is Relationships, are you saying that I am dependent on others to be happy?

Whether you like it or not, you are dependent on others. Even the most basic things like the air you breathe in comes from outside, you are breathing the air that others breathed sometime ago. Similarly, your emotions are affected by the people around you. If you look closely, everything is connected. Inner harmony comes when your relationships are harmonious.

At the same time, inner joy does not depend on changing others and the events around you. What changes is your perception of others and the events around you.

You may ask, “Is this contrary to what the ancient seers have spoken about detachment?” There is no contradiction. Only when you are detached will your relationships have harmony and ease in them.

I like to state it like this for your contemplation.

You are dependent on everything but your joy and happiness do not depend on changing anything!

Please have some patience as you look at this and other statements in this article, and do not hastily jump to conclusions. I request you not to immediately reject or accept these or any other statements in this article. That is the typical response of the mind which likes to wrap things neatly in a box; if things fit in the box, it accepts it, if not, it rejects it. I am not requesting you to agree with me; I am requesting you to let your mind wander and explore a little bit. Think about this article as a way to help your life rather than just being something interesting you saw in a website or magazine.

Living Fully is not about having things put in predictable places. These are your choices; do you want to be bird in a cage with a predictable life or do you want to be a free bird that cannot always predict where its next meal comes from, but is confident in its ability to gather food, thrive and enjoy the mystery of life?

How can I make the right decision? For example, after graduation, should I stay in India or should I go abroad?

Decisions cannot be made with the mind alone. We shall take the following examples.

• You are in a boat and two people are drowning, your brother and your friend. You can only rescue one. Who should you rescue?
• There is a beggar or homeless person on the street. Should I give him money or not?
• Should I stay in India or go abroad?

Any decision made from the mind will lead to conflict. To illustrate this, let us take the last question which is very relevant in your lives. Let us say you make a “noble” decision and decide “I will stay in India and help others instead of being self-serving and going to USA for money”. A few years may pass and you are at peace with this decision. You are working here at a regular job, helping a few people and living with your family. Then you hear about someone who went abroad, made millions and funded an incredible project that helps hundreds of people. Immediately your conflict starts. Maybe if I had gone abroad, I would have been able to do such things, and so on. This is not to say that going abroad is the right decision. For you could do that, then live a regular life abroad, perhaps even help some people, but you will always think about what might have been if you had stayed in India. The same thing happens throughout our lives, we are always wondering if we have done the right thing.

To live fully is to function from the heart. When you are living fully, every decision and action is complete. Then, there is no carry-over and second-guessing of the decision. Once again, when relationships are harmonious, your heart flowers and you make clear decisions that bring no conflict.

This sort of decision cannot come from the mind. There is no manual or rulebook that gives an absolute right decision. This is a little difficult for us engineers since we are experts at the use of the mind. The mind is excellent in the external world, but it has no place in the inner world of love and relationships. As your relationships become harmonious, you can learn to live from the heart and use the mind for the things that it is suited for.

What about decisions that we have already made of which we are not sure if we are right or wrong?

This begins with an inner inquiry which is a spiritual process of awakening. As you become more aware of these conflicts inside, you automatically receive help from the Universe, Higher Intelligence, Higher Self, or from God, however you wish to characterize the Higher Intelligence around us. This help can take many forms. Through this help, you can release the charge or emotion associated with an action or decision. This charge is fueling this conflict of whether this is right or wrong, and when the charge is released, the conflict disappears and Inner Peace begins.

Can you show us some simple, practical exercises to help?

Please note that it is important that you be aware of your life and start to see some of these things in your life. Simply agreeing with me or believing me (or disbelieving me) will not free you from these conflicts. Your own truth and awareness can free you to live fully.

The first contemplation involves being aware of the “coincidences” in your life and seeing them as the action of a Higher Intelligence. As you close your eyes, and look into your life, you will start to see how many things come together as and when we need them to help us achieve things or receive things. You might have wanted something and immediately a person shows up who has that book or information. You are thinking about someone and they call or show up at the tea-shop at the same time as you, or you run into them as you are biking to class. If you look closely such “coincidences” abound in our lives and we dismiss them as luck or chance.

Instead, start to see them as the response of a Higher Intelligence that is connecting all of us. If you can start to see it that way, your love increases and these coincidences turn into miracles. These kinds of happenings become everyday and life begins to flow very easily and smoothly.

The second contemplation is to focus on the importance of gratitude. We continue to see how so many people and things come together to help you achieve or receive something. For example, we may think that we got into IIT (or achieved something) through our efforts. But in truth, so many factors influenced it. Pandit Nehru had a vision, many people were involved in the creation of the IITs, your teachers helped you, your parents gave you opportunities, the professors set exams, and examiners graded exams fairly and so on in order for you to have the opportunity. You certainly played an important role and should be praised for that, but did you do it by yourself? We take all of these other factors for granted. Even if we take a look at simple everyday things like the rice we eat, so many events occurred in the universe for that food to come to our table. A farmer grew the rice, someone transported it to the store, your father bought it and your mother cooked it and so on. Specifically feel gratitude towards your mother for giving you life and taking care of you. You would not have anything without that.

The above contemplations are some important beginnings in setting right all our relationships, especially our human relationships. We can go into more exercises and detail in follow-on talks or courses.

Why should I have gratitude? The farmer grew the rice because he needs money…

When eating a grain of rice, if you can feel gratitude towards the universe, the people and various factors involved in putting the rice on your table, then that experience of eating the grain of rice is magical. Isn’t it an amazing intelligence that a grain grows into a plant? When this gratitude is absent, eating rice is simply a mechanical thing.

I am not saying, either here, or any where else in the article, that “you should feel this” or “you should love’ or “you should have gratitude”, etc. All I am pointing out is that if you see things a certain way, if you feel gratitude for everything, you are happy and living fully. Gratitude is one of the important factors in having a harmonious relationship. In the modern world, we take people for granted either quoting money or duty as the reasons for their action. I am not asking you to analyze and discover their motivations; I am simply saying that if you have gratitude you are at ease.

Start becoming aware of your lives, your motivations, and see the various connections that make up the universe. The journey begins where you are. Awareness of what you are and inner authenticity is the key to inner growth.

I don’t see the point of awareness. So, I see that I am lying and say “so what”. What is the point?

Try being aware and see for yourself. By being aware, I do not mean simply saying I am a liar and so what. Start watching yourself as you lie; see how you are lying because you are afraid they will not like you if you speak the truth, you are afraid of being ridiculed, you are trying to fit in, etc. Once you start to see like this, your life will automatically start to change.

Our mind tends to reject simple solutions and wants complex ones. Living fully and being aware are very simple things. Little children do it naturally!

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started to live fully?

For many years I was an agnostic and had no interest in spirituality. A crisis occurred in my family, and I started to realize that this was a manifestation of problems in relationships. I did not know how to set relationships into harmony. At that exact time, I was introduced to the Oneness Movement, which is another example of the “co-incidences” I spoke about earlier. I then did many courses that gave me great clarity and insight into my condition and healed many relationships. My life started to flower and I became actively involved, setting up centers and leading many courses and seminars. I now have my own practice where I help individuals and organizations discover Inner Peace and become successful in the day-to-day world. For me, it is great joy to share with all of you. My work gives me joy and even the simplest things are a source of joy. I have also been successful in the conventional sense, for instance, helping found a software company that is doing quite well.

Why should I study with teachers and spiritual movements like the Oneness Movement?

I could turn this around and ask “why should you study at IIT or any other engineering college to be an engineer?” These institutions fulfill a similar purpose in the spiritual field that IIT fulfills in engineering. They have been setup with a particular vision and mission and have trained guides and professors to evolve and fulfill the mission and vision. Equally important is that they provide a community of students and seekers with which you can interact and learn collectively. While it is theoretically possible that you can make significant progress without the help of such institutions, for most people they provide an important factor. However, what you do is your choice and is completely individual. Certainly, your effort, intent, inclination and motivation play a key role just as they do in your study at IIT.

You cannot leave things like this. You have simply raised many questions and not given us answers. What is your purpose in being here?

Thank you for bringing this up and asking me to summarize. I can see that I have raised many questions and they have not been satisfactorily answered, and some of you are disturbed. I will not apologize for this. My main purpose in coming here is to provoke thought. That is the purpose of a forum like the Reflections where you can be exposed to different perceptions and points of view.

The questions we have raised and discussed are very fundamental questions and I did not expect them to be all answered in a short talk. I must also add that I did not expect to end up covering so many topics, and I am pleasantly surprised at the depth and level of the discussion.

Each of you has to answer these questions in your own way. I am confident that if you seek you will find answers; that is why I have boldly allowed these questions to be raised here. In fact if you look closely, you have raised these questions and I have simply facilitated the process by bringing them to the surface and helping you to inquire into them. I am not the one who has disturbed you. I have simply shown some of you that you are disturbed!

Some of you will go back and continue to ponder these questions and the answers will find you. Others will go back and in a few days the disturbance will get lost in your day-to-day routines and nothing would have changed. One way you would have gained something valuable, the other way you would have lost nothing significant.

There is an awakening happening throughout the world today and it has become very easy to find answers to such fundamental questions. As youth, you are an important group of individuals who can have a significant impact on society and I feel it is important for some of you to ask these questions and find answers. My experience is that only inner awakening of key individuals can solve the world’s problems, all of which basically come from feeling divided and conflicted within. Thus, I would like to invite some of you to take up this challenge, become happy and help humanity and the world. Only happy people can help others become happy!

Thank you very much for a wonderful evening. It was great to be back in IIT and share with all of you. My thanks to Professor L.S. Ganesh, Professor Devdas Menon, and the Reflections team for this opportunity.

The author graduated from IIT Madras in 1991 with a B. Tech in Electronics and Communication. After a successful career in engineering and software, he currently travels around the world giving workshops and seminars helping people to live fully and helping people and organizations become more effective. He can be reached at ravi@integralseeing.com and would love to hear your feedback, questions and comments on the article.