In Search of the Future Organization X — The Secret of Nataraja

Pravir Malik
4 min readMay 12, 2024

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Across this series, I have shared some personal stories that perhaps mark highs. But equally, in this journey, there have been lows. Doors have unexpectedly closed, relationships have ended, and direction has unexpectedly changed. In the moment, these can be disconcerting.

This final post in the ten-part series highlights an essential rhythm that may originate from the deeper recesses of any system. Recognizing this rhythm enables one to let go more effortlessly, appreciate the silence between activities, and discern the connections between seemingly unrelated elements, ultimately helping one to see more of the bigger picture.

It leads one perhaps into a freeing secret — the Secret of Nataraja.

The spherical systems-canvas wrapped around a quantum-like core is such that the richness and evolution of each proceed symbiotically, hand-in-hand…

… The canvas and the core complete one another. Advancement continues so long as there is openness to the play of invisibility natural to a quantum-like core. It is only so that quanta can parse out mystery and invisibility, making it material and visible. But this means that much of what informs organizations must be adapted, transformed, and transcended in the continued dance toward a more dynamic and sophisticated equilibrium.

This is the Secret of Nataraja

…The ebb and flow of systems, markets, organizations, and civilization are sourced from that fount of rhythm. As far as each dancer moves in concert with the secret Dancer, they spiral forever toward the unknown future. Unheeding, they become figures of the ego-filled figure sooner or later crushed under Nataraja’s dance*.

The Quantum Age requires that forever unending spiral-like movement…

…So long as the sophisticated radar system inherent to each individual is primed via EQ-type tools, so long as the habitual and often noisy patterns are reduced as a result, so long as deeper powers and patterns — PowersWithin — can come to the fore to become living dynamos of new perception and activity, so long as Light is continually remembered and invoked so that impossibility is no longer a thing, and so long as the mathematics that animates activity morphs harmoniously, then Nataraja’s play cannot but become increasingly delightful.

Appreciation of silence is required for this…

…A continued comfort even when activity seems to stop and even when all that one has worked toward or all that organizations work toward pauses. For in that silence, in that pause, something new comes to the fore, something new from that which observes, to see whether the spirit of individuals and teams and organizations and work itself has matured enough to gather the strength to refashion the dance as per deeper design of the system.

Then, indeed, something more of that great secret — the Secret of Nataraja — is revealed…

*: Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Nataraja”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nataraja. Accessed 12 May 2024 — “In the Nataraja sculpture, Shiva is shown as the source of all movement within the cosmos and as the god whose doomsday dance, represented by the arch of flames, accompanies the dissolution of the universe at the end of an eon. His dance of creation is said to have been performed in Chidambaram (an important Shaiva centre in South India), a place that is identified with both the centre of the universe and the human heart. The gestures of the dance represent Shiva’s five activities (panchakritya): creation (symbolized by the drum), protection (by the “fear-not” pose of the hand), destruction (by the fire), embodiment (by the foot planted on the ground), and release (by the foot held aloft).”

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Pravir Malik
Pravir Malik

Written by Pravir Malik

A view of the world through light and fractals

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