ABOUT

I am Mohan Ranga Rao. I studied electrical engineering at S.J.C.E. and followed with an M.B.A from the University of Mysore in an era when MBAs—at least in India—were considered mavericks. I was raised in a large family, with many successful businesses, but instead of living within the comfort and collective security of our family compound and working in our family business, as was expected of me, I chose to go solo to build businesses on my own. I struggled with massive debt, Chinese dumping, and a dire lack of capital but I eventually built and sold several multimillion dollar businesses.

My beloved Yogita, my first-born child, was born blind and with arrested cognitive developments. She was a very beautiful, affable, tender, inquisitive, playful little girl. She was a keenly perceptive girl who loved music. Parenting her was the biggest privilege in my life—I was forced to transform from a power-driven individual into a spiritual and devoted family man. Yogita taught me that true happiness comes from the inside and that the material things I had craved were actually trivial. My eyeless angel made me see.

My hunger for self-discovery sharpened as I exited from my businesses when I turned 56. I began to push myself both physically, mentally, and spiritually. The top of peaks seemed to me like the higher self of the physical earth and I began to climb hills and mountains as a physical and spiritual hobby while simultaneously seeking and searching my inner self.

I believe that spirituality is a private inner study and reflection done beyond the play of our constructed minds. I do not believe in rituals or prayers to appease or influence any gods, although I sometimes perform these sorts of rituals out of familial obligations. I believe that god is an infinitely intelligent energy field that is present in the form of consciousness that exists in all of creation. We are manifestations of this field. To recognise this field by witnessing intelligent consciousness in all of us is the goal of spirituality.

We all face our own struggles and challenges. The importance is not in what we face, but in how we choose to confront it.  Your and my experiences may be different but we share the ability to grow and change in the face of them. I wrote my two memoirs with the wish that my experiences will help others. I hope that you may find some inspiration or community in my work—or at the very least, some practical mindfulness exercises that will help you and found there is a larger, deeper meaning in them that we can recognise if we stop looking at them with myopic inner eyes and start viewing them as cosmic orchestrations designed to edify our souls.