L. N. Godbole

“ Progressing from caterpillar to Butterfly becomes almost impossible, You can dream of becoming a bigger and fatter caterpillar, as that becomes the limit. If you expand idea of yourself growing up to Universal Entity then a huge space unfurls before your mind. The framework of your mind gets enlarged before you, the widening horizons become visible to you. A transformation from caterpillar to Butterfly becomes a possibility.
After all, what does the caterpillar do? It draws into its self, Produces threads and keeps itself busy in the cocoon of its making. ”

“ My Dharma calls on me to believe that we can evoke such a spirit in the hearts of the people, that without the aid of legislation and no matter what the law may say, they themselves will distribute the land. Do mothers need a law to induce them to nurse their babies? There is a power in the heart of man which enriches his life, and that power is love. ”

“ A worker often wants more salary than his fellow worker. A worker wants promotions, pension Fund and numerous holidays, loans also once in a while, wants guarantee of Income is willing to follow leader and is ready to respond by shouting leader's slogans. ‘Eating even mud for the community’ is the basis of willingness to strike. In fact one is unwilling because industrial action disrupts stable income, one does not necessarily think identically as a member of worker as a class, does not see Employer as an enemy. ”

“ By itself, it does nothing, but it co-ordinates all the other fingers. Its tole is to bring together all these powers in society. That is the role of Government. Today, it may have assumed supremacy of power, but its real role is that of anamika. It should occupy less and less importance and should remain power in name only. Hence Vinoba compared it with anamika.
All these five fingers make a hand a complete power. It can move mountains, provided it works like a hand as a united whole. Each finger is a power in itself but effective only when they are together. ”

“ If I do not work as per expectations, if I shirk work or did not work at all but collected my pay, then nobody thinks it is irreligious behaviour. Keeping my part of the bargain is not considered to be my duty at all. Dereliction of duty by worker or manager is not considered as a wrong in morals or in religion by society. It is defined as misconduct under law. What nobody bothers about is defining good moral conduct. Trade Unions do not consider it as their duty, managers also do not consider it to be part of their responsibility, and workers themselves do not bother to think about it. ”

“ It is better to look at one’s own faults only.
Vinoba then called on Gandhiji who told him that he should enlarge the good qualities in others and also enlarge one’s own faults. Vinoba argue with Gandhiji. He said: You are a seeker after Truth. Then we should stick to truth. Why are you asking me to enlarge the good things in others and bad things in me? Gandhiji replied: What you say is mathematically correct. We should not enlarge or reduce. We should stick to reality. But human beings have to see things in perspective. Our eyes cannot see things from a distance in their actual size. ”

“ Once you harmonise the minds of the people, it becomes easy to understand that though our roles in the drama may be different, our drama is one. Roles are small and big, there is a hierarchy of roles also, some are big and some are small roles, but we have equality as individuals. Jobs may be small or big but the bigger goal for all is the same. If you have to achieve big results, make impossible things possible, then we have to work in that spirit. ”

“ We cannot confine the growing thoughts in any book, philosophy, School, or political theory or sacred edifice. It must continue growing like a tree. In science every assumption or theory is checked in the light of new experiments, and baser part is rejected. Similarly in social science we must keep our ideas ever changing and growing. By checking the postulates of belief from time to time they too become stronger, the baser part is discarded and the original thought illuminated. Such ever-growing belief cannot break or die with passage of time. ”

“ What is the nature of our (teachers) strength? Is it not in the nature of light? The light of knowledge, of wisdom, of thought and reflection. What power in the world can stand before it? When science has made so much progress, when the intellect has such far-reaching power, it will be disaster for humanity if the heart remains small. The problems of today arise from this discrepancy: big brains and small hearts. ”

“ The purpose of the business that is Customer, gets ignored. Nobody bothers about the customer. Factories, Banks, and companies then start working for their employees only, If this continues, the business does not grow, it does not prosper, the size of the cake to be divided does not increase. The focus of labour management action rests only on the cake, Matsushita Company therefore puts national service through Industry as a first priority. They have fixed this as a super-ordinate goal. The company tries to inculcate it in the minds of its employees in their daily prayer. ”

“ Vinoba’s emphasis on not having institutions was very fundamental. After all, we only ‘experience’ life as individuals. Group, family, caste, religion, country, nation, union, company are all theoretical constructs. They are all concepts the reality which we experience is only the individual. It is the individual who has to change himself to change society. If a man is not changed, nothing changes.
A man can be changed only by changing his thoughts. This can be achieved only by the spread of ideas. ”

“ Those who have made agreements with me, however, consider me very firm and unchanging at times. I have done a lot of bargaining in making industrial agreements. But I do not suffer from the illusion that I alone am right.
Reality is reality. It has no need to be true according to any logical or fixed framework. It simply exists. My knowledge, my descriptions, my roadmaps, have to be true to scale Frameworks have to be logical. Reality is not obliged by that limitation. What you consider as impossible has often happened in actual life of people. ”

“ The word Kula means a family. All of us teachers are members of one family.
Every aspect of the work we mean to do — to commit ourselves to knowledge; to strive for mental purity; to watch over the development of our students with affectionate care; to study the problems of society with a disinterested endeavour to reach agreed conclusions for the guidance of the public - all of these are part of the task of establishing the unity of the family that is the family of teachers.
Vinoba said, these are the reasons which led him to choose the name Acharyakul. ”

“ People do not work only for bonus or incentive bonus, Industries are not raised, and soldiers do not fight for bonus. Only fuelling desire for wants cannot create enthusiasm for work amongst the workers. A call for performance has to be suborned by some emotional appeal. Inspiring this urge for increasing production, increasing value-addition is the key factor in any managerial success. Keep extraordinary goals before people, they can deliver extra-ordinary results if they are motivated enough. ”

“ The individual becomes great because of the indwelling thought, which is great. The individual becomes the mouthpiece for the thought. The strength lies in the thought. And just as the existence of the individual helps the thought, it may also cause harm to it. After the individual is gone, the pure thought alone remains. That is why Tulsidas says that the name of Rama is greater than Rama, implying that what can be achieved by an individual as great as Rama can be achieved in a much larger measure by the power of his name. ”

“ One starts thinking about the thorn in the leg as a very important problem in the world. One ceases to think about anything else. An apparently small thorn becomes the biggest problem in the world. No other thought comes to the mind, no other thing is felt by us. The strike by workers or their behaviour has the same impact. A small problem in small part of the work place becomes the focus of the nerves of the work place as a whole. ”

“ The Sanskrit word for poet, kavi has a deep meaning. The kavi is the seer of revolution, whose vision pierces beyond the immediate. These two eyes of ours see what lies immediately around us, and shows us all the beauty of the world for our enjoyment. But their powers are limited. Beyond this present world is another world of interest and delight which they cannot reach; but man is blind to the beauty of that world because his two eyes are open only to this immediate world. ”

“ If that employer happens to be a company then one does not see any individual as such an employer. What one sees are the fellow employees who are as much beneficiaries as oneself. One is jealous of those individuals for their salaries. One thinks that one should get more. One does have some personal quarrels, anger and enmity but they are as an individual and not as a Class.
Thave not seen the unity amongst the employers or factory owners as a class. Even in employer-employee disputes I have not seen employers helping each other. ”

“ Education or learning does the same trick. The world, things and people are the same around us. But we see them better, we look at them better. We know them better. The reality is the same but we become better. Learning changes us. It does not change things. That is what school should do to you. In fact, the English word educate comes from its root “educare”, which means “to draw out”. The school or a teacher draws out from you. The things are already in you. Education or learning draws more and more out of you.
That is what a good teacher does. In the Vedas, the teacher is called “gatu vit”. ”

“ In labour-management relations these frames are very troublesome. Why do People Work? If your answer is: only for money, stability, and for bread, or in absence of alternatives, the answers appears logical and complete to us. Often we imagine our own answers as the answers and that is the beginning of complications.
My experience is that it is not the workers but educated managers who believe in the division of society between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and more so with regard to class conflict. This feeling is stronger in the more educated managers who are actually highly paid workers. ”

“ Vinoba narrated this story in a meeting for farmers. He said, “You physically cultivate your farms, you do the tilling to level the land, Sun shines on that land and then you wait to see God. How many of you have seen God?" All of them raised their hands. There was not a single farmer who doubted whether he had seen God or not. When it rains, the farmers feel that God has not only come to meet them but to touch them. He touches them physically with thousands of drops of water in the showers of rain. ”

“ Every society has to find answers to these questions from time to time. Unless you have clear confirmation in your mind, you cannot proceed in human resource management. Whether we are consciously aware of these answers or not, they are basic assumptions in any given society. When I am working as a manager in India I must know the value systems of the people who work with me. If I look at them with foreign spectacles my perception is likely to be wrong. Often perception of a problem indicates the solution of the problem. ”

“ While reflecting on the spiritualisation of politics it occurs to me that in the process politics does not remain intact, it is destroyed. Its place is taken by Lokaniti (people's power) . With freedom has come the rule of the people. Politics cannot survive its spiritualisation. Just as when you try to ignite wood it burns up. You cannot apply fire to wood and at the same time make it retain its character as wood. ”

“ Equality between all organs will be underscored for the ultimate benefit of the enterprise.
This will need an understanding of the individual ‘self’. You will have to forget the outer trappings and concentrate on your core. How do I see myself as an accounts manager/ personnel manager/ research manager in order to enhance my organisation? Once this belief in your self is established, then how to behave as a Manager, how to lead others will be easy to understand. Search of this self will lead to the individual's growth through transformation. ”