Billing business as ‘sacred pursuit’

This Article appeared in The Economic Times on 2nd Feb 2008.
Authored by Vithal C Nadkarni.

For a country like India, the search for spirituality is hardly new. But when movers-and-shakers, bankers and businessmen from around the world, including a Grammy-award-winning pop singer like Noel Schajris (of Sin Bandera) and Bollywood diva Manisha Koirala, begin to swear by something called Oneness Blessing, you become curious.

Of course, captains of industry running after ‘captains of soul’ aren’t new either. Remember the merchant banker from ancient Magadha, Anathapindika? To please the Buddha, he supposedly bought Jethvana Park by paying as much cash as needed to carpet the vast acreage with gold coins!

In our own times, we've had the Beatles jumping onto Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s TM bandwagon. And celebs like Sting and Madonna going gaga over yoga. Does that make the Oneness Movement the latest spiritual flavour of the month? More pertinent, why is it being called what the California-based aficionado of awakening, Arjuna Ardagh, describes as “the fastest-growing spiritual development in living memory” in his paean to the movement Awakening into Oneness?

The answer depends on who you are, and where you come from. As Jagdish Capoor, chairman, HDFC Bank, says, “All of us endeavour to approach the Ultimate Truth. But what matters is the way one approaches it. That's where the guidance provided at Oneness helps."

What this does not stand for is an eclectic, do-it-yourself sort of spirituality. For one basic tenet of the movement is that enlightenment cannot be "obtained". In an earlier interview, Sri Bhagawan, who founded the Oneness Movement with his spouse Sri Amma, back in the 1980s in South India, says, "Buddha advocated self-effort, whereas we advocate the opposite. We ask you do nothing."

For some that may evoke visions of mind control and loss of free will. "(However) almost every spiritual tradition has recognised that surrender to divine will, or to a wise guide, may be a saner way to live," assures Ardagh. "`Wash me clean of myself’ says Rumi. `Not my will, but Thy will be done’ says St Thomas Aquinas.”

Says Samadarshiniji, director, Oneness UniverCity, "Oneness is not a cult or a faith that demands any conversion or change in one's beliefs or practices; It's a system that helps you discover the truth of your own faith through a direct personal experience. To quote Sri Bhagawan and Sri Amma: ‘Belief binds. Experience liberates’." That may explain its growing popularity.