Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 37, Narya Tosetto

Narya grew up in Venice, Italy. At age eighteen, he took over the family glassware business and built it into a supplier of custom glass to high‑end department stores worldwide, with a clientele that included Middle Eastern oil billionaires. In the late 1980s Paolo sold the business and moved to Ananda Village, where he lived for several years. Paolo now lives with his wife, Laura, and their children, Alberto and Alessandra, near the Ananda community in Assisi, Italy.

Editor’s Note: Paolo’s English is limited. I’ve tried to preserve the charming flavor of his conversation while retaining readability. Any awkwardness is mine.

Q: How did you get started in business?

Narya: I was born into the family business. The shop was below our house, and as a young boy I played there and talked with the employees all the time. My father decided to stop running it when I was eighteen. He said, “You want the business?” So at that time I decided to take it over. In my business there’s a lot of responsibility. So many families depend on it, and I had to be really careful because I felt responsible for those families.

Q: The workers in the factory?

Narya: Yes, because I was like a son to them. They drove me to school when I was six years old, and they are like fathers to me, because they’re sixty, sixty-five, sixty-eight years old. When you work for twenty years with the same person, it’s no longer a factory, it’s a family. My father’s driver was my driver, he is sixty-two years old and he did this job for forty years. This is not a worker, he’s not an employee, he’s in the family. I can call him even in the night, “Can you come, please, I have a problem with my car,” and every time he’d say yes. So this is no longer a factory, it’s a family.

You have to be really careful, because with fifty families behind you, it’s a big responsibility. You have to think about your profit, and at the same time you have to think about their salaries. Sometimes I decided to cut my profit to pay their salary. I never missed a payroll. Never. Sometimes I missed my profit for them. I fell in trouble many times, but I trusted my guru.

Q: You would ask your guru?

Narya: Yeah, I trusted my guru, Paramhansa Yogananda. “You gave me this intuition, and now I’ll try this intuition, but help me.” If you have to think only of yourself, every experience, good or bad, is fine, but if you have to think for a family, and a factory, a wrong experience is bad. But in my case everything became easy, because I meditated about this a lot.

Q: You meditated about the business?

Narya: Of course. I spent, in the last three or four years, almost every weekend in seclusion.

Q: Meditating, asking for guidance?

Narya: Not asking, just to bring peace inside myself. If you are in peace, everything is easy. It’s simple, because your aura is peaceful, and people feel that peace. But if you have stress around you, nothing is easy, nothing is simple. People trust your peace. They say “Paolo said this,” and it’s fine, and they don’t generate arguments.

People feel peace. They love to be where it is. They feel “This is a nice business,” and they relax in the peace. I couldn’t do business without meditation. Not this kind of business, using energy the way I do. I don’t think anybody can make a business that way, without meditation.

Q: Let’s back up – what kind of business is it?

Narya: My business is making chandeliers, glass. This was the beginning. Then I started a construction company, and this company I still own, building commercial centers in Italy.

I decided when I was eighteen to start in business, because for a teenager it was a really good attraction to have money, to be successful and so on. And I started to decide what kinds of items to put in the shop. When I started, it was a small company, twenty-five employees.

Two years later, my brother came into the factory with me. He’s an artist, and we started developing different directions, making big chandeliers for churches and big buildings. Then we began expanding in the European market, the Japanese market, and we began to move out a little all over the world.

We did many trade fairs in Europe. This was a good foundation for the business, but you have to spend money, because the first impression is very important. The Japanese and Americans have little time to visit every supplier, so they go to the fair and they spend a million dollars, two million, and if the first impression is good, you sell.

We did this for fifteen years, always the same way, and for fifteen years it was a good, good job. Then, after reading Autobiography of a Yogi, I went to Ananda Europa, and I started with meditation. That was eight years ago.

And then, you know, you begin to think another way. After two years of meditating, I decided I would have to do something different with the business. It was difficult to think of business in the same way after starting on the spiritual path. I began to use energy more, instead of thinking only about mind, power, and money. And I learned how to use “money magnetism.” [Referring to Swami Kriyananda’s book, Money Magnetism.]

Q: What changes did you make?

Narya: I tried to tune in to the energy of the people. I moved people from one office to the other, or from one department to another, because the energy was better for them in the new location, and because they felt comfortable in the new place, the business changed.

Q: The energy flowed more smoothly?

Narya: Everything. If you do something with good energy, you’re putting that kind of energy into it. Even into a piece of glass, a chandelier. And I started to learn how to use money. It’s energy – lira, dollar, it’s the same, just energy.

I started to improve the quality of the business. Every employee had a basic salary, but if this month you put in more energy and more intuition, your salary is more, ten percent, twenty percent more, sometimes thirty percent more. Everybody wanted to make something more, something better, and because I started that, I increased the total sales in one year by fifty percent.

The workers and the customers were all happy, but the other sellers said, “I don’t understand.” Because their chandeliers and glassware were displayed in the middle of the big trade shows and yet the customers wanted to buy from us. The other companies said, “I don’t understand why your stuff is really easy to sell and our stuff they pass by.”

So I started to think of quality and energy. For example, I had a French customer who couldn’t do business, but his mind, and the energy of this man, was great. I asked him, “Come, my friend, stay close to me and I’ll pay you a commission, two percent, three percent on my sales, for three years.” My brother and father said, “You are crazy! We have to pay this man so much a month?” But in one year we increased our total sales by a hundred percent.

Q: How did he change the business?

Q: He had good energy. Just a feeling you got being around him, you know, it was his energy. And he was really honest – absolutely, one hundred percent honest with me and with my customers.

So this was a great experience, and from that point on I started to use energy in the way I did things. If you want to make something with quality, top quality, you can’t save money, you have to spend a lot of money, put more energy into it. Quality for me is the future. When I started going in this direction, I created a new name for my company, Studio d’Italia Vasari. “Italy” because Italy means art, fashion, charm. There are many good associations around Italy.

Q: Good design.

Narya: Good design. And we started a new line, with not many items, maybe twenty, no more, but top quality, the best design. If you go in the best streets in San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, you can find my work. Just a few items, but with good energy. With good support, because you are using the money-energy and the mind-energy of the worker, and your own energy to support the product.

Two years ago we went to a huge fair in Milan. Those are the best fairs in the world for design. Nothing there is not good. We spent about ten times more than our normal budget for a trade fair. My factory was small, a $1 million business, but at that fair I spent money like a big factory, because I had learned that in order to do business you need energy, common sense, and wisdom together. And you need another thing that is very, very important: you need a first impression. You also need care – and care means for everything, especially for the customers, because the first impression and the care are the basis, the foundation, for future business.

It’s hard to feel the energy of a person right away, but if the first impression is good, and the quality is good, the customers feel comfortable to buy. So I started with this huge fair, and after a day my brothers said, “Paolo, you are crazy, we are spending too much money for this! We borrowed money from the bank to support this.” But after the first day we got enough money to pay for the exhibit.

Customers don’t care about religion and spirituality, but energy is the same language everywhere. You can go to people of any level of consciousness, and they understand energy.

For example, I worked very well with Muslim people, because they trusted me. It is not necessary to speak about spirituality, but they trusted me. I did a huge chandelier, an amazing, big, big, big thing that required a forty‑foot shipping container. But the price was not important, because this chandelier went to the United Arab Emirates. The customer said, “I want the best. I don’t care about the price. I want a big chandelier with a star.”

It was a big honor to make this huge chandelier – six months of work for one chandelier, and I did my best work. But I was so happy, and the customer was really happy. The impression of the chandelier was terrific, and I almost started crying when I saw it.

This emir bought many houses around the world, and for all the chandeliers he told the architects and designers, “Go to Paolo. For chandeliers, go in Italy to Paolo, he is the best.” [Laughs.] I am not the best, but I try to make my customers happy so that I can be happy, too. Because working with this kind of happiness behind you is important. It’s a good support for a business.

Q: Someone told me that you don’t accept certain customers.

Narya: No, I don’t. When you are meditating, you can feel a person even before he starts talking. And when I feel something is wrong, that a person just wants to take advantage or wants to use me as an instrument for making money, then I say no. I want to make money, but sometimes you feel you won’t make money no matter how hard you work, because the energy is wrong. So to some customers I’ve said, “No, it is not possible, you have to go to another firm.” Many, many times.

Q: To keep the peace?

Narya: Yes, this is important. Working without peace is not working, it’s just going in a wrong direction. I don’t want to go backwards. In the beginning, I sometimes did business in not a very clear way, and many, many times it happened in the end that I lost money.

I remember with an American customer I lost $15,000, and my brother wanted to go ahead with a lawyer and a court case. But I said, “No, we can wait. Everything will be all right.” And after three months I received a letter of credit from a new customer, for a profit that was the same amount as the loss, not one dollar more or less. I went to my brother’s office and said, “Look here!” But he said, “This is nothing – this is just a coincidence.”

For him, it’s not possible to understand something higher, but that’s fine. My brother is a good man, but he’s very materialistic. His life is different, but it’s fine. Last year I sold my factory, and my brother now is the new owner. Just because I need more freedom.

Q: What are your thoughts about starting a business?

Narya: The best thing is to use energy. Intuition has to be there, but for myself, I like to use energy to risk something. The risk is in the mind. It’s not the risk in doing something, in starting a business. You generate the risk – the risk is in your mind.

Q: It’s a fear?

Narya: It’s a kind of fear: “Oh, I don’t know if I’m able to make money. I don’t want to spend my ten years of savings!” That is not good for life. Energy is a flow, a continual flow. If you stop the energy, you stop the money magnetism. Money is just a tool. Money is a gift from God, in a way, because it’s energy. People put so much tension into money, and then there is no more of the God‑energy, only the energy of the minds of the people behind the money.

So you ought to understand that money is really something very sensitive. Because you can open all the doors in your mind or you can close them. Sometimes our minds don’t trust our self, so the door is closing. You close the flow of energy – in this case, money energy. But when you trust yourself, all the doors are opened.

When I was eighteen and starting in our business in Venice, I went to see a big, important person. In Italy we have this person who consults on how to do things. He knows the laws, he knows everything. So I went there to see what I could learn. I was young, and the business was in trouble, and I didn’t know what to do, because I was afraid to go and ask for help from my father.

So I went and talked to this important man for an hour, and he told me, “You are eighteen years old and you’re generating trouble for the business? When you are so young there is no problem! You are energetic, you can go anywhere.”

You know, eighteen years old, and I was asking, “Okay, there are some bills to pay and I have no money. My stock is too big, my inventory is too big, what can I do?” And he said, “Everything! You have all the world – you are young, you have energy! If you do something wrong, it’s fine. Doing everything wrong means new knowledge, new understanding. So your problems are not problems.” And so this was a big push for me.

Q: It was encouraging?

Narya: Yes. After talking with this man, I asked him, “What can I pay you for this information?” And he said, “Nothing – you could be my son.”

So I started working, losing money, making money. You know, every business is up and down. But when I started using energy, it was just up, just up all the time.

Ten years ago, my business was three times bigger in sales, but it’s not important to sell. It’s not important to sell $3 million a month and make $1000 a month as your profit. That’s nothing. You can use a lot of energy for a small profit. Big volume, $3 million, and you have to pay this and that, and the profit is $10,000. In the same way, you can sell $25,000 a month and make $10,000 profit. So I started to change my company, to reduce my company in that way.

The energy flow is important. It’s important for me, for my family, for everybody in the company. Few businessmen can understand freedom. They are looking for freedom, but the ego pushes the company to be bigger and bigger, and no one understands that you can make money with a small company, the same money.

When the company is small and it grows, there is a point where you increase the workers, and you increase the profits, but at the same time you increase the costs, so there is no more profit. But below that point, you can sell $1000 and have $500 profit, sometimes $700 profit. Because below that point you can use your intuition to decide what to do.

Q: You’re more flexible?

Narya: Everything is flexible. Using good quality, using artistic things. Murano glass is known all over the world, and we use it always. You can make something really simple, but new. Nobody has the same thing, so people want it, and they don’t ask about money. They don’t ask “Why is this so expensive?” Because it’s something new and there is no competition, nothing is similar. Look at this lamp, I made that. This is a single piece. I did this. That is so beautiful. Nobody knows what the price is for that. You can ask $100 or $1000. Nobody can say the price for that.

Q: Because it’s unique.

Narya: It’s unique. It’s like sculpture. It’s like a piece of art. And this was the new way for me. It was a new way to be free and do business at the same time. A small job, twenty employees, just two computers, not twenty-five computers. Two lines of telephone, not twenty lines of telephone. No factory. And it was really free, but my profit was the same, no difference. This is my way to do business. But I’m going against the business world.

Q: “Bigger is better.”

Narya: “Bigger is better.” With that mind, if you have $25 million of sales, this means something, and if you have $1 million, it’s nothing. But, you know, you can have 50% of profit on $1 million and just 1% of profit on $25 million.

Q: Were you having more fun with the business?

Narya: Ah, yes…

Q: It was more interesting?

Narya: Of course, and much more freedom. Some days I went to my business at nine o’clock, some days at two in the afternoon. And I have time for my friends, I have time for my spiritual path, I have time for my family.

Time is important in life, because at the end you realize that life was so quick. You are too busy, and one day is like another. You see your children one year old, and you don’t remember after five or ten years what happened because your life was all the same. Every day was the same – business, telephone, computer, fax. For me, it’s a wrong way to do business. We have to think more in energy terms, not think in money terms.

Q: So a business would have to be small and flexible?

Narya: My view of the future is a really little company, not a big company. But sometimes big companies are important.

Q: For making toilet paper, automobiles, and light bulbs.

Narya: Yeah. Everything. But the future for me is a small company, a kind of family company with ten people, twenty people, just making a little thing.

For example, it’s not easy to shop in a big, huge supermarket. Really, you feel there is no life – everything is dead, just cans, boxes, vegetables with nice color but the taste is flat. No energy. Everything is in terms of energy. The people there do not think about food, they’re thinking about salary. The mind is thinking “What can I do after five o’clock?” But from eight in the morning until five o’clock there is no connection between mind and work. The mind is thinking outside. So it’s not good food, everything is dead, and it’s hard to support your body with that vibration, that energy.

Q: Would it be better for the employees to work in a smaller place?

Narya: You have freedom, and you feel something. Two, three years ago we worked until eleven o’clock in the night because it was a busy time before Christmas. We had a little kitchen, and at eleven o’clock I said, “You want a pasta? Okay, you go on with the work, and I’ll cook for everybody.” And I started cooking for everybody. It was a big family. There is something there, you can feel the difference. Look at that lamp again. This is my lamp. And now look at that other lamp.

Q: There’s a difference.

Narya: It is nothing. There is no energy, nothing. For me it’s important to live in a nice place, with energy. Look at this vase, we did this in Italy.

Q: It’s beautiful.

Narya: Touch this vase. There is energy inside. It’s Murano handmade with filigree, many kinds of glass, cut by hand, it’s blue. This will support your spiritual energy. At a certain level there is something behind everything. It is energy.

Q: The energy that was put into it? I was amazed, in Florence, by the paintings by Fra Angelico.

Narya: Oh!

Q: And in Amsterdam, the paintings of Rembrandt. Those pictures glowed with energy.

Narya: We are using a certain level of God‑energy to do everything. When you are in the same flow, you can create a painting like Van Gogh, Piero della Francesca, Angelico, or Michelangelo. The human mind can’t do this alone; you have to use that flow of energy, and you are the bridge between the creation and God. You can use that flow of energy to do something big – something that is forever, not for just one lifetime. Look at Mozart, look perhaps at Beethoven. They are forever. That music is forever, not for one life. For millions of lives.

For me, living in a nice place is important – living in a nice place for the vibration, not for the design. I love to have a piece of art around me. I love to have something with energy. Because when you are in that place, you feel it – without thinking, you relax, you feel the presence of something.

All the ancient cultures – Viking, Aztec, Egyptian – they were really open about that, and I think one day we will be, too. Using energy, using the intuition. You don’t need to work for long, you can have a little place, you can have some time to work.

Q: That’s what Yogananda said: work three hours a day, meditate, work in the garden. It’s hard to imagine today.

Narya: It’s hard to imagine. In the beginning I liked the enthusiasm of the American people, but I don’t like so much the constant changing. They change jobs so often, there is no time to create energy. Too fast job, too fast work.

Working in a little company, nothing is fixed. In my factory you can buy something, and if the price is $156, at the time of payment I can make a little discount. “Give me $140, it’s fine.” And the customer is happy. But in a big company that is not possible, because you have the computer and everything is fixed.

So many times a customer comes to my factory, especially the Arab customers, and they love to trade, ask for a discount. And so, after the business you can say, “If you spend $500,000 then $1000, $2000, $5000, is a gift.” In a big company this is not possible. Ten thousand dollars, it’s a big amount, but if you sell $500,000, then $5000 is nothing. But the customer is very happy. You generate a vibration, a new relation with this customer.

Q: You’ve made a friend?

Narya: It’s a kind of friend. Sometimes in a little factory you can ask a favor. “This month could you pay me in twenty days? I need money to pay my people.” Today I help you, but tomorrow you help me. So there is a balance with a small factory. It’s a good relationship.

Q: The atmosphere is good?

Narya: Yes, the atmosphere, the relationship. You can call the owner and say, “Can you come with me, we’ll go to Murano to get something to eat, spend two or three hours in the Laguna.” But with a big company, everything’s closed, there’s no flexibility. Everybody has a little place, a little desk, and no one takes time. I think the future will be for companies with more freedom, with a kind of relationship with people.

Here in America, they start something but then they change their minds, change businesses. Too fast. There is no time to generate energy.

I have a friend in Venice. He had a small factory and the county wanted his place, so he decided that he would move his factory and start another business. I tried many times to explain, “That place is a blessed place, because you have five generations, your father, your grandfather, who were working there. The energy’s there. The energy for that job is there. If you change places, there is no energy. You’ll have to generate new energy.” But he said, “I don’t care. You are crazy, Paolo. Let me try.” So he tried, and two years later he went bankrupt. No more business.

Sometimes we don’t care about a little thing, but little things are important. Changing the location for a business is not always a good idea. I changed the location, but my old business, at the old location, is still mine.

Q: You deliberately kept the old location?

Narya: Yes. I needed more space, but I never want to sell the old location. The old location means energy, it’s a connection with the energy. My father started after the Second War, so it means fifty years of the same energy there. I don’t want to work thirty years to build the same energy. So location is important.

Q: Is this an expression of a new consciousness in business?

Narya: My life is different from most Italians, also probably from most Americans. I try to use the energy. For example, when I receive the power bill I pay it the same day. I don’t want to wait, because every day you say “Oh, I have to pay this,” and you generate a kind of nightmare inside. There is no freedom in the mind. It’s a little thing, but two little things is a bigger one. If you have money and time, why not pay? Otherwise you close a door in the flow of money magnetism, and so you lose energy.

I don’t even want to have an account in the local market, because I receive the bill from the market, and there is no flow of energy there. Too much paper, too complicated. All that paper is anchors, anchors on the energy.

Q: It takes the mind away?

Narya: It takes the mind away, very far away. All that stuff. Too much stuff, too much paper. At the beginning of my business, I had real troubles with money. I was in big debt with the bank, with government agencies. But year after year I learned how to use that energy, and I tried to cut away everything that was a chain pulling on that energy.

Q: You cut those chains?

Narya: Yes, I cut those chains. And the last five years, I didn’t even want to see a draft from my supplier. When I bought something, I transferred the money to the bank or through a check, without a draft – immediately, so the problem is over the same day, and after four years I had no more problems, never again.

Q: After you started doing things that way?

Narya: Yeah. No more problems with money, never. If you love somebody, you generate a loving magnetism around yourself. You are a loving person for everybody, not just for one or two people. And this technique works for everything. If you magnetize money, you attract money in some way. So it’s important for me to live with this kind of energy. My desk, no papers, because I close the problem immediately. I don’t want two days of the same problem.

Make a big decision? Now! Let’s do it now. Because your mind generates a kind of wall and then the energy has to go up and down the wall. You can have money if you live like that, but you have to spend so much more energy to have the same profit.

I’ve had so many experiences with this. If you use that energy, everything is simple. Not to be a millionaire, but to live in a simple way without thinking too much about money, too much about profits. There’s nothing complicated.

Q: You said earlier that meditation keeps the business on the rails.

Narya: Exactly. After meditation you feel intuition, you feel peace. You feel energy inside. And so you are very sure of the next step. When you are sure, it’s easy. But if you are not sure, it’s hard. Meditation was, I think, the most important support for my business. Every weekend, many hours, just to re‑balance myself, my mind.

Sometimes after a day of working, you have to go to the workers and explain what you’re doing. You have to go and share with them your point of view. You can’t say simply “Do this because I decided to do it.” You have to explain why. And you have to be on the same level as the other person to be understood. Otherwise there is no comprehension, and without comprehension there is no real flow of energy. So, meditation was real important. I don’t think it’s possible to do a job using energy without meditation, or without deep, deep concentration. But meditation was very important, several hours a day, just to re‑balance myself, to keep the mind open.

This is an unusual way for a businessman to work. Only a few businessmen use meditation. I tried to open some friends to it – no way! I tried to talk about it, and in the end I realized there is nothing to say to them. Your way is your way.

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