Barrett is an idiot

I spent 1.5 hours of my life last week listening to people talk about the "Seven Levels of Consciousness".

Richard Barrett, a man lacking wits but making up for it with entrepreneurial enthusiasm, has improved the old pyramid model of Maslow (the hierarchy of needs) by creating an hourglass model.

Old:

Improved:

One will instantly see the superiority of this new model. For one thing, it's symmetrical. And it has circles. If there is anything more scientific than pyramids, it's circles. And the number seven.

I have to say how impressed I am. Barrett has taken a relatively meaningless concept, the hierarchy of needs - wholly unproven and unprovable - and improved it by extension and inversion via the science of the Vedas. If it's science you're after, an ancient holy text is the best place to look. He's melded religious myth and pseudo-science and made a business out of it, selling it to morons world-wide.

Vedic science specifies seven levels of consciousness. These are waking, sleeping, dreaming, soul consciousness, cosmic consciousness, God consciousness and unity consciousness. It appeared to me that the descriptions of the last four of these levels of consciousness described the underlying features of self-actualisation. (From Maslow to Barrett)

One could wonder how this sort of garbage could become such a integral part of corporate consciousness, especially at the management level. But it's not an anomaly. Business is full of unproven ideas and myth. Modern myth may appear to be especially good targets of ridicule but old myths are no less absurd, merely more accepted because they've been around longer.