K.C.Lall Memorial Lecture by Mr.P.C.Sen on 14.02.99.
We are Gymkhanites. In my present job I come in
contact with many Sr.IAS officers and Ministers. In fact people often say that we are the ICS of
Indian Railways. Many, many from here have excelled in their respective
spheres. Lets contemplate-are we really excellent? If there is nothing wrong
with us, why does the whole world hate us? It’s a fact that we are the most
hated tribe in Indian Railways . I came upon this all the more when I was
called upon to give a lecture at (Baroda) Indian Railway Staff College; I felt
the venom that was spitted out against us. Lets see what’s wrong with us. We
have a lot of external excellence but we don’t have internal excellence.. In
the golden days when we came to Jamalpur, it was a question of unity. Because
we were a very small number of persons, we were united. What was the result of
being together, the result was that we got two years seniority. Net result was
instead of ending as CMEs we were ending up as CRBs – guess what happened then?
Twice has our seniority been challenged
in court. By that time I had left Railways & was with Burnstandard. There
was a gentleman in the Railways who from within Railways was eager to fight in
court. I was assisting him from outside because I could stand up in court, my
lawyer could go to court. But the person who was helping me from outside the
Railways was ridiculed, he was hounded, transferred, ultimately he died a
premature death from heart attack. First part of the chapter was closed thus.
It
went to court again when I was in Peerless. This time the people who were
helping me from inside the Railways, simply dared not to sit and discuss it in
Board’s office because ex-Special Class Apprentices were spying and any
discussion made was immediately reported to the traffic department. We found
some tracks. We found some spies and we know they were being bribed with
GM-ship. I will not take any names.
But
this does not speak well of us. Why are we doing this? This is because we lack
internal excellence. A lot of people would have heard of the word “Rat Race”.
That word was not there in our times. But I don’t think anyone understands its
meaning. If you look up the dictionary “Rat” means a betrayer. So when we go
out from the Railways into the commercial world everybody says we have joined
the Rat Race. Its commonly used but people don’t understand the meaning. It
means that we have to be the best betrayer and then only can we get where we
want to get and that’s what is happening amongst us. We are betraying our
cause. We are betraying our community for self gratification. The only words we
people understand are-I, me, myself.
This
“Rat Race” will give you a very temporary gain. I know that the younger generation
here will ask me, so what, everybody is doing it and they are getting maximum
returns why are you telling us not to do it?
Let’s see what science says. See, when we sit to
mediate, when we sit down to talk, when we sit down to fight, when we sit down
to study, a particular wave comes out. So, when I am greedy, when I am hurting
somebody, a particular brain wave comes out (EEG & EMG gives a good idea of
what brain waves are coming out ). This resonates with similar brain waves. So
if my brain waves are love, which is the most powerful brain wave, all the
brain waves will affect me, so when I hate somebody all the hate brain waves of
the world are coming back to me. I’m talking of scientific facts because this
is being used by military intelligence in the US. So all the hate brain waves
are coming back to me which means that my own action is coming back to me as reaction.
I don’t think you people have heard of a person called
David Bohm and Alen Aspect. They are advanced physicists. They have done tests
in Bell inequality theorem, where they have shown that communication can travel
faster than light. Does it travel faster than light violating Einstein’s
principle ? The only explanation they found was that every thing in this
universe, all electrons, protons, atoms, everything is inter connected. It’s
like a whole. If you cut off your toe it is going to hurt you. Why? It’s a part
of you. same thing, if you are hurting somebody, you are going to get hurt. I
would request all of you to consider the other person, consider all of us
together and not as individual plain creature.
Let’s see what two of the most famous Japanese people,
who built Japan from ashes, say. One is Akio Morita (Sony). I presume you people have read his book on modem
management practices. I’m just quoting , “excessive and unfair competition in
Society and education has destroyed lives and is debilitating Japan.”
Matsushita (Panasonic) –“not by bread alone ”. He said
,“If you immerse yourself totally in the pursuit of personal gain-society will
suffer violence and disorder.” All this is the result of greed. We are gaining
our left brain. The right brain has totally been neglected. We have to work for right brain education.
We are taught to be a manager. Who is a manager? Where
does the word manager come from? It comes from the word “managerie” meaning
“training the horses”. How do you train
horses? By a whip. We as manager still think of running the organisation with
whip. Today the world’s number one leader in the commercial world is Jack
Welch. I hope you all have heard of him. Jack Welch is the current Chairman of
General Electric. He says that we don’t need more managers ,what we need is
leaders, we’ve had enough of managers,
dictating and getting work done. We need leaders now, whom people will follow.
However the leaders cannot be produced by just teaching Mechanical Engineering.
No way. You have to think of going inside every mechanism. Now , I could talk
of other people but I will keep it short. Oliver Holms and Peter Drucker .
Now I’ll talk, of just one more person -Swami
Vivekanand. He said that ,”The education that will procure more pleasure and
food will look glorious and then will degrade and degenerate. It will give rise
to material prosperity as also rise of jealousies and hatred , competition and
merciless cruelty” . We see how relevant it is today. Jamshedji Tata wrote a
letter to Swami Vivekanand and told him that I am going to set up an institute and give all the
money to him so that he can build a
place which will, “be a crusade for aesthetic living and high thinking among
Scientists and Businessmen”.
I coud have, and I wanted to but time does not permit.
We are going to suffer for being tempted. How will we suffer? Cancer, we are
all prone to cancer. Why? Because carcinogenes is the gene that causes cancer.
A normal is in an absolutely balanced state, you tip it slighty and you get a
carcinogene. My mother, she died of lung cancer. nobody smoked in my house not
even my father. Then how could she get Lung Cancer. She was deaf. She was under
tremendous strain-an unhappy marriage because of her deafness. She died of
cancer. What did it come from? It came from the mind under stress. When you
cheat somebody please remember that, it remains in your mind and it keeps
hurting you and illness comes from that. So, to keep Gymkhana society together
to really prosper in life you have to get some other type of education also.
And I would finish that in a few words. You have the best school here-the Bihar
School of Yoga. I would suggest that every month you get a speaker from there
to give you a talk, what you call a Satsang. Let him talk. This Divinity used
to be a subject in our schools when we were young. Now, Divinity has been
thrown out of the window but you could teach people a little bit of meditation
instead of divinity. Let there be a meditation room. You see we Indians started
meditation and now we are learning it from the west. All the best books on
meditation are from west. Teach them meditation. Teach them how to go inside.
And here Mrs. Jain, she frequents to Bihar School of Yoga. You see, every
20,000 yrs there is a pole shift and this goes on , there will be a sea of
change in the society, prepare yourself for that society and prepare yourself
to be a better human beings and that will come to you through meditation. And
you cannot meditate unless you have a fit body . What is Hatayoga? Hatayoga is to
enable your body to sit in meditation for hours without thinking that your
ankles are paining, your knees are paining. Unless you have a very fit body you
cannot meditate. I’m telling you this after 25 years of study that you must
exercise. I find the parallel bars gone, sports is going down. So, exercise,
meditation and a bit of Satsang is very important. Please inculcate this.
Thank
You