Four more days to go before independence day (August 15), and it got me thinking… What is independence? Was it just political freedom from the colonists? Or does it mean something else? The freedom to do whatever I want? What about constraints? If I jump off a cliff in order to fly, without the proper gear, I will soon but very briefly learn about a constraint called gravity.

If the idea of inner freedom appeals to you, I would suggest my course, Siddhartha ( www.walkright.in ) as a good starting point.

Read the Uttarpara Speech here. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Uttarpara_Speech

Join Mathai Fenn (PhD) for a 12-week journey through the intellectual landscape of India. Explore the reasons that has made India the destination for so many generations of people who have felt that there must be more to life than meets the eye.

“Three years ago, I was Siddhartha the Brahman’s son who left his home to become a sadhu. However that was yesterday, today I have entered a new path, that leads to your garden……”

Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha is a novel about the seeker ( Click here for book summary at SparkNotes). According to Indian Philosophy, the purpose of our human life is to find ourselves, our own true nature, true self, our soul. Everything else is temporary. The search for our true self is simultaneously the search for God. Only an outsider can describe this quintessential aspect of Indian culture. Although Hesse was German-Swiss, his grandfather, Hermann Gundert had spent many years in India and was the force behind translating the Bible to Malayalam, the language of the state of Kerala in India.

Your guide, Dr Mathai Fenn holds a PhD in Psychology and a life long interest in the spiritual and philosophical schools of India. Born to a family of Practicing Christians in a country where Christians were a minority of less than 5%, his passion lies in introducing Indian Philosophy to beginners. This includes non-indians who are curious to know about Indian Philosophy as well as ethnic Indians who do not feel connected to their own spritiual and intellectual roots.

Every day, a reading from the Siddharta is followed by a discussion of its context. The first paragraph of the book reads ….

“In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.”

While this is a good description of many villages in India until a few years ago, it also speaks of the nature of the Awakening. Although the paragraph depicts an idyllic setting, Siddhartha finds something missing. Popular accounts would blame technology or at least materialism. But it was not materialism that made Siddhartha restless. Indeed he already had the basic training in spiritual exercises from his family of priests. Sacred chants and hymns were as much a part of his life as was the river, the sun and the mango trees, yet he is not satisfied. Do you hear The Call?

To find out when the course is running next and to pre-register, click here.

The single most important course of loss of productivity is Ethics in a world where familiar markers of behaviour have been demolished by fast-paced social change (Durkheim). When faced with an important decision, people find it hard to choose one over the other. This leads to a paralysis brought about by what Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) calls Anxiety (Wikipedia). Unfortunately, all of social science and management will only be of help to us implement the choice once it is made, but they offer little help in making the choice. So how do we know which is the best right way forward? The biggest tragedy is the tragedy of numbers. Saying that “….when faced with such choices 90% of the people chose the left option.” Does not automatically make it the right choice. Simply put, knowing what IS the case so far does not automatically tell us what OUGHT to be (Davide Hume).

Our Inner Kompass

At a time when the very fabric of society is changing so deeply and so fast, we can no longer depend on maps to help us navigate the 21st century. After all, by the time we reach a particular point, it would have changed too much. According to the former Director of MIT Media Labs, Joi Ito, what we need is a compass and not a map.

1. The first step of acquiring an Inner Kompass is to discover how our values influence our behaviour, not in an abstract way, but through the realization that when we choose coffee over tea, its because for some reason we value coffee more.
2. The second step is to recognize the distinction between Wants and Needs. While being thirsty may refer to a need, I may experience it as I want a coke. Unfortunately, we don’t always recognize the distinction between the two. This makes us think that we need a coke.
3. Once we have achieved this conceptual distinction, we engage in the WORK of teasing apart the needs from the wants. For this process, we will appropriate the term Deconstruction from Jacques Derrida (It’s an appropriation because we are using the word in a new, although related, context from what Derrida used it.). This is achieved through the application of mindfulness.
4. This WORK shows us how we have constructed our way of looking at the world and our way of responding to it based on culture and past experiences. Such constructions. called Gestalts, are not easy to deconstruct and during the work of deconstruction, one may experience what the Psychoanalysts call Resistance and when one gains the insight that there may be other ways of achieving the same thing, it may be accompanied with a Catharsis, a release of energy.
5. But the aim of WORK is to increase a sense of freedom and to give the person a greater range of choices to choose from and an experience of freedom. The person is encouraged to make conscious choices about life, each time a choice is made it strengthens the connections between values and actions. Making value-based choices is like exercising a muscle it makes you stronger.
6. The WORK of Deconstruction happens in a conversational space (discursive space) where you can talk about anything. This is made possible because of a shared contract where both parties understand the rules of engagement. They are not set in stone but its often helpful to start with an explicitly stated code.

Driving a car is an interesting complex exercise. It is a complex exercise since the driver has to know the pedals, gears, and steering which is what he uses to control the machine on the basis of feedback he gets about road conditions, obstructions, and other visual information. He also has to keep in mind the laws of driving including speed limits etc. (click here to see how traffic rules evolved, youtube: 05:14). That’s a lot of information to process simultaneously. When a novice learns to drive, he has to keep track of all of this information consciously, and just thinking about it all may lead to a nervous breakdown. But soon driving becomes automatic and subconscious (in the sense that it does not require us to pay attention to it), leaving our conscious mind free to engage in conversation or to listen to the radio.

Daniel Kahneman calls this Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow (read more about it on Scientific American). I prefer to call it conscious and subconscious thinking, although the words often carry the baggage of Freudian Psychoanalysis with them. Once driving becomes a subconscious activity, it is interesting how we process multiple streams of information simultaneously. It would seem that while we can consciously learn how to drive, driving becomes safe and effortless only when we allow it to sink into the subconscious level.

Perhaps it would be interesting to launch an inquiry into the activities that we do subconsciously. Collectively we can call it The Subconscious Mind or merely The Subconscious. In perception, we focus our attention on the foreground while the background is still an important part of the perceptual whole. An important part of driving subconsciously requires listening to the hum of the car, its the sum total of noises made by the engine, vibration of the car and noise the tyres make on the road. A good driver instantly knows when the sound is not what he expects to hear. It will ring an alarm bell. He may know that something is wrong but not exactly what it is. To get that, he may have to bring back conscious processing to eliminate the possible causes one by one.

There is a lot we can learn about life from driving, especially about listening to the Hum of Life. Everything we actually do or experience in life is a “figure” seen against a “ground“. But the ground is not something we are conscious of, and if the hum is not right, our experience of life is not the best, or worse it may come to a halt. The mistake we do is to try to fix problems by changing the figure (the things we do or thoughts we think), when the problem lies in the (back)ground.

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Gestalt Psychologists like to talk about the figure-ground effect (Wikipedia). When images are created with the intention of befuddling the brain, they are easy to spot. But when we are lying on our backs watching the clouds go by, we cannot help but wonder how much of what we see is actually there and how much do we make up? The figure-ground effect is not limited to the image on the left, all perception is against a (back) ground.

Perception is a good example. How much of what we see is determined by our subconscious? Just how much of our problems come from the way we frame things? Despite trying everything you know, have you ever felt that nothing is working out? Perhaps its time to change the way you see the problem. This means changing the frame. Clearly, the subconscious is not just either there nor not there. There are layers to explore starting with the frame that immediately surrounds the thought or image.

If we correct the background hum of life, much of the foreground will fix itself.

The Talk Shop course on the SELF is a good place to start in understanding the Figure and Ground of life. Read more about it here.

Monday April 20, 2020 will be known in history as the End of an Era (Pre-COVID) and the beginning of a new one (Post-COVID). The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) got its name from a disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Source: WHO). It got its name because it was first discovered in Wuhan, China in 2019 (New Scientist). In 2020, the pandemic is far bigger than just a disease caused by the virus. It has far-reaching economic, social and political implications. COVID20 is the handle used to describe these events that have come into focus in 2020. But as is true of every major watershed in history, there are antecedents that led up to the crisis and the world after it, will not be the same as it was before.

Why April 20th? It is the day that the restrictions caused by the COVID Lockdown caused a negative crude oil price, in the first time in history (Forbes)

Now that you have seen this data, watch this video (youtube) to see why this is not the best representation of the data, and why this one is better. Didn’t I tell you …or did I?.. that epidemiology requires teasing out information from data?

This correction is thanks to Amit Fenn, our family biologist.

The spread of COVID 19 has yet to reach its peak, and yet COVID 20 is already here. COVID20 is an expanded version of the crisis that includes the socio-economic and political fall out of the disease as well as the direct impact of the continuing growth of the pandemic. COVID 19 was named such because the disease was first documented in China in Dec 2019 (see a timeline of events from WHO here), but COVID 20 is the state of things in 2020. Its no longer just a disease caused by the Novel Corona Virus, COVID 20 is not even just a health care problem, it’s much more than that. It has impacted our lives in far greater ways than any other disease since the Bubonic Plague of the 14th Century (History.com), that left almost 50% of the population of Europe dead.

India, like much of the world, has been under a 21-day lockdown since March 24th (BBC). The lockdown, like everything else, is the result of a set of circumstances that came together. The first is the growth of digital media, where such a plan can be formulated and sent out to a large number of people without delay. The second is the political reality of India, a combination of a Charismatic Prime Minister and a large number of dedicated party-workers. who worked tirelessly to give him a landslide electoral victory in 2019 (BBC). 2019 was a difficult year for India, the Indian economy was teetering on the edge by Dec 2019, and in a sense, it was a blessing in disguise that Covid 19 wiped the entire board clean.

When will we wake up from the nightmare?

Not for a long time. Perhaps the world will never get back to what it was Pre-Covid. First, there was the one day People’s Lockdown. Then came the 21 Day Lockdown on March 24th, 2020 Will it all end one day in April?

The short answer? NO. Antonio Guterres, the chief of United Nations is already calling it the most challenging crisis since the second world war. The Managing Director of the IMF, Kristaline Georgieva calls it Humanity’s Darkest Hour. The World Bank President, David Malpass put it in black and white on his LinkedIn post when he said: “Beyond the health impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are expecting a major global recession.” Major events divide history into periods before and after the event. The second world war was such an event. the fall of Constantinople is often considered another one. In modern times, COVID 19 certainly qualifies as a catastrophe of global proportions. So what happened while the world was asleep? What kind of world will we awaken to?

1. Family & Personal Life

How has your personal life been affected by the Lockdown? Perhaps you found more time to pursue something you have been wanting to do for a long time, reading or perhaps practising that guitar that has been gathering dust in the corner. How has family-time changed your family? Has it helped to bring out and resolve some issues that were always brushed under the carpet? Perhaps you learnt to appreciate your family better? Or maybe you had time to take a philosophical bent of mind, to wonder about the fragility of life, perhaps even start a regular meditation practice that could potentially change your life forever. There are those who decided to use this time to learn something new, thanks to the number of good quality courses offered at discounts or offered for free.

Has there been a change in roles in the family? No longer does the man have to go to the office to earn a living. When everyone is stuck at home, has it changed the way things are done at home? Is there a greater family involvement in chores and how housework is shared?

Not all of the changes are positive. For some, it has been a trying time. Here is an email from a friend struggling with anxiety and panic disorder for 24 years: “ (When my anxiety increased), …Even my husband was surprised. I used to complain of loneliness and now i was not alone so why anxiety? One main reason was that I have this deep trust in doctors and now the place which is most safe for me ..hospitals/clinics are the most unsafe. So if I fall sick how can I get better without doctor’s help? My therapist said I am overthinking and my psychologist friend suggested that my husband tie me to a chair if I start screaming to go to emergency… unless I have something more serious than Covid19!“

2. The Environment:

For years our race to turn the tide of ecological damage has been a losing race. Those among us who were optimistic found themselves hard put to stay positive as each day brought news of further calamity. Even in February 2020, an iceberg the size of MALTA broke off from a glacier in Antarctica.

Increasingly desperate measures to put in place measurable quotas for reduction of greenhouse gases have met with considerable debate and discord, with many environmentalists in despair of reaching targets. Everyone was worried that the reduction of greenhouse gases would mean in some ways curtailing industrial output and this, in turn, would undermine the competitive edge of the country. Perhaps it would be the harbinger of a severe recession?

The Novel Corona Virus achieved what world leaders could not achieve with years of negotiation at Kyoto, Paris, etc. As economic activity shuts down and people stay at home, animals take to urban streets and global pollution levels have dropped significantly. Of the 30 most polluted cities of the world in 2019, 21 of them were in India (Wikipedia). The lockdown has had an unprecedented reduction of India’s pollution too. Even the earth’s crust seems to be healing (nature.com). Perhaps the COVID Virus will be the much-needed correction that our industry needs in order to save a dying planet. Perhaps the virus itself is an ecosystem responding to threats to its existence?

3. Healthcare

Perhaps nowhere else would the impact of COVID 19 be as direct as in healthcare management. The pandemic forced us to reconsider our priorities. Healthcare once again re-focussed priorities on the Economics of Healthcare, Public Health, Epidemiology and Prevention. This may bring about a sea change in THINKING when it comes to healthcare, and a focus on community and scientific prevention of the spread of communicable diseases like never before. Once again the health of the community is what is important and not just the patient within the walls of the hospital.

For decades the average age of people in developed nations has been getting higher. Healthcare systems work as long as there are young people working in the economy and paying for those who cannot work. A disease like COVID 19 would take a greater toll on those who are old and sick changing the profile of the “herd”. Much in the way, The Plague changed the demographics of 14th century Europe

4.Science

The 21st Century showed a distinct fall from grace when it comes to science. Although science helped us stave off hunger and disease, helped us fight wars, travel and communicate across vast distances, things began to change in the second half of the 20th century. The Atom Bomb forced us to see that science could have darker sides too. While the green revolution helped us escape the Malthusian Bomb, Rachel Carson opened our eyes to the price we had to pay for it. Add to it, several aspects of the post-modern world view also chipped away at the facade of science as a saviour of mankind. Young students moved away from college degrees in science, moving to business majors instead.

With a number of wild claims floating around about the Corona Virus there was a great need for credible information. And that meant people turned to experts and scientists for verifiable information. The medical community also was facing a crisis with many of the challenges of communicable diseases were already met. Of course, there was the spectre of Multi-Drug-Resistant germs, but it was yet to develop into a credible threat. Covid brought back the Romance of Medicine like a Robin Cook novel. It’s a high-stakes game of life or death. It includes sleuthing and incarceration and the heroes are the doctors.

5. Politics and International Institutions

Given the global shutdown of several sectors of the economy, there are many who predict a recession on a global scale. This may not be bad for everyone. By the end of 2019, the Indian economy was in shambles. This did not bode well for the ruling party. However, the COVID 19 was such shock that it wiped the books clean. Yes, we are still heading for a recession but the bad fiscal policy could no longer be faulted for it. The parallel with the impact of 9/11 on the 2001 economic crisis is unmistakable. In other parts of the world too, the Novel Corona Virus allowed people to further their own political agenda (The Guardian)

With the fall of the USSR and the passing of the cold war era, many things have changed on the world stage of geopolitics. With the end of the Warsaw Pact (Brittanica) and the emergence of a new unipolar era (or is it multipolar? – Taylor and Francis), the role of International Institutions like the United Nations and World Health Organization have lost much of its relevance. However, with a pandemic like COVID 19, spreading across the globe with scant regard to political borders, the only way to contain it is to join hands to take a stand against it. Once again, agencies of international collaboration like the WHO, IMF and the World Bank, have new relevance in today’s age. Perhaps it is the beginning of a new era of international collaboration. Certainly, the one thing that is obvious, is that the piece-meal approach to global problems is not working!

6. Economics

We were already aware that the system needed change. In an interview with Forbes, Steven Chu likened the (Pre-COVID) world economy to a global Ponzi scheme. A significant number of economists believe that economic progress is reflected in Economic Growth, ie; an increase in the goods produced and sold in any economic unit like a country. This leads to an unhealthy focus on production and consumption for its own sake. Economies are measured by the percentage of “growth“. Consume more, then the producers will make more, which will create more jobs and this will put more money in the pockets of consumers who will, in turn, buy more. Is it just me…. or does this sound like a Ponzi Scheme? COVID 19 has shown us that we do not have robust social institutions that can protect our weaker sections. Wealth distribution is flawed with the top 10% holding over 75% of the wealth of India. It is time to recognize our economic models are flawed. Perhaps it is time for our Economic Model to Change

Economic growth is usually distinguished from economic development, the latter term being restricted to economies that are close to the subsistence level. 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/economic-growth

But there is another crisis playing out, the unorganized sector(Times of India ). A large number of people in India who live a hand to mouth existence. Each day’s wages from labour is what puts food on the table. Large numbers of men who work in other states far from their own families find that they do not have wages to pay the rent or money to send home. Without this families will go hungry, crime is likely to increase as people get desperate, and the death toll would be significant. It would not be a surprise to find that, at least in India, more people die from the economic hardships of COVID 19 than the virus itself. This is COVID 20.

Read part 2 of this article here.

There are many who would agree to me that COVID-19 is what N. Taleb calls a Black Swan event (youtube link 4:05 min) Even when it was reported on Dec 31 2019, not many of us thought it would disrupt the world like it has today. Social scientists given to Systems Theory would call it a Catastrophe, not in the literary sense of the end of everything, but as the end of something old and the beginning of something new (Science Direct article link). It was just an event horizon, something that we could not see beyond, like a bend in the road. So what brings about such catastrophic events? How do such events break up the comfortable life that we once knew? Those who believe in Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence (Brittanica.com)would be quick to point out that there is a periodicity in the pattern of global pandemics. We just weren’t looking at that cycle that is all. However, there are those who would say that it is a result of sensitive dependence on initial conditions (Glassnert and Weiss, 1998). ( If you are wondering what’s so strange about that, here is the Wikipedia link. ) The conditions were all building up, we just didn’t see them that is all. So what were the conditions for this catastrophe?

Initial Conditions (Precedents)

1. Travel: Viruses are transmitted by hosts. The Great Bubonic plague of the 14th century was triggered by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis, which lived in the flea that lived on the black rat. The black rat itself was transported along the silk route to the Crimea and from there by ships to other locations (Wikipedia). So it was a bacteria spread by a flea transported by rats who were transported along the trade routes (silk route). Interestingly the article suggests that the Plague existed in South Asia before that. One way to look at it is that when a pathogen reaches a new population, they have very little resistance to it and cause havoc. This is well discussed in the history of Syphilis (Wikipedia). Some say that the native American population was decimated by diseases that were brought by the colonizers, others say that Columbus and his sailors brought it to Europe from the colonies. Sometimes the disease is known by the place where it spread first. Syphilis was called the “French Disease” because it was first brought back from Naples by returning French Soldiers. Covid-19 was also known by the place where it was first detected. But that is a rather unscientific way of looking at it.
2. The Sixth Extinction (Wikipedia description of the book): There have been five mass extinctions that have happened before this (National Geographic). They were not manmade. They say the sixth extinction is manmade. But isn’t man part of nature? While it is tempting to blame unbridled human greed as the cause of this extinction, there is another way to look at it. As system evolves, its parameters change and then the old subsystems become unviable. This is not to say the end of everything, perhaps we have just reached the peak of our era. It is time to hit the reset button. In an extremely complex ecosystem called earth, humans do not control the reset button. A single virus could achieve what climate change experts have been trying to do for YEARS! Did global warming trigger the right conditions for the virus to emerge? Are there more waiting to emerge, say under the melting permafrost of the Arctic and Antarctic? What would the RESET button be like? Does the human race have the resilience to survive this?
3. Epidemiology For a quick technical overview of the subject from NCBI, click here: (Surely Covid-19 is not the only disease to sweep the globe in recent years (Science Direct)? Why is the Novel Coronavirus different? Perhaps its got to do with the fact that it spreads faster and more rapidly. Perhaps its because we monitor health more closely, especially for communicable diseases. In 1854, there was an outbreak of cholera in London (Wikipedia). At the time, it was thought that diseases like Cholera were caused by Miasma or bad air. (Perhaps it is has a parallel in today’s theory of droplet contamination that requires negative pressure isolation wards with negative room air-pressure when dealing with Ebola and other contagious diseases (Wikipedia).) Although Louis Pasteur had not proposed the Germ Theory yet, Dr John Snow, a physician was not convinced that Cholera was caused by bad Air (UCLA, Dept of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health). He turned detective, and by tracking down cases, he showed that almost all the infection cases happened to people who used a particular handpump in Broadway, London. He then had the pump handle removed, effectively stopping the epidemic (watch a Harvard video on it here… youtube: 8 min (the video also tells us why it was safer to drink BEER than water.) Epidemiology is the where medicine, biology and social sciences meet. Advances in testing and mathematical modelling of epidemics (Elsevier), make it very important to detect early, predict the spread and take containment measures. Hence the alarm-bells go off early.
4. A social phenomenon and a media circus: Today almost 100% of all news channels contain news of the progress of Covid-19 across the world. Informal channels are choked with half baked truths about the disease. The Govt machinery has the unprecedented reach to declare a lockdown, asking people to stay indoors. The conditions are very similar to life on active frontlines of a war. People worry about dwindling supplies and when it will all be over. Most of us do not know how the lockdown will help in anything but delay the progress of the disease. Flattening the curve is not because there are fewer people sick, but because they will be sick over a longer time frame. But the good thing is that people have come together to stay away in order to protect the vulnerable. For most of us COVID 19, is not a threatening disease unless you belong to the vulnerable section. Vulnerability in terms of COVID 19 means…
   1. Age above 70
   2. Asthmatic
   3. Diabetic
   4. Immuno-compromised
   5. People who are already weak from another infection or serious disease

In short, most people are undergoing unprecedented hardship, to protect people like me and others who belong to the vulnerable group. It’s no wonder why an observation made by the Cultural Anthropologist, Margret Mead (Forbes) has resurfaced as a meme in the era of Covid 19.

Next: What happens after the lockdown is over? Read part 2 of this article.

Have you ever been at a loss of words to express what you felt? I first developed the five circles to explain the inner journey many years ago in an online course I did for a year with Shwetaa Shah. I have used it in many places since then.

1. The Transactional world is the world we live in ordinarily. A world where sentences are taken literally, and we make promises we can keep and enter into contracts etc. In this world, we think logically and express ourselves in correct syntax. (Logic, Syntax)
2. The symbolic world is the world where poets use words to craft experiences and painters paint pictures that represent things that we don’t always have words to express. Its a world where metaphor and symbols reign. Often using two words close to each other in a text is more important than what the sentence means syntactically.
3. The emotional world is often beyond words, experiences/feelings that are intense and leave us at a loss for words. In this world it is hard to adequately represent something, even symbolically. Often there is only one thing to do, to be Present and to allow ourselves to FEEL, knowing any form of experience will always take away something from it.
4. The unconscious represents things things that we are not even fully aware of, information we process before it even reaches our awareness.  The simplest form of this is a strange sense of a presence in the room when there is no one there. Another example is that of Dichotic Hearing. Our intuitions and hunches often originate at this level and then bubble up to our conscious awareness through the subsequent layers. This is why it is so difficult to understand the logic behind our intuition. Yet we can learn to understand it and trust it.
5. Pure Awareness: At the centre of it all lies pure awareness, the cogito in Descarte’s famous dictum. This is an outward looking awareness. Even an image seen in the mirror is seen as yet another visual object and not as the self. The unconscious realm lies beneath this too. But this is the bedrock, the foundation of consciousness.

The only thing to add is that the boundary lines between each circle is made of anxiety (fear). What this means is that in order to go from one level to another we have to go through anxiety.

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To understand more about the epistemology behind this, read this paper on Gestalts.

Applications

Applications:

• Therapy: Those who have worked in the therapeutic setting can clearly distinguish these different layers. If the goal of therapy is an integrated person, then the therapist helps the client go through different layers, with an attitude of what Carl Rogers calls Unconditional Positive Regard. When the client learns to adopt the right attitude to understanding oneself at all levels, it leads to a person being more integrated. The initial part of this conceptual map was created during my work with Schizophrenia
• Meditation: Practitioners of meditation experience the journey through these different levels of consciousness. One could even say that it is the purpose of meditation.
  • However, it is interesting to note that when speaking of metaphysics (the nature of things), it is often described inside out. The innermost realm of pure consciousness or awareness is considered primordial, in the sense that it exists first. Let’s say it is what a baby is born with. The rest of the layers are things that we develop over time.
• Creativity: Understanding creativity requires an understanding of the five circles. It also involves understanding and facilitating the movement between them. The easier it is to traverse between the circles the easier it is to access our creativity
• Productivity: Anyone who has access to only the outer circle may well be a great manager, able to manage everything logically, allocating time and resources to get the job done. But she would still be using only a small part of the resources that could be available to her.

In my years of life as an employee, entrepreneur, consultant and life coach, I have observed that the biggest challenge to career growth is… not knowing what to do… quite literally. When faced with a high stakes decision, some people are sucked by the quicksand of indecision. Making a decision involves taking responsibility for outcomes. What if I am wrong? This is the most paralyzing affliction in modern life. Earlier, it was easy, we just had to do what we are told and the gears of society/culture would lock-in and convert that into something. But as Durkheim would put it, anomie leads to ennui and in a society where old norms have fallen and new are yet to evolve it’s hard to know what to do.

In Business Schools the hardest topic to teach is ethics. That’s because it does not go with the basic premise of management education – how to make more money. Unlike finance, hr, marketing etc., learning ethics will not teach you how to make more money. Ethics is not about How to do anything it’s about What to do. I call this the Ethical Imperative. We behave ethically because it’s the right thing to do, that’s it.

So next time you find yourself in the quicksand of indecision, remember this….

Not making a decision is far worse than making the wrong one. Not deciding does not absolve you from all responsibility about the outcome. That is a decision too.