Expand by embrace not conquest: Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, in conversation with KV Kamath, non-executive chairman ICICI Bank, discusses the environment existing in the corporate world and how big businesses are trying hard to expand their portfolios. He says the failure lies due to businesses aiming for conquest and not inclusivity.

Below is an edited transcript. Watch the accompanying video for more.

Q: Inclusive economics isn’t a phrase anybody used six years back. We are talking of inclusive development in the last three years or so. I want you to start with this because it’s a positive note Sadhguru.

A: The purpose of business or the purpose of the goals of big businesses is to expand. You can expand in two different ways- one is by conquest, another is by embrace. I can conquer you or I can embrace you, both ways you will become mine. If I embrace you, you will become mine willingly and I will have better use of you in every possible way- I am talking business, it’s not my personal thing.

But if I conquer you I will still have you, but I have to sit on top of your head and make you do things, and you will do everything possible to make my life miserable. So, people are trying to conquer and their businesses and their activities is doing everything possible to make them miserable and you can see it on their faces.

Successful people are showing miserable faces, which is a wrong message to send to the world, particularly to the youth. If you send a message that success is misery, you are destroying humanity. Success is the sweetest thing that can happen to human being. But now you take the most successful 10000 people on the planet, you will see they are an epitome of tension and anxiety and misery. You are sending a completely wrong message.

This you can see took such a bad turn in United States of America in the 60s. The so called corporates brutally wanting to grow and conquer the world, set such an image of themselves that youth thought its better to sit in the street corner and smoke pot and it’s a better way to live. At least you are happy. You are not causing any damage to anybody. This is a horrible way to exist. So, it’s extremely important that successful people send a clear message that success is a beautiful thing, it is not a suffering. It is not a miserable thing to do in your life.

If this has to happen your expansion has to happen by embrace not by conquest. So, inclusion is what you are trying to do, but you are trying to include by conquest because every business wants to expand. Somewhere because of the way today the financial markets and whatever is happening, a lot of businesses have lost this sense that what they want is expansion. They are only looking at their quarterly balance sheet which is not allowing them to expand- it’s too short-term for expansion.

Very big visionary businesses, I am sure ICICI Bank has looked at it this way otherwise it wouldn’t be what it is today. People are looking at expansion. Those who are really looking for expansion they are not looking at what is somebody’s opinion every quarter. You don’t care what somebody thinks about you.

People think all kinds of things about me in the last 30 years, but in the last four years we have expanded over 20 times over, we multiplied, not expanded. This is because of the huge embrace, not because of conquest. When you have expanded by embrace you don’t become miserable with expansion, you become joyful and wonderful with expansion.

Q: You have seen Davos from 2006 till after the crash of 2008 and just before we came here we were having a short chat and you addressed depression, in the post 2008 period. You have seen the euphoria of the preceding years. Euphoria to depression - how do these mood swings happen? How does one balance out ones views as it were?

A: A lot of people have not strived for their success. They are successful by chance. That’s why they are euphoric and depressed. If they had crafted their success, you would know the mechanics of success. It doesn’t matter what's happening today, you know where you are going anyway. Nobody can take that away from you. So people who do not know the mechanics and the fundamentals of what they are doing, by chance because of situational help somebody becomes successful he is euphoric. Hitting the lottery is not success, its just chance.

So, because of that you see too much of these swings. They asked me to handle this session called Recession and Depression. It was 2008, just then recession had moved into the European and American markets, all these billionaires were carrying long faces, so I was supposed to spread it a little bit. So I said recession is bad enough, do you need depression on top of it?

You always dreamed, you want to walk on the beach, you want to swim, you want to go play golf – ok this is the time, less work, this is not the end of the world. Above all, the way we have structured our economic process on the planet is such that if we fail we will be depressed and if we succeed we will be dammed.

I said I prefer that you are depressed because our economy is all about “more”, not about “all”. The business leaders or people who have reached a certain level of success should shift their attention from “more” to “all”. “All” would naturally be inclusiveness, “more” is taking, and “all” is an embrace.