Mircea Eliade: The Sacred and the Profane – Two Modes of Being in the World

In this post I examine the introductory chapter of Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, in which the author uses the same terminology as Émile Durkheim to note a dualism between “two modes of being in the world” (Eliade, 14).

Although both authors use the words “sacred” and “profane”, Eliade’s goals are different from those of Durkheim. In Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, he refers to a “collective effervescence” (Durkheim, 226) which is mistaken by humans for some form of transcendence. In other words what is thought of as “sacred” is merely a social construction, and is viewed in opposition to the profane because humans demarcate it as apart from other objects. In Durkheim’s words “religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden” (Durkheim, 47).

In contrast, Eliade views the sacred and the profane as two ways of seeing the world, which means that the very same objects or acts can be viewed as either sacred or profane depending on an individual’s point of view. He explicitly states that he does not want to confine his discussion to the history of religions or sociology, but also to include phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, and psychology (Eliade, 15). On the whole Eliade is concerned with “the possible dimensions of human existence” (Eliade, 15) by which he means the way an individual regards herself in relation to the cosmos.

Given Eliade’s different definition and approach to the sacred and the profane, it is fitting that he references the work of Rudolf Otto for context rather than Durkheim.

Rather than reduce the idea of the Divine to an anthropological projection like Feuerbach or purely a sociological construct like Durkheim, Eliade references Otto’s work on religious experience.

The key point of emphasis for Eliade is that despite his background as a Theologian, Otto distinguished between the “living God” for the believer, which is to say the believer’s experience of God, from abstract philosophical notions or rational proofs of God’s existence (Eliade, 8). Otto studied religious experience of God which he termed “numinous” experience, in which the Divine presents itself as “wholly other” (Eliade, 9). Characteristic of this experience are the three characteristics of mysterium tremendum et fascinas.

Eliade explains that when one has a numinous experience “the other” that is encountered is perceived as “like nothing human or cosmic” (10), and therefore, regardless of which words one uses there is simply a “human inability to express the ganz andere” (Eliade, 10). By including Otto’s work as part of his introduction, Eliade orients the reader towards a phenomenological perspective of the sacred. Once this understanding is in place, Eliade is able to introduce his goal which is to discuss a broader scope of sacred experience of the world. Rather than simply considering a numinous experience sacred, Eliade wants to explore the individual’s way of being in relation to the world as a result of her sacred attitude. He refers to this as the “sacred in its entirety” (Eliade, 10), which gives the individual the potential to view the entire cosmos as the sacred rather than only through an isolated experience. Eliade’s goal in sum for his book, which he states in the introductory chapter is to “present the specific dimensions of religious experience, to bring out the differences between it and profane experience of the world” (Eliade, 17). The sacred therefore, refers less to an isolated religious experience and more towards a religious way of experiencing the world.

At this point it would be useful to further discuss Eliade’s definition of the sacred, especially since it is difficult to convey given that it is beyond the scope of the symbolic nature of human language. Eliade uses the word hierophany to denote the manifestation of the sacred. A seemingly ordinary object such as a tree, for instance, would be a hierophany if it was perceived as a “manifestation of something of a wholly different order… a reality that does not belong to our world” (Eliade, 11). Eliade acknowledges the paradox that by the nature of the individual’s perception, the object both “becomes something else” but also “continues to remain itself” (12). To make sense of this contradiction one could say that it depends on the the individual’s point of view. From the perspective of the profane the object is merely a tree, whereas from the perspective of the sacred it is a manifestation of a ‘supernatural’ reality. In other words, “the sacred is saturated with being” (13). Eliade goes as far as to say that with a sacred viewpoint the entirety of the cosmos can become a hierophany.

Eliade’s interest in examining the manifestation of the Divine is to “bring out the specific characteristics of life in a world capable of becoming sacred” (15). He wants to examine the behavior of what he calls homo religiosus, which means one with a sacred view of the world (18). Therefore, Eliade uses examples of the sacred from a variety of different societies from different historical periods and cultures. His aim is not to suggest that they are identical in terms of the specific nature of the phenomena, but rather to show that on the whole all these examples indicate a different attitude or way of being in relation to the world compared with the profane. To illustrate this, Eliade explains that there are specific characteristics of religious experience and an attitude towards the world as Divine in the same way that many different cultures have variations of the “poetic phenomenon” (16). Therefore, the phenomenological perception for an individual from a “primitive” society who regards a tree as sacred, has something in common with the more “supreme” manifestation of the Divine such as in God made manifest in Christ (Eliade, 11). Similarly, Eliade acknowledges that different peoples will have “differences in religious experience explained by differences in economy, culture, and social organization” (17) however, the common factor is that in each case the individual lives in “a sacralized cosmos” (17). Eliade notes that in contrast to this sacralized view of the cosmos is the existential situation of modern man who “finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic societies” (13). We can find a specific instance of the difference between a sacralized and profane view of the cosmos in that the “modern individual views everyday activities as the profane, or as an organic phenomenon” (14). On the other hand for the “primitive” these acts such as food or sex can become a communion with the sacred (14). These approaches describe “two existential situations” (14), and in this way Eliade takes a psychological and phenomenological approach to the sacred experience of human life.

Above, I have detailed the methodological orientation and overall aim of Eliade’s introductory chapter in The Sacred and the Profane as well as the difference in his approach from Durkheim’s. Below, I explain why Eliade’s exploration of the sacralized cosmos is significant in contemporary society. Eliade generalizes that in the modern age the cosmos is not viewed as sacred which according to his definition means that it is not viewed as “saturated with being” (13). Eliade does not make it clear to the reader in his introductory chapter whether he views the Divine as a social construction, a transcendental encounter, a ontologically valid plane of reality, or simply a description of phenomenological experience that Otto studied. The merit of the approach Eliade outlines in the introductory chapter is that it allows for the fruits of the sacred experience of the world, without necessarily needing to say what the cause of that experience is. Eliade addresses that the profane view of the world takes the mystery of existence of granted. Thus rather than focusing on what the word Divine is a pointer to, he focuses on the modality of the perception itself. While Durkheim claims that “men believe themselves transported into an entirely different world from the one they have before their eyes” (226), Eliade’s approach means that the world is actually transfigured in the sense that the subject perceives it as sacred. Thus Eliade gives room to explore the qualities of experiencing the world with a sense of wonder, awe, and mystery without needing to make claims about the meaning of such experiences, although he does acknowledge that people throughout history tend to view them as more ‘real’. Especially since Eliade considers the overall view of the cosmos as sacred rather than simply confined to a temporal numinous experience, he focuses on the qualitative difference in the experience of living. Moreover, if the entire cosmos is viewed as a manifestation of the supernatural one is left to wonder what the supernatural denotes. If one regards the entirety of the ‘natural world’ as ‘supernatural’ these opposing definitions cease to make sense, apart from saying that the natural is a pointer to something beyond itself. Yet, I posit that Eliade’s approach gives room for one to view all of existence as “sacred” without necessarily believing that the world is literally a pointer to something beyond itself. Thus the difference in the modalities of the sacred and the profane does not lie in words or definitions but rather depends on the subjective experience of how the world is perceived by the individual. Does the individual view the cosmos as sacred or as merely the natural world? The natural world in this case is defined as profane by the word merely rather than the word natural. The adverb is more descriptive than the noun since it is describing a way of being in and seeing the world. Does the individual view the world as merely existing (without significance) or as saturated with being (significance)? Thus there is the potential for secular society to have a sacred view towards the cosmos, not because it is a pointer to another ontological plane of existence or supernatural deity, but simply because the experience of ordinary life itself can be perceived as profound and because a scientific­ materialist view of the world does not explain Ultimate questions. Ordinary phenomena are mystical in the sense that the sacred and the profane are ways of seeing. The profane takes things for granted, while the sacred acknowledges this limits of human epistemology. Thus the religious attitude is the act of perceiving seemingly ordinary phenomena with wonder. However, social conditioning dictates these occurrences as unremarkable or profane, because we use scientific or even dogmatic religious terminology to explain them away. Thus Eliade’s approach to the two way of being in the world leaves room for the profane rather than the sacred to be viewed as merely a social construction created by what Huston Smith might call the tunnel of scientific materialism (Smith, 20), because the world prior to this explanatory construction is a great mystery. In this way existence in and of itself can be perceived as sacred, with no opposite.

Note: This post is adapted from an essay I wrote for a class at Princeton.

Works Cited
Durkheim, Emile, and Joseph Ward Swain. The elementary forms of the religious life. Courier
Corporation, 2008. Harvard
Eliade, Mircea. The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
1959.
Smith, Huston. Why religion matters. HarperCollins World, 2001.

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Jerry Colonna / Tim Ferriss Podcast: How to Take a Two-Month Sabbatical Every Year

The Tim Ferriss show is my favorite podcast because it covers topics ranging from startup growth to mental health and spirituality. Tim is a great interviewer and the guests he has on the show are phenomenal. Below are my rough notes from an episode with Jerry Colonna.

Q: “What benefit do I get from the conditions I say I don’t want?”

Family systems can reject feelings, not just individuals

We get busy because we don’t want to feel certain feelings

Cold boredom – we all need it – just stirring oatmeal type of days

Tim – sitting in the void last year – very painful for him

Baby steps – you don’t have to start with 2 months. Start with an evening or a weekend

Digital Sabbath (Brad Feld) – Friday – Sunday devices off

Share a tent with guy friends, sleep in a tent. Make a first at night. Hike at high altitude. Example of something that is relaxing / cold boredom for time. 4-5 days of that and felt like a 6 month vacation

Blessing for those who are exhausted – “To Bless The Space Between Us”

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Team and Execution With Sam Altman

Notes From “How to Start a Startup” Lecture 2

You need to have technical co-founders.

Don’t brag about how many employees you have. Better to have fewer not more employees.

Airbnb medical diagnosis question 9:45

It can easily take 1 year to get someone if they’re the best. The best people have options.

25% should be dedicated towards hiring once you’re in that mode.

Mediocre engineers do not build great companies (sign on the wall).

Referrals for the first 100 employees

HR person should ask you for every smart person you’ve ever met once you join the company

1. Are they smart?

2. Do they get things done?

3. Do I want to spend lots of time with them?

Do a project with them for 1-2 days rather than interview them. You’ll get a much better sense. 15:45s.

Zuck: You should be comfortable reporting to this person if the roles were reversed.

Give away 10% to the first 10 employees.

Employees add more value over time, whereas investors write the initial check then don’t add much (some exceptions).

The team gets all credits. You take all blame.

Dan Pink: Three Things people need to be happy at work: Autonomy. Mastery, Purpose

Firing is the worst part of running a company.

“You don’t get to pick their decisions, but you do get to choose the decision-maker”

4 years is the standard vesting period, the clock begins 1 year in

Don’t be remote in the early days of a startup.

Set key goals. Everyone in the company should be able to tell you what they are.

You should know your weekly growth metrics. Who cares about PR? 35:30

Two key ingredients:

  1. Extreme Focus (Say No)

  2. Extreme Intensity

0.99 (death) vs. 1.01 (exponential growth) consumer web viral coefficient example

Break down large projects/products into smaller projects and ship them super quickly

In marginal situations get on a plane

Keeping momentum is the most important part of running a startup.

Sales fix everything

You must be decisive and execute, not just talk about cool ideas

Facebook’s growth slowed in 2008.

Created a “Growth” group.

Worked on very small things to contribute to growth. In isolation seemed small but improved the growth curve.

In order to maintain momentum you need to establish an operating rhythm for:

  • Shipping product

  • Launching new features

  • Reviewing/reporting metrics and milestones

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Book Notes: Blitzscaling by Chris Yeh and Reid Hoffman

This book asks the question, when is it beneficial to prioritize speed of growth over efficiency?

What Is Blitzscaling?

– Additional airbnb hosts, make the service more valuable for travellers

– Additional travellers make the network more valuable for the hosts

Strategy + set of techniques to prioritize speed > efficiency.

Purposefully + intentionally doing things that are non-traditional and take on additional risk.

Based on Stanford class. How to grow multi-billion dollar companies in a matter of years.

Dropbox, Facebook, Airbnb, Google stories. Extreme unwieldy, inefficient do or die approach to growth.

How, when and why to Blitzscale.

Silicon Valley is the most prominent / concentrated set of examples of blitzscaling.

14 companies of over 100B market cap worldwide. Seven of fourteen in Silicon Valley.

Talent + capital + entrepreneurial culture is not the key. It’s not just venture capital, research universities and smart people. What sets Silicon Valley apart from Austin, Boston, Seattle, Shanghai, etc.

0 to multibillion dollar market leader in a matter of years.

Small number of hypotheses to decide where you want to win the market and how that will help your business.

Capital fuels and helps tweak the rocket.

Software is eating the world. Even hardware companies integrate with software.

– Computational biology

– Precision surgery

Prioritize speed over efficiency vs. usual startup approach which is efficiency over speed in an atmosphere of uncertainty, to maximize resources.

Blitzscaling is success or death. Blitzscaling is different from fast scaling because there’s uncertainty.

~~

Technique 1 – Business Model Innovation

– It’s not just about technological innovation

– Though it is the most common trigger – e.g. Smartphones + GPS helped Uber for both drivers and riders

– Often companies that growth through Blitzscaling buy technological innovators (e.g. Google bought Deepmind)

– Combine new tech with good distribution to customers

– Scalable and high margin revenue model is ideal

PayPal Examples

1. Paid Customers Referral Bonuses

PayPal’s referral program / financial bonus was a good move because it was a lower cost of acquisition for financial service than other acquisition channels

2. Allowed customers to accept credit card payments and ate the 3% fee themselves

Technique 2 – Strategy Innovation

How do you create a strategy to achieve extreme growth? What should you not do and what should you not do?

Network effects – 1st company to achieve critical scale leads to winner take all / first scalar advantage. 

Uber Example Of City Expansion

Uber allows you to get a ride faster than anyone else. This attracts more customers, more drivers, and increases the liquidity of the market.

2012 blog post – all markets are not created equal. Route and load optimization leads to shorter pickup times and a better experience.

Disney was risky, since Walt Disney bet against life insurance to fund the company but it’s not Blitzscaling.

Examples of Blitzscaling strategies:

– Reduce ticket prices 90% to get to 1 million visitors, since those 1 million visitors would help go to 9MM more through network effects

– Paying construction crews to work 24 hours / day in order to get Disneyland open a few months earlier

Silicon Valley Investors

– Upward trajectory but no hockey stick

– Take on more risk to get exponential growth or sell

– 20% annual growth isn’t enough to hit multi billion valuation fast enough

– Anything below 40% annual growth is a warning sign, though it would delight wall street analysts covering another industry

– Greater risk is to move to slowly according to this philosophy

Nokia is an example of the peril of not taking risks. Apple and Samsung came into the market.

When Uber launches in a new city, they offer subsidies. For example:

– Boost payments to attract drivers

– Lowering fares to attract riders

Reach critical scale faster than competitors. Raised $9B+ but eventually it needs to significantly improve its unit economics – for example investing in autonomous vehicles to eliminate driver costs.

Technique 3 – Management Innovation

Tripling the number of employees each year isn’t uncommon, meaning you need unconventional management strategies.

Launch flawed and imperfect products. Let fires burn. You may have to ignore angry customers. You may have to hire “good enough” people.

Technique 1 Business Model Innovation Deep Dive

– Amazon dominated e-commerce not Walmart. Online reviews, shopping carts and shipping.

– Microsoft pre-installed the browser on all it’s computers with Windows OS.

Business model innovations seem obvious in retrospect, but they aren’t usually at the time.

Innovative Tech ⟶ Innovative Products and Services ⟶ Innovative Business Models

What Is a Business Model? Let’s define it.

Peter Drucker

– Theories composed of assumptions about the business

Clayton Christensen

– Focus on the concept of the job to be done. When a customer buys a product they are hiring it to get a job done.

Airbnb, Brain Chesky

– Build a product people love

– Hire amazing people.

“What else is there to do? Everything else is fake work”

– This book’s definition: How a company generates financial returns by producing and selling its products.

Ideally you want to maximize:

1. Market size

Pitch deck 101 for startups. Large number of potential customers and number of efficient channels for reaching those customers (TAM – Total Addressable Market). Ideally the market is growing quickly as well.

VC’s need a small number of huge wins. Benchmark invested in eBay 6MM to Public 5B (745x return).

1B in annual sales needs to be the potential.

2. Distribution

Creative distribution if you don’t have money to pour into paid ads.

A. Leverage existing networks

PayPal built a pay with PayPal button for Ebay listings.

Airbnb allowed hosts to repost listings to Craigslist and they could just click a single button. Craiglist had no API so Airbnb built distribution innovation rather than product innovation in this case, by building a slick integration.

However, there’s risk if you lose the integration. For example, Facebook took away Zynga’s ability to get Facebook users to share game updates with friends. Demand media and “junk websites” got killed.

B. Virality

Incentivized

– If you referred a friend to PayPal, you each got $10.

– Led to 7-10% Growth per day.

– Dropbox: You and your friend each get free account storage

Organic Virality

– PayPal: You had to set up an account to get paid.

– Address book importer – connect LinkedIn to Outlook contacts

– Use LinkedIn pages as primary professional page on the internet (value to user as well as to others). Public profiles led to viral growth.

– Dropbox: You need an account

Retention

– Not just about front door acquisition. You need people to use the product.

– Usability test – 0/5 people succeeded in referrals – hence its worth making the experience better and doing user testing.

– Virality is often free / freemium

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Book Notes: Perry Marshall – Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords (Review)

I read Perry Marshall’s book as a refresher on Google Adwords. Below are my notes.

Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords Notes

“Lower positions convert to sales better, generally”

In other words, don’t bid for top of page. This attracts tire kickers and is unnecessarily expensive.

Claude Hopkins is the father of Direct Response advertising and the author of “Scientific Advertising”.


ClaudeHopkins

Basic campaign setup — Keyword Research research, check cost, see how many competitors show up.

Less than 15 = easy, 15 – 50 moderate, 50+ hard

2 ads per ad group (basic A/B test)

1 kw: 1 ad ratio is ideal, but impractical

Therefore, use ad groups to cluster similar keywords together with the same type of ad.

Put keywords into different silos based on theme (p. 34)

Look for potential negative keywords.

To keep bid prices down always split test two ads, eliminate the loser. Then rewrite to try and beat the current winner.

Higher CTR = lower bid cost.

If possible, put the keyword in the title, the body and the display url of the ad.

Wordtracker / Overture for click tracking (may be outdated and Google’s KW tool may be better now).

For more KWs, can use synonyms, brand names — though might be a legal issue, misspellings.

LexFN for synonyms and related concepts.

Glossaries and indexes of books related to the topic you are advertising for → you can find high volume, low cost keyword ideas.

Phrase / Exact match can help reduce unwanted KWs.

Negative KWs improve CTR by lowering impressions (again helpful to lower click costs).

Writing Good Google Ads

No ivory tower language. Keep it simple.

Use keyword in headline.

Benefits first, features second (huge difference in CTR).

Benefits = emotional payoffs.

Retell the ads story in the display URL.

Images get higher CTR (display network), but may show less often because there’s less inventory. They take up more real estate.

Local search has less competition. e.g. dentists, counsellors / therapists, real estate, service based businesses.

Local service to test the market, then offer a product globally.

CPC goes way down if CTR is high!

Quality score → comprised of CTR, ad text relevance, historical KW performance, + other factors

Your Unique Selling Proposition

USP → Answer: What do you uniquely guarantee? OR Why should I do business with you, instead of any and every other option available to me, including the option of doing nothing at all?

Key USP Questions

1. Why should I read or listen to you?

2. Why should I believe what you have to say?

3. Why should I do anything about what you’re offering?

4. Why should I act now?

Use these questions for both your advert and your website / landing page.

P. 116 has some great USP examples.

P. 120 USP for a maid + flyers example

With a complex sales process (read: higher value item) break up the process into steps.

First get their email address.

Email Marketing → Subject line is all about context

Headline Swipe Files (p. 128)

For example,

* When [Method] is NOT the Best Way to Solve Your Problems

* Five Insidious Lies About [Topic]

Tell stories & show personality in your emails!

Often the stories aren’t that related… there’s a transition after the reader is hooked.

Frequency is important so people remember you.

3, 5, 7 are good numbers for sequences.

After 5-day sequence, taper out… (2 years later)

Unsubscribe between 3 and 10 percent.

After someone buys, put them on a sequence that helps them use the product (cuts refunds in half).

Use email to express a personality, don’t hide behind it.

You can duplicate a product, but not a personality (brand differentiation).

Optins can be more than an email address, which makes them more valuable.

Wright Brothers story — testing the gliding first. Got the balance right. THEN, then added the engine.

Similar to getting product market fit right first before creating a sales engine. Steve Blank talks about this in Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Website is the glider.

Search traffic is the motor.

Adwords can send you a lot of traffic, but you need to be able to convert it.

Doing Customer Research

Chapter 14

Test different headlines e.g. for event title

You can use this for article titles, whitepapers, book names, product names, etc.

People choose to click / read on impulse so the title is important, and we don’t always know why or report why accurately.

Advertise an ebook and get feedback from them. E.g. say you offer the product but make it sold out or coming soon or something similar.

Tweak testimonials, upsells, etc. (e.g. upsells could be 1-1 services).

Good businesses make money on the back-end.

Split testing + attrition will make you a winner.

Most valuable thing you own is your list of customers. Second most valuable is list of prospective customers.

If you’re going to be an affiliate, add value related to the product you are promoting. E.g. Do a webinar that can segue into promoting a product, or offer a free guide.

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO: Keywords tell what your site is about, inbound links tell importance (and anchor text).

PPC immediate, SEO 6 months – 1 year to rank highly

On page SEO – Title tag, meta description, headline tags, body copy

Off page – URL itself, anchor text

High PR links

Link dilution

Standardize incoming link format else dilution.

Link building — Guest posting with author box, directory sites to get started

Limit your CPC bids, but keep daily budget high so ads show throughout the day.

1% CTR is typical, but if ad is a direct answer to a question you can get 10%+ (p.272)


“What ultra specific questions can you answer for your audience?”

Keep keywords in small tightly clustered groups

30-50 clicks to split test. If CTR difference is large 5-10 clicks is fine.

Landing pages: 100 – 300 words of copy.

Optin rates → 4% low, 10-25% typical, best 50% in a highly focused niche

If cost per conversion is high on a keyword, reduce bid rather than deleting it.

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Ken Wilber vs. Sam Harris: Comparing Perspectives on Spirituality Without Religion

Sam Harris vs. Ken Wilber
Photos by Christopher Michel and the Kanzeon Zen Center

In this post I examine the perspectives on spirituality without religion offered by two contemporary thinkers — Ken Wilber and Sam Harris. Both of these individuals claim that contemplative practices, which are sourced from the world’s religious traditions, provide phenomenological insights that the secular, humanist, and rational world views do not have access to. In his book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion Harris argues that “spirituality remains the great hole in secularism, humanism, rationalism, atheism, and all the other defensive postures that reasonable men and women strike in the presence of unreasonable [religious] faith” (Harris, 202-203). In their work both Wilber and Harris advocate for spiritual practice and attempt to extract the contemplative aspects of the world’s religions which lead to the experience of self-transcendence, but they hold different perspectives on the implications of how this self-transcendence can be interpreted intellectually, and also in the way they define “religion”. In Imagining Religion Jonathan Z. Smith argues that ‘religion’ “…is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy” (Smith xi). In light of this, in addition to comparing the views Harris and Wilber hold, I examine their different understanding of the term “religion”, and see how this functions in the overall context of the message they are trying to convey.

Some background on Harris and Wilbers’ personal journeys is useful I think, in order to shed light on how they developed their perspectives on spiritual experience. This is relevant in the sense that all scholars bring their own epistemological assumptions and a priori commitments to their work. Both Harris and Wilber are critical of the limitations of intellectual discourse in the academic study of religion, and therefore their perspectives are best considered in light of their socio-historical context and life experiences that shaped their views. Both Harris and Wilber spent a great deal of time beginning in their twenties pursuing meditation for soteriological liberation or ‘enlightenment’, primarily through both Buddhist and Advaita meditation practices. In Waking Up, Harris describes that he studied with “a wide range of monks, lamas, yogis, and other contemplatives” (14) and that he “spent two years on silent retreat myself (in increments of one week to three months), practicing various techniques of meditation for twelve to eighteen hours day” (14). Eventually, Harris decided that the question of whether enlightenment was a permanent state or not was not important but rather that “the crucial point is that you can glimpse something about the nature of consciousness that will liberate you from suffering in the present” (45). Harris explains that the meditative practice of Dzogchen in Tibetan Buddhism was “without question the most important thing I have been explicitly taught by another human being. It has given me a way to escape the usual tides of psychological suffering — fear, anger, shame — in an instant” (137). At Harris’ “level of practice this freedom lasts only a few moments” (137).

Similarly, Ken Wilber also went on Buddhist meditation retreats and explains that after about twenty-five years of meditation he began to experience constant consciousness through waking, dreaming and deep sleep, twenty four hours of the day (Wilber 50). For Wilber, meditative practice did indeed lead to soteriological liberation from the temporal sense of self and a shift to a more primary sense of identity that is impersonal. That said, both Harris and Wilber have encountered spiritual experiences which sound similar anecdotally. Harris describes a time when he was at the “Sea of Galilee, atop the mount where Jesus is believed to have preached his most famous sermon” (81). He had an experience that he describes as follows:

“As I gazed at the surrounding hills, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self — an “I” or a “me” — vanished. Everything was as it had been — the cloudless sky, the brown hills sloping to an inland sea, the pilgrims clutching their bottles of water — but I no longer felt separate from the scene, peering out at the world from behind my eyes. Only the world remained” (81).

Similarly, Wilber describes that as one’s meditation practice progresses,

“You still have complete access to the waking-state ego, but you are no longer only that. Rather the very deepest part of you is one with the entire Kosmos in all its radiant glory. You simply are everything that is arising moment to moment. You do not see the sky, you are the sky. You do not touch the earth, you are the earth. You do you hear the rain, you are the rain. You and the universe are what the mystics call ‘One Taste’” (51).

Wilber explains that, “This is not poetry. This is a direct realization, as direct as a glass of cold water in the face.” (Wilber 51). For Harris these meditative experiences, as well as states of mind caused by psychedelics, engendered the belief that with regards to the founders of world religions “their claims about the nature of reality would make subjective sense” (Harris 194). Therefore, Harris clarifies that when he uses the word spiritual he is specifically discussing experiences of “the intrinsic selflessness of consciousness” (Harris 82), not to describe simply “beauty or significance that provokes awe” (Harris 209) in the way individuals with secular world views such as Christopher Hitchens and Carl Sagan might use the term.

In this way both Wilber and Harris advocate an approach to contemplative practice that is phenomenological, existential, and experiential. Both stress that the meditative practices they use to experience different states of consciousness are empirical in that from a first-person point of view these can be validated in an individual’s own experience. Harris argues that his assertion, “if you look closely enough at your own mind in the present moment… you will discover that the self is an illusion” is an empirical claim (Harris 92). Based on their experiences in meditation, both Harris and Wilber also agree that there is such a thing as pure consciousness. For instance, when describing his own experience after years of meditation Wilber says:

“…as your pass into deep, dreamless sleep, you still remain conscious, but now you are aware of nothing but vast pure emptiness, with no content whatsoever. But ‘aware of’ is not quite right, since there is no duality here. It’s more like, there is simply pure consciousness itself, without qualities or contents or subjects or objects, a vast pure emptiness that is not “nothing” but is still unqualifiable” (Wilber, 50-51).

While Harris does not claim to experience pure consciousness during sleep each night he explains that during his time on extended vipassana meditation retreats,

“There were periods during which all thought subsided, and any sense of having a body disappeared. What remained was a blissful expanse of conscious peace that had no reference point in any of the usual sensory channels. Many scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is always tied to one of the five senses — and that the idea of a ‘pure consciousness’ apart from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is a category error and a spiritual fantasy. I am confident that they are mistaken” (Harris, 127)

The view that there is such a thing as pure consciousness, which Harris argues for based on his personal experience, is a point of contention in the debate on religious experience in scholarly discourse. A problem is that those who argue in favor of the existence of such a thing as pure consciousness all claim that one has to have had the experience in order to validate its reality as a phenomenological possibility. Moreover, Harris describes that the challenge is that in order to validate these empirical insights one also has to have access to contemplative tools that not all people are equally gifted in, “but many people find it difficult to acknowledge that a continuum of moral and spiritual wisdom exists or that there might be better and worse ways to traverse it” (Harris 46). According to Harris “stages of spiritual development, therefore, appear unavoidable” (Harris 46), and moreover, “it is not work that the Western intellectual tradition knows much about” (Harris 93). For instance, Harris uses the example of the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter’s critique of Douglas Harding’s book “On Having No Head”. Harding explains in first-person terms what it is like to phenomenologically experience “no-self”. Harris explains that Harding’s “emphasis on headlessness is a stroke of genius that offers an unusually clear description of what it’s like to glimpse the nonduality of consciousness” (Harris 144), but “Hofstadter, a celebrated contributor to our modern understanding of the mind… dismisses him as a child” (Harris 145).

Wilber also agrees that there are different stages of spiritual development and in this way both authors essentially hold the view that rather than simply assessing spiritual texts as narratives, they can be approached as phenomenological descriptions, and that scholars, or more broadly people in general, are therefore not on equal footing in how well they can assess these comparisons. In scholarly discourse however, there is a debate as to whether there is a common core of mystical experience at the heart of the world’s religious traditions, whether there is such a thing as unmediated experience, and even whether the word experience is anything more than “a mere placeholder that entails a substantive if indeterminate terminus for the relentless deferral of meaning” (Sharf 286). In my Junior Paper about mystical experience I write at length about these issues, but ultimately both Wilber and Harris based on their experiential meditative paths are uninterested in these epistemological debates which leave out the primacy of subjective experience itself, at least insofar as it denies the possibility of the experience of pure consciousness itself. From the perspective of Harris and Wilber, their experiences are self-evident.

However, the way Wilber and Harris explain the implications of their experiences differs, as well as their understanding of the term religion. While Harris’ explanation of how consciousness without a self is a phenomenological possibility which is in line with insights from neuroscience, philosophy and psychology, is cogent, he paints a very narrow conception of religion based on his personal context. For instance, Harris explains that “nothing need replace the ludicrous and divisive doctrines such as the idea that Jesus will return to earth and hurl unbelievers into a lake of fire, or that death in defense of Islam is the highest good. These are terrifying and debasing fictions” (Harris 9). Similarly Harris explains that when his daughter asked him about gravity, if he were religious he might have said “Gravity might be God’s way of dragging people to hell, where they burn in fire. And you will burn there forever if you doubt that God exists” (Harris 201). Harris explains that he has “heard from many thousands of people who were oppressed in this way, from the moment they could speak, by the terrifying ignorance and fanaticism of their parents” (201). Harris is concerned that while there may be some insights from religious contemplatives of the past, these insights harden into dogmatism (203). His point has some merit depending on how religion is practiced, however, I think Harris’ approach inaccurately depicts the variety of ways individuals relate with and conceive of their religious faith and essentializes traditions in a way that is not accurate and could seriously benefit from a scholarly perspective. For instance, Harris often advocates publicly for harsher criticism of Islam when compared to other religions because its texts have in his view a stronger support for violence. However, if one studies the historical origins of Islam it becomes clear that the development of the understanding of Jihad through interpretation of specific verses in the Qu’ran is complex and varied, and that recent revival of violence justified by “Jihad” is in response to various sociological factors. The scholar Wael B. Hallaq explains that the,

“concept of jihad in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are not only widely varied, but also qualitatively different from the consistent pre-modern juristic doctrine. To reduce these differences between the modern and pre-modern concepts of jihad, is not only to miss the point but also to conflate the social, economic, political and legal realities of the seventh/eighth century with those of our own time, thereby producing a ‘historical Islam’ that is reducible to one abstracted essence” (340-341 Hallaq).”

While this criticism of Harris’ view of religion does apply to his public statements about “Islam” as an abstracted essence, as well as his critiques of religion in Waking Up, he might still argue that it is unreasonable to reference texts such as the Qu’ran or Bible for any sort of authority in a modern context even if they are interpreted different ways. Why would anyone interpret them as the literal Word of God given our current understanding from a scientific and secular perspective of the world?

However, Wilber approaches religion from a more comprehensive perspective. Wilber says that in each religious tradition there are people at varying stages of spiritual development. He agrees that “Spiritual development is not a matter of mere belief… And this is why infantile and childish views of God, once appropriate, are so detrimental for mature spirituality” (135). In this way he disagrees with what he calls the post-modern perspective that all views of religion are simply different narratives that individuals hold. Rather, he argues that the descriptions of God or the Self that mystics from different religious traditions articulate are poetic descriptions of a deeper perception of reality. For instance, Wilber says that,

“When Yogis and sages and contemplatives make a statement like, ‘The entire word is a manifestation of one Self,’ that is not merely a rational statement that we are to think about and see if it makes logical sense. It is rather a description, often poetic, of a direct apprehension or a direct experience, and we are to test this direct experience, not by mulling it over philosophically, but by taking up the experimental method of contemplative awareness…” (Wilber 169 – 170).

The focus on direct experience sounds similar to Harris, but Wilber also argues that the mind is not just “an ephemeral epiphenomenon of matter; it is eternal” (Horgan 64) and that “mystics are unanimous that the material universe is a ‘manifestation of this pure awareness’ perceived in deep meditation” (Horgan 65). On the one hand, Wilber argues that there are more advanced stages of human development which transcend and include rationality. On the other hand, Harris describes himself as “simply someone who is making his best effort to be a rational human being” and is therefore “very slow to draw metaphysical conclusions” from his meditation experiences (Harris 82). According to Wilber, “the person with an Apollo complex remains unconsciously attached to the mind and its reality principle. (‘Reality’ here means ‘institutional, rational, verbal reality,) which, although conventionally real enough, is nevertheless only an intermediate stage on the path…” (Wilber 35). The difference between Wilber and Harris’ views is that Wilber says that when one ‘wakes up’ they discover the more primary identity, whereas Harris only goes as far as to say that the conventional sense of self is an illusion. That said, both authors do agree that contemplative insights do not give one answers to scientific truths. Wilber explains that enlightenment “doesn’t instantly reveal all of the universe’s secrets, as some mystical enthusiasts have implied; if you want to learn more about physics and cosmology, you must study these subjects” (Horgan, 61). Both Harris and Wilber also focus on the primacy of experience similar to the way William James does in the Varieties of Religious of Experience. Both authors, when articulating a view of spirituality without religion have a different take than scholars such as Eliade who write about the sacred and the profane. As I wrote about in a previous paper Eliade writes about the potential for an individual’s view of the cosmos as sacred, but Harris and Wilber are saying that ultimately spiritual practices such a Dzogchen show that in any experience — sacred or profane — there is actually no person who is having the experience.

One of the interesting things about studying the category of religion is its interdisciplinary nature. Harris’s Waking Up is significant because it clearly explains how the phenomenological insight of “no-self” in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta is corroborated by contemporary neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology, and how none of these disciplines is able to capture the mystery that is revealed in direct experience from these practices. However, he paints a narrow and undeveloped characterization of religious traditions. Harris acknowledges that “readers who specialize in the academic study of religion, may view his approach as the quintessence of arrogance” but he considers it a way to “focus on the most promising lines of spiritual inquiry” (Harris 10). This makes sense within the scope of his book insofar as one tries to extract contemplative techniques from various traditions, but it is problematic because he also makes critical statements and wide generalizations about religion. On the other hand, Wilber provides a much more comprehensive understanding of all aspects and approaches to studying religion, which makes sense given that his personal legacy to the world is what he calls “Integral Theory”. However, Wilber explains that his work is only a theory which has “what the Hindus and Buddhists would call ‘relative truth’ as opposed to ‘absolute truth’” and that spiritual realization can never be “objectified in mental-linguistic forms” (332-333). Both Harris and Wilber recommend that individuals pick up a contemplative practice for themselves. Intellectually, Harris’ perspective is an attempt to find a middle path between mind independent from the brain and deflationary attitude taken by some scientists (205), and to cut through the illusion that there is an ultimately real sense of ‘self’ in subjective experience. For Wilber, on the other hand, despite his ‘Integral Theory’ which also includes the socio-historical study of religion, spiritual practice is to experience the Ultimate that mystics in the world’s religions attempt to articulate which is irreducible to mental perspectives and is not itself a perspective.

Note: This post is adapted from an essay I wrote for a class at Princeton.

Works Cited

Harris, Sam. Waking up: A guide to spirituality without religion. Random House, 2015.

Horgan, John. Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004. Print.

Hallaq, Wael B. Sharī’a: theory, practice, transformations. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Sharf, Robert H. “The rhetoric of experience and the study of religion.” Journal of

Consciousness Studies 7.11-12 (2000): 267-287.

Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining religion: from Babylon to Jonestown. University of Chicago

Press, 1982.

Wilber, Ken. The simple feeling of being. Shambhala Publications, 2004.

Dhanani, Hafiz. Bringing My Religious Experience to the Religious Experience Controversy.

Ken Wilber vs. Sam Harris: Comparing Perspectives on Spirituality Without Religion Read More »

Book Notes: Conscious Business by Fred Kofman

Why I Read the Book

During the last two years (2014 and 2015) I made a major shift towards meditation practice which examines first person experience (subjectivity) directly, and eventually towards a “spiritual” worldview.

Some of my other interests include entrepreneurship and technology, and lately I’ve been wondering how to integrate my spiritual practice and the ethics/values that follow from it with my personal career goals and leadership style. I don’t view these areas of life as separate. Specifically, I wanted to ensure that my desire to work in business is coming from a place of creativity and serving others, and that my leadership style incorporates “body, mind, and spirit” in alignment.

Through my growth over the last two years I have already seen the sense of freedom that comes from emotional mastery and authentic communication in personal relationships and was curious how this could apply in a business context, both in terms of wider company culture and one’s personal relationship to ambition and work.

Overall Thoughts

I generally don’t read business books anymore, but Conscious Business was a joy to read in its entirety. I finished most of it in one sitting. I was impressed by the author’s synthesis of key concepts from spiritual traditions and their pragmatic application for individuals and companies. One thing I’ve noticed about some books that try to integrate eastern spiritual traditions or “New Age” thought to Western secular life is that they lack depth. Authors water down or misunderstand key concepts. On the other hand, many traditional business books are one-dimensional and ignore personal subjectivity (consciousness) altogether. Kofman draws from an impressive breadth of wisdom traditions, but clearly understands from his own personal practice the deeper message they convey.

The book not only addresses how to be a great leader within a company, but examines how business fits into the greater context of life. Kofman writes in the first chapter “we need to ponder the most fundamental questions pertaining to reality and human existence and let these insights guide our business choices”.

Though it is particularly relevant for entrepreneurial leaders, the book is great for anyone who wants to find purpose in the work they do and achieve meaningful success in their lifetime. If you are adverse to or confused by spiritual terminology, don’t let that scare you off. The book addresses personal leadership and company effectiveness from a pragmatic viewpoint that does not require what you might think of as a “spiritual” perspective. Each of the body chapters begins with a real life situation (dialogue) and ends with a revised example based on the central points of the chapter to improve communication and outcomes.

The book integrates spirituality (consciousness), philosophy (system of thought), personal and organizational psychology, and management/leadership principles from top experts. I was impressed with the breadth of sources Kofman drew upon and more importantly the depth of his insight (see the references I found notable). The author clearly went through a lot of personal growth to understand and synthesize these ideas.

While many of the examples in the book specifically focus on business culture, the communication principles apply to other areas of life such as friendships, romantic partnerships, or any sort of leadership in an organization.

The book tears down assumptions about how we need to do business and shows that being compassionate and communicating authentically does not mean “being soft”. In fact, it takes a tremendous amount of courage.

On a more personal note, the book reinforced my conviction that business can be a wonderfully creative pursuit and an opportunity to contribute and grow from challenging situations. It was also encouraging to see that personal transformational work I am doing helps to influence the collective culture of an organization. Since business is a dominant force in our society it is a good place to bring awareness.

For an individual elevated consciousness in business leads to a much deeper level of contentment. For an organization it ensures long-term sustainability and increased effectiveness as a result of clearer communication, honesty, and clarity. Furthermore, it improves communities as a whole because it reduces negative externalities like unhappy individuals interacting with their families.

References and associations which I enjoyed (people, ideas):
Pathless path, gateless gate (Zen), Success beyond success (Zen, reminded me of Shunryu Suzuki, “To realize your life beyond success and failure”), Ten Ox-Herding Pictures (Zen), Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, Dalai Lama, Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Rumi, Kabir, Kahlil Gibran, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anthony De Mello, The Talmud, Jesus, Bhagavad Gita, Carlos Castaneda, Wei Wu Wei, Joseph Campbell, Ken Wilber, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Robert Frost, Hume, Pascal, Descartes, Heracleitus, Plato, Abraham Maslow, Piaget, Carl Rogers, Martin Seligman, Daniel Goleman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Marshall Rosenberg (NVC), Douglas Stone, Viktor Frankl, Peter Senge, Jim Collins, Peter Drucker, Ayn Rand

Detailed Notes

This is not intended to be an exhaustive summary or even outline, but rather a list of impactful passages, takeaways or what I personally found valuable. If a note says “Fiz:” I’ve added some additional personal annotations.

Foreword 1 by Ken Wilber:

Explains the Integral Model and how it applies to business by “taking into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature”.

“Integral business leadership would use different categories of business management theories including individual motivation, corporate culture and values, and exterior objective systems, flow patterns, and quality control.”

I/We/It paradigm

Forward 2 by Peter Senge:

“We then must choose what matters more to each of us — knowing or learning. Real learning opens us to the fear of uncertainty and the embarrassment of incompetence, as well as the vulnerability of needing one another.”

Chapter 1 Conscious Business:

People are not molecules

Jim Collins says that Level 5 leaders who channel their ambition away from their ego take companies from good to great, however he doesn’t answer how to develop those skills, hence this book.

“We need to ponder the most fundamental questions pertaining to reality and human existence and let these insights guide our business choices”

Colleagues are human beings, not human resources (Fiz: Hence job titles like “People Development”)

How do we look at business from the I/We/It perspectives?
We make the mistake of focusing on results instead of the process and more importantly the platform (being)

“The highest leverage comes from becoming the person or organization capable of behaving in the way that produces the desired results”

“The blindness of the selfish individual is that her attachment to success it the ultimate source of her suffering.” Allusion to hungry ghosts in Buddhism

Communication challenge: Consider how you would tell a colleague, in a way that helps both of you work together, that you think his proposal is a terrible idea

Decision making challenge: “How would you go from wanting to do “A” and your colleague wanting to do “B” to the two of you freely deciding (and committing) to doing “X” in a way that build self-esteem, connection, and excellence.”

Coordination challenge: “How would you honor your word, enhance trust in your relationships, and accomplish your (and the organization’s) goals when you make promises that are subject to risk.”

“Those who communicate manipulatively seek to pursue their personal agenda… they hide data that does not support their arguments and fabricate information”

Hafiz: If you have a specific agenda or narrative and approach communication from a narrow angle you can also lie to yourself about what data means, or ignore its significance. In other words you can also fool yourself if you aren’t coming from a place of clarity/centeredness.

“When people communicate manipulatively, there is a wide gap between public speech and private thoughts”

Hafiz: Level of honesty in communication could be a heuristic to assess corporate culture

“[In narcissistic negotiation] People see each other as enemies competing for scarce resources… there is covert competition for what appears to the opponents as a fixed and limited amount of self-esteem”

Chapter 2 Unconditional Responsibility:

How we can confront challenges with responsibility, adopting the self-empowering attitude of the player”

Focuses on how we view ourselves as the player or the victim and how we have the ability to respond to situations, to view them as challenges/opportunities instead of judging them as good or bad.

When we come into conflict the explanation we give can either damage the relationship or the way we communicate can resolve issues. Distinction between responsible and response-able

Player mentality is unconditional freedom, not freedom from

As a victim e.g. minority group, do you want to remain that way or do you want more personal power? This is not to say that it’s an excuse for not making societal/systemic change (powerful anecdote from a session with Fred and an individual from a minority group)

Taking the view of unconditional responsibility is a choice. It is empowering.

“If you are the one who is suffering, you are the one who has the problem”

“Freedom does not mean doing what you want without consequences; it means the capacity to choose, in the face of a situation, the response that is most consistent with your values”

Contribution to the problem is not “blaming the victim”

“Pity is an empty form of support. Nurturing the victim’s feelings of helplessness, resignation, and moral outrage is a cheap way to be friendly.”

Hafiz: It’s important to have empathy but that doesn’t mean buying into other people’s stories. It means helping them go beyond or drop the story and holding space for them. This is true compassion.

When you issue a loving challenge, love comes first and poignant inquiry second

“Ultimately you don’t take the player role because it is convenient or because others will appreciate you; you take it because it is the way you choose to live”

Hafiz: Reminds me of Chogyam Trungpa’s teachings on unconditional blamelessness and fearlessness and the way of the warrior

“True success is not accomplishing your goals, but feeling happy and at peace. Beyond success lies the serene joy of integrity. That is why essential integrity is the heart of success beyond success.”

Hafiz: My takeaway from the dialogues is to view your actions as elements that contributed to the situation. You see those objectively so you can respond in a way that helps the total situation and make changes accordingly. This could all be summarized as you don’t need to take it “personally”, as in an attack on your identity, which would be a purely egoic perspective. Focusing on outcomes not who is right and getting the the other person’s world helps with that. I also think that once one does inner work these principles are no longer techniques one needs to actively employ, but rather flow easily from one’s personal “being”/foundation.

The final dialogue is effective — the level of honesty and understanding of each other’s’ world is very pragmatic for a favorable outcome. What stood out for me is that in order to communicate effectively emotional awareness and equanimity are paramount, otherwise you feel blamed, react, and close off rather than remaining aware of your feelings and operating from a space where they don’t control you. The final Sufi anecdote shows authentic power, but this openness and freedom comes from letting go, not from the personal ego pretending to be powerful.

Chapter 3: Essential Integrity

How we can remain grounded in integrity when dealing with forces beyond our control

Why do you want what you want? Ultimately you want to feel fullness, but you think you want “success” so you confuse the means and ends

There are Ultimate ends such as truth, happiness, freedom, peace, love (vs. illusions of what we think will get us there)

Hafiz: Until I experienced these ultimate ends through meditation practice I did not realize how confused my basic assumptions and approach to life was. Now I can see this confusion in other people (and I have my fair share of it too!)

Outside-in living, vs. inside-out living — radical shift in perspective

Hafiz: I think of this as living from first principles rather than living under the illusion that something else will make you happy. It is a big shock when you realize you’ve been doing things to get what and where you already are!

Happiness is for its own sake

“… compare these traits with the typical success markers of our culture, the kind of traits featured in People magazine. After doing this exercise with thousands of people, I have yet to find anyone who selected characters whose qualities were power, wealth, youth, beauty, pleasure, or fame. It is fascinating how we gravitate unconsciously and instinctively to things that mean very little to us, and how we sacrifice unconsciously the very values that ultimately motivate our behaviour”

Hafiz: If you get the qualities mentioned above you realize they are conditional, transient, and ultimately unfulfilling, yet people still remain convinced that they might satiate their desires

In the same way that wisdom traditions have said to go beyond ego-centered cravings, systems thinking optimization can do same thing in an organization

“The alignment between your behavior and your values is the measure of integrity, or success beyond success”

“The more important question is whether acting with essential integrity in pursuit of success beyond success increases your ability to achieve ordinary success. The answer depends on your time span: in the short term, not necessarily; in the long term, absolutely.”

“Integrity is immediate and unconditional”

“In the midst of a crisis or a phenomenal business opportunity, an organization without discipline operates unconsciously, guided by fear or greed.”

“The only lasting safety I have found is a total commitment to essential values such as respect, honesty, freedom, and love.”

“I am not advocating that success is unimportant… what I am asserting is that if you want to live a “good life” you must subordinate success to integrity, not vice versa.”

“Reality is complex and ever-changing. It is impossible to “manage” such a system through logical models. There are too many variables. You can use technical tools to get some intuition on the behavior of the system, but you can never comprehend the full implications of external events and your own behavior. That is why integrity, with its simple set of practical principles, is so valuable. Since the beginning of humankind, people have been struggling to find rules of behavior that foster higher and higher levels of success. Integrity represents a summary of human wisdom accumulated over thousands of years.”

Hafiz: (on anecdote about company that didn’t hire Fred): It’s possible to manipulate situations to accomplish your goal (e.g. landing a client) but if you compromise your integrity it’s not a good fit for your mission and will lead to problems down the road anyway

“Once you relax your attachment to success and commit to success beyond success, you cannot be swayed by external conditions”

Chapter 4: Ontological Humility

How to create alignment, trust, and mutual understanding when people hold different perspectives.

What to do when people disagree

View everything as a learner

Your perspective is the truth for you (which is conditioned), but not objective or privileged e.g. the way different parties interpret financials

People have different mental models

The problem comes when I think my truth is the truth

Example of different perspectives e.g. aesthetics, cost, function in automotive industry

Benefits and drawbacks of culture (monkey + banana example)

Controllers prove they are right as a matter of self-worth, not just of accuracy

There is no such thing as a problem

I am Okay, You are Okay – mutual learning model (Fiz: reminds me of Byron Katie) instead of I am Okay and You’re Not, which isn’t helpful

“People keep secret, self-validating theories based on private arguments rather than share them publicly”

“One of the basic premises of unilateral control is that you must act as though you are not trying to unilaterally control others”.

The shift to honesty goes against social conventions

Example dialogue:

“Have you shared your concerns with Sally?” I asked Mark.

“That would be like telling her I don’t trust her! It would be disrespectful,” he replied.

I asked the natural follow up question: “Is it more respectful to fire her without giving her a chance to correct her behavior?”

Hafiz: Often keeping our concerns private doesn’t allow us to see the other person’s perspective and understand their world. It allows each party to create a story in their head which is not true, and then when we don’t communicate we keep fabricating and extending the story.

Humor is the road to ontological humility

“Objectively San Francisco is the best place to live” Is that really true? What would my mental model have to be to make that true?

“Some people like to think there’s value in being brutally honest, but toxic opinions always turn out to be more “brutal” than “honest”. Sharing these opinions destroys efficiency, hurts relationships, and creates animosity.”

Effective opinions (vs. toxic) lead to better outcomes and better understanding of the other’s perspective

Chapter 5: Authentic Communication

It is precisely at the time when communication is most vital that our conversations break down most dramatically.

We need to accept that we can only know the impact that others’ actions have had on us, but we cannot know what intentions they had when they acted the way they did. The converse also applies.

Find out what impact your actions had on them, and let others know the impact of what they said to us and find out what led them to act the way the did.

“We feel hurt; therefore they intended to hurt us” – The conclusion doesn’t follow.

Exercise of what we think vs. what we say. What we think has lots of harsh opinions and broad generalizations and intense negative emotions. Other people have these too.

On the flip side there are also gratitude and positive feelings which are difficult to express vulnerably – how to find a balance between dumping toxic mind waste and swallowing?

Writing it down brings awareness

Accept that you are not perfect and take response-ability for how you show up to the conversation. Your identity does not have to depend on the illusion of perfection.

(1) Learn their story/narrative
(2) Express your views and feelings (sharing your story)
(3) Address the situation together
(4) Create a respectful context/container for the conversation

You are not trying to convince anyone that you are right; you are helping others to understand why you think the way you do

You must love the truth more than you love saving face

Use self statements to own your experience

Productive inquiry requires a profound openness and receptivity… this can only come from a strong desire to understand the other person, to discover her world with appreciation and respect.

The ability to pay attention is inversely proportional to the need to be right

“I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care”

“When we act skillfully, others simply feel we are having a good conversation, not suspecting that we are using any technique. In some situations, however, it may be beneficial to tip our hand and explain the principles of productive expression and inquiry. This is safe because expression and inquiry are not tools to use on but with others. That is the essential difference between a collaboration tool and a manipulation tool.”

Chapter 6: Constructive Negotiation

coming soon

Chapter 7: Impeccable Coordination

coming soon

Chapter 8: Emotional Mastery

coming soon

Chapter 9: Entering the Marketplace

Many of us believe that it is necessary to sell out in order to succeed in business, or to drop out in order to pursue a spiritual life. This is a false polarity. When business is conducted with a high level of consciousness, there is no tension between material and spiritual wealth. Conscious leadership can create a conscious business, one that integrates compassion in support of human development. In a conscious business, ancient wisdom and modern economics come together.

False belief: “if you are a mystic you can’t handle logistics”

“Business is not typically seen as a spiritual activity. It is supposed to pursue money-oriented goals devoid of any deeper significance. The only worthwhile businesses, however, are conscious businesses: those that tackle their work as a spiritual activity.

“I was stunned by the realization that it is impossible to suffer a loss when you love your opponent”

“The inclusion of the other in our circle of care and concern requires the development of consciousness. Only at the higher stages of maturity can we embrace our competitors as “neighbors” to love.”

At the lower level people compete to “be someone”

If you are already full, competition is a spiritual practice

Self-actualization through work vs. enlightenment in cave dichotomy

We spend so much time at work, why be unconscious?

To work in competition for excellence/giving of gifts to the world requires that you realize that you are already full as described in Chapter 3, and perfectly imperfect. Being full means you accept yourself and aren’t coming from a place of fear or needing to be good enough, which means that you can operate consciously not from unconsciousness. Conscious leaders will enable conscious culture which helps bring everyone up.

Love (not personal love) but agape is the foundation. Agape is not a sentiment or feeling. It’s a principle beyond personal egoic preferences. Bodhisattva vow.

When business is “guided by success beyond success, business becomes a work of art, a work of love and freedom.”

Retirement party and deathbed exercise

“To enjoy the game you need to let it matter and not matter simultaneously. Then you can go all out, knowing that even if you lose you are ultimately okay, that the ultimate point of the game is to succeed beyond success.”

”Success beyond success focuses on essential rather than surface values, on unconditional rather than conditional goals, on process integrity rather than outcome achievement. Even though you cannot guarantee that you will win, it is possible to play any game as a full expression of your values. You will still bear the sorrow of loss, the disappointment of defeat, and the consequences of failure, but you will bear them with poise.”

The seven qualities of conscious business are “based on a shift in consciousness”

Epilogue

“Challenges will seem insurmountable at times; failure, unavoidable. In those moments, you will need a community to help you expose yourself over and over again to annihilation, so that what is indestructible can arise within you.”

“I sometimes wish I could go back: Blame others, feel like a victim, indulge in unconscious patterns. But there is no return. Awareness is irreversible. Once you start seeing, you can’t pretend to be blind. You might fool others, but you cannot fool yourself.” Fiz: Hugely resonated with me. It’s tough but it’s worth it.

“the highest freedom is choiceless discipline”

In Sanskrit “Namaste” means “I bow to you” — not to the small “you” but to the vase expression of Consciousness that “You” are. You can use this greeting without saying “namaste”.

The End

Book Notes: Conscious Business by Fred Kofman Read More »

Lessons Learned from Six Years as a Rowing Coxswain

I plunge my hands into the current flowing past me, sending a fountain of water into the air. As the cool droplets come crashing down on my teammates and me, euphoria courses through my body. For the months leading up to that instant, I spent each morning in darkness, awaiting the eight members of my team — the stillness of the water mirroring the tranquility of my mind.

At 5:00am, I am in peak mental state. As we commence training, I am conscious of the trust my crew has invested in me as well as the authority they have accorded me. I do not speak loudly. Many times, I almost whisper. My voice speaks only what is in their minds and is demonstrated by their bodies. My immediate goal fuels me to push the athletes past their self-imposed limits. Every day, every practice, I expect more from them, and they expect more from me. As I take my place on the podium, I know that my team has allowed me to lead them to this perfect moment of success.

My first introduction to rowing was as a scrawny eighth grader. I wasn’t strong enough to make the team as a rower, so the coaches told me I should be a coxswain. My impression of a coxswain was a little person who sat at the front of the boat and yelled at the athletes. I wasn’t entirely sure what else it entailed, but I wanted to be with my friends on the team so I decided to try it out. I figured I could transition to being a rower later.

Fast forward to the end of my six years as a coxswain and it turns out that being a part of the rowing team was one of the best things that happened to me. I won four national championships with an incredible group of teammates who are now like brothers to me and had the opportunity to compete on the varsity team at Princeton.

I’d recommend it.


After winning the Heavyweight 8+ at Canadian High School Rowing Nationals

After winning the Heavyweight 8+ at Canadian High School Rowing Nationals

Rowing is an incredible, but often misunderstood sport, and coxing is an amazing (and even more often misunderstood) art form. I miss the sport tremendously, and the camaraderie that comes from being a part of a team that has to work so hard to accomplish a singular goal together — it unites you.


In this post I want to share some reflections on coxing from my thousands of hours on the water, as well as some advice for those just starting out.

But first…

What is a rowing coxswain and what does one do?

When people found out that I was a coxswain they usually responded with something along the lines of:

  • You’re the guy that sits in the boat?

  • You’re the one that yells at the guys?

  • You must have a loud voice! Oh, so you don’t actually row?

Most people have no idea what a coxswain does, so before I explain what I learned or share any advice, it makes sense to clear a few things up.

Coxswains sit at the stern (back) of the boat in an eight, and usually at the bow (front) in a four.

Most people imagine a coxswain yelling into a cone at the athletes, but in reality good coxswains don’t yell except in special circumstances. You wear a headband with a mouthpiece that amplifies your voice to speakers located down the boat. Changing the volume of your voice can be a useful tool, but changing the tonality is most often how you get an athletes attention.

Also, coxswains do not yell “stroke” or “row” or “let’s go guys”. It’s a common misconception that the coxswain’s role is to motivate. That is certainly one of the roles, but there are so many more.

A coxswain’s primary responsibility is to steer straight, but a good coxswain is also a student of the sport. They are able to run a practice without a coach being there. They know what drills the athletes need, and what changes need to be made in the boat based on:

  • How the boat feels to them

  • What they see visually

In other words, a good coxswain should have the technical understanding of a coach. When you get to a certain level, for example an elite college, the coxswain’s role in the boat becomes less about coaching and more about calling drills precisely and efficiently so that your coach can focus on technical aspects of the sport and not worry about managing the boats.

That said, your technical understanding is still important because it changes the way you make calls, and it allows you to evaluate whether your boat has made the changes your coach is looking for.

In a race, a coxswain’s job (on top of steering straight) is to first and foremost execute the race plan, and then to motivate the athletes.

But there are so many intricacies to being a good coxswain. For instance, the way you call something as basic as a shift of pace over two strokes can make or break the rhythm of a crew and be the difference between success and failure in a race.

Also, when you have lost some ground to another boat, your athletes need to know. But when they are pushing their physical limits, if you tell them in the wrong way it can completely deflate their morale.

So you learn to frame your statements a certain way: “they took two seats on us, now we’re going to make them pay.”

Another example of managing the psychology of the rowers is right before the race begins. You want your athletes to be focused and relaxed, yet poised, so you make your voice reflect those qualities. Then the horn goes and you cox the start sequence.

Some advice for new coxswains

If you’re just starting out as a coxswain, here are the steps I’d suggest to develop your skills as quickly as possible:

  1. Listen to recordings of national team/high level coxswains to get an idea of how they sound

  2. If there are things you don’t understand in those recordings (and there will be), find a coach or older coxswain to mentor you.

  3. Each practice/race focus on a specific skill to improve.

  4. Buy a voice recorder and record yourself so you can review the audio with coaches. Every coxswain listen to the audio of their races. In addition, it’s helpful to ask teammates after practice if there are calls they liked or didn’t like. I’d also recommend sending out a survey to your teammates in order to get feedback.

  5. Constantly learn more about the technical aspects of the sport by reading books, for example. Rowing Faster is a great book to get started with.

  6. Do workouts with your team to gain respect and understand what it’s like to push yourself as a rower.

Most coxswains don’t take things this seriously, so if you do you’ll stand out very quickly.

Some lessons I learned along the way

1. Put aside your ego and ask for brutally honest feedback

When I was a coxswain, I never liked to share my recordings because I could spot so many mistakes in them. I had an image of how the perfect race should sound and my performance always fell short. Logically, I knew it would help me get better, but I always felt embarrassed to share. When I finally got over my own insecurities and started to ask for feedback, my progress accelerated dramatically.

2. Embrace situations that are above your abilities

When I was in ninth grade, I was thrown into our school’s Senior Varsity Eight. This forced me to learn extremely quickly. In fact, I learned in two weeks what it took some of my peers around a year to learn.

It was overwhelming at first, but instead of shying away from the challenge, I studied coxswains who were much better than me. I remember printing a 10 page transcript from Pete Cipollone, a US National Team coxswain and memorizing it. I annotated it with questions about specific calls and asked older coxswains to explain what they meant. At first, I just emulated the calls, but over time I developed my own style.

Of course, to succeed in a situation where you either sink or swim you have to work really hard, but if you are committed, these are the kinds of opportunities that you should actively seek out.

3. Always over communicate and make sure your team is on the same page

One of the most important keys to success for any crew is having complete trust in each other and being on the same page.

One time at a training camp our coach Ben Rutledge, an Olympic Gold medalist for Canada, asked us to create a race plan and present it to him. As a group we came up with a well thought out strategy. I was satisfied that everyone in the crew knew it by heart.

When we met with Ben he asked one of the crew members to explain what we did at the 500m meter mark. Then he asked every person in the crew to explain what exactly that meant. There could be no ambiguity.

I realized that just because everyone could repeat what we would be doing did not mean they understood exactly how to implement it. For example, we were going to take 10 strokes to focus on quick catches (direct blade entry). But what does that really mean? If everyone has a slightly different idea of how to achieve a quick catch, it won’t work.

One thing I noticed in my six years as a coxswain is that the best crews are willing to put in the extra time off the water to work these details out.

Others don’t see the importance of being on the same page about the technical aspects, and just want to put the hours in on the water.

These crews don’t win at the elite level.

4. Work extremely hard on and off the water to gain respect

From the outside it might seem like you don’t get a lot of respect as a coxswain. After all you are watching your rowers go through pain, not experiencing it with them. By this very fact, you are different and removed.

But what I found, was that you can earn a tremendous amount of respect if you are someone who makes the boat go faster.

If your athletes see that you increase boat speed they will place a lot of value on you. Your attitude should always be to contribute as much as possible. You should be indispensable in whatever way you can, on and off the water.

Coxswains who just go along for the ride don’t deserve respect.

Some suggestions:

  • NEVER complain about being tired or sore. Your rowers are way more tired and sore than you are.

  • Do workouts with the team as often as possible. Your teammates will appreciate that you are one of them,. Also, you should understand the psychology of a rower and know what pushing yourself feels like. It also helps you understand why your crew likes or dislike certain calls.

  • Most importantly, you should always be learning more about the sport so you can offer suggestions to make the rowers better. If you have a strong technical understanding of the sport, you’ll be able to help guys with their strokes 1-on-1 and they will really appreciate that. If you make them better, they will listen to you.

5. Pay attention to the seemingly small unimportant details

I learned this lesson from my coaches in high school and it really paid off.

One example is spinning the boat in unison, like a national team. Another is pausing with the blades off of the water every time you weigh enough/let it run (stop rowing). Sure, spinning the boat doesn’t directly affect boat speed, and neither does being disciplined about pausing with the blades off instead of just dropping them after a piece or steady state rowing.

If you don’t do those things though, it changes the psychology and culture.

It shows that you don’t pay attention to the little details — the ones that add up and will make you go faster. It’s just like missing a session because of the weather — it won’t be the difference between winning a national championship or not, but it changes the psychology — something stops you.

When you pause blades off the water together, it demonstrates a commitment to unifying as a crew, and that greatly helps boat speed in an eight.

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Teetering on Two Wheels – My Story

Below is the essay I wrote for my application to Princeton.

I have always revered my father. As an infant, he would bounce me on his lap, exuding a feeling of serenity and warmth. When he first taught me to ride a bike, he was the most patient teacher imaginable. He urged me on when I was the most frightened and told me not to worry, I would not fall. And if I did, he would be there to catch me before I hit the ground. His words were comforting and reassuring, and I always believed them.

And then the day arrived when I knew he would not be there to catch me.

On June 29, 2010, I had to withdraw from the school I had dreamt of attending since I was six years old, the place where I felt like I belonged. After two short years of benefitting from this amazing institution, my journey would have to take a radically different path. I had never felt so disappointed in all fourteen years of my life.

My dad sat across from me in the living room, a shadow of gloom cast over his face.

“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, unable to look me in the eyes. His pain was palpable. I tried to maintain a strong exterior but inside, I quaked.

That night, as I lay in my bed, the whole house was still. But the thickness of walls could not hide my anguish. In my mind, my family’s inability to pay for my tuition signified the end of the world.

Faced with this inevitable conclusion, sleep eluded me for several days. I could not let go of the fact that I would have to leave a school that challenged my ideas and perspectives, and fuelled my passion for learning in both tangible and intangible ways. St. George’s School offered opportunities academically and athletically that were unmatched in my world, that I had just begun to explore in my first two years. The intellectual challenge, coupled with the genuine camaraderie and brotherhood that I felt, convinced me that I had to find a way — any way — to stay at Saints.

Fast-forward two weeks. I found myself on the phone with a representative from one of the largest online marketing agencies in Canada, making my case for how I could help deliver quality leads to their advertisers. I stammered nervously, trying desperately not to sound like a fourteen year-old. My eyes darted between my notepad of strategic answers, and the large flow chart in front of me that included the response I had crafted for every “Yes” or “No”. The conversation that felt endless finally culminated in his gratifying last words, “How quickly can you get started?” Every day that summer, I attempted innumerable things that failed, but I trusted my abilities and had faith that eventually my work would pay off. And it did.

When I returned to school in September, I felt truly fortunate. It was very fulfilling to realize that the training wheels had come off and I had been able to positively impact a situation that I initially thought was beyond my control. As I walked through the hallways of my school, I had a new appreciation for my peers and faculty, as well as the opportunities that were once again presented to me. From that point onwards, many aspects of my life came together. As it turns out, my newfound appreciation shone through to my peers and they gave me their support in Student Leadership elections. I was fortunate enough to win four national championships with an incredible group of teammates. And to top it all off, I had a business that was growing every day.

What began as a journey to try and pay for my education evolved into something much more significant. At the time, I felt as though my dream was coming to an end, yet today I am grateful that those were the circumstances. Had I not been faced with the possibility of leaving St. George’s, I would not have worked as tenaciously to succeed. I experienced firsthand that meaningful adversity can be an impetus to meaningful change.

Today, as I ride my bike alongside my father on the seawall at Stanley Park, I realize that even though he was not there to catch me this time, I learned a lesson that I will never forget. That summer, I did not know whether I would be able to ride alone, or fall, but I pushed myself to teeter on two wheels — perhaps a lesson he was trying to teach me all along.

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