The Impersonal and the Personal
Wednesday November 17 2004 08:07 IST
By Karmayogi
Individual relations are personal. Laws
are impersonal. When you are applying for a job, if you are qualified according
to their rules, you are selected impersonally. If the CEO is personally known
to you and interested in you, you get the job personally.
The impersonal is a stronger qualification from the legal point of view. The
personal is stronger from a personal point of view. When the personal interest
comes to you impersonally, as you are qualified too, your position is
unassailable in your scheme of things. When rules of Mother – cleanliness,
punctuality, self-giving, taking the other man's point of view, etc. etc.
– are followed, they will yield us impersonal qualifications in that particular
regard, which is valuable to us.
Calling the Mother intensely from the heart evokes Her response offering us Her
Force personally. He who follows all Her rules, calling Her every time he
needs, has the joy of getting Her impersonal force coming to him personally.
One who is a member of an office having good positive relations with everyone
will enjoy the impersonal power of that organisation. When his good reputation
reaches the boss and he calls him to forge a personal relationship, the
employee gets the power of the organisation personally.
As he has earned the good will of all his colleagues, this is the impersonal
power coming to him personally, a double blessing. As the impersonal force
comes to him personally, the personal force too can come to him impersonally.
Our elders saying, 'not to have a single enemy', 'to earn the
good will of all will always stand us in good stead' simply means we must
impersonally qualify ourselves.
We often know people striving hard to get a contact of a highly placed person.
That is the way of life. We must do our duty at our place to our satisfaction
and to the satisfaction of all, so that the chief will take initiative to
contact us. Tom Peters became world famous in the 80s as a writer and speaker
on management. Reporters asked him how he met all those important CEOs of whom
he spoke.
He answered, ‘‘We worked at the bottom of their companies as
employees of our parent company McKinsey. Reports of our work reached the top.
Thus we were called for the interview.'' Walter Lippmann was a
journalist of international fame in the 50s.
A reporter asked him how he could meet the world leaders for an interview.
Lippmann answered, ‘‘I never sought an interview. Stalin,
Churchill, Roosevelt asked me to interview them.'' Poised in the
Spirit, we can have it personally or impersonally or the impersonal through the
personal.