CHAPTER 4

Connecting with Your Inner Self ¹

‘We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war.’

—Fight Club ²

What is spirituality?

Yoda, Gandalf, Master Shifu, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Kahlil Gibran, Eckhart Tolle ³—there is a long list of gurus. But why did Luke need Yoda? Why did Po need Shifu? Because all of Luke’s and Po’s knowledge and experience was incapable of taking them through the challenge that lay ahead. All of us need to develop our inner strength and inner peace (which is what the various gurus ultimately represent) in order to balance our emotions and help us through difficulties. Rationality just isn’t enough. We need more. Which is where spirituality comes in and helps us live simpler, happier and more fulfilled lives.

We can almost hear you groaning. We did too when we were in our teens and twenties. At that stage of our lives, as ambitious young students fed on high adrenaline, testosterone-charged movies such as Wall Street (1987), Top Gun (1986), Agneepath (1990) and Hum (1991), we subscribed to the late, great Khushwant Singh’s view ⁴:

A modern fad which has gained widespread acceptance amongst the semi-educated who wish to appear secular is the practice of meditation. They proclaim with an air of smug superiority, ‘Main mandir-vandir nahin jaata, meditate karta hoon (I don’t go to temples or other such places, I meditate).’ The exercise involves sitting lotus-pose (padma asana), regulating one’s breathing and making your mind go blank to prevent it from ‘jumping about like monkeys’ from one (thought) branch to another. This intense concentration awakens the kundalini serpent coiled at the base of the spine. It travels upwards through chakras (circles) till it reaches its destination in the cranium. Then the kundalini is fully jaagrit (roused) and the person is assured to have reached his goal. What does meditation achieve? The usual answer is ‘peace of mind’. If you probe further, ‘and what does peace of mind achieve?’, you will get no answer because there is none. Peace of mind is a sterile concept which achieves nothing. The exercise may be justified as therapy for those with disturbed minds or those suffering from hypertension, but there is no evidence to prove that it enhances creativity. On the contrary it can be established by statistical data that all the great works of art, literature, science and music were works of highly agitated minds, at times minds on the verge of collapse.

In fact, the Indian cricket team in the 1990s appeared to have taken Singh’s advice to heart, with talented batsmen entertaining the crowds briefly before the entire batting lineup collapsed unceremoniously, especially when we were up against strong sides such as Australia, England and South Africa.

Then, as Indian cricket came of age in the twenty-first century under more level-headed leaders such as Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble, we too matured and realized that if we wanted to play the long game, if we wanted to utilize our talent more efficiently we would have to get a grip on our minds.

What follows in this chapter is our attempt to a get a grip on our minds. That being said, we are not going to delve into religion and the philosophical and scientific debates on the nature of the human soul. Those are separate, vast discussions, and we doubt whether we have the competence to opine on subjects as profound as these.

Spirituality means different things to different people. But in a broad sense, we can say it involves acknowledging that there exists an inner self—you could perhaps call it a soul—separate from the material or the physical one. Spirituality then is not a specific practice, but rather a way of looking at things that can form the basis of a way of life.

Again, this is a highly personal outlook, but we are believers in spirituality and its connection with simplicity. So, in this chapter we simply discuss our experiences, the practices we have built on the back of our version of spirituality, and what works for us and hopefully helps you too.

Balancing the emotional and the rational

In business and in investing, we have to make decisions and choices from a sea of possibilities. To make these decisions, we usually have information and data on hand to analyse and consider. And then we have to make a probabilistic call about the future which is as much emotional as it is rational.

It is impossible to make a decision which is just based on numbers, because for tomorrow’s world we have no numbers, no ‘future facts’. Our decisions, therefore, have to balance the emotional and the rational.

For example, when you see the sunset from a beach shack in Goa, a part of you absorbs the facts about the natural phenomenon (time, temperature, etc.). But another part of you appreciates the beauty of the spectacle and loves the changing mood of the day as night falls on the beach.

Similarly, in our professional lives too, whether we like it or not, we react to most events (the performance of Saurabh’s portfolio, his annual appraisal, his bonus, the financial statements of a company in which he has invested in, etc.) at both a factual/rational level and at an emotional level. Our academic and professional training, for the most part, is geared to help us deal only with our rational responses to such stimuli.

Just as we can experience sunsets and deal with corporate results, we can read people both rationally and emotionally. The American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, in his superb book Subliminal: The New Unconscious and What it Teaches Us ⁵, points out that humans—from as early as the age of four—have a unique ability to understand what other people are like and how they are likely to behave. Our emotional response to people often dominates our rational response. Spirituality helps us balance both.

More specifically, here are three areas where, in our experience, adopting a more spiritual approach works:

1. Dealing with clutter

Our manic obsession with buying things we don’t need has cluttered our physical spaces with useless items. And mentally, we are no better off, with the clutter of distractions from cat videos to checking our social media when we know we have a fast-approaching deadline. And finally, there is the clutter of fruitless relationships and the time we spend with people that draw down our energy reserves. The more you pack into your day, the greater the risk that you suffer from cognitive overload; your intellectual abilities are then compromised regardless of how hard you work.

The spiritual approach to this is to place greater value on the well-being of our inner self, prioritizing those possessions and relationships that truly matter to you. It is a philosophy that has been espoused by many over the ages. Chuck Palahniuk famously wrote in his book Fight Club ⁶: ‘The things you own ending up owning you.’ Stoicism, a school of ancient Greek philosophy, speaks of frugality. And there is even scientific evidence to wake us up to meaningful relationships.

‘The Harvard Study of Adult Development’ is one of the world’s most comprehensive studies of adult life, spanning nearly eighty years. The study’s findings are startling. Robert Waldinger, director of the study, summarizes these as follows:

The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health. Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation. Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. ⁷

2. Dealing with emotions

‘Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them,’ the Greek philosopher Epictetus said centuries ago. We have to deal with our fears and our anxieties in a constructive, practical, clear-headed manner. For example, if as an equity analyst, Anupam is anxious about his firm’s exposure to the pharma sector, he needs to get to the bottom of his anxiety. Is it because he doesn’t understand the science behind these companies? Or is the anxiety driven by his inability to understand the regulatory regime around pharma products? Or is it simply because he hasn’t invested time and effort in understanding the industry properly?

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates—one of the largest hedge funds in the world—says in his book Principles ⁸ that ‘the most valuable habit I’ve acquired is using pain to trigger quality reflections. If you can acquire this habit, you will learn what causes you pain and what you can do about it, and it will have an enormous effect on your effectiveness.’

And the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations ⁹: ‘If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.’

3. Achieving deep focus

Achieving peak performance is pure joy; it also involves deep, almost extreme focus and overcoming huge challenges (and hence pain). From intense physical training to long hours of focused work, almost any goal that is worth achieving will require inhuman effort.

In the end, hitting this peak is immensely rewarding. In our experience as equity analysts, the work we put into researching a company requires deep focus—and it is not always rewarding. While we spend hours toiling away analysing annual reports and travelling to gather primary data, the market might just not care for our effort. As a result, for many years, the stock price of that company might not go anywhere. This is the pain and self-doubt that we have to endure. But when one of our investments finally proves us right, our reward is more than just the profits we make—it is also the emotional pay-off that comes from having weathered the pain and reached our goal.

Principles and practices

Connecting with your spiritual side, as it were, is easier said than done. The biggest question we need to ask ourselves is ‘What is my purpose?’ It might make us sound like hipster gurus, but we believe that connecting with your purpose is what connects productivity with spirituality. It is what eventually led Luke to confronting his father and becoming a Jedi knight; it is what eventually led Po to becoming a Kung Fu Panda. One of the most famous scenes in the Indian epic tale Mahabharata is where Krishna awakens Arjuna to his purpose.

Arjuna’s famous dilemma—which is the fulcrum of the Gita—arises in Kurukshetra as the Pandava and Kaurava armies line up against each other armed and ready for combat. Upon seeing his kinsmen on the other side of the battlefield, Arjuna lays down his famous bow—the Gandiva—and refuses to engage in battle. Krishna, his charioteer, first tries to reason with Arjuna. When that does not work, Krishna resorts to his authority as God and impresses upon Arjuna that his dharma is to be a warrior, whether he likes it or not. He cannot escape his dharma and he must fulfil it. Arjuna has to be a warrior for what is right and just. While your and our goals in life might be more prosaic, all of us have to understand and fulfil our dharma.

Mythology and movies apart, here are the principles and practices that work for us.

Principle 1: Frugality

Frugality is a concept common to a range of spiritual philosophies, from the Buddha to Socrates, from Rousseau to Thoreau. Not buying or owning things that add very little to your life not only saves you money but also frees up mind space for more useful activities. We don’t believe in buying the latest smartphones every year and we don’t believe in stocking up on clothes and shoes in sales.

Saurabh has, at any point in time, only one suit, six shirts (one for each working day in the week) and only one pair of plain black shoes. As a result, not only is his closet very empty, his decision of what to wear to work requires no application of mind. Furthermore, he wears these items until they wear out, regardless of what the latest trend in men’s fashion might be.

The late Steve Jobs had almost no material possessions at home until he got married. Saurabh aspires to Jobs’s ability to understand good design but can confidently say that even after marriage he has very little by way of material possessions, other than a lot of books and a big collection of songs in his decrepit phone, which has a cracked screen and a cheap plastic cover.

Principle 2: Positivity

We are hardcore believers in positivity. When dealing with our emotions, especially our fears and anxieties, we try to follow a constructive, level-headed approach. Research tells us that the brain (a) is incredibly sensitive to positive suggestions, and (b) suffers from ‘confirmation bias’ with regard to our preconceived notions about ourselves. This wiring of the human brain is a potent driver of self-improvement.

For example, in one study, Harvard professor Ellen Langer divided a group of hotel housekeeping staff into two groups. Phil Dobson described the study in The Brain Book: How to Think and Work Smarter thus: ‘One group was told their levels of daily activity met the definition of an “active lifestyle”; the second group was told nothing. One month later, the first group had experienced a significant decrease in waist-to-hip ratio, and a 10 per cent drop in blood pressure.’ ¹⁰ That is the power of positive suggestion in changing not just behaviour but actual health outcomes of people.

This approach has worked for us. Before he became an investment manager, Saurabh, for instance, set up a successful stockbroking business in Mumbai on the principles of honesty and transparency. This was not easy. Saurabh and his colleagues worked long hours and wrote detailed notes regarding the long-term prospects of clean, well-managed Indian companies. However, some of their recommendations went wrong, leading to anxiety and a fear of client anger.

As a response, Saurabh’s team decided to declare upfront to their clients that their stock recommendations were made on the strength of the company’s franchise and corporate governance. And that some of these recommendations might not make money in the near term. Clients understood that that is the way even the best portfolios perform. Eventually, the stockbroking business rose up the rankings and became a market-leading franchise, proving the efficacy of the approach.

Beyond these broad principles, though, there are two specific practices that form the foundation of the spiritual side of the Simplicity Paradigm.

Practice 1: Meditation

Meditation is a practice where an individual trains her attention to achieve a clear, calm and stable state of mind. The Dalai Lama believes that meditation and prayer have similar benefits. However, our reading on the subject suggests that there are two differences between meditation and prayer. Firstly, meditation is, in general, a more advanced form of concentrating and focusing the mind than prayer. Secondly, while prayer has as its focus either a god or a deity, meditation—especially in its more advanced forms—can be about completely blanking out the mind.

Jason Voss, a successful investor, says in his book The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth ¹¹: ‘Meditation is a natural state of mind that occurs when the egoic mind is diminished or turned off.’ According to Voss, ‘egoic mind means the state of mind where a sense of “I”, or a sense of separateness from the interconnectedness of the universe, exists.’ In other words, by subduing your ego and your sense of self, meditation allows more creative thoughts to bubble up to the forefront of your mind.

The recorded origins of meditation are usually traced to the Chinese and Indian civilizations around the fifth century BCE, although it also appears highly likely that people elsewhere in the ancient world had also clocked on to the benefits of this simple but powerful practice. As John Selby says in Seven Masters, One Path ¹²:

Several thousands of years ago, among the . . . Taoist culture of ancient China, the judging, analytical thinking mind was already correctly identified as the perpetrator not only of our particularly human blessings in life, but also of our particularly human curses. They understood clearly that . . . we humans have gained vast powers to think logically, reflect upon past experiences, and manipulate the world to our advantage. However, because thinking is a past-future function of the mind, we have tended to lose touch with the vital experience of participating spontaneously in the present moment.

Meditation aims to resolve this ‘lost in thought’ dilemma as we temporarily distance ourselves from the constant barrage of thoughts from our inner virtual reality, and shift into a deeper consciousness. By learning to calmly watch thoughts flowing through our minds without being attached to those thoughts, we liberate ourselves from chronic identification with our ego’s limited notion of what life is all about . . . In the Taoist tradition, when we quiet our thoughts in meditation, we let go of trying to manipulate the world based on our inner fantasies of how things should be.

What are the work-related benefits of meditation? Dalio and Voss have written extensively about how meditation has helped them become better investors. When we asked Voss how meditation had helped him, he pointed us towards Selby’s excellent book, which is referenced above. What follows in this section is a summary of what we have learnt from these three books ¹³ and from our chats with Voss. The benefits of meditation—going from the most basic to the most advanced—appear to be:

• Stress relief and recovery from difficult experiences: This is the most commonly cited benefit of meditation. Normally, mental and physical stress causes increased levels of cortisol (also called the primary stress hormone). Cortisol in turn promotes depression and anxiety and disrupts sleep. Scientific studies show that meditation reduces stress and cortisone. Effectively, meditation has the opposite effect—on the body and the mind—as an adrenaline rush (which increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure and boosts energy levels). As a result, meditation plays a dual role of not only providing relief from a stressful experience but also helping in the rejuvenation and recovery process (via lower cortisol, less anxiety and better sleep).
• Clarity of thought and greater focus: Uncluttering our mind so that we can think more clearly, even if we are facing time pressure and/or financial pressure, is clearly a valuable skill to have. Psychologists are increasingly of the view that one of the best ways to regulate your body and your emotions is through meditation. In fact, research shows that meditation not only improves your health, it also strengthens your mental muscle, especially your ability to focus and concentrate. A brain imaging study by Massachusetts General Hospital found physical changes in the brain after an eight-week meditation course ¹⁴. Researchers identified increased activity in parts of the brain associated with learning, memory, self-awareness, compassion and introspection as well as decreased activity in the amygdala.
• Higher level thinking and creative ideas: According to Voss, meditation allows you ‘access to creativity, intuition and wealth manifestation. Exploration of this topic opens up an entirely new world, one rich with skills for making you richer.’ To quote from Dalio’s book Principles, ‘I also came to understand that while some subconscious parts of our brains are dangerously animalistic, other are smarter and quicker than our conscious minds. Our greatest moments of inspiration often “pop” up from our subconscious. We experience these creative breakthroughs when we are relaxed and not trying to access the part of the brain in which they reside, which is generally the neocortex. When you say, “I just thought of something”, you noticed your subconscious mind telling your conscious mind something.’
• Greater ability to work co-operatively: Regardless of how talented we might be, successful professional endeavour almost always involves working in collaboration with other people. Unfortunately, our education system and the general ethos of capitalism focus on our identity as individuals. That in turn inhibits the extent to which we are voluntarily willing to collaborate with others. Life, especially in the financial services profession, seems to hinge on chasing greater pay and perks. Meditation helps you de-emphasize your own role and what rewards you will get from your efforts. That in turn makes it easier for you to work with others for their benefit. Ironically, that is a far more efficient way to move forward in the world rather than barging forward Gordon ‘Greed is Good’ Gekko-style ¹⁵.

So how does one meditate in the midst of a packed schedule? The beginner’s format for meditation simply focuses on using a basic technique to either distract or relax your conscious mind (where your ego resides). Here is Saurabh’s basic technique to meditate on flights and car journeys: close your eyes and count backwards from 100 to zero while trying to visualize each number as you call the number out in your mind. The reverse counting is a way of distracting the ego and thus letting the mind enter a more relaxed mode. Practising this technique on a daily basis for even ten minutes allows you to gain control of your mind to such an extent that soon you will be able to meditate at a time and place of your choosing.

The more advanced formats involve concentrating in one or more long sessions (of an hour or more) each day. This often involves using chanting as the technique being used to distract the egoic mind. The effort then is to focus the mind on the mantra that you are chanting and hold that focus for very long periods of time. It is hard to do but Dalio and Voss swear by these advanced meditation techniques and the way these techniques have helped them become better investors and better human beings.

When it comes to meditation, there are a wide variety of techniques and approaches, and what we have given here is just one of those. Feel free to search and try out different methods; our only advice would be to keep it simple.

Practice 2: Relentless focus

Focus helps us connect our practice with our purpose and our execution with our vision. We declutter with zeal. Especially on weekdays, we strip away everything that diverts our attention from our work. For example, we avoid ‘networking events’ where people whose own objectives of attending the event are fuzzy meet others with equally fuzzy objectives in a noisy setting. Instead, we use this time to meet a list of people directly related to our investment research—for example, dealers, distributors, company promoters, etc. Similarly, we avoid industry conferences in five-star hotels with a rambling cast of speakers and time-consuming schedules.

We also ruthlessly control what we consume. For example, we use social media with heavy discretion. Saurabh is manic obsessive—he has no Twitter or Instagram accounts. He does not even have WhatsApp on his phone. He wants to make it difficult for people to contact him and for himself to contact other people.

Anupam, on the other hand, has specific limits on his Twitter usage, uses Facebook only occasionally and restricts himself to mere sentences on WhatsApp (which he uses only for coordinating and setting up meetings and not for long or life-changing conversations). Neither of us is obsessed with social media and both of us are aware of its danger as a weapon of mass distraction. We leave it to users to find their balance.

Ultimately, these two practices tie into the idea of deliberate, focused, deep work—a concept central to the Simplicity Paradigm. As computer scientist Cal Newport says in his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, ‘The ability to perform deep work is increasingly rare at exactly the same time that the work is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life will thrive.’

In fact, a quarter of a century before Newport gave us the concept of deep work, American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’—and immersing yourself deeply both in work and in leisure—captured the essence of the same idea. Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience ¹⁶, says that ‘flow’ is a state you achieve when you lose yourself in a specific activity (whether for work or otherwise) and typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity and total enjoyment with life. This positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. He writes:

First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks which we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.

At the core of this, Csikszentmihalyi says, is the idea of autotelic, or self-contained, activities. That is, ‘one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.’ He gives the example of investing in the stock market—doing it just to make money is not autotelic. However, ‘playing it in order to prove one’s skill in foretelling future trends is—even though the outcome in terms of dollars and cents is exactly the same.’

He writes: ‘Teaching children in order to turn them into good citizens is not autotelic, whereas teaching them because one enjoys interacting with children is. What transpires in the two situations is ostensibly identical; what differs is that when the experience is autotelic, the person is paying attention to the activity for its own sake; when it is not, attention is focused on its consequences.’

In the end, this concept of ‘flow’ can be applied to all aspects of our lives—whether professional or personal, tasks or relationships. For example, for both Saurabh and Anupam, the main driver of writing this book is that it pushes us to absorb new concepts, to understand the implications of these concepts for our own lives and then to convey them to the readers in as lucid a manner as we can.

We find this process satisfies the vast majority of the conditions that Csikszentmihalyi has laid down for what constitutes ‘optimal experience’. For us learning, understanding and writing are autotelic experiences. In a way, this builds up to the ultimate goal of our approach to spirituality: a meaningful life with a sense of purpose.

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Key takeaways from this chapter

• Spirituality involves acknowledging an inner self separate from the material or the physical one. Spirituality is not a specific practice but rather a way of looking at things that can form the basis of a way of life. Spirituality helps us in balancing the emotional and rational parts of ourselves.
• Spirituality can help us in dealing with clutter (both mental and physical), in dealing with emotions and in achieving deep focus. We should prioritize those possessions and relationships that truly matter to us. Fear is natural, but we should deal with our fears and our anxieties in a constructive, practical, clear-headed manner.
• What are the specific practices which help us connect with our purpose? Meditation: distinct from praying, meditation is when an individual trains her attention to achieve a clear, calm and stable state of mind. Relentless focus: it helps us connect our practice with our purpose and our execution with our vision. So strip away everything that diverts attention from your work, and ruthlessly control what you consume in terms of time.
• What are the benefits of meditation? For us, they are stress relief and recovery from difficult experiences, clarity of thought, higher-level thinking and creative ideas, and greater ability to work co-operatively (as opposed to obsessing about our place in the world).

Jason Voss’s Spiritual Journey from Wall Street to Sarasota

Jason Voss has a multifaceted background. He has a BA in Economics and an MBA (with an emphasis on finance and accounting) from the University of Colorado, and holds the chartered financial analyst (CFA) charter. Jason is the CEO of Active Investment Management (AIM) Consulting, LLC, which helps small to medium-sized active investment management firms create and deliver long-lasting alpha. Prior to this, Jason was the global content director at the CFA Institute, and the author of The Intuitive Investor. Over the course of his investment career as co-portfolio manager of the Davis Appreciation and Income Fund (DAIF), the fund bested the Nasdaq by 77 per cent, the S&P 500 by 49.1 per cent, and the DJIA by 35.9 per cent ¹⁷. In 2005, Jason switched tracks and stepped out of active fund management on Wall Street.

On 23 May 2019, we had a long call on Skype from Saurabh’s home with Jason, who is based in Sarasota, Florida, USA. Jason is a firm believer in the power of spirituality and in the practice of meditation. As he writes in his book The Intuitive Investor, ‘Meditation is a natural state of mind that occurs when the egoic mind is diminished or turned off.’ According to Voss, ‘. . . egoic mind means the state of mind where a sense of “I”, or a sense of separateness from the interconnectedness of the universe exists.’ But given that investment is a rational, rules-based exercise, how did a successful fund manager on Wall Street find his way into mediation and spirituality? Meditation was always a part of Jason’s life, from the time he was a kid right up to his teenage years. But it was during a painful divorce in his late twenties—which coincided with Jason’s promotion to a portfolio manager—that Jason returned to meditation as a formal practice. As both Saurabh and Anupam can testify, the world of investments is a high-stress one where, as Jason puts it, ‘all of a sudden the burden of the world and other people’s fortunes are on your shoulders.’ Within a few months of making meditation a part of his daily routine, Jason started having creative realizations about how his own inner mechanisms were not serving him as an investor.

He gave us two specific examples. The first was the realization that he had grown up poor and really wanted to be successful in his life. However, that desire was driving him to prove himself and demonstrate how smart he was. In the process he ended up hurting people and negatively impacting his career. ‘So when I made the realization that so much of my decision-making is born of insecurity and has nothing to do with the underlying performance of the security, or the prospects of the securities, or the composition of the portfolio, or how I value a business, I stopped doing those things,’ he told us.

The second realization was that the most important relationship we all have is with ourselves. And only we get a vote in the nature of this relationship—we can be forgiving or unforgiving of our faults; we can be quite a terrifying adversary to ourselves. Once Jason realized how he was an adversary to himself and ended that practice, he learnt to wear the mantle of portfolio manager as it truly should be worn—that of a guardian, a fiduciary in the truest sense of the word. ‘That realization of loving yourself freed me, because I no longer had to please other people. I could then focus on what I should really be focused on, which is taking care of and being the guardian of the reputation of my firm,’ he told us.

We spoke about the debate between spiritualism and materialism, and religion versus science. Jason believes that religion and science are both the same in that they are both explorations of the truth. On spiritualism versus materialism, Jason believes that: (a) we are all interconnected; and (b) consciousness is primary to materialism. ‘Once you realize consciousness is prime and you realize meditation is a technique to discover these insights, then all of a sudden, the conversation is no longer about how science and spirituality are related; you see them as the exact same endeavour—the pursuit of truth. Science has never really discovered consciousness in the way that a meditator can,’ he told us. He doesn’t see meditation and spirituality as separate from science and scientific method. Is it possible to be spiritual without being religious? ‘Absolutely. I believe that institutions (such as economic institutions, scientific institutions, or the institution of family) exist because of a profound realization of universal values. Spirituality—that we are all interconnected—is the source of values and religion is the institution,’ he told us.

If spirituality and meditation are such powerful tools, then why are we not seeing hordes of youth flocking to gurus and ashrams? Or even have more lunchtime meditation sessions across organizations? Jason believes that centuries of materialism and objectivity as mental models have meant that most people struggle to see beyond these mental models. But these mental models are also broken. In quantum mechanics, objects exist in varying and hazy states as against classic mechanics, which places objects at specific places and times. Indeed, scientists have proved that objectivity is an illusion. ¹⁸ Add to this the idea that capitalism is seen as the pre-eminent institution of competition—whereas capitalism is actually as much about co-operation as it is about competition. ‘All of this is hardcoded in us like a program. I would say it is a software programme that is in need of an upgrade,’ he told us.

We conclude with the thought that spirituality is the bridge connecting your practical state of knowledge to where you want go in the world. ‘The advice I have given to the young, mostly men and a few women that I’ve mentored over the years, is that you must first know yourself exceptionally well in the investment business and discover what makes you unique,’ he told us.

Jason thinks of personalities as lenses that have to be polished. Old mental models create a fog on the lenses that prevents the light from shining as beautifully as it could. Meditation practices are the polishing techniques that help you be the best. ‘You need to find the tools and techniques that exalt your consciousness. I love that word ‘exalt’, because it is just that. Once you discover what makes you unique and your unique talents—and that’s only found through spirituality—then all of a sudden magic happens,’ Voss ends our discussion on a magical note.