Guru-Shishya Series-3: Boss/ Supervisors as Guru

19 March 2023

Houston, Texas

In this dimension of material nature, exertion, endeavor, and striving are ubiquitous for every creature and for every need. Nothing comes out free! If it comes out free, someone has worked behind the scenes and nature will take our services free in some other fashion if not directly. 

For human beings, the critical part of getting the needs is employment. Every person either an employer or employee has to learn to work with each other. The more onus is on the employee or sub-ordinate to adapt and learn to the master or boss. There is a reason either Nature, Providence, or Krishna has put someone on top of the other to learn something.

Sometimes, the boss or immediate senior could be stupid and degenerate, still, that is a great experience to accelerate the thirst for a better supervisor and evolve faster.

Why should we evolve faster?

Because Nature is super damn slow in evolution, it took 40 million years for chimps to evolve into human beings.

And the worst thing is chimps are our nearest ancestors whose DNA matches with humans to almost 96-99%, think how many more millions or billions, it must have taken for evolution from aquatic species to biped land species.

How to evolve faster (Spiritually)?

There are several ways to evolve faster, these are the 2 main factors:

1. Extreme pressure from nature to evolve
2. Superior and contemporary techniques 

Both factors are interconnected, extreme pressure from nature forces the creatures to evolve and mutate to a new species or to a higher psyche to adapt to the new circumstances by using superior techniques or methods.

On the other hand, the superior methods itself as a whole can independently evolve certain species to a good extent until again nature challenges them on a new front. Sometimes, we see scientists aggressively pursue state of art techniques for problems that nature has not yet presented to mankind and humans wait for years to use that solution or they create a mess or situation to use that technology. Observing closely, we can also say Nature's influence within the human psyche was behind this silent operation.

The whole evolution idea is simply shedding unwanted and useless parts for future progression. Cutting the dead weight!

As one evolves, the old outdated features of the psyche should be thrown away or disabled, no point in having blind loyalty to antiquated cultural, habitual, and religious practices.

Nature and Krishna's gift for my spiritual training: My Bosses and workplace

My first work was in Mumbai, India. I did not learn anything from my bosses and we were fresh out of college, so I was not in any mood to learn, I was still roaming around like a college loafer and had no seriousness that I was an employee in a big company. I eventually know that I would escape from that employer in the year and go to western countries for education, so I was even more wandering when I was employed. I learned everything there except how to be a good employee. 

After coming to the US for graduate school, my new employer was in Michigan, an automotive parts manufacturer company after graduation. That slack attitude continued until my new bossman came. This guy was no accident, it was set up by Providence. 

This new Bossman had both good, evil, and petty intentions, he was a mixed bag. Generally, bosses at lower level tend to have straightforward intentions to train young engineers and set them up for success, the main politics and evil designs of pulling each other leg down happens at the higher level around Vice-presidents and Directors. Here, it was all confusing but I had a great wake-up call and this bossman put a code in my psyche that still runs in all my works.

Here I have given a summary of lessons learned from my bosses and some phrases from my old boss.

The first boss was a heartless monster, he had some psychological issues and childhood problems and he unloaded that crap on all of us. He had a team of 20, full of Indians and Chinese engineers (because no white guy can even think of working with him, he himself was a white guy), and assaults us day and night verbally. Worse than me was Chinese Ph.D., after finishing his rap with him, the idiot will search for me and execute me!

By the way, I am not the first and last to be fired by him. Later on, he got fired (after 30 years of service) for using abusive and racial language toward his subordinates and some reported him as pushing them to suicide by psychological pressure. I bore that pressure.

He had hidden and stupid motives. He had a picture of Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk on his desk and worshipped them day and night and took energy from his books, stuck stupid quotes everywhere from their books, and always wanted to change his team into a dream team that can be like Big 4 Tech companies.

Deluded man, the company size was not even 5 percent of these Big tech companies and we are set up as their supplier, not as competitors.  Some are forced out and some fled themselves! All of us sure, thrived in our new workplaces! That was the kind of training and pressure we faced!

Conclusion:

It is an extreme honor to work with all these bosses. Providence has set up each person precisely to my level of advancement and some people mainly to whack my back to accelerate my advancement. The first boss who fired me is with whom I learned a lot!

Never would I have guessed, that the work ethic I learned from my first boss would become the basis of all my future endeavors including spirituality. I did pick up certain resentment and unwholesome energy from him, the subsequent managers were sent by providence to filter those unworthy traits out gradually and just retain the extreme work ethic, he drilled into my head. 

Loyalty to bosses or supervisors and to the given work is critical for one to complete the duty to satisfaction and also comply with Karma Yoga prescribed by Krishna in Bhagavad Gita.

Cheating the managers and being disloyal to the given work will catch up sooner or later, one has to be the extension of the manager and be his right hand and execute what he wants and thinks in an ethical manner pertinent to work. This would relieve one from the karmic burden of the workplace, if not that workplace burden will destroy the meditation by creating restlessness and fear of unemployment, or the unfinished work will keep disturbing the psyche by taking a chunk of space in the subtle head. 

The glory of American or western work ethic is facing the problem head-on and bluntly trying to find a solution to it and being willing to fail and evolve. The Indian work culture lacks this approach from my experience and they tend to be wishy-washy and say "Yes" to everything, even to impossible things (there are exceptions, things tend to change these days). This sycophancy, endless defending of outdated practices, unfaithful servitude, and subtle dishonesty are shredded to pieces in the Western workplace.

It is an honor to work under good and bad managers, not everyone gets a chance to work always under good managers. There is something to learn from every manager. Even Arjuna was acting loyal and as a mere extension to his friend and boss Krishna and executed his orders on the battlefield after the universal form revelation, sometimes even by a mere look of Krishna, Arjuna was able to understand and executed what Krishna desired.

Unfortunately, the only way to learn the work ethic is only thru practice and working under a qualified supervisor at the workplace, not by reading this post or thousand books on "The great work ethic".

Even for spiritual training, the days of Guru-Shishya (Teacher-Student) living in small kutir (hut) and having close one on one monitoring to teach work ethic are gone long ago. The work ethic can be learned from their respective workplace practically which providence sets up for one's growth in that life, not by books or theory or online classes!