An Author’s Memoir From Management and Fractals to Light
Thus far I have authored seventeen books.
At one level the books correspond to the three different phases in my life. The first phase, in the 1990s, was precipitated by a more intimate contact with life. Powerful bubbles I had lived in were broken and I recorded the gist of my reactions to the environments I was placed in. In this phase, I wrote ‘The Flowering of Management’ and ‘India’s Contribution to Management’.
When I first began working in the corporate world the reality of the environment struck me as anachronistic. I felt that organizations and management were a hangover from a past that was being unnecessarily extended. In my perception what life could offer was very different, and I wrote The Flowering of Management to capture aspects of a vision I thought corporations and money existed for. Similarly, when I wrote India’s Contribution to Management it was the result of the dissatisfaction I experienced when confronted with the prevalent interpretation of India. This was precipitated by my working with a US-based company, A.T. Kearney, in India. I sought to reverse that interpretation with India’s Contribution to Management which aimed to capture my understanding of the essence and deeper capacity of synthesis of India.
Both these books were high-level and while they may have aroused some feelings from the heart in those who read them, they lacked the analytical depth and rigor to become vehicles of organizational change. What I began searching for was a more cohesive framework, far beyond the usual frameworks I found in Graduate School and in the consulting companies I worked for, that would also be situation-agnostic. This I found in the concept of fractals, which aligned deeply with my beginning to see similar patterns regardless of area of life, and I worked to systematize this as a series of four books from 2000 to about 2015.
The first book, ‘Connecting Inner Power with Global Change: The Fractal Ladder’ is a theoretical framework of fractals. The fractals that I envisioned included the added complexities of emotional and thought components, while also serving as the language that connected one level of organizational granularity to the next, so that shifts in people could be linked to shifts in teams, and then to shifts in business environments, and subsequently even to shifts in markets. This was followed by ‘Redesigning the Stock Market: A Fractal Approach’ which was an application of the theoretical fractal framework to the then-recent global financial crises of 2008. ‘The Flower Chronicles’ sought to make the gist of the ubiquitous fractal I had described in the previous two books easily graspable at the visceral level primarily through many practical examples spanning diverse walks of life. ‘The Fractal Organization: Creating Enterprises of Tomorrow’ was a comprehensive summary of the fractal framework that included the basic theory, the applications, and a practical field guide that had been developed while I was working at the Organizational Development group at Stanford University Medical Center.
My own thirst and inquiry led me further, to want to mathematize the fractal and holographic reality I was encountering. This has resulted in the third phase that is still ongoing. The third phase has so far yielded two completed sets of books and the recent beginnings of a third set.
The first set, comprising of six books, extended my inquiry into the mathematics of complex systems to an interesting limit culminating in the nature of Light and the Cosmos. The holographic, fractal mathematics I propose, is at the heart of this first set — which I have called Cosmology of Light — and through the six books, I have articulated a baseline mathematics of innovation true of any complex system.
The first book in this series, ‘A Story of Light: A Simple Exploration of the Creation and Dynamics of this Universe and Others’ contains the main ideas in the mathematics, in non-mathematical terms, that are further explored mathematically in the remaining books in this series. The second book ‘Oceans of Innovation: The Mathematical Heart of Complex Systems’ describes my interpretation of the mathematical foundation of complex systems. The third book, ‘Emergence: A Mathematical Journey from the Big Bang to Sustainable Global Civilization’ applies the mathematics to several layers of matter and life. The fourth book, ‘Quantum Certainty: A Mathematics of Natural and Sustainable Human History’ describes a process culminating in space, time, energy, and gravity quantization by which history is made. The fifth book, ‘Super-Matter: Functional Richness in an Expanding Universe’ describes a process for the creation of super-matter based on a need for continued functional-richness. A link is made between the resulting quantization of space and an expanding universe. The final book, ‘Cosmology of Light: A Mathematical Integration of Matter, Life, History & Civilization, Universe, and Self’ proposes an integrated mathematical framework that flows through all things, hence unifying matter, light, civilization, history, universe, and self.
The second set further explores the implications of “one mathematics flowing through all things”. I call this series Application in Cosmology of Light and have sought to apply the mathematics of complex systems that I had created in Cosmology of Light to four contemporary areas that have captured the imagination of our times.
The first book in this series ‘The Emperor’s Quantum Computer: An Alternative Light-Centered Interpretation of Quanta, Superposition, Entanglement and the Computing that Arises from it’ describes an alternative narrative for quantum computing to the one commonly expressed today. The second book, ‘The Origin and Possibilities of Genetics: A Mathematical Exploration in a Cosmology of Light’ explores pre-genetic, genetic, and post-genetic possibilities in a cosmology of light. The third book, ‘The Second Singularity: A Mathematical Exploration of AI-Based and Other Singularities in a Cosmology of Light’, explores the limits of Artificial Intelligence and the possibilities of light-based singularities. The fourth and final book in this series, ‘Triumph of Love: A Mathematical Exploration of Being, Becoming, Life, and Transhumanism in a Cosmology of Light’, explores the generation of beings and a path to transhumanism in a cosmology of light.
When I embarked on the writing of the first Cosmology of Light set I felt that I was walking a very thin, tight, time-bound edge. There was no choice for me but to finish this set as rapidly as possible, and I had to let go of any laziness and doubt in doing so. There was also a very clear sense of the names of each book at the very beginning of the writing of the first one, the content and the bounds of each book, and the sense of how one inevitably led to the next.
Similarly, when I embarked on the second Applications in Cosmology of Light set, there was a clear sense of what each book would be about, and how the previous would be necessary to the next. There were gaps in the mathematics that I did not fully understand how to close, but once I embarked on the journey I followed a process of thinking about a problem before I went to sleep, and the next morning when I awoke it was usually with an answer. This second set was much more daunting, and I had to learn to not focus on the ‘dauntingness’ at all in order to complete it. I remember the sense of euphoria I had in April last year when I finally completed that fourth book in this series and the tenth articulating a cosmology of light. The euphoria lasted for days.
The third set is now underway and focuses on an artistic interpretation of the ten previous cosmology of light books. Note that the previous nine-book elaboration of the power of light in mathematical terms was already an artistic expression. I leveraged an organically growing knowledge of mathematics to the best of my ability, while simultaneously creating or putting together mathematical notation in a different way than the mathematics I am aware of, hence giving it its artistic tint.
A skilled mathematician may find that the mathematics I have put together already exists or may find a better way to express what I have. But this third set is different. While I used mathematics as a medium for “artistic” expression in the previous books, I am now collaborating with visual artists to ground the concepts in Cosmology of Light through visual art.
The first book in this new series Artistic Interpretation of Cosmology of Light has just been released. This book, ‘The Mandala Illustrated Story of Light’ seeks to use visual cues, and in this case, mandalas, to allow the reader to enter more deeply into what is being expressed conceptually. Other books in this series will follow shortly.
It has been an unusual journey where sometimes I have followed threads, and at other times pleaded that the downpour of forms and possibilities stop. Through it all, there has been a gradually growing flexibility in perception, animated by an increasing sense of something solid yet infinite of which all expressions are at best only hints.
