Steve Jobs’ letter on Buddhism auctioned for USD 290.000

Steve Jobs’ handwriting containing his thoughts on Zen Buddhism sold at auction for $300,000.
The writing was done directly by the hands of the founder of Apple when he was 18 years old. He wrote to childhood friend Tim Brown on February 23, 1974, two years before Jacobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple, or the day before his 19th birthday.

Jobs’ first manuscript will be auctioned on November 3 by the British Auction House in Bonhams. The auction house said the one-page handwritten note was about Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Zen Buddhism and his plans to travel to India for the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious pilgrimage and festival.

 

In the letter, Jobs, who has passed away since 2011, opened the article with a sentence that responded to several previous correspondences from Brown.

“My [Brown] team has read your letter multiple times.

I do not know what to say.

Many mornings have come and gone

people come and go

I loved it and cried many times.

Somehow, nothing has changed behind it – get it?”

Brown and Jobs attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, where Apple is currently headquartered. Their friendship continued well throughout their lives.

In the letter, Jobs also revealed to Brown that he was saving up for a trip to India. Jobs is known to have spent seven months in India at the end of the year seeking spiritual enlightenment, before returning to Silicon Valley with his head shaved like a Buddhist monk, CNBC reported.

At the same time, Jobs began to regularly meditate and experiment with psychedelic drugs. He also told biographer Walter Isaacson that psychedelics strengthened his sense of what was important.

 

“To create these wonderful things, to make money, to get everything back into the flow of history and into human consciousness as much as I can.”

Of course, Jobs had made a lot of money when he died. In 2011, Apple was estimated to have a net personal worth of more than IDR 585 trillion, or $8.3 billion, with the current market cap of almost $2.5 trillion, as quoted by Hypebeast.

In his own handwriting with a rather confusing sentence at the end of the letter. “I’ll end this by saying I don’t even know where to start.”

Jobs then signed the letter with the prefix ‘shanti’ meaning ‘peace’ in Sanskrit.

“This letter provides us with an exciting insight into the mental processes of one of the world’s greatest creators and entrepreneurs,” Adam Stackhouse, Bonhams director of business science and technology history, said in a statement.

“No signature letter from Jobs has ever appeared at auction, and certainly no material that was this revealing and insightful,” he said.