Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 8: Nayaswami Jyotish, Part 2, Running a Business by Spiritual Principles

Jyotish, first row on right, petting dog, with the Ananda Incense staff in 1972.

We talked earlier with Jyotish about the beginnings of Ananda. Here, he shares his thoughts on work and the spiritual life.

Q: Is it possible to do business in a spiritual way in the modern world?

Jyotish: Paramhansa Yogananda came to this country to introduce an approach to the spiritual path that would be very practical. But when you talk about running a business according to spiritual principles, Yogananda defined a path that leads down the middle, and then there are paths that lead off to either side, both of which are pitfalls.

The first side‑path is where people try to be “Practical,” written large, where they believe that business is an area where spiritual principles don’t actually apply. So they separate their working life from their spiritual life, and their thoughts in church on Sunday may be very different from the way they treat their customers because they can’t imagine that they’ll be successful if they apply spiritual principles.

That’s the left‑hand path, where you’re excluding spirituality from your practical affairs.

The right‑hand path is where you exclude practicality from your spiritual life, and here is where you find people who define themselves as “spiritual” and who therefore rejoice in not being terribly practical. They tend to be a bit airy‑fairy about their spirituality, and they tend to ignore the possibility of God being expressed in the workplace, and the possibility of integrating spirituality into their daily life.

Many of these people end up not functioning very well in society. It’s a variation on the old monastic model, where people felt that the world was so spiritually dangerous that they had to insulate themselves in order to carry on a spiritual life. But Yogananda cut through both of those fallacies. He said that if you can practice your spiritual ideals in the workplace, the workplace can become very spiritually helpful for you.

If you’re meditating, and you’re able to expand your consciousness as you meditate until you can feel the presence of God everywhere, and if you can carry that consciousness into your business practices, you’ll begin to see your customers and co‑workers as manifestations of God. You’ll see everything as an expression of Spirit, and everything in your life will be seen as spiritual.

One of Ananda’s missions, if we can get so highfalutin’ as to call it that, is to take the spiritual teachings and show how they can be applied in practical ways. And, of course, these aren’t just Yogananda’s teachings that we’re talking about – they are the beautiful, expansive, universal spiritual truths. But we’re trying to show how you can express them in appropriate ways in your daily actions as well. Because if you can do that, you’ll be able to integrate your spiritual and practical lives, and they’ll become one. You could call it “practical spirituality” or “spiritual practicality.”

Nayaswami Jyotish in 2014.

That’s what Yogananda was talking about when he said that it’s time for East and West to become integrated. It means combining the spiritual teachings of the East with the material efficiency of the West. He said that if you can combine those two without losing the positive, beautiful, and powerful expression of each one, you’ve got something that is much greater than either one alone.

Q: We are having this conversation long after Ananda was started. Has there been a refinement over the years, toward a better understanding of how to practice spiritual principles at work?

Jyotish: I think the ideal was always there, of trying to spiritualize our work, and our ability to implement it has become more complete, although we still have a long way to go.

In the early years, when we were starting businesses to support ourselves, there was a wide diversity of thought about work and spirituality, and a number of the businesses would fail because of some specific fallacy or another in people’s minds.

Some people were thinking “I’ll run the business according to, quote, unquote, ‘business principles.’ I’ll make a lot of money, and then I’ll spiritualize it by giving back a portion to God.” But that was, in effect, putting spirituality off in the future instead of practicing it very clearly in the business right now.

It has taken us a long time to get people to see the customer as a manifestation of God. Of course, it helps if you have a work environment that supports that. The most successful Ananda businesses tend to be those that screen the world, you might say, where they attract customers who are able to relate somewhat to the spiritual side.

Our bookstores are a good example. They’ve been very successful, and I don’t mean just financially. They’ve been successful in helping their employees learn to vibrate increasingly from their own spiritual side with the customers. In turn, it has helped bring out a response in the customers.

As the environment of the store gradually becomes more harmonious, the employees feel uplifted, and they can bring out an uplifted and joyful response in the customers. It’s been true in the bookstores, and in the restaurants and health food stores we’ve started. But I suspect it would be harder if we were operating a tire shop. Not that it couldn’t be done, but it would be a challenge.

Q: Because the customers would be less interested in spiritual things?

Jyotish: Yes, you’d have customers whose motivations had little to do with spiritual growth, or health and well‑being. They’d be looking for the cheapest price, or they’d want to get in and out as fast as possible.

You can help a person take a step vibrationally, but if they’re starting from a point that’s relatively self‑involved, maybe the best you can do is help them feel a little more friendly and cordial.

But if they’re looking for a spiritually helpful gift for a friend, they might be more open to receiving the spiritual vibrations you’re feeling. If you can hold on to an awareness that everything is permeated with a spiritual presence, you can help people take a step from where they are.

Q: Some of the people I’ve talked with, like Karuna McDivitt who runs a surveying business, have said that their businesses grew by word of mouth. They might not be in an overtly spiritual business, but their attitudes and their spiritual focus drew customers to them, because they were extended a respect and warmth that people felt attracted to.

Jyotish: That’s a good point. If you hold your vibration high, the customer will naturally feel lifted in spirit, and they’ll leave the exchange feeling good about it. They may never call it “spiritual,” but they’ll remember that this person truly understood them, that they were honest, or that they had integrity. Something in them will respond to the high vibration of the exchange, and the word will go around. It’s a very practical spiritual way to operate.

We can learn to think about the quality of our vibrational exchanges with others. That quality may express itself as friendliness, cordiality, or truly caring about the customer’s welfare – really looking out for their needs. When you’re shopping, you can focus on the quality of your exchanges, too – you can treat the seller as a friend, and make it a cooperative exchange, where you expect them to help you as a friend, and it will lift the exchange into a higher vibration.

Behind the scenes, what you’re doing even if you don’t define it this way, is drawing a circle of connection. In the yogic path, we might say that you’re drawing a circle of unity in your exchange with the other person.

If you’re wanting to run a business according to spiritual principles, you have to start by assuming a unity with your customers. A unity of goals: that you’re working toward the same goal. And a unity of friendship: that, whether you express it or not, you’re assuming that you’re a friend of the customer or the merchant. A vibrational exchange of friendship opens a different level of communication than if you’re just walking in the store expecting that the merchant will want to rip you off. It’s a very different way of operating.

Q: Ananda’s businesses seem to have built a circle of magnetism that draws people they can be friends with.

Jyotish: It’s true. You may not be able to see the exchange, but it’s a real experiential feature of those relationships.

We took Swami Kriyananda to have his teeth examined recently, and it was a wonderful experience. When we walked into the dentist’s, it was like visiting family we hadn’t seen in a long time. The staff came out and greeted him, and the doctor gave him a hug, as if he was seeing an old friend. It was an exchange of friendship and mutual respect, and it was very sweet.

When you go to the dentist or doctor, it can often feel dead, because there’s often no real human interchange, no circle of unity between the doctor and patient. It may be cordial, but it doesn’t rise to the level of friendship. Paramhansa Yogananda wanted to bring a heightened awareness and energy to this culture, in everything we do, even if it’s just getting your teeth cleaned.

Q: There’s a spiritual principle in yoga of not being gushily emotional when we’re dealing with people, but having a calm inner feeling instead. Patanjali defined yoga as “the neutralization of the vortices of emotional feeling.” It seems it could be a challenge in business. Surely it would affect how we deal with people.

Jyotish: When we talk in yoga about “not being emotional,” the principle is that you’re trying to avoid being emotionally reactive. In other words, if you can keep your center under your control instead of reacting to the energy of a situation or a person, that’s a spiritual response.

You can be very enthusiastic, and still not be reactive. When you’re enthusiastic, you have lots of life force flowing through you, and you can be very friendly and concerned about the other person, but it’s coming from an inner flow of energy, rather than a reactive emotion. An example would be if you’re dealing with a difficult customer, someone who’s being crabby or feeling grouchy.

Q: I had the “customer from hell” recently, and I told her exactly what I thought of her attitude. I think she needed it.

Jyotish: Well, sometimes that’s true.

Q: I knew my behavior was less than spiritually ideal, but I’m not entirely unhappy with it, because she was really asking for it.

Jyotish: Some people do need that, but for you in that situation…

Q: It was just after Swami Kriyananda had come into the store. I knew the customer was showing me, on a spiritual level, “Here’s what you need to work on.”

Jyotish: Uh‑huh. We’re all faced with that in varying degrees, and the key, in the spiritual life, is to maintain your center and your connection with your uplifted inner qualities. These would include peace, calmness, love, and joy. If you can stay in touch with those, rather than let yourself be pushed into a state of frustration through your emotional reactions to a situation or person, you can live continually in that state and exude it. In that way, it will change your interactions with the other person.

A person may be so locked in their own state that they won’t be able to pick up on your calm vibration. They may stay irritable and grumpy, and maybe the best they’ll be able to walk away with is a feeling that “At least that employee didn’t mouth‑off at me.” But it doesn’t mean you have to be weak. It means you can be strong in the energy that you’re putting out, and not just be a doormat.

Q: It takes energy?

Jyotish: Yes, you have to have lots of energy. You have to take control of the situation vibrationally. The “customer from hell” is behaving that way because they’ve got lots of energy behind their negative emotions. In reacting to that flow of energy, the temptation is to match their negativity with your own. But if you can stay centered and not react, then you can match the power of their negativity with the greater power of your positive qualities. It’s not easy, and that’s why these skills can take lifetimes to refine.

Q: You said earlier that Ananda still has a way to go in learning to spiritualize business.

Jyotish: I would say that one of the primary battles we fight on the spiritual path is a tendency to forget that all of life is a spiritual adventure. In your meditation this morning, perhaps you experienced an inner expansion of joy and peace, and a feeling of unity with everyone. But by the time you get to work you may be feeling irritable and frustrated, because you’ve forgotten that life is a spiritual adventure. A customer comes in, and it’s no longer automatic that you’re seeing them as a friend, or a brother or sister, or as God in human form. You have to keep reminding yourself. And I think we all have a ways to go, to learn how to hold onto that feeling of life as a spiritual adventure, and to keep that awareness always in our minds. Because the tendency is to forget it.

It’s like an electron that drops to a lower state of energy, and then the atom isn’t vibrating at the same high pitch. In the lower energetic state, you lose your connection with the higher principles. Not that you’ve lost your connection, but you no longer have the awareness so clearly before you.

Q: Are their gradual steps we can take to improve our ability to remember God in daily life?

Jyotish: Yes, for sure, and it begins with meditation. The two things I’ve seen that help people the most are meditation and associating with other people who are trying to express higher qualities. In yoga, we call it “satsang,” a Sanskrit word meaning “fellowship with truth.” It’s not satsang in the usual sense of a religious gathering, it’s being in an environment, at work or elsewhere, with people who aren’t always consciously or subconsciously suppressing your desire to cultivate the circle of unity – or, worse, they’re making fun of it and forcing you to hide your spiritual ideals.

If you can live in an environment where you’re able to express these ideals openly, it will support you in working to cultivate and strengthen them in yourself. Otherwise, if you have to be hiding them all the time, it’s harder to exercise them and make them grow.

Q: Even in a spiritualized environment, I imagine you’d have people with widely varied ability to hold onto a higher spiritual awareness.

Jyotish: Absolutely. You’ve probably seen this in your work at East West. [East West Bookshop in Mountain View, California is an Ananda-owned business.]

There are times when the spiritual consciousness of a group hasn’t quite risen to the level where it’s mutually reinforcing. It can get stronger when a few of the employees become strong and uplift the others, or when a group of people come together who already have those principles strongly at heart. Either way, everyone gradually begins to vibrate at a higher energetic level, and one way or another the business will either gradually ascend to express more and more of those qualities, or it won’t.

Q: You seem to be saying that it isn’t a question of getting there in one big step, but of moving step by step in the right direction.

Jyotish: It’s very much a directional thing. People who may have been practicing for many decades can always deepen their experience of inner love and harmony. You could call it “practicing the presence of God” – not while removing yourself from daily activity but by making the effort to be with God in the moment, and in the place and circumstances where your karma has brought you. And it’s a lifelong practice.

Q: I imagine God would have some toleration for people who are using the workplace to learn qualities of kindness and unity, rather than expect them to be perfect “or else,” or punishing them severely when they fail.

Jyotish: I think God has enormous tolerance. I think the reality is that God is, we could say, appreciative of any effort that we’re making, rather than judging people for not being perfect.

Q: At Ananda, are the managers of the businesses chosen with these abilities in mind?

Jyotish: Yes. A leader has to have certain basic qualities. They have to be capable of and willing to accept responsibility, and not everyone can be that. Without it, they won’t rise to the level of true leadership. Also, there are many people who are willing to accept responsibility but may not be able to express spirituality. Every business has its leaders, and not all of them are uplifted in their consciousness. So responsibility is just a starting point.

The next stage is where the leader is able to express some of these principles. Swami Kriyananda has outlined quite a lot of them in his book, The Art of Supportive Leadership. Examples would be a willingness to do what needs to be done, and a desire to further the personal growth of each employee, and to put their growth ahead of the success of a project, and so on.

Q: The qualities you mentioned sound saintly but also like rugged good business sense. There seems to be a meeting ground.

Jyotish: There’s a large meeting ground. I think businesses are beginning to understand this. Cultural shifts are almost always slower than the shifts in the small groups that lead them, but I think businesses in America today are learning to take better care of their employees. The old model of employer and employee as antagonists is breaking down, and the new model is recognizing that we’re in this together. In many cases, it’s simply expressed by the employees getting stock options.

If you read articles about the hundred best businesses to work for in this country, what makes them special isn’t their financial success, but that they cultivate a pleasant, uplifting, and enthusiastic environment for their employees.

Q: Where the employees feel they’re supported and can grow?

Jyotish: Yes, and that their enthusiasm is appreciated. I read an article about the business that was named number one in the country to work for. I don’t recall the name, but it sold packaging supplies, boxes and gift‑wrapping. One of the primary reasons the employees felt it was enjoyable to work there was that their creativity was respected, and they were allowed lots of flexibility. If an employee had a creative idea, the management would let them work in a different department for a while to try out the idea.

The employees find it wonderful to work there, and the people coming into the store feel the employees’ enthusiasm and love it.

I think the cultural shift toward respecting the expanded potentials of employees and customers is beginning to permeate business in America. Instead of saying “I’ve got it all figured out and my employees have to obey me unquestioningly because they aren’t important as individuals,” the best employers are valuing individuality and creativity.

The bottom line is that people take pleasure in being appreciated, whether they’re employees or customers, and if you can bring that attitude into your business, it will increase your chances of success. Appreciating others and expanding your consciousness to feel a circle of unity is an inherently spiritual way to serve, so that business and the spiritual life are no longer in conflict.

 

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