What if the ancient Fourteen Lokas were actually an early leadership framework?
For those unfamiliar with the idea, Loka broadly means a world, realm or plane of experience. In the ancient Indian worldview, existence is described through Fourteen Lokas, representing different levels of experience, from the instinctive and ego-driven to the subtle, expansive and highly evolved. Now comes the interesting part.
What if we looked at these not merely as cosmic realms, but as a metaphor for levels of consciousness in leadership and organisations?
No PowerPoint, no 9-box matrix, no competency dictionary. And thankfully, no meeting titled “Strategic Alignment: The Way Forward Going Forward.”
The Lokas can be seen as different levels of human experience, from instinct, fear, ego and attachment to clarity, wisdom and interconnectedness.
Now replace “human being” with “organisation.” Suddenly, things become painfully familiar. “My KPI is green, my department delivered, that is a Quality issue, SCM did not give us the material, sales committed it, Operations has to deliver it.”
And the corporate classic:
I have done my part.
Everyone has achieved 100%.
The customer has received 0%.
The dashboard is green.
The organisation is bleeding.
The ancient Vaishvanara, the Universal Self, teaching in the Chandogya Upanishad offers a beautiful metaphor: the whole is one system. The head cannot celebrate because the feet are injured. Finance cannot declare victory while Operations is struggling. Sales cannot own the customer while Quality disowns the defect.
A mature organisation moves from functional optimisation to enterprise consciousness.
The question changes from: “How did my function perform?”
to: “How did the whole system perform?”
That is leadership maturity. Less blame, more ownership. Less “my number”, more “our outcome”. Less protecting territory, more creating value. Less optimisation of the parts, more attention to the whole.
And here comes the slightly uncomfortable question: Which Loka are we operating from?
If fear drives decisions, ego drives conversations and departments behave like independent kingdoms, perhaps another strategy workshop is not the answer.
Perhaps we need a shift in consciousness. Because the best leaders do not merely manage functions. They see the system.
And before we commission another dashboard, KPI, alignment meeting or PowerPoint titled “One Team, One Vision”... perhaps we could first ask ourselves: “Which Loka are we currently living in?
#leadership #collaboration #ego #alignment #purpose