EWS #23: Human relationships, marriage and sex (7)
Feb 16, 2019
Topics:
Narad (0:00:00):
Welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste. Today we are going to continue a bit on celibacy and then these three forces or powers that have been for long in the hands of the Asura, power, wealth and sex. We concluded our last series with some thoughts on celibacy. Can you share some more
Sraddhalu (0:01:03)
I wanted to highlight the importance as well as non-importance of this and this time more in the context of those aspiring for a spiritual life. What we discussed earlier was in a more broad framework where people who have an inclination to spirituality may take their time to prepare themselves and during that period, celibacy is not important. But for those who do feel the need for a more consecrated life and with it comes this difficulty or the question of celibacy and I wanted to put this in context again that you can be celibate entirely and even perfectly by whatever definition you follow. It does not mean you will attain to any spiritual growth. It does not mean you will realize the Divine, it does not mean you will realize the psychic being, it does not mean even that you will awaken to higher states of consciousness. After all that we have discussed of the benefits, at the very least, the benefits would remain with a general increased vitality of the body, its ability to hold greater quantum of energy and it stops there. If you do not consciously make an effort to lift the consciousness, none of the higher benefits on their own would occur.
And so this point I want to highlight which we did not really touch upon last time. And so there are people who concentrate so much obsessively on that aspect of being celibate, thinking that as a result they have become more spiritual and it actually means nothing in itself. On the other hand, there are those who may not be perfectly celibate by whatever framework they have set for themselves and yet they may have attained to deeper or higher experiences, states of consciousness, even attained to self realization, not requiring celibacy as a compulsion. So I want to consciously disconnect these two things for the practical reason that the difficulty of maintaining celibacy varies according to your body type and has in itself no connection with spirituality. If your body has a greater base of vital energy, if your physical base is of the type that generates more sexual energy, you will necessarily have greater difficulty in containing it or in allowing it to build to higher gradations. And just because you have higher difficulty does not mean that you are less spiritual. Somebody who has a weaker body type or the type which does not generate as much sexual energy may have no difficulty at all remaining celibate, but does not mean that he has become spiritually superior or grown more because of that. So again, I want to disconnect this association. Just the fact that you have difficulty or you have strong sexual desires which may arise as part of your life, even your spiritual life, does not in any way make you less capable or less ready for the spiritual progress, nor the fact that you do not have any difficulty maintaining celibacy makes you any better for the spiritual progress. In fact, there is a contrary connection in a certain sense, those who have greater energy can be better instruments for the Divine in the world in action than those who have a weaker base and therefore cannot manifest strength or power or sustained energy.
[Narad] Are you speaking about spiritual life but when it comes to the integral yoga, Sri Aurobindo and Mother have been very specific.
[Sraddhalu] In the context of the period of the 1930s and 40s of the sadhaks who came already ready for a concentrated, dedicated life. All the letters, as we have discussed before, relate to that period for those sadhaks. In fact there are good examples of letters also of Sri Aurobindo of two cases at least where he mentions how the person has still a strong need for sex and he recommends, this is 1932, he recommends that they leave the ashram and enter the conventional family life until they are ready to be free of that in order to join the ashram, because otherwise remaining in the ashram would create internally the strong conflict which would not only harm them but also damage the atmosphere of the community consciousness. So he gives both reasons. So in a very specific context, we have placed this whole discussion. That we are now looking at a broader context where people living, even today in the ashram in a very mixed atmosphere, you do not have the purity of the 1930s or 40s. You step into the ashram and you are surrounded by a horde of casual tourists who come sometimes with the most coarse vibrations invading the space. You even avoid visiting the ashram main building because you don't want to get into that huge crowd. On darshan days, often you are mixed again with a very crude atmosphere that is built up and just in case people feel that I am saying something which is anathema, un-sanctimonious, it's the Mother who said this. It's a record. She says, you think on darshan days the atmosphere is higher? She says, no, it goes down because of the ashram's atmosphere, avoid the darshan days. And it will be much more beneficial to come in a time when you do not have this kind of a mixture. But my point is, those circumstances of the 1930s and 40s do not apply today. Even in the ashram, it is so heavily mixed. You could sit in the dining room, and you have been in those days, when the atmosphere was so clear, so pure. And today you see the mix that comes. And they're good people, I'm not saying they're bad people, but it's the vibrations that come in are not exactly uplifting or supporting to maintaining that purity.
We have another example when Golconde was being built. It was 1935, in the late 30s, and the Mother wanted to create an example for humanity. Golconde was meant to be a model which would set a new precedent for the world. And so she had the best architects, the best engineers, the finances she said to the architect, do not worry about money. Now at a time when ashram has a financial crisis, she is saying don't worry about money, I want the best and she gave certain design specifications for the architect and then the engineers. And at that point they were about to begin the construction, they said it will take six months, they would need, if I recall right, five hundred workers on spot and Sri Aurobindo said no. The fact that there would be 500 workers in that space working would harm the purity of the ashram's atmosphere and would affect the spiritual work and so he accepted only 50 workers. The result was instead of finishing in six months the whole project took more than six years so that condition does not apply anymore because today you have 500 tourists who are wandering all over the place.
[Narad] Five thousand.
[Sraddhalu] Five thousand. And the houses which were owned by the ashram, around the ashram main building, have all been given up and have gone into hands of different groups, businesses and barely a block away from the ashram now you have a couple of restaurants and all of that brings a very different kind of atmosphere. So the picture of these energies is strong today. You cannot wander around the ashram building and experience the same purity of atmosphere which you had then where you could maintain that easily. Today you will find this junk entering, passing right through you, the challenges are far greate, in a sense, even the work has been seriously compromised, the work for which the ashram was created. Of course, the supramental power has the capacity to overcome that also but it will have to work now through other means to build multiple focal points within the community and all the rest which we have discussed before.
[Narad] But the cross-section of humanity was necessary also, was it not?
[Sraddhalu] Not the invasion though. Not the invasion. Sri Aurobindo was very particular about this. There was a filter which was placed on numbers of people who could come, the kinds of people who could come, not only for staying in the ashram but even for visiting the ashram, to be able to maintain that kind of purity and intensity necessary for the work that they were doing.
Narad (0:11:19):
Aurobindo Basu told me that they asked him to stay out for a while to get a little more experience of the West and it was 16 years before they wlet him come.
Sraddhalu (0:11:29):
And after 1956, Mother gradually reduced these boundaries and still she maintained what was needed for a practical spiritual community. Those boundaries even now have gone completely. We have televisions in people's houses within the ashram. We have people cooking meat and fish in their houses, the smell spreading to other apartments and it's not at all supportive in the way that is necessary to sustain the spiritual framework that the Mother requires or this yoga in a concentrated way requires. So, we have to come back to the theme, the importance which I am giving to celibacy now, I am deliberately de-emphasizing it or rather putting it in context of body types. Just because you have strong desires that rise every once in a while does not make you less fit for the spiritual path, does not prevent you from attaining to the psychic or spiritual realizations or any of the higher states of consciousness. Nor the other way, having a weak vitality makes you better, more competent. As I said, those with a greater vitality or a stronger base actually can be better instruments for the Divine work to whatever extent you are able to open yourself and put yourself in the hands of the Divine Consciousness. So much more can be done through these people than from the other type which is weak. So not to worry about this, the conclusion is do not worry about this. Rather work on building your purity of relationship with the Divine from the heart, in the mind, in your actions, in your consecration and these things will take care of themselves. If they are difficult, have patience and put the difficulty in the hands of the Mother. Work rather on the descent of her consciousness filling you, her light and her peace settling in you in the lower chakras and the practical result of that will purify all these difficulties much more rapidly than you could with your struggles and conflicts and do not allow this whole problem of guilt to come in the way.
This is how I want to conclude this whole theme of celibacy but close to the whole discussion we have been having now on the theme of relationships and sex are two other powers, wealth and power itself. And these three are deeply interconnected, so I want to take this theme now naturally to the interconnection with these two other powers, in what way they relate, in what way they have their place in the spiritual life and especially in the context of the integral yoga. The Mother has some very interesting statements on this. Sri Aurobindo of course sets the base in the little booklet, The Mother, where he links these three together when writing about money. He speaks of money as the visible sign of a universal force, which is indispensable for the outer life. And then he says, 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 and 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. 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. Now in English language when you say few, it means none, when you say 'a few', it means a small number. So when he says ‘few escape entirely a certain distorting influence’, what he is saying is everybody who has to handle money comes under this distorting influence and of course none escape entirely. You can practically escape the influence, but you cannot entirely escape it. ‘For this reason, most spiritual disciplines insist on a complete self-control, detachment and renunciation of all bondage to wealth and of all personal and egoistic desire for its possession. Some even put a ban on money and riches and proclaim poverty and barrenness of life as the only spiritual condition’. And he concludes, ‘but this is an error. It leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces’. And what is to be done? ‘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’. This puts a very high reference for us, it is also a point of great confusion, because what does it mean to reconquer it for the Divine? I remember once somebody in the ashram, one of those very special ones, left the ashram, got into some other community where they had free relations, sexual relations and things. And some of his friends said, 'oh, he has gone out to conquer the sex impulse in the world'. Of course, it was a ridiculous statement.
But this idea is to reconquer it for the Divine. It means what? And people unfortunately misunderstand or misrepresent that. So I wanted to have some discussion around this theme. What exactly is this distorting influence stamped on wealth by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura and in what way does it seize you, possess you rather than you possessing it and how are these three interconnected? The Mother has very interesting commentaries in two different places on this passage and one of the things she says is that you cannot entirely conquer one of these forces without having conquered all three, because they have become so interdependent in a sense and she has a long discussion but the sum of it is this, that across these three you will see one thing common that the ego enjoys the aggrandizement or the satisfaction of desire or sense of enjoyment or pleasure that accompany all three and if you have one, you tend to especially if you have the money, you tend to have the power or the sex that typically follow. With money pretty much you can buy influence, so the power comes easily and then Mother says and the sex follows because that's the only way you can enjoy it. After a while, what do you do with money? Eventually you want to turn it into some kind of a physical sensational pleasure or satisfaction of desire. Beyond the point you cannot keep buying things and accumulating things. So but even that does not satisfy, so often it takes on weird and perverse forms. If you see in cinema, the way they will present to you, a mafia head. So let's say James Bond goes to meet a mafia head and he's taken into this palatial complex, there are pools and then there are skimpily clad women surrounding this mafia head and he waves them away and then he sits down for a conversation. But the whole ambience you see is set representing wealth, representing power which he has and then the sexual influence that he can command the most desirable or attractive women on a whim and these three somehow seem to be so tightly bound. And Mother explains how, the way the Asuric energies have organized it because they've had centuries. You see, all the spiritual traditions gave up these three things saying they are unspiritual. So they've had centuries in which to organize and accumulate and she said they're so well organized, so tightly well knit that if you try to enter into their space, they will either block you out, if you don't fit their criteria or they yield a little bit and then if they see that you don't get sucked in, then they will cut you off. So they will yield a little to pull you into that ambit of influence.
Narad (0:20:41):
Cut you off means what?
Sraddhalu (0:20:42):
From the access to the wealth or the power. So if you start entering for example, a power structure, they will test you, are you willing to follow their values? If you are willing to, if you allow yourself to be possessed by the energy, then you are allowed inside the system. If you do not allow to be possessed, if you now apply deeper or higher values for its utilization, you get cut off, thrown out or whatever.
Narad (0:21:09):
Mother says money is not meant to make money, but to serve the Divine. And I think that context came up once in investing in stock markets. She was against it.
Sraddhalu (0:21:22):
Yes, because if you see the nature of the stock market, of course even the stock market there are two types of investment. There is what we will call a long term investment which is called the primary market that you invest money and then the money comes to you as the company grows through the dividends that the company shares and that's good. It's your way of investing in something that builds. It's the secondary market where you're buying and selling in the short term which she was against where you're accumulating money means someone else has to lose it. So you're never really creating wealth, rather you're creating poverty so that you may become more wealthy. And it is this kind of speculative trading which is the basis for the bulk of the stock market today in the whole world and it is also the basis of gigantic collapses of companies and even banks which were too big to fail as we have seen in the last 20 years so many of them. In a moment you can lose everything or win everything, it's gambling basically, but in the act of gambling, someone loses so that you may win. And so it has no purpose at all in terms of growth of consciousness or in the Divine scheme.
Wealth creation is a different story, where you invest money and the result is something grows which actually adds to the sum total in the world. And this would be worthwhile for the Divine use if that which is created helps growth of consciousness and you could invest in a liquor company for example and the growth of liquor production will satisfy the desires of many perhaps but what it will do in terms of consciousness would be to reduce the level of consciousness and create more harm in evolutionary terms. So that would not be a wise investment. But if you invested in a product which actually helps make people more comfortable, happier or grow in consciousness, well those would be acceptable. The problem though is when this group or the people who hold the power or the money, when you approach them, she explains this as an example, they don't want to give at first and it's in her own example she is saying, they would say to her things like if you are the Divine, you are all powerful, you should be able to get all the money you want, why are you coming to us? and of course her response in her commentary is that, of course they don't understand the way the Divine working is. But it's a very childish response of exactly the ego that holds the money and is unwilling to give for a cause which it cannot control. So again she gives an example when they were building Golconde, she had people approaching her saying, 'we will give whatever money you want, but you must put a plaque in each room that says this room was sponsored by so and so', and the Mother said, 'I told them, I will not do that, but if you want, I will put the plaque in the basement at the bottom of the building', but then she explains how the same person if there is a moment of generosity, can just give like that. And of course there is an attempt to take back afterwards. So I give an example here. One of the persons that she tapped upon quite a bit for finances for the ashram was Lalji bhai. He was a very strong vital personality and I suppose it is alright to speak of it here now openly. Huta was his sister and to Huta she warned very strongly against his influence, protected her from his influence and even told her openly that he was an Asuric being and that she had to protect herself. But he had that access to the wealth precisely on the basis of her relationship that she built with him, she helped him to create the New Horizon sugar mills. There's a long story around that, you're familiar with how much she invested to help him build a business and yet in those days, I remember still we had interviewed him, he spoke of how the Mother sold to him the soup bowl of Sri Aurobindo for at that time 10,000 rupees. It was a lot of money in those days. She needed it desperately but she had to sell Sri Aurobindo's soup bowl and he of course was willing to give the money in return for something.
In 1953, she is asked this question, has that relationship changed? Has the money power yielded more to the Divine requirement? And she says, no, nothing has changed, it is exactly the same. But I do believe though, and it is the experience of many in connection with the ashram and in Auroville today, that in the last, let's say at least 20 years, maybe a little more, the relationship has changed. We do find not only among the people connected with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but generally in many spaces in the world, people who are willing to give for a cause without expectation of recognition or return or claim or any kind of demand and willing to give as freely as the true attitude of the sadhaka would be. Maybe the numbers are small, but that these people are successful in the field of business and yet able to maintain this poise of the sadhaka has set the prototypes around which the whole field of business and wealth creation will undergo a change and that they could sustain it for several decades and sometimes into an entire family framework is to me testimony that this has got a sufficient base now that the work that she did that she began and struggled through has actually brought it to fruition.
Nevertheless, I want to comment on the nature of this problem. The way the money power acts on you when you begin to utilize it and she explains how that happens. At first when you get wealth, immediately you start using it well to make your life comfortable. Small steps, little things and after a while you become attached to the comfort and then at some point the energy that comes with the wealth itself begins to demand more and more and seizes your desire, pushes it to expand the zone of comfort or the other benefits of the ego satisfaction or exaggeration which have slowly crept in and before you know it, suddenly you are living the life of the egotistic model of the wealthy man. On the contrary, she says, if the right attitude is kept, you use the money to build your base, whatever comfort you need and other requirements, and if for any reason the wealth stops, you continue to adapt to whatever circumstances are there without feeling the pinch. If such can be your attitude, then you are effectively free from that mixture. But this I am placing as an example, because a lot of people connected, devotees who are in business, or who are salaried employees, have a problem with how they should relate to the wealth. The ascetic taint towards wealth is as harmful as the asuric taint towards wealth and in avoiding the asuric taint, they slip into the ascetic taint. So I have seen so many people connected with the ashram who will say things like, I did not ask for promotion, I never asked for a raise because that's the spiritual attitude that I had to keep and the result was they were bypassed, opportunities and other things which they could have had were lost and I believe that's an error. You have to be able to take advantage in that environment of the opportunities given to increase either your wealth or the position of responsibility, authority or power that would come with a promotion with the same attitude that you're doing it to serve a larger cause or to serve the Divine. Even if you're serving the company you are doing it as a part of your consecration to the Divine and for that you must be part of that mechanism that allows you to keep growing in opportunities.
Narad (0:30:46):
There are two questions and one thing I'd like you to talk a little bit about philanthropy, which Sri Aurobindo and Mother speak very strongly about. The other is how is one to determine how to give to the Divine in the current circumstances of the world?
Sraddhalu (0:31:08):
Yes, it's not always obvious, how do you serve the Divine? One of the examples I had was a good friend who is a businessman. He runs a family business and in his spirit, in his heart, he would have just loved to be present in the ashram as a sadhak. He lives as a sadhak in his attitude. He has a family, he has children, he has a large family and a business and he said how can I live the sadhaka's life and I said to him the one way is to follow exactly what the Mother taught us in the ashram. So let's go back to the period of the 30s and 40s, it's no more the same, it cannot be the same, but you take the principle of it. When you came in the 30s, everything you had, you gave to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, to the Guru, everything even your clothes everything was given to them, no bank account, no personal ownership and then the Mother gave you everything that you needed and more if needed but everything was given to you by her and belonged to her, you belonged to her, there was nothing of you that was separate physically. It is in that framework that, that kind of an intense sadhana was possible.
[Narad] But she also specified for Auroville.
[Sraddhalu] Yes, in Auroville, Mother was very practical as always. She set this as the highest standard but then she allowed all the steps in between for people to be able to rise to that level, but by setting the reference wherever you are, you know which direction you have to grow into. But if you take this principle, where you are and my friend is in a different city, I said everything you have is not yours, treat it as belonging to the Mother, your business belongs to her and you're running it on her behalf, you have to show her the profits, you have to show her the growth of the business, you have to show her that you're utilizing the funds suitably in the way necessary for the sustaining and the growth of the business, but also in looking after your family and your larger responsibilities in the larger family. So, family is not just your spouse and children, it's also the larger family, it's also eventually society with which you engage. There's no limit. It can grow according to your consciousness and your capacity, it can grow to the whole humanity eventually, but you basically stop in the range which is your natural consciousness's expansion. Some are naturally more expansive in vitality, so their family would be larger some are smaller and narrower, doesn't matter. But the idea is you have to then apply that wealth including the profits, so the profits also which you have now successfully built. First you must recognize profit is not bad, it's not a bad word, making money is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. So a lot of the guilt that is associated, which we discussed in relation to sexuality, is also attached from the ascetic relationship with money and power, and this is the point I want to highlight; Get rid of the guilt. Money is good, power is good, if it is used to serve the Divine. Anything is bad if it is used to serve the anti-Divine, regressive tendencies. So we take it in this spirit. The money itself belongs to the Divine, but everything you own including the shirt you wear belongs to the Divine. And the same relationship you will have with your spouse and with your children. They are also Mother's children put in your care for you to look after them. Your spouse is also Mother's child put in your care that you may build between you a relationship worthy of the responsibility she gives to you and if you think in these terms, your entire life can be lived in the same spirit as the sadhaka in the Sri Aurobindo ashram in the 1930s. There's nothing specific which binds you to that location and that time period. You can live those values where you are right now in any context, at least to the extent that you are able to. So you start with what is easy.
Narad (0:35:40):
Are you saying therefore that it is not necessary to live in the ashram to have to practice the integral yoga?
Sraddhalu (0:35:54):
Not only that, to live in this spirit it is not necessary to live in the ashram, but it is the attitude with which you live and the sense of possession or non-possession that you have which would make it spiritual and put you in that relationship with the Mother that they had in the 30s in the ashram. The missing component would be only this, that in the 30s, the intensity of the charge that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo built at a almost physically tangible density, that is not there everywhere on earth. But equally, if they could build it here, they can build it for you where you are or to the extent you are capable of maintaining it. So even that is not a big issue. What you will miss is colleagues who share in your values. Being in the ashram, pretty much every face you saw in the 30s shared those values. But here you are in a space where perhaps even your spouse doesn't share your values, your children don't share your values, even though you may live with them. And that happens so often. Because you did not marry on the basis of your spiritual values really. You married on other kinds of affinity and comfort. Your children were not necessarily born by conscious spiritual invocation of a spiritual soul or an aspiring soul, not necessarily, maybe they did, but your circumstances of the employees that you have in your business are not selected for that. So your environment is completely contrary at worst, to your values and yet nothing prevents you from living by those values. You may say it makes it a little more difficult and Mother's response to that is very simply, 'but we are not here to do what's easy', and she uses it in this context. She says that the way that we need to accept the right relationship with wealth and with power does not make it easy. To withdraw from it entirely would allow you to maintain a kind of a partial purity, but she says even that does not work. If as an ascetic you go into a cave you may still not be free from the universal influence of those tendencies. So you might as well just face it and create the minimum barriers required for a practical purpose.
Narad (0:38:29):
Well, to bring up a very specific point that may be difficult for many, one wants to give to the ashram for the ashram work, but one doesn't know how to give or where to give, and to whom?
Sraddhalu (0:38:44):
Yes, I will generalize it more, I will say for Mother's work, whatever form it takes. And in the earlier days it was easy because you went to the Mother physically, or sent it to her physically, what she did was left to her. She allowed also a more fluid framework for people who wanted to give, they could give to specific projects within the ashram. And for many decades that continued. And so the advantage was a person could feel that they were giving to a particular kind of activity that suited their aspiration or their sense of ideal and purpose. Also that they could see vividly the result of what they gave, which is a factor which is very important for a businessman to see that the money that they give is utilized properly. If they feel it's not properly utilized, it's contrary to the business temperament. You see, in business, every money that you invest has to be used to generate and grow the wealth. I don't mean money, wealth in terms of value and if they find that they're putting it somewhere where that does not happen, there's no value creation, they don't feel comfortable with it and so Mother allowed that kind of fluid framework where the way people gave could match the circumstances. That is no more possible today, it's not being allowed, but the point is if you are conscious of where you are giving and what will be the result of its utilization then as long as you see there is growth of consciousness which goes in this direction which is not an ascetic spirituality but in a spirituality that helps growth it would be part of Mother's work. I personally, I grew up being, having grown up in the ashram in a kind of a very protected atmosphere, I saw these boundaries very distinctly earlier. This is ashram, this is Auroville, that is the society, this is the World Union, that is a different Sri Aurobindo's action and then that is a different center, this is a different center. I outgrew that, what I realized was it actually did not matter. What mattered was you felt that here was Mother's consciousness growing and working and these I will call them vessels, vehicles or vessels were only containers for holding that consciousness some oriented in certain ways, some oriented in other ways, some more effective some less effective, some in development, some in decline, they are just vessels for her force and to the extent that you have the sense of her presence and her force working, growing you are contributing to her and I consciously grew the perspective to see it as one continuum and these boundaries only for practical administrative objectives, having no other value at all as far as Mother's consciousness and her work is concerned. So I would say simply use your deeper sensitivity and follow to see how it grows and how comfortable you feel. Isn't it?
Narad (0:42:33):
Yes, I mean as an example, when in the 1970s, early 70s, when there was the question of purchasing land for Auroville, it was very reasonable. And another group wanted to give the people whatever they asked. And you know the story that I wrote to Mother. And she said, 'buy the land now, you do not know the power of greed'. Well, now it's a hundred times more what it was, and people still have to give money for that, because one has to purchase the land.
Sraddhalu (0:43:13):
Exactly. We cannot afford it anymore.
Narad (0:43:16):
Yes.
Sraddhalu (0:43:19):
So these are, well, human failures, let's say. And the problem is, failures of this kind you can never undo. You cannot say it's a learning experience, now let's do it the correct way. It's gone, the opportunity is over. And it's the same with the lands around the ashram main building. The Mother insisted in those days, for all the buildings around the ashram to be bought up by the ashram and I have interviewed some of the people who were in that and they said sometimes they left out buildings for 800 rupees. Today the amount you will laugh at, in those days it meant more, but still, you will laught atthe amount and just for 800 rupees you could have bought it and it's gone now and now you cannot get it back and that's how it is. So there are mistakes that have been made from human failure, which we are going to pay for a very long time. But coming back to this theme, in the way you relate to wealth then you can read the whole of the chapter on money that Sri Aurobindo has written in The Mother, the attitude of being the trustee for the Divine, of the wealth, that sense can expand into even the business. In fact it is my experience that the most effective businessmen have this attitude, not necessarily in a spiritual way, but they have this attitude of a kind of a large detachment. On one level they enjoy the play of the money and the growth of the business and the drama of the vital energy flowing in that whole exercise, if they have a large vital. On another level, at a deeper level there is the equality of the inner vital which is backing and supporting the soul drama and so they are able to take risks which are dangerous sometimes, but which when they succeed give enormous profits and breakthroughs. On the other hand there are those who do not have that, they are very safe, secure in their growth of business, they grow in tiny bits and grow slowly and they make something stable but it's not flexible and it is not, does not amplify very quickly. But the most successful because they can amplify so quickly are those who have a kind of a deep detachment.
Narad (0:45:50):
And there are many books obviously out there today that say give half of your wealth and much more will come back to you.
Sraddhalu (0:45:58):
Except it doesn't always work. <laughs> You could give away half and get nothing at all because it's not like a machine. If it was a slot machine and you kept giving and it kept coming, everyone would be doing that. It doesn't work like that. There is an affinity of energy that you have with the money power itself. And if you have that affinity, you can pull the money power and just circumstances just flow and fall literally at your feet and the thing just happens and the people who don't have that power and they are struggling and able to make very little because of that. The problem though is when you try to seize the money power, it is more powerful than you, it seizes you and this is what Sri Aurobindo refers to in that passage we read. When it seizes you, you can enjoy and flow with it and it will build rapidly but then it will be seized by that energy and the taint which came with the ego or the asuric imprint associated with it and very quickly you will tend to get somehow warped. Mother makes this comment that if you give a man a lot of money and a lot of power, she says then you will see his true nature. And sometimes the most nice, caring, loving, generous people rapidly become the very opposite. The moment that happens when they have a lot of money, a lot of power and you don't recognize the person anymore and it can happen within months even that the whole person changes completely and it comes because of this taint. And so the requirement which Sri Aurobindo describes here is precisely that conscious detachment, the sense of the non-ownership, the thinning of the ego, the consciously placing at the service of the divine, but in the sense that It's not I am now putting the money in before the Divine, it was never mine. So we see this often in the ashram when sometimes people have been suddenly promoted to position of great power, they will even make statements like this and it happened in Mother's time, even continuing now, 'I gave so much money to X'. One of the persons associated with the farms told the Mother, Mother I need the money because I have to feed you, and Mother kept quiet. After he went she said, what does he mean by that? It's her money that she's given him and he said I have to feed you and it's a joke and then the person who is dispersing the money, let's say the cashier in this case, if the cashier were to say I am giving you money, it would be ridiculous, right?, but we have actually so many examples of that.
I remember, just to share a personal experience when I was much much younger. I had to go for some tooth work to the local dentist and in those days the ashram didn't have their own dentist so they were paying from outside, so having done the dental work I had to take the bill and give it to, it was Dyumanbhai, he was a trustee at the time, I went and placed the bill before him. And he took the bill and he had he brought out the pen, he did not even look, he asked me, so how are you, how are things, signed the bill and gave it like that. Of course he saw the amount, but it was done so casually he never made you feel that he had done anything. He just went, got a paper signed, it was all done, he had no sense of possession, ownership, money transaction, nothing. It was just a mechanism to set right a balance of something, that's it. And many years later, I had to go to somebody else, Dyuman bhai had passed away. Some books had been purchased for a project and I had to get an okay. I went to the person then, he has now passed away, and he looked at the bill, he looked at the titles of the books, then he started doing the total on the bill. Now, you imagine the shop has given you a bill total and he is doing a total to verify and then he hesitates before signing and he says, 'do you really need these books'? And I felt so disrespected, not so much on a personal level, but we are not doing it for him, it's some work being done for the Mother and he is saying, 'do you need this', and he had of course no understanding of what was happening and at that time I decided I will never go back, never ask him again and if it is within my means I will manage it and that was it, I never had to go back, but that mentality, that shift which you saw from those trained by the Mother and those who came later, but they failed to pass on those values to the next generation. But here I saw the attitude of the true sadhaka in relation to the money, he was responsible, Dyuman bhai was responsible, he had to be careful that there was no misuse, but he did it in a way that there was no sense of personal ownership or any sense that he is doing you a favor. The same attitude comes in the context of power. I look at the period in the 1940s, let's say, when one of the very early sadhikas, she narrated how when she was given work, she was assigned in the ashram library at that time, which is now the reading room, and she went and joined in the work, and the person in charge showed her what had to be done and then very quietly, very gently he said to her you know although I am in charge of this thing, I am not your boss, we are both working for the Mother and that was it. And never she said did she ever feel the sense of somebody bossing you, ordering you and things like that. And you contrast this later to the period when the Harpago workshop was going through difficulties and they brought somebody from outside who was an accountant in some government office after retirement, joining the ashram for a comfortable life and they put him in charge of that whole operation, who had no competence at all and he would demand that everybody coming, working with him, he would make them feel under him, he would demand that they greet him with a good morning, otherwise he would criticize them and the whole thing became a government bureaucracy. Within a few weeks you transplanted the false culture into what Mother had built and infected and destroyed it and it's over, the whole Hapagon workshop eventually shut down, which was one of the most advanced facilities in the whole country at that time, Mother had imported the most advanced machinery from Europe in the forties and fifties when you could not get it in India and it was the most advanced machinery for any tooling work and the whole thing was shut down, they sold off the machines, it was a very sad thing.
Narad (0:53:41):
And let me end this session with the story of Golkonde and there was no money and Udhar went to Mother and he said Mother, we have all this brass to formulate and it's not possible to find it in India. Mother said, 'oh, you could do it?'. And that's how Harpagon began. She went on her left side and she took out one rupee and she said, here. And he began Harpagon with one rupee.
We'll take a five minute break.