Hemant Lawanghare introduces Atman Intelligence, blending ancient wisdom with modern leadership to address burnout in the AI era.
Atman Intelligence
In an age dominated by artificial intelligence, constant performance, and rising burnout, a quieter but more profound question is beginning to surface: Who are we beneath our roles, achievements, and identities?
Mid-Day speaks with Hemant Lawanghare, author of Atman Intelligence and Founder of MasterMyLife EQ Education, whose work bridges ancient Indian wisdom with modern emotional and leadership challenges. Drawing from his own journey through corporate life, executive coaching, and Advaita Vedanta, Lawanghare introduces Atman Intelligence as an inner operating system for clarity, resilience, and conscious leadership.
In this conversation, he explores why emotional intelligence alone is no longer enough, how spirituality can enter boardrooms without losing practicality, and why the future of leadership in an AI-driven world depends on deep inner awareness rather than external optimisation.
1. Your book introduces Atman Intelligence as a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern life mastery. What personal experiences led you to create this framework, and why does the world need it now?
I answer this as I have lived it and narrated it in my book, A Journey of Self-Discovery: The Mask, The Mirror, and The Horizon. Atman Intelligence did not emerge as a concept. It emerged from my own unravelling.
The first phase I call The Mask. Over more than twenty-four years in corporate life, I performed my roles well. Career, family, stability, success, everything appeared in place. Yet there was a persistent emptiness. Sitting at traffic lights, a quiet question kept returning. Is this living, or am I simply surviving inside a cage I have built myself?
The second phase, The Mirror, began in 2012 when my organisation sent me for executive coaching. My coach specialised in emotional intelligence. There were no fixes, only presence and questions that evoked awareness. That experience stripped away layers of identity I had mistaken for myself. The question became unavoidable. Who am I, truly? Seeing the impact of coaching, I pursued certification and became a coach in 2014.
The third phase unfolded in 2016 when I chose to work full time as a coach and educationist. While developing a master’s programme on emotional intelligence and life coaching with the University of Mumbai, I was drawn into Advaita Vedanta. The inquiry deepened beyond roles and thoughts. I realised I was not the waves of identity, but the ocean beneath them. That stillness did not give answers. It gave freedom.
Atman Intelligence exists because people today are exhausted from performing. In an age of artificial intelligence, burnout, and constant noise, the world is ready for inner clarity and grounded leadership.
2. How does Atman Intelligence go beyond traditional self-help or emotional intelligence approaches?
Atman Intelligence is not a checklist or a motivation system. Traditional self-help focuses on optimisation. Emotional intelligence focuses on managing emotions. Both often stop at behaviour.
Atman Intelligence begins at identity. It awakens remembrance of the Atman, the unchanging witnessing consciousness within. From there, thinking becomes intentional, action becomes aligned, emotions become conscious, and care expands beyond the self. It is not about perfection. It is about coherence. As I say in the book, you do not manage life, you lead it.
3. How does MML help people move from defining purpose to living it daily?
Purpose is easy to articulate and difficult to embody. MasterMyLife EQ Education was created to bridge that gap. Through the Global Coach Certification Program and the Atman Intelligence based Life Wisdom Program, participants integrate emotional, behavioural, and spiritual intelligence through experiential learning.
This is not classroom knowledge. It is lived practice. I have seen professionals shift how they make decisions, lead teams, and show up in relationships. Purpose stops being a statement and becomes a way of choosing and responding every day.
4. How does Atman Intelligence bring spirituality into boardrooms and leadership spaces?
Spirituality is not an escape from life. It is mastery within it. Atman Intelligence translates ancient yogic wisdom into everyday action. Ethical clarity builds trust. Breath and embodiment create calm under pressure. Awareness sharpens focus. Meditation brings clarity beyond ego driven decisions.
I have seen leaders use these practices to navigate crises, scale ethically, and lead with responsibility. Spiritual intelligence becomes a practical advantage, not a private retreat.
5. How does MML ensure emotional and spiritual intelligence are embodied, not just taught?
MML is experiential from day one. Participants practise live coaching under supervision using structured tools and receive continuous mentoring and feedback. Growth is observed and assessed not just intellectually, but behaviourally and emotionally.
Across global cohorts, I have watched leaders move from reaction to presence and coaches emerge as living examples of awareness. Transformation, not information, is the benchmark.
6. How does your book redefine emotional resilience?
Resilience in the book is not about bouncing back. It is about waking up. It is the shift from emotional armour to inner mastery. Drawing from Vedic wisdom, resilience is framed through the Sakshi, the witnessing self. You are not the storm. You are the sky it moves through.
Practical tools help translate this awareness into conscious responses during fear, rejection, and heartbreak. Loss is treated not as failure, but as redirection. Resilience becomes growth.
7. What shifts do you see when emotional, behavioural, and Atman awareness align?
People move from performing life to living it. Reactions slow down. Presence increases. Identity shifts from roles to authenticity. Leadership becomes calmer, more humane, and more trustworthy. Success expands from personal achievement to shared growth.
8. Looking ahead, what role will Atman Intelligence and MML play in an AI driven future?
As technology accelerates, inner stability will define success. Atman Intelligence offers an inner operating system rooted in self-awareness, emotional steadiness, ethical clarity, and interconnectedness. MML exists to develop humans who can hold emotional overload without burnout.
In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, the future belongs to those guided by a deeper intelligence, Atman Intelligence.
- Hemant Lawanghare, Founder, MasterMyLife EQ Education, Author, Atman Intelligence
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the article are media marketing initiative and do not represent the stand and views of Mid-Day Group. Mid-Day Group disclaims any and all liability to any party, company or product for any direct, indirect, implied, punitive, special, incidental or consequential damages arising directly or indirectly from the use of this content.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
