Wealth and Government   

WEALTH AND ECONOMICS

 

 

           

 

 Money is not meant to make money, money is meant to make the earth ready for the advent of the new creation.

 

          It is to the Divine that all riches belong. It is the Divine who lends them to living beings, and it is to Him that they must naturally return.

 

           Wealth under the psychic influence: wealth ready to return to its true possessor, the Divine.

 

           A day shall come when all the wealth of this world, freed  

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at last from the enslavement to the antidivine forces, offers itself spontaneously and fully to the service of the Divine’s Work upon earth.¹

6 January 1955  

            Give all you are, all you have; nothing more is asked of you but also nothing less.

6 January 1956 

            True wealth is that which one offers to the Divine.

 

            You are rich only by the money that you give to the Divine Cause.

30 January 1959 

            You are richer with the wealth you give than with the wealth you keep in your possession.

 

            (Message for the First Annual Conference of the Sri Aurobindo Society)

 

The true fortune is to spend in the right way.

            You become truly rich when you dispose of your wealth in the best possible way.

February 1962  

¹ Distributed on the Feast of the Epiphany, which the Mother designated as “the festival of the offering of the material world to the Divine”.

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       Prosperity stays consistently only with him who offers it to the Divine.

 

            Unselfish prosperity: he who receives it abundantly, gives all that he has as he receives it.

 

            Generosity gives and gives itself without bargaining.

 

            Let money come and go in abundance for good works.

 

To me any activity is more important than its cost to me, even if the cost is unreasonable. Money should never be the criterion for such decisions. If we say we can’t have something because of its cost, we limit our receptivity to the Grace and hamper its workings. Money is only a medium of exchange, it is all relative and the Divine resources are inexhaustible. Is this attitude a correct one?

 

You are quite right and I approve of your attitude.

 

Never mix in your thought  spiritual power and  money because it leads straight to catastrophe.  

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A gift made through vanity is profitable neither to the giver nor to the receiver.

 

            I wanted to make him understand and experience that the thought, the feeling and the force that is in a gift is much more important and valuable than the thing given itself.  

 

A practical problem comes up more and more often: should one who is preparing to do Yoga and has made it a general rule to offer You everything and depend entirely on You, accept gifts, in money or kind, coming from others? Because if he accepts, he is put under personal obligations and duties. Can a sadhak allow this? Can he say to himself: “The Divine has many ways of giving”?

What is to be done if a person begins to quarrel because one has accepted a gift in one case and refused in another? What is to be done to avoid such bitterness around one, provoked by repeated refusals?

 

“The Divine has many ways of giving.”

This is the correct thing. One never has any obligation to anybody, one has an obligation only to the Divine and there totally. When a gift is made without conditions, one can always take it as coming from the Divine and leave it to the Divine to take care of what is needed in exchange or response.

            As for ill-will, jealousy, quarrels and reproaches, one must sincerely be above all that and reply with a benevolent smile to the bitterest words; and unless one is absolutely sure of himself and his reactions, it would be better, as a general rule, to keep silent.

6 October 1960  

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People say, “God is the friend of the poor”, but it seems wrong and false. God is the friend of the rich. We do not know what place we have.

 

To the rich God gives money, but to the poor He gives Himself. All depends on the poor giving more value to the riches or to God.

22 August 1964 

            The financiers and businessmen have been offered the possibility to collaborate with the future, but most of them refuse, convinced that the power of money is stronger than that of the future.

            But the future will crush them with its irresistible power.

 

            In this material world, for men, money is more sacred than the Divine’s Will.

12 March 1965 

            Greed for money: the surest way to decrease one’s conscience and to narrow one’s nature.

 

            I am not for getting interest on money.

 

I dabbled in stocks and shares a little, but came a cropper. The speculation I carried on for a while has  

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burnt quite a hole in my pocket. I really wish I hadn’t. Are you dead against speculation?

 

You ought to know that I do not approve at all of speculation − but what is done is done.

17 December 1939 

Does the economic condition of a man become stable with the betterment of his consciousness?

 

If “betterment of consciousness” means an increased, enlarged consciousness, a better organisation of it, then as a result there should naturally be a greater control of outward things (including the “economic condition”). But also, naturally when one has a “better consciousness” one is less preoccupied with such things as one’s economic condition.

 

            Solution of the economic problem:

            Arriving at the synthesis of two problems:

            (1) adjusting the production to the needs;

            (2) adjusting the needs to the production.

 

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS 

 

            One must be able to control oneself before one can hope to govern others.  

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            1) To have complete control over oneself is the indispensable condition for controlling others.

            2) To have no preferences, not to like one and to dislike the other −  to be equal with everybody.

            3) To be patient and enduring.

            Also to speak only what is quite indispensable and nothing more.

            March 1954  

            One takes seriously what is said by those whose lives are governed by reason; but how can one attach any importance to the so-called decisions made by those who are actually the playthings of their whimsical impulses?

 

            Idea: essential for all organisers; on its quality depends the quality of the organisation.

 

            It is easier to suppress than to organise, but the true order is far superior to suppression.

30 June 1954 

            Organisation and discipline are the necessary basis for all realisation.

            To know how to command well, one must first know how to obey well.

 

            Only he who knows how to obey is capable of governing.  

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To those whose work is to govern or to lead.

 

            When you want to please the people, you let things go as they are, waiting for Nature to impose her progress upon man. But this is not the truth of the creation. The true mission of man is to impose his progress on Nature.

                2 December 1954  

            In their ordinary consciousness, human beings cannot tolerate any authority, however legitimate, if it is exercised over them by somebody whom they believe to be on the same level as themselves.

            On the other hand, for human authority to be legitimately exercised over others, it must be enlightened, impartial and unegoistic to the extent that nobody can reasonably challenge its value.

 

            He only who has a perfect sense of true justice can claim the right to be obeyed.  

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            When I say that the “wise” should govern the world, I am not taking a political point of view but a spiritual one.

            The various forms of government can stay as they are; that is only of secondary importance. But whatever the social status of the men in power, they should receive their inspiration from those who have realised the Truth and have no other will than that of the Supreme.

17 September 1959 

            Remain in politics and try to bring Truth into politics. It is a very sure way towards effective spirituality.

 

            Completely give up this ordinary vulgar political practice of publicly abusing people either in speech or writing. One should wage a war of ideas so that the truth may triumph, not a war of personalities.

 

Sweet Mother,

      In connection with the Youth Camps¹ You have said that we should not discuss politics .

            In this connection I pray for some more specific guidance from You, Douce Mère, not only for us at the Youth Camps, but generally for us who go around the country giving talks on Sri Aurobindo’s Action...

      So far, we have considered “Politics” as consisting of any movement, including intrigue and malpractice, to arrive at dominance either of oneself or of one’s party over others. In this, one has to hold that one’s

 

¹ Seminars, lasting several days, for the study of the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother  

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own view or ideology is true and that of others is wrong.

This politics we must completely avoid. Is it not so?

 

Yes.

 

But Sri Aurobindo has dealt with such matters from a very high viewpoint in which He has seen what is true in each approach or each ideology and has shown the way towards a true integration of all these partial truths into a real synthesis. If we can learn from Him and follow His way then we can truly deal with such topics and need not avoid them. Are we correct in our understanding and approach?

 

Yes.

 

When we have to answer specific questions on such matters as Bank Nationalisation, Privy Purses, Press Bill etc., then, unless we have had already direct and specific replies from Sri Aurobindo or You, our answer has been that all these actions are only arrangements on the surface and, therefore, by themselves cannot solve the basic problems they try to solve. It is only by a change of consciousness or, at least, by the aspiration for the truth and the resultant opening to a change of consciousness that such specific problems can be really solved. Because whatever is the form of any arrangement or scheme, it has to be implemented by people. If the people continue to remain in darkness and falsehood, then no arrangement or scheme, however fine it may appear to be, can succeed.  

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So, there is only one solution to all problems; that given by You − to obey the Eternal Truth alone and live according to Truth.

Is this answer correct and sufficient?

 

Yes. True.

 

On certain issues where You or Sri Aurobindo have given direct answers, we also are specific, as for instance on the point of the Unity of India and Pakistan being a Truth without which problems like Bangla Desh cannot be resolved or on the language issue where You have said for the country that (1) The regional language should be the medium of instruction, (2) Sanskrit should be the national language, (3) English should be the international language.

            Are we correct in giving these replies to such questions?

 

Yes.

            Blessings.

            Talk little, be true, act sincerely.

4 October 1971 

            To think that communism is the Truth is to make the same error as all religious fanaticism and puts communism on the same level as all other religions... very far from the Truth.

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