In the Mother's Light

Money and its Proper Use

THE place and importance of money in the creative economy of life cannot be overestimated. Without it nothing can be achieved in the material field. Whether it is the formation and growth of a society, or the promotion of its culture and civilisation and commerce and industry, or the stimulation and progress of scientific research and discovery, in the great undertakings, in the works of destruction as much as in those of creation and construction, the one indispensable means (but only a means) is money. Even the ascetic, who studiously avoids all contact with money, has perforce to depend upon the money of others for the sustenance of his body and the dissemination of his teachings, if he has any. If we turn to history, we shall see that all great nations, in the heyday of their culture, were sufficiently rich to expand and organise the creations of thei0.0.r individual genius, and any period of decline in the life of a nation has been invariably associated with either a growing poverty or a reckless waste of wealth. Let us take the example of India. When she was great in the realms of the Spirit, when the higher Light moulded and guided the manifold expression of her expanding life, she was great also in material opulence —her plenty was the envy of the world. Poverty, famine and pestilence were regarded as exceptional visitations, and reflected upon the integrity and purity of the ruling head. But when the decline set in, corruption too set in, a multiform corruption, which drained the fabulous wealth by a steady process, and paved the way for the predatory incursions and ruthless exploitation of foreigners. And yet the opulence India possessed even in the sunset glow of her ancient greatness struck the foreigners dumb with amazement, and fired the cupidity of unscrupulous adventurers. When the decline was complete and India lay prostrate in the dust, her destitution too was complete—she had been bled white. The land that had flowed with milk and honey and sparkled with diamonds and rubies, became a land of half-starved and half-clad men groaning under the

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heels of marauders and vampires.

It may be argued that money is the source of much evil, but so are all forces in the world. One never thinks of eschewing fire because it burns, or water because it drowns. It is the use to which a force is put that determines its character. A world- shunning spirituality instinctively shrinks from the forces of life and has not the courage to look them in the face. Its achievement is in a cowering retreat and not in conquest. But a complete retreat is not possible, so long as the body is there, therefore the ascetic is compelled to resort to a compromise, a clumsy enough compromise, with the forces he detests and dreads, and yet cannot altogether avoid. A dynamic spirituality, which aims at a divine conquest of the world and all its forces and movements, cannot permit itself the relief and comfort of a retreat, but has to grapple with the very elements which oppose its progress but which, once conquered and converted, would substantially contribute to its creative fullness. If the whole of human life has to be organised anew on the basis of divine Consciousness, fall its energies are to be marshalled and mobilised for the revelation of the splendours of the Divine on earth, the money-power has to be utilised with a disinterested control and a perfect knowledge of its potentialities. If spirituality fights shy of the money-power, its material self-expression is bound to be what it has almost always been, poor and halting, or squalid. Much of the aversion of the modern mind to spirituality is due to the latter's uncouth expression in life, its lack of control over material things, and an uncertain, hesitant and slovenly attitude towards them. This weakness—for, it is nothing short of that—has to be cured and replaced by a masterful dealing with the money-power for the organisation of a rich and powerfully creative material life in the world.

What is Money ?

According to Sri Aurobindo, "Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness

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of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine, it is delegated here., and in the ignorance of the lower nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose. This is, indeed, one of the three forces—power, wealth, sex —that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally missed and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura.”¹

We learn from the above quotation that money is a universal force and is derived, like every other force, from the Divine; but, equally, like every other force, it is appropriated and perverted by the beings of darkness and is used, more often than not, to serve and satisfy their own ends. It is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life, and if the Life Divine is our objective on earth, a divine use of money is an imperative desideratum. Be- sides, the aversion to and fear of money are usually the result of an illusionistic philosophy or a timid, anaemic spirituality, neither of which is in consonance with the comprehensiveness and robust vitality of the ancient ideal. In Hinduism the very conception of the Divine, Bhagavan, is a global conception of qualities or attributes which include omni-opulence, samagram aiśwaryyam. The Divine is not only the naked Spirit of the ascetics, without features and contents and qualities, but the sole Sovereign of the worlds and the sole Master and Ruler of all creatures. If there is wealth in the worlds, if there is splendour and magnificence, where have they come from, if not from the Divine ? If Matter is from the Divine, then material wealth is also from Him; only, as says Sri Aurobindo, it is usurped here, in the material world, for the uses of the ego or "held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose.” It has to be wrested from the hands of the Asuras and used for the service of the Divine in the world. The ancient ideal of plenty and plenitude, the divine splendour and magnificence,

¹The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

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has to be lived again, if spirituality has to shed its timidity and narrowness and rise to its full stature of an all-conquering might and revealing majesty. For its creations in the material world and the organisation of a harmonious and progressive life of luminous knowledge, power, love and joy, the material means indispensable to it is money.

The Present Possessors of Money

Most of the present possessors of money are not, really speaking, possessors at all, but possessed. They are slaves of their money and are directly controlled and used by the forces of the vital world, which abounds with all sorts of desires and cravings. What do men mostly spend for ? Evidently, for the satisfaction of their desires. Usually their desires are "connected with the sex impulses,” but very often too they yield to "the desire for fame and consideration, the desire for food or any other that is on the same vital level.”¹ Money is allowed to flow like water when these lower appetites clamour for their base satisfactions, and this lavishness is not only justified, but admired as larger hearted munificence. Society praises this selfish use of money and transmits an effective tradition of it to future generations. If a super-idealistic nature impungs this use, it does so on altruistic or humanistic grounds, and advocates the spending of money for the service of humanity or all sentient creatures.

Now, let us try to understand the rightness or wrongness of such uses of money by an analysis of the motives that he behind them. It is a commonplace of psychology that man is a multi-personality,—there are many parts and personalities in him, having different, often divergent, desires and propensities, and moved by diverse forces. There are the physical personality, the vital personality, the mental personality and the psychic; and there are besides, many sub-personalities within these main categories. These personalities hardly agree with one another. If the mental personality, for instance, seeks the Divine and hankers for a life of spiritual freedom and bliss, the vital opposes

¹ Words of the Mother.

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it with its insistent desires and blind attachments. In the vital personality itself there may be a part touched by the light and responsive to a higher call, and another, obscure and perverse, wallowing in turbid sense-pleasures. The physical personality may often find itself oppressed by the mental or the vital, and suffering in consequence of a constant, unavailing revolt. It is these different personalities that are responsible at different times for the motives of our actions and the actions themselves. And if we go a little behind these surface personalities—we leave out the soul or the psychic for the moment, for in most men it is not on the surface, but veiled deep within—we discover that most of them have an affinity with or a habitual open- ing to the beings and forces of the subtler worlds; and it is these forces and beings that influence or impel their movements to their own advantage. Men are thus used as puppets by the subtle forces of the invisible worlds. Because they are ignorant of their true Self, the secret, eternal reality of their existence, because their beings are divided against themselves and their nature is a cockpit of contending and chaotic elements, they fall an easy prey to the forces of Ignorance.

Here an example will make my point clearer. Let us suppose that a rich man conceives the idea of spending a lakh of rupees for the celebration of his son's marriage. He may have imbibed the idea from the society to which he belongs, or conceived it independently of all social customs and traditions, as the result of an impulse arising in or invading him. "The Power of money”, says the Mother, "is at present under the influence or in the hands of the forces and beings of the vital world.”¹ Therefore, the rich man submits automatically to the organised influence of the vital forces operating in his society, or succumbs unawares to their fresh assault upon him. In any case, it is not the decision of his true self that he follows, but the imperative direction of the enemies of his true self; and it is not really he, but those forces that profit by and enjoy the result of the enormous expenditure. The pleasure derived from the spending of the huge amount is an exclusively vital pleasure, which obscures

¹ Words of the Mother.

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his consciousness, inflates his pride and egotism, and retards, if it does not, indeed, impede, his spiritual evolution. "It is not that those rich men who are more or less toys and instruments in the hands of the vital forces are averse to spend; their avarice is awake only when the vital desires and impulses are not touched. For, when it is to gratify some desire that they call their own, they spend readily; but when they are called to share their ease and the benefits of their wealth with others, then they find it hard to part with their money. The vital power controlling money is like a guardian who keeps his wealth in a big safe always tightly closed. Each time the people who are in its grasp are asked to part with their money, they put all sorts of careful questions before they will consent to open their purses even a very little way; but if a vital impulse arises in them with its demands, the guardian is happy to open wide the coffer and money flows out freely.”¹ It is only when we consider this tight hold of the vital forces on the money-power, in the light of the Mother's words, that we appreciate the justice of the severe stricture of the Christ upon the rich that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Christ saw the grip of the vital forces on the money-power, and it was not any ascetic loathing of money, but a divine solicitude for the deliverance of men from the dark influence of the hostile powers that inspired the stricture. It can be safely asserted that in nine cases out often the use we make of money is an illegitimate and unspiritual use, which degrades us and justifies the ascetic's ban on money. Not only do we lose much of the money we use, but we lose into the bargain the precious opportunities offered to us for using it for the service of the Divine to whom it really belongs. "All wealth belongs to the Divine, and those who hold it are trustees, not possessors. It is with them today; tomorrow it may be elsewhere. All depends on the way they discharge their trust while it is with them; in what spirit, with what consciousness in their use of it, to what purpose.”²

¹ Words of the Mother.

² The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

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The Conquest of the Money-Power

No dynamic spirituality which aims- at the regeneration of man and the re-organisation of human society, can afford to nut a ban on money, for, that will mean leaving the money- power in the hands of the vital forces, on the one hand, and, on the other, allowing its action in the material world to be paralysed by poverty. Like other powers, it has to be reconquered for the Divine and used divinely for the divine purpose in human life. How to achieve this conquest ? Individually, he who is inwardly dedicated to the Divine must not fly away from the money-power in a spirit of ascetic aversion or fear, but endeavour with a perfect scrupulousness and vigilance to use all his money in the service of the Divine. In the beginning, it is true, it will be difficult for him to know for certain what the service of the Divine is. His ego may wear various disguises and delude him into wrong decisions. If he forswears all expenditure on vital pleasures, customary, conventional or contingent, the ego may dictate more commendable uses of money, for the service of the society or the country or humanity, for instance, a service which appears so indubitably disinterested and noble. Very few people have the perspicacity to detect the ego even in these acts of obvious selflessness; most of them do not know that the ego's hold is sometimes strongest when it is bent on altruistic or philanthropic activities. It is immensely more difficult to unmask the sattwic ego than the rajasic or the tamasic. Our mental principles and moral notions come usually to justify and support the sattwic ego, and the unqualified appreciation of the world always confirms it in its inclinations and actions. But if a man clearly feels that he belongs to the Divine, all he has and is, and that to surrender all himself and his pos- sessions and possibilities to the Divine from whom they are derived is the sole work of his life, then the ego's dominance begins to diminish and an unsuspected centre of reference opens in the deeps of his consciousness, which gives him the right lead in his use of money, as in everything else. The doubts and hesitations, the uncertainties and indecisions of his mind

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give place, little by little, to a clear perception and a definite direction of the will, as a result of the growing purity and transparency of his being. What seemed impossible in the beginning becomes not only possible, but even easy and natural. We deny, because we cannot foresee, the new faculties of perception and discrimination which develop in us in proportion as we repel our desires and release ourselves from the yoke of the ego. But once the inmost centre opens—and a sincere aspiration and self-giving cannot fail to open it—we cease to take counsel with our mind, even with our ethical conscience, but look deep within for the support and sanction of each of our actions. This is the initial progress. Later, by a further purification and transformation of our consciousness and nature, another centre opens high above, beyond the ranges of the spiritual mind, which gives an immediate and infallible lead to all the movements of our being. It is here, in the supreme creative Consciousness, called by the Upanishads the Truth-Consciousness, that the conquest of the money-power is fully consummated and its divine use permanently assured. This is the way to deal with money, so far as we are individually concerned with it. But its sway over the collectivity has also to go, if man- kind in general is to organise its existence on earth in perfect obedience to the will of its Creator. "The hold of the hostile forces upon money-power is powerfully, completely and thoroughly organised, and to extract anything out of this compact organisation is a most difficult task. Each time that you try to draw a little of this money away from its present custodians, you have to undertake a fierce battle. And yet one single victory somewhere over the adverse forces that have the hold upon money would make victory possible simultaneously and automatically at all other points also. If in one place they yielded, all who now feel that they cannot give money to the cause of Truth would suddenly experience a great and intense desire to give,”¹

Only those who are utterly surrendered to the Divine in their active nature and securely superior to the lures of money and the comforts and advantages it confers, but without the least ".

¹ Words of the Mother.

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ascetic shrinking and aversion, can conquer the money-power for the Divine and use it freely for the accomplishment of His work in the world.

The Proper Use of Money

Once money has been won from the hands of the vital forces whom it serves, it has to be diverted into the developing channels of the divine work. Not to the animal or the Asura in man, but to the Divine Shakti, the supreme Creative Force alone has it to be offered; for, it belongs to Her and has been created by Her for the purpose of Her work in the material world. "In your personal use of money look on all you have or get or bring as the Mother’s. Make no demand but accept what you receive from her and use it for the purposes for which it is given to you. Be entirely selfless, entirely scrupulous, exact, careful in detail, a good trustee; always consider that it is her possessions and not your own that you are handling. On the other hand, what you receive for her, lay religiously before her; turn nothing to your own or anybody else’s purpose.”¹

It will not be an unnecessary repetition to state here that the acts of altruism or philanthropy are not, as they are commonly supposed to be, selfless and disinterested. We do them, because the ego in us takes a positive delight in them—a self-regarding delight, full of pride and complacency. The perception that we have been given the material life and its powers and resources not for the egoistic satisfaction of our desires and cravings, not even for our mental ideas and predilections and moral principles, but for the realisation of the divine Will and its perfect fulfilment in every movement of our composite being, will loosen and eventually abolish the ego's hold upon us in our use of money, as in every other thing, and lead to an integral consecration of all our consciousness and nature to the dynamic Master of the universe. Money, which is regarded as a source of evil, will thus be turned into a means of self-perfection and divine work. In the New Creation or the supramental new- .

¹ The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

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moulding of life, money will be restored to the Divine Power and "used for a true and beautiful and harmonious equipment and ordering of anew divinised vital and physical existence in whatever way the Divine Mother herself decides in her creative vision.”¹ The degrading bondage of money has to be annulled, not by a flight or withdrawal from it, but by a complete conquest and mastery. It is not enough to be unegoistic and disinterested in our use of money, we have to be docile and po

werful instruments of the supramental Force, the Mother's Creative Shakti, which alone knows how best to use the money-power for the establishment and fulfilment of the Life Divine on earth. The God-directed supramental use is the only proper use of money.

¹ The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

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