Did you know that Steve Job’s inspiration to name his company ‘Apple’, was an Indian spiritual guru? According to legend, Neem Karoli Baba, Job’s spiritual guru, lived in the foothills of the Himalayas and loved apples. Imagine what would have happened if the baba had loved pineapples? I suppose we would be using Pineapple iPhone 6.
But humor aside, India is not only known for the export of IT services but also of spirituality. In fact, our spiritual past has been appreciated more by outsiders than Indians. Maybe reclaiming the spiritual space is going to be difficult? On the other hand, why should Indians try to reclaim something which now belongs to the universal brotherhood…
My particular spiritual journey began when I met Samir Dadia at a startup event where he was making an elevator pitch to attract investment. He approached me diffidently and enquired whether I would be interested in attending a summit on spirituality and IT. As it turned out, I was lucky to have accepted, otherwise I would have missed a fascinating interactive session.
The CXO dialogue was enabled by SPIR-IT (Spirituality in IT) and was held in Pune. The organizers dubbed it as an inspiring conference aimed at merging the crossroads of deeper human health, wellbeing and technologization. Perhaps the discussion which followed went deeper than the stated objective. We began the dialogue with a few questions – Is spirituality compatible with the dog-eat-dog world of technology? Can spirituality enhance productivity in a highly charged tech environment? Are we now moving up the human value chain - from IQ to EQ and now SQ? What can we do in our own corporate work environment to facilitate spiritual quest?
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