Between March and July 2023, Dr. Anil Maheshwari published four more books, bringing his total to 16 books altogether. He has also published more than 40 papers and given more than 40 presentations at conferences and symposia.

His most recent tranche of books includes a two-volume textbook, Consciousness-Based Leadership and Management. The book has an interesting origin story that goes back to a 2016 conference in Los Angeles. 

The conference was organized by the Academy of Management, the world’s largest association for management professors. Maheshwari is a distinguished member, and this year, he was promoted to serve as chair of the Management, Spirituality, and Religion division of the academy.  

At the conference, Maheshwari came across an MIT professor who was advocating for his “U Theory” — a 7-step process to go from brokenness to greater connectedness. Maheshwari liked the idea, but told him it could be done faster.  

He asked the professor: What if we could go down to the subtlest level and come back up again in one swoop, like a V instead of a U?

The professor thought for a few seconds, then responded, “Sure!”

Just like that, Maheshwari’s “V Theory” was born. He calls it a “reformulation” of Maharishi’s bubble diagram — instead of a purely vertical stroke, there is a movement from left to right. You return from the inward stroke “a little bit ahead.”  

From 2016 to 2018, Maheshwari talked up his new theory at various conferences. “I pitch for transcendence,” he says. “Transcendence is the key. I tell them, if you want to bring everybody together to solve problems, you have to transcend your specialties.” His peers at the Academy responded with enthusiastic support, Maheshwari said — “Everybody gets it!”  

Maheshwari organizes online world peace conference

This encouraged Maheshwari to organize a world peace conference in Fairfield. Plans changed in early 2020 with the pandemic, and he switched to an online conference instead.  

With no outside funding, Maheshwari and a small group of volunteers set to work, creating brochures and a website, posting on social media, sifting through published research, and inviting keynote speakers.

Keynote speakers included Dr. Tony Nader, Dr. John Hagelin, Dr. Robert Quinn, Dr. Subhash Kak, and Dr. David Orme-Johnson. Themes included spirituality and religion, shared prosperity through enlightened business practices, and development of collective consciousness for world peace.  

In May 2021, the International Conference on Consciousness-Based Leadership and Management was held on Zoom. More than 90 speakers from diverse fields came together to lay out “a path to flourishing humanity.” It attracted almost 1,200 attendees, from 400 cities and towns around the world. Some 85% of the people were not associated with MIU.

That three-day event was a big success, reminding many MIU attendees of the SCI conferences of 1971-72 at Amherst University, which gave rise to Maharishi International University. Maheshwari was pleased that the conference evoked feelings of joy and nostalgia in attendees who were present for both.  

Two-volume textbook

This brings us to the two-volume textbook. Instead of releasing a transcript of the conference, Maheshwari decided to edit and build on the scholarly journals the presentations were based on, letting the videos stand on their own, while developing a catalog of 30 scholarly papers to expound on the topics discussed. “The quality of the papers is phenomenal,” he said. “High level [knowledge], high quality content. Breadth. Very, very joyful.”

Three main principles arose from the conference, becoming the overarching thread for his book: Consciousness is primary, compassion is essential, and developing yourself is the first priority.  

His next book follows on his #1 global best-seller, Data Analytics Made Accessible. Data Analytics 2E, the second edition of his popular textbook, includes topical issues like Data Privacy, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Wrangling in a concise and conversational style. For busy readers, this edition includes a summary that condenses all the knowledge into 50 main points. 

The textbook is application oriented. While it primarily caters to computer science and IT students, engineering and management students should also find it useful. Those seeking an introduction to data science can find simple tutorials on data mining techniques using Python, R, and Weka.  

Book on social entrepreneurship

There’s still one more book to mention, titled Social Entrepreneurship, which Maheshwari co-authored with Dr. Nisha Pandey from India. This book tells the stories of different business groups in various industries to explore social entrepreneurship and sustainable business models. It focuses on individuals who recognize problems and create innovative solutions, aiming to transform society through their conscientious business practices. Social Entrepreneurship is an elusively dynamic topic, but this book does its best to provide a “thorough narrative” of the evolving field. 

Maheshwari has now published 16 books, and he tells me there could be more. A deep purpose undergirds his writing: to help humanity arm itself with wisdom, so we can positively harness the power surrounding us, rather than continue to be exploited by it. “The technology is here,” he says, but our survival depends on how we choose to use it.

This is an important key to his success. Maheshwari distills complex, disparate concepts down to a profound and simple essence.

Towards the end of our interview, I asked him how data science, a seemingly mechanical subject, can incorporate a consciousness-based lens. He looked to his wife, a top-notch chef, and asked her the secret to making a quality meal. “Your heart has to be into it,” she replied — and that, he said, is true in every field.