In the context of global market and its economic engine, the paradigm of growth or development is largely centered on the idea of getting bigger – bigger GDP, bigger market share, bigger turn over, bigger profits, more products and services, more users etc; in short the formula of development is ‘bigger the better’. This may be called the scaling up, the horizontal growth, a growth that is relatively easy to measure and quantify. It is a well known domain and there are hundreds of strategies and methods to do it. After the explosion of information technology and globalisation, the time taken for scaling up an organisation for global operations is taking less and less time. However eventually everyone ends up in the global market where competition is ferocious and survival of the fittest is the order of the day. To make things worse the consumerist culture is eating up the natural resources of the planet at a rate that is unsustainable and it is in the process polluting and destroying the natural environment upon which life on earth depends. Our current conception of growth as an infinite economic and material growth is practically cancerous in its nature and destroys the host organism; it is somewhat like expecting the body to grow infinitely. It is altogether an irrational conception and must be replaced with a more rational conception in which we can pursue infinite growth within finite limits of the physical world.
The human body probably is the best symbol we have to understand the scenario. The body does grows physically, but only up to a certain size and then the body stops growing; but only the physical growth reaches its limit - the growth of vitality and mentality, the dynamic power of action and the increasing and vaster comprehension of knowledge, continues to grow. However in most people, just like the body reaches a limit to its growth, so is their vitality and mental capacity comes to a halt with age. Not only comes to a limit but also start withering away as the decay sets in. There is a cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decay and death for all life forms. But within this brief cycle some individuals breaks out of the limitations and become larger than life heroes of humanity fuelling the myths and legends. They shine forth as leaders and the leaders come in all hues. There are individuals in all fields who stand out with their extraordinary capacities as shining examples of what is possible within the limits of a human body. The vitality and mentality they seem to possess and something beyond the vitality and mentality, that unknown something we can only term as soul or the spirit, stands out as exceptional and undeniable. The body seems to be only a container of something that is capable of a splendid range of possibilities that often touches upon the mythical and the sacred.
Within the finite limits of the human body there is something that is capable of reaching splendor peaks of excellence and shows the possibility of infinite development and it is in this domain the instinctive urge in humanity for infinite growth finds its full expression without becoming a cancerous growth upon the planet. What appears as exceptional individuals, a product of chance, is actually our evolutionary potential available to all but remaining dormant; a possibility that can be awakened and brought to dynamic flowering through systematic processes. This is the domain of evolving consciousness, that intangible content in the human vessel, capable of infinite growth and its related powers.