Steve Jobs, Mike Markkula, and the Power of Surrender
When we think of Apple and its early days, the credit for building the organization often goes to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Jobs was the marketing and sales genius who set the world on fire, while Woz was the technical genius who created the actual product. We often forget about the third founder Mike Markkula, who played a critical role in mentoring Steve Jobs and creating the Apple brand.
Mike had retired after a fruitful career as a product marketing manager at Intel and was introduced to Steve Jobs when he was about to launch Apple 2. Steve needed two hundred thousand dollars to go into production, and since they were a new company, the traditional investors did not trust them with their money.
“If you want me to finance you,” Don Valentine (founder of Sequoia Capital) told Steve Jobs, “you need to have one person who understands marketing and distribution and can write a business plan.”
Don introduced Steve to Mike Markkula, who had become a millionaire after Intel went public. Mike told Jobs they should create a business plan together, and if they created something that Mike liked, they could figure out a partnership. A few weeks later, Mike predicted that Apple would become a Fortune 500 company in two years and decided to invest 250,000 dollars for one-third share of the company.
After joining Apple, he played a crucial role in securing funding and instilling operational discipline. He also wrote a one-pager titled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy” that governs their philosophy even today. He emphasized the role of empathy and its impact on users. You can see that in Apple’s design even today and how it drives the seamless integration between hardware and software. He also emphasized the value of focus and doing a few things exceptionally well versus trying to do everything. Finally, he underscored the importance of packaging because people impute the value of a product by its packaging. The best software loses value if it’s shoddily presented.
While Mike’s contribution is irreplaceable, you also have to be amazed at Steve Jobs’ ability to soak all these lessons like a sponge and use them throughout his career. When I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, I was amazed by Steve’s ability to turn on the charm and make people feel important whenever he needed something from them. However, he also had the ability to eviscerate you if he did not rate you. It’s challenging for such people to leave their egos aside and learn from someone, but Steve Jobs really surprised me as I could see that he was a lifelong learner. He learned spirituality from his trips to India, and The Autobiography of a Yogi was the only book on his iPad. He also learned Zen Buddhism, and he grasped the essence of marketing Apple from Mike Markkula. Even after leaving Apple, Steve reflected on the benefits of creating an ecosystem that encouraged third-party app developers from Microsoft and used that while launching the iPhone.
This trait of Steve Jobs surprised me because he demonstrated the ability to turn his ego on and off at will, which indicates a significant degree of self-awareness. One of the prerequisites of truly learning anything significant is by admitting it’s important and that we don’t know anything about it. You can only learn from a fantastic teacher if you are willing to become a student, and that involves leaving your ego at the door of the classroom. Good teachers instruct you, but great teachers imprint the knowledge in your soul by first challenging your ideas and then picking them apart. They ask piercing questions that make you question the foundations of your knowledge. Then, when you finally admit you need help, they give you the building blocks you can use to find your answers. All this happens only after you silence your ego and acknowledge that you need help.
The Role of A Spiritual Master in Your Life
The ability to leave your ego at the door and surrender is the most critical requirement for a spiritual seeker. Here is a beautiful story that will help you understand the relationship between a seeker and a Guru. I first read it in the following blog by the peerless Swami Tyagananda from the Ramakrishna mission.
A cow was grazing in the jungle when she suddenly saw a lion racing toward her. Survival instinct took over, and she galloped headway into the forest without even looking at where she was running. The lion raced after her, licking its lips in anticipation of a gourmet dinner.
The cow ran headlong into a swamp full of sticky mud and got stuck in the middle of the swamp. The lion also waded in after the cow and got stuck a few meters behind her. The cow kept looking at a distance while the lion shouted insults at her, letting her know that she would soon be his meal.
Seeing the frustration and anger of the lion, the cow turned back and asked him if he had a master. The lion laughed disdainfully and said he was the king of the jungle. How could anyone be his master? The cow reminded him that while he may be the king of the jungle, he was stuck helpless here and would die soon from hunger and exhaustion. The angry lion snapped back that the cow would see the same fate and was furious when the cow smiled back at him. She told him that, unlike him, she has a master. When she does not return home by evening, he will come looking for her. He will follow her footsteps till he finds her, and then he will do whatever it takes to rescue her and take her back home.
A few hours later, as the sun was setting, the master appeared on the edges of the marsh. He understood the situation in a single glance and waded into the swamp to rescue the cow. As they walked back home, the cow looked back at the lion, who was still growling and baring its teeth, ready to eat them at a moment’s notice. The lion is the ego. The cow represents the surrendered heart, and the master represents the guru.
The True Grace of the Guru
When we first meet our guru, we all may think we are the cow. We imagine ourselves to be humble, surrendered, and ready for the grace that showers upon us when we meet a realized master. However, almost all of us have the hidden lion of ego within us. The guru creates situations where you can experience the lion roaring within you. Then, you realize that you are stuck in the unending muddy ocean that we call Samsara, or the material world. When you are tired of flapping your arms and roaring insults at the world, the ego subsides, and you surrender to the master. Your guru then literally wades into this muddy ocean of Samsara to bring you to the other side.
This feeling of devotion to a guru is sublimely described in the Guru Paduka stotram — a composition by Adi Shankaracharya.
Anantha samsara samudhra thara naukayithabhyam guru bhakthithabhyam,
Vairagya samrajyadha poojanabhyam, namo nama sri guru padukhabyam.
Salutations and Salutations to the sandals of my Guru,
Which is a boat, which helps me, cross the endless ocean of life,
Which endows me with a sense of devotion to my Guru,
And by the worship of which, I attain the dominion of renunciation
Do you notice how the world we live in is called an endless ocean here and an inescapable marsh in the story? There is scriptural and scientific significance to this depiction.
The Endless Ocean of Samsara
In his latest blog, my guru Om Swami talks about the world as an Indrajaal. I am quoting a snippet from his blog.
Indrajala is mentioned in Atharva Veda (8.8.5–8), and Jala did mean a net or a snare. What is most remarkable, however, is the timeless wisdom hiding in plain sight in the term Indrajala. For, Indra represents the mind, and our mind is what creates the expansive mesh of thoughts. Our mind ambushes us into whatever we feel. It is the net of infinite desires that has us entrapped. You slash one desire, and there it is, another one ready, right there.
When it comes to the latest neuroscience, the research by Lisa Feldman Barrett comes to a similar conclusion that Indian sages suggested thousands of years ago. They called this world Maya — an illusion of your own making. Most people think that it means this world is false or unreal. However, it means that you cannot experience the world in its proper form because your mind is creating a world, which is your own subjective experience.
Your brain constantly runs a model of your body as it moves through the world. You come to know that world only through your cochlea, retina, and the other sensory surfaces of your body. Their signals, along with those streaming from within your body, continuously confirm or correct the ongoing signals in your brain. The implication is a bit startling: You cannot experience the world, or even your own body, objectively. Your experience is always from a particular perspective, and no perspective is universal.
Hence, when Adi Shankara calls this world an endless ocean of life, he states that we are trapped in a body that can never see reality for what it is. Thus, we will take countless rebirths because we keep repeating the same actions. It’s like a swimmer tirelessly swimming in an endless ocean. In such a scenario, only the guru’s grace can liberate you from this fate.
Summary
You can only truly learn something when you surrender your ego and are ready the follow the teachings of your master. This principle applies to all aspects of life. Since it’s impossible to kill the ego, the best thing to do is surrender it at the feet of your guru so that it’s no longer your problem.
There is no better day to do this than Guru Purnima. I offer this article and everything else I have at the feet of my guru Om Swami. He loves all his disciples with the gentleness of the Omnipresent divine mother and yet keeps them centered and focused with the firmness shown by Shiva, the cosmic father. He is both in this world and utterly detached from it, like the radiant Sri Hari who resides majestically in the Sri Bhadrika Ashram established Om Swami.
