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The
Mother Answers on Money - II
Page
2
If
someone has acquired a lot of money by dishonest means,
could some of it be asked for the Divine?
Sri
Aurobindo has answered this question. He says that money in
itself is an impersonal force: the way in which you acquire
money concerns you alone personally. It may do you great harm,
it may harm others also, but it does not in any way change
the nature of the money which is an altogether impersonal
force: money has no colour, no taste, no psychological consciousness.
It is a force. It is like saying that the air breathed out
by a scoundrel is more tainted than that breathed out by an
honest man—I don't think so. I think the result is the
same. One may for reasons of a practical nature refuse money
which has been stolen, but that is for altogether practical
reasons, it is not because of divine reasons. This is a purely
human idea. One may from a practical point of view say, "Ah!
No, the way in which you have acquired this money is disgusting
and so I don't want to offer it to the Divine", because
one has a human consciousness. But if you take someone (let
us suppose the worst) who has killed and acquired money by
the murder; if all of a sudden he is seized by terrible scruples
and remorse and tells himself, "I have only one thing
to do with this money, give it where it can be utilised for
the best, in the most impersonal way", it seems to me
that this movement is preferable to utilising it for one's
own satisfaction. I said that the reasons which could prevent
one from receiving ill-gotten money may be reasons of a purely
practical kind, but there may also be more profound reasons,
of a (I do not want to say moral but) spiritual nature, from
the point of view of tapasya; one may tell somebody, "No,
you cannot truly acquire merit with this fortune which you
have obtained in such a terrible way; what you can do is to
restore it", one may feel that a restitution, for instance,
will help one to make more progress than simply passing the
money on to any work whatever. One may see things in this
way—one can't make rules. This is what I never stop telling
you: it is impossible to make a rule. In every case it is
different. But you must not think that the money is affected;
money as a terrestrial force is not affected by the way in
which it is obtained, that can in no way affect it. Money
remains the same, your note remains the same, your piece of
gold remains the same, and as it carries its force, its force
remains there. It harms only the person who has done wrong,
that is evident. Then the question remains: in what state
of mind and for what reasons does your dishonest man want
to pass on his money to a work he considers divine? Is it
as a measure of safety, through prudence or to lay his heart
at rest? Evidently this is not a very good motive and it cannot
be encouraged, but if he feels a kind of repentance and regret
for what he has done and the feeling that there is but one
thing to do and that is precisely to deprive himself of what
he has wrongly acquired and utilise it for the general good
as much as possible, then there is nothing to say against
that. One cannot decide in a general way—it depends upon
the instance. Only, if I understand well what you mean, if
one knows that a man has acquired money by the most unnamable
means, obviously, it would not be good to go and ask him for
money for some divine work, because that would be like "rehabilitating"
his way of gaining money. One cannot ask, that is not possible.
If, spontaneously, for some reason, he gives it, there is
no reason to refuse it. But it is quite impossible to go and
ask him for it, because it is as though one legitimised his
manner of acquiring money. That makes a great difference.
And
generally, in these cases, those who go and ask money from
rascals use means of intimidation: they frighten them, not
physically but about their future life, about what may happen
to them, they give them a fright. It is not very nice. These
are procedures one ought not to use.
Besides
money, what are the other divine powers "delegated"
here on earth?
All.
All the divine powers are manifested here and deformed here—light,
life, love, force—all—harmony, ananda—all,
all, there is nothing which is not divine in its origin and
which does not exist here under a completely distorted, travestied
form. The other day we had spoken at length about the way
in which divine Love is deformed in its manifestation here,
it is the same thing.
How
can money be reconquered for the Mother?
Ah!...There
is a hint here. Three things are interdependent (Sri Aurobindo
says here): power, money and sex. I believe the three are
interdependent and that all three have to be conquered to
be sure of having any one—when you want to conquer one
you must have the other two. Unless one has mastered these
three things, desire for power, desire for money and desire
for sex, one cannot truly possess any of them firmly and surely.
What gives so great an importance to money in the world as
it is today is not so much money itself, for apart from a
few fools who heap up money and are happy because they can
heap it up and count it, generally money is desired and acquired
for the satisfactions it brings. And this is almost reciprocal:
each of these three things not only has its own value in the
world of desires, but leans upon the other two. I have related
to you that vision, that big black serpent which kept watch
over the riches of the world, terrestrial wealth—he demanded
the mastery of the sex-impulse. Because, according to certain
theories, the very need of power has its end in this satisfaction,
and if one mastered that, if one abolished that from human
consciousness, much of the need for power and desire for money
would disappear automatically. Evidently, these are the three
great obstacles in the terrestrial human life and, unless
they are conquered, there is scarcely a chance for humanity
to change.
Does
an individual mastery over desire suffice or is a general,
collective mastery necessary?
Ah!
There we are...Is it possible to attain a total personal transformation
without there being at least a correspondence in the collectivity?...This
does not seem possible to me. There is such an interdependence
between the individual and the collectivity that, unless one
does what the ascetics have preached, that is, escapes from
the world, goes out of it completely, leaves it where it is
and runs away selfishly leaving all the work to others, unless
one does that...And even so I have my doubts. Is it possible
to accomplish a total transformation of one's being so long
as the collectivity has not reached at least a certain degree
of transformation? I don't think so. Human nature remains
what it is—one can attain a great change of consciousness,
that yes, one can purify one's consciousness, but the total
conquest, the material transformation depends definitely to
a large extent, on a certain degree of progress in the collectivity.
Buddha said with reason that as long as you have in you a
vibration of desire, this vibration will spread in the world
and all those who are ready to receive it will receive it.
In the same way, if you have in you the,least receptivity
to a vibration of desire, you will be open to all the vibrations
of desire which circulate constantly in the world. And that
is why he concluded: Get out of this illusion, withdraw entirely
and you will be free. I find this relatively very selfish,
but after all, that was the only way he had foreseen. There
is another: to identify oneself so well with the divine Power
as to be able to act constantly and consciously upon all vibrations
circulating through the world. Then the undesirable vibrations
no longer have any effect upon you, but you have an effect
upon them, that is, instead of an undesirable vibration entering
into you without being perceived and doing its work there,
it is perceived and immediately on its arrival you act upon
it to transform it, and it goes back into the world transformed,
to do its beneficent work and prepare others for the same
realisation. This is exactly what Sri Aurobindo proposes to
do and, more clearly, what he asks you to do, what he intends
us to do:
Instead
of running away, to bring into oneself the power which can
conquer.
Note
that things are arranged in such a way that if the tiniest
atom of ambition remained and one wanted this Power for one's
personal satisfaction, one could never have it, that Power
would never come. Its deformed limitations, of the kind seen
in the vital and physical world, those yes, one may have them,
and there are many people who have them, but the true Power,
the Power Sri Aurobindo calls "supramental", unless
one is absolutely free from all egoism under all its forms,
one will never be able to manifest. So there is no danger
of its being misused. It will not manifest except through
a being who has attained the perfection of a complete inner
detachment. I have told you, this is what Sri Aurobindo expects
us to do you may tell me it is difficult, but I repeat that
we are not here to do easy things, we are here to do difficult
ones.
3
May 1951
- The Mother
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