The Favorite Book of Apple Founder Steve Jobs
How Steve Jobs Found Inspiration from an Unlikely Source
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, had an unusual journey— born and raised in Silicon Valley, dopped out of college, traveled around India, and got fired from Atari before starting the famous computer company.
Jobs was later kicked out of his company and ten years later triumphantly returned for the best years he had there. He's credited for spearheading some of the most iconic and popular electronics of the late 20th and early 21st century including Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. He co-founded animation company Pixar, famous for its CGI films like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. Apple's launch of iTunes heralded the age of music online (well, legally. Remember Napster?). The iPhone created the smartphone and phone app boom. Steve's vision and impact was enormous.
When he died in 2011 at age 56 due to cancer, he had an unusual request. He wanted a copy of his most favorite book handed out to each attendee of his funeral. Jobs first read this book as a young man in India while he was recovering from an illness. He later read the book yearly and it was the only book he kept on his personal iPad.
Was it a book on business or technology?
Nope.
Was it a book on leadership or a novel?
Not exactly.
It was Autobiography of a Yogi, a book about Indian spirituality written by yogi Paramahansa Yogananda.
I'm new to Indian culture and religion and had little insight what to expect. I decided to give this book a try because of Jobs' own journey and his strong endorsement. I can’t think of a higher recommendation than having copies handed out at your own funeral!
So, what is Autobiography of a Yogi about?
In short, it's the spiritual journey of one man in early 20th century India and his mission to spread Indian yogi techniques to the West. He was a guru and a teacher in a specific form of practice called Kriya Yoga.
When Western readers see the word "Yoga" they imagine a gym studio of people wearing spandex and standing bare foot on rubber mats doing aerobics with names like "Downward Dog". It's mostly a secular practice and the emphasis is on physical balance and well-being.
Yoga in India is an ancient practice with different sects and practices. It can range from severe asceticism like owning and wearing nothing or to highly intellectual scholarism. Yoga is meant to be a pathway to find the Divine, or in other words, a devout spiritual practice. Yogananda is a proponent of one branch called Kriya Yoga, which (roughly) translates into "Action" Yoga.
The autobiography has all sorts of his stories ranging from amusing, entertaining, bizarre, and strange.
Yogananda often has an impish sense of humor in his writing. It's hard to describe. Nothing raunchy or anything like that. More of a playful or jokey tone. It gave the book a light-hearted feel while describing deep spiritual and cultural topics.
I divide his book’s themes into two broad categories:
1. The different yogis and gurus Yogananda met.
2. The history and knowledge of Kriya Yoga
I'd say three-quarters of the book are devoted to the first category. His upbringing with his family. How he tried several times to escape to the Himalayas as a young man before his older brother captured him. Losing his mother at an early age. The night she died while in another city, she appeared to Yogananda in a vision begging him to take a train immediately to see her but his father, who was with him at home, declined to go. Yogananda didn't get to see his mother alive again but remembered that vision.
Over time he met all sorts of people with different "powers". A guy who could create any scent on command. Another guy who fought tigers with his bare hands. A woman who survived without eating or drinking. A guy who never slept. The most famous of all was meeting Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian independence movement.
The most important chapters in category one is where he met and learned from two of the Kriya Yoga masters: Lahiri Mahasaya and Sri Yukteswar Giri. Yogananda's father was a student of Lahiri Mahasaya and the family kept a portrait of him. They even attributed miraculous healings to having the portrait. Yogananda eventually met one of Lahiri Mahasaya disciples, Sri Yukteswar Giri, and became his disciple. Yogananda went on to start his own school in India before travelling to the US and starting the Self-Realization Fellowship in California which still operates today.
The common theme in these stories is miracles. Yogis magically appearing and disappearing in various places or after death. How Yogananda “miraculously” graduated college studying for a few days with a student-mentor before finals instead of attending classes. Many visions of gurus and divinities are described in the chapters too. Yogananda does his best to explain the different Indian/Hindu divinities and why they’re important in the context.
The second category talks how a divine figure Mahavatar Babaji found and chose Lahiri Mahasaya to teach him an ancient Yoga practice, specifically Kriya. Kriya emphasizes meditation practices as the best pathway to self-realization and discovering the divine.
After the passing of Sri Yukteswar Giri, Yogananda claims Yukteswar visited him and explained how the afterlife works explaining there are three spheres of universes—physical, astral, and casual. Souls go through iterations of each sphere by reincarnation until they've worked out their karma, or attachments and desires, associated with that sphere. Yukteswar describes the astral sphere as a fantasy world where people can jump to different planets and the casual world is a sphere of light-filled beings. Once the soul works through these spheres, they are then fused to Divine Consciousness for eternity. Yogananda admits that this is a specific interpretation of afterlife inspired from traditional Hindu/Vedic scriptures.
Yogananda quotes the Bible, particularly the New Testament, throughout the book and claims Christ’s teachings are harmonious to Hindu beliefs. Sometimes he shares a Yogic interpretation to the teachings of Christ and to Bible stories. This may have been Yogananda’s way of trying to part his message in a context more familiar to Westerners. Though I doubt Christian theologians would agree with his perspectives.
What did I learn from this book?
Some of these stories were bizarre. Like the one where Yogananda predicts the death of one of his students. Not only did he tell the student but later went to his funeral and scolded the father for taking him from Yogananda’s school which precipitated his death. A few months later he goes searching for a pregnant woman using his own karmic “radio signals”. When he finds her, he declares the unborn child is the student's reincarnation. That’s just one of many stories like that.
On the other hand, this book did transport me into another world and shared perspectives I hadn't heard of before. I work with Indians and Americans of Indian descent at my day job, so this book did help give me some cultural context I didn’t have before.
The autobiography is a long read of over 550 pages and over 330 footnotes on top of that. The audiobook was over 19 hours in duration! It took me about two weeks to finish it, completing most of it during spare time on weekends. Not only that but Yogananda used a lot of outdated English vocabulary not commonly spoken today. For the first time in ages, I had to look up words in a dictionary. Despite all that, the book does have a warm and easy narrative tone to it.
While this was Jobs's beloved book, I couldn't find confirmation if he participated in Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship or if he actively practiced Kriya Yoga. My best guess is that Jobs was inspired by the book’s message about following your Intuition. The last chapter with Sri Yukteswar Giri's after-death appearance emphasizes that Intuition is the true sixth sense.
Marc Benioff, a founder of Salesforce, attended Job's funeral and later commented on the book gift:
"That was his message," Benioff said. "Actualize yourself.... He had this incredible realization that his intuition was his greatest gift, and he needed to look at the world from inside out." - CNN
Jobs himself echoed that sentiment in interviews and speeches. It underpinned his famous "reality distortion field".
And here's a five-minute clip from Jobs' 2005 Standford University Commencement Speech talking about "connecting the dots". He doesn’t directly refer to this book, but the theme feels similar.
I’ll end this edition with my favorite quote from the book.
The ubiquitous religious shrines of Mysore are a constant reminder of the many great saints of South India. One of these masters, Thayumanavar, has left us the following challenging poem:
You can control a mad elephant; You can shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; You can ride a lion; You can play with the cobra; By alchemy you can eke out your livelihood; You can wander through the universe incognito; You can make vassals of the gods; You can be ever youthful; You can walk on water and live in fire; But control of the mind is better and more difficult.