The Last Gift Steve Jobs Gave To Family And Friends Was A Book About Self Realization

Mironova GallerySalesforce CEO Marc Benioff and TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington spent a lot of time talking about Steve Jobs at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday.

Benioff recalled the last gift Steve Jobs ever gave him, family and friends at a Stanford memorial service that Jobs planned himself.

Benioff says Jobs picked the speakers, which included Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, as well as the artists that would play there, Bono and Yo-Yo Ma. Jobs also picked the caterer and a gift for all attendees.

The gift came wrapped in a small brown box. Benioff waited until he was in his car to open it. He knew it was something his long-time friend and mentor would want to sink in. It would be some sort of message.

"I said, 'This is going to be good,'" Benioff recalls. "I knew this was a decision he made that everyone was going to get this. So whatever this was, it was the last thing [Jobs] wanted us all to think about.

In the box was a book by Yogananda about self realization. Autobiography of a Yogi was one of Steve Jobs' favorite reads.

"That was the message: Actualize yourself," Benioff recalled.

"If you look back at the history of Steve and that early trip to India...he had this incredible realization that his intuition was his greatest gift," Benioff said. "He needed to look at world from inside out...his message was to look inside yourself and realize yourself."