Question of the month

Q: 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 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 misheld and misused by those who retain them. For this reason most spiritual disciplines proclaim poverty and bareness of life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the sadhaka.

– Sri Aurobindo, in “The Mother”

How can money be reconquered for the Divine?

A: 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 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 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.

(“Complete Works of The Mother”- Volume 4, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1972, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Sri Aurobindo Ashram press, Pondicherry –605002)