How modes of creation have influenced corp thinking | Economic Times

The Genesis in the Old Testament tells us that the world was created ex nihilo—from nothing. In the beginning, there was a God and God created the world in seven days at the end of which the world starts. So from zero to something, from zero to one. This was an invention. There was nothing and somebody invented something. Thus the bulb was invented and it changed the way we saw time. Thus the clock was invented and we saw the day as having 24 hours. Thus we came up with the internet, virtual reality, smartphones. It didn't exist, somebody imagined it out of nothingness and then worked with what was there and created it. Most entrepreneurs function this way; they create something out of nothing.The creation concept changes when we read the Mesopotamian stories. Here chaos existed and was overpowered by a hero, a god called Marduk. He controlled chaos, he organized things. A similar German concept is called Chaoskampf or conquest of chaos. The purpose is to create order in chaos. Here, unlike ex-nihilo creation, something always exists but the default nature is chaotic. And the purpose is to organize it, control it. Here numbers exist, but they make no sense. There is data but no information. No pattern. Here creation is about organising, prioritizing, finding patterns, and subjugating the chaos.That's what a consultant does, he walks into a room and opens up his excel sheet and everything becomes organized, manageable, not overwhelming. He breaks the problem down into tiny bits and finds solutions. The primary job of a good consultant is to organize thought. That’s more difficult than it sounds because there are many ways of organizing thought and what is needed is a framework of organisation that is most fruitful to the customer. And that is a second approach. The third approach takes emotions into consideration. Creation happens because there is desire. Hunger transforms matter into food. Thus there is a separation of material reality and spiritual (psychological) reality. The latter transforms the former.This approach is Vedic. When you read the Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, or even the Rigveda, it will say in the beginning the first being was lonely, and in order to overcome his loneliness, he created the world. The world we experience is an outcome of Brahma’s emotions, desire, hunger, feeling, desire. The value placed on consciousness, on sensations and emotions, is not found in the first two creation myths.The Sanskrit phrase, Asatoma Sadgamaya, is often translated as from falsehood comes truth; but this is a translation clearly revealing colonial, hence Christian influence. A more Vedic reading would be from non-existence (asat) becomes existence (sat). Complete experience of all of existence is truth (satya). Desire is invisible, materially non-existent until it manifests through action, when Brahma takes the form of a stag and chases the doe across the sky.I can't see your hunger until I see you going towards the fridge and opening the fridge for a midnight snack. So the state of asat is in my body tormenting me, and the state of sat is when the food manifests before me. The emotional world, the nirguna, that which cannot be seen does exist. This is hunger, fear, loneliness. Saguna, or visible measurable world, is when hunger generates food, fear generates weapons of security, and loneliness generates family. It's a very different approach to creativity, where creation is an outcome of desires of shareholders and employees and customers. Life is not a problem to be solved but a desire to be realised.The first model grants power to the creator, no question asked. One has to trust why the creator created the world. One has to submit, as in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. You rationalise the reasons for creation, much as corporates rationalise the reason for relentless growth. The second model sees the creator as a problem-solver. This second model is seen in China where the first emperor is one who builds dams and canals to prevent floods and who creates the script to communicate across distances. This is when corporates see themselves as bringing value to uplift communities and bring development all around.The third model sees creation as an outcome of human consciousness. First comes hunger, and it transforms matter into food to be consumed. Here spiritual reality (non-measurable mind, desires, emotions, sensations) which is invisible is given independent existence from material reality (measurable world), visualised in art as the relationship between God and Goddess. Here, the corporate world exists to satisfy the needs of society and is willing to slow down to prevent pollution from destroying the ecosystem.