Responsibility and Leadership : We have a responsibility to our own self and if we are leaders, to those who are under our care. How to fulfill these responsibilities?

Surely. One has a big responsibility, it is to fulfil a special mission that one is born upon earth. Only, naturally, the psychic being must have reached a certain degree of development; otherwise it could be said that it is the whole earth which has the responsibility. The more conscious and individualised one becomes, the more should one have the sense of responsibility. But this is what happens at a given moment; one begins to think that one is here not without reason, without purpose. One realises suddenly that one is here because there is something to be done and this something is not anything egoistic. This seems to me the most logical way of entering upon the path—all of a sudden to realise, “Since I am here, it means that I have a mission to fulfil. Since I have been endowed with a consciousness, it is that I have something to do with that consciousness—what is it?”

 Generally, it seems to me that this is the first question one should put to oneself: “Why am I here?”

 I have seen this in children, even in children of five or six: “Why am I here, why do I live?” And then to search, with whatever consciousness is available, with a very little bit of consciousness: why am I here, for what reason?

This seems to me the normal starting-point.

[CWM2, 4:246]

If the sense of collaboration and responsibility is awakened in the children, then they will take an interest in what they do and do it with pleasure.

[CWM2, 12:354]

It is those who prove to be most capable and most sincere, honest and faithful that have the biggest amount of work and the greatest responsibility.

[CWM2, 13:160]

If you do not feel your responsibility and if you are not always alert and painstaking, then Nature will play mischief with you. If you want to stop the mischief of Nature, you have to do your work with exactness and a sense of responsibility. You must not leave anything undone. You must always be careful and alert and you will be safe.

                                                                                                         [CWM2, 15:12]

Ah! that indeed depends upon you.

The first thing is to learn how to know by identity. That is indispensable when one has the responsibility for others. To learn how to guide other people, the first indispensable step is to know how to enter into their minds so as to know them —not to project one’s thought, imagine what they are, but go out of oneself and enter into them, to know what is happening there. Then, in this way, one knows them because one is them. When one knows only oneself in others, that means one knows nothing. One may be completely mistaken. One imagines it is like this or that—one judges by appearances or else through mental preferences, preconceived ideas; that is to say, one knows nothing. But there is one condition in which one doesn’t even need to know, to try to know what somebody is like: one can’t do otherwise but feel what he is, for he is a projection of oneself. And unless one knows how to do that, one can never do what is necessary for people—unless one feels as they feel, thinks as they think, unless one is able to enter into them as though one were they themselves. That is the only way. If you try to know with a small active mind, you will never know anything—nor by looking at people and telling yourself: “Why, he does this in this way and that way, so he must be like that.” That is impossible.

So, the first task of those who have a responsibility—for instance, those who are in charge of educating other children, taking care of others, from rulers to teachers and monitors—their first task is to learn how to identify themselves with the others, to feel as they do. Then one knows what one should do. One keeps one’s inner light, keeps one’s consciousness where it ought to be, very high above, in the light, and at the same time gets identified, and so one feels what they are, what their reactions are, what their thoughts, and one holds that before the light one has: one succeeds in thinking out perfectly well what should be done for them. You will tell each one what he needs to hear, you will act with each one as is necessary to make him understand. And that is why it is a wonderful grace to have the responsibility for a certain number of people, for that obliges you to make the most essential progress. And I hasten to tell you that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t make it. But that is exactly why things are in such a bad way. Particularly those who have the responsibility of governing a country—this is the last thing they think about! They are very eager rather to keep their way of seeing and their way of feeling, and fiercely refrain from realising the needs of those over whom they rule. But indeed one can see that the result is not up to much; so far it is evident that one can’t say that governments have been remarkable institutions. It is the same thing on all levels: there are small governments, there are big governments. But the laws are the same, for all. And unless, when giving a lesson, you are able, there and then, to take in the entire atmosphere, to gather the vibrations around people, put them all together, keep all that before you, and become aware of what you can do with this stuff (with the vibrations you can spread, the forces you can give out, those which will be received, those which will be assimilated), unless you do that, mostly you too are wasting your time. In order to do the least work, one must make a lot of progress.

[CWM2, 5:298-300]