The Rake: How would you describe your work today?
Horst: I am a disciple of herbs and plants. I am very interested in my lifetime that I do everything possible to help preserve endangered species of plants which have been used in traditional medicines around the world. You know, last year our world lost 35,000 species of plants. And the reason why is because we are cutting virgin forests around the world. Biologists guess that approximately 95 percent of species that live within the biological system of a virgin forest die when you clear-cut.
The Rake: How do your businesses—Aveda and Intelligent Nutrients—support your goals?
Horst: We want to contribute to greening the planet. And to avoid using petrochemical chemistry, which is not sustainable. I obviously feel we can do this through education. I am not a teacher, by the way. I prefer to be called a student.
We probably have 20 to 30 years of oil left in the planet, to get out. To me, the human body and the planetary body are totally symbiotic. We’re made from the same elements. We are made from soil—bone, tissue, is soil. We’re made from water—we are 75 percent water, so the world’s matrix is our matrix. We are also solar-powered—we need light. And we’re respiratory, we are air. So we are the same elements, many of which are—surprise!—becoming endangered. It’s only in the last 100 years that we got ourselves into this situation. Can you imagine?
The Rake: You’ve been in the business of creating demand for socially responsible products. A cynic would say you just know how to make a buck, due to the marketing of “green” products and services.
Horst: It’s not just the entrepreneurial spirit. It’s knowing about what’s right. If you know about it, and you don’t do it—because I am Catholic, I have guilt feelings. That has a lot to do with it. Guilt. And why not do something that is nurturing?
The Rake: You view money as a form of power. You had a lot of it—as a successful business owner, stylist, and photographer. You had the money, in other words, to indulge your curiosities.
Horst: It wasn’t until I cashed in what I call my playing field for the moment, that I became independent. Before, I wasn’t very independent, because I always reinvested into the company, and took very little for myself. Quite amazingly, unlike some other people do. Because I lived for the business, and I also lived for my family and the people I am involved with. Once I sold Aveda, things changed for me. My objectives changed, my anger decreased because my pressure decreased, of performing and providing every day. There is enormous pressure on leadership in a corporation, it’s a seven-days-a-week phenomenon. It’s not easy. I have my own personal techniques that I use to refuel the battery. I renew myself by looking within, and evaluating myself. I like the healing arts. Judge me not. For me, it’s the right thing to do. I’m doing what I’m doing because I just feel good about it right now. Am I going to be doing it ten years from now? I don’t know, it’s not the issue. I don’t even think ahead anymore. I thank every day to be alive. [Laughs.] I’ll be 61 in a month! Perspective changes as one ages.
The Rake: To grow or even sustain Aveda, you were going to have to go public, right?
Horst: Exactly. This is why I want a new design for Intelligent Nutrients. Small is beautiful. Because you don’t need to go public when you’re in a cooperative with the people you work with and with the community. Ben and Jerry did it in an interesting way, but then they copped out on it. There’s usually an economic reason, where the people who started a company want to cash out, because their family puts pressure on them, they get divorced, there are settlements where you need cash. That’s often why people go public. Interesting how businesses evolve into living organizations which take on
personalities.
The Rake: Why did you stay here in the Twin Cities, when you could have lived anywhere in the world?
Horst: My family is here. I don’t have anybody in Austria. My parents are both gone, and they were both orphans, so I literally don’t have family in Austria. My older brother came here, my other brother died. I’m seriously think of going back to Europe, to live there at least half the time. For a time I was thinking of moving to Asia, but Asia is too crazy for me. They don’t like foreigners, they really don’t.
The Rake: Where in Europe do you think you might live?
Horst: Ireland. I’m looking at building a studio there, so I can paint there. I want to learn how to be a painter. I’m trying different things, I’m still looking, I’m an explorer. Painting is just play, basically. I want to spend more time doing that because I enjoy that. And more time meditating. Because when I paint, I can meditate.
The Rake: How much do you meditate? Two hours a day?
Horst: More than that. It depends, I vary. There are periods when I mediate seven hours a day. I go through streaks. It all depends. When I feel like I’ve run empty, then I need to meditate.
The Rake: Do you work with a teacher?
Horst: My teacher left his body. I don’t need a meditation teacher. In fact, I think meditation is something you teach yourself. Somebody can give you suggestions, but the practice becomes the teacher. The practice is the teacher. It takes breath science, and it takes surrendering. You go deep, where you are in the true self. And then it works. You can’t teach that, you have to practice it. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. I haven’t found any substitute. If I don’t meditate, then I have to have a glass of wine! [Laughs.]
The Rake: Any activity can become a yoga, a meditative practice, right? Can business be a yoga?
Horst: Business is a meditation in action. It’s a form of worship, if you look at it from the right point of view. If you look at yourself selflessly. When that’s the intent, the goal, the mission, then it is a meditation. If it’s not, it’s still a learning process. What is meditation? Some people say meditation is absence of mind. Your mind is not being attended to. Pure meditation is absence of mind, there is no interference. There is only one frequency. It’s a low frequency. You ground yourself, because it’s energy. Pure consciousness is pure energy. It needs to be grounded. I ground myself by surrendering, and then it sucks me into it, almost like a little vacuum. That is bliss. I call it brain surfing, it’s just the most amazing thing.
The Rake: Do you still consider yourself a Catholic?
Horst: Religion is very unnecessary for me. In fact, religion is an obstacle. It took me a while to figure that out. My mentor, because he was an Indian, people would say, “Are you Hindu?” And he’d say, “No, I’m an Undo!” People say, “Are you a Buddhist?” and I say, “No, I’m a nudist!” [Laughs.] I just want to be everything, why choose one thing in this day and age? It’s just not practical for me, when I see all the people fighting over belief. I just say I am a Catholic because that’s what I am—that’s the way I was born. I have no need to change, I just need to expand my horizon. Catholic teaching is as good as any other teaching, there’s nothing wrong with it. It talks about the male and female energy, which is a reality. It talks about universal consciousness, which is a reality. I just expand on that.
The Rake: How do you distinguish this type of belief from more hollow forms of “new age” spirituality?
Horst: The discipline. Discipline is commitment to the worship, to practice, service, and making a contribution.
The Rake: What is beauty, and what role does it play in healing the planet?
Horst: I firmly believe today that one of the greatest teachers is the body itself. We are composed of two things: Chemistry and energy. Energy is information. Chemistry is matter, substance. This is what we are. Water is a chemical. Air is a chemical. So we are chemicals. What we have now discovered is that, if you and I are content in the moment, in the here, in the present, the body makes endorphins. They get us up and going and make us feel great. It’s almost like endorphins bring spirit to life. It lights up the energy in the cells, it awakens us, it renews us in the moment, instantly. It’s like an awakening, an endorphin rush. We can’t buy endorphins. We can synthesize them, this is what drug companies have been doing for years. There are products on the market that try to mimic this. But you don’t need to buy them, you can make them. But you have to earn it, through action.
Endorphins also build new peptides, peptides are immune-system building blocks. Now if we are in a state of dis-ease, it’s the result of another kind of action. Because I am more interested in me than you, instead of being one with you, I say I don’t care about your being one with me. I separate myself from you. Interesting enough, I don’t make endorphins when I do that. Because the body knows. There’s something in the body that knows the difference.
Beauty is odd. Love is endorphins. Love triggers endorphins. Endorphins are related to the self, because the self is love. I happen to believe personally that the self is pure love, that’s all self is. Pure, radiant, conscious energy. By nature we are loving beings.
Modern society, the material world makes the distinction between “good and bad,” “right and wrong.” But what it really is, on the psychological-physical plane, is pain and bliss. Beauty is an interpretation of truth. Yours is different than mine.
The Rake: Was there beauty in 9/11?
Horst: It’s in the eye of the beholder. Who is right? On which side is God? They think God is on their side. The Buddhists don’t take sides. Why are people willing to die for that? What causes such a deep frustration, what causes the internal terror that the pain is so strong that you’re literally willing to die for it?
The Rake: Were the terrorists selfless?
Horst: In that moment, they are totally selfless, there is no doubt about it. People blow themselves up for a cause, it’s no different than a man who sees a train coming, sees a child, and jumps to save the child, and gets killed by doing that. Fine line. I don’t want to judge that. It’s only how I feel and how I act, what I do.
Evil is a human invention. Good and bad is a human invention. Someone convinced someone, somewhere, that God created man in His image. It’s also true that humans created God in their way. It all works, as long as no one gets hurt.