Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. I want to put a ding in the universe.
- Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs wasn’t actually that great at computer programming, his colleague, Steve Wozniak, did the heavy lifting in that department. Jobs became famous for his business acumen, his creative vision of what a computer could do, and his brilliance at designing a computer that looked cutting edge, sleek, and even, well — delicious. Like all great inventors he was able to bring into manifestation things that were only in his imagination — and he allowed himself to have a bigger imagination than most.
Just how far out of the box Jobs was with his thinking came into sharp focus at his funeral. On the way out, everyone who attended the funeral (over five hundred people) were given a small brown box. In it was a copy of the his favorite book, Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. The books main message — stop chasing the outside world, look inside, transcend your individual self (ego), and actualize your universal self (soul). The autobiography had already become legend among meditative spiritual seekers; but it was hardly a go to text in silicon valley with the computer geek set who was storming the world with their technological revolution.
The book outlines how to harness powers beyond the linear thinking of the human mind. Yogananda came to the west with a mission to spread eastern yogic teachings and unite them with western doctrine. He founded Self Realization Fellowship , the “church of all religions.” The book is not for the faint of heart. It is ripe with passages of events that would rest easily along side miracles from The Bible. It challenges the modern mindset and what we have come to accept as possible and impossible.
Yogananda’s teachings also promoted combining eastern mysticism with western material know how. Jobs was said to read the book every year for the last forty years of his life. It was also the only book he downloaded to his I-pod. He learned that his intuition was his greatest gift — and that there was enormous power in developing, following, and creating from it. Albert Einstein is said to have read the book multiple times. The book was also the late Beatle George Harrison’s favorite. Harrison said, “I keep stacks of it around to hand out to anyone who needs help.”
Going past our conditioned, limited thinking can be enormously challenging. We can often be in a trance of limitations, unable to see past our own history. When we even entertain books like this, we give our minds a chance to consider a new paradigm, step past the known, and give ourselves the gift of imagination — and maybe even self-realization.
From the Autobiography of a Yogi:
You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else had done, something that will dazzle the world. Show that God’s creative principle works in you.
Click below to hear entrepreneur Joseph Rodriguez do a deep dive into some of the life themes of Autobiography of a Yogi: