Raghu Ananthanarayanan - Five Seats of Power: Leadership Insights from the Mahabharata

Dedicated to

my Gurus Yogacharya T. Krishnamacharya and
Shri T.K.V. Desikachar, as well as Na Muthuswamy, who opened
my eyes to the depth and beauty of the Mahabharata Koothu
performance tradition.

Contents

I ndia is a collage of many strands of philosophy, science, and many ways of engaging with the world. It has been able to weave a tapestry where these strands flow into each other. Science and spirituality, the philosophical and the pragmatic, blend together in many subtle ways. These are very relevant in an emerging global context, where society is impacted by vast changes in technology.

Leadership processes that can mobilize the natural genius of people and shape powerful organizations lie at the core of success. Raghu Ananthanarayanan has engaged with this enquiry for over four decades and made unique contributions to the fields of leadership development and organizational transformation. He has enabled organizations and leaders to anticipate the future and build capabilities through frameworks derived from traditional Indic wisdom.

Raghu uses design principles drawn from Vaastu Shastra to study organizations and facilitate their growth. He has also effectively used insights from the Yoga Sutras and the Mahabharata to enable behavioural transformation and inspire people to perform to their potential.

I have had the opportunity to appreciate his methods over the years through his association with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). His leadership development programme, A Leader Prepares, has enabled over 2,000 people in leadership positions to gain a new perspective into themselves and their roles.

Through this book, Raghu offers a bridge between ones inner potential and its outer expression. It can be used as a mirror to reflect upon yourself and put into practice its pragmatic recommendations. It can be your first step on the inner voyage to become the best version of who you can be.

Natarajan Chandrashekaran

Chairman, Tata Sons

S ince time immemorial, man has been on an eternal quest to know oneself. But why is this quest important in the first place? Its because if we do not understand the process through which we make meaning of ourselves and the world, we will lack the clarity to use our skills effectively.

Defining oneself is an integral part of all the philosophies of the world. In the East, we have Vedic scriptures, the Yoga Sutras and Buddhist traditions that focus on the subject. In the West, the dominant idea of scientific proof and validation took over with the birth of psychology as a major field of study. Freud approached looking into ones own mind from a scientific perspective. This became more prominent in the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Having studied and referenced the Vedas and Upanishads in his work, Jung had a deep appreciation of the wisdom of the East.

At its extreme, this journey led to the birth of Skinnerian behaviourism, which shrugs off any attempt to understand the self. It is only concerned with behaviours that are to be operationally conditioned to control the behaviours one wants the other to exhibit.

Some of the recent advancements in psychology have emerged from meaningful engagements with Buddhist and Yogic traditions. Dialogues with the Dalai Lama and a deep study of the Bhagavad Gita have informed the emerging practices of psychology.

And despite all of this, Western psychology is mired in the question of consciousness. It is a chicken-and-egg situation. How did consciousness emerge? Is it a result of the brain and mental processes, or is it the other way around?

The Eastern tradition, unlike the West, posits the primacy of consciousness and considers it the substratum of all existence and therefore of human intelligence. When subjectivity becomes valued, ones sense of self doesnt need any validation from anchors outside. The Eastern tradition offers a range of methods to understand the self without getting caught up with theories and other forms of self-deception.

The Mahabharata is one such powerful and evocative tool to mirror and observe yourself, and this book draws its framework from the epic to bring out your heroic potential. In essence, this book asks the question: How can you discover the best that you can be? Through the story of the five Pandava heroes who won the battle of Kurukshetra to reclaim their kingdom, we will examine each of the Pandavas as an archetype of a particular power.

When seen through an Indian lens, a story is never linear. The journey never ends with a happily ever after. It is more complicated than that. Even though the Pandavas win, they also pay for the expedient choices they made. The journey of a hero in the Mahabharata is an inner journey, where the impediments to the unfolding of ones true self are identified to be dissolved. And when that happens, the persons actions reflect Divine Intelligence.

You are free to draw your own lessons from these stories and the discussions. However, you should be aware of this: the evocations, provocations and internal dialogues that get triggered by the stories all reflect your own psyche. There is no single truth out there. How you define yourself is not just your truth but also a reflection of who you are.

While examining the Pandava heroes and drawing out lessons that would be relevant today, we will draw upon Carl Jungs ideas of archetype and shadow.

What Is an Archetype?

The idea of an archetype was popularized by Jung, who used it to describe the patterns of behaviour held deep in a persons mind. These unconscious patterns determine the ways in which people perceive their world and shape their identity. For simplicitys sake, I will use the masculine pronoun to describe these archetypes, although archetypes are universal and transcend gender boundaries.

These patterns have a brighter side that energizes a persons behaviour. They also have a dark, or disowned, side, which causes loss of energy and triggers compulsive behaviour. The disowned part of the archetype is called the shadow. For a person to mobilize his heroic potential, he must transform the dark and compulsive energies. This transformation is essential for a leader to be the best he can be.

Jung suggested that archetypes are models of people, behaviours or personalities. Archetypes are universal human tendencies that play a role in influencing human behaviour. He believed that each archetype played a role in ones personality but felt that most people were dominated by one specific archetype. The actual way in which an archetype is expressed or realized depends upon several factors, including an individuals cultural influences and uniquely personal experiences. Jung believed that archaic and mythic characters from traditional stories that make up the archetypes reside within all people from all over the world. It is these archetypes that symbolize basic human motivations, values and personalities.

Joseph Campbell, one of the most influential thinkers in The archetypal energies are the quintessential patterns of unique types of talents, capabilities and propensities that manifest as behaviours.

While examining the Pandava heroes, I am not going to try and map them on to Jungian archetypes, but rather borrow the idea and view the five Pandavas as archetypal energies that manifest in the way we play our roles in life. The five Pandava princes are symbols through which we examine and enquire into the principles and psychological patterns of power. These Mahabharata heroes are committed to the