The Bhagavad Gita & the Flawed Creed of the Entrepreneur
Since the end of WWII, the entire planet seems to have adopted the philosophy
and creed of American entrepreneurship, however from the metaphysical
perspective this creed religion-ideology is deeply flawed.
I grew up with the ideal of the individual entrepreneur. Like most Americans, I
never questioned its value or how the creed of entrepreneurship was affecting
the world - because I lived in it. I remained unconsciously inundated with no
possibility of any objectivity. The American entrepreneur was embedded in my
psyche as the ‘good guy,’ the hope of humanity, the ‘can-do’ man who takes
charge and leads the world into a better life, and promises the freedom provided
by common sense capitalism.
Now as the American Empire is beginning to unravel before our eyes, it seems to
me a good time to understand the limitations and flaws of this American religion
- the entrepreneur. A brilliant insightful analysis is found in a translation of
the Bhagavad Gita, interpreted by K.K. Nair/Krishna Chaitanya.
***
K.K. Nair/Krishna Chaitanya
K.K. Nair was an intellectual sage and one of my favorite Indian thinkers. His
pen name was Krishna Chaitanya and I have gone to great lengths to acquire
everything he ever wrote, because sadly his books are now out of print. His was
a mind capable of absorbing all the ideas of this world, both east and west. He
had not only read everything of any consequence written in the western world,
but also in the east including the Sanskrit texts.
K.K. Nair elucidates the flawed reasoning behind the American creed/religion of
the entrepreneur in his wonderful commentary on the Bhagavad Gita – The Gita for
Modern Man. In chapter three, he exposes the development of this ideology that
had mesmerized my psyche since childhood and even today holds millions of others
trapped in the ‘holy grail’ illusions of its limited webs.
The discussion begins with an analysis of verse 15 in Chapter III of the
Bhagavad Gita. Krishna tells Arjuna that the origin of all ‘acts’ is the
Oneness. The Oneness is termed as Brahman
in the Gita, and here Krishna defines
Brahman as that which is imperishable and all pervading. In other words, God
is Everything, there is nothing in this universe except God consciousness, the
Oneness, Brahman. Therefore every act
originates out of and arises from its source, which is God consciousness.
“The all pervading Brahman is
eternally established in sacrifice.” The One sacrifices Its Oneness and takes on
the temporal ‘appearance’ of multiplicity in order to create the Universe to
play in.
Sacrifice is any act performed in the state of awareness that everything is
sacred.
However, our actions lose their ‘sacred’ vibrational frequency when we forget
and lose our inner connection to the Oneness within; when we forget that we are
in fact a piece of God consciousness, as is everyone and everything in this
universe. As our awareness sinks into differentiated perception and our real
nature is concealed, so does the consciousness of our actions fall and move
further into the external manifested five-sense hologram. Thus we are carried
deeper and deeper into our self-created delusions.
The Sanskrit word YAGNA means sacrifice. The etymology of the word sacrifice is
SACRED. The act performed in conscious awareness of our Union with the One is
sacred. The act performed in the consciousness of self-interest will drive us
further and further away from the awareness of the God-with us all.
This is “sin” – the only real sin is being unaware that you are the Oneness. As
we forget our real nature and move deeper into illusory states of differentiated
perception and delusion, we fall into sin - the miasma of amnesia that binds us
in the temporal illusory hologram and entraps us in Samsara, the endless rounds
of repeating birth and death.
Sacred acts would of necessity be altruistic.
When we come to know that we are the Oneness - and therefore understand that we
are connected to every other man, woman, and child on the planet, and the planet
herself as the oceans, rivers, flora and fauna, everything - then our actions
with and for these beings, and the Earth, are actions taken for our own Self.
K.K. Nair says that the poet and author of the Bhagavad Gita, Vyasa wants man to
be altruistic in whatever he does because such altruism would be derived from
the very nature and structure of reality. The Creator lacks nothing, is
compelled by no need, and yet works for the world. The enlightened know that
they are united in God consciousness, and therefore whatever is done is seen as
a sacred act performed in this understanding of Union with All.
K.K. Nair: “ The man who does not help turn the wheel thus revolving wrecks the
world system, and himself too, since he cannot survive in a wrecked world. On
the other hand, his own security and progress are in no way endangered if he
works altruistically. For his work for others, for the world, will yield benign
results for all including him. The residual yield of altruistic action is ample
for his genuine needs.”
The majority of people who are caught up in the whirlwinds of consumer
capitalism have no respect for altruistic thinking. Self-interest and success
are all that matter. Those who work for others and the good of the world are
seen as contemptible fools. Success is equated with money, no matter how that
money was obtained, amassed, or grabbed.
“The productive frenzy of the outlook which has contempt for soft-headed
altruism and is wholly devoted to the hard-headed pursuit of self interest has
led to a war on nature and a war on fellowmen, and both now point to race
extinction. [KKN]”
The words altruistic and entrepreneur are rarely heard together. Of course the
usual justification is that the successful entrepreneur provides people with
jobs. But as K.K. Nair points out, these jobs daily mangle the spirits of men in
meaningless labor.
K.K Nair quotes other maverick viewpoints: “Modern production periodically
destroys men by heaps and piles in war”
- and “the cult of development practiced by the affluent really means a
war on the very substance of the poor” - and “violates the inner limits of man
and the outer limits of nature.”
***
The creed of the American entrepreneur now rules the world, so let us examine
its origins and “its vast miscegenation of other equally non-human ideas. [KKN]”
In 1776 Adam Smith wrote the ‘Wealth of Nations’ and laid down the code of
self-interest. The acceptance of this creed of self-interest is said to have
influenced Darwin’s formulation of his theory of evolution on the basis of a
competitive struggle for existence. Herbert Spencer developed the concepts of
Smith and Darwin into a social Darwinism, and this became the philosophy of
American entrepreneurship – which today is the economic philosophy of the whole
world.
Self-interest quickly turns into selfishness and greed in the minds of lesser
and more desperate fearful men. ‘Greed is good’? The mere egotist is worshipped
and regaled as hero for the ephemeral acquisition of success based solely on
wealth and fame – with little or no concern for integrity, wisdom, or concern
for others and the planet.
Getting ahead means leaving others behind. This “creed has endorsed a psychology
of unlimited desire and a theory that removed the onus from unlimited
appropriation, reduced experience to instrumental terms, and encouraged a
perception of the self … which defines its boundaries in competitive activity
[KKN].”
Winning becomes everything. The etymology of the word ‘sport’ is play, mirth,
merriment, jest. In the hands of the entrepreneur sport has become bottom-line
business and the business of sports has become corporate. The ideals that once
made the disciplined life of an athlete a source of character building and
integrity are now mere means to profit. The owners of teams are successful in
proportion to their ability to pay great athletes. These men and women have no
allegiance to any team, but only to their own bank account. I can’t blame them
really –their behavior is the consequence of the entire system and their career
life expectancy is short.
Far more grave, sinister, and perhaps irreversibly destructive are the effects
of this ‘creed of the entrepreneur’ on the planet. “Enthusiastically embracing a
creed which appealed to his lower nature, man declared war on nature (thereby)
threatening to pollute and use up its life support resources, and a war on his
brethren in the form of exploitation through monopoly, colonialism,
multinational economic imperialism and annihilation through nuclear armament.
[KKN]”
Adam Smith preached the doctrine of self-interest – but when we reach God
consciousness and enlightenment we realize that our own self-interest lies in
the welfare of the world, because we are that. There is no ‘us’ and no ‘them’ –
there is only the One. And my understanding is that we all knew this during the
first cycle of time, the Golden Age or the Sanskrit Satya Yuga – and we will
again.
The creed of the individual entrepreneur who has accepted self-interest as the
primary motivation can only take place in the Kali Yuga, the cycle of time
steeped in conflict and confusion. Far from making progress and evolving, in the
last 6000 years we have progressively descended into five-sense differentiated
perception, self-created delusion, and the miasma of amnesia.
This ‘forgetting’ our real nature and source is grounded in the ‘sin’ of feeling
totally cut off from the God-within. We have distanced ourselves to the extreme
of projecting deity out, up into some heaven, seated on a golden throne. The
only functional relationship of this enthroned remote deity to us is the
prospect of a terrifying final judgment on our ‘one’ life, which condemns us to
an eternal hell, or some boring winged-harp heaven. This kind of thinking is
‘sin’ and a kind of madness itself.
Adam Smith’s creed of self-interest denies us the possibility of the “reciprocal
respect for all individuals … to draw the closer to another in an ever more
comprehensive association that would be regulated in accordance with the laws of
harmonious liberty. [KKN]” This creed of self-interest and entrepreneurship has
turned us into “the acquisitive society” and “has flattened man to one
dimension, that of a consumer who, unlike the animals, always nurtures his
appetites beyond possible satiety. [KKN]”
There was a joke in the USA you don’t often hear anymore: “He who dies with the
most toys wins!” When is enough stuff enough? Giant conglomerate corporations
have made useless stuff available to every level of society. Even the houses of
the poor are found to be crammed with gadgets and doo-dahs. Credit cards made
anything possible and now the day of reckoning may have arrived.
The future may offer an escape from this creed of the entrepreneur, which has
like the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing kept a stranglehold on our
consciousness and the planet. If the future brings about the collapse of the
world consumer corporate economy, then perhaps we will find how little
status-based consumption has served us.
You can’t be attached to material world when it is collapsing. Perhaps we will
find our way Home, to the God-with us all - back to a higher way of living and
the consciousness that perceives everything as everything and the world as the
One. Real change will take place only when we have first changed our own
consciousness.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna does not repudiate happiness. “But happiness comes
from inner serenity and this can only come from the ultimate knowledge of the
Self, its role in the grand design of existence. Proliferating appetites wreck
the world because while there may be enough for everyone’s need, there is not
enough in the world for everyone’s greed. [KKN]”
In the Kali Yuga we have forgotten our primordial connection with the essence of
all life that underlies this entire universe. We have forgotten the God within
that permeates all beings and Gaia, the Mother Nature we have set out to
conquer. Until we reconnect to the Oneness, even the most innocent of
entrepreneurs will be vulnerable to the inevitable corrupting influence of
self-interest and greed.
It has become apparent to all that this planet has crossed a line of toxicity
and devastation perilous to the survival of humankind. Unsustainable levels of
chemical and industrial pollution are contaminating the water we must drink, the
air we breathe, and the farmable lands without which there would be no food and
no life. Surely the time has come for us all to look within our hearts and
realize that the ideology of consumption, which was born of successful
entrepreneurship, has reached a dead end brick wall.
What kind of species destroys its own planet? What will it take to wake us up?
Now is the time to reconnect with our Source and realize that we are the
Oneness, one people, one planet, one future. Each of us must look within, and by
elevating our own individual consciousness and connecting to the God-within us,
once again return to that primordial, innate, harmonious relationship with
Nature and the Earth. It is up to us – each one.
***
The above article was inspired by, partially paraphrased, and quoted from the
out of print work of K.K. Nair/Krishna Chaitanya – to whom I remain profoundly
indebted:
The Gita for the Modern Man, Krishna Chaitanya (K.K. Nair); Clarion Books, New
Delhi, 1986, 1992.
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