Millions of years before the first man evolved on this planet, it was the rule of the dinosaurs. Huge reptiles who dominated the surface of the Earth, they existed for some million years before they met with their extinction. Barring the exception of a blue whale, there is no other creature in the history of the planet which was bigger than some of the dinosaurs like Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus etc. We often wonder about why such mighty creatures, with nothing to stop them, nothing to threaten them on this planet, why did they have to perish this way. There are theories that they succumbed to climate change or got annihilated during massive asteroids colliding with the Earth. One sure reason why the dinosaurs could not stop their extinction was the size of their brain in proportion to their body size. If the ratio of the dinosaur brain against their body is compared with the human being, then it can be deduced that the dinosaurs had a brain roughly the size of a pea. They were giant reptiles, cold-blooded and primarily driven by their instincts. They did not have the intelligence to make sense of the world the way we do. That is what sets us apart. We understand life and life spans, we understand the transient nature of our biological clocks and we understand that all of us must one day return to the dust, to decompose and the atoms that once made our body, shall be set free and could land up anywhere in the universe, perhaps they could turn up as the white noise on somebody’s television set.

We as humans have also evolved a long way from being fearful worshippers and blind believers in the catastrophic potential of the forces of nature and the unknown to the rational and intrepid harnessers of the same forces. We think therefore we are. Over a period of time our aspirations and our ambitions have shape-shifted into the quest for permanence and immortality. We humans have pitted all our hard work and intellectual capital against entropy, against destruction, against transience. We are trying to find permanence in the face of impermanence.  Since ages we have tried to find the panacea for diseases, old age and death. Medical science has helped us increase our life spans. The death rates have reduced rapidly. This is a very positive sign. Science is progressing at such an accelerated speed that there might be a day, when, we might be able to port our essence, our consciousness, our Ego, our identity to a machine or a computer. The movie “Lucy” showcases this point beautifully when the eponymous lady transfers all her intelligence to a futuristic pen drive.

We have this deep seated desire for immortality. We want to do it through various ways and means. Our species is a perpetual machine. We are the gene pool carriers of our antiquity and we harbor the same desire to continue living by passing on the same pool to our posterity. Nature’s desire to propagate and proliferate is innately embedded in us. At the same time we also wish to pass on the planet we have inherited, to our future generations, slightly better than we found it. What works at the micro level, works at the macro level as well. A father who is not educated enough and does some lower end job, will moonlight with a second job and be thrifty, cut corners and take the pinch to ensure that his child gets a great education. But are we really mindful about doing this? What kind of legacy do we leave behind for our generations to come? That is what we are going to discuss in this last sub-pillar of the Great Wisdom pillar of Mahatman.

David Bower said “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children” This statement has immense responsibility and accountability embedded in it. It is this feeling that “we owe” something to posterity is what we have to be mindful about all the time. There has been enough damage done by deeply entrenched irrational thought processes and their fairy tale theories about the afterlife. We must not dwell over such things. We must think about the here and now. We have only one planet, entrusted to us and we must ensure to pass it on in a better shape than we found it.  There is a school of thought known as Existentialism, which believes that life is inherently meaningless, and it is we give meaning to it through our actions. I think we should accept this definition at the cost  of all other meaning making processes, the only reason being, this bestows EXTREME OWNERSHIP upon us and we as Mahatmans consider ourselves blesses and privileged to take extreme ownership of situations.  Our every action counts. It counts towards making this world either a better or a worse place. If we adhere diligent to the three pillars of Mahatman philosophy, Great Health, Great Wealth and Great Wisdom, we will not only become the best versions of ourselves, but we will also usher in such an awesome Zeitgeist of greatness, that the next generation will not be able to help but feel inspired to adapt it in their own and raise the bar further and further. The first legacy that we can pass on is of a GREAT ATTITUDE. It is the attitude that will set the tone of the milieu in which people exist. We need to create an ethos of positivity and an abundance of energy so that every person is inspired to take massive action and self-actualize to his or her fullest potential.

 

Mahatman is about the legacy of action. It is the legacy of a fearless and indomitable spirit. A Mahatman never shirks from conflict. We welcome conflict in the spirit of healthy dissension. Only if there is Thesis and Antithesis, shall there be synthesis? Our life is one of adventure and courage in the face of adventure. We have a strong survival mindset and we are here to survive, thrive and pass on a legacy of action to the future generation. We are about great health, exercise, sports, dance, martial arts and all kinds of physical activities which we conduct with mindfulness and intent. We are a mindset of perpetual motion. We are like a vortex. Stagnancy is an anathema to the core philosophy of Mahatman. Mahatman is about the legacy of life. We believe in living life to the fullest. We choose to experience the entire spectrum of life. We are centred and we also live on the edge. From Success to Failure, from Grief to happiness, from greed to generosity, we feel each emotion to the fullest with a sense of detached attachment. Mahatman is about massive action with attachment, detachment and non-attachment. Mahatman is about being rooted in equanimity. But it does not stop there. Equanimity is the substratum in which we are rooted but we go all the way to experience life with all its facets. We are about soaking ourselves entirely in an experience. We live on the edges but we are also centred in the middle.

We are here to carve a name on the hearts and minds of people. We wish to become a part of their best memories through the great work that we do in all spheres of life. We endeavor to conduct our life such that when somebody talks about a Mahatman, they will say that he or she has lived the life to the fullest. He or she has squeezed all the juice out of the lemon of life. We are here to unapologetically experience the entire set of emotions.  We are here to experience and experiment with an open unprejudiced mind with extreme awareness of ourselves and our environment. The most important thing is we are completely aware of our energy states and if we slip into a lower energy state we are mindful to identify it and snap out of it with the power of compassion and self-love. We are here to enrich ourselves with all the experiences life has to offer us.

We do not believe in labels. Labels have ruined a lot of things. It has ruined the ability of people to overcome their adversities. We believe that every great person have a certain anomaly about them. We celebrate the anomaly along with the person instead of stigmatizing that anomaly. Mahatman is not about being normal. Mahatman is about being extraordinary in your own way. Be the best Doctor, Lawyer, and philosopher, pain the best painting, write the best poem ever written, set world records in sports, we are here to do all this, to take extreme ownership of our passions and convert them into great work.  Yes we are greedy, we are greedy about making a difference, we are greedy about living forever through our work. We are like a flowing river; we are like the expanding universe, in a state of perpetual motion, always moving, always expanding and always going places. We are courageous and ferocious and aggressive when it comes to dealing with and staying on top of difficult situations. We unleash the great warrior inside of us. We love to take on newer and bigger challenges no matter how intimidating they may look, just as the lion hunts animals much bigger than itself.

We do not miss the wood for the trees, like the eagle, majestic and grand, we may soar to the greatest heights and swoop in the skies of success, but we never lose the sight of our roots, just as the eagle never loses the sight of its nest and its little ones. We are great and we are proud of being great, but we are also humble about being great. We will put on our best emotion depending on the situation and we will emerge victorious.  We can be menacing and almost brutal when it comes to dealing with our own complacency and our mediocrity. Like the ferocious shark, who is always on the move, we do not brood or mull over our situation in life. We do not gloat or stay complacent over small things. Like the shark we are always on the prowl, we are mean like the shark when it is about being tough with ourselves. We are the formidable courage of the Lion, the majestic insight of the Eagle, and the ferocious dynamism of the shark combined. We are the archetypes of great attitude, great perspective and great action.

We are here to survive and proliferate. Just as we are here to pass on our genes to the future generations, we are also here to cascade the powerful memes of a great zeitgeist to the posterity. We are here to live behind a legacy of great work in all spheres of life and we are here to pass on highly ingenious ideas and thought processes to the ones who inherit this planet from us. There is immense competition out there in this world and there is also a lot of collaboration. And we say both are good. We as Mahatman are here to win, but we are not here to defeat. We believe in the Win-win of all. We believe in being those indefatigable sources of self-sustaining energy which will fuel the culture of greatness for generations to come. We draw inspiration from the SUN which nourishes us perpetually with massive amounts of energy, without prejudice, without rest. Perhaps no statement will distil the essence of our philosophy as well as this quote by Blaise Pascal

“We show greatness, not by being at one extreme, but by touching both ends at once and occupying all the space in between”.

Big Bang of Immortalize-

1. 1. Mahatman is about the legacy of a life high on action
   2. Our attitude is fearless and we welcome conflict
   3. We are rooted in equanimity, but we branch out to extremes
   4. We yearn to carve our names in the hearts and minds of people
   5. We can always snap from a low energy state to a high energy state
   6. Mahatman is about perpetual motion. Stagnation is an anathema to us.
   7. We are the formidable courage of a Lion, the lofty perspective of an Eagle and the ferocious dynamism of a shark put together.
   8. Like the Sun we will burn incessantly, to create a great legacy for future generations.