June 19, 2006
Money
What has
Money represented over the centuries?.
Parallel
between Money and City
Value of
Scale and Measurement
Foundations
of Wealth – Ultimate Basis for Money
The
Institutions of Law and Money
The Virtue
of Being a Mental Organisation
The Great
Depression and World War I
The
Relationship between New and Old Organisations
Old
Literature and New Knowledge
The Part
Money is of the whole the Society is
Money as a
Medium of Social Transformation:
The more
subtle, the more powerful
Life
Progresses by Consciousness
Progress
comes to consciousness by organisation.
Survival,
growth, development and evolution
Money
behaves in opposite ways with respect to the Line
The laws of
multiplying Money are the same for an individual, a bank or a government.
The choice
at every step matters, matters ultimately
Money Force
as we see is an interplay of Social Forces
Man is
conscious, Society is subconscious.
Money has
its own personality outside its social existence.
The present
day is the transition period where one yields place to another. Hence its
importance.
Money
creates law and order and maintains it.
To know
Money fully, one has to see it from every side of the society
Earning is
not Money, nor spending, nor saving.
The
Psychological origin of Money in the society as well as in the Individual.
The Army
founded the nation-state; Money will found the World Government.
Universal
Education, Universal Suffrage, Universal Prosperity
Abolish
caste, class and status
Money enjoys
our understanding it more than our
cherishing its use.
Characteristics
of EU in Money
Common
Currency offers Equality of Social opportunity
Reorganisation
of the erstwhile USSR
The higher
terms expressing in the lower planes makes for fullness.
The
Structural power of Money grows in the ascent; its development awaits descent.
Money –
Cannibalism – war – Revolutions – riot – anarchy – terrorism
The
capacities of Money taking shape unconsciously in the society.
Can Money,
as an institution, become Self-conscious?
Organisation:
Subconscious, Conscious, Superconscious.
Money
readily integrates itself with every aspect of evolving Society.
The Rising
Power of Money in the Society and in the Individual.
Money has to
fight for its survival in the Society even as Society struggles for it.
Money is
energy organised and concentrated. It energises everything it touches.
Before the
birth of Money, how was life?
Money
started with produce, seller and buyer.
Use value,
power of production and creative power.
Once Money
is created all the necessary Secondary Powers arise.
The two
sides of change that is progress.
The various
aspects of Money give rise to various types of human relationship.
The
productive organisation of Multiplying and the creative organisation of
Self-Multiplication.
The
Importance of Separateness.
Money is
born in Relationship. It cannot be separate.
Accumulating
Money is wealth. It makes you Selfish and Aggressive.
Money has
the ascent and descent, but essentially it is of the descent, as it is man
made.
Money is a
plane that includes other aspects like education, language, etc.
What is true
of freedom is equally true of
all human traits. Let us consider only about a dozen.
Social life
as we witness it is an interplay of forces.
Money
becomes unique at every moment.
In its
action Money becomes Unique.
Search for
uniqueness is search for Excellence.
The infinite
social power of Money is in one single transaction.
Supramental
Possibility in Money.
Money is not
so much conditioned in social existence as mind that gives out knowledge.
Money
maturing in life through social organisation.
The Border
between the Infinitesimal and Infinity.
Positive,
negative, social sensitivities of Money.
Such
sensitivities exist in consciousness and substance.
The distance
between yoga and life.
The
Significance of clarity of Thought.
Comparison
of Money with a School.
To Transfer
all these perceptions to Money is,
Market is to
Money what a School is to Education.
Centres of
Service -- Centres in Cyberspace.
The Higher
capacities to earn Money.
The Training
one can get till he weans himself away from the family and society.
Money is
personal as well as Impersonal.
Common Sense
is the superstition of stupid people – Russell.
The American
Dream and the European Dream.
Energy,
Skills, Efficiency, Organisation, Power, etc. in the Society.
Society has
its own examples of this phenomenon.
The $40
trillion inheritance of our children.
The
Phenomenon of Weaning Away from Dependence.
Freedom vs
Structure in Weaning Away.
Bargain –
The Hidden potentials.
How an
Airline company can Boom
Money
compelled the American Revolution
Process of
creation in the infinitesimal
Sensitivity
– Non-Linear thoughts
Conception-Perception-Sensation
Self-conception
− Self-limitation − Self-absorption.
Solving a
problem – the Role of Money
The Process
of Money Multiplying
Money is
capable of self-creation
Multiplication
of Money – Individual and collective.
McKinsey
Report on China and India
The ways in
which Money multiplies and self-multiplies:
The power of
self-multiplication and its origin
Money
has come to rule the world today. Its rule began long ago. But now men,
countries, continents, armies, movements, ideals, organisations, institutions,
leaders, powers, philosophies, technologies are its veritable slaves. Man who has created money himself is a
willing slave of it in his totality. He is proud of possessing large
quantities of it which means he celebrates the fact that he is possessed by it.
His emotions towards his subjection to it is that of a lover who is proud of
his unconditional surrender to his Beloved. It is created by the power and
consciousness of the human mind which produced or created the entire
civilisation. It is a collective power and the institution of money is social.
No money can be created by the individual for himself. Always it is the
individual who wielded the power of the collective on its behalf in every other
field. In the march of Social Evolution
the Individual is just now poised to acquire the collective power of money for
himself. Should he do so, the entire collective power will express in the
Individual making the finite currency the infinite money Force. The law of social evolution that every
new organisation gradually integrates with every other organisation is fully true
in the case of money. It is seen in the fact that there is almost no work, that
cannot be done by money. It means every social activity permits itself to be
evaluated in terms of money. Every work and any work can be reduced to terms of
money and vice versa. Done positively, the act furthers social evolution.
Sought after negatively, the work organises the foundations of social existence
in the vital substance of humanity. Man's individual ability to create world's
wealth need be no wonder as it has already been accomplished in knowledge. We call such a person a genius. The
poet is a similar phenomenon in language. Its earliest expression is in the
leader and in his courage which is the collective physical prowess which he
possesses on their behalf. We see it in the social organisation and its
creation in the collective finds a spearhead in one man in whose consciousness
it centres. What is organisation in the society is the organised consciousness
in the individual of which he first becomes conscious.
It
is not confined to knowledge, education, language, power or money. It is a
common process for all collective power for its generation. Power of any
description – observation, thinking, sensing, moving, feeling, producing,
creating, etc., -- subconsciously starts in the collective and when it is
saturated becomes conscious in the Individual when he is able to create all the
power the world can create. Beyond that the collective becomes conscious as a
collective when it possesses that vibration in all its individuals. August
Comte, a disciple of St. Simon had a glimpse of this truth in the 19th century and said that one day the world would have 37 million Homers, 37
million Molliers, 37 million Newtons, etc. He also said the sea will become
lemonade. And such power is given to one at birth as the animals inherit
instincts. It is the object of this work to trace all the aspects of such a
social evolution in the context of MONEY and reveal that power to the
Individual so that poverty in 3 billion people will be at once wiped out. As
the individual can now speak endlessly, i.e. produce words, then he can produce
money endlessly at his will. That will be the power to create money as he is
emancipated from the power of money. The power of money will be his slave instead
of his becoming the slave of money, as he is now.
Money
is social power. Man's acquiring the power to create infinite quantities of
money incidentally will release him from his social conformity which is
submission to the collective. Money is not a refined force as knowledge or
language is. It is crude, as it is a social vital force. Even courage is more
refined than money perhaps because courage is mainly a quality of the
Individual. Man's capacity to produce money like this will pave the way for
everyone becoming a leader of extraordinary courage, everyone becoming a genius
or a poet. What the society achieved in the individual so far, the society can
accomplish in every one of its individuals in future. Power is the basis. Power
emanates from organisation. That Individual in whom the consciousness is
organised enough for this purpose of creating wealth will be the pioneer of
social evolution. Other pioneers – genius, leader, poet, etc.-- are to follow
later. In will be the Millennium at the level of social existence, if not
spiritual living.
Money
has begun as a material thing and now is an expression of individual trust in
the collective economic stability that is security. Now it is a social force.
It can outlive its dependence on society and become a pure force. Thus it is
well on its way to becoming a divine Force to be won from the Asura and put at
the Feet of the divine Mother. Its growth has been through several stages. A
material thing, a thing in itself – transaction – relationship in trade –
personal relationship – organisation – a power of organisation – a symbol – a
force – a social force – monetary force – a social monetary power, are the
stages through which it has passed. The Theory of Development will reveal
itself to one who studies the other forces in the society (education,
organisation, production, creation, etc) through the several stages of their
growth. During each stage one can see that each force forges a relationship
with all other forces and becomes effective in the measure of its relationship.
Such relationships mature towards social integration. Social integration is a part of integration of Existence. The
process of integration has an insistent tendency to extend its domain towards
the negative forces of the society. As there are positive social organisations,
there are an equal number of negative social organisations. Each positive
organisation has its counterpart in the negative. As the positive organisations grow in size and intensity, they
grow in efficiency. Efficiency is of the part. Existence is of the whole. That
comes to the surface when the positive organisations become consciously aware
of their necessity to integrate with their negative counterparts. I shall not
digress into that wider field of social integration in this book, as it is
severely limited to the role of Money. Money is a quantifiable, transferable,
storable preservative of social force. In the smugglers one can see invisible
money being used as effectively as money in our society. Almost all its aspects
are subtle to be kept in memory made possible by the honesty of the other
pirates. The material thing Money is
matures only when the subtle aspects – apparently negative -- are fused into its existence, evolution
and function. To trace that growth stage by stage will be not only
fascinating but will make this study evolutionarily meaningful. It is worth
undertaking. In view of the very limited purpose adumbrated here, I propose to
restrict my scope to what I have already laid down – the individual's social
capacity to create an endless amount of money.
When
money was a shell, tobacco or even precious metal, it performed one thing, to
relate one man to another man. The lone
self-centred man was introduced to the social value of relating effectively
with another man thus becoming selfless to some extent. This is the process
of the birth of social organisation which is invariably done by speech, family,
teamwork, transport, education and every other social function that brings one
man into meaningful contact with another man. Education is mental and therefore
it carries less power than the vital force of money. Speech is vital but it
represents thought and therefore carries less power than money that represents
work as well as property. A transaction is not merely an exchange. It implies a
more understanding relationship, an understanding of the person, an
appreciation of the product that comes from him. It forges a little of the
psychological power which is not absolutely demanded by a mere transaction that
is mainly determined by the genuine value of money. Beyond transaction money is
an organisation. That organisation rises from its primary value to its ultimate
value through a long list of gradation. Money as a thing represented by a shell
or leather acquires its value by the scarcity of the symbol. Its value was symbolic, not intrinsic. Money
as precious metal has an intrinsic value, not a mere symbol. It means money as
a symbol has integrated with the real value of precious metal. This integration
is more powerful than the earlier symbolism. It means the ORGANISATION that
money is brings under its fold the organisation of value of the precious
metals. Initially the precious metals too might have had only an intrinsic
value, not a value of their organisation. The organisation of money lies in the
fact that a function has been converted into symbolic money. Here that function
is transaction. Organisation is born in more than one way. By virtue of money
becoming an organisation, the transaction, the materials that are exchanged,
the person who exchanges them all are TOUCHED by the fact of organisation. This
initial change is an evolutionary change. It permits in future the effective
coming together in transactions persons and materials. Such a transaction gets
upgraded into what can be called an event. It is a financial event as well as
social event. Money thus gets one more dimension of its being finance. The unit
of social complexity which is a unit of social power is generated by money
during a transaction.
As
the level of money rises from being a thing to an organisation, it can relate
to other activities from this higher level thus making itself a higher
instrument. A spiritual truth of society is each in all and all in each. There
is another side to this Truth which says God is in all and all is in God. The
objects in a room are obviously unrelated and their use is limited while people
at home can interpenetrate each other's personality and play a role in
another's life. In the subtle plane this is true even of inanimate objects. An evolutionary truth about the spiritual
plane of transformation is the more inert an object is, the more powerful it is
after transformation.
Creation
is upheld in Time and Space. Grain and eggs are farm produce while a hammer or
stool is a product from a workshop. The former are perishable while the latter
are not, but a hammer is a hammer and it can be used only as such. It cannot do
the work of a towel. When converted into money, grain and eggs acquire the
quality of imperishable money and can be preserved endlessly. A hammer can do
the work of a towel if it passes through the medium of money. Thus money,
It
is needless to repeat every time all these capacities of money are no close
preserves of it. Every social institution is vested with a similar power of
varying expressions. The idea of organisation is not material but subtle. An
organisation is, of course, a material thing. It is equally true that it is
subtle too. Being a subtle organisation,
money is capable of giving gross material objects the power of subtlety because
the society has a subtle existence too. A subtle organisation enables us to
bring out the subtle powers of the society thus enabling the spiritual man to
rise to subtle heights of functioning. These are original ideas that require
original elaboration through explanations and examples.
It
is a self-evident truth that an educated man is a far more efficient individual
than an uneducated one. An endowment acquired helps to bring out that endowment
in a man if it is there in potential. By the same logic a spiritual man can be
far more efficacious in the society as it brings out the spirit in him. Life
belonged to the elite till the 18th or even the 19th centuries. A man's
effectivity was determined by his birth, not his capacities. One who is not
high born endowed with higher capacities is not lauded but is suspect. It
brings on his head a punishment for having usurped the higher echelons of
society from which he is barred. Sastras in India prescribe that molten lead be
poured into the ear of one whose ear is struck by the tone of the Vedas, if he
was not born a Brahmin. Class in the West is more tyrannical than caste in
India. One of the words that migrated into English and through that to other
European languages very early was caste, as it struck them as a forceful idiom.
The 20th Century had the distinction of having been the century of the common
man. Towards its end being a common man became a virtue all over the world.
The Report of ICPF speaks of this
century as that of an Individual. I
present here the idea that that individual will be a spiritual individual. As
currency abridges products, we see a credit card abridges the bulk of the
currency. In a similar manner Spirit in Man has the unique power of abridging
as well as condensing all that MEN in the collective are capable of. Property
is an endowment but it can become an encumbrance for certain higher purposes.
Endowments are powerful but they have a way of keeping us to their vital,
mental planes. Becoming a spiritual Individual, one carries the powers of the
lower planes without being encumbered by their gross expressions. To study the
fashion in which money discharges these functions and further enhances the
ability of man, is to advance on the journey of becoming a Spiritual
Individual. It is a Supramental truth that the instrument is enriched. The pen
of a genius or a blackboard in the class is not enriched by the functions they
perform. It is true that they have the subtle atmosphere of the genius or the
thousands of ideas written on it. In practice we do not see it or we cannot use
it. Money enriches the Man who uses it and enriches itself in the process.
One major theme of this book is in
future Money can be created in endless quantities as we now can produce
electricity and it will happen by a process known as a self multiplication. My endeavour is to explain this theme in its
totality from every possible aspect as and when the context permits. One of its
bases is as civilisation proceeds man shifts his centre from the body's
physicality to the mind's subtlety which is infinite. If it is not exactly
infinite as in the spiritual plane, it tends to infinity. In the physical
plane, money represents property whose expansion can be tardy and cumbersome
and admits of inherent limitations. This limitation is less at the vital stage
as that stage is represented by human relationships as well as one's capacity
to produce. Whereas in the mind, money represents trust. Trust can increase in
itself without limit. It can also extend by the widening population in which it
acts. The Euro, whose rupee value was close to 40 while there were twelve
countries in the European Union, has risen to 58 now when the twelve became 25.
One important reason is the increasing
population that uses the euro. The increasing speed of currency circulation
raises its value and generates more money as it abridges Time. As each
transaction acts like the function of a bank, the greater transactions can lead
to generation of higher amount of money as well as raise the currency value.
The proposed Asian currency will shoot up in value if India and China are
members by virtue of their population. If the theme is of value, it is an
argument for world currency. That move alone is enough to abolish the poverty
of the world at one stroke. As electricity made the world bright by its
illumination, a world currency will make it prosperous by its inherent capacity
for multiplication. Time, Space, speed, population, productivity, trust will
increase the value of the currency and have the power to multiply its quantity.
Such a process reaches the point of
maturity where self-multiplication starts. Fire itself was a kind of
invention by man though he had witnessed it for long. His production of heat
and fire moved from wood to coal to oil and now electricity raises the quantity
and quality available. Now Solar Energy has been organised or harnessed on a
modest scale. It may take over from oil and electricity in future. Spiritually, the theory says, any energy
can be produced from any source if only the appropriate method is devised. Abundant
money can wipe out universal poverty. Increasing levels of education can wipe
out universal ignorance.
Money
that evaded tax, bribes, money earned by anti-social activities are under this
classification. Money is an instrument,
a tool and a symbol. It is neither black nor white. Man can be white or black,
not the money. It is he who lends his character to money, his tool. Man is
conscient. He can acquire any consciousness he chooses. Anyone who earns black
money will find his money carrying his character even after it passes through
hundreds of hands. That is the force of the original act that is black. There
is another side. One who has earned it wrongly has the choice of changing in
his consciousness to the other side. In the measure the man changes, the
character of money too changes. It is possible for him to change, but often he
is not willing. Man's demand is the world should treat his black money as
white. That will not happen. Man submitting himself to an organisation that is
entirely right, can change the character of his money to a great extent, not
fully. Man's inner change can be complete, but it has a tendency not to be permanent.
Should he choose to change inwardly and submit himself outwardly the change
will last permanently. Most men will consent to THINK that they should change
inwardly. That will generate no results outside. On the surface there are ego,
Time, mind, finite. In each of these domains Man has to take sustained
conscious effort to change, not generally that has a value in thought, but with
respect to each detail of the original act. In the ego it becomes selflessness;
in the mind it changes one's opinions; in the vital it changes the attitude; in
Time one goes back as far as his memory can take – his memory can go very far
even to a past birth – and THERE bring out a genuine change of consciousness.
All smallness of being fosters finiteness while all outgoing movement of
generous expansiveness will release him from being finite and therefore DARK.
It should be effected in mind as well as in memory. These movements can oscillate as mind does so. Effected in
consecration, the change of consciousness comes to stay. What changes here
is the value system by which one lives. The extent and character of change will
reveal in our sensitivities. Outside life will confirm it. Physical
sensitivities are more comprehensive. After the change, a bundle of currency
received will by its physical sensation reveal its character. On enquiry, one's
sensitivity will receive an incontrovertible confirmation. For a wider deeper
effort, changes in the law of the land and attitudes in the society are
symbolic endorsements. Money is always earned by hard labour. It is never
black. Man can fully change its character by his own change.
Money
was born in a society rigidly fixed by caste here and class in Europe. Men were
evaluated by birth in both cases. Their rewards and punishments in the
society were determined not by their talents but by their birth, a thing
entirely extraneous to the conditions obtaining at a given time. Caste or
class had its partial truth in earlier generations for the men who acquired
them by their talents. It is true one's own talent alone matters. It is also
true that a son born to a talented man has a greater chance of acquiring the
father's talents. These are partial truths. Society is a whole. Society that is
a whole coming to espouse partial truths develops imbalances as well as
rigidities. Monarchy, aristocracy, high castes were the result. Society permits
these irregularities to come to stay. At the same time there is another
phenomenon. Growth of knowledge, skill and talents is open to all. This opening
corrects the imbalance created by the rigidities of caste, class barriers. But
vested interests develop. Those of the high caste using their social status
take an unusual step to prevent other castes from acquiring knowledge. This is an
organised negative method which is the tool of organising falsehood in the
society. Nature, He says, consciously delays quick development and this is one
of her ways. Higher castes, of course, can impose denials of education, but
they cannot prevent knowledge being acquired and thereby talents building up by
themselves. This much is open in the society. With Money, it is different. Even
in its earliest stages when money was a thing, a transaction took place between
two individuals on a footing of equality of transaction, if not social
equality. The equal status in any transaction cannot cancel or reverse
social inequality, but is an antidote to social inequality. No one can buy
a cow or pig from a poor man or low caste man for a lower price because of his
social position. The elements of democracy enter into social life through the
instrumentation of Money and help restore Man's lost dignity a little. Thus
Money is a democratising force, however feeble its contribution. It is a social
leveller. This character of money is shared by every other social organisation
-- education, transport, communication, sport, military service, etc. – but in
Money this character is felt more as it integrates with other social functions
more readily than other organisations. Its readiness to integrate translates
into social force inherent in money. That aspect of Money more fully belongs to
the domain of the Theory of Development.
Man ate the food which the land possessed and produced.
So, he endeavoured to possess the land that was the source of his food. It was
a time he was severely physical and hence totally possessive. In the language
of the theory, we say Man was centred in the physical consciousness. We call
him a physical man. To a physical man, knowledge is physical, existence is
physical, experience is physical. When such a man develops Money, money will be
physical, a material thing, a shell, a coin. The physical is severely limited.
It has no inherent or latent capacity to extend itself. It cannot expand, much
less multiply. Since then Man has grown. He had a stint as a vital man. Now he
claims to be a mental Man. The term Man itself has its indirect roots in the
word ‘mind’. Mind gets knowledge through the senses. It can know without the aid
of the senses too. Now mental Man is centred in his mind. Mind is a knower, not
a possessor like the body. What mind knows can be given away without its losing
itself, i.e. Mind has the capacity to extend which is expansion. It is obvious
mind has the power to multiply the things it creates. Mind is an organiser.
Whatever it produces or creates will bear the stamp of organisation. We can
even say mind cannot produce or create without an essential element of
organisation. Money is essentially the creation of mind, i.e. it is a product
of organisation. What does it organise? It organises the better utilisation of
what Man produces and the human energy which produces it. Organise means to
relate with other aspects functionally for greater efficiency and effectivity.
So we see Money is created by the mind which
0
abridges
Time,
0
enables
energy to be stored and transferred easily,
0
converts
one product into any other product
(We have mentioned all these aspects earlier; Now we look at them
as parts of organisation that Money is)
If the physical produces food, Mind produces knowledge as
well as Money. And that Money carries its stamp of organisation and a potential
to multiply itself. Mind has given Money its capacity of subtlety too. To know
that Money is not a mere thing, but a symbol of organisation that is capable of
expansion, multiplication and at a stage even self-multiplication is to know
Money better and fully.
Society was simple in its early stages. It began to grow
not only in size or knowledge, but society has been growing into an
ever-increasing complex whole of an organism. Periodically society creates
fresh capacities. These capacities grow into organisations and institutions.
Slowly they begin to interact and merge. It tends towards integration. In this
process several powers emerge. Money represents economic power, i.e. productive
power. Education is the power of knowledge. Transport generates the vitality of
the society by bringing to one place what it needs from another place. We can
say it is the vital power of its productive capacity which ultimately rolls
into economic might. Communication is a reinforcement of transport. Also it
links the minds of the members of the society thus helping to organise the
mental powers of the society. The army is an exclusive category powerful in
itself needing all the services of production, transport, communication,
education and money. Not only powers
emerge, but they merge to create a more forceful power. We see how more
production becomes economic power and at later stages solidly as wealth. The
growth of a society generates fresh and more powerful powers that are
all-inclusive and comprehensive. We are only looking at the society. Government
is there. With its army and administration it becomes formidable and
overshadows the society itself. At each
stage Money represents the highest formulated power. Ä
As a mere thing Money represented products. Becoming
transaction, Money represents the vital capacity of the society to relate with
each other and enhance their effective functions. It is a primary social power
of communal existence. When it becomes an organisation, Money represents fully
the organised power of the society at that period. It goes on to represent the
wealth of the society and its power to create Social Power. We see each time
society acquires something new, be it a knowledge, technology, power, or
organisation Money readily integrates itself with that thereby raising its own
value as power and the power of the society. Now Internet has raised Money sky high. Money, further, can
penetrate into the potential powers of the society and then represent them too.
Above all Money has the power to develop new powers in the society by virtue of
its being Money, an organised entity. Money is productive as well as
creative. The many facets of Money are the many facets of the society. Also
each enriches the other. Beyond all this, Money is a Force. It can be a social
force, a pure force as well as Divine Force.
Money
is as much an Institution as language, family, Internet, education, etc.
Language was born when there was a necessity to call in another to share what
one felt. Maybe it was to seek help. Perhaps it was a shout. The instinct that
relates one with another brings another to you when you shout for help. What is
shouted is an emotion. It is communication. A sound let out of the mouth is
heard by the ear of another, communicates distress of one to another and brings
that body to the first body. It could be a shout of joy which is similarly
communicated and a response evoked. The first articulate conscious SOUND could
have been a call from one to another. It was an emotional communication. From
emotion to thought it would have been several millennia as so much of time is
needed to rise from emotion to thought. We can only guess the first words born
were simple ones such as the names of objects. In such a formulation of a name
in the mouth and recognition by the ear we see the coordination of a
sensation of sound with a vibration of listening. Speech is of the mouth,
sound is of the ear; both meet at the vital in the stomach centre. From the
names of material objects to simple concepts such as 'help', 'yes', 'no' the distance mind travelled is great. It is
concept-formation, a faculty mind was not born with. The felt emotion forming
as a word in the mind is a process of mentalisation at a primary level.
Obviously such words are nouns. To predicate an action to a noun is a stage of
mental growth. It is a process more complex than the first process of
observation. If observation and utterance is the process by which the first
sound issued, to mentally give that observation an action and formulate a word
for it is to think in more than one word. A sentence is thus formed in mind and
uttered. It is received by another mind and understood. Communication that is
of words is essentially a mental sensation given and received made possible by
a unity in emotion in two individuals. It is a collective sensation shared by
two or more individuals. Sri Aurobindo says thoughts originate in the body,
i.e. the sensation is not so much of the vital but of the body. The thoughts
are not created by individuals. They are collectively created by the community.
They are floating in the atmosphere ready to enter any person whose mind is in
tune, very much as radio waves in the atmosphere enter a receiving set. From
there, the first articulate sentence, toward the exchange of complex formation
of ideas is a scholarly study obviously out of place here. That will be a
helpful analogy if not an instructive parallel. To study money and education or
any two institutions is a valuable study in social psychology.
Nothing
in the physical plane multiplies. But we know a message moving from mouth to
mouth multiplies. Sages of information are not tired of saying that information
is not lost when it is given. As it is a mental plane, the plane has the power
of multiplication. About three or four hundred years ago, banks came into
existence. One who had money lent it. Obviously he could lend only the money he
had. He could not lend the money he did not have. As information is not lost by
giving it away, money has a little of that capacity. To a certain extent the
bank can lend the money it does not have. When money is a thing, a coin or
represents a product, one can lend only the money he has, not more. From being
a thing, Money becomes a transaction. Such a transaction generates SOME trust
in both the persons who transact, also in the money that is the medium. It is
not the characteristic of Money. It is the characteristic of transaction. A
transaction implies that both are capable of producing the product they
transact. Banks unconsciously are aware of this aspect of society which money
brings out. Activities make man powerful. Activities arranged in a system make
men more powerful. Power issues out of action. Coordinated, systematic
action generates greater power. A transaction is an act. A bank situated
centrally in a community is at the centre of all the coordinated acts of that
community. Transactions have behind them the productive power of those who
transact. A bank ready to lend money to a community is a centre of
transactions; hence it is in touch with the entire productive capacity of that
community. Presently any community is using only a part of its productive
capacity and the rest are unused. It remains in potential. There are various
reasons for limited production one of which is the paucity of money. An
instrument of transaction is partially a power of production. Money
represents that and has the capacity to become that instrument in a greater
than actual capacity. Bankers as well as governments saw this fact which is a
social phenomenon and lent three times the deposits that were really with the
banks. In their experience expanding money supply three times its availability
retains its real value and does not lead to inflation as long as that money
goes to tap the potential productive power of the society. Expert bankers now
say that it is nine times. The productive capacity of the society has now
increased a hundred-fold or even 1000-fold. Money extended up to that limit
will retain its monetary reality. It is totally lost sight of that money
creates fresh productive power in the society.
At
this point money is no more a transaction. Money, then is the productive power
of society. And it has the capacity to energise every other productive power in
the society. Its productive power enables it to expand. Its capacity to create
that power of production allows it to self-multiply.
As far
as the rule of multiplication, it is a power of multiplication. It applies to
all social powers. A plant grows by virtue of the food and water given to it by
man in the beginning, but as soon as it can strike roots and reach food and
water in the soil, it becomes independent of the farmer. At this stage it grows
on its own. In any system of power, there is a point at which it begins to
self-multiply. Money, in my view, has reached that point in the 80s. We said
the capacity of money to expand is limited by the productive power of the
society. Its capacity to self-multiplication is limited ONLY by the self, here
the self of the individual or the self of the society. At further stages, it
becomes the self of Money which has the ability to raise itself to the Self,
which is the Self of all. This aspect of Money is its most valuable aspect,
especially because every item in the society or in creation has this aspect.
Considering those aspects one shades off into philosophy of creation. We are
taking up here the aspect of social power of money and we can extend it to be a
social force. Our domain of inquiry can safely go up to that.
One
aspect of Money least explored theoretically is its power of organisation, is
the organisation money is. It is not done, as the theme of organisation itself
is unexplored. Organisation is a systematic arrangement. The power of any
organisation is primarily determined by the way the system is arranged.
Secondarily it depends upon the other aspects on which it impacts. Those
aspects can be organisations too. Railway is an organisation. It serves the
postal system. Part of its functioning is done by telegraph. Telegraph itself
is a sophisticated organisation. Post is another. The railways touch upon
several such organisations. Its power is secondarily determined by all the
other organisations it serves. Here we see a complexity coming into
existence and organising itself not merely as a force but a real Social Power.
Money is a greater complexity that looks like a veritable complication. Every
aspect of the society that touches money in one way or another energises money
further and they all get energised by the power money is. Thus money is a
growing social power which grows with each new invention of the society, be it
a technology or knowledge or right or anything else.
My
theme is Money is a marvellous power which Man longs for over the ages. What
he yearns for is really the Divine Money. In his low consciousness he
thinks he is asking for plenty of money in his greed. Even here, it is
indispensable that there is a human choice. It is up to us. In
either case, what we seek is ultimately the Divine. My aim is to show man what
he really aspires for through his unconscious, low attitudes. He seeks Money,
the currency bills with which he can shop. I want to show him the Money that
represents the Divine. That Divinity is seen in the capacity of Money for
self-multiplication which man understands as his own increasing power of ego.
Whatever he may construe it is, it is the divine power of money. To acquire the
divine power is to reach the Divine in some measure. Let man see that Money
self-multiplies. Let him see that he can create endless quantities of money.
That power is there in money. It has started surfacing since 1980 because of
the Internet. He can SEE it now, if he chooses. He can get it if he makes a
mental effort. This power being so real, so great, even a mental comprehension
can become the power in some measure. Every man will be eager to reach it as
children take to Harry Potter. No man will refuse or hesitate. It is in our
power of SINCERITY to present it to him. Compare it with a physical person or a
vital person, ignorantly aspiring for the Supreme Supramental Consciousness. If
his Sincerity is granted, it means he seeks self-awareness in his mind. It also
implies a sincerity in his emotional will to accept readily what his highest
enlightenment reveals. A man is what he does, what he feels, more than what he
thinks of himself and speaks out. Look at all the acts he does. He seeks to
possess. It is the trait of the physical. He seeks to dominate. It is vitality.
Let him see it in a hundred acts of his. Now his mental sincerity shows in
his unreserved acceptance of it as an idea. His vital sincerity is revealed in
his full acceptance of that emotional reality. Should he do it, the first
step is taken. He must constantly endeavour to maintain it. Hereafter his
trying to be a mental man and a mental man aspiring for the Supramental has the
same procedure which sums up as,
-- Try exhaustively NOT to be what you
are;
-- Recast all your activities around
the spiritual centre
It
is given by The Mother as the ten rules of Psychic Education. She starts with
the top level.
1. Do not rely on mind; have faith in
the Spirit.
Do not try to possess or dominate, rely on rational thought.
2. Do not seek comfort. Do not seek
psychological comfort.
3. Don’t do what you like, like what
comes to you as work.
Spread yourself, expand yourself in the aspirations of people around
you.
4. Don’t complain of others; if you
can, you can change them.
Complain against yourself, change inwardly, if you can.
5. See the world as your reflection.
See the family and company as your reflection.
It is the real inside.
6. Move towards the Divine every second.
Remind
yourself of your rational decision all the time.
7, 8, 9, 10. Consecrate eating, sleeping, talking and acting.
Any
man will be serious and sincere if he understands he can make tons of money in
doing the above. The American settler SAW it in real terms and flew towards
that. He made that money and rules over the world. He did it physically. Here,
it can be done vitally. The American made all the money he needed to dominate
the world. Here, Man can make all the Money the world is capable of possessing.
It is the infinity in the infinitesimal. This book tries to convince his mind.
It is the most we can do in a book. It is up to him to comprehend the argument,
explain to himself in emotional terms, examine his money value in its various
expressions and SEE his mental values of Money undergo in his mental
comprehension the changes Mother wants Man to undergo in the Psychic Education,
a version of which is given above. The thing needed is SINCERITY. It is a
sincerity of mental values, sincerity of emotions towards others, sincerity of
physical sensation to all (universal). In his own mind personally, in his
emotions socially, universally in his sensation, MAN needs to change or
reverse his MONEY values in real terms. Doing that much, all the money due
to his consciousness will move towards him. All the money needed for the
nuclear disarmament and the projects in the Academy will sail towards him. His
inner sincerity will be fully reflected in the outer sincerity of Life
Response. Will he come to grant
-- what he is really inside;
-- that he should move towards his
ideal.
Will
he examine every minute detail of his life in the last thirty days or hundred
days or one year in the light of the searchlight? Does he aspire for everyone’s
luck? everyone around him? Will he refuse to stand in the way of anyone getting
his Mother’s DUE? That ideal above translates into this practice in the field.
Is
there a border, a term, a boundary? If so, what is it? How to cross it? It
is the point at which the limited turns into the unlimited. The Indian
world believes in karma and fate. For them, the boundary lies between the Force
and consciousness. We can say Being instead of consciousness. In our prayers,
we see that the law itself changes to confer a single, little benefit on it. It
is not the finite becoming the infinite; it is the personal changing into the
impersonal. When discussions of an idea sap our energy, the talk moving to
trivial facts restores our energy. It is the energy being free from the
all-absorbing idea and turning to the small details that need a little energy.
At night, when sleep overcomes an information we await restores our energy at a
higher level. It is interest, not infinity. Even when the ego and evil rise out
of all proportions, HE says it is immensity they reach, not infinity. With
respect to money, billions are immensity. For many of us, millions are
immensity. Man would be more than satisfied with that. What I outline is
not that. I have in mind crossing the border in essential terms into the
infinity of Being and consciousness. And from there confer on humanity infinity
or immensity. The Spiritual Individual cannot rest satisfied with anything less
than the true infinity. It matters not what the world is willing to receive
from him. It may be immensity or even mere abundance or just plenty of
prosperity. Leslie’s father sent her an article “India-Boom” from the New York
Times Business report. The writer of the article, some tourist, clearly has
sensed the Infinite Presence in the Indian economy. The vital man or the
physical person desiring to raise himself to the plane of mind should really
follow the Psychic Rules to reach the Supramental consciousness. Below each
such rule I have written in red ink the vital man’s version. He should aim at
the very highest. He said that He had prayed to the very highest for the
greatest of boons and it was granted. That being the spiritual context, our
aiming at the next best will be self-defeating. One index that we are on the
right track is at times when our energies are sagging below a low point, ONE of
these ideas set out above must be able to restore our energies. At least sleep
must revive those energies. It is a symptom of our sincerity in the physical,
if not in the physical consciousness. Anything may fail, not Sincerity. I
demand sincerity of emotional understanding with respect to money values in the
mind.
Human
existence was conditioned by external circumstances. Initially Man was not a
producer in the sense he exercised his productive capacities with a view to
producing. His life was one of
subsistence. He collected as much fruits or game as he could consume. The
excess, if any, he had no use for. It could only go to waste. This external
circumstance determined his inner urge to collect food. Even when he took to
agriculture, he could not find any use for himself in any surplus. Surplus or
excess had no personal use, meaning or significance for him. That condition led
him to produce only for consumption. From there, till the advent of Money,
society passed through several stages each of which was a step in evolution. We
cannot give a detailed consideration here of these developments beyond
indicating their existence. Family is one of them. The various skills man
acquired were another major step in his individual evolution. Emergence of
family makes the man that is physical vital. Accumulation of skill has a compelling tendency to urge them to
act which naturally will produce a surplus. The collective group or tribe
that took shape had a bearing on his productive capacities. In short, every
aspect of social organisation of a later day maybe up to now, has had its
origin in the early formative days. We shall leave them aside for the present.
The advent of Money has generated a new possibility. While produce will perish in time, Money in any form is not a
perishable thing. Man had more energies for production than he was using.
After the advent of money, man had a reason to produce more than he could
consume. He became productive. His past energies could be used for his future
preservation. As his productivity rose, his own human self-satisfaction rose.
As a distant echo, this new occasion of Money opened up in Man the idea that
his productivity could be raised by means other than his own exertion. That was
the origin of his fashioning tools, the very distant origins of thinking, even
scientific thinking. Money which at those times was only a material thing had
the subtle aura of organisation in the sense it could link the past to the
future, it could tap the potential energies, it could activate his mind to
discover better ways of producing more. As elsewhere this characteristic was
not confined to Money. It was a universal trait of every social aspect which
almost threw themselves up as if from nowhere. It shows us we are in the presence of a creative social atmosphere of
evolution.
Our
aim is to understand Money in all its aspects, especially in its evolutionary
role and its relation to the emerging Spiritual
Individual. Our theoretical position is when we do so, Money will
proliferate, as urbanisation is expanding now. A time will come when man will
be able to create Money as he is now able to create ideas. In truth, he will
then be able to create ideas as a genius creates new ideas. For this purpose, a
closer, fuller understanding of urbanisation, what a city really is will be of
help. Understanding a city is less subtle and more concrete than understanding
currency that is Money. Let us start from the beginning and trace all the steps
of urbanisation as far as our comprehension and common sense permit.
Civilisation
began with agriculture. Before that man was uncivilised as he was not settled.
He was a nomad. The discovery that he could grow food that was then grown by
Nature made him settle down in one place, reclaim land, grow food, stay there,
work as a community, develop a family, grow attached to the land that fed him
and then over time develop the concept of property. Land was that property.
That is the beginning of our enquiry. Money
was created long after but it was an extension of that property and the produce
from that property. Extensive research has been done in the period I refer
to but it is research to get at facts. It can be a broad guidance to us but
will not help us to precisely pinpoint us to a period or a process. Our theory
starts from above where knowledge dwells and is extended by way of application.
We shall seek confirmation from the historical data, not bind ourselves by what
it appears to be to the scholars now.
All
men without exception lived on the land in villages. Agriculture was the work.
Anyone doing any other work was for agriculture and was directly dependent on
it. Food was produced only for consumption. Cities or towns were a later
creation. What was the origin of their creation? Let us start where Money came
into existence. Money came into existence when man had learnt to buy and sell.
It was a time when, according to our definition, Money was a thing. It was only
a symbol, until the precious metal replaced the shell, tobacco, etc. often an
insubstantial symbol like the tally. What was the measure of Man’s civilised
state at that sacred historic moment is only an intelligent guess. But, we
start from here. Any act exists in the subtle plane prior to its emerging into
the gross plane. The best part of it is invisible and therefore not seen. If
seen it is not seen by the naked eye. It is sensed by the other senses like
nose. Only the subtle senses man has lost now he was fully aware of then. For
the perceptive it always reveals itself in one way or another. The buying and
selling in villages was the early symptom of trade. Trade collects in its intensity not in the village but away from the
village. Trade has its secrets too which are best kept away from the seller
of the produce. As trade is an offshoot of agricultural surplus or the need to
exchange the agricultural produce with other newer services, every other aspect
of civilisation such as transport, communication, education, astrology,
festivals, entertainment, art, music develop out of man’s settled life. They do
not tend to centre themselves in the villages. Their tendency is to move away
from the village life. They all cluster around one point. That point was the city. The exhaustive list of the aspects of city
life is an interesting exercise by itself. But one major thing stands out.
Each
positive act has the capacity to generate its exact opposite at once. To us it
is negative. Completion of harvest is the culmination of the season’s work by
the entire community. It at once creates the negative possibility of theft of
produce. For a fuller yogic understanding of Social Evolution, it is necessary
to draw up that list in the mind so that Evil can come into its proper place in
the study. We do not have that necessity. Our inquiry is narrow and limited.
The life of the villages extends to cities. It is not a mere extension; it is
an evolution to the next stage of progress. It contains all the aspects of
village life at the next higher evolved stages, subtle as well as gross. In
those aspects coming together as urban life, there enters a refinement unknown
to the village existence of hard labour. That refinement is the first
foundation of the future culture of the society that was to emerge. That
refinement is seen as a pleasant, expansive, inclusive, emotional sensation, a
dexterous handling of men and matters, a more precise accounting of what
happens in terms of quantity that gives birth to quantitative appreciation of
unformed events of unshaped mass. This outer delicacy directly penetrates the
inner life unleashing a line of music or poetry in these receptive individuals.
The inner rhythm of excessive, ecstatic well-being flows out as a physical
movement that is pleasing to the observing souls. Thus was born dance and its
accompaniment music. Music and dance are
the munificence of the ripe soul seeking expression in sound and movement. That
which takes note of those developments and records them for cultivation are
centres of consciousness in us that flower into individual and social culture
later. Dress, speech, food, festivities, relations, organisation for living,
etc. are the outer expressions of what is thus collected inside. A town comes into existence as the outer
expression of this inner centre. Thus a town is in the next stage of social
evolution of the life in the village. Every aspect of life here is more
evolved, more organised, more refined, more powerful, fuller, and subtler.
Money too is so. Money that was a thing in the village becomes a transaction
between two individuals more cultured than the rustic in the village. It is no
longer a mere medium of exchange of goods produced in the soil. It is also a
coming together of two or more evolved men experienced in the art of living,
having experienced its inherent intensity.as well as a social power. Money has
the aura of that atmosphere. If man works during the agricultural season, the
rest of the year is there for him to collect his experience for present
enjoyment as well as future use. In the towns there are not only agricultural
seasons. In many ways the town witnesses trade seasons, temple seasons of
festivities, cultural seasons of intense interactions and deeply felt communal
enjoyment. Life’s intensities move inward into the recesses of family life as
well as outward into the organised outbursts of outer activities. Mind finds a
greater play in the towns. It gets a widening field, widening into the newer
possibilities of evolving social life. This is no occasion for the individual.
He does not exist. All life is communal.
Money that travels from person to
person, from a phase of old life to a phase of new life collects all these
influences to constantly mature into a well-ripened social product that is
essentially in touch with every aspect of life that gave birth to it. When such a power saturates Money, at once it moves
to the next higher level only to begin the same old round of the known process
in an unknown level of life. Money that was a medium of exchange becomes
productive of social power, as at this stage it represents the productive
capacity of individuals. The productive capacity of Money we see here is the
new productive capacity of the society in the towns, productive of social
powers other than foodstuff. As the
society grows, Money too grows in its complex content as every other aspect too
does. At this primary stage Money is productive. Later when the society
becomes creative, Money too becomes creative. Society that was conditioned till
then from the outer environment shifts its essential existence inside and
becomes creative by its own Self-conception. Money as a parallel acquires this
facet too. Just now Money is yet in the quantitative phase of
self-multiplication, and has not entered into the other higher spiritual phase
where it can draw upon the Self.
Man
witnessed the miracle of Money expanding apparently with no basis when credit
and mortgage came. He was able to use money he did not have. Hire purchase made
his future income available to him. Insurance brought him the social average
for his token participation. In the guise of Money, through insurance society
rose to the benevolent attitude of saving one individual from his personal
catastrophe. Life became social from its
narrow confines of being personal. Society thus practised self-giving, an
instinct it never had. About 200 years ago when insurance began, the dominant
impulse of man was to gloat over crushing another who had fallen. In that act
society exhibited its meanest motive. Theoretically it was a necessity for the
society as it was a very physical period. The physical needed strength. Society
was to foster strength and frown on weakness. One who fell was weak. It was the
duty of the society to discourage weakness and crush it out of existence. So it
not only destroyed the fallen man but ridiculed him. Just at the moment
insurance emerged, expressing the very opposite of the social ideal, to
collectively support the unfortunate individual. Here we see how the society creates the outer organisation to enshrine
its inner needs.
Then
we are able to conceive what powers, forces, energies, and skills Money has now
when the Internet is offering the World Wide Web to every child. One Man was
able to place himself at the storm centre of a shaping catastrophe and ward off
the ill effects for the whole world. He was an ordinary man in whom we see no
trace of anything extraordinary. What we have explained here, he had
experienced in his life. Having acquired the knowledge through experience, he
used it for the benefit of humanity. That knowledge, exactly one hundred years
ago to the year, is now available to every individual who seeks it. It is there to come to him in a higher form
in vaster measure. With a view to reaching such aspiring human beings, this
attempt is made. The Spiritual Individual is an epitome of the entire society.
He is the conscious compression of the unconscious or subconscious maturity of
the society. He has in him all the other aspects of the society because he is a
full Individual. Here we consider one capacity of the Individual to create
Money. That Individual will be able to create knowledge, power, joy -- the
components of complete existence. The Money I speak of partly includes some of
that knowledge and joy. One method to arrive at this Money is to feel the joy
of its creation for the world.
This
knowledge of Money can come to us as information from a textbook. It can be
given to us by a professor as an intellectual argument. His explanation can
make the Money he describes an intellectual reality to our intelligence. The width of the receiving mind or the
power of a richer comprehension of the teacher can recreate some insights in
our mind here and there. The curiosity of our minds, the energy of its
eagerness to grasp and possess that knowledge can awaken in our mental emotions
certain sentiments for the incoming knowledge. Should that occur, the
understanding will be wider and more comprehensive. There is an inherent will
in the incoming knowledge. There is a will in the person who delivers it to
you. There is equally another will in the recipient. All these wills can
function as wills with effectivity. Or, they can be organised with a form of
the mind. It is the personality of that knowledge. That would carry a power of
that knowledge to us. It has the capacity to turn itself into power. It is the
power of mental consciousness. This is the first stage of effectivity, i.e. for
that knowledge to bring in money. It has two versions of the personal and
impersonal. One is limited while the other is unlimited. It can be received and
perceived as a positive or negative power or as both. To choose to exercise
only the positive power when one knows both sides is the human strength. To a
person whose personality is negative but mind resourceful, the expanding
expressions of the negative power will present themselves with full force so
that life itself will come to him with opportunities where he can exercise his
newly acquired powers with the joy of experiencing it. Our aim here is a narrow, limited, partial one by which the individual
can create endless Money by his newly acquired knowledge that is power. It
does not extend beyond Money to other aspects such as knowledge, joy or even
power. I have been touching upon an aspect of theory everywhere that goes one
step beyond my professed goal. Also, the expanding aspects of a theoretical
comprehension, viz. positive, negative; personal, impersonal; consciousness,
substance; surface, depth; Time, Timelessness; etc. to draw the attention of
the reader to the wideness of the scope, while this book confines itself to one
aspect at a time relating to Money. The subject here is Infinity in the
infinitesimal and the process by which man can bring it out in one aspect of
his own life, Money. Though the writing touches upon Mind often, Mind is not
our topic, Money is. Mind is a wider topic that has created life and matter.
Money is one symbolic aspect of social life that is a part of life on earth.
Wherever there is measurement, there
is Mind. Cleanliness is a value on
the plane of material physical. No Supramental force will descend on a spot
that is not clean. Physical cleanliness is external, inner cleanliness is
purity of consciousness. Each plane has its values. One of them stands out. As
cleanliness is for the physical plane, in the mental plane the value of
measurement is important. Measurement goes with a scale. Without a scale
measurement is useless. One need not argue the enormous value of measurement.
Length is measured, weight is measured, national prosperity is measured, and
the body temperature is measured. Imagine the world without the measurements we
know. In the absence of ‘miles’ we can only say Chennai is near while Delhi is
far. How absurd it is, is clear when you again say the guesthouse is near and
the Ashram is far. In the absence of well-defined measurements, one resorts to
impressions where 10,000 miles and 10 miles can be equally far, while 5 feet as
well as 500 miles can be near. Impressions
are of the vital, measurements are of the mind. It enables us to compare
the comprehensions of the vital man and the mental man of the world. Hence the
value of the science of statistics. Once you find a man armed with statistics,
he passes for a scientist in our eyes, as we do not pause to ask what these
statistics and measurements mean originally and how they are useful to us.
Money has a capacity to measure quantifiable things as well as those that
cannot be directly quantified. Any aspect of work or life when it touches
Money, gets measured in terms of money. As
money is converted as currency, an inherently quantified aspect, work,
performance of music, quality of a play or anything has a capacity to reduce
some aspect of it in terms of Money. Educational attainments are evaluated
in terms of one’s earning capacity. Education is really qualitative. Its being
reduced to scores and grades itself is a sacrilege but when the man enters the
labour market, he is paid in terms of Money. In social terms, Money measures
the value of education, though it does not qualify as a real measurement.
Money’s measuring the value of a piece of art can be vulgar, but in its absence
there is no other measurement available now. Thus as an instrument of
measurement, Money excels itself. For the Theory of Development Scales and
Measurements are like eyes and ears. Thus Money qualifies itself in many fields
where no scales or measurements are existent now.
This
is not a theme exclusive to Money. It is a theme of Life. It is a theme proper
to the spiritual domain. The principle
here is the same that works in what we know as Silent Will. In Silent Will
we see a thought afloat in the atmosphere. (None of us are able to see it). We
KNOW it to be our thought. Knowing it to be our own thought, naturally we seek
to express it for effectivity. Our understanding is our thought will be heard,
its value understood and acted upon only when WE express it. We are completely
oblivious of a subtle fact witnessed daily in all our experiences that a
thought expressed readily meets with its opposite. A thought expressed by one
is an opinion, not a thought. An opinion is part of a thought. One opinion
naturally meets with another opinion, usually its opposite. A customer who
enters a shop meets a salesman as they are complements or correlatives. Don’t we do it all the time? The ego
entirely loses sight of this phenomenon. The truth is a thought is afloat
in the atmosphere. We are one point of reception. The other is another point of
reception. Either of us receives one
part of the whole thought while WORK receives the whole thought and completes
itself. This needs two things, patience and silence. Both are merged into
non-initiative. We call it Silent Will. Silence on our part allows the whole
thought to be received by the work or allows our opinion to be received by the
other person. Thus work is completed. Here Money comes to a man who does not
seek it. It comes to one who seeks only Money. While the former is in infinite
quantities of a higher order, the latter comes in a quantity considered to be
infinite in his circumstances. What comes is of a lower or negative order.
Money is a thing, transaction, organisation, power, Force. With respect to
each, the general rule works variously. A thing sought eludes. In a transaction
money moves to a stronger person, strength issuing out of an outgoing attitude.
Money’s organisation submits to a stronger inner human organisation. Human
power overpowers material power even when it is subtle. Don’t seek THE thing money is. Take the other man’s point of view in a
transaction that makes you strong. Enjoy an inner organisation of consciousness
that can generate Money. Know the corresponding human powers to the social
powers Money represents. In short, acquire a strength higher than that of Money. It can be said that Man
created Money. He should be its master. Let him not become a slave of it lest
it should elude him.
Countries
that resorted to deficit financing used it up to 5 or 6% beyond which it would
trigger inflation. The gold bars in the Reserve Bank were translated into
currency and maintained the value of money. There was a time when the value of
such gold was only 4% of the money in circulation. The idea is the money in
circulation represented the productive capacity of the country. The real
value of money was thus protected. Of the myriad illusions by which society
exists, this is one. The productive capacity of the nation is represented by
the value of goods produced. Beyond that lie the services. And such services do
not multiply, they proliferate. I wonder how the Reserve Bank can keep track of
the bulging services of Man to another Man. Maybe they have their monitor. We
believe Money can be endlessly created and its real value kept up for various
reasons, all of which sum up as: There are in the society many mines of
resources that could be converted into Money.
1. Man’s initiative produces Money. He takes initiative when he is sure
that he will not be inhibited, i.e. he has the social freedom to act as he
chooses. Disturbance in the society is inhibitive to initiative. Ensuring
freedom from social disturbance and creating a SENSE of psychological freedom
releases his initiative.
2. Freedom in the nation converts itself into liberty in individual
life. Absence of social ostracism minor and major releases man’s physical
energies for action.
3. Social organisations in our country are 5% as efficient as in
advanced nations. There can be no great obstacle to raise it to 10% which will
double the national efficiency on that score. As a matter of fact, to take all
the efforts to raise that level of efficiency to the maximum possible level in
the given circumstance is possible. In that case, this 10% may rise to 30 or
35%.
4. Labour productivity is lowest here. No one can argue that a serious
mental effort to evolve strategies to improve it at least marginally is not
possible. In a country like India with its population, when people move from
five cars per 1000 to 12.8, the New York Times writes about the BOOM of India
while other nations are at 349, 551, 480, etc.
5. Even the IIM graduates who are welcome to high paid jobs in the USA
are known NOT to think, but memorise. They could switch over to thinking,
acquiring mental skills.
6. In 1970, NLC had a 48% plant utilisation. A concerted effort took
her to 77% in ten year which won her a national award. Obviously this is a poor
performance at 77%, whereas similar establishments are known to reach 102% of
plant utilisation. In all fields the productive capacity can be raised. The
increased capacity is increased wealth. And that much of Money will enter into
circulation.
7. There is wealth in various forms which is not presently converted
into money value. One who has a house worth one crore free from encumbrance,
does not see that there is national wealth lying idle. He may not use it. But
it certainly has use for others. This is a huge field that when tapped will
triple or quadruple Money in the nation.
8. Future productive potential – material and human. Now that longevity
is nearly double what it was at the dawn of freedom and the nation has come to
accept hire-purchase as a valid institution, we see how much is in store in
this shape.
9. An idea is capable of creating greater wealth than a year of
physical labour. We have about a thousand ideas that can be beneficially
borrowed. Our ideas as micro-credit can be created in thousands. One
lakh of borrowers of micro-credit were prompt in repayment.
Unsecured
loans to salaried people from Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 15 lakhs is the order of the
day. Rs. 1/- wage in 1970 has now risen to Rs. 130/-. The unconscious process
of the above description is putting Money into every pocket. About 18 years ago
many state governments were bankrupt. Now all of them are flush with money.
Temples that used to receive one lakh a month thirty years ago are now
exceeding one crore a day. The nation is moving towards Prosperity and hunger
is less and less. Still, this is NOT due to any conscious effort on anyone’s
part. Social response can have a greater result than government planning. The
initiative of the Individual can have the greatest imaginable result.
Politicians, economists, etc. must discover what is happening in the country
and HOW before any of the above ideas can have a chance of being listened to.
Even in advanced countries, there seems to be no conscious thought bestowed on
these aspects of monetary life. Everyone gets the benefit. Business readily
rises to the occasion to benefit by a new possibility, but not much of thought
goes into it. It is our endeavour to draw the attention of those concerned to
this and other similar phenomena.
Power
is that which accomplishes work. It is energy that so accomplishes. It does so
first becoming force by the direction of will. Force is converted into power
by the structure of an organisation that lets it pass through. A bullet is
powerless. You can hit a man with it. It will hurt, not wound. Put it into the
barrel of a pistol and send it to a man. It kills him. The pistol is an
organisation. It is a mechanical tool. It is a system of action. Its action is
energised by gunpowder. The bullet which is a piece of metal acquires the power
to kill a man when it passes through the organisation of a pistol. Offering
help to the farmers in the seventies was a prominent idea. A farmer told us
that no bank loan would be necessary if jewel loans were released. It was the
simplest of ideas, an innocent one. At that time C. Subramaniam was the Central
Finance Minister. He was the head of a government organisation of which the
banks are a small part. He appreciated the idea and accepted it and passed
orders to implement it. The local district cooperative bank on receipt of that
order raised its usual three crores of jewel loans to 30 crores. We saw a similar expression of it in the
state as well as India. An idea that carries no power becomes a formidable
one when it passes through an organisation of power. Give a significant
idea to a great man. Even if the idea is small, passing through the personality
of a great man, it acquires a great power. Money is a thing. It is a
transaction. It is an organisation. It is a power. It is social power. Society
is an organisation as Money is an organisation. Society is structured. It is
culturally structured, socially structured, organisationally structured.
Anything that passes through society and its structures acquires the social
power of those structures. Money by itself is an organisation. Anything that
passes through Money gets the power of Money. Money passing through society
is a partial organisation entering a total organisation. The resulting Social
Power is immense.
This
has happened over the centuries fully. But it is unorganised and subconscious.
It is like the rainfall for agriculture compared with irrigation. Even
irrigation can be improved from the surface irrigation to one through plastic
tubes. Drip betters that. Money is a divine Force man is handling, as if a
child is using a sophisticated tool. The immense power inherent in Money unseen
and unutilised is buried in its organisation. Society at present has NO
organisation that can handle the power Money can release. Even its own power
when released, society cannot manage as it has not yet developed the
appropriate organisation. The power the hippies released was immense and
spilled over the world. Society was bewildered. No organisation rose to receive
it. Just now no one seems to remember what happened through the hippies in the
society in the sixties and seventies. It rose like an earthquake and vanished
like a bubble. When the Internet came and developed the worldwide web, few
people saw what was happening. We now know a few shining results. Its innate
power was so great that college graduates have founded the biggest corporation
in the world. Amazon.com came into existence and enjoys 25 million
customers. It is an organisation selling books. They are issuing credit cards.
At the rate of $1000 per customer, their potential is $250 million. Hotmail has
become email freely available to all of us. It is the power of organisation the
Internet is. All this is coming into existence by itself, i.e. subconsciously.
By a conscious process, it is certain that more can be done.
There
are primary powers of organisation and secondary powers of organisation. Beyond
that there are powers released in the society as Money is present there
actively. Also its catalytic action is there. The secondary powers, at least
what I call so, are the powers of Money which accomplish by Money not being
employed. By virtue of possessing Money, man acquires powers. Its power is seen
mostly in real estate transactions. In settling disputes it is very visible.
Money power and social power are inter-convertible. Maybe most of the powers
are convertible to some extent. It is a rule of social life and life in
general that when new powers appear in the society, there will be virulent,
organised, bitter opposition often unanimously. It happened to Money when it took the form of paper. Paper
currency is to Money what the electronic chip is to computer. To fully
appreciate the Theory of Development, one needs to fully examine the stiff
opposition to any innovation. Its greatest impact is on us, the individual.
Should one see it, he will enter the realm of self-awareness which properly
belongs to yoga. Paper currency is what made possible the life we live now. In
the USA, the opposition was bitter. Crass superstition was in glaring
exhibition with a religious zeal. It was said bankers were robbing the honest
workers in the field and factory of their labour, sitting at their counters and
practising deceit of a high order. The movement of opposition spread. It
infected the highest social quarters touching the Presidency. President Jackson
became its spokesman and won an election on that score with a landslide
victory. He managed to close a bank that was functioning like a central bank. No
successful development can ever complete itself if the negative side is not
faced and overcome fully.
Money is
a power of exchange. Law is the power that creates order. Law makes living
possible. Money enriches that living. Law is the outcome of collective living.
Man living all by himself is a law unto himself or the plane of life that
generates law does not arise. Living together makes order necessary. That
which makes that order possible is law. What each man requires and feels,
other men too require. It becomes a public perception. Perception matures into
understanding when the mind endorses what it observes. Mind lends its mental
force to that concept. An impersonal concept receiving the endorsement of the
individual conscience is the birth of a legal necessity. Public conscience
too can perceive it, can endorse it and offer its sanction to codify it. It is
law. The existence of Man demands peace and order. Existence needs
consciousness. Consciousness needs law and order. While law and order are
collective, Money is personal but was created collectively. Both are
expressions of power codified into organisation. Money is a mental organisation
of vital power used to relate with each other facilitating the growth of the
collective by the individual movement. Law is the mental enlightenment
organised into codified knowledge imposed on the unruly vital for ordered existence.
The Institution of Money translates itself into currency. The Institution of
law translates into judiciary and police. It has no currency that people can
carry with them. What they carry with them is a power of understanding
necessary for their living. Law is enforced by the dual institutions of
judiciary and police. The codification of law is for the lawyer, not so much
for the citizen. The presence of law is invisible. Only at the time of
enforcement its power is felt or received by the individual. But Money is
something one can carry, use, give, take and enjoy its power all the time. It
has a way of occupying human minds. It attracts the ego as sex, while law is
invisible, imperceptible, intangible, but when it sails into action, the lathi
is felt on the back, the bursting bullets remind us of its existence. There is
a law for the collective, another for the individual. Maybe it differs from
people to people, as with sex. Its versions vary but Money is uniformly the
same acting as an economic leveller of social inequalities. Law does not have
that role. It ceases with the collective enforcement. Only at times of
disturbance is it in evidence. Behind the police is the army. There are times
when the army too fails. Only the public conscience, if it survives till then,
can come to one’s rescue. One can understand Money better by studying law and
vice versa.
Work
organisation such as serving meals to a hundred people is mainly an
organisation at the physical level. Of course, the planning was done by the
mind. We may note it is the physical mind. Mainly work organisations are
essentially physical organisations. At the other end, there exist
organisations guided by values. Here every action is guided by the value of
honesty, truth, integrity, etc. One’s reputation is such an organisation of
values. The good will companies have which is taken into its sale value depends
upon the market value of the brand name. Here the market value is a commercial
value, but is indirectly built on ethical values. Suppose we set aside physical
organisation on the one side and organisations based on values on the other
side, we will be in a better position to evaluate the Mental Organisation. A
mental organisation primarily demands understanding. An organisation
essentially based on mental understanding is a Mental Organisation. When
the engineers of Chicago were trying to work out a method to lift the buildings
five feet above the ground, they were trying to fashion a purely mental organisation
that is a method. In that method – not the act of lifting the building – there
is no value. No ethical value enters into it. Nor are there moves that are
physical. It is a method devised by the mind. So also when the Navy engineers
tried to abridge a repair job of months into hours. Ethics of no description
enter there. All movements are mental and no movement is physical or vital. The
virtue of a mental organisation is its effectivity rises with the rising
effectivity of the understanding. In the context of Money, this turns out to
be “with a wider, stronger, richer understanding of this organisation, its
capacity to create money rises in proportion.” Here we see ORGANISATION is by itself creative of Money. The work
done by the lands, factories, services is now done by the very organisation by
virtue of its structure of constitution. Its power to create Money can be
raised by raising the power of understanding the organisation. Organisation
becomes creative and it makes ideas creative of Money. Hire purchase,
insurance, credit card, sixty-year house mortgage came into existence this way.
One who studies various mental organisations will better appreciate this aspect
of Money when he completes those studies. Organisations, we said, make ideas creative.
The ideas themselves are mental organisation of thoughts. Therefore, their
power to create Money is great. Men living in the plane of mind can rule the
world by creating Ideas that are powerful and making those ideas creative. The
world is ruled by about a dozen original ideas. Great men created powerful
ideas that, in time, came to rule the world. Therefore to make ideas creative
so that Money would be created in abundance is not impossible. Opinion, belief,
conviction are non-ethical mental organisations. For our purposes, our opinion
about Money, our belief in Money, and our conviction about Money matter.
Opinions about Money are varied.
If only I can earn money, it does not matter how, is one opinion. Such people are
successful. Their success depends upon their capacity. This opinion of theirs
will do no good to them. It is not an ethical opinion, but any opinion has its
own power. This opinion pins the man to the end, not the means which render the
opinion useless. Suppose another has an opinion that:
I should apply myself fully to any work.
Such an
opinion, by virtue of the idea it carries in it will make it powerful. Ethics
apart, opinions, beliefs, convictions are mental organisations having the
power of being organised in the plane of mind. So, our opinions, etc.
should be such to create those powers. E.g. one may have a conviction that
Giving myself fully to a work is
best.
There
is no ethical value here, but the power of conviction is there. To repeat, this
is a non-ethical Mental Organisation where the type of one’s conviction pours
force and energy into his work. A conviction that
Market will respond to a positive
approach of ours, will elicit a response from the market. In such a
situation, if one tries to create Money, his mental organisation in this
conviction will help him release more of it by virtue of the intensity of his
conviction. Our endeavour should be to examine ALL the mental organisations
that come into contact with Money in our work in terms of our ideas. Such an
approach will take the study to greater heights and make it perfect. Our own
project is a simple one meant for the common man. He may not travel to these
supernal heights.
Both are seventy years old. There are tons of
exact, precise documents about them. The cause of neither has been
discovered by the army of accredited scholars all over the world. HE speaks
of conception of the mind, perception of the vital and sensation of the body. The
Life Divine can give us the intellectual conception of the Integral Yoga.
It has to mature in our vital and physical. The discovery of Copernicus is not
for the vital experience of centuries. The fools of Gotham will never find the
tenth man who was missing. Turn as much as you can, you are not going to see
your back. It needs a mirror. There are eight reversals for us to pass
through. Are we going to apprehend them?
Here we
can concentrate on Money as organisation, though it has earlier and later
roles. For us to study the origin of that organisation from the first ACT, the
act of the birth of symbolism, we need another perception. With that
perception, we make the first reversal. Then there is a hope for all the other
reversals, because with the birth of that ACT is born not only Money and its
power, but Man’s knowledge, joy, and power too are born. A proper study is not
a mental study, it is a vision to be visualised which sees in the birth of
the part, the beginning of the whole. Man does not have that vision. It
does not mean he must give up. The materialists begin by denying the other
facets of Reality. That will lead us nowhere. Let us assume that other phases
are there but invisible to our human senses. The animal is given unerring
instincts at birth. Man is born having given it up and evolved into mind. Now
his mental development when completed must regain those vital instincts as
higher spiritual sensations through his higher consciousness. For one who is
not anxious to give up his spiritual inheritance, there are multiple gates of
entry into that vision. In any event, especially a great event, there are a
few dozen small significant events that reveal the horizon of the higher
vision. Perceptive people do not
miss it. The anachronistic orthodoxy too is negatively aware of these indications.
They take special efforts to neutralise them as they did on August 15th,
to begin the ceremony a few minutes earlier. Jallianwallah Bagh, the Naval
Ratings uprising in 1946, the assassination of the Archduke of Ferdinand, the
public’s pressure to bring Churchill into the Cabinet in 1939, JP Morgan’s 1907
miracle are such events. One has to penetrate the surface and construct a
tentative theory and then see all these significant events fit into it. That
gives the opening. That alone can give. Let us endeavour here to trace the
origins of Money and understand the organisation it is. With that, the
essential work is largely over. Let the Individual taste the power of that
knowledge.
Creation
was due to the energy because of movement. Energy issues when the moveless
begins to move. Dormant cultures coming into contact with another culture
experience a renaissance. Contact activates. One law of the Theory of
Development is when a new organisation is born, it gradually integrates with
all the other existing organisations. At each point of such an integration is a
burst of energy. Having integrated itself with another organisation, the new
raises its own level of existence. It simultaneously raises the level of the
other organisation with which it integrates. Each such movement is a step in
social evolution. A monograph on Money must begin at the beginning and trace
all such movements and record the growth because of that contact that is
integration. Their number is legion. To have a firmer grasp of the process, we
can see what happens around us. The advent of the credit card for gas, the
general credit card by the bank, and the others by other agencies, the services
of other institutions they avail of for their effectivity, the advent of the
Internet, the infusion of lightning speed in transmission of Money, the volume
of movement of Money, the amount of fresh Money created by virtue of the new
technology which is itself the most sophisticated organisation born into
another space and how it spills over to create fresh economic activities will
help us have a glimpse of what is happening. Telegraphy was one such invention.
After its advent, it took time to cross the seas. Banks had not availed of its
facility to send money till they came by a coded message. It will be
interesting to see how long it took for the coded message to be accepted for
money transfer. Internet can now give us the varieties of resistances that
arose in between. Even on this one topic of one institution integrating with
all other existing institutions, about a hundred volumes of literature are to
be scanned and a literature of great volume created. The study when exhausted
will sufficiently introduce us to the domains of Joy, Power, Knowledge and
several others. The expansion of the field is significant. The contraction into
one law is a wonder. The Theory of Social Development, if we are to do full
academic scholastic justice to it, needs a separate encyclopedia of several
volumes, as every subject on earth must be rewritten in terms of this Theory.
An exhaustive list of organisations of the society, their points of contact
with other organisations, the process of such integration, the myriad
opportunities such a movement throws up is a MUST to study Money or any other
social power. Here we touch upon only the outlines.
Sri
Aurobindo has not brought into this world a knowledge that is of the next
level. In that case, we can try to build on what we know. The knowledge HE has
brought is of the Supramental level, which is four stages beyond the human
mind. Mankind has not exhausted the knowledge of the mental level. It is at the
vital stage. Rationality is not born. No leader however great he is, is known
to have lived a rational life. There are definitions of rationality and logic
has been developed to a high level, but not to perfection. In terms of
living, it has not been attempted yet. Those acts that concern us most
today internationally can be seen to be conducted in a fashion far from
rational. Reading the old literature can give you facts in the form of
information, but not a single idea that will help you understand. Studying the
volumes on the Great Depression, you can have all the dates, payments, losses,
gains, etc. but not one idea why the Depression arose. Suppose the reason for
the Depression is discovered, then to explain the principle in terms of
statistics, all these publications are of immense value. Studying the
Mahabharata, the Ramayana, The Gita, Vedas, Upanishads, etc., cannot make one
understand the Supermind. The old cannot lead one to the new. So,
understanding of Money in its context of social evolution cannot be helped by
reading the literature on monetary economics. It requires observation of the
movements of Money as a social vibration that energises, organises and creates
-- rather new creates – Money. One has
to see in these movements Money that is an organisation. Also we have to
observe the other forces of power, knowledge, Joy, communication, etc.
organising themselves alongside. Hence the significance of the theme
integration. The temptation to resort to old literature is irresistible.
Greater is the subconscious urge to employ the old method to acquire the new
knowledge. Again, NO new knowledge can ever be meaningfully acquired by the
employment of old methods. It is equally true of old attitudes. Old
literature, old consciousness, old methods, old attitudes, old beliefs, old
strategies must go lock stock and barrel. Even the old TONE will prevent the
new knowledge. What in the old is helpful or even indispensable is the essence
of experience, not the experience itself. The experience carries the form. We
need the content, not the form. The creative energy that multiplies Money is
with the New Force, not in anything that is old in any guise.
Legal
justice does not claim to deliver absolute justice. Often, as in murder cases,
it professes its aim more to prevent the punishment of the innocent than to get
at the culprit. About 20% of the prisoners in US jail are serving terms for
others’ crimes. In our society to seek justice is in vain. What we call legal
acumen or rational faculty is of course right in a vast majority of cases. It
fails in the exceptions. And these
exceptions happen to be the major events of history. This Theory of
Development is capable of being fool proof, unfailing in any case, whether we
acquire that capacity or not. It is capable of accurately pin pointing the
cause of the First World War or assigning the exact reason theoretically as
well as practically for the Great Depression. It cannot err as the magistrates
or the public erred in the cases of Lady Mason or Crawley. In one case, we
finally know that the lady forged and in the other case the gentleman was above
board. In the case of Lady Mason, there were actual witnesses who could declare
they had not signed a second document. To the keen perception of an aggrieved
tenant the dates told the story. In a
lazy social atmosphere ready to gossip with a vengeance, this is the subtle
hint of life. He who seeks the facts cannot overlook these subtle hints.
Here in this case the subtle hint is in the shape of hard dates. Crawley’s case
is more difficult and impossible for the social context in which we live. One
with a subtle vision could have seen the figure of Eleanor on the cheque as
Padmanabhan had seen blood on the blessing packet going to a piles patient
waiting for operation. The truth of Money is evolutionary. It is in the subtle,
causal planes. At every point it impacts, we can see it hits against the hard
crust of vital vesture or material darkness to let the infinite power emerge.
Only insight leading to intuition can be aware of it. The first qualification
there is not to close one’s mind. Next one has to fix the partial event −
Depression, war, Mason’s forgery, Crawley’s theft − in the context of the
widest whole and look for outlines of ideas or subtle hints that can lead one
to truth. It is ruled out that rationality as we understand can arrive at the
answer. The answers that we have tentatively arrived at for Depression and
World War I can be put to the test of hard facts of history. In one case it is
events; in another they are statistics. Suppose both these arguments are so
proved, or one can prove to himself a few such questions, he is qualified to
discover the Truth we are after in the case of Money. Let Mason and Crawley
guide. In one’s own life there are more than a dozen events willing to testify
to this evolutionary fact.
The
European powers built empires all over the world. Their imperial power issued
out of their trade and capacity to export. It
was based on their production capacity. Their vital power gave them
physical power of owning colonies. When a higher power like the vital is used
to foster a lower power of physicality, the cycle becomes closed and ends
there. It has no further opening for evolutionary growth. It is the point at
which they meet with their destruction. They did in the postwar period. The
power that helped the USA to take over world leadership from the European
powers is the same productive capacity but at a far higher level. Thus the vital power of economic
productivity overcame and destroyed the empires, symbols of physical powers. This
economic power of productivity is now ruled and guided by Money power. Money
power too exists at all levels from the physical to the spiritual. When Money
ruled, represented mostly by property, it was its own physical power. In the
USA Money has outgrown that stage. At the next stage Money is a vital power
mostly represented NOT by solid property – or at least nor thus recognized by
the public − but by the vital power of economic productivity. Immediately
after the war the USA had an enormous productivity as she raised her fields and
factories during the war time to such peaks of productivity. Now Money is
moving away from that centre and is finding a new centre of power – Money power
– based not on property, not on productive capacity but Money that is being
created by the plane of human consciousness of Trust. This is a vital Trust
made possible by mental understanding. The
next stage to which Money power will rise will be the Money created more by the
understanding of what Money is rather than by Trust. Trust is vital,
understanding is mental. Theoretically any nation can do it. If that is done by
whichever nation, the centre of world power will move there. If that ever
happens, looks as if it will happen in the USA. As Money overcame the monarchy,
knowledge will replace Money. It can even be the knowledge of Money. Suppose
the Asian currency emerges, its value will sharply and quickly rise by virtue of the strength of population. That
power of Money will be the power of knowing what MONEY is, of course sub
consciously. In the event of a world currency coming into existence the
leadership for the world will be a contest between the country that has the
power of production and the country that has population. In ten or fifteen
years developments will decide that course.
It
seems there is a serious research at to what is the greatest invention. Is it
the wheel? In their list Money does not figure. A question Sri Aurobindo raised is some what parallel to this. He
has answered His supposed QUESTION what is the highest ideal Man can seek. His
answer was trying to know God is that ideal. His announcement to the world that
this is the Hour of God tells us by
implication that to KNOW that this is that HOUR will prove to anyone that it is
the greatest invention. Language does not strike the ordinary researcher as
Internet does; Internet is still in the physical material plane as it works in
electronic space. Language exists in the subtle physical plane. It is a far
greater field. The miracles occurring in the field of language are greater than
in the Internet. We know Internet does not create information, at least we
believe so. We just do not see how Internet bringing miraculously to us the
information the world has, creates NEW possibilities. The creativity of the
Internet is not in the creation of information but in the creation of new
organisations. In language it is easy to see MAN is constantly creative. He is creative at his own level. He, who
speaks fluently, creates more of fluent speech where creative value is
universally missed. Going further even in the plane of language there are
creative and non-creative productive parts. What comes into our minds as new speech is new to us, but is drawn
from the stored speech of the world in the subtle plane. We are oblivious of
that. Our creativity in that plane is what we miss. In Money we see the Money
earned by others coming to us for use. This is not to create Money. This is to
make available to us through organisations what Money is already newly created.
We don’t see that in this same plane Money is also newly created. Seeing Money
or Internet as an organisation we see new organisations are created. Seeing Money as a Force will enable us to
see fresh Money is being created all the time. What is creative is the ACT
more than Language, Money or Internet. As
banks create three times more money, internet creates knowledge. The
greatest creativity in a lower plane is productivity. Its instrument is the
Act. It is done by our initiative, human initiative. Moving one step further it is pure creativity. It is achieved by
Non-Initiative. The knowledge of Sarvaarambha
parithyagi which is the most powerful discipline of this yoga is Super
grace. Bringing it into the field of Money we can see that creativity. Even the
character of that creativity is determined by the character of our personality.
Inaction by non-initiative in the field of Money can raise the productivity of
Money to pure creativity. It thus moves from electronic cyberspace to pure
subtle space in the social sphere.
A symbol is a representation in a
concentrated form. It is a formation saturated with the intensity of what it is
originally. Money is a symbol of
social vitality. It represents all the vitality of social existence,
functioning and life. To start with it represented social products. From there
it moved to represent its productivity. Money in the collective represents the
entire productive capacity of the society. For purposes of transaction, it is
broken into convenient units. This is Money’s primary function. But Money represents the entire vital power
of the Society. The productive power of the society refines into social
power, the power that administers. It later becomes political power. Step by
step we see Money becomes the cultural power, religious power and finally all
the powers of the society.
A
degree is a symbol for education. Thali
is a symbol of marriage. Speech is the symbol for emotions. Life is full of
such symbols. A symbol makes the
abstract concrete, impersonal personal, universal individual. A symbol
makes action possible. A boy sent into a library to acquire education may be at
sea; sent to a university to take a degree he can handle it with ease and
understanding. A degree holder is a well defined educational entity to which
the society can meaningfully respond while a well informed person seeking a job
may not be understood by the employer. For
successive action that is building up the capacity a symbol is essential. Not
all people can educate themselves by not going to school, though education of
the mind is a non-stop functioning as the heart beating. It is for the genius
and the precocious. The ordinary citizen needs schooling for his energies to be
converted into educational capacities, raised to talents and converted into
specialised abilities. It will be interesting to trace all these stages in
Money. Incidentally it makes us see the vast unorganised potential energies of
the society which Money in further phases of its growth can embrace. Money, as
any other instrument, is capable of dominating the master who created it. That is an aspect we constantly must keep
in view. Once we lose track of it we become a slave of Money and all our
studies come to an end. To discover the symbolic powers of Money, to know
how it has been built up so far and how much more it can be raised in the
social progress is a rewarding exercise for the emerging Individual.
A
part of an inert whole can be removed and replaced. Sometimes it can be removed
without much damage as a cover for a pen. The functioning of the pen is not
interfered with by the removal of the cover as it is not an integral part of an
integral whole. A child moving away from the mother for a few minutes will
bring the mother to a dead stop as the child is an integral part of the
mother’s life. Society is a living
organisation, not a mere functioning organisation. With each part born the
society becomes alive and at once each part of the society endeavours to relate
with that new part or the newly developed part with a view to integrating with
it ultimately. The internal combustion engine revolutionised transport, created
the motorcar which accelerated the growth of the society. Today is it possible
for us to enumerate the uses of that engine and its electrical version – the
electrical motor – which in all micro units is run by batteries stored with
electrical energy. There are two different types of discoveries. One is
confined to the field where it is originally used such as dress or pen.
Innovations in these articles are mostly confined to this area of use. The
other is like steel, plastic, TV, computer, motor, etc. They find more than one
application or their applications can be endlessly extended. They begin to
permeate our living and do not stop till all the avenues are exhausted. A minor
version of this phenomenon is the newspaper, cell phone, TV, and car expanding
their role in the society till all avenues are exhausted. Integration is the part becoming the whole acquiring the character of
infinity. He has spoken of the part becoming greater than the whole. Money
when it matures will, by this principle, become the society. That is our aim.
It is the same principle of the Spiritual Individual who becomes universal and
Eternal. And that is true of all other aspects and parts of the society. To
consider the whole universe as an evolving organism, evolving in joy is to
acquire the knowledge of creation through the process of creation. That is the
same process by which society evolves and Money acquires its power. Today we
are beneficiaries of the social process unconsciously. We aspire to become
conscious social individuals who become a live part of the society by the
evolving power of its aspects like Money. Money, He says is attractive to ego
as sex is. So also is Power. Ego is a part, a part with a vengeance that
considers itself a separate part. Ego when it sheds its separativeness, becomes
the Purusha and finally evolves into the Transcendent.
Sri
Aurobindo says these three are attractive to the ego. Sex is of the physical,
capable of reproduction. Power is social, can dominate over all. Money relates
only to products and productive capacity. In that sense it is partial while
power is a whole. Money has the capacity
to secure power and sex. Power too has the capacity to secure the other two
through an element of compulsion or coercion while sex is not so much capable
as the other two in securing the other two. Ego is the centralising
spiritual power in the lower triplicity. Rising out of the lower to the other
side on the higher realms ego becomes Purusha. This is a spiritual change or
even spiritual transformation. As the ego loses its smallness of separativeness,
it becomes selfless and moves to self-giving. Money moving from being a thing
to social power through two other intermediate stages of transaction and
organisation, expands, extends, becomes refined, grows in productivity rising
to creativity. Its creativity exists at more than one level. It is creative of
higher quantity of Money and Money of a higher quality. It can be socially
creative to raise the quality of any other social sector such as education or
sports. Money that is refined is capable of refining any other field in
which it operates. It will be of very great interest to discuss the higher
refined functions of Money till it reaches the stage of being a divine
instrument. There was a time when poets, artists, etc. entirely relied on the
patronage of rich men. Royal patronage was its acme. Poetry and art thus had no
life outside such a patronage which was very difficult to secure just for the
reason the possession of Money becomes possible only when people are incapable
of appreciating art or poetry. Money came on the scene through the field of
commerce. An artist can reach the people through the field of commerce and earn
a living on his own. Shakespeare could do so successfully. Money emancipated
art and poetry from the heavy unintelligent dependence on the aristocracy.
Money here plays an evolutionary role in the society, the evolution being
Social evolution. Today musicians, artists, writers are on their own very much.
They owe their today’s independence to Money. Athletes are sought after to
advertise products of companies and it is a rich source of income for them. It
is Money that makes it possible for these social heroes to become independently
rich. To look at every such significant social function of Money is educative.
To collect every insignificant function of Money in the expanding society gives
us a deeper knowledge of the Society’s creative potential.
As
and when a new arrangement arises, a new facility becomes possible. This is
social progress. Whether it is electricity in the 19th century or
computer in the 20th century, a new thing is a source of progress,
convenience and comfort. There is
another law operating in the society. The more organised gets a greater benefit
of any new change. The rich become richer, the poor become poorer is a
complaint over the last half a century. Osmosis acts this way. The denser
liquid while in contact with a diluted one rises in density. Money made its
appearance at the dawn of history making sales and purchase possible, created
trade, commerce, urban centres, etc. making human life civilised. After a while
Money began to accumulate in some hands making them richer than others. In the
society a few were rich, the many were poor. From this point Money began to act as an instrument to unjustly
transfer the wealth from the poor to the rich. Money made credit possible,
an institution that saved millions from bankruptcy, or even destitution,
sometimes complete liquidation. It was an institution sent by God to save the
weakest from annihilation. Credit made the collective self-giving possible to
the oppressed individual. Before the advent of Money this was difficult or even
not possible. The same benevolent institution of credit, under unfair or
unfavourable conditions acts as an instrument for the rich to rob the poor of
their property. After the World War, the social atmosphere markedly by changed
towards the poor. Now the same
institution of Money acts as a fertile medium to wipe off the poverty of
millions or billions. Without money which is being liberally distributed as
micro credit unsecured loans, the poor cannot be helped to emerge out of
poverty. Money is a medium of social transformation. We know the great service
of Insurance. Without the concept of insurance the society cannot exercise its
collective protection of good will to a lone individual in distress. As
insurance is a social boon, Money is an institutional boon which is servicing
the population as no other institution can. No news can be given to the world
except the through the media. No knowledge can be disseminated without the
system of school. No goods can be sent to a distance without transport and
communication. Each of these institutions is playing a role which cannot be
replaced or rendered by another institution or agency. Money is a leveller of inequality, an agent of social transformation.
My
eternal theme here made central is Money can multiply and even self-multiply. What is this power of multiplication? If it
is real, where does it come from? Does it defy rational explanation? Multiplication
comes from a large number who are all related to act lending the power of each
to all and the power of all to each. In the terminology of current social
comprehension, it is organisation. Organisation is the principle of
multiplication when many are related to act in unison outside.
Self-multiplication follows the same principle inside when the separated many
join together in union in oneness which releases the Power of the Self. In a
chit fund of ten members with an individual subscription of Rs. 1000/-, in the
first month one member gets Rs.10,000/- which is the money of all. Rs.1000/-
multiplies into Rs.10,000/- because ten members agree that one member can each
time use everyone’s money. This is called organisation. The resources of ten
people, under a particular arrangement, come to serve one man which is the
multiplication we see. Instead of ten
members if it is a hundred members, Rs.10,000/- rises to Rs.100,000/-. The
power of multiplication rises by the number of individual members increasing. Banks discovered it centuries ago. The
volume of population acts as the depositors and borrowers of the bank and
raises the value of currency. The spiritual theory is each member
recognising himself as a part of a live whole and agreeing to act in
coordination, generating the Lila, increases the collective enjoyment. Bliss
that is static thus rises to Delight that is active. We see the same principle
in the newspaper when the readership rises. The reader of the news is also the
viewer of the advertisement. As the newspaper is organised to distribute the
news invisibly another market of public that are consumers comes into
existence. That market pays for the newspaper reader. Email is thus free. What
is seen as free actually means the reader who gets his newspaper cheap or free,
pays as customer to the advertiser. The selfishness of the newspaper reader who
enjoys receiving a free newspaper subconsciously is willing to pay for the
advertisement of the product to which he pays the cost. Nature destroys the ego by this method building a social organisation. The
unwilling ego that in its selfishness refuses to let go its right is
organisationally made to part with its unholy right. What Man refuses to give,
God takes away from it through the back door. We see the lever reducing the
labour. Here too the principle is the same in another fashion.
We
see that when the railways or postal system is to be created, it can only be
done for all, the Many. It cannot be created for one person. The concept of organisation belongs to the
Many and the equality of all. The British biologist Sheldrake found the
power of understanding increases with the increasing number of learners.
Learning requires mental energy. As the river swells along its course and
becomes swifter, the quality of learning increases in each member with the
quantity of learners. In trade and commerce it is a common experience that the
increasing users enable the producer to make better and cheaper products. Here
it is seen practically needing no further explanation. Spiritually the theory
is the greater the number of users or participants, the greater the energy that
is gathered in the common pool which is available to each member. The process of multiplication is the
process of the parts coming alive in the play of the whole. In
education, the quality every member receives rises phenomenally as education
reaches the wider segment of population. It is true of any commercial product
as we see in air travel. The wider the area of operation the greater the
possibilities of organisational innovation that is understood as individual
benefit. As we see in GM which offers its own car finance, or in Amazon.com which
is offering credit cards to its members who buy books from the company, any one
specialised activity through this route tends to become general. In the supermarket which sells
anything on earth, the concept of specialisation gives way to cover all activities.
The infinite becomes the infinitesimal at which point the infinite in another
form – energy – is released. Involution ends where evolution begins. Evolution
ends where the Marvel of creation fully reveals. We are at neither end but
trying to unite both ends in ourselves and raise it to the superconscient.
Applied to Money, one acquires the capacity to infinitely multiply it. It
directly points out to the value of world currency. A world currency before it
comes into existence needs several new organisations at the level of banking,
government, administration, social existence, trade practices, etc. All of them
have been once successfully evolved in creating the Euro. The world need not
reinvent it. It is enough to imitate the process including any possible
innovation demanded and permitted by the local context. Asian currency, if it
comes into existence, will have ironed out most of these issues. The process of multiplication is
evolutionary capable of generating power.
Prosperity’s
essential part is Money and the capacity to generate Money. What is spoken of
as capital is accumulated savings. Again it is Money. The cause of the
Industrial Revolution in Britain is traced by one thesis as agricultural
surplus. Sociologically it can be traced to the freedom it won over centuries
after about a millennium of slavery to foreign powers. It comes from the
individuality one has which is seen in commerce as entrepreneurship. Physical freedom as Robinson Crusoe had,
for the below average man is freedom to die of hunger. For an above average
Man, physical freedom symbolises a field of plenty. Settlers who migrated
to the USA found wages in New York ten times higher than in Europe. Externally
the fact was shortage of labour. Vast freedom is more than a challenge to Man.
He who survives that becomes an individual. The individuality thus created in
the midst of adversity makes one rise head and shoulders above the average. His
productivity rises ten times. Hence the high wages. Productivity is prosperity.
Prosperity is Money. One cannot receive
aid without losing that individuality. Western Europe received the aid of
Marshall Plan and became economic satellites of the aid giver. Russia refused
that aid and preserved its independence. Monetary aid in practice renders the
receiver culturally subordinate to the giver. The very capacity to think will
be immobilised. It is a bad policy to receives aid or give aid. It saps the
energy of the nation. Aid develops a dependent attitude. No one who is
dependent can stand up as an individual. It is moonshine to develop
individuality in a nation that develops essentially on foreign aid.
Individuality can be physical making men warriors. Economic individuality
brings self-respect. He can survive on his own. Only one who has such
individuality can think on his own, become a thinker. Spiritual individuality
is beyond all of them. A country that desires to develop individuals will do
best to return all its aid and as a policy decide against it forever. What one
country can receive from another is training and technology, not capital.
Capital borrowed itself is harmful. Aid will dissolve any sense of independence
a nation enjoys. Productivity is prosperity. In order to produce, one should be
an individual, not a wage earner or a salaried employee. Those who seek such
employment will discover that the nation is devoid of entrepreneurs. A nation
devoid of venturesome entrepreneurs is one without an economic backbone.
One of the rules of the Theory of
Development is we must be clear-headed as to what is the cause and which is the
effect. Inversion of them causes
problems. Behind any problem one will see that inversion. In the case of
Money, the truth is Money is a symbol. To mistake the symbol for the Reality causes
problems. The Great Depression was caused by that. Money is products,
productivity, and the capacity to work, not the currency that represents it. To
believe that currency is Money, the share certificate is Money is to invert the
order of things. Speculation was based on that. Currency is paper. Share
certificate is printed paper. How they can be Money? It is silly to believe
that. It does not matter one is silly. If he acts on that basis he is led to
catastrophe. In 1929 America was in an unprecedented boom. Investment companies
were making many millions in a month, even a billion in a year. That was because companies traded on the
real strength of Money. Money multiplied. For one who is gambling in the
stock market or one of its versions in the various business deals, the border
between the real value of Money and paper value is lost sight of. Once the
border is crossed, the reality is lost sight of, the movement changes its
character. Speculation has the temptation to reach its peak when prosperity is
overflowing. For seventy years scholars have been researching the stock-market
statistics to discover the cause of the Depression, like the German scientists
who examined every part of the human body that came for autopsy and declared
the soul is not found in any part of the body. In India conditions are so ripe
that one can pay money and forge a degree without undergoing the course. Can
that degree represent any knowledge in him? The inversion is most pronounced when Man, the creator of Money,
willingly trusts that Money is a greater power. He becomes the slave of Money. It
has happened to power, to matrimony, to property, to position, to monarchy and
everything Man has created. In the view of the theory, all problems are created
when this inversion takes place. Reverse this artificial inversion, the problem
will be solved. In the case of the Great Depression Man never realised this
inversion, nor could he reverse it. Life reversed it by bringing about a war
and killing millions of people, thus reversing the vital inversion by the
physical depth. It is worth noting that before this reversion took place, Money
lost its value in Germany to become a zero.
This
is another law of the Theory of Development which is apparently in
contradiction with common sense. We would prefer to think that the heavier a
thing is, the stronger it is. A famous metallurgist said about alloys of metals
that a tougher alloy is lighter. It is a confirmation of a higher truth from a
lower domain. This is true in all walks of life. It is strikingly true of
money. From being a bulky product, it became a tiny metal which changed into
paper. Now it is a mere unseen member communicated over the web as the credit
card. It travels all over the globe in a trice and transacts any amount of
Money. Local trade was possible when Money was invented. Trade spread all over
the country as well as outside the country when gold represented it. The volume
of trade rose from two digits to numberless digits when solid gold was replaced
by paper currency. By an extension of
logic, when Money represents invisible Trust without any medium, however flimsy
it is, it rises to infinite proportions. In education we see the same
phenomenon at the point when the heavy memorised material is replaced by the
invisible understanding. Before memorisation was in vogue, knowledge was
represented by bulky palm leaves written all over by a sharp stylus, written
over the years. It is most evident in manufacture where miniaturisation sets
in. The computer was occupying a full room in the fifties. Then its size began
to shrink. Now it comes as a laptop. Further the miniaturised computer is there
as a tiny part of any gadget like the cell phone or clock. This phenomenon has
been directly derived from the Spiritual principle. Sat is invisible. Matter is
the very opposite. It is durable, heavy, and dense. Moving up the ladder life
is energy. Mind disappears. As we go above, things become subtle and more
powerful. In the lower courts we hear loud, lengthy, hot arguments. In the
higher courts, sound is less, length is short. No heat is evinced in the
argument. The party is not addressed, the case is addressed. Senior lawyers
move from the particular personal case to the general, impersonal law. A Pondicherry
client having great amounts at stake reached a Supreme court lawyer for
redressing his grievance. The lawyer was reluctant. When he was finally
persuaded to plead the case, he stoutly
refused to listen to the details of the case. He entered the court without
hearing the details. He spoke for a few minutes and won the case on the
strength of one casual remark the client was heard to make at the point of
entering the court that Pondicherry was a Part ‘C’ state. The client’s order
was invalidated on the strength of that information.
Sri
Aurobindo prefers to use subconscious in place of unconscious. Instead of
saying life progresses by consciousness, we can as well say that a blind man
will progress by sight. Here I would
like to declare that the power of Money rises by Man becoming conscious of all
its potential power. Examine the period when credit came into vogue. Money,
by its preservative power accumulated itself as a surplus having met all the
uses of eating. Food can only be eaten. Now Man saw that when all his food
requirements were met, the grain was in surplus. It was there with him as cash.
It was impossible for him to know the coins he had had some use for him. After some time, either he or another who
was in need of his coins suddenly became conscious of their use. Till then
the possessor of Money was not conscious of its value. Thus credit came into
existence. Man had, at this point, discovered that he had a greater use for
himself. There was a time mortgage came to be a possibility. It was a discovery
of Man that he could live in his house and still have one more use for it as a
property. At that moment, Man suddenly grew conscious of the potential value of
property, as by then Money was in use. The medium of Money helps convert the
unused value of his property into another usable value. The value of the
property multiplies. Money rises in value. At every landmark of Money’s growth,
grain receipt, bank credit, discounting of bills, packing credit, working capital,
term loan, credit card, unsecured loans, free giving away of Money, Man grows
more conscious of the inherent power of Money. By being conscious of such
hidden power, life progresses. The history of Money can be rewritten as Man
becoming conscious of the invisible power of Money. To be conscious is the
first stage of progress. There is a second stage of growth. It is by organising
what one became conscious of. The other is about the progress of consciousness
by organisation. It is to be conscious of the external potential. That is what
has made the present civilisation possible. There is another consciousness. It is to be conscious of the inner
endowments. It is much vaster. The one is a unit of one; the other is as
wide as the society. All the powers of the society are inside. In the measure
the American became conscious of his cultural inheritance, he discovered it
outside as his own wealth.
This
law of the Theory of Development is in evidence everywhere. In Money it is
blatantly perceivable. Why America paid ten times the wages, how the American
was able to produce 34% of the world’s production excelling the other peak of
7% is told by the Mother: “The Americans have excelled in practical
organisation”. Man discovers powers like steam, electricity, magnetism, etc. It
is usable only when converted into power or knowledge. For the discoveries to
become commercialised they need an intermediary, technology. Technology is knowledge of the Mind
organised in matter as a mechanism or better still machinery. Knowledge
organised is idea. Work organised is activity. Energy organised is skill. Skill
can be upgraded by its being organised into capacity. Focussing the
organisation for efficiency and higher intensity attempts perfection. Capacity
poured through one skill for a greater organisation is talent. Talent is
specialised. Specialisation is exclusive. Exclusiveness is one aspect of
inclusive comprehensiveness at the higher level. Acting at a higher level makes
the impossible possible at a lower level. Personality of Man is higher than his
character. His character is fixed, rigid, and possessive. His Personality does
not suffer from that vitiating oppressiveness. Man’s Personality can shift his
talents from one field to another. We call it in language ability. We see all
these aspects in Money, its functioning, its structures, its potentials. To
write on all those stages in his history, the powers Money unleashed into
society will be quite a monograph on Money not so far conceived. Organisation
acts within the available scope. In freedom organisations can quickly exhaust
their old forms and try to innovate on a wider scale in newer domains. VISA is
the best example. Credit card when it was originally introduced was an organisational
innovation. Man tried to fly as it was long his ambition. Kennedy had the
ambition of putting a man on the Moon. One was a creative act in organisation
to higher intensity and wider amplitude. Organisation
helps consciousness progress. This law of development taken through the
stages of growth of Money in the fullest detail will reveal enormous potentials
now and even in the past stages it can uncover many more devices.
The
above are the three stages of development. Evolution is beyond that. We can
imagine that when Money was introduced as shell or tobacco how unwilling the
farmer would have been to part with his produce taking some shells. The opposition that paper currency met with
is of recent memory. When there is a registered document of power of
attorney, banks wanting the owner to sign especially when the amount is big is
a common experience. At each such stage of change resistance, unwillingness,
lack of cooperation in all fields is fully in evidence. Bank of America gave a
demand draft. The receiving bank insisted on collecting the Money before
releasing the document. Even 100 rupee currency was suspect in the 70s. One has
to sign his name on it lest it should be suspect as a fake note. Coinage became
popular and spread far and wide. For the coin, to be accepted by the population
is its survival. Its growing into all sections of population is its growth. Its
being replaced by paper currency is the development of Money in earlier shape. Money that is an article of economic
significance beginning to play a social role in politics to secure power is its
evolution as Money. The economic productivity it represents changes
into social or political power by which Money rises in the social scale of effectivity.
That evolved status now has expanded and is penetrating every walk of life. To
give a detailed account of it that is exhaustive is out of place here now. For
one who undertakes a study of Money for the purposes of creating it himself
with no fields or factories or even capital, it will be necessary that his
knowledge of the details of the history of Money be thorough as well as
exhaustive. An exhaustive knowledge at the point of exhaustion is the moment of
Perfection. Spiritually it is a moment of Truth. It is at that point
development spills over into evolution. To locate every point of evolution of
Money and concentrate the STUDY there will reveal the highest aspects of Money.
Banks introduced multiplication. It is one such point. Trust in dollar spilled
over the borders of USA when we witnessed the phenomenon of
Self-Multiplication. When that point is identified, the process of
Self-Multiplication will be almost a revelation. Euro’s value rising vertically
due to increasing membership of EU and the growth in population is
another point of Self-Multiplication.
This
rule in the Theory is an important landmark. Money is positive with respect to
the society above the line, negative when it is below the line. The same rule can be stated with the same
force in respect to Man. The speed, velocity, acceleration of development
Money is capable of is amazing. It is so when it is above the line. What is it
to be above the line or below the line for Money with respect to the society?
Money represents organisation, i.e., employing Money for a work without our
knowledge we are commissioning an organisation. That organisation represents
the latest technology, the latest education, the latest administration. A road
that took six months to build earlier can now be completed in six weeks or one
month. It means not only five months are saved; the rate of progress in every field is six times greater. When 10%
greater efficiency is celebrated as achievement this is 600%. Without Money
this is not possible. One may try to imagine that in building this road, if he
chooses not money and all that money can buy, he has to employ labour in great
number. Assuming such an experiment is possible; he will find all works come to
a stop. Only in refugee camps life degenerates to that level or during war
devastation. An intense imagination of what Money represents can bring us this
understanding. Money is not only technology, but it brings the latest
education. Money helps us organise them at this new higher level. When Money swings into action, work moves
by leaps and bounds. Money, above the line, is a constructive power. Money
is below the line only when inflation erodes its value. Beyond a certain level
of erosion Money exhibits its power of organisation in destroying all that was
built up to that point. The deceleration too will be great. Money remains the
powerful organisation it is. Only that its direction is reversed. What is
important for us here to know is not its capacity for organisation but its
capacity to reverse its role and act in the opposite direction. In that sense,
Money is neutral; society gives it the character it chooses. The character is
of the society. Money is capable of taking the character of the society. The
original organisation of Money is neutral, but when it is positive it exhibits
its positive character and when it is negative it exhibits its negative
character vigorously. It is not a neutral instrument in action. A sword is
neutral always. But Money is neutral in its constructions, not neutral in
action. It is capable of identifying itself with the character of the act it is
commissioned to do.
Society
comes alive when it moves. It moves when its members move in action. Society is
the social collective. Its power is in
the individual. Its highest power is in the individual realizing his higher
inner powers. His acting for himself does not release his higher powers. He
would not act entirely for others. He comes forward to relate with others for
his own sake. It is the beginning of his becoming a greater collectivity. To
act or agree to act with another even if it is for his own sake is to recognize
that he is a part of a whole. It starts with cooperation of a few members as in
a family, extends into coordination with a greater number of people and finally
becomes an organisation. In an
organisation several people agree to come together to act according to an idea.
That idea always implies his parting with a little of his rights in exchange
for getting a little of everyone’s rights and potentialities. In a chit fund we
see one man using everyone’s resources under an arrangement. We also see it in
insurance. Organisation is a
subtle arrangement that multiplies one’s gross physical capacities.
Organisation multiplies the power of a product it handles. At an earlier stage
consciousness so creates. It is not so self-evident. Movement, action,
consciousness, organisation, values, dismantling of the structures of the
organisation, giving up the purpose of action are many landmarks in social
evolution that are creative in differing measures. The spiritual truth is everything is creative, everything is infinite
and spiritual evolution is to realize the creativity of objects releasing the
infinity from the infinitesimal. Such a law applies to the individual, an
organisation as well as the entire society. By this we enunciate that an
organisation can multiply its wealth, an individual can multiply his wealth and
the society at large can multiply its wealth to any extent it chooses. This can
be extended to conceive that knowledge, power, joy, accomplishment can be
increased by anyone if he chooses to. What starts as multiplication goes on to
become self-multiplication. Only in Money it is possible for us to see how it
occurs. Here we talk of increasing quantity. So, we understand it should apply
to quality also.
Existence
becomes energy by movement. Energy acts, gets organised as skill. Activities
organised is progress. Progress can expand in space, stretch over Time.
Sustained progress is tradition, history. Progress extending over an area is
power of existence. The prime mover is movement. The unit is an Act. By the
time an Act comes into existence the entire process of creation finds its play.
Without going prior to an act, if we start from an act and confine our scope to
Money, a meaningful discussion will shape up. Even in Money we further restrict
ourselves to its capacity to multiply and how much an individual can avail of
it. Money has a power in several directions. It is not quantifiable and
therefore a discussion on the quality of Money will be nebulous. It is true that when money expands and multiplies,
its standard rises. By standard I mean the role money plays in the social
progress. With every further stage Money becomes a better instrument of social
progress representing social aspirations, social processes, social structures,
social forces, and social capacities. Only its number is measurable. So, the
discussion confines mainly to it. In a transaction, one man deals with another. Unless he is a known person one will
be reluctant to transact with him. You give your product to a man and take his
Money or you pay your Money and take his product. Several things are involved.
The product quality, the quantity of the product, whether it is not a stolen
product are there for one to take into account. There are men who will take the
Money and refuse to deliver the product. Or after delivering the product he
will come back to claim it. So, one can deal with another only when he is
rational, civilised and reliable. In doing so, the producer develops from being
a mere laborer in the field into a citizen capable of many psychological
endowments. He grows in his personality.
When transactions come to stay, trade is in vogue which means each seller
and buyer is capable of understanding a rule or law of trade and is willing to
submit himself to it. His mind becomes capable of impersonal comprehension of
rules or even a Law. Many facets reflect all these traits in a subtle fashion.
The character of Money changes from being a shell or a coin into a symbol of
social power of which processes and structures are part. To follow Money all
along its path till today in this fashion is our study.
Creation
of aristocracy was possible because Money was there. In the absence of Money no
aristocracy would have come into existence. Aristocracy is landed property that is power. It is social power to
rule and dominate. Money creates property, transfers the social power of the
weak who cannot produce or manage their production to psychologically strong
personalities. Money is an instrument of transfer of capacity that is power.
This is an evolutionary role in the society. In a tribe, all are equal. While
producing food the productive capacities of the individuals vary. Prior to the
advent of Money that excess food went to waste. Seeing that waste next time Man
produces less, enough to survive. There is no scope for using all his energies.
Money enables transfer of the excess to another. The excess is preserved in the
shape of Money. And it is an incentive for Man to exert to his maximum and
invent tools to increase his production. Property was not easily created by Man
before the advent of Money. With Money on the social picture, possession
becomes real, property comes into existence. The stronger man who is more
capable quickly discovers he is superior to the less capable man. He can see
his excess ability as Money saved his excess production. Money makes for sale
and purchase. A strong person, with his Money, can buy the property of the
weak. It is money that makes this
possible. Money is not only power but prestige. Power and prestige go
together and fortify each other. Education that brings the knowledge of
production and management is more easily available to those who have Money. The
advent of Money has created property, the propertied class, endowed them with
power, prestige and knowledge. This is the aristocracy. Repeatedly I said Money
transfers power from the weak to the strong. It transfers both ways. The
transfer is always in favour of the strong, those who enjoy the social
patronage. It is a social transition. In periods of transition society gets
more organised usually. We see Money that represents social power
simultaneously gets equally more organised. At any given time Money enjoys the organisation society has. When
the society decides to shift the power from aristocracy to the commoner, Money
again acts as an instrument of transfer of power from the aristocrats to the
commoner. Always Money serves the social ideal. Therefore it pays to understand
Money in the light of the social ideal.
Individuality
is the highest psychological endowment of a person. In its purity it means his acts will carry the stamp of his Jivatma,
the individual Divine. In the ordinary sense it means he is one who needs
no one’s help whatever the work A\Põ¯ `µß. In practice, the phenomenon of
individuality has degenerated into one living for himself. It has further
slipped down to callous selfishness. Let us take it only in the higher sense,
which means self-reliance, self-respect, capacity to stand on one’s own legs,
etc. In societies where individuality is prevalent it has come to mean not to
borrow money or any other thing. Such people when compared with similar
personalities not endowed with it are far apart. If one is a successful
entrepreneur of several millions of business, the other is an employee who
cannot retain his job. Socially it will be the distance between a judge and a
taxi driver or a janitor. Individuality has developed in circumstances where
there was no one to help. That became a virtue or an attitude. It also develops
in places where no one is willing to help. In
its best sense Individuality is developed in an atmosphere where everyone is
willing to help – would be offended if no help is taken – one chooses not to
avail of them for the sake of developing one’s own independence. In both
cases, Money helps the formation of his individuality. Individuality has its
seed in the initial trickle of success. To preserve it as work or helpful
circumstances is not so easy. Converted into Money it is easily preserved. In a
progressive work Money plays at each successive stage a higher role. As it
passes along it becomes more and more organised. What indispensable role it
plays at this initial stage, remains real at all stages. One, who has 90% cost
of a project seeking another’s help for 10% of the rest, finds that 10% has the
power to control the 90% thus destroying one’s individuality. Conversely if one
has 100% capacity for a project and needs help in various other shapes, it
won’t be surprising if none comes forth. But
if it is converted into Money even a small part, of it what his full capacity
failed to do this part can accomplish. Money has that power of organising
the social powers which the superior individual psychological talents fail to
achieve. Individuality is the highest endowment. Money has the ability to
foster it in strong ways. Beyond this Money has an individuality outside its
social power.
Money
is a social institution rising in the society subconsciously. Man can become conscious of the role of
Money more easily than society. Social evolution is sub-conscious society
becoming conscious of it through the individual Man. Money is an instrument. It
is inert. It cannot become conscious. Should it become conscious, it should be
after the society becomes conscious. We have the gradation of Nature – Life –
Society – Man. Nature is material. Our inquiry does not take us beyond Nature.
Man can become conscious of himself or even of the society. Here we seek that
Man should become conscious of Money. Presently Man alone is conscient.
Therefore he alone can become conscious of the progress of Money which is a
process in the society. He can become conscious of it in his individual life. In the measure he can become conscious or
becomes conscious, he is free of the force Money is. In theory society can
also become conscious, followed by Life and Nature. Ours is the first
proposition. The one outstanding event which I refer to often is when ONE man
was thus conscious of Money, its power, its process and progress he was able to
save the USA and the world indirectly from the catastrophe that Money was about
to wreak by Man negatively using it. In this context, let us remember that in
the event of Man choosing not to be conscious, society will act unconsciously
to the detriment of Man, but in the best possible interest of the society. That
was the Great Depression. The Great
Depression is a safety value of the society to protect itself against the
unconscious negative acts of Man. Society restores the balance which Man
disturbs. When society acts like the foolish Man and takes initiative to
disturb the balance Life takes initiative and rectifies it as in the two world
wars. Nature correcting the imbalances Life organises is the occurrence of
natural catastrophes such as cyclone, earthquake, and tsunami, etc. Earth is
evolving. Its rigidities of matter, fixities of vital, preferences of the mind
are always corrected by a wider plane. Some of the conscious Individuals of
this century -- FDR, Gorbachev. Napoleon and Leonardo led the world consciously
earlier. Man through institutions has made the society somewhat conscious and
provided for avoiding the pitfalls of 1929. The institutional safeguards Man
has devised are half-conscious but they averted the catastrophe of the 1929
type since then.
·
Man alone is
conscient.
·
He is really
half-conscious.
He has
the choice to act either consciously or sub-consciously.
·
Neither society, life
nor Nature are conscious in the sense Man is conscious.
·
Body takes upon
itself the duty of saving itself when the meddling of mind has brought it to an
impossible impasse.
·
Body then rises to
act.
·
There is no word to
denote its awareness, as Man does not see such phenomena.
·
We may call it tentatively the action of
sub-conscious awareness.
·
As long as the more
evolved parts – vital, Mind – act on their own initiative body, the social
collective, life, Nature are passive witnesses to those actions whether they
are in the right direction or not.
·
When such acts fail
to maintain the balance of the plane on which they act, the plane rises to act.
It
acts in several ways.
§
It disregards the
higher plane and restores the balance.
It destroys the higher plane and restores the
balance in its foundations.
(Society destroyed Money and a big part of the
human physical to restore it at the level of vitality – trade. This can lead to
a reversal as in 1945 or simply maintain the balance as in 1907).
Society can destroy its then existing structure as
in the Black Death and make way for a better structure.
Society can ‘consciously’ throw its weight on the
side of the rebels as in the French and Russian Revolutions.
§
Money uniformly
played a vast comprehensively constructive role in the USA for 3 or 4 centuries
to create the domination of economics over the military hegemony.
§
The First World War clearly presented a feeble
opportunity to Man to overcome his physicality avoiding the war. Man sought war
with an enthusiasm in his nerves.
§
The civil war in the
USA is a tiny but determined resistance of the physical. It left its residue of
Ku Klux Klan for over a hundred years.
§
To know all such
choices of Man is a study of social evolution.
Money
by itself is an economic entity. When you take Money as a Force you see it is
in everlasting interplay with the forces of power, powers of knowledge,
knowledge of government and every other conceivable Force. The world is a
playground where HE plays, exchanging consciousness with consciousness, force
with force, being with being, ananda with ananda. Fix Money in that widest
context of creation, focus it on social progress, then you will see Money
holding the central stage of the play called Life. Tracing this path from any
one facet of society, we can see the
same process in its local variation. The progress of the society is a process
where energy passing through force and power gives us results through our
skills. It is a process which at each further step MEETS with a similar further step from every other aspect, fully
validating His phrase new-combining which is new-creation. It is new creation
of higher energy, a more directed force, better organised power yielding newer
results through new skills that are instantly forming. This is the wonder of
creation witnessed in society as a phase of progress that is evolution. In this eternal change each has the joy of
ushering itself into freshness and the further marvel of blending with other
fresh forces. It is true that all is not evolution but part of it is the
foundation. It must be stationery,
answering to the law of necessity. Sure, it is undeniable. But the real
significance of what we are tracing will reveal itself in its original
splendour only when we are able to conceive of even that part as an
evolutionary change because in faith, it is. Suppose the student of Money is
able to fix himself in this context and trace Money through one transition
fully, the whole process will be a revelation to him. Money changes from
currency to credit card. It enables us to send money by wire. Just then it is
evident that as and when this transition from currency to card takes place
Internet and web have appeared on the computer which is already a wonder. Take
into account the fact that simultaneously the dollar has become the unofficial
world currency and American banks have opened branches here. Look at the other
act that it is in the same period the American food habits have become popular
here. Can we forget the BPOs here even if we refuse to see how their presence
is related to our study. These are only a few. We must EXHAUSTIVELY enumerate
all the changes at present and evaluate Money from the point of view of each
aspect. Money is a vital force mentally organised, spiritually sanctioned
acting in the material physical plane with a tendency to multiply.
Human Management of Money: Money need not be and
should not be allowed to activate the negative propensity of the society
Money
is an instrument of the society created by itself.
Any
instrument has both sides, positive as well as negative.
Society
too has both sides.
For
an instrument to mature in the society it has to exhaust both of its sides
working in both aspects of society.
This
is true only when the Man is not conscious.
Being conscious has the capacity to
mature without having to undergo the negative experience.
Because
consciousness is to be aware of both sides as well as the capacity to acquire
in knowledge what unconsciousness has to acquire in experience.
This
is a common trait of all instruments of the Society and Money is one.
The
positive capacity of Money is to help the society forge ahead by relating it to
other aspects of society and pressing them all to integrate so that the
progress can be fast, comprehensive, cover wider distances and produce more
powerful results.
The
ten times higher wages in the USA for the settlers is one such point.
In
India wages have risen by hundred times in 40 years leading to social progress.
In the absence of Money it would have taken a longer time.
Even
now such a progress is more in the educated states than in the states with low
literacy as education makes Man mentally
conscious.
Similarly
Money makes Man vitally conscious as Money is an organised vital force in the
society.
Advanced
parts in traffic, transport, communication, education, music, arts, technology,
political awakening are better helped by Money to progress faster, the principle being the more organised is
the greater beneficiary of any new development.
Man,
in the measure of his awakening, can play a CONSCIOUS role in the society of
which preventing Money from seeking the negative experience for its maturity
which is witnessed during periods of inflation.
In these pages, I am trying to
present a conscious mental method for the Individual and an organisational
field for the society. That can be
best appreciated when the preceding and succeeding stages are explained. We
cannot hope to explain the succeeding stages as even this stage is beyond one's
comprehension of imagination. The preceding stages will be self-revealing. If
one stage is self-multiplication, the stage before that is multiplication. It
is preceded by a stage where Money created by others is collected for the use
of one. An earlier stage is the Money one has earned has greater use than its
original value. At every stage of its higher function, Money extends
horizontally, yields subsidiary dividends, grows vertically, changes its
character with respect to the profession, society and itself. At most of these junctures, Money springs a
surprise of its inherent productivity or innate creativity. Because an
employee is paid wages in Money, we know all these above aspects in various
forms. The salary becomes guaranteed, i.e. the recurring payment becomes a
fixed phenomenon. Money in becoming wages acquires a little of the character of
the function of the company. The company produces products periodically as and
when orders are received. This uncertain recurring activity of the company
ultimately gave Money the character of wages, which acquires a fixed punctual
periodicity of a month or a week. This is a new development from the far
earlier compensation of daily wages. What issues out of this? Provident fund is
the direct immediate result. ESI is another, bringing in the benefit of various
insurances. Outside in the market this makes him eligible for hire purchase
credit. Even out of the PF, one is eligible for loans for certain categories. A major social result is the institution of
pension, which means the work one has done to the society in youth and health
takes care of him in age and infirmity. Widow's pension is another result,
not to speak of the health care insurance benefits in the West. L.T.C. is the
latest addition for the Indian employees. Annual holidays have become a
permanent fixture in the West. The extended services are so enormous that even
the unemployed enjoy them in that which abundant measure prevents them from
seeking a job.
Money
does not expect people to cooperate. They can do so only when they appreciate
the freedom Money has in its play in the society because of its social personality.
As children growing in freedom come upon their newly forming
personality to fully express it to newly integrate themselves with the society
are not sympathised with by their parents who witness their own cherished
outmoded values of anachronistic character, Money finds the society which it
wants to serve as its major obstacle.
Money has a social personality that expresses its social values.
It is true Money is a social product.
But Money is not entirely a social product, as the child born of its
parents is not entirely of the parents because its soul is not from its
parents. The soul entered that body as it originally found it biologically
conducive. So, Money brings its seminal existence from above in that it is a
force to sow itself in the soil of social life.
All creativity, Self-Multiplication, etc. arise from the germinal
seed. Its exchange value, its consequent productive capacity that tends to
multiply come from its social body that is organisation.
The birth of the Euro is epoch-making.
The talk of an Asian currency indicates the creative energy of the
Euro.
The Euro came into official existence as the dollar unofficially
became an international currency.
The period of 1950-2000, or better still the recent period of
1985-2005 is a fertile evolutionary soil to create a new world, especially the
world currency that will presage the World Government.
The student of this Theory of Development will reap a rich harvest
from a study of either of these periods.
Corruption, high wages, waste, etc. are Money outgrowing its
structured strength in the society.
It may even be explained in an opposite way that social progress is
outgrowing the structured limits of Money. Structure is the determinative reinforcements of the social form.
The forms of the society are in all planes. Its physical form is seen in the
settlement they are in. Its spiritual form has not emerged in any society
including India because Spirit tried to escape from life here. It has not
endeavoured to accept and shape life according to its expansive life.
Physicality, vitality, mentality are formative forces of life. In their
outline, it is seen in the planning of their cities. In its minute precision,
we see it expressing as attitudes that govern every day life. To be able to
cite one such expression is insight into living. To see them all is an
integrated vision of life from the focus we see. Mind gives the form;
vitality offers the energy acquiring the appropriate character. Physicality
takes the Form given by the mind, shaped by the vital. Such forms are
reinforced by structures decided by the original determinant. Money is one such
structure that guides the movements of the society, fixes the foundations of
its existence, and offers the energy for its changes of growth the society
chooses from time to time. Tanks are dug out of a surface, they are naturally
formed in a depression, or they may be built by bunds raised from the surface.
Often they overflow unable to contain the volume of the inflow. Tanks, if they
have bunds, can break them and destroy life around. Periods of development that
bring in copious prosperity are capable of damaging their structures. It cannot
be a permanent feature. As and when the excess withdraws the normality is
restored by social effort. The excess may come to stay or even choose to
increase. In that case, that care being permanent, a surviving society
creates new structures that can support its survival and allow it to reach
growth. Damages are the results of development. They must be viewed as such.
Corruption, nepotism, breakdowns in law and order; even of the moral codes
receive such benefits in transition.
Moral codes of the Society as well as Individuals are the training
given to them for efficient functioning for a period intended. Honesty, truth, integrity are
eternal values not only in the lower triplicity but in the higher heavens also.
While Truth is eternal, its versions in various levels of existence, in various
periods of history vary, the variation determined by the then aspiration of the
social milieu. To mistake the outer apparent form for the inner content is an
attitude which Man was capable of over the centuries. The educational system in
pre-British India was language and arithmetic. Now it will not suit, nor will
it be adequate. History and geography became indispensable. Later Science
usurped the pre-eminent position of poetry. In Britain in the earlier centuries
education was in classical languages, poetry, etc. In the course of learning
the classical languages, it was inevitable to acquire major philosophic
thoughts of these periods. Poetry was all education in its early eminence. Even
philosophy branched out later. The manor houses of Europe were constructed as
castles as their primary object was protection. When protection was taken over
by the standing army of the nation, these manor houses had endless rooms to
house the enormous number of guests that were invited from time to time. Of
what use is there today for a palatial country mansion of Pemberley? These are
outer forms. All forms are outer. Surely, they are not the inner content.
Currency is the outer form of Money that is the social force serving as inner
content. These forms were fashioned by the society with considerable care. The
body of the society, its human part is meticulously trained to use the form the
force has taken. The training varies from the Individual to the Society. If
Money comes into existence, a purse too is invented for the keeping of it.
Writing accounts becomes possible in the beginning, essential at a later
period. The social mind creates the form of accounting, a numerical thought
process that converts the quantity of the product into more precise quantity of
numbers. The quality of production has already changed into quantity of
product. Society is alive all the time. Its movements are productive in the
horizontal plane, creative in the vertical direction. We focus on the content
and disregard the form.
Marx predicted the withering of the state. Today we see militarily the
state is "withered" as no country as it is now can activate herself
militarily. The world, in utter surprise, noticed the fact that after the death
of the leaders of the war – FDR, Churchill, Stalin, Mao, De Gaulle, etc. – the
world has not thrown up a leader. The period of leaders is over, as the
state politically is "withering" and is settling down to municipal
functions. The basic evolutionary truth of an integrated society compels us
to look for the reflection of these aspects of life in Money. Long ago Money
ceased to be a thing representing the products of the field and the factory.
Later it was given the dignified status of representing the most precious thing
in the world, gold. No longer does the currency in circulation represent the
gold in the Reserve Bank. Nor does it now fully represent the productive forces
of the society defining production materially. It began to represent services
too. As the state passed through stages of withering, Money too has passed
through stages of losing its most material aspect of being a thing or its
representation. It represents Trust between men, trust of men of their
government, their social existence. Trust is the most durable form of mental
energies or forces. Money can travel further. The mental trust it is today
can rise to become spiritual trust. What is it to have spiritual trust in terms
of Money? Only the spiritual Individual can see another as a Spirit. One man
trusting another as Spirit is Spiritual Trust. Are there slight symptoms of it
already? Spirit is infinite. Spiritual Trust is infinite. After the effective
introduction of the credit card, Money is mostly reduced to accounting.
Handling of currency is coming down. Accounting is a numerical function
representing mental cognition that is comprehension. It does represent a
transaction that takes place. Spiritual Trust will represent the transactions
that can take place thus unleashing the potentials of the Spirit in daily
living. Humankind must discover an appropriate symbol that would represent
that Trust. It is presently indicated by Money representing the future income.
Money is the effective Social Personality determining the extent to
which its resources are utilised by its awakening. The rich lands of Thanjavur do not
yield one fourth of California lands not because the soil is not fertile, but
because the agricultural personality of the farmer is unorganised. Water is
copious, land is fertile, and the tradition of cultivation is over several
thousand years. Israel is a desert. The nation is less than a century old but
her productivity is ten times higher because the farmer is educated, he is
informed of the latest agricultural practices, he conducts researches. Mind was
born in Greece. It made Europe seek science. Mind was born long before that in
China where Mind was taken to its acme. But it was applied to life. Aristotle
applied mind to the inquiry of Nature. Hence Science was born. In India mind
was born earlier than in China. Its philosophic urges were famous. Mind in
India was applied to Spirit. What matters is not mind, but what it is applied
to. Neither China, nor India, nor even Greece pursued the inquiry of Science.
It was left to Europe. The USA applied Science to work, organised work. Hence
its prosperity. Money is the personality of the society. Only its measure of
organisation will determine the measure of social accomplishment. Education did
not spread in India. Education spreads in the nation only when it is
commercially viable, which means Money is the determinant. No temple is
popular if the collections are poor. The success of religion is determined by
Money, as Money is the personality of the society. Britain and Holland are
trading nations. Nothing enters their culture if it is not sanctioned by trade.
America has invented the principle to evaluate any work in terms of Money. No
work can get off the ground if it is not endorsed by its profitability. As of
today, the essential value of the society is enshrined in Money in all nations.
Only to the extent one works through Money
can work be done.
This is true generally for all
aspects of society as well as all aspects of the Individual. Its total relevance to the subconscious education
and the consequent creation of genius is readily seen. Progress begins in all
places in trickles, collects at one point when it is seen by all, called a
conscious expression. One who is writing a monograph on Money will do well to
describe each role of Money in its subconscious origin and its transition to
the conscious form in the Society. Trade originated in the village fairs which
had its origins in barter among neighbours. Music has its origins in the joy of
the sound. Banks’ beginnings can be seen in chit fund. Also
we see that subconscious productivity changes into conscious creativity. The
subconscious expansion is horizontal and therefore is productive. Productivity
repeats the known forms. Being conscious is no mere growth. It is creative in
the sense it does not repeat the existing form, but each time creates a new
form. Therefore the productivity changes into creativity. This rule extends to
the transition from multiplication to Self-multiplication. Multiplication
accepts the external energy, the external form and the external field.
Self-Multiplication transfers the external to the internal, the social to the
psychological, and changes from Nature to Self. The statement clarity of thought is a contribution to
peace in the context of Suez, Algeria and Vietnam gains significance.
Intellectual errors lead to irreparable losses militarily. Behind this lies a
vaster truth contained in absence of
social ostracism, minor or major, makes psychological freedom effective,
enchanting. The Individual who seeks to create Money in endless quantities
will be vastly helped by knowledge of each aspect of Money. Their absence is a
hindrance to creating Money. Their presence is a help in doing so. The freedom to create Money is a
subconscious freedom deeply felt in one’s physical substance. Doubts,
hesitations, confusions, unclarified conceptions are effective bars to
efficiently releasing a copious supply of Money.
Money is
terra firma while traffic rules, government compelled education are like brick
structures man has created. Money
is vital force. It grows from the physical reality of work, production and
existence. Therefore it is true, solid, and reliable. It gets organised at all levels. Organised at the level of
physicality, Money becomes a coin, helps exchange grains, cloth, food, etc. The
coin being easily transportable, it can travel miles more easily than the bulky
products, and there can be in store or reconvert itself into other products.
Physically organised Money, the coin, physically ‘moves’ objects. It is one of its
various functions. What do we mean by physical organisation? Man’s physical
work, its result, the produce or product, its carrying over distances, its
safety in transit, its storage, its reconversion into another product, the
people related with such activities are functionally
related in an organisation so that each input can have the possibility of
receiving all the benefits of all the components forever. The gain may be
less labour or more practical benefits all in the physical plane. One truth of
an organisation is the scope of one receiving the benefit of all, if necessary,
is opened and almost a subtle system mentally agreed on by all concerned. A
similar organisation with a greater effectivity arises in the plane of vital.
Money being a vital force representing physical work, under a system created by
the mind, in this plane we see all the effects combine. A plot is sold or
agreed to be sold. Circumstances change. Land becomes plot and Money value
shoots up. Disputes arise. If not, disproportionate benefits arise. It can
arise and reward the beneficiary because Money is there as a vitally organised
force to bring the benefits of the mentally organised urban centres to
god-forsaken outlandish parts. Suppose Money is not there. How can the owner of
the land receive any benefit higher than normal to that life? A plot may become
IMPORTANT without offering social benefits to the owner. Now, the presence of
Money acts as a medium to shift large chunks of the urban power to the rural
folk. Money is stable, not skin deep, not shallow. It is enduring, durable. It
is reliable, long lasting, has no power to change as other things.
Fields that have been enormously benefited by measurements, scales,
and tools of measurement are many. Medicine and Money stand out among them.
Money was born as a countable coin
whereas temperature, sugar, BP, etc. are scales constructed. Mother said to offer an analogy is to mentalise an
issue. Westerners are mental and do not need the assistance of an analogy or
illustration. When offered one, they may take it as an insult. In reading The Life Divine, no one born in the West
or East can straightaway take in the idea. They are so far removed from our
life. Even when one comprehends, it will be a comprehension of an empty
statement devoid of significance. An analogy enlivens the understanding. It
gives body to the grasp, putting flesh and blood into what the idea is. One
such typical example is the Real-Idea. The above statement about the value of
measurement is an important fact about the Theory of Development. Imagine the
field of medicine devoid of all these tools. Its effectivity will be shrunk
very much, may- be it will lose 80% of its present day pre-eminence. In the
case of Money it is all important. How will the investors know of the company
if there is no balance sheet? How can an executive be evaluated in the absence
of measurement? As speed enhances the
use value of Money, the measurements too do. The Exchange rates are of
prime importance in international trade. The rate of interest is such a
powerful tool that by raising or lowering 1% of it sometimes even ½ % of it,
one is able to manage the market trends. The power of Money, its power to run
away can be handled by this measure. Governments know the exact amount of
currency in circulation. They know even their velocity of movement. In the West
it is put at three while in India it was taken to be two. I am not sure whether
exact measurements are instituted. Obviously, other economic factors apart, by
trimming the administrative procedures, removing rules that are anachronistic
even in India the two can be moved to three or at least towards three. That
alone can change the face of Indian economy. Presently the bulging population
and urban migrations are two major factors that have made India the 12th
wealthiest nation in the world. Poverty remaining unaltered, this fact alone
made the Western investors gravitate towards India. There does not seem to be any conscious appreciation of the value of
these tools even in the economic sector at least to the point of
instituting more of them or streamlining the existing one. Comprehension of
Money increases considerably this way.
Such measurements help Man to shift Money from a lower
status to a higher status – from being a thing, a transaction, an organisation,
power, force.
In the Process of
creation Time precedes Mind. It is Mind that divides the One into the Many. In
this sequence there is a mystery, a mystery of the Ego. It is one secret of
creation. Ego, preceding Time is the sequence of formation of ignorance. But
Mind that divides the One into Many making the ego formation possible follows
Time. It is a mystery as well as a reversal. It is a secret that one can feel,
not understand.
In the crossing of the golden lid HE speaks of Overmind as a dissimilar
similarity. The apparent change in the ORDER
is the Key. It helps that subtle perception to change into causal sensation. Knowledge
of Supermind becoming Overmind helps in converting Overmind into Supermind.
Society
initiates endless activities all the time. The initiation, continuation and
consummation of these activities are determined in succession by the intention,
the energy it releases, the force it becomes by the direction of social will,
by the available social organisation that converts it into social power and the
social skills the population possesses. As
production represents Money or is represented by Money, peace – law and order –
the foundation for production is more vastly represented by Money. Positively
Money can build law and order; negatively it can degenerate law and order. As
elsewhere, this is not only true of Money and law and order. It is vice versa.
As a principle of social change in either direction, it is true of every social
energy or force. In the absence of Money, Law and Order cannot be raised beyond
the prevalent level. Cement and concrete are recent inventions. Lime was their
predecessor which was preceded by mud. None of our temples, especially their
high towers could have been built by mud. It was made possible by lime, its
advent. Think of every construction since the advent of cement and concrete. It
is more so with the cement that works instantaneously under water. None of them
could have come into existence if cement has not been invented. Society is a growing structure. Any new
higher aspect invented takes it higher still. If withdrawn, that part of the
edifice with collapse. Money is a higher organised entity which is constantly
organising itself at greater heights. As it rises, it raises the society that
uses it. In a new neighbourhood plots and properties are sold and bought. They
are ruled by the laws of the society. When those laws are respected by all the
community, peace prevails. Where peace
unquestioningly prevails, prices soar. It is a function of Money. Rising
prices is a social phenomenon of social power transferring itself to property
through the sacred sublime auspicious of Money. A school, whose reputation rises,
raises its cost. A musician who enjoys popular support is permitted by the
entire community to receive the adoration of the population in silent peace
which is officially described as law and order. Her price soars day by day. At
its bottom is the phenomenon of law and order. What is law and order socially
is called peace and calm spiritually. It is the spiritual peace that descends
on the society as stability. Money plays its part all along.
The phrase idiot-genius is what we
know. It is not known that one is an idiot because he is a potential genius. This is a spiritual truth expressed in the Infinite emerges from the infinitesimal.
It is so because it is the Infinite that in the process of involution and
self-absorption changes into the infinitesimal. The essential truth in the
infinitesimal, idiot, and poverty is the same. Sociological observations are
void of significances if they are not based on psychological perceptions. It is
said the poor man is poor by choice. Karma lays down that one is poor by his
past karma. Insights into the past births reveal that one has taken pains to be
poor and was tending towards absolute poverty. In the choice of birth the soul
endeavours to fix the experience it seeks in one birth. Situated in Force, this
choice has a destiny that is fatality. Situated in Being, the soul needs no
such experience in the vital plane. In that context, what it seeks is to accept
a given situation and flower through that in such a fashion that the structure
of that situation is transformed to the opposite. In the plane of Time, the soul is dormant, a witness. Its being a
witness is to allow Nature to act as she chooses. In the Timeless plane the
soul is immutable. Only in the Simultaneous Time, the Soul emerges through the
form of Time to perfect the Form. The result is Nature gives way to the
evolving Soul and Lila is one of the play of Being with Being. If this
spiritual basis is acceptable, it is easy to concede that the poorest of men is
one who is preparing himself in the reverse to enjoy the greatest wealth when
transformed. For one who knows the sublime ways of generosity of people of
abundant wealth, the ways of the poor man is spent exhaustively to shun
spending money, in devising ways of how to accomplish without involving Money.
In that sense he knows all the ways of rich abundance. He will be trying all
the rules that avoid waste, all the avenues of efficiency. Only that he attempts
them in darkness, in ignorance. The
capacity to exercise ignorance to accomplish is a great capacity. What is
needed is the decision for transformation. Once that decision is taken the
entire structure needed is there. It can be done by moving to utter
truthfulness too as ignorance is falsehood of one type.
To benefit from Money or anything
else, one has to know all its potentials. To do so we have to know Money as it knows itself. It is a theme of
integration. Presently we use Money as students avail of the facilities in a
university. Most students do not know the academic potentials of a college.
Those few who know are not interested in availing of them or are incapable of availing
of them. To emphasis the inadequacy of
man, we can say Money is utilized as much as computer is utilized in government
schools in India. To know Money is a theoretical effort, I am writing this
section to show the importance of the other man’s point of view. In schools we
rarely used to think the student has a point of view or the parent has a point
of view. Can we conceive that Money has
a point of view? Money will enjoy bringing out all its present potentials
and creating new potentials. This is an endless topic which will savour endless
repetition unless we see Money as we should see. In insurance there is an
essential difference between life insurance where one gets the full policy
value at the end and all other insurances where only the risk is covered. Such
a difference is there in others also, in Money too. The rule is one aspect seen in one place will be there in all other
places in other forms. I would like to say that it is the other man’s point
of view. Higher population raising Money value is not yet perceived by any.
Each time a new vehicle arises, such as paper currency, cheque, credit card, we
are sure new values arise in Money. I am sure even in paper currency there will
still be unused potentials. Readers do not know the writers as they know the
writing. A writer is always pleased when new readers appreciate fresh points.
Is it not a fact that Hamlet is not fully unravelled yet? Even the causes of
Depression or the WWI are not yet clearly spelt out. To offer VRS with full pay
till retirement was introduced by Tata long ago. The eight hour day was in Tata
before London and New York. Hire Purchase was a US invention. By an elaborate
legal system it can gain the same status as currency. Even the credit card has
not replaced currency. Quantitative as well as qualitative work remains to be
done. Any organisation that comes forward to do three items such as
complementary currency will break new ground. Money offers infinite scope in
infinite directions.
In
education we can see the parallel for the educationist between hearing,
listening, understanding, accepting, decision, determination and commitment. We can boldly say that cost accountancy
made Carnegie wealthy. Cost accountancy is one of the earliest processes of
integrating time, energy, work, result, etc. in terms of efficiency. Maybe the
world after devising cost accountancy gave up that approach forever in that
field as well as in all other fields. A three months repair job is reduced to
eleven hours. Imagine the tools employed. List out the mental tool, social
tools. Consider the proposition that the
tool of clock helps the plane of time to be effective as well as another
proposition that without the value of punctuality clock is rendered useless and
Time ineffective. Examine the Herculean effort of abridging time like this
and see the role of discipline of men that made it possible. Imagine the
original organisation of WORK that executed the repair in ninety days. It
enjoyed the reputation of American efficiency. Trace all the transformation
that organisation passed through in quantity, quality and the changes it
demanded in the participants. Even the energy used in the beginning and end
would have been qualitatively different as quantity does not increase without
quality changing. Different instruments must have measured the variations of
energy along this transition. Whether the same men executed the job acquiring higher
skills or different men – engineers replacing technicians, workmen – the end
work enjoyed a totally different organisation of men and materials. Now
transfer the analogy to the New York slums where men in seven weeks moved to
middle class. Look at the boat man turning into a steel magnate. Follow such
changes ONLY in terms of Money and the changes it underwent. It will help
appreciate the value of the statement that is the title. Stingy men in this
journey should have changed into generously spending lavish barons. Money
value, accounting value, waste, gift, inevitability, waste becoming precious
product, an idea bringing about that change, the corresponding change of idea
in the consumer, the social endorsement that rises or disapproval that feebly resists
are all reminiscent of a Robber becoming the Ruler exercising his own innate
evolutionary resourcefulness to rob the people in as many ways as possible. The
work needed to fully enjoy all the possible present and future resources of
Money is not to be planned by a single mind, but by the spontaneous rising of
the collective Mind sailing into social action simultaneously at all points of
the society.
Money is a social institution, a
reinforcement of the social structure, only that the structure is a growing one
and the reinforcement a living one. Internationally
acclaimed experts in education mistake teaching as education, not to speak of
the simplistic delusion that a degree represents education. It is a common
misconception among the non-scholar public that government is synonymous with
society. In this decade known as information age a very strong Maya is that information is knowledge.
Obedience passes for surrender, conformity for chastity. It is easy to overlook
the fact that chastity is a condition of the mind not the unpolluted condition
of the physical body. The aim of this writing is to deliver the Individual the
psychological capacity to multiply his Money by virtue of being a spiritual
Individual – an individual who seeks to express his Spirit. I am tempted to persuade myself that that aim
will begin to be well served if he sees the above fallacy and feels Money is a
living force serving as a reinforcement to a growing society. Any growth
breaks the existing equilibrium to reach an equilibrium at a higher level. The
society is such a living organism that not only is the above truism true but another mysterious truth also
emerges. The organism the society is
demands the equilibrium constantly be maintained as it is growing. We may
call it a dynamic equilibrium. Money, as other aspects do, helps maintain that
equilibrium. To do so or in doing so Money maintains internally an equilibrium
of growth. The vibration by which society is held and is held by all other
forces of it, is harmony. Earlier, I said, when that harmony was wantonly
disturbed rudely in 1929, society that was in a BOOM making the effort to keep
the peak the average was deprived of its glory. She had to first restore her
equilibrium lost in the vital. She restored it in the physical and for that
purpose shattered the obstacles of rigidities valid only to the physical. This
harmony, if maintained, will avoid all possibilities of such lapses the least
of which are devaluation, inflation, deflation. Honour in transaction
understood as honesty does duty to that in smaller occasions. Man’s honour with the society richly
expressed through Money delivered through the vibration of harmony will endow
him with the social creativity in the Individual. It is this that makes him
a genius, a multiplier of Money.
Money
is a power and a symbol. It rules the world. Man in the collective submits to
it gladly. Man, the Individual,
longs to be possessed by it. There is no work that cannot be done by Money. It
is as powerful as a war and conquest in it. It is a Force nothing has been able
to resist so far, not even its creator. It carried its power in all the forms
it has appeared. It has occupied Man’s mind at its centre and has made him
think abstruse topics in its terms. If Money has failed to rule any other
force, it is Romance. At lesser heights, even that sublime vibration has
consented to be influenced by Money. A power that is a symbol is greater than usual by virtue of its being a
symbol. A power, a symbol, a force of the collective possessing the Individual
is irresistible. Man emerging from that
possession and possessing it first acquires the knowledge of what it is. Such
a mental knowledge releases the mind. The same becoming vital knowledge
releases the vital power to possess it. The vital knowledge can be emotional or
sensational. Its becoming physical knowledge, knowledge of the body is mainly
of the physical sensation. Physical emotion is more powerful and is called
passion. The yogis of India have shunned it so much that it is difficult to
find sannyasis who will receive it. In the case of one, even the
touch of gold created a reaction even if he has not seen it to be gold. He has
physically in the sensations rejected gold. It is the negative side. We seek
the positive side of possession without attachment. Money began as work and the
results of work, when it is energy. It became the collective energy,
particularly the energy in exchange when it represented the collective vital
power. The generation of energy, its spreading to the collective from the
individual, its being endorsed by the collective vital, that dividing itself to
become the individual energy and finally that coming to hold it in venerable
adoration in its emotion is one essential process of Money organising itself
into power. From there it has reached the mental comprehension where mind has
given it an organised form and released its sentiment for it. That is the role
above. Below is the body without whose endorsement and enjoyment nothing in our
world is established. Vital’s power, mind’s understanding and organisation,
physical sensation’s welcoming possession creates Money in the collective. He who seeks knowledge of Money must
psychologically expand this outline into a clear-cut thesis of emotional
understanding. That is knowledge. It will become power when his emotions
along with the physical sensations are proud of it in utter understanding
detachment.
The
emergence of the nation-state is a landmark in social evolution. It was done by
the army. The army was physical. In this formation, Money played an important
secondary role as the army got its supplies mainly by looting. No longer can
looting be officially or practically practised. The general who was the King
slowly saw the importance of politics. Over the last few centuries the
nation-state was presided over not by the general but by a leader who
represented the people. In that measure Money was gaining in
significance. It is a shift to civilisation, Mind ruling over the body. The
future World Government is seen in its embryo in the European Union. EU was
created by the Euro. The dollar rules the world as the unofficial world
currency; but Euro was an official currency. EU created the Euro; the Euro
created the EU. Both statements hold good. The creation of the government in a
country was done by the political stability that is peace. Behind it was the
army. When the peace was disturbed, the police restored it, failing which the
army restored it. If army too fails, the nation disintegrates into a tribe.
Army represents the physical force, the main force. Civilisation requires
renunciation of force and resort to rational thought as well as rational
living. The norms of such a living are
enshrined in Money. Man, who rises above the nation state, desires to rise
and continuously rise in his living standards. One of them is copious traveling
and constant communication, both of which technology has made possible. Continuous rise in living standards is the
secret held by the continuous rising value of the currency. In the gross,
this rise is in proportion to the rise in population that uses and honours the
currency. It is an argument for the states to come together. Every advancement,
be it in thought, living, organisation, technology, or culture raises the value
of the currency. The birth and functioning of the EU confirms all these truths.
There is talk of an Asian currency. World currency is only one step away which
is the penultimate step to World Government, Sri Aurobindo’s third dream
─ the first being the independence of India and Asia and the last being
the birth of the Supramental Being and India becoming the Jagat Guru. Law that unites in organisation has had its teeth in
the army. Now that power comes from Money that is common currency. Man was
beaten into submission by the bullet. Now
he is to be lured into prosperity by Money whose value is constantly rising, before
he is educated into cooperation. The unity that is there in the Spiritual basis
is to be rediscovered in the basis of material, moral living.
Civilisation
created power, acquired knowledge, became prosperous. Military leaders created
powers and became kings. The next king should be one who could rule, but
circumstances enabled the leaders to appropriate it to their family which was
held in veneration by the population. It is theoretically and idealistically
true that the power belonged to the people but in practice, it is the people
who admired the prince. It was not a path of social evolution but in the
fixities created by the physicality of mankind it held valid for 2000 years.
Knowledge was nebulous in the sense no one could monopolise it. Still it was
denied to the vast majority of the population. It was believed that that
majority denied themselves that education. In the widest sense, which is the true
sense, power, education, and prosperity cannot belong to one person or one
class, as it is truly created by the
entire society. No President today can claim the wealth of the nation as
his own which monarchs did earlier. The general, the priest, the wealthy are in
every true sense only repositories of the national power, knowledge and wealth.
Power was monopolised by a family till another general took it away. Knowledge
was monopolised by a class or caste by practically denying it to others. That no one is excluded from prosperity is
evident, but wealth accumulated in a few hands. The sentiments of
egalitarianism apart, for the continuous evolution of the society, it is
necessary that power, knowledge and prosperity belong to all. Universal
education opened the doors of knowledge to all which prepared the world for
universal suffrage. Now power has gone to the population through democracy.
Democracy has extended education to all. Without a high level of prosperity,
power and knowledge are powerless for man to emerge as the Individual. Society
develops its own tools to achieve its own aims. Money is the very tool created
by the society to equalise wealth among the population. The power of Money to
transfer social power to an urban centre, the power of the producer to the
trader was touched upon. In the 20th century Money has been
actively, if invisibly, transferring social power from the rich to the poor.
The communists have recognised this role during periods of inflation in the
other direction. Money is to prosperity
what democracy is to power. Society admits charity and service as
superstitions but does not approve of them. Conscious men became leaders,
possessed knowledge, and accumulated wealth. It is unrealistic to expect men in
those centuries to voluntarily distribute what they acquired. Of course, Asoka
voluntarily renounced war. The Rishis never claimed exclusive possession of
their realisation. Smaller minds always try to possess what cannot be
possessed. Hence society acts on its own to restore it to the original owners
through democracy and education. Now Money plays that role in the society.
Though it is natural to possess and they ruled for so long, what happened to
their offspring? The power never got transmitted to the subsequent generations
unless those generations exhibited these capacities. The Spiritual knowledge of
India is too big a plum for the small human mouth to chew. Those who attempted
it got the skin, but lost the fruit. The fruit always remained with those who
pursued it with the selfsame vigour of the original sages. The case of power
distributed through democracy and knowledge through the system of education is
there for us to see. The ease of
spiritual knowledge is very basic here but it is not pertinent, as we have
abridged it as academic knowledge. Karl Marx saw it and gave a call to the
proletariat of the world to unite, break their fetters, and expropriate the
means of production. It led to the Russian Revolution and seven decades of
State economy and secret police, without achieving the goal in USSR. The goal
is achieved all over the world. The instrument of achieving is Money. Till
World War II the centre of human consciousness was in the upper classes. Money
served them, transferring from the rest of the population more than their due.
After the war, Money serves a new master as the centre of collective
consciousness has shifted. Society is
slowly becoming conscious of its own prerogative to develop every one equally. The
Individual is capable of becoming fully conscious and need not move as the
society does slowly. Such an Individual can create wealth out of all proportion
for himself. Just now, in the person of CEOs they do it for the companies they
preside over as the company provides the organisational base for wealth creation.
In the Individual that basis is the basis of consciousness, consciousness of
his own universality. In the measure he SENSES it, he becomes that instrument.
Money is trying to develop that Individuality as it has successfully done it
organisationally. Money is acting as the means of production Marx spoke of. Not
only Money, power and knowledge, but every power of the society belongs to all
equally. It cannot be otherwise in the very nature of things. To recognise this
role of Money in its collective and individual aspects, to recognise the role
of a conscious individual with respect to the society, to see Money is offering
economic democracy to people, and to practise them are the aims of this book.
Caste
confers no real superiority, but in India it was an instrument of tyranny.
Class gave no real power in Europe, but the aristocrats enjoyed the
psychological illusion of being superior. The USA shattered the distinction of
class by freedom to work and enjoy the fruits of work by which wealth
accumulated there. Accumulating wealth
directly led to rising levels of education as the Americans understood the
value of education in raising productivity. Wealth and education shifted
the centre of the world from Europe to America. Europe has not lost anything
real except its illusions. In India since independence, untouchability is
abolished by law, the oppressed are raised by the prerogative of reservation.
What is lost for the higher castes is the unfair advantage they enjoyed till
then in education and employment. With higher education reaching higher levels
of saturation and unemployment replaced by scarcity of skilled workers, even
that will be lost. Ever since its inception, technology is offering the poorest what was
exclusively enjoyed by the rich, as we now witness in the cell phone. Partially
we see the phenomenon of rich not losing, but the poor gains. It is moving to
the stage where no one loses, everyone gains. No more of win-lose, but win-win
games. Inequality in wealth will be abolished in one stroke by a world currency
by which all currencies will have the same value. The unfair advantage of low
wages for the rich will disappear. Wages in India in 40 years have risen 100 to
200 times abolishing poverty in that measure. Suppose wages are still one
rupee, who gains? The close preserve of the Ashramites of the Samadhi will be
lost when each devotee invokes Mother from his home. Money is doing it by
technology, law and population. Suppose the rupee is replaced by the dollar,
what is lost? Nothing but the unfair advantage of the low cost production. It is rarely realised that by keeping this
imbalance, the world as a whole loses. The middle class in India which has
moved to the status of upper middle class could not have risen if the wages
were kept low. Wages rose by MAN realising his social value. When Man realises
his individual value, the world currency will emerge. What democracy and
education have done in politics and knowledge, currency will do in economics.
An eminent educationist said that the
child prefers learning to eating or playing. Playing is physical, eating is vital, learning is mental. Obviously
the higher faculty is more attractive. The college gives a degree. A
professional college offer degrees that secure jobs. Its research faculties
give knowledge which may not often end in a degree or secure a job but will be
scintillating higher mental exercises from which one cannot easily wean himself
away. An eminent English writer could not put down Dumas’s novel The Count
of Monte Cristo which he began in the morning till late at night. The book
absorbed him. He was not simply reading the story which cannot hold one’s
attention like that. Being an author himself he was seeing the creative
faculties unfold through the events, characters and the plot. Hence the
interest. The more you use Money the more it comes to you. But the force of
attraction in both these cases pales into insignificance when Money sees that
your mind understands its structure, urges, functioning and the process of
movement and expansion. A child commented when two of his grandmas were at
pains to fully engage him and entertain him, ‘Grandpa make me laugh’. The
grandpa is one who loves children and loves to please them. The child has a
sense to discriminate it from the attention of grandmas. Money has a future not
easy for anyone to fathom. Its past is recorded. From its recorded past we can
know the stages of its growth and what other social forces helped Money to
grow. At each stage of transition the subtle force of Money interacted with all
the subtle forces of the society to create a positive atmosphere of 1) social
progress 2) expansive growth of Money. When Money conquered space kings
extended their kingdom stably. Money conquered Time and the world jumped a few
decades in a few years. Such acts were not the sole achievement of Money or
Time or Space. All the social forces acted simultaneously in synchrony to
create the subtle power and the invisible and visible results through the
subtle plane. Aristocratic Europe sought the patronage of savage America even
from 1800. The role of Money was dominant there. All the valuable arts
collections migrated to America. All the Nobel Prizes shifted to America. To
precisely fix the role of Money in its direct and indirect action will make
Money enjoy our understanding it.
Robert
Cooper says EU is not a mere coming together of 25 states but it is a different system, a system which
reverses the earlier characteristics or the characteristics of the earlier
system. The old system was aggressive. No longer does one nation in the EU,
(especially France now never thinks of invading Germany) think in terms of war
against another. Competition is replaced by cooperation. Laws of one nation
─ e.g. parking rules ─ are implemented by another nation; borders
vanish. In that measure ego of the nations is shed. Money in great quantities
offers a power to the possessor. It is a power of domination, a characteristic
power Money enjoyed for long. Now the accumulation of Money has the opposite character. It seeks
indifferent borrowers and persuades them to accept higher and higher credit,
offers moratorium on interest. The power of domination undergoes a change
into the power of submission, a transformation. Studying every characteristic
of EU in comparison with that of Money widens our perspective of Money. Not
only EU, but every new innovation in organisation has this parallel, a parallel
in the reversal. The greater truth of social evolution ‘The more willingly one
gives up the short term advantages of power, prestige, profit, the more
powerful, prestigious, prosperous the whole becomes’ is difficult to follow,
though it is obvious. A lower middle class family with the head of the family
alone earning offers him a respect with fear. Their deference issues out of
dependence; their reverence is based on insecurity. When all the four members
begin to earn, fear disappears, respect is for his values not for his position.
As there is no dependence or insecurity there is no superstitious deference or
squeamish reverence. The family moves into the middle class or upper middle
class. Where there was no cycle or motorbike, every member has a car having
moved into a five bedroom palatial house which they now own. This is true of any nation and is true
internationally. No one loses, but everyone gains. The world currency will
readily achieve that. Oppressive organisations change into an arena that
fosters absence of minor ostracisms, thus making freedom a socially creative
power, creative of the Spiritual Individual. An exhaustive study embracing
every dimension is essential to know Money in all its social, evolutionary
significances.
The
value of the currency was fixed and maintained by the gold it represented kept
in the central bank. Now the gold standard is no more. The production of the
fields and factories determined its value later. To that the services contributed
their mite. The theoretical appreciation
of currency has stopped there. In reality the real value of currency began
beyond these roles. Production and services are of men, rather Man. It is his
value that intrinsically fixes the value of currency. An approach that goes to
the first principles rest on the human value. Human value is complex. Mainly it
consists of how much Man values himself. Democracy that offers liberty raises
his value. His value rises by his health, rights, education, skills, accomplishments,
etc. As a rule in the more prosperous
nations Man has greater self-respect. It is best understood when we put it
otherwise. As the length of the roads rise, the currency values rises. In India
eleven miles of roads were added annually in 1947. Now it is the daily
addition. The overall rise in wages between 1947 and 2006 is from 25 p to
Rs.100 which is about four hundred times. Pondicherry receives about two
hundred telegrams a day. They are delivered on an average of three hours delay
from the time of receipt. Suppose for some reason that three hours is reduced
to two hours and it is true of all-India, the value of currency will rise by
this rise in efficiency. The quick spread of cell phones is now doing it. What
do we mean by the rise in value of currency? A family of fixed income is able
to buy for that a greater amount of comfort, i.e. the rupee is able to buy more. A long list can be provided. All of
them would sum up into the rising value of Man. They are,
·
The percentage of
passes in SSLC rising say by 5%.
·
The breakdown in law
and order coming down appreciably.
·
5% of the shops
refusing to bargain and resorting to fixed prices.
·
Banks offering loan
in a greater measure.
·
Increase of newspaper
circulation.
·
Increase of rainfall.
·
Food in hotels rising
in quality.
·
Lessening of
corruption.
·
Quality of products
in the market rising.
·
Greater inflow of
devotees to the temples.
·
Increase in tourist
inflow.
·
Truthfulness of
people.
China
created an intelligentsia 2000 years ago who ruled her. Oxford and Cambridge
and other European universities did the same. In Toynbee’s estimate, the
foundation of intelligentsia creates a Revolution in 136 years. America rules
the globe on the strength of production. The
sinews of her production come from the vast measure of her higher education. The
founding of a new state goes with the founding of an agriculture college which
grew into a university. The cultured Europeans pursued their higher education
in the USA shifting the centre of knowledge from Europe to the USA. In India
the frontline names in politics, business, education, journalism or any other
field are mostly those educated abroad, particularly the USA. It is noteworthy
a majority of them had their early education in well-known public schools in
India. It is obvious that education
moulds the leadership. Education is the part of consciousness that is light
without will. The will part of consciousness is represented by Money. What
education does by enlightenment without power Money can do by power without
enlightenment. In an earlier period of history we see Money alone qualified one
to leadership. We saw it was crude. Obviously a combination of education and
Money is desirable. If the above view is acceptable, what can the schools do to
take it further? Education makes a man rise and shine, if for any reason he is
endowed with character. Otherwise the role of education is subdued, bringing up
the rear. Leadership is of personality. Education
moving from memorisation to thinking or understanding has created a wide
spectrum of able leadership at the middle or upper middle level. Even
memorisation produced outstanding leaders, but we understand it is not by
memorisation but in spite of it. Moving education from understanding to
thinking, education can produce an able leadership of high quality that can
fully fill the top layer of the world. Thinking of Life, as distinct from
abstract thinking, gives life education. It creates personality. What education
does from knowledge side when it is trained, Money does from the side of will
as witnessed in the Nattukottai Chettiar community. Such a training on the
scale of academic education has never been conceived of so far. Now that
general education is not low, founding of such a system will fulfil itself far better
than in the Chettiar caste. It is worth seriously considering. The question is,
if we can create a new system, why base it on Money, why not base it on the
blend of knowledge and Money? The Spiritual Individual is based on NOT human
personality but the personality of the Spirit. To plan and execute such a
system on any level, comprehensive comprehension of the leadership that will
issue from Money is essential and helpful.
Equality of opportunity is not
equality. Spiritually all men and
objects are equal but appear differently in society. Mental development and
moral forms differ while the basis of Spirit is the same. Extending the logic
to the society, we can as well say that all men or even all nations are equal
in social participation and take on different levels of accomplishment in
various social results. Once the higher
perception rises, the difference in form does not matter. It has the capacity
to become equal by itself. Till then, the endeavour at equality has its
right to exist. Democracy gives equality of opportunity which is reinforced by
liberty. Equality is no goal to the society nor is it necessary to achieve it
for social evolution except in the measure its absence hinders the latter. As
equality of opportunity facilitates the free exercise of human faculties, the
right to equality facilitates the development social faculties, or the
faculties of the collective society. Money that represented the product, moved
to represent human transactions and later social productivity. Now it
represents human Trust. At each of these levels Money serves different social
purposes. At one crucial point Money
that is an economic force changes into a social force capable of developing the
social personality in the individual and in the collective the formulation of
the social power into a divine instrument. Sri Aurobindo said Money won
from the Asura and offered at the feet of the Divine Mother will become a force
that can divinise the society. Education and Money function in the society
differently as knowledge and will function as different entities in human life.
To blend education and Money is to create the Real-Idea in the society. If any
instrument is capable of doing it, it is the currency. The more individual
currencies merge together to let a common currency emerge, the better the
currency is suited to integrate education with it. I concentrate on Money often
digressing into education. The institutions of language, the vehicles of
transport, the forms of architecture that symbolise Man’s aspiration for the
Divine, the formation of states taking a nation soul exhibiting the tendency to
develop into a world union and a world government are as significant as Money.
Money is a force, education is a light, state is a form, communication is
energy in movement, transport is a mode of conquest of Space, the evolving soul
is the evolutionary centre of the spiritual development seen in the society as
its own progress.
At
$1300 GDP in democratic freedom we see India in a boom, a boom that has
attracted the attention of investors all over the world, notably the Americans.
Russia is at $6000 GDP per capita. Glenn Doman has demonstrated that crawling
rectifies defects in speech, sight, hearing, reading, and comprehension. The body being an integrated organism, this
is true and much more than this is true also. As bodily movements rectify
the defects of the constitution of the brain, mental decisions can cure bodily
ailments. In the human body as well as the humanity that is an organised
society, any aspect of it can
determine any other aspect it. The
ideal of integration is nowhere in sight. All that is happening in the society
now is partial. So, these rectifications too are by a partial effort and will
be partially effective. In EU we see the phenomenon of economic lure compelling
nations to give up war. Certainly this is an incentive that enables nations to
do it. As mentioned earlier what was imposed on nations by military superiority
is now being achieved at a higher level by a voluntary economic incentive.
Dragoslav Avramovich achieved 0 % inflation rate in a state where inflation was
astronomical by linking his currency with the German Mark. It was done in a
week. Lost economic stability was
restored by the stability of currency. In the erstwhile USSR law and order
has broken down. There is no market functioning. Politics is in turmoil. Mafia
has taken over. (Incidentally this is the negative picture in social stability,
the reverse of the business boom in software companies that is the positive
growth of a new field where no stability is as yet established.) The Russian
states are five or six times economically better than India, a vast advantage. Their currency can be replaced by the Euro
without their joining EU. It will raise the $6000 GDP to two or three times
that level. That positive economic boom can be dexterously used to rectify all
other deficiencies. By joining each aspect of EU, the states of erstwhile USSR
can completely reorganise themselves as developed nations when they will be
eligible for the membership of EU. There is no great secret here in this
strategy. A weak system upgrades itself by linking itself to the strength of a
strong system. Drag has demonstrated it. Doman has enunciated it; the Theory of
Development proclaims it. We see it is successfully working out in the European
Union. What is needed is a full appreciation of the possibilities and a humble
decision to avail of them. If done,
MONEY will reveal itself as an instrument of Social Evolution.
A
country that wants to multiply its Money resources or an Individual who desires
it, will be enormously helped by the
knowledge of Money outlined in the previous pages. The difference will be the
progress in India in 1940 and now. One is like the first generation of
education that is stiffly opposed and the other is like the 10th
generation education. Even this compares the quantity but not the quality. The
power of understanding over memorisation is great. Still greater is the power of non-understanding or non-thinking
understanding. Outside India, this thought will provoke laughter. Even
inside India, except for those who are familiar with the mental powers of
silent understanding, people will act like Westerners. One produces degree
holders and the other creates prodigies and geniuses. How is this thought
extended in its application to Money? The present life that uses Money can be
compared to memorisation. Suppose the world comes to examine this view of Money
as it has accepted the reality of pollution and initiated counter measures, the
very fact of such an examination will
become subtle attention to Money. As in recent years accumulated Money
seeks borrowers without security, relying on their creditworthiness, there will
be a further burst of Money. The only partial analogy will be the rise of stock
value from Rs.10/- to Rs.200 or 300/-. Money will be in a glut and the society
will begin to think afresh as to how Money can be meaningfully employed. In the
next step, if the world wants to implement it, I can only continue the analogy
of the stock and take it to a value of few thousand rupees. All these are
unimportant great steps. The real next big step is to use Money with a thorough
understanding of its evolutionary value but
without exercising the mind, much as the runner in the race or the musicians in
the platform are not conscious of the strenuous practice they took. Air is
indispensable without which humankind or life on earth cannot survive for an
hour, but we are almost unconscious of it and it is in god’s abundance. Money
will become air. Of course, man’s perversity should not pollute it! Before the
world honours Money with this knowledge and receives its monetary blessing, the
Individual who understands can have no objection to practice it in his life.
Such a pioneer must have greater endowments in higher perfections. The
experiment may yield some results to man as he is, but to ensure the expected results, the practitioner must adhere to
truth. It must be utter truth inside and in outside life. In a corrupt
national boom, this is a great avenue for honest public servants.
There
is no potential force like Money’s forces that cannot be converted into an
organisational procedure to be followed by all. The higher forces are only for
the Individual, for his own self-discipline. All others can be offered to all others.
Hire
purchase, insurance, chit fund, credit card, Visa card, discounting of bills by
banks are only a few of the myriad potentials of Money the world is using with
advantage. Multiplication occurs without any conscious effort in the unseen
invisible subtle plane. Self-multiplication is something few can conceive of.
As far as the undeveloped Asian countries are concerned, there are a host of
ideas in the West practised for long which are to be directly imitated. The emulating nations have to have two
things prominently in mind: 1) The scheme or procedure must be culturally
reoriented for the emulator and, 2) the extent of benefit is limited by the
organisational receptivity of the host country. That is not a line one can
cross safely. We have before us one concrete example in the creation of the
Euro. Bankers know the ratio in which each nation took the Euro. That is a
known part. The fact that the Euro will have legitimacy in more than one
country brings in an invisible power which enhances the value of the Euro as
the shares rise in value not in response to what is actually but what is
perceived. The value issues from the
power of perception. The effect of population is invisible and unseen but
is more than real. ABN Amro Bank’s experiment with micro-credit has shown that
reliability is total. This is something new that credit is returned on its own.
It must be understood as a potential of Money surfacing under the conditions of
trust. The risk taken by the bank has brought it out, as the Grameen Bank. The potential is Money’s capacity to create
reliability in a cross section of unreliable population. What the credit
card witnessed is a new insight into the field of lending that one can borrow
not on solid property but on his behaviour in repayment. To chronicle all these
capacities for the benefit of non-users and offer it to them as a kind of
training is great. To move to the inner zone is less tangible now, but that is
the area where great power is compressed. Already some programmes are there
which have seen the generation of non-monetary powers to the bank when the bank
utterly gives away the Money and does not ask for it back.
This is a theme for integration, of
integration. At this stage, we cannot handle integration unless we have studied
integration. For the present, it is enough we trace Money on one path till the
end. Money on its onward journey
takes on itself every possible social character and grows in weight and
significance. The fashion in which it grows is our study. For that, one has to
start with Money, the thing, if not earlier and end at Money an organisation,
if not a social force. In a god-forsaken village, a farmer of six acres of land
diligently cultivated when the whole village had gone for well digging. He
became affluent overnight in one year. The excess money went into a house of
big size. His son went to college, got an M.Sc., and married the niece of a
High Court Judge. Money brought him status through education. The boy and the
Judge are poles apart socially. Caste played a part but the main role was that
of money. Without education, the farmer’s money would have gone to raise the
price of neighbouring lands. Kurien sacrificed a few lakhs of salary all his
career. He denied himself what was legitimately due to him, as he was of the
generation of freedom fighters. The Money thus sacrificed brought him in touch
with the Chief Minister, Prime Minister, President of FAO, World Bank, WFP and
every dignitary in the world. Nor did he lose all the money he sacrificed.
Through 168 awards the accompanying cash ranging from Rs.5000/- to $200,000
came to him. Had he been a government official with a monthly salary, in spite of
his accomplishment, he would not have risen this high. Money travels down the
gradient as water moves losing itself in seepage. When the round is complete,
it is capable of returning to its origin or to a representative of it. How then
are we to study it? The progression of a thing --
transaction-organisation-power-force-pure force-Divine Force -- is a fully
comprehensive outline for the beginning. Studying
its role, character, complexity, and colour at every stage is important. Something
more important are the points of transition and the actual changes Money
undergoes. Organisation multiplies we know. Transaction brings the social power
into Money. Even as a mere thing, Money makes the man work himself to
exhaustion. Moving from organisation to power, it has the capacity to occupy
the centre of social power and control social movements. Positively it can save
the world from bankruptcy. Negatively it can ruin the world, unleash war,
create a holocaust and usher the world into a boom, initiating a new saga where
the hotbed of war declares that war is unthinkable and play the role of
successor to war to achieve its negative ends positively. Ultimately it can act as a World Army to found the World Government and
pave the way to the fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo’s final dreams.
Apparently
this looks like a repetition. If we receive it as a repetition, it means we
miss the new facet of Money that is issued out here now. Earlier we spoke of
these same things more from the point of view of the Society. Now we do so from
the point of view of Money. There is a world of difference. One question is, if Money has all these
facets, where do they meet? How? What is the result and significance of their
meeting there? In being a thing Money is a medium of exchange, helps store
energy, becomes easily transportable and serves as an incentive for man to
exhaust his maximum potentials. Money, a thing, in bringing two people
together, permitting one product to be made over from one man to another man, it is Matter by virtue of its symbolism,
helps a conscious man transfer a material product to another conscious man.
Symbolic matter bringing two points of live conscious minds to recognise the
value of one gross product in terms of another material symbol. It is matter
becoming conscious in a vital plane by the office of mind. This is pure
philosophy. To explain each act of ours everyday to ourselves in this light is
to raise our minds to the heights of philosophy. Money is an occasion for us to
know the society and ourselves. Money plays that role very effectively because
of our abiding interest in it. In a transaction Money opens up the personality
of men − the intra-conscient and circumconscient of their beings −
to us, creates a web of energies moving in all directions thus creating in the
society a new plane of existence, the plane of selective vital relationships
made possible by the movement of material products, guided by decisions of mind
when the decisions synchronise. Only when Money comes to organise, it
finds its productive capacity uplifts itself into creative originality in being
able to bring several persons together to meet on a commonly agreed on
programme to be implemented according to fixed rules. Money here is creative in the subtle plane and initiates itself into a
new capability of multiplying its result based on what is already created by
others. Pure creativity is to create Money out of human Trust where man
witnesses the phenomenon of one rupee becoming one thousand rupees, much as one
seed in the soil gives birth to one thousand seeds. Knowledge is to know what
is there. Wisdom is to learn how knowledge acts in the planes of energy and
action.
As
the mountain rises, it tends to be a peak that is narrow. In culture,
democracy, national virtues what is acquired at the top gradually seeps down,
called descent in the language of the Theory. Completion, fullness, wholeness, totality entirety are expressive of
several shades of the one concept, but integration includes all. In the
integrated state the infinitesimal is infinite. In a case like Money we can
conceive of two states of integration. One is integrated Money and the other is
a society into which Money is integrated. As Money rises from one state to
another, it is mandatory that the previous level is saturated with the
intensity of that level. Out of that saturation rises the next level. The known
structures are so constituted as each layer is saturated with its own intensity
giving birth to the next higher level and leaving each birth severely to
itself. This may be enough to generate further higher levels, not for what we
conceive of as Integration. Even in integration we speak of a fully integrated
state. A democracy is said to have reached an ideally mature condition when
each voter is qualified as a candidate. It is primarily done by education,
heavily supported by wealth. It is
really consummated by his own character and personality. A fully mature
democracy may be one where the collective Personality itself has arrived at
that maturity. Money as a thing, at that stage, will cease to be a thing but
will become Money that is pure power or force. Put in another fashion one can
conceive of Money as a force as a thing by another evaluation. Transaction
becoming organisation or the thing becoming transaction is more easily
conceivable. Imagine transaction becoming organisation. In that case the
society itself must be so fully organised and so well that even outside Money
mere transaction has acquired the power of social organisation. This GRADATION
of levels of existence horizontally and vertically is something one needs to
understand and appreciate to fully endorse the above argument. For Money to
rise to organisation from transaction it is enough transaction is saturated in
its own plane. For it to convert the transaction in the plane of transaction
into organisation, society in several other aspects, if not in all, should have
reached that maturity where transaction is organisation. To think out each
stage, each transition in such elaborate clarity is a sine qua non for the Theory. For the purposes of Money, it is
enough the basic argument is comprehended in terms of its applied existence.
While
it is a thing Money makes man grow in his capacity. Shifting to being
transaction, Money multiplies itself by releasing the untapped productive
capacity of the society. Society moving to manufacturing from agriculture, a
new capacity of production comes into existence. Agriculture needs lands;
manufacture needs a factory and machines whereas the service sector needs no
such material base for its productivity. Human
willingness to work is the plane in which Money grows. Next Money moves to
the plane of human TRUST which creates Money not by the work expending energy
but by the mere attitude of mental Trust. That plane multiplies the existing
Money which at the point of its growth Self-Multiplies. What is true of the collective
is true of the Individual. He needs to have an initial capital. Once he has
that it can multiply and later self-multiply. Money having a character of the ways in which one has earned, what
multiplies will also multiply that character. Therefore it is necessary to
initially earn a substantial character that is positive. It is perhaps the
critical mass needed. How the individual can multiply his Money is illustrated
by what happens to the investment banking. There are two outstanding examples
prior to the Depression of 1929. A beginning with half a million dollars gave $
636 million in a year or two and another who started with $6 million in a
similar period saw it rise to $1300 million. The individual being an individual
can witness the result first. Suppose one whose honesty is 70% can raise it to
71%. Such a decision will directly result in a greater in-flow of one more
percent of income. Raising it to higher percentages, his income too will rise,
not in exact proportion but in a wider way. Up to 99% the process will be
productive multiplication. At 100% it
turns creative and begins to Self-multiply. The world has been witnessing
this phenomenon for over a hundred years, but does not stop and give it the
thought it deserves. One is free to receive the increased flow as result. It
will give him that much of Money. Based on that real experience of his, if he
comes forward to learn this Theory of Money that knowledge will become Power in
him. The extent to which it will be real will be determined by his personality.
He can create Money for the Society through an appropriate organisation or do
so for himself without the medium of such an ORGANISATION.
This is a general rule or law of the
Theory of Social Development. Each
plane and the members therein grow by virtue of their exertion that draws upon
the resources of that plane. The occasion for development is not fully
supported by such energies but they await the energies from above to descend on
them. School is for the great mass of children who are unable to utilise the
social resources to educate them. In the organisation of a school, there is a
syllabus based on the wider curriculum where a teacher arrives with a textbook
and a mandate to teach, enters the class as an authority to teach what is there
in the textbook. The curriculum,
syllabus, textbook, teacher, organisation of the school and its discipline are
social resources which the pupil is unable to avail of either by his authority
or capacity for organisation. Society does it for the child. It is growth.
The boy who has exhausted these resources and is capable of drawing upon the
original thoughts that are afloat cannot be helped by the school; rather the
school will stifle it. He must seek them from outside the school in the society
or in the library. The higher regions of knowledge descend on him so that his
mind may avail of the occasion for development. At the stage of transaction
Money is a resourceful instrument that can draw upon the unutilised productive
capacity of the society thus enabling Money to grow into a vital force of the
Society. Rise to the plane of pure trust. It
is a creative power, capable of multiplying Money. That power of Trust does
not lie in the society as its productive capacity. It is a psychological power
of the Individual who is no longer one capable of conforming to social
conventions. It is, in its origin, a truly higher power, a power of the Spirit
emerging in him. Only that can make him an Individual. Society and conforming
it to it can, at best, make him a citizen. The higher you reach for
exploration, the higher is the revelation. One sees productivity that is
vital-physical transforming itself into creativity that is mental-spiritual. It
was Hamlet who said that doomsday was near when he heard the world had grown
honest. Honesty spells the doom of the
world we live in. Honesty is the truth from above. We live in an organised
falsehood called the social plane. Another basic rule of evolution is explained
here by implication. Nothing higher can ever be created permanently or
meaningfully until the old structure is demolished. The old structure of
falsehood is so sensitive and cautious, says Hamlet, that on its serving the
advent of honesty, it recognises the need for dissolution. To make this
phenomenon clear at every stage of transformation in the long chain of Money’s
journey helps clarity of thought. Clarity of thought, said Robert Cooper, is a
contribution to peace. Right understanding
dissolves wrong foundation.
The powers of Money in its highest form still not conceived by
humanity can now be seen in its earliest expression of shells. To trace the
higher powers in the lower levels and the lower powers at higher levels makes
for a completer knowledge.
We
know the body has a mind and a spirit. Mother speaks of a material mind well
below the body mind. She also mentions a corporeal mind. The Egyptian mummies preserved the bodily form as the embalming had
released the material mind into action, says Mother. Shell was a symbol.
Imagine the effort mind had to take in the beginning to comprehend that the
area of a circle is Πr². It is one thing to use the formula and another
thing to comprehend the significance of the formula. Area itself is a concept.
The relation between the radius and area is a further step and Õ challenges the mind. Even the one who uses the
formula exhibits a certain amount of effort on the part of his Mind. It takes
all the energies of his mind as the tapasvi
who goes into trance losing all the activities of all his parts of being.
Shall we say cannibalism was blunted when the community accepted the shells?
One who has attempted to change his anthropomorphic idea of God to conceive of
Him as infinite, eternal Brahman can fully know the type of effort the
primitive needed to accept the shells as Money. In the heydays of currency we
see misers hoarding Money and thoroughly enjoying the act of possessing those
bundles of printed paper. To the miser the currency is still a THING as the
initial gold coin. It is a rule in His Theory of creation that all the aspects
of one plane are found in all other planes in modified forms. To exercise the mind with respect to Money
in this fashion is our aim and scope. Take the formulated aspect of
organisation of Money when it begins in a pronounced measure. Ten people
joining in a chit fund suddenly discover, especially the one to whom the lot
falls in the first month that the
availability of Money is multiplied ten fold just because he is part of an
organisation. Is this organisation in evidence in the credit card or VISA
card? Or in the transaction. Can we see it in the shell? It is. Only that the
concept of organisation modifies itself to suit the plane. VISA is organisation
par excellence. It is an organisation
of several concepts of organisation in other planes or other levels of this
plane. In the shell ORGANISATION is implicit in bringing the shell into an act
of selling or buying, a thing and an act are organised to create a symbol that
inheres the social power which it generates. Production is the result of energy
expended. Barter or selling is generative of power. We see the inklings of
organisation relating energy with power.
·
Money being a mental
symbol consumes unending energies of the plane of its creation rendering that
plane less raw and more politically civilised.
·
Cannibalism, as said earlier, lost its original
vigour.
·
Outbursts of tempers
or clash of interests ordinarily led to riots and settled down as permanent
condition of anarchy.
·
The world witnessed
in the fastest growing city of America, Chicago, unprecedented dynamism when
the population grew in fifty years to the extent of a few centuries of growth.
She lifted the whole city to five feet higher than the ground level. It was the nest of gangsters, producing Al
Capone.
·
War could be more
organised when soldiers were assured of pay in coins instead of relying on
looting. The army becomes less uncivilised.
·
A riot issues as people
are poor, i.e. Money acts as an instrument of transfer to the benefit of the
rich. People riot to rob that Money. Even to organise the riot SOME Money is
needed in the beginning. Even that cannot be looted as once looting starts
riots cannot be stopped. Money has a
role everywhere and the character of Money -- the initial Money -- decides
the outcome. In such situations wild rumours are afloat that decide the
course. One who follows the ways in which rumour shapes and acts can see the exact parallel in Money, its
course, how it acts, multiplies, destroys.
·
All that I write in
this page is indicative of significance and NOT exhaustive of the process.
·
Terrorism is a miniature war of the days before the
rules of war were honoured.
All wars, much more so terrorism, arise out of the
strength of the weak; violence is the response of the weak who imagines himself
strong. He imagines himself strong as he has had a past to justify that
imagination. Such a justification issues out of a past glory real or imaginary.
Fortified by a sentiment religious, patriotic or any non- mental emotional
intensity, it becomes fanaticism.
Fanaticism, by its intensity attracts Money and
sacrifice.
Emotion devoid of thought shapes as fanaticism by
intensity.
The roots of terrorism are at the bottom of these
emotions and intensity and the reason why it is devoid of thought or how the
available thought is either overcome or made to serve this fanaticism.
Those who have headed Revolutions know Money has
been a major determinant in initiating the Revolution. Looking at the
formulation of a Revolution among the people as well as among the leadership, the crucial role of Money and how it
determined its possibility can be seen. It is more important to see that
the character of Money ─ who it serves, for what purpose ─ is also
changing along with the changing course of the Revolution. It is here one can
perceive the role of Money as a determinant. The First World War originated by
an assassination. Indian Independence was immediately succeeded by an
assassination. Caesar was assassinated. Lincoln was assassinated at the end of the civil war. Indira was assassinated
by the Sikhs. All these assassinations were from the disgruntled defeated who
had once ruled. The present terrorism centred in the Islamic countries has
among other things several causes of which the prominent ones are
·
Foreign Aid. Either the recipient or his rival
takes offence. Both are mortally offended by the help which announces the
superiority of the Aid giver.
·
Behind the
intransigence of the Islamic countries lies the Israel-Arab conflict, an
eternal quarrel between blood brothers.
·
The Jews represent
Money. Their Money secures help, support, and aid.
·
In that fashion Money has entered the fray since
the First World War.
·
The Israeli Prime
Minister said that Palestine can be swept into prosperity as Singapore.
·
Money can cause the
conflict, Money can resolve the conflict.
·
Ireland has
experienced the unconscious resolution of unreasonable violence by the rising
prosperity.
·
The roots of
terrorism appear as poverty, while they are deeper still. It is the once
martial races, empire builders, fanatically superstitious illusionists now
rankling under an inconceivable inferiority complex that are its very springs
now. In another sense this principle is behind all violence, even the violent
wars of the STRONG. What was considered strength, military strength, considered
in the context of the world’s progress, is real weakness. The cure lies in NOT
throwing one’s weight about in the fullness of unjustifiable pride, a pride of
the uncultured.
Man
starts learning consciously not even in the school, but later when he knows
what he wants to learn and how it can be acquired. Till then his gathering of
knowledge is not conscious, but contains various measures of subconscious
elements. The difference or distance between the subconscious knowledge and
conscious knowledge is the same as between starlight and sunlight, animal sensation
and human thinking, education outside the school and inside the school. Man has the ability to convert that
subconscious process of Money in the society into a conscious process by a
decision of his. For him to do so, he needs to know that subconscious
process as well as the conscious process and in addition he must know how to
convert into the other. When a skill is learnt we learn it in the surface and
pass it on to the subconscious and not interfere with it. It is the function of
Mind. Otherwise the subconscious will take an inordinately long time to learn.
Mind receives it on behalf of the subconscious and transfers it to the
subconscious and remains withdrawn. When the Mind receives from the
Superconscient, Mind receives the instructions and without interpreting them
passes them on to the subconscious for execution. In either case Mind is not
active, does not exert its faculties of analysis, thinking or understanding. Only in such an attitude Mind functions as
the instrument of the higher consciousness. Functioning as it is, its own
Mind will be a bar. To understand Money from the higher functioning of the
Mind, one discovers that the subconscious is converted into the conscious. It
is evolution. It is Supramentalisation. This way of functioning brings down the
Supramental consciousness to bear upon Money. That brings out ALL the potentials of Money from the
earliest THING to the highest Divine
Force. Such a knowledge in the collective enables the society to multiply the
Money infinitely and renders it superfluous as air. The same knowledge in the
Individual enables him to create ‘infinite’ Money to make him individually
prosperous. The same Individual with the same knowledge will impact on Money
differently if he represents the society. That will be a JP Morgan in a higher
context. Morgan avoided a crisis. Such an Individual will create crisis–like
opportunities where Money will act as an instrument of Transformation of the
Society.
The
present evolution is based on man’s capacity to be Self-conscious which means
the human soul becomes Self-conscious. To
be Self-conscious means to be conscious of the Self, Brahman, in us and act
from there. Money is a mental organisation, a vital power, an instrument in
the society to guide it in evolution. It is inert; at best vitally
self-conscious in the sense the vital force in it cannot be overlooked. Sri
Aurobindo spoke of Man winning Money from the Asura to be put at Mother’s Feet.
Money becoming Self-conscious is the vital in the collective society becoming
Self-conscious. It is a far cry for us at present. Anyway to be informed of
such a phenomenon and why it is not feasible now can certainly help. Our aim in this thesis is Man, as the
Spiritual Individual, becoming conscious of the evolutionary role of Money and
using it for his own purposes instead of becoming a slave to Money. This
from a higher point of view is partial Self-consciousness, better called
self-consciousness. In the Revolutions such as the French and Russian we see
the SOCIETY becoming Self-conscious
for a brief period, bringing about the necessary basic changes and leaving the
rest in the hands of human leadership. On
such occasion Man sliding back to old prestige or habit as FDR, Napoleon or
Lenin is usual. It happened all over the world in China, India, etc. In
this view Revolutions are moments when the Society becomes Self-conscious. We
call it social awakening or the ideal coming into its own. In Britain Freedom
awoke about thousand years ago and we saw the Spirit of Freedom becoming
Self-conscious in their fight against Hitler. France, which underwent the
Revolution, because of lack of character could not rise to the occasion, was
not able to be Self-conscious against the attack of Hitler and succumbed to it
in a facile fashion. Even here in Self-consciousness there are grades. We see
Money energising man, activating social productivity, organising trust in
members of the society, acquiring social power in a general way and becoming a
centre in ONE man or in one
institution. Only when Money reaches the level of pure Divine Force can it
aspire to be Self-conscious. If, today, anything is so Self-conscious it is the
society in moments of Revolution and society does so in its leaders of Revolutions.
Great
Souls are capable of Self-organisation. The Spiritual Individual is capable of
such a Self-organisation with Money.
The self-organisation is that of the
ego, while Self-organisation is that of the Spirit. Every farmer having a fence or watchmen is an
organisation demanded by work. It is therefore work-organisation. The whole
village deciding not to let loose cattle during the cropping period is social
organisation. Bank is a financial institution but also is a social organisation
as well as a commercial organisation. The credit card, as it is based on trust
– the credit-worthiness of the customer – is more a psychological organisation
than a social or financial organisation. A college is a social institution
while a scholar in a subject is an institution in himself where we see
education moving from the social plane to the individual focus. In that
measure, a genius or even an accomplished scholar is a self-organisation of
education at a point of transition into knowledge. We say in a certain context
law will take its own course as we recognise the independent personality of law
as an institution by itself slightly outside the control of the society. An
organisation arises out of work and is capable of moving to being a social
organisation or human organisation. It can also mature into a cultural,
religious, spiritual organisation. Self-organisation arises when the field or
organisation acquires a personality or even ego. The same organisation shedding
its narrowness, widening into its spiritual expanse with the centre in the
inner eternal Brahman will rise to become Self-organisation. The Individual
rises through the scale from physicality to Spirituality. At the physical
plane, he found his body to be unique, apart from the gregarious collective. At
the vital level, a similar individuality makes him the leader, general and
monarch. Mentally it raises him to be an expert professional, a genius, and an
original thinker. The Spiritual
Individual is one who has discovered
his spiritual uniqueness in the context of the society. Such an Individual
exercising himself to create Money having discovered its faculty of creativity
through self-multiplication is capable of creating endless quantities of Money.
His organisation can shift from the human self-organisation to the spiritual
Self-organisation either within the society or in its own. It is the work of an
awakened soul. What Great Souls can do either in Money or elsewhere is
something outside our scope here but it is worthwhile thinking of such possibilities
in the age of Internet.
The
functioning of the body, the sensational organisations of the animals, etc. are
subconscious organisations. They are subconscious in more than one sense that
they are not consciously organised, they are unperceived by the conscious mind
and they are flawless. To become
conscious is to develop Mind. Memory gives up the subconscious to become
conscious. The subliminal memory is ever-present while the subconscious and
Superconscient memory surfaces when the act surfaces. They cannot be summoned
before the act occurs. Conscious memory can be summoned at will. Subconscious
memory presents after the subconscious act occurs while Superconscient memory
does not even after the act. Superconscient
memory is understanding. It has to be activated through the conscious memory. After
the superconscient act occurs, one has to activate the conscious memory to
understand it. Here we see the subconscious and Superconscious trying to unite
through memory. Both have a non-memory territory. For the subconscious, memory
is the conscious part, while for the Superconscient memory is the human part.
One faints when the subconscious moves beyond memory. In the non-memory part of
the Superconscious, one loses oneself in the hold of the not-self (£µÁ\®).
Institutions like Money begin in the society as a subconscious organisation
where the society accepts its use value, become a conscious organisation with
human direction and planning, moves up to the Superconscient organisation where
Money acquires power over the entire community and is available for conscious
direction as Morgan did in 1907. The Federal Reserve is the institutionalising
of the individual acumen of Morgan. At that point the Superconscient
organisation descends itself to conscious understanding and memory. The
subconscious aspiration towards the superconscious is initially through memory.
Memory is an attribute of the conscious extending to the surface of the
subconscious and the lower regions of the Superconscious. Subconscious or the
Superconscious organising themselves in the domain of the conscious under its
own auspicious divorced from their native dynamism becomes superstition. The
subconscious organises primitive superstition. The Superconscious organises
religious superstition. It becomes
chaos, an organisation of the unconscious, when the conscious gives credence to
it. Astrology, if acted upon as a guide, reinforces karma effectively
preventing man from reaching the Spirit. Religion where man follows the
inspiration of another, organised by conscious direction as religious worship
is organised, becomes superstition organised, effectively ruling out the use of
Reason forever.
This
book is properly a book on Social Evolution but is taken in a specific focus of
Money. Money can be fully appreciated only with the complete knowledge of the
society. Society can be so understood only when Money and all other aspects are
so comprehended. It is analogous to reading text and criticism. Wherever the
context demands or even permits, I have gone on a digression to other aspects
such as language, education, etc. One
fact is society is multifaceted, rather has infinite aspects which are all
evolving simultaneously in 360°. Money is one of them, a latecomer. Of
course, the role of money as a symbolic instrument of social cohesion was
played by other aspects earlier. For instance, language is such a symbol.
Knowledge that observes, identifies, recognises, symbolises is exactly such an
instrument but totally subtle. It is impossible though interesting to extend
the quest so far. It is not indispensable for us here. Starting at the point
when barter changed into Money and its symbols, it is not exactly possible for
us to know the linguistic development of the human mind, his extent of social
interaction, his capacity to know the environment objectively, his sense of
aesthetic appreciation, his ability to fight, more so his capacity to live in
harmony with others for harmony’s sake or for the demands of social existence,
his perception of the astral bodies and their influence on his life, etc. To
some extent we can appraise them. To that extent we can imagine the role of
Money then. If documents are available then it may take a concrete shape. What
is just now readily and precisely possible is the previous stage of Money
before the credit card or even the stage prior to paper currency is fully in a
recorded version in Europe and much more so in America. The glitter of gold
when it is a coin is less when it is currency. To that extent, physical
possessiveness loses its charm. No bank can discount a sale on credit when what
was expected is cash. Credit sale through a bank can be discounted. Thus trade
extends to commercial banking. Banks then require educated clerks where we see
the indispensable role of education for discounting bills. Honour developed in
trade when trades were illiterate and could not prepare documents. Honour was to
trade what memorisation is to education. Absence of literacy integrates trade
with ethics. It is certainly possible to locate hundreds of avenues where
society evolves and see the role of Money integrating with them. Still one must
clearly know that it cannot be exhaustive from the earliest of times. At
present it can be never exhaustive.
Consideration
of social emotions, social conformity, individual conviction, individual
conscience, urges from human nature, universal impulse in us, our own personal
impulse at the three or four levels of mind, etc. will throw light on the above
theme. A house in a slum and a house in a rich locality are still houses,
serving the basic purpose of shelter. How
those purposes are served and what those purposes are, are vastly different in
stature, structure, content, concept. Money differs vastly with different
levels of society, with different periods of history as the society differs. Money is as society is. Money serves
social values. It helps their formation, fostering, reinforcing. Money helps
the society to grow from one level to another level. When Man wants to destroy
the society Money helps that destruction. When Man borrows heavily, Money rises
superior to him, insists on its own personality and breaks his back and pushes
him down in the society. Money is an instrument. It serves its master whether
it is the society or Man. It also has a personality of its own. When Society or
Man is out of his depth, Money comes into its own to assert its role. It is not
a docile instrument. It is an instrument with a character. The subject of what
an instrument is with respect to society and Man is something into which we
need not go now. One thing is sure --
Money is not indifferent to ANY aspect of society or the Individual. It does
try to integrate with each of them as fully as possible as the context permits
or demands. So, we have to know the successive stages of social growth as
well as the stages of individual growth so that at each stage we can
meticulously workout the way in which the integration with both of them is
worked out. It is best done in a recent period where all the facts are
documented. Its growth is best observed TODAY
when the transition takes place. That pattern will essentially hold good at
all periods. The mafia takes note of men when they earn more than $100 million
which discourages many to earn further. That accumulated Money inherited does
no good is recognised by parents and they give away the best part of it.
Society frowns on the filthy rich, no longer looks up to them. One section of
people are shy of five star hotels and avoid them. In a country like India,
even today, no one is proud of successfully making great money. These are simple
public opinions but sifted in terms of the character of social integration the
significance of the symbol Money is, its capacity to foster social growth, its
sense to the god-seeker will reveal more fully. They can best be appreciated
when the ego of the collective and the ego of the individual are fully known in
their interaction in the social evolution which is an aspect of spiritual
evolution.
The
phases of survival, growth, development, and evolution are inescapable whether
it is the Society as a whole or the Individual as a part. This rule is valid for every aspect of the Society, organisation,
institution, culture, custom, usage and every other conceivable part of them. Paper
currency, the bank’s role, gold standard have fought their battles all along.
The Great Depression was a fight of Money in its durable form against the
Society’s capacity to indulge its negative energies. Inflation and deflation
are important landmarks in the life of currency. The central bank is the
psychological centre of the field of Money-forces of the Society. In the USA an
agriculture college sprang up as soon as a State was constituted which was
quickly upgraded into a university. In India primary schools opened by the
government in the rural parts were to close because young kids were
indispensable in agricultural operations and domestic service. We see the
phenomenon of a clip becoming a house in the Internet. Will this stray
phenomenon come to be established as accepted behaviour and a stable
organisation? The Austrian town magnificently experimented with complementary
currency abolishing unemployment and raising the level of prosperity. Just
because it was a success, it was not accepted by the society. It died a death
from which the experience has not yet revived. Drag’s success went unnoticed. Success is only one aspect of survival. Survival
needs social maturity of consciousness as well as infrastructure. The old
should gracefully withdraw for the new to come of age. The rule is a violent
break. In the case of the Austrian experiment, the central bank took a perverse
stand that no one else could issue currency. Drag met with the age-old rebuff
of NOT recognising the success of anyone else. The four phases of development
have their parallel of conscious ignoring, conscious refusal to sanction,
active opposition, compromise, trying to establish the old in the guise of new
and silent dissolution. The entrenched religious orthodoxy in India, in the
Islamic countries and in USA are playing these roles as if they are struggling
for survival. Such efforts always find ardent support from the highest quarters
as Jackson did with currency. The fundamentalists of USA and the White House
are in the same camp now with respect to nuclear disarmament.
The
world has certainly come to recognise the evils of overeating. There was a time
when overeating was a mark of status. Any civilised person will be shy of
overeating now anywhere in the world. Money
is indispensable, but more money than one needs is an encumbrance. Slowly
this knowledge is dawning on humankind. Money came into existence when man’s
productive energies raise their evolutionary status in energy to a point where
the Energy stood for a symbol. Primary energy comes out of interest. Interest
releases energy and makes the body work for longer hours than usual. Prior to
that it was physical energy that urged a man to move or walk. We know the
difference between the basic physical energy that dredges and the vital energy
that issues out of interest. The idea in the vital mind activates itself as
interest and that interest releases the energy of the body. Let us go in for a further finer
distinction. Energy of the vital with a physical base called passion is
commonly known. Energy of the physical activated by the vital impulse and
vital ideal. Distinctions are endless. It is obvious for us that there are
differences. Going up, Mind has the energy of understanding. It acts in the
vital and physical differently. Mind has the energy of organisation. They too
go down to the vital and physical. Then decision releases the energy of the
will. All these -- understanding, organisation, decision -- can combine in
various ways. Symbolism is different from all these categories. Language is
symbolic. Arithmetical numbers are highly symbolic. Mathematics is a science of
symbols. Money is conceived of as a
symbol, constituted as a symbol, created as an energetic symbol and works
symbolically. The energy of the symbol extends horizontally to all its
similarities, vertically to all that differs from it. Money energises anything
it touches with its own symbolic energy and goes on to release various hidden
potential energies of the thing touched. Money is creative in the sense it has
created new activities, released new energies. Money is productive in the sense
that it activates any productive process. It can be productively creative if it
innovates new productive processes. It can be constantly productive when it
multiplies its capacities for creation. To look at what happens around us, the
distinction between a Demand Draft and a cheque in terms of these definitions,
to label the seller’s market as different from the buyers’ market and define
the changing attitudes, to classify them, to describe them, to define them
enough for the Individual to use it effectively in his own life is a wide
ranging task.
The
paperclip that brought a house is one expression of such an expansion at the
most primary level. It does show the
possibility of endless extension. It is for us to explore the truth of it. It
is here a theoretical knowledge is of value. Our theory declares that it is
possible. What is needed for us is not an exhaustive study, but we need to
exhaust our energies in such a study. The instance of the paperclip, the
Austrian experiment, Drag’s fight against inflation, Morgan’s handling the
crisis, the way in which gold disappeared from the currency market are such
occasions. A German scientist wrote a book Electricity State. Lenin was
enamoured of it; the engineer who came to California armed with that book made
California what it is today. Imagine a
‘Fiscal State’ where every activity will be evaluated in terms of finance and
monitored by financial dicta. When electricity was a focus, Money played a secondary
role. It can be the reverse. Money can be the focus. In a small sense EU is
making the Euro play that role. And there we witness Money playing the positive
role of what war played negatively. It is a formidable transformation. And yet
Euro is not the pivot of focus. A few centuries ago Army was the centre, before
that that role was played by the church. In the first half of the 20th
century technology played that role with its being made the spearhead, as the
engineer consciously did in California with electricity. To make Money the
conscious instrument of nation-building will be giving Money a greater power
and she can very well execute her part. The results will be phenomenal. For
such an attempt, a fuller knowledge of Money as the title describes is
necessary. In India even today if a man is to receive a bundle of currency he
will get up from his seat, take off his shoes, grow humble in bodily movements
and vital attitudes, receive the currency in total reverence and put them to
his eyes as he would do with a temple prasad, keep the money in his
inmost pocket and resume his seat. Then he would lose his speech. In rural
parts Rs.10,000/- will do it. Even in urban parts the behaviour cannot be
missed. Only that each man has a figure when his submissiveness surfaces. What
we witness here is the way Money touches his psychological intensities,
transforms his social personality, brings out the very best of cultural
appreciation of VALUE, (here the
value of Money). To gather about a hundred such instances from various fields,
analyse them from all the angles of this Theory and explore what Money is and
is not is an indispensable exercise. I have not fully discussed even one event
in this light. I have refrained from it just spot lighting the essentials.
Wherever
there is curiosity there begins a quest of understanding. Curiosity is
essentially of the mind. The physical responds when it is touched. The vital
does not seek but responds with energy of action to forge a relationship. Money came into existence as coin. Soon
personal barter was organised into communal trade. As long as education was supported communally with their
production it was confined to the select few who sought it in spite of its
rigorous discipline. Money came into its own, not only as a medium of exchange
or an instrument of transaction, but as a social entity which had the ability
to organise itself as an institution. It invaded the sector of education and
compelled it to organise. That was the basis of universal education. At least
in Europe and Britain travel was by private conveyance or on horseback. It is
interesting to see the wide coincidence of a network of roads, springs and a
system of transport coming into existence with the period of Money organising
itself into its own personality. With the transport came the postal system
which was impossible without Money already established as a power in the
society. Today manufacturers of cars, two wheelers and a hundred other
household durables have discovered what the USA discovered a hundred years ago
-- the customer is an asset, is more valuable than his capital. Such a market could be created only by
Money, a further organisation of Money. When Money enters the fray, it
becomes a deal as it comes with its own inherent organisation as a symbol of
social power. The symbol that Money is enables the market to change into an
active power, symbolising the aspiration of the population. The credit card has
created a market of borrowers not underwritten by their immovable property or
even movable assets, but on the estimated credit-worthiness of an individual,
regardless of any other disqualification. It looks like the computer chip
emerging out of sand on the sea beach. Look at the world through the eyes of
Money, you will be able to see much more than you are presently aware of.
Negatively we know of hundreds of great projects dying their natural death for
want of an insignificant sum of Money. Worse still, other greater projects are
stillborn children for want of Money, the midwife.
Periyar
started his campaign for Dravidanadu in the 30s. Till 1945 or even 1950 he used
to visit his supporters at home. Meetings were conducted in houses with an
audience of forty or fifty men. In 1957 they won fifteen seats in the Assembly;
in 1967 they came to power. For forty years they are there. Congress has become
a splinter group totally dependent on their mean mercy. Rajaji saw which way
the wind blew in 1962 and supported DMK. It took the wind out of their sails.
They shed the claim of Dravidanadu and the platform of anti-Brahmanism, and
became part of the national politics. Acute
politicians are aware of the trend decades before they precipitate as
irrevocable agents. While cultured ladies considered Chicago gentlemen as
gangsters, European capital substantially migrated to America. In the thirties
no one in Europe was giving thought to Hitler but his factories producing
planes and tanks were in action. Espionage was aware of it. They warned the
British government far ahead of time. The Divine Mother said in 1930 the future
leader of India was none of the stalwarts around Gandhiji but the volunteer
youth Nehru, as She saw the fire in him. The ascent is a process that begins as
trickles and ends as a flood while descent is a process where the whole starts
to divide itself into trickles. In the process of ascent we see movement,
action, consciousness, organisation. In the descent we see what begins as
movement, action, consciousness and organisation ends as the same in another
plane of Time, the simultaneous integrality. To follow Money in the ascent and
descent with the knowledge of the Theory is to know its present and future
social power. As in politics the very first step of becoming an MLA is a great
step, though in the overall picture it is nothing. One small move in Theory or consciousness is a very big step in life. For
the common man, the path is a rising ladder of infinite steps. For the son of
the Prime Minister the top post awaits as the work he should have done was done
for him by his father. Mother’s consciousness is not of this world. One who
belongs to that consciousness is always eligible to enter life at the top
level. How does that apply to Money? One who understands Money as Morgan did
will be in a position to wield political, social, psychological power in the
society made possible by the build of his personality. What Money can do can be
done by any other social aspect. As Money is power, it will act more easily.
Education being light can move the centres of power, as it cannot directly act.
What military does by destruction, Money can do by lure or attraction. Anything can do anything but each follows
its own path cut out for it by its swabhava.
Only
those who have known India in the sixties can appreciate the BOOM she is undergoing. Knowledge comes by observation and it is
expanded by comparison. Measurement, scale of values makes that knowledge
precise. Comparison generates competition. There is no greater incentive
than competition in human affairs. To appeal to a sense of competition is to
work realistically, not in the air as the idealist tries. The idealism of
unrealistic approach appeals to the potentials of human nature, whereas
competition is a consummate strategy. It is generally NOT gradual. All the fifty-four eligible farmers who resisted a well
loan for over a year, en bloc came to avail of that when the lever of
competition set all by itself to work. Someone said a second wife makes
marriage, as well as, concubinage an eternal Romance, as competition is ever
present. To imagine how life was before the advent of Money, we can pause for a
moment and see what can be done without Money. Apart from its so many social
values, Money gave man something precious to possess and be fulfilled in that
possession. By virtue of its being a shining small coin, its value rises in
intensity. It is the first vital symbol in inanimate form in which the vitality
of man found the greatest expression of concentrated vital energy. The very
first thing we know of life before Money is Man was stationary, tied to his land
much like an animal. Money gave him an
avenue to go out into the world for other produce, relationship with others, to
offer his son an inheritance and the scope for his mind to exercise itself in
what is called rudimentary planning. It is the birth of a Symbol. Man felt
the power of symbolism rise and possess him. There are animals that cannot look
up and see the sky. Man was then like those animals unable to look up to the
society, recognise its existence and relate to it meaningfully. The birth of Money
was birth of several social facets in Man. Language, tools, village,
leadership, Money, wheel, well digging, agriculture, creating a product such as
a pen, discovery of energy are evolutionary landmarks in the society. To know
the society before the advent of Money is an adventure in itself.
Man
is a gregarious animal because spiritually there is only one body, one vital
and one mind. It is the ego that feels the separation. As soon as the primary
bodily separation is overcome by a process of civilization, FORCES in life throw themselves up to
express that unity. Birth of Money is
one. Family, language, education, etc. are other such forces. To know Money
in this sense enables us to rise with its rise till we see that Money is a
Divine Force. This book or paper will serve its intended purpose if we secure a
glimpse of this aspect of Money. For instance, hire-purchase or installment
credit was an invention of the USA. All
such innovations are adventures in social evolution. Imagine possessive Man
desiring to grow endlessly by unconditionally offering his products for an
unconscionably long time. We know Man would rather keep his traditional fertile
land fallow than give it for lease. It is impossible for his sensitivity of
possessing in the physical to stand the idea that another man cultivates his
land and takes home some paddy. All these American traders were the first
generation of traders who just emerged out of agriculture. In America Man
reclaimed land under conditions hostile and intimidating. Such farmers had few
social contacts. They felt at home when they were all by themselves. To him
there was excess production. A normal course is to curtail production. He would not consider that alternative. He
would rather risk the excess production almost giving it away than cut down the
production. This is a revolutionary attitude in trade created then in USA
as an innovation. At all costs Man there sought greater unity with a larger
population. To further evolution Man acquires revolutionary attitudes that
destroy totally his primary sense of possessiveness in the physical plane. When
evolution replaces Revolution, replacing the lone pioneering individual by the
willing general population, the spirit of Revolution shifts to vitality from
physicality. To unite with others is to reverse the vibration of division by
which creation came into existence.
Growth
is organisation of energy into skills of social existence. When life was
created it was created as a field of energy in flux. Life that was pure life
never permitted anything to come into existence. Its one concern was to lose
its form of movement and attain a form of stability and thus create Matter.
Matter is durable where creation comes to an end. Matter that retains its fixed
form releases energy by movement, thus regaining the movement life lost to
bring Matter into existence. What we call Life is that, Life in the ascent, not
in the descent. Society is an advanced stage of fixity in the existence of humanity.
Money is born when society advances far
more into organisation and civilisation. Money is fostered by society but
at one stage Money outgrows the social bounds. As ego is a help and ego is a
bar, society is a help and society is a bar. When society ceases to be a bar,
we are left with the only field of life with its unbounded expansiveness. Money
growing within the society is growth; Money breaking out of social norms and
continuing to grow in the field of life is development. The evolution of Money
comes into being when Money again breaks the limitations of life and bursts
into the arena of consciousness. There
it becomes Force developing the initial seeds of the Divine Force. Only in
yoga one can pursue Money to those levels. I should like to reach the stage
where the Spiritual Individual discovers his inherent capacity to create or
produce endless Money by his own volition. By definition, it will be all the
Money the world can produce – the wealth of the world. At this point Money sees
the rule that complete minus complete=complete. Money reaches its infinite
aspect in action. Man acquiring the same capacity in knowledge is potentially a
multiple genius. These are concepts which cannot be relevant to social
existence. For one to know the infinite aspects of Money or anything is only
Self-revelation. A boy, whose life is cloistered when he is at home, feels a
large freedom when he goes to college. The family limitation is replaced by the
limitations of the hostel life. Next he enters life where he is free of the
family as well as college. Here the scope broadens in a vaster measure as the
limitation is only from the society. Suppose he decides to transcend society,
he enters the domain of his psychological field where the expansion is again
great. To rise above the moral values of conscience, he enters Life where
universe is the limit.
Family
started with parents and children, became the extended joint family almost
covering the entire village. At this
stage, the family was passionately attached, physically protective. In the
village protection is TOTAL. Its
opposite side is, the moment one crosses the village, they instantaneously
destroy the family. Even the family does so to its members. Money as gold was
almost dangerously devilish. One man’s gold is every man’s interest. To hoard
it is a full time occupation. It is often buried under trees with some
landmarks. To steal that is an adventure. The
strong, clever, resourceful man steals it.
Rights were not evolved. Capacity to hide or capacity to wrest is all
that matters. Today banks offer secrecy of your account. It is a
discourtesy to try to know another man’s savings. Still, big Money evokes
interest. An issue like Nuclear Disarmament begs for a paltry sum of a few
millions. To any government this amount is a pittance. It is striking that no
government has come forward to finance fully such laudable campaigns, as the
Dutch Government footed the entire bill of the Brandt Commission. Still Money has physical value. Hence it is
important to part with the physical possessive value of Money. It is
education, especially scientific education, that built this civilisation.
Teaching at both ends remains the least paid profession. Ideas do not carry
value, especially Money value. To trace the various parallels in the society
helps one to understand Money or anything more and more fully. Incidentally, it
reveals the extent of our unconsciousness. To
be conscious is to be conscious of the whole. Its consummation is to see that
whole in the part. We live on the surface. We have to move to the
subliminal where life is universal, where Money is a great force that helps
build the universe, where family is humankind. The fundamentalist is not in
Afghanistan. He is in the USA among the Christian sects. It is in the mind. As
long as we fight terrorism in the Islamic countries we are not addressing the
issue. The ROOT of terrorism is in
the superiority of the English over the Irish, in the German Nazis, in the
superior monetary strength of USA of their military and money. Let us have our
perspectives clear. The village that crushed a dissenting family LIVES in the human mentality today in
powers that are strong. You can crush the weak today but cannot escape his
terror. Gandhi could change the heart of the Muslim goondas but strengthened
the fanaticism of the RSS.
The
products we use have a use value for us. We can neither produce them nor invent
them. He who produces the product has far, far greater power over it, but he
too cannot use it more than others. The inventor is usually different from the
producer, but he too consumes. Only Edison combined all the three roles in
himself. Neither the inventor, nor even Edison can have a greater use of the
electric bulb he invented and manufactured any more than any of us. We have use
value for Money. We do not manufacture currency nor have we invented it. Of
course, all of it was done by another man who is similar to us. The lever and pulley
moves thousands of pound weights by ten pounds of force. Where does the nine hundred ninety pound force come from? It comes
from the subtle plane. When force converts into power it passes through the
subtle plane. It is a subtle power. Knowledge of that power is subtle
knowledge. Transformation comes from the causal plane. Here poison changes into
nectar, foul odour changes into good fragrance. This article tries to give
rational arguments and arguments that skip rationality. It tries to explain the
subtle plane and points to the causal plane. A complete grasp of all these
arguments gives one the possession of material knowledge, subtle power and
introduces him to the causal worlds. In the chapter The Divine Soul there are thirteen paragraphs and a little over a
hundred points. Each such point expands into several directions offering us
comprehensive Self-knowledge. Reading one chapter thoroughly can lead to the
whole book. Knowledge of Money overlaid with the power of The Life Divine can create in an individual the capacity to create
all the wealth of the world as this combines all the three powers. Just because
one can travel to any point on the earth where there is an airport or where
roads lead to, one does not undertake world travel. He travels to places where
he needs to go. Though one can create all the Money in the world, he will be
able to use only what he needs, neither more, nor less. At the point the use
value, power of production and the creative power meet, one can see a DOT of integration. To gain a knowledge
of Integration of life or existence will further help this goal.
Society has always been its own
leader. Never did the Social
Personality allow itself to be swayed by any other force. Society by its own
aspiration forges a lead and uses any other available force for that purpose
which often appears to lead the society. Society struggled for survival, took
to growth, endeavoured to develop and evolve higher forms. In each period it
has effectively used religion, church, royalty, aristocracy, science,
education, press, market, business, marriage, Money as its handmaid. The
inversion of cause and effect is most clearly seen in this phenomenon when it
was believed that the church or science led the society. Society always maintained its paramountcy. Any of these institutions, in serving the
society, can fall in line or deviate. These institutions have developed in the
measure of their falling in line with the aspirations of the society and
accepting its lead. Just now the society is all set to evolve the Individual,
and that too the Spiritual Individual. Money
serving that purpose consciously will grow from power to force and from Force
to Power, if it acts thus. The recent history of America is ample testimony to
this theory which is more than a fact. It does not allow much scope for
argumentation. In this article all along I have tried to position Money in that
role but have pleaded that the Spiritual Individual will be able to create the
wealth of the world. Only in America the trend of the emerging Individual can
be seen unblurred by the obfuscation of the outworn social dressing. In the
USSR, Gorbachev was the first chief to hold a university degree after Lenin,
which underlines the role of education in human emancipation. The fact that No
leader is anywhere visible after the World War II stalwarts quit the arena
shows that the field is clear for the Individual to emerge. We see the distant
echoes, smoothened inklings of his emergence in the emphasis laid on Human Rights,
the facilities that are being offered to the handicapped, etc. Terrorism
centring in the Middle East has one valid reason, if not the spearheading great
reason. Before the Individual emerges, women, half the population, are to be
freed. Man has enjoyed his unquestioning domination over the woman sanctioned
by the society, Law and God. The emerging Individual, his possibility
sensitively touches his physically developed sore spots when the onrush of
liberation announces the future arrival of freedom for woman. Hence the Muslims
are up in arms to defend their sacred rights there. Here lies a possible
solution to terrorism.
We
are now putting the Society in the place of existence and see how the
application unfolds. Similarly we can
enthrone Money in the place of Society and delineate the unfoldment. It
will be an immense intellectual labour not necessary for us now to undertake,
though fascinating. Society gave birth to a host of institutions, a very long
list of them and now let us just think of a parallel list of say, faculties of
Money. They are exchange, barter, medium, coinage, storing of energy, incentive
to release the entire human potential, by extension the social potential and by
a similar extension the entire potential of any institution it integrates with,
credit, mortgage, harnessing future income, saving from bankruptcy, exhibiting
the capacity to save a single man from utter destruction-doing the same thing
positively and negatively to the society and to any other
institution-multiplying its quantity and taking it to self-multiplying it,
raising its quality to that of social power, conquering Time, conquering Space,
conquering any obstacle created by any social institution, giving science a
cutting edge, offering the army the capacity to organise itself better,
reinforcing existing forces in their stated purposes, helping them to create
non-existing forces for social purposes, raising one man to the level of a
whole national institution, organising political life in economic symbolism
employing the original symbolism of numbers, converting human talents into
quantifiable numbers of profit, fighting social crime by luring the criminals
away, replacing war by its strength of economic lure, offering patronage to
art, music, poetry and philosophy, be a staple force to religion, bringing the social average to an
individual in distress through insurance thus raising the psychological faith
through an arrangement of organisation, making the entire population
donkeys running after bunches of carrots as well as offering them umpteen
bunches all the way, leading man to the revelation that he could either be its
slave or make Money his slave and finally giving him the realisation that he
could reach the Divine by placing it at the Feet of the Divine Mother. Each of
these secondary powers can proliferate like the particles of light.
Division
of labour is a great human invention that matured to give up mental
possessiveness of vital activity in a physical field. It has the other side
that leads to specialisation and evils arising out of separation. Every movement is change. Change is
progress when it is vertical. It is creative when its comprehensiveness is
inclusively integrating. This is the course of social growth organising
social development, not to speak of social evolution. There is an opposite
process, as every process generates its opposite. This is no context for a
discussion on it. Still the knowledge that there is one, and it has an
undesirable course whose end is the destruction of social values if not the
very society, is of use. It is important to know the existence of the other
side. In the early days of Indian freedom when Nehru was the head of the
government he used to emotionally work himself to a pitch because of the
nefarious activities of the black market. His favourite slogan was hang the
black marketeer on the nearest lamppost. It was given to Sardar Patel to
collect party funds that came from the self same black marketeer to whom Nehru
was advocating the lamppost. Patel pointed out to Nehru the live connection
between the lamppost and party coffers. The idealist in Nehru learned the
worldly wisdom of Silence over the inevitable evil. It is not easy to discern
the other side in Money. Banks’ productivity of Money can help evil men cheat
honest men. The speculation of stockbrokers beyond a certain point can wreck
the economy and the nation. Even paper currency can be an inducement to counterfeit
notes. (Incidentally, in theory fake notes serve the common man as much as ones
of legal tender, much as the one of Milton, who waits, waits on the sidelines.)
Credit cards can make great frauds possible before they are discovered. Quicker
circulation directly can lead to inflation. Consumerism made possible by hire
purchase, bank loans, etc. can lead to an undesirable state of production for
the sake of production. It has the knack
of non-production productive as the educational system produces an endless
number of unemployable graduates. Only when the process comes under
conscious planning, this knowledge finds its great use. Till then only men of
experience devoid of theoretical knowledge can handle extraordinary emergencies
created by the intense presence of forces of the negative type.
The power of Money comes from the
extent and variety of human relationships. It is not given to the human tongue or the writer’s pen to
exhaustively trace the infinite varieties of human relationships forged by the
Many between themselves and those with the One. Money is power. It is the power
of the society. It is created by one going out to another in utter harmony of
enjoyment. A greater intensity of joy arises from the one of Many seeking a
relationship with the One. It is an infinite progression ever expanding in all
directions with ever increasing intensity of its inherent complexity. A good
friend for a long time discloses another side of his personality when you
become his client. The clientele is richer by several degrees by virtue of the
friendship. On another side the rigours of the professional etiquette are found
inflexible even with a friend. The one is a cultural variation of enrichment;
the other is the discovery of the scientific requirements of an organisational
discipline. While these can be more fully appreciated by the urban dweller, the
rural citizen is outraged by the dry mental norms that disregard the blood ties
of the rural soil of nativity. A fuller
appreciation of Money demands from us the discovery of all that we know of
Money in each of these new human relationships. It is not to be sought in
its quantitative aspect. One comes to know the essential knowledge and acquires
the capacity to apply it to any and every possible situation. Beyond human
relationships one more is pointed out above. It is one’s relationship with the
society. Each inanimate object differently relates to Man. Between two such
objects the subsisting relationship is of a still different kind. Now that
society has developed units, organisations, and institutions, they enjoy a
unique relationship with Man. Also there arises another type of relationship
between themselves. It is evident that our study of Money is only that study of
the entire society from one chosen side, the side of Money. So far we dwelt on
studying the relationship between man and man with respect to Money. Money, an
organisation of social intensity, like an electrically charged equipment, when
it comes into contact with men or objects begins to monetarily energise them
for a social purpose. A consideration of that side will take us further into
the domain of social existence.
Organisation
makes permanent what consciousness makes possible. We have successive
organisations one replacing the other. We also have mentally exclusive opposite
organisations such as health and disease. Transport follows road is an example
of one organisation succeeding another made possible by its presence. War has
an organisation as peace has one. The organisation of peace supports the
organisation of war by its production. The fighting organisation of war ensures
the producing organisation of peace. Health and disease co-exist, but a time
comes when the intensity of the organisation of health by its perfection, i.e.
the degree of efficiency, makes the organisation of disease impossible. So the time has come for the organisation
of peace, if saturated, to eliminate the very seeds of possibility of war. Organisations
arise out of a possibility which turns into a necessity. This is outer
organisation. The unconscious outer organisation matures into conscious inner
organisation. The inner organisation is will; the outer organisation is a
system of execution, a field for the action of the inner will. All these are
general rules of development. Here they have a particular application to Money.
Our aim is to discover the productive organisation of Money by Multiplication
and the creative organisation of subtle Money force by the process of
Self-Multiplication. The emerging Spiritual Individual who has been developing
the parallel inner organisation of consciousness in himself crossing the border
of transition finds himself endowed with the power of creating Money all by
himself or supported by a token effort of the vanishing field. In the rare
phenomenon of genius this transition and this power are self-evident. The siphon
works by itself once the air in it is removed. Disease and health; war and
peace; scarcity and plenty; the scholar and the genius; poverty and prosperity;
depression and cheerfulness; failure and success, and every other similar
phenomenon are expressions of this principle. One is the organisation of energy while the other is the organisation
of power placed on the two sides of the force of individual will that chooses
its determinism. That human choice here can eternally move into the domain
of creative Self-Multiplication. Money that was social energy in one phase
becomes social power in the subsequent phase directed by the force of human
Will which is the determinant of the course of social evolution. A full
explanation that is well understood is enough for man to create Money; its
essence will give a similar power in spiritual evolution.
A
unifying force, if taken out of circulation and permitted to foster
separateness, can do as much harm to the community as it otherwise serves. Money that goes into gold is almost
hoarding. Money thus separates itself from the mainstream of circulation.
An estimate puts the value of domestic gold at $300 billion. Government of
India is at the doors of the World Bank for a loan of $1 billion while so much
is hoarded at home. The Brahmins kept the spiritual knowledge to themselves and
deprived the society of its use value. Imagine if every scientific discovery
had been kept as a closely guarded secret by the inventor. Money is a great force,
but it is Man who decides how to use it. The role of gold is blatant and
obvious, but at each step on its course Money permits both uses. A complete
knowledge of Money can help it to surface. In the collective as well as
individual life, such a knowledge when put to use can bring about a sea change.
These are minor issues in the theme of Multiplication and Self-Multiplication.
Still in particular cases, it can appear phenomenal. What is necessary is a
complete grasp of the theoretical knowledge. Particularly here it is important to take note of the opposite roles
Money can play. Still, this aspect of separateness can play a wider rol, as
Sri Aurobindo said that creation can be there without ignorance but not this
creation. We can know of such a role without enquiring into it fully. Banks,
other institutions that accumulate Money do play this role to a great extent.
Suppose they have the right theoretical knowledge, then a great opportunity
arises to release 30% to 50% of their hoarding. Out of ignorance they hold on
to the whole lot. Knowing that they need to hold on to only 20%, they are free
to release the rest, at least part of it. It is like tapping the underground
water storage. A release of this type may make available 70% of its present
resources to humanity. Maybe it is 170%. Only a calculation based on knowledge
and experience can decide. Money is a vast field, as vast as the social
collective.
Even
the isolated use of Money can lead to its own perfection.
Speech
dissipates; Silence achieves. People give loud lectures about Silence! If it is
not loud, it helps. Analyse silence, its nature, how it accrues, where it is
centred, why energy issues out of it, you will find the loudness less loud.
Continue the enquiry, you will be
surprised to see Silence gathering. Any path ends in the goal. Analysis of
the outer phenomenon as well as the synthesis of the inner phenomenon have the
same result. Isolation or separation is caused by ego. One can analyse the ego
till he reaches the origin of ego or relate to it as if it is Brahman.
Ultimately it will reveal itself as Brahman. Ego is infinite; isolation too can
reach the infinitesimal which is the other face of the infinite. Money in
isolation loses its power of being Money. It is atrophied. Still it is not
dead, as death has no reality. Each phenomenon has its own perfection. At the
level of perfection Money in isolation is capable of revealing as Money in
circulation. To see one in the other, one cannot so easily resort to examples.
At that level even theory is concrete. One needs to enter into another domain.
It is wisdom or insight that listens to a friend’s remark about one’s
boorishness as the announcement of life of the Fellowship of a world
organisation. It is a point of major reversal. What is Money in the market
becomes currency in the bank. At the level of the Central Bank it becomes
finance, far removed from its origin of crude material production or the vital
force of production. The Central Bank is able to calculate the currency in
circulation, its productive part or the part of being credit. Even savings
where Money enters into dormancy can be accurately calculated. The speed with
which Money has moved in the market is tracked. As a result of all this, Money
the social symbol slowly but entirely gets converted into a mental SYMBOL of numbers, relations that can be
handled by appropriate formulas. Raising or lowering the interest rate by 1%,
the bank effectively controls the balance between exports and imports, is able
to make the entire monetary population -- that part of the population that
relates to Money -- concentrate its thoughts on the varieties of its movements.
As
ultimately everything is divine and infinite, even separation can achieve the
goal of relationship. As Money was born
in relationship, it is obvious that the more we foster the relationship, the
richer it grows. As it grows richer, it is a joy to observe its growing
stronger, nobler, complex, more organised, more capable of bringing out its
innate potentials, more capable of bringing out the inherent potentials of the
things it touches AND more of
everything. This wonder is most appreciated if we have access to the tether end
of society where Money reveals its newer capacities. The idea Luis gave for the
Academy is the point at which Law becomes order, where knowledge taking the
role of organisation changes into power. It is the exact point where the
international organisations are newly born by a fresh inch and hence is of
utmost importance. The few hundred
thousand dollars necessary to organise it becomes the monetary determinant of a
momentous watershed in the life of humanity. To know all that Money can
accomplish at that point, all the relationships it can forge at that moment is
to know Money fully. Not only Money, attitude plays exactly the same role
there. Jonathan is not for stirring up USA and creating the possibility of
destroying the court. That attitude can be as much determinative as the few
hundred thousand dollars. Let us take Time. Speed, absence of delay is
important. Equally not to hurry up is equally significant. What is important is
not speed or quickness or even patience. The
moment is important. The right moment is the ripe moment. Look at energy,
interest, motivation and every other thing from this point of view. He who
brings a momentous opportunity himself will become an obstacle. At this moment the
non-cooperation we resent will reveal its evolutionary significance. At the
right MOMENT, you will witness the
extreme importance of performance as well as non-performance. We can also see
then unegoistically the power in us to accomplish more than what the world has
so far achieved. Also at the same time we can see the VERY opposite endowment. Hence the significance of the human
choice, balance, rhythm. Indian
spirituality has created in rich abundance all this in potentials. All that the
Indian has to do is to realise it and avail of it. A non-Indian perception of
this is greater than wonder.
This
is the very nature of Money. It is true of all other social endowments. So far
wealthy men have followed this path of accumulation and aggressiveness through
the vehicle of selfishness. The priests in India and Europe rode this path. All
generals made themselves king and created dynasties. It is the reality. Over
the centuries Money has started revealing its other side of public benevolence.
Money as democracy and education has
started on its evolutionary role while Man clings to its earlier negative role.
The Spiritual Individual I speak of is one who becomes conscious as an
Individual and becomes conscious of the evolutionary roles of all social
institutions, particularly Money. For him, it is to realise his own
evolutionary potential in the evolutionary expansion of Money where it sheds
its narrow power and discovers its role of taking society on the onward march
of evolution. It is a course that will reverse the directions. With the
changing directions, attitudes will undergo a similar change and strategies
that will fulfil the opposite goals will arise. At the tether end the tactics
too must change accordingly. Please note the energy that expands is the very
opposite of the energy that shrinks. The will that directed an earlier movement
is a will of selfishness. Now it has to change the direction into selflessness
and finally into one of Self-giving. The organisation too will not remain the
same. Earlier it was the gross material organisation. Now it is the subtle,
causal organisation. The one was an organisation to accumulate and preserve.
Now the organisation is for production and finally for creation. Production and
creation are multiplications and Self-multiplication. The skills too have to
change. It was the personal skills of narrow selfish possessiveness and
preservation. Here they are impersonal organisational skills that are subtle and
causal whose aim is to serve the society in the beginning and to equip itself
to serve the Divine in the end. In this wide transforming movement Money will
play the roles of communication, transport, sports, education and every other
possible social function. No longer will Money or any of them bear the stamp of
negativity. Even the role of positivity will be lost. Money will emerge as an
instrument of the Divine to divinise the world. Prior to it, Money will help
society evolve to a point where the Spiritual Individual will be born to
spiritualise the living on earth. Accumulation will now offer its focused
strength to every point in the wide social expanse.
Money eminently fits the description
of “any situation, though infinite, readily rises to your inner formed and
unformed expressions”. What
accomplishes in Man is his sincerity. Sincerity is determined by what one is
conscious. The deciding factor in Man’s evolution is how much he still enjoys
the taste of ignorance and how much he seeks the taste of knowledge. It is the Soul’s Freedom in bondage, the
ultimate freedom, the freedom to lose one’s freedom. Money takes on both
these roles 1) offers you a field wherein you can accomplish what you choose
and 2) enjoys that freedom itself in being Money. Availing of the infinity of
Nature and where she enjoys in leisure her infinity, one follows his course in
force as part of creation. Choosing to evolve, he deliberately shifts from
force of Nature to consciousness of Being. Sri Aurobindo beckons us to that
minor adventure having accomplished the major adventure of having a new path in
the virgin forest. It is best done by surrendering to Him through the surrender
to the Divine Mother. How do we BECOME
this adventure in Money? Money moving as currency or coin or even credit card
is in Nature that is the social movement of force. Money while moving as coin
suddenly stops and realises it can become currency. It is an evolutionary
moment, fulfilled in society unconsciously. Should Man at that moment consciously see that possibility and switched
over to currency, instead of being led into that movement, he becomes a conscious
individual. As the unconscious Man became conscious here, further down the
road a moment comes when Money too can so become conscious and BECOME currency.
The French Revolution thus became conscious in Napoleon. The Cold War was made
conscious by Gorbachev. The energetic market becoming dynamic becomes conscious
of the customer and presses for his satisfaction. Truths of life in a poet
become self-conscious to become immortal literature. Anusuya, Krishna, Rama,
Mona Lisa, power of steam can thus be explained in their various stages. In the
RIN ratings Indian Independence
became conscious. Helen, Jesus, Brindavan, Kurukshetra are such landmarks of
history. Narayana Darsan reveals each item of life becoming Narayana in one’s
vision. It is life becoming Divine.
When Sri Aurobindo said life is a
mystery, he meant more than the word disclosed. Presently we see in the Indian politics greed
acting as a positive instrument of democracy. An intensely emotional nation as
Russia was ruled by cruel tyrants. More than the opposites, the co-existence of
disparate traits in the extreme as mental honesty and bodily filth is baffling.
Among the many wonders mystery meant, He
also indicated the capacity of life
to progress through reversals. All these phenomena we witness in the growth
of Money into various fields. In this digital age quantum physics has opened
the door to the invention of the personal computer, nuclear power, genetic
engineering and laser technology out of which the CD player and the bar-code
reader emerge. We see how into each final product several inventions go.
Sociologically every social act is penetrated in toto by every social force
like Money. It is only the ultimate vision that can reveal what has entered
which and what further transformation it has undergone. We see here the play of
being, consciousness, ananda splitting themselves into fragments for the
purposes of interchange resulting in a magnificent marvel. In such a simple act
of a mother rearing a child, we see Money playing a significant role bringing
that child what education Money can buy within the limits of her comprehension
of the child’s educational needs. The health of the child is so determined by
the mother’s knowledge of health, the availability of Money and how much
attention that single child deserves in such terms -- an act of human choice.
In this we see a fully conscious mother rearing a fully unconscious child later
developing vibrations of ingratitude and even accusing that mother of
wrongdoing for his ineptitude in receiving. There we see the ruling ideas of
the day deciding the attitude of the youth towards his mother. How many such
ruling ideas enter into his opinions towards his mother is another mystery for
the social scientist. Money shapes
everything and everything is shaped by Money can be a dictum. Money can be
classified as money of the first or second or third generation in another view
of analysis.
Let
us consider Money as Money, also as one of the social institutions that are
instruments of the society. Society, like man, is egoistic, possessive,
violent, harsh, cruel, etc. These traits Money serves faithfully as long as
there are social aspirations. When society outgrows them say from cruelty to kindness,
Money too changes its character. Money,
being a faithful social force, can even anticipate the social transformation
and help society transform in that line by its taking institutional initiative.
We have said that Money is a thing, a transaction, an organisation, a power
and a force. Even along these lines Money can outgrow one stage and flow into
the next stage. It can also reverse in the sense of drastically changing its
role either forward or backward depending on the status of the society. In the backward reversals, Money is capable
of insisting on its institutional roles if circumstances permit. One can
see all these traits in his child growing up. Up to a point in the social
growth, the action of grace is unseen. Beyond a point, it is subtly visible.
Further down the road, grace acts overtly. Inflation acts in its own chosen
direction as an instrument of grace in the subtle plane. Thieves are forced to
offer someone, officials, partners, politicians, voters, enormous amounts of
ill-gotten Money. In one direction it comes as free products or services and in
another direction it moves as bribes or incentives. To study Money in its
theoretical role and further in its evolutionary role with respect to society
offers an abundant raw material spread all over. At no time does Grace fail.
Even when Grace has fully protected Man from his accentuated folly, he insists
on passing through the motions of folly to fully enjoy the taste of ignorance.
E.S.I. land-ceiling exemption, President with absolute powers were all legally
protected even at the moment of the act of folly. Folly has its run after the
tragedy is averted. It is folly equally to resist complete foolishness and
foolhardiness. What remains is Grace, only Grace. Only that we must see it with
open eyes.
Vast difference and total similarity
between two things is one rule, because
both are essentially the same. The difference is of the context and similarity
is of the essence. Pearl and diamond, in their essence, are Brahman, but in
external appearance and their origin they are vastly different. Money
accumulated with the Individual offers security to him and threatens the same
in others. When saved, it goes into dormancy. Held by the collective, it is
actively seeking intense relations with everything it touches to become
productive at one level and creative at another level. While it becomes
creative, it is an example of ‘Miracles become commonplace’. In either case the
reversal we mentioned earlier is a fact. Reversals
are the essence of evolution even as consciousness and organisation are for
development. What is normal for the society is a reversal for the
Individual. Intellectually it is almost a pasttime and an intensely interesting
game to study those reversals. Yogically reversals can be said to be at eight
levels. Reversals are easily appreciated in the vertical scale. Horizontally
the reversal is imperceptible. When SEEN as
reversal it reveals the Brahman hiding at that point. Shakti to whom Ishwara
surrenders asserting beyond a point is a classical example. He seeks His fulfillment in surrendering to
Her while She enjoys in reversing the roles by assertion instead of the
fullness of appreciation which requires Her expanding inwardly in Her Being. Subsidy
for farmers’ power has had the reverse effect of stalling the expansion of
power. We see in big organisations individuals paying to serve that
organisation instead of being paid for their service. America offered the
Marshall Plan to Western Europe while it was the turn of the war-devastated
nations to seek market help. In ancient times it was man who sought a bride but
the bride came with a dowry PßÛPõuõÚ®. Now it is the turn of the woman to go
after a groom while the dowry remains a fixture. The weak seeking support from
the strong is understandable. Now we see the strong going to the weak offering
all kinds of support, especially monetary support. Reversals in the collective
or the Individual in Money as well as other fields is a rich field of study of
evolution. It is much more so with yoga.
In
the ascent it has its usefulness. Only in the descent it releases its power
that issues out of creativity. Education is essentially of the descent. Hence
its great power of knowledge. Its power is enlightenment, not the power of
will. The power of Money is that of the social will, a will of the society that
almost compels the individual to turn to society in selflessness. Credit that we take for granted now is an
arrangement by which one is compelled by the interest that accrues to help
another out of his failure. Society compels the selfish animal that man is
who gloats over the ruin of another, to make an about turn and help that other
man come out of the hole through credit. Interest accomplishes it. Just now
Money has developed the need to give itself away in return of non-monetary
gains. Institutions are shy of disclosing the truth and are devising various
ways to disguise their intentions. Politicians, who rob all, are compelled to
give away crores to wipe off slums, buy a vote for almost a thousand rupees
with their ill-gotten Money. Even if we do not project our imagination into the
future and we only collect the events where Money in its descent is playing its
evolutionary creative role, our harvest will be rich enough. Those, in India,
who denied education for the untouchable, now preside over institutions of
hundreds of crores of rupees and spend it in the cause of their education.
Money that claimed the prestige of unavailability is knocking at the door of
every pauper to beg them to accept loans. Surely Money has reversed its role of
prestige and learnt humility. To study the ascent is to study economics. To
study the descent is to study the social progress in the vertical, termed as
social evolution. Only in the descent it integrates with more social
institutions deeply enough to create a lasting foundation for further solid
progress. It is essentially Money that created the service sector. Presently it
is Money that is creating an effective public opinion to accomplish anything
from nuclear disarmament to the establishment of One World or World Government.
Money’s creativity is at its best when it creates non-monetary social results.
Money is creative, creative of a new society of wonders.
Contradiction is the basis of
accomplishment. All instruments as
well as institutions are created by the forces above the line. Most of the
population is below the line. This, though appears as a contradiction, is the
process of progress. In education it is much more apparent where the whole
creation and utilisation of education is a process of decent. Money dominates
over those below the line. Money is used and dominated by those who have
created it by virtue of being above the line. One particular explicit use of
Money is in insurance where Money overtly offers a service mankind is not used
to. It offers to salvage an individual who meets with a calamity with the
monies of his fellow men. It is a direct
act of self-giving of the society where the selfish man is persuaded to offer
selfless service in view of the hidden benefit to the self. Everywhere
Money acts like this but it will not be self-evident in all those places as in
insurance. The inherent contradiction expressed in the title has another truth
too ill-concealed. While Money above the line serves copiously those above the
line, it is capable of wiping off or exterminating those who are below the line
thus serving the cause of evolution -- to eliminate the unfit. We have seen in
the Depression the wonder of people coming in a car to the poor house for free
feeding. It is a wonder that can be witnessed only in America. There is a
reverse wonder of unemployed graduates not knowing, I would say not trying to
know, the avenues of lucrative employment. It is another contradiction where
Money prominently figures. One man working for Rs. 2500/- in a bottle washing
company seeking a job in the USA on $60,000. How do they co-exist? We may say
they are in two different countries. Even in the same country such an
opportunity exists, if only the unemployed changes his attitude. These apparent
contradictions are apparently rich resources of prosperity. Our discussion does
not always stray into philosophical
theory but confines itself to Money and the wonders it is capable of. This
wonder arises out of a contradiction. The miser and the one who squanders Money
are in another plane equal in the eyes of the Divine. Obviously if the miser
does not accumulate there will be nothing for the one who plays ducks and
drakes with it. Money is productive, creative, miraculous and is capable of
making the miracles commonplace. This paper slowly tries to reach the recesses
of those secrets. They lie hidden in the society. In truth they are buried in
life and Spirit. To discover those secrets, and bring them out to the surface
of the life of the Individual is our aim.
Man is conservative as he is
physical. The physical learns once and cherishes it as a possession. The horse that stumbles on a stone once unfailingly
remembers when it comes to the spot again no matter after how long. That is the readiness with which the
physical learns. For the same reason it refuses to forget. What it is slow
to learn is the result of experience as the Irish. The Irish are quick to learn
anything. They are cheerful, assume leadership in all local situations but are
unable to learn from experience or aspire for the leadership of the nation. It
issues from the fact that they were the greatest beneficiaries of the Catholic
training. The wave of civilisation from Europe stopped with Britain and never
reached Ireland. England tyrannised over Ireland and did there what they had
not done in India, religious persecution. It takes a long time for the physical
experience to change into mental knowledge as the mind is outside the scope of
the physical. The essential role of
Money lies outside its field of action. It lies in the subtle plane as well as
in the plane of Mind. Money becomes effective in the measure its original
value is recognised by the field of its action as well as experience. Such an
attitude is seen as indifference, non-recognition, opposition, resistance till
the wave of social progress overcomes such attitudes. They suddenly exhibit an
energy to be over enthusiastic about what they frowned upon. Just now since the
80s or even 90s the excess potential Money has created in the society is so
overwhelming and is one that exhibits a strong tendency to grow that trait that
society can freely distribute to all who need Money in any measure. The free
newspapers, free email, free phone calls announce it to the world indirectly.
Technology can do it and is doing it for long. Language has done it from the
beginning. Extraordinary talents in music, writing, speaking, and athletics are
there for anyone to take. Money is no longer scarce. It is like the wind power
or solar power freely accessible to all. As education was compulsorily thrust
on the entire world, as epidemics were abolished by the few, Money has come of
social age making it so abundantly available that it cannot ever be exhausted
by distribution, as its distribution will increase its generation.
Mother
has allowed an enormous waste of cash. It was the expression of infinite
squandering of Her consciousness. It has
prepared the world to come by an enormous potential of Money. Waste in
Nature has this connotation. HE says, seen in this perspective waste is an
investment for Prosperity. This is a social explanation, not a theoretical
explanation. Theoretically to come by any capacity, one has to prepare, as the
tiger goes back before pouncing upon its prey. The low consciousness to rise to
higher consciousness serves it without reward. It pays to be permitted to
serve. It is most seen in prestige. He who can be obedient qualifies to be a
leader, not the one who seeks to assert from the beginning. The tree takes long
years before it starts yielding fruits. The process of accomplishment begins
with a knowledge of the greatness of the goal. Glenn Doman says the cells in
the brain are dead by the age of five. Only till then one can learn. Evolution enables the dead cells to revive.
It also postpones the limit of five years. Once evolution takes hold of the
brain, the cells lose the capacity to die. Our topic is social evolution.
Not to allow any social layer to die is the purpose of social evolution. Waste
can be seen in this view. What appears to be waste in one man is really his
activating the society not to die in parts which would normally die of their
own accord. He who spends his energies, consciousness, Money, is one who later
enables the society to create those things in greater surplus. The history of
the society is a standing witness to this process. In one’s own personal life
and in yoga this process can be more than self-evident. Only those who spoke a
lot are capable of greater Silence. In the progress of the Society, it will be
in evidence only to a penetrating insight. India went into slavery for eight
centuries which prepared her to be the Spiritual Guru of the world. The
enormous waste of food in America is pathetic. But it prepares her to become
aware of the need to conserve the higher consciousness. One can indulge in it
consciously or unconsciously. Results will reflect the character of endeavour
but he who wasted cannot escape abundance. It is a law whose significance is
great in the field of evolution.
In
1937 for a Ph.D. to work in a lab in America they paid $ 1000 a year.
·
A small sum of
$72,000 was the capital for the East India Company in the 1600s. It was one
third of the British budget of those days. A
little Money could accomplish very much in those days.
·
Now Money is thousands
of times more powerful and is available equally in that measure.
·
The social power of
Money, its easy availability, its reach in the society are to be reconciled in
the plane of social progress.
·
This is a general
rule of inverse relations between the availability and its power in all fields.
·
A few London returned
gentlemen ruled India before the war.
·
Now thousands have
returned from America.
·
The less prevalent is
more powerful.
·
The more widespread
Money or education is, the more advanced is the society.
·
Where do they
reconcile as a principle of action?
·
The truth remains
that for the social power of today the availability of money almost retains the
old proportion.
·
As the social aspect
-- Money, education, etc.-- is scarce, the power it exercises is great. At that
stage it enhances the egoistic power of the man who holds it. As it spreads in
the society, it is the power of Money or education that comes in the front,
pushing to the rear the ego of the individual.
·
In a less developed
society a small amount of Money can achieve a lot which will be ultimately a
little.
·
In an advanced
society, achievement is for all. So, for the same level of accomplishment
vaster amounts of Money are needed which are readily available.
·
In the beginning the
social instruments are small, less available, but more powerful in a less
powerful society.
·
Now the same social
instruments are widespread, more available, but appear to be less powerful in a
more powerful society.
·
The essence of impact
remains the same.
The results have a differing appearance.
Ego of the individual is diluted.
Money neither asks for freedom, nor
does the society consciously offer it to Money. Freedom emerges in the
transaction. It is for the society to admit it or deny it. The one thing Money, as well as other attributes
of the society, silently crave with all their being, but do not assertively
demand is from the very birth of it, freedom to act. Money in its origin is
society. The knowledge that Money inheres is its remembrance of Society losing
itself in Money. Freedom is the power to
emerge from Ignorance. In Money freedom enables it to emerge as powerful as the
society. Immortality for Money is once it is born, it lives forever,
growing non-stop. Freedom is the condition that brings this about. Therefore,
freedom is the final law and last consummation. In Time, freedom is eternity.
In Space, freedom is infinity. Freedom exists in the unity of creation with the
creator. Equality is described as the consciousness of the Infinite. For a man
to act in freedom, he must know he has infinity before himself. That is
spiritual patience. He must be ready to act as if the act is to be completed in
the same instant. The knowledge that infinity is before him and the patience
that issues out of it when combined with the readiness to act to accomplish at
the same moment, is the cosmic version of freedom beyond the cosmos. In the market
where Money moves it is difficult to define freedom. What prevails are the
market conditions and man’s temperament. The awareness of this freedom and the
aspiration to avail of it results in the strength of spiritual equality. Those
who have that can hope to impart the knowledge of what Money is to Money in the
market. Even if one does not have it, the knowledge that such a freedom exists
in the society gives him the right attitude in the minimum. In fact, the
society is an institution that condones in Money what is otherwise culpable.
Without this tolerance Money will either be extinguished or destroy the
society. Society cannot have a cohesive existence, if it does not have this
indulgent attitude towards its own institutions. In other words, we have to
appreciate the utter havoc Money wrought in the society. This is the freedom
society gives Money on occasions.
There is a course for the social forces.
It requires a discipline for the forces, the society and every other thing that
comes into contact with an event, a discipline to adhere to that course. Deviating from that course is social dissipation
leading to destruction. Freedom is outside this discipline as well as
deviation. Freedom is the course taken by the society and its forces in a plane
of equilibrium that sustains the social progress along the route of its
evolution. This freedom is ever present. It is generally not availed of nor is
its prevalence felt. Music is an artistic force. Money is an economic force.
Obviously the availability of Money furthers the cause of music. Its
availability in excess in the absence of restraint on the part of music
commercialises music. Music becomes coarse, vulgarised. The musical energy in
excess of availability of Money, finds no elegant expression, shrinks in its
existence and its performance feels throttled by Money’s heavy hand. Music
loses its artistic value, becomes a mercenary money earner. Money lowers itself
to being an uncivilised agent corrupting itself and music. In extreme cases the
vulgarity rises to prostituting profane agencies. The faculty in an academic
institution demands academic freedom. It can come only when the academic
knowledge is administered by academicians and that in its own right earns
Money. At the centre of any academic institution is a mercenary vested interest
that takes the course of economic route. Academic freedom is subordinated to
other interests than academic. This is a truth valid in all fields. Society
gives freedom to Money. Money can give freedom to art or education. That
freedom is chosen and exercised by Man. As Man has a choice, at rarefied
heights Money too acquires that choice. Thus there are several freedoms with
respect to Money. They are academic freedom, artistic freedom, administrative
freedom, social freedom, and freedom pure and simple. Spiritual freedom and
psychological freedom are of great value, but will find rare expressions here
as the focus is economic freedom in a social political context. Money is the
central figure of enquiry here. Society is the wider plane. Economics is the
particular field. We take in our stride art, music, communication and other
subjects in the measure they lend themselves to analysis.
Money,
a thing, a transaction, an organisation, a power has its versions in the
physical, vital, mental, spiritual planes both in the ascent and in the
descent. Money when it outgrows one level, say, transaction and rises to become
an organisation, we find the plane of transaction is saturated and the descent
of organisation on transaction begins. What is it for transactions to be
saturated at its level and be organised? At the point money becomes an
organisation, transactions that were casual, or at random, i.e. only between
selected and trusted individuals become more uniformly universal. For us to buy
an article of high cost, we go ourselves to the shop instead of sending a young
person, as he is likely to be cheated. When transactions are saturated, we see
the prices are fixed and any child can buy anything. Just now we won’t buy
expensive articles from new establishments, as their products will be
substandard. At the point of saturation of transaction all products will be
standard and you can buy from anyone. Money when organised brings several
people together who stand by a set of reliable behaviours. Of course, that is
confined to selected groups. When organisation descends on transaction, the
element of dishonesty will be removed from the plane of transaction as in the
credit card system. As the planes are
four, the directions are two; to exercise the mind in all these contexts and
see them to some extent in real life is a rich exercise to thinking and
imagination. This is when we consider only Money. We must consider Money in
its relation to every social institution thus covering the entire society. Ask
the question what it is for education in relation to Money in transaction and
organisation, when one is saturated and the other descends on it. What are the
new forms thus created. It is endless. Education spreads in the society when it
is commercially viable. Transaction will saturate that plane of Money, if every
educational institution renders standard service for its Money value.
Organisation descends on that field when it is recognised statewide, nationwide
and finally internationally. Now it is a far cry. State Board, Central Board,
ICSE clash between themselves serving differently.
Every
human endowment therefore will have infinite versions. Money too is capable of
it. Twelve aspects in eight planes subdivided into positive and negative
extends to one ninety two or three eighty four ways. What is true of Mind is
true of Money as it is created by Mind. Mind in the ascent acts as social mind
inhibited by psychological tendencies. It is also circumscribed by social and
psychological consciousness. One can try any idea and see how it expands
endlessly on three sixty sides. These
are ideas Mind cannot contemplate for one moment without being fully disturbed.
One, who can do so, can see what RATIONALITY
is. Even in contemplation, it is frightening. So far such an individual has
not emerged in the world among human beings. Imagine the same freedom in the
descent. It is the spiritual emergence in the mind. We call it the psychic
being. Suppose that happens, one will not be in the human surface mind or the
Rishi’s inner mind. He would have crossed these zones and reached the
subliminal mind. The subliminal is universal. As it is the meeting point of the
subconscient and the Superconscient it can be either dark or bright. Neither
will help us. We have to remain in the darkness
and see the seed of light inside the darkness. It is to unite the
subconscient and the Superconscient as a preliminary effort to integrate them.
Such integration must be done in the individual SOUL. After such integration it has to ascend to the Eternal. This
is done by shedding the seven ignorances one by one. The Spirit begins to
evolve only when seven ignorances are shed. At that point the Mental Psychic
emerges. It has the Supramental Light, not power. The Supramental Light is not divorced from power. They are one.
Still the Supramental Light will be the Supramental power in the Supramental
consciousness, not in the Supramental substance. It is always turned to the Divine. Its remembrance of the Divine
is constant. It has no power, as it is in the Mind. The power is in the
physical, not in the Mind. By the time the mental psychic develops into the
physical psychic, it also rises through the spiritual range to reach the
Supermind. At that stage it is Ishwara or the Supramental Being. Opinions, attitudes,
motives, preferences, and all the vitiating factors of the vital and physical
deny the mind this FREEDOM. To apply
this knowledge to Money in this detail is to follow its evolution in the
society. We consider these arguments only from the point of view of Money. As
we do so we meet the other aspects meeting Money from their evolutionary
dynamism. There, if one pauses, he can observe the fullness of social evolution
in its rich mature ripeness. At that point the greatness of freedom, Spirit,
infinity, evolution, in short, God, will reveal in its entirety.
Education
is commercialised and it spreads on that strength in the society. It is obvious that the result will be
commercial not educational. Trying to make that movement educational will
retard its speed. Presently the equilibrium is unconsciously arrived at. To aim
at arriving at the right balance, it is necessary that the Individual should
become conscious. In making the child fit into the society, we discipline him
as we know dictated by the culture at our disposal. The ideal is the child is a society by himself one
generation ahead of parents and the parents must grow to fit into his
society. Man has created Money but Money belongs
in spirit to the next generation and therefore, he must rise to the
occasion of Money’s latest progress and not try to prune it on all sides to fit
into his outmoded structure. This needs a clear definition of the relative
position of Money with 1) society and 2) all that the society has created like
Money. Money’s relationship with society will be akin to the Many’s
relationship with the One and Money’s relationship with all other sectors of
society will be a parallel to one soul’s relationship with the other souls
which is: each is in all and all is in
each. Thus this section by itself will be subject enough for a whole book
and will justify itself as one long segment of the Encyclopedia of Development.
Here we can only indicate effectively and conclusively the deepest significance
of this matrix. Incidentally a fuller appreciation of this linkage that is a
complexity requires us to know the table one to nine where it shows the mental,
vital, physical existing in each other.
1) Real-Idea 2) High poetry
3) Decision
Concept Sentimentalism Determination
4) Insight 5) Pure
idealistic heroism 6) Passionate
adoration
Cunning Heroism
touched with Passionate
physical
cunning attachment
7) Physical skill 8) Rural
Poet - Folk Tales 9) Moving
material
Physical
capacity Physical emotion Live non-moving Matter
In
the tabular column the term above refers to consciousness and the term below to
substance. It was drawn for a different purpose in a different context. Here it
can serve us well.
Money
is a determinant of education or marriage or any other thing. Money determining
education means education does not have a life of its own. When education is
the goal that is to be attained at all costs, Money and its availability gets
the maximum possible education as in the Brahmin community. In such a case
Money is an essential but the determinant is education. Even in the Brahmin
community in view of its utter impoverishment, education was not sought for its sake but for the earning capacity it
gives. After the boy joins the college, Money does play various roles in
varying measures. Even when it is inessential or non-essential it will be an
interesting study to observe the role of determinant Money plays in
entertainment, food, health, sports, etc. and the direct as well as indirect
impact it has on education. We may call
that role as one of Determinant while being a non-determinant. To go
through the roles of various aspects of society with Money as the central focus
will bring out in full relief the role of all social forces in play or
inter-play. A study of how education is sought after in families of different
levels of culture -- the same is true between 1950 and 2000 for all families --
shows how the Determinant emerges in families with the changing social
attitudes. It is the social determinism.
Move from there to Individual determinism. For that there should be an
Individual in place first. The psychological value unencumbered by ethical
conscience is behind that Individual determinism. Of course it can be egoistic
or its opposite. Egoistic determinism is of the capacity of the ego.
Non-egoistic capacity is of the psychological Individual. We should take our
arguments to the Spiritual Individual, its Selflessness and further its
ultimate potential of Self-giving. That alone will make the study real,
complete, wholesome. To start with we shall focus ourselves on the field
realities of Money, Education, Transport, Government, etc. and their social
play, interplay and their own independent play. That enables us to collect a
vast number of facts and get an insight into the subtle forces they are capable
of generating.
Their
number is legion. Opinion, attitude, stubbornness, faith, superstition,
preferences, demand, desire, hostility, flexibility, generosity, comparison,
etc. is a partial list. It is obvious that these things mean different things
to different people and vary according to land, space, event, known as the
context. What then is the role of Money in all these contexts? To know all that
is there to know is the wisdom of the world. We restrict the use value of Money
to the mind and to the selection of the transaction with one person in a given
event. Let us know all about Money irrespective of what we do in our context. The Life Divine is a book of philosophy
that describes the creation as the involution of God and His evolution.
Whatever He has written there is a fact of His spiritual experience, not an
intellectual argument valid or invalid in itself. Of course, HE had one idea which HE expressed in fifty-six chapters. The
Book is split into two books and the second book has two parts. The first book
is of creation and the second book is of evolution. The first part of the
second book speaks of ignorance becoming knowledge. The second part is of
spiritual evolution. In it HE uses plenty of Sanskrit words wherever His
meaning tallies with the current meaning. His
whole philosophy is new and therefore HE is compelled to use new terms. Such
terms are non-existent in Sanskrit as His philosophy goes beyond the tradition.
English is neither a spiritual language nor a classical one. It was developed
by trade and made creative by parliamentary democracy. To write a new
philosophy demands new terminology. The only language He knew was English. It
never admits of it. Like the princess who fell for the handsome face of an
idiot and made a Kalidas out of him, Sri Aurobindo has taken infinite pains to
employ a substandard language for any purpose and tried to express a philosophy
that transcends human experience. The simplest example anyone can follow is the
word Silence. In English silence means absence of noise. In Sanskrit silence – mounam -- means absence of thought. To
use the word Silence in the sense of absence of thought, any Englishman will
feel it absurd and a violence to her idiom.
In
Sanskrit mounam has an amplitude. Sri
Aurobindo has to go necessarily beyond it. Silence is there when we do not
speak. It is the Silence of speech. When we do not think, Silence arises which
is far more powerful. We are tempted to call it mental silence but it won’t be
exact as mind has innumerable faculties -- imagination, decision, etc.-- behind
each of which there is an appropriate silence. When all these mental faculties
cease to function, the Silence that arises can be called mental Silence. As
there is a Silence behind thought, there is a Silence behind feelings. The
Silence behind acts is the most powerful and He says it sustains activity. Om is said to be the third stage when
the Original Silence descends to creation. It is the Silence of universal
creation. Equally there is a Silence behind Ananda, Consciousness and
Existence. He calls that the Silence behind Silence. Even that Silence cannot be attributed to Brahman as it is featureless.
Still there is a beyond which is His own yogic territory. When the Infinite
Eternal Brahman chooses to express itself through Mind, Life and Matter and
their activities, the silence that sustains that creation and evolution remains
undisturbed. We cannot certainly call it Silence in the other sense. For want
of a better word or any word, He resorts to original creation and says it is
the Silence behind Silence, far richer and more integrated than the stage to
which we gave that name. Intuition, insight, consciousness are very important
in His vocabulary. Supermind is His key word. He is not satisfied with any of
them. Often He refers to his own definition to words like Logic and Reason and
divides them into higher and lower. E.g. He calls His logic Logic of the
Infinite. Before trying to read the Book, it will be well to know what He
exactly means by each word He employs. This is possible only after reading the
book half a dozen times. He consciously avoids, whenever necessary, the
Sanskrit word lest it should mean something else -- the traditional sense.
Jivatma in the tradition has a limited sense having no eternity. To denote what
He means He avoids Jivatma mostly and employs the word individual.
One
of the important messages of the Book is the Process of Creation. Especially for Money it is important to
know this theme. Our central theme is the Process of Creation of unlimited
Money by the Spiritual Individual. Brahman comes into Existence. It becomes
conscious and senses its being conscious. It looks at itself subjectively and
becomes the Spirit. It looks at itself objectively and becomes Truth without
losing its basic unity. Time is created when the Spirit looks at itself. Space
is created when the Spirit looks at its movements. The plane of Supermind is
created when the objective state of the Spirit-Truth relates itself to the
objective state of consciousness-knowledge. It is called the plane of Truth-Consciousness -- Supermind. In the
planes of Time, apart from Time and Timelessness. He introduces another concept
where they co-exist and calls it Simultaneous integrality of Time-eternity and
Timeless-eternity. To collect His terminology and understand it as He intended
-- not what the tradition mean -- is a full-scale study by itself. Going beyond
words we come to concepts. The most characteristic of those concepts is
Freedom, when He says that Freedom is the final law and last consummation,
giving it the meaning that Freedom is complete only when it is free to lose
itself. Every concept of His has this
dimension and every term of His repeats it. One may ask what all this has
to do with Money. Money is the organising
power of the society leading it to evolve. Presently Money offers social interaction so that life at that
level will be smooth. The Individual is one who rejects the social way of life
and seeks to evolve as the Spiritual Individual so that he may lead the
evolution. In a limited context of Money, his endeavour will be to create
individually all the Money the world so far created. It may be called the
emergence of the individual, the monetary individual or even the psychological
individual, none of which will precisely reflect what is meant. Let us call Money the power of the society
that collects for the purposes of organising it. The experience of that
organisation is decided by the organising society. The Individual who
experiences is determined by the collective society. There is NO question of the Individual separating
himself from the social collective. All that he can do is to have an
evolutionary relation with the collective. The society is the ‘collective
individual’ meaning what the collective has permitted in the individual as his
maximum reach. To do yoga, to study The
Life Divine, etc. are issues I never touch upon in my writings for the
devotees. My view is Money can be best
understood if one understands yoga as described by Him. As a family man or
even as an Individual one has to act in the society or in the field of Money. Action here means action of the Individual
that is the citizen on the market in the context of Money at a given moment of
transaction. Actions are judged by results. An understanding of yoga says
the individual and Money are social finites out of which the infinite
Prosperity emerges.
Surely
the individuals who fulfil these conditions will be able to create greater
amounts of Money than others. The
question is will they be able to produce more money than the richest man now
earns. What a rich man earns will be the minimum. What then is the maximum?
The maximum is determined by the maximum receptivity of the Individual and the
maximum encouragement society gives. Financially my aim is to create an
Individual at the age of eighteen or twenty who will have all the potentials to
create the wealth of this world. It is an abridgement of Time apparently, but
in fact it is hastening the ripeness of social experience -- maturity. No man who cannot fully appreciate the
value of Money as organisation will be able to emerge as an Individual and no
one who cannot appreciate the roles of Internet can accomplish this. Maturity,
ripeness are not aspects that can be hastened but that which enables them --
Freedom, awareness, choice, direction, self-direction -- can be given to the
maximum possible extent. The CHOICE
is made by the citizen, the individual. Is there a way to help the citizen to
make the right choice? Such a help is an interference that will spoil the child
and turn out to be conditioning. The progress one makes offers the scope for
others to receive what direction it may choose. One man’s perfection can save
the world, said He. It means the atmosphere one creates is the maximum one can
contribute. Direction is in place to prevent degeneration and dissipation. It is our conception that Money is to be
produced in fields and factories. It is not a wholly wrong conception.
Money lies more in human creativity than in the fields and factories. As trust
is one such creative field, it creates Money. Real wealth lies inside more than
in outer life. Going inside will be tempting to the individual and he would
like to go more and more inside. It will again separate the inner from the
outer. Integration of the outer with the inner is one essential aspect of
creation of wealth. To discover the inner power in outer experience is living
richly as no one so far has attempted. It will be a full living. All of us do
it in learning a language. We can extend it to create prosperity. Our highest
aim is to learn the evolving Spirit in life. It is an evolving life, evolving
because the Spirit inside has come to the moment of realisation that it has to
evolve. Spirit evolves in life, mind and matter. Spirit evolves by itself. What
matters is spiritual evolution.
Creation,
as we are repeatedly saying, is for delight. The delight issues out of the
Brahman hidden in it emerging. The aim is explained as a play of consciousness
with consciousness, being with being and ananda with ananda. This play demands
separation. But the basic unity is indestructible. In the inversion created by
involution, knowledge converts into ignorance. To know the play of the forces
in the human world it is necessary to know what happens in the cosmos. In the
beginning it is the Self-conscious unity in the Being. For the sake of the
play, it becomes Sachchidananda. Supermind is the nature of Sachchidananda, its
objective status. The Self-conscious Being presents itself as Brahman, Purusha,
Ishwara with their corresponding powers of Maya, Prakriti, Shakti. Maya
conceptively creates while preserving the original oneness. Prakriti
dynamically executes as Purusha stands aloof. Shakti conceptively creates and
dynamically executes as Ishwara here is a part of Shakti, by surrendering to
it. Simultaneously the Self-conscious being divides itself subjectively as
Spirit and objectively as Truth. The objective status of consciousness is
knowledge. The action of Brahma, Purusha, Ishwara through Maya, Prakriti,
Shakti takes place in the plane of Supermind which is the objective status of
Sachchidananda. Supermind is called the plane of Truth-consciousness. It is
here the One becomes the Many without actual separation, a differentiation
without distinction. In our lower world Ego creates the separation converting
the play of enjoyment into a struggle for survival. If the Self-conscious Being
splits itself into Spirit and Truth subjectively, the Spirit by a similar
process creates subjective Time and objective space. Further the plane of Time
becomes Time and Timelessness. This is the original division between which the
instrument of Mind is born. Mind, by definition, is an instrument of division.
But the unity and oneness being the real basis, Mind splits only the Force, not
the Being. The division meets with an absolute resistance at the level of
substance, resulting in atomic existence. The ego, the result of division,
acquires a mental point of view, a life point of view and considers itself as a
separate entity at the physical level. Evolution
restores the unity created originally at the level of Matter. As unity is
the basic principle of Being, not division, when the division proceeds in the
consciousness, it comes to a dead stop when it meets with the substance. The
process of division is infinite. Therefore it cannot stop. When further
division is not possible, aggregation of divided units begins. Evolution is to
discover Sachchidananda in Matter where the fleeting Ananda of Cosmos is given
permanency in the dense Matter below. For
one who aspires for the spiritual life, this is the only view. In simple
words, the first step in divine living is conversion of Selfishness into
Self-giving in the universal life. This is exalted philosophy. All that we live
today once started as exalted philosophy. We
have to accept the new philosophy and create new attitudes that will express
the new consciousness. That will be our study in Money. No work of ours
misses our attitude and motive behind that represent our old philosophy of
moksha which is seeking selfish salvation. The new salvation we seek is for the
collective, not for the individual. This we do by the individual becoming the
Eternal. In practice, this is selfishness becoming Self-giving on a universal
scale. In the process of change, e.g. constitution, law, rule, procedure,
custom, usage-there are several stages, each insignificant change being
exceedingly important. The new
understanding of Money we have to create must be on this basis.
Subjectively
Money is an object of possessive enjoyment. Objectively it is an instrument of
wide social action in any direction or field. They meet together at a higher
level of social power represented by the WILL
of the social individual in a person. That social power is Truth whose
inner counterpart is Spirit. The Spirit of that outer social power is the
social spirit. They merge in social existence. The Being of such a social
existence is the head of the nation, his person. That splits into the
President, the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice. There was a time when the
Chief Justice was paid only 5000/- while car drivers in banks were clearing a
total salary of 20,000/- with a basic salary of Rs. 3000/-. This is a
distortion which presaged the spate of corruption that followed in the coming
decades. Money was put in the straightjackets of administrative process while
the social growth of Money was overflowing enormously raising the value of a
plot from Rs. 1000/- to Rs. 10 lakhs. As Money was not allowed the freedom it
deserves, it went into ugly distortions. Kurien retired on Rs. 5000/- while he
deserved Rs. 5 lakhs a month.
As
the infinite in creation has become the infinitesimal, the society in its
progress has become many things of which Money is one. The same process
continues in Money till Money attains a unique position at a given moment. What is it for Money to become unique? It
is a truism of life that every thing can do duty to everything else. The speech
can be replaced by a sign, but communication is unique to speech. The duty of
exchange which is the primary function of Money was done prior to the birth of
Money by barter. But Money does it with precision and goes on increasing the
level of precision till the function becomes unique. The cost accountant has
arrived at appreciating the unique service of Money to the society. At the point of uniqueness, it is the
overmind that expresses itself through Money. We can well appreciate the
difference between the sensory perception of an article like a book from its
mental comprehension. Going further beyond, we can construct the understanding
of the book at every level of the spiritual range of Mind and that of
Supermind. Stopping at the overmind, we will be able to appreciate the value of
uniqueness of anything. A similar exercise with Money is called for to know its
uniqueness. For instance, there are various ways of measuring the efficiency of
an act. Money too can do it. The time consumed is one indication, its
usefulness is another, but Money measures the efficiency in terms of how much
money is spent. Such an approach enables us to improve its efficiency in terms
of Money spent. Uniqueness is a trait
which no one else can exhibit. It is true that education, trade, etc. also
have their unique functions. In man meeting his complement in the woman,
Romance rises to its peak at the point he and she are unique to each other.
What the web and the Internet do, nothing else can do. The credit card,
especially the visa card, has come as a standing wonder. We see at this point
Money becomes a unique instrument. At
the point of uniqueness, its service excels, reaches perfection. Mind
offers so many services, but in memory Mind’s function becomes unique and
cannot be bettered. Uniqueness enables creation to reach perfection.
Fingerprint experts, handwriting specialists, astrologers and philosophers know
this. The Buddha says the river is never the same. The teacher who sees this
uniqueness in a child will have discovered the potential genius in the child. To be able to reach the unique aspect of
Money or anything is to utilise it the best. Spiritually all men are equal.
We try to become a type. To use Money as everyone uses is to reach Money at the
level of a type. We cannot still say Money has attained its unique status.
Maybe it is on its way. Ours is a summary primary attempt to create a great
quantity of Money. From there, till we reach the uniqueness there is a long
distance. Quantity is either physical or vital. Beyond that Mind and three
further levels of it are there till we reach the overmind. Perfection is the
watchword of this yoga. Perfection and uniqueness go together though there is
one step beyond. When Sri Aurobindo walked for ten hours he thought walking the
same distance in the same time is of significance. Hence he had four clocks in
between the two ends. Supramental perfection demands it be taken to the minutest
detail. Having reached atoms, physics has gone beyond it to subatomic
particles. A similar attempt in matters of psychology was successfully
undertaken by the Rishis earlier.
Money
becomes unique at one point. The Act becomes unique at some point. When we reach that point in social
existence and examine Money as well as action, we find uniqueness meeting
uniqueness. It is an acme of our study. An act is inanimate. It can be animate
when done by a man. Still, the act has an existence. An ACT is the unit of universal life or existence even as the atom is
the unit of matter. In the individual it gets the energy of his life. Also an act is a universe in itself. Money
is a thing, not an act. When it is transaction it becomes an act. Money rises
to be an organisation when it ceases to be an act but becomes a system. Rising
further to become Trust, Money is no longer a thing or an act or even a system.
There Money becomes a social value that
exists in a human value system. Uniqueness being a universal value, Money
arrives at its uniqueness in all these stages. Only when it is a transaction is
it an action. It is obvious we are in the presence of Infinity of infinities in
this study. What we are studying is not money, with Money as an occasion or an
excuse, or a doorway. We are studying infinite existence which by its
definition defies study. The question is
whether we are able to conceive, perceive and sense that Money is the
infinitesimal that reveals infinity. This conception is the reward of the
study in the mind. Its perception evokes a vital response from life. Only its
sensation gives us the power to create what we perceive. It will be doubly so
as we are approaching uniqueness -- infinity -- from two sides, action and Money.
The point at which they become unique is the natural terminus for the
involution where begins the evolution. To us evolution, in this narrowest
context, means Money enters the phases of Multiplication and
Self-Multiplication. The significance is given by the reversal that is
transformation of involution into evolution. Supramental consciousness has the power to reverse the involution into
evolution not necessarily when the involution ends, but at any stage. It is
the essence of this yoga that Man, being conscient, has the capacity to escape
the rest of the evolution by moving away from his normal physicality to the
conscious mentality and further to the further possible centre made possible by
evolution, the mental psychic. If the truth in this statement is conceded, it
follows that Money can enter into its final phase of being an instrument of the
Divine. I always put it away to the sadhak. To the simple devotee, this
movement, its first stirrings will open the floodgates of infinite Money. Our
quest ends there.
We
know when the Being is awake, it can reverse, change, hasten the course as it
chooses. It is spiritual awakening. We
have now the spiritual awakening of 1) man, 2) society, and 3) Money. Our
stated purpose will be more than well served if the first is fulfilled. The
world evolved from agriculture to modern society via manufacturing. As the
centuries or decades pass, Mind has awakened. It hastens the change. Now that the service sector dominates the
society and a TOOL of technology in
the shape of computer has come, India can skip both the initial phases
--agriculture and manufacturing. As the world becomes a global village, the
earlier compelling need to produce all the nation’s requirements within the
boundaries of the state no longer is there. The world can have its food and all the other needs produced anywhere,
as its then purpose dictates or demands. Rural areas can generate their own
service sector and agriculture can be avoided to a large extent, if possible.
Before printing came to India there were no textbooks. Children had to memorise
all the textbooks. It is no longer necessary. All civilised progress is as
such. Suppose one wants to analyse an act, he needs to know the process of
creation. In creation Brahman has become the Self-conscious Being, Sat Purusha.
The Self-conscious Being acquires three consecutive states of Brahman, Purusha,
Ishwara and their powers Maya, Prakriti, Shakti. What Maya conceives, Prakriti
executes. Shakti does both, i.e. conceives and executes. It is done in the
Supramental plane which is the objectivised state of Sat. In addition Sat
creates Spirit and Truth by the subjective and objective states. Spirit, again,
by an objective process, creates Time and Space. So far, it is the creation of
the cosmos. Only when Time splits into Time and Timelessness Mind is created.
Mind creates Life and Matter. One can see the ACT at every stage. Maya, in creating the Many out of the One,
preserves the oneness. The Mystery lies in the preservation. Minus the Mystery
we are finite; with the knowledge of the Mystery we are infinite. This is the
process of creation which is hidden or buried or implicit in every ACT. To him who knows the process, the Mystery begins to reveal. ten people
sit around a table each with Rs.1000/-, and at the end of the meeting Rs.
10,000/- is offered to one of them. The recipient cannot but be intrigued,
but pleased. Suppose he pauses a minute and sees the PROCESS, a process by which the selfish aggressive Man who does NOT want anyone to prosper comes forward
to offer his own Rs.1000/- for another’s use for a period, he will see
selfishness giving way to Selflessness for a higher selfish benefit. This
possibility arises out of an organisation. Suppose the modern man, by an
infinite stretch of imagination sees that Internet brings to him news,
knowledge, trade, opportunities, Money which none of his own co-citizens would
concede because Internet is a wider subtle organisation. It brings him a house
in exchange of a Red Paper clip. He will see such potential is there in the
market, the world, the atmosphere. It comes to him when it gets organised. One more step. He sees the same
possibility inside him. Should he have the same generous attitude of the
Internet in his own psychological attitude, the attitude of creative
Self-giving, he will see the same infinite possibilities of Multiplication
as well as Self-Multiplication in him. It has after all gone out from inside. That inside was the inner life of an unknown human being.
Then he becomes qualified to multiply Money as Internet is now doing.
One movement of Money considered from
each of these sides will be of help. In
lending, the value of the individual, whether his status is one of poverty or
wealth, will be of importance. The act varies from a bank to a moneylender. Of
course, how critical the moment is for the borrower is of great significance.
When the loans have shifted from the banker’s market to the customer’s market,
relationship determines how each acts. Over what space of time is the Money to
be issued acquires importance. When no one returns the loan, one person
promptly returning it becomes unique. Equally when everyone is anxious to return
the loan in time without reminder, he who refuses to do so in spite of coercive
action does prove to be a unique case. Money has over a hundred relationships
of which lending is one. The Komutti Chettiar who believes that the borrower’s
Money with him for whatever reason will do him harm is unique as a community. A
bargain that is prolonging for hours over a fixed sum, takes a unique turn when
the sum is placed on the table as bank notes. The seller on seeing the currency
bundles behaves differently. Once the Money is on the table, his look shifts to
the Money and may not shift back to the buyer. From that moment, his attitude
softens, and the bargain takes a different course. Money, the sight of it has a unique effect. Often in rural transactions
the buyer thrusts the bundle of Money on to the lap of the seller which changes
the direction of the transaction. The sight, the touch, sometimes even the
voice that mentions the figure has a striking effect. Their result is typical.
To see the unique performance, we have to wait still further. In Mother’s
atmosphere, we have always seen the phenomenon of excess benefit in one shape
or another. When the buyer quotes an impossible price of Rs.66,000 as against
his previous quote of Rs.125,000/- a new seller offers Rs.36,000/-. This is the
type of response Mother evokes always. Now, uniqueness apart, whole fields of
trade such as phones and emails offer the customer a price a hundredth of what
he is used to. They excel themselves even offering the service free. This occurs
when the uniqueness of several aspects joins together. Uniqueness is still
farther away. In music the highest pitch of a raga becomes unique in each
singer on each occasion. Money becomes unique as Money and more so when Money
moves attitudes, power, situation, equilibrium, etc. as nothing can move. We
know teaching is at its best when it becomes learning. Can we say buying can
become selling and vice versa. Only in the real estate it can be seen very
well. The cultivable land purchased to be converted into house plots undergoes
a metamorphosis. We can as well say his buying is selling. Similarly at the
point Money’s role becomes unique the personal becomes impersonal as in the VISA card. Money, at that point becomes an uncentralised organisation of which
No-body is in charge. Public opinion is another organisation which has been
taken hold of by no one so far. Sri Aurobindo calls the moment, the moment
where the involution changes into evolution, an evolutionarily creative moment.
His own actual phrase is a virginally creative moment. The youth in the West
wanting to be himself, not what the family or the society asks of him is the
Quest of Man for uniqueness in individuality.
India
combines the post-Independence laxity in public life with the aspirations of
the modern citizen. The employers, thus, face a two-faced dragon. Labour laws
do not permit discharging the erring employees. They work for a few hours or
refuse to work at all. The ingenious human mind found a solution through the
instrument of Money. As today we cannot
think of a negotiation except in terms of Money, the extraordinary
resourcefulness of this measure can be missed in a great part. The
situation is a complexity because of the political climate. It is intentionally
made complicated by the refractoriness of the individuals who stand to gain. In
terms of karma, this generation of employers pays for the sins of the employers
of the 1940s. It is Tatas who originated this VRS (Voluntary Retirement). It
pays to pay the full salary for the remaining years of service to the senior
employees. It is a solution made possible by Money. As this is an example of
solving a negative issue, there are positive ones where new entrants are paid a
bonus of a few months’ salary in addition to double the salary offered. They
appear to be an individual benefit, but what absorbs the untold amounts is the
newly emerging social opportunities in terms of Money. Chandrasekaran’s book
speaks of how even the sculpture in the Indian temples can be digitalised and
made a source of vast income. Someone is selling a CD-ROM for a cost of
Rs.1,50,000 in good number every year. As the sand on the beach contains the
potentials of becoming a chip, computer has come making anything a source of
Money. Even a paperclip becomes a house. The scope for innovation is infinite.
Chandrasekaran speaks of a new software company in a village, opening monetary opportunities in animal food
and a host of other similar items. The Rishis sought ÷©õm\® moksha
that merged their souls with the static infinity of Brahman. Sri Aurobindo looks on the static Brahman
as the Brahman that is active in itself and in all the planes down to matter
where the Marvel unfolds. Moksha is one great soul receiving illumination
and offering to bless the rest of humanity by his status in Silence. Marvel is
the soul of the Individual emerging through the parts of his being, as it has
realised that it is no longer the individual soul or even the soul of the
universe, but it is of the Transcendent descending on earth to discover its
emergence from ignorance. Money can accumulate with rich men, royalty and banks
and shine from the top. Now man realises that his expansive attitude can bring
Social Money to emerge through his life as abundant living, where one man
spends as much as the richest man in an earlier period spent. It is the Marvel
made possible by Money. Its infinity is reached at its uniqueness. Infinity,
infinitesimal, uniqueness, Marvel all are facets of one single movement. VRS
that puts Rs.20 lakhs in the hands an employee of Rs.20,000 salary raises the
efficiency of the establishment he quits. Mostly uniqueness goes with
perfection at some level. What the
Supermind achieves in knowledge, Overmind achieves in ignorance. Bernard
explains that counterfeit currency acts exactly as the regular currency as far
as the public is concerned. Only that if the counterfeit money floods the
market, inflation will set in economically. Morally, the Government will
encourage immoral acts. The perfection of Overmind occurs in Matter. The
perfection of Money’s uniqueness takes place at all levels -- a thing, a
transaction, an organisation, trust, power, etc. The smallest part of matter is
the atom. The smallest denomination of the currency is the paisa or the cent or
the penny. The aim of creation is to arrive at the perfect form. What is the
aim of Money? Money is a symbol. Its best service to the society is to serve as
an effective tool to accelerate its growth. It does it in two ways. One is just
functional. Transport is made possible as every passenger can pay for his
ticket. Payment for services rendered is
the primary function of Money in any field. In the field of education,
apart from the direct payment of tuition and boarding fees, Money plays a subtle, more powerful role as it equips
the student with an earning capacity. Today, earning capacity is the central
motive to get educated. A degree is a
powerful symbol of society’s monetary reward to the student. The players in
a professional team are paid for their play. That is a smaller truth. Business
pays them, for their period of popularity, enormously for being a social
success. Money here becomes a symbol of social accomplishment. The spy does a
patriotic service for the nation. He almost serves the nation. They can also be
professional. Money does it. Suppose monetary rewards are not possible, the
athletes will not be so forthcoming to advertise the goods, the spy will not
readily risk his life for the nation. Money makes such things possible. Interest
makes credit possible. It is the service of Money. Money does not make anything
possible, but it makes many things possible. In 1980 a diabetic patient, not
expected to survive, escaped death and was slowly recovering. The doctor
suggested a drug not available in India could help her recover fast. It was
produced in USA, but was not in the market, as it was not yet released for the
public. The patient happened to know a doctor in research who could procure her
that drug. But it was to be brought under controlled temperature. The airlines
had that facility. The patient needed only four tablets. If the earlier hurdles
could be overcome, the cost of the drugs and the transport was Rs.5000/-. It
was a forbidding cost, but, in this
case, Money made it possible. As symbolic service is its virtue, Money
often exhibits the capacity to make the impossible possible. In this we see the
accomplishment assumes the perfect form because of Money. In all accomplishment
there is satisfaction. Satisfaction
rises to delight when the service becomes unique at the point of the act
acquiring a perfect form. Delight is the result of self-discovery for the
lost soul. The delight of Money is seen when it realises its innate hidden
capacities in non-monetary social fields, what is not possible for the forces
of those fields. The infinite does not emerge out of the finite till it becomes
the infinitesimal. Uniqueness and the infinitesimal go together. Also
perfection in form is another of its attributes. Uniqueness can be expressed as
the process of the formation of the seven ignorances. As the Spiritual
substance descends to become material substance, the one infinite becomes the
infinitesimal. Money which is a Divine Force descends to represent gross
products of land or factory, and it becomes a material thing. To be able to
know another person’s unique nature is almost to know where his divinity
emerges. The path of infinity to the infinitesimal is almost parallel to the
other eleven aspects of Spirit becoming their opposites. One who traces all
those paths, will be able to know Money fully in all its aspects of
integration. When the uniqueness is recognised and is allowed to grow on its
own path, the ugly duckling becomes the swan, the idiot becomes the genius, a
nobody becomes a celebrity, shivering fear becomes undaunted courage and a mere thing Money rises to master the
throne.
In this poise, one is on the border of Becoming
changing into Being. It is a poise where attention to details helps achieve
greatness in Man. Also here we see persons ridden with chronic diseases
changing into a picture of health. Uniqueness goes with high character. Uniqueness gives unique strength. It is
a point where the inconscient becomes superconscient. At the same time, one
crosses into the subtle plane from the gross physical plane. Again it is here
the objectless ananda tries to express itself through objects. Uniqueness is
the gateway through which the infinitesimal emerges into its original infinity.
Guru-shishya, husband-wife, fast friendship, professional-client relationships
are fertile areas for uniqueness to emerge. In the market, where Money rules it
is eminently possible. Emerging uniqueness can be an iconoclast and abolish all
forms of established authority.
1)
Wages in India are up from Rs.20/- to Rs.120/-.
2)
Real estate values all over the world rise high.
3)
One man with one tiny skill
of speech about culture in a humorous way rose to be the fifth most well known
consultant in the world.
4)
For one single flaw in accounts, world famous companies collapse.
5)
Banks, having realised that giving away Money will make them socially
eminent and politically powerful, do not dare venture to act on their
understanding.
6)
The rich man whose primary motive is never to allow the poor to rise
now finds his bread in New York costlier if there is famine in Bangladesh.
7)
No longer are children anxious for the inheritance from the parents,
as they perceive their own goal in life cannot be achieved by that Money.
8)
Parents do realise inheritance will render the character of their
children flabby and flimsy and give it away to charity.
9)
No longer is the
character of Money what it was.
A person in 1500 AD or even 500 AD, if told of the
comforts of life we are now enjoying, would have found it unbelievable. Can we
speak to anyone today that the Love of Jesus, the Compassion of the Buddha, the
powers of Lord Krishna or all that we have heard of Paradise are inside us? The
world we have now around us is created by our Minds. The Earthly Paradise the
great souls have envisioned is in our inner lives. Sri Aurobindo went to the
Kali temple and Kali came out of the idol. At least a few thousand devotees
have seen Sri Aurobindo and the Mother like that in their photographs. Can we
tell any teacher or parent that he has never seen the genius in his own self
and at least now he must see it in his child? But it is true. A petty
shopkeeper earning Rs. 1000/- a day cannot be shown that his business contains
the potentials of one lakh of profits a day and, in truth, all the wealth of
his town. It demands another dimension of vision. The world is long used to the
idea that people are poor, ignorant, filthy and dirty and only a few are
talented and are affluent. All our education has not taken us out of that
superstition. We are out and out physical. These are superstitions of the
physical existence. We find all these superstitions in Money. Some of them are,
As luck is
not the determinant, so work is not the determinant.
·
Education is a hindrance to earn Money.
·
Without education one cannot earn enormous Money.
Education is a bar in the
sense; it prevents Man from descending low enough to earn as the circumstances
demand. Education is a help to earn as it enlightens the process. A deeper wider Truth here is education
brings in his prestige which is foreign to accomplishment. In the second
proposition education helps one receive from experience.
Money is produced by Man
at different times out of different things – land, factory, service, values,
etc. – depending upon his mental development and social opportunities. Man is
capable of raising himself to any level. He can also raise the society if he
chooses. Man influences the society and the society influences him but out of
the two, he is the primary factor that determines the other. Money is not the
only thing Man has produced. It is one among the many. What he really does is creation, not production; it is creation of
social development.
In spite of a galaxy of intellectuals in the
hundreds, if not in the tens of thousands, it has not produced one rational
Man. Suppose such a rational man is in existence, he will be able to see what
is happening to the social progress through the instrumentation of Money. He
will get a glimpse of the infinite Money power behind the Money that is
currency. Behind a single bank, a rational person will be able to perceive the
inexhaustible power, if not as Money power. Bank is a powerhouse, market is a
power station, society is power incarnate. It converts itself into bits of
expressible power of various types.
Abolition of poverty, prosperity, and abundance for
some are what the world knows. Abundance
for all is not yet a concept, leave alone a reality. Half the world is poor. There
is a super abundance of things that makes the object superfluous. It is a
Supramental possibility. Sri Aurobindo envisaged the Supramental Being even
before the rational man is born. In India even agriculture is primitive. How
can we skip manufacturing and the service sector? If we do, it is a Supramental
possibility turned into actuality. All of us, as devotees, strongly believe in
His prophecy but want that Being born in
our social conditions. It is not rational. The Supramental possibility of
Money will be realised if there are Supramental attitudes, Supramental
organisations, Supramental values. We now see the distant, but distinct
symptoms of them in various ways. Insurance is the oldest. Credit was only for
the propertied rich. At the inception of banks, it was the attitude, but the
need for the bank to lend Money made it gradually relax its rigidities and seek
those members of the society it would otherwise shun. The innate power of Money compels the society to change. It is
essentially the role Money gives the society. As the paper clip has other
dimensions, Money too has. It has all the dimension of the society. By itself
these dimensions do not emerge. When the society changes, new conditions emerge
and organise themselves into an institution, those possibilities emerge and
persuade men to conform. In this paper the aim is to know those possibilities
in full before they emerge in the society so that they will become real in our
life under appropriate conditions. Even rationality is a bar. Our turning inward
to the evolving Being-the psychic being-is the changed inner circumstances.
Sri Aurobindo calls some
of them Logic of the Infinite, Higher Reason.
The spiritual truth translated in terms of Money
will read like this. When the whole world believes one has to work hard to
generate Money, our belief that less work brings in more Money sounds like not
only a paradox, but downright folly. Spiritually, folly is the greatest of
wisdom. Such are the mental attitudes demanded of us, once we embark on this
path. Such attitudes are expected of us not only in important affairs, but in
all small events. By a strange turn of events patients from the West are flying
to India and Thailand to have medical treatment, a reversal of roles, as it was
from Asia that patients went to USA for treatment. Seen as a whole, the social
fabric reveals all these facets in rich abundance and goes on adding to the
store till all is explicit. In the final phase there will be less distinction
between Money and Education or between power and joy. All the independent
powers of the society meet at the peak of the society gradually losing their
individualities and becoming more of social facets. To trace each one of those
movements in Money distinctly and to place them in the right social perspective
so that Money will be seen not as Money but as a social instrument fulfilling
social duties from its own side is the aim.
Not many will come forward to accept these
conditions or to benefit from them by practising it.
In practice, it means,
On the day the Buddha was born, astrologers
prophesied that he would rule the world as a monarch or a sage. The paper clip
becomes a house. After working for forty years one suddenly becomes a national
leader. Others gradually find their fame growing. Stones remain stone, desert
remains desert but some points in the desert become important as oil is struck
below. All are the same, but each item
reveals it at different times. He who has the vision can see it at any time. Money,
in its original sense, is the vital power of the society organised by the
social mind as part of fulfilling its divine mission. At every point of its
movement Money has two alternatives, actually many options. One is the routine
role assigned to it in its horizontal expansion where it retains its character
evolved thus far. Another is its productive role of multiplying accepting
energies of the forces it interacts with or the planes higher than its present
functioning. A farmer taking a bank loan meets his cultivation needs and there
it ends if he is cultivating the crops all the others do. Suppose he raises a
crop new to the village or new in his region or new to the country or in the
extremely unlikely occasion a new hybrid, the role the bank’s money plays in
each case is different socially. When the farmer’s savings go to money-lending
or buying fresh lands, he is at the level of others. Suppose he starts a chit
fund then unknown in his village or complementary currency, the bank money
plays a different role of productivity or creativity. Credit cards in the
sixties and seventies, Internet transfer of money in the eighties have played
such roles. At any given time Money
somewhere takes on that role somehow in the transaction of some person, but it
always occurs. To be able to conceive of it in mind, perceive it in the
vital, sense it in the physical act, one recognises the tip of the iceberg that
is infinite expansion.
Money is vital power. Knowledge is the light of the
mind. The light enjoying no power cannot be effective. It can only be guided
and conditioned. Money being power expresses on its own, cannot be conditioned
as knowledge. So, money is a power without self-guiding knowledge or light. Our
approach to it naturally is to be different from that of education. We see
education becomes effective only when Money leads it. It happens when education
becomes commercial. There is a corresponding movement in Money, maybe in the
reverse order. Money too can come into
its own only when it is guided by knowledge. Without commercialisation
education cannot reach its universal dimensions. Without mass enlightenment
Money cannot realise its deeper potentials and release its higher energies. To
convey the argument to every other social force and redefine our ideas of Money
in that light is to travel through all aspects of the society spearheading
ourselves on the light of the Theory. This exercise is one part of it.
Obviously the ruling force is NOT money but social
power. In one case, a trustworthy entrepreneur was entrusted with funds by
several investors on their own choice. All of them belonged to an organisation.
This organisation decided to destroy the entrepreneur for its own reasons of
competitive jealousy. It ordered all its
members to take the Money back from the outsider so as to ruin him. All acted as ordered which easily shows the
determinant is not money but power. In this context Money cannot play
its own role freely. The question of its rising to heights of productivity,
creativity or evolutionary dynamism is nowhere. Whether Money plays its role or
power usurps its position depends on freedom.
Freedom has two sides. Freedom to create or freedom to destroy. We have been considering
only the constructive side. The speculations on the stock market, counterfeit
currency, gangsters’ organised life using stolen Money to buy judges and
legislatures, etc. are on the wrong side. Whatever the side is, the theory
finds all sides its field of inquiry. Our scope is limited. In a limited,
positive social structure Money plays 1) a constructive role as Money 2) a
creative role in the social development 3) a spiritual role in creating the
Individual. Only these are our immediate concerns.
In a society where Money has negative freedom it
can equally forge itself into an effective instrument. It will be an amorphous,
unorganized aggregate or conglomerate that can create dynamic chaos in the
society. Imagine what Al Capone would do, or would not do, if he had a field
day. All organised institutions would have ceased to function as examination
has become defunct in India due to mass copying. Once exams are abolished, the
pupil goes to grass roots learning from journals, newspapers, TV, etc. which
reduces him to a literate citizen. The body of academic talents will vanish.
Money used negatively will help destroy the administrative core of the
government as well as the structural functions social values have created based
on the reality of administration. It will be a free-for-all where Money will
certainly play a role. We cannot
overlook the fact that negative freedom will destroy the value of Money too and
remove it from social life. As the student outside school starts learning
from rumour, society, having banished its own structures and that of Money,
will have to start afresh. It will be a new foundation of society we are not
used to so far.
Man receiving excessive Money saves. It is right.
The knowledge we are trying to foster tells him it is better spent as early as
possible. That means on any given occasion he must have more calls on his Money
than what he will be receiving. It creates a fight in him. Rather, from this
point of view, this should create joy in him. Our study will find there the
modest householder will one day become an affluent middle class family
accumulating objects at home through hire purchase. He will see his salary is
rising. A paradox!
Money is a force which starts as energy. It is the
social will that gives the direction to social energy for it to become social
force. Before Mahatma Gandhiji came on the Indian scene, India was aspiring for
her freedom. That aspiration rose as social energy. It was Gandhi who gave a
direction to it by the slogan of Purna
Swaraj -- complete independence. By that leadership the social energy for
freedom became a socially well directed force. In 1904 Sri Aurobindo realised
that what Indian needed was not a better government from the British, but
complete Independence. His call awoke the nation which was in apathy. In the
80s and 90s Indian economy was astir. The educated population that can
understand the market mechanism exhibiting greater trust and equally deserving
that trust was taking some shape. NRIs
who returned from other countries provided a fresh perspective. Society that
was in majority was composed of people who were born after 1947. They never
knew what slavery was. They were born free. It was a time the working class was
intensely aspiring to move into the middle class. By this time,
self-sufficiency in food as a result of the Green Revolution had increased the
purchasing power of the rural population. The educational awakening completed
with the higher purchasing power was given a push by the pressure of the
increasing population resulting in urban migration. One consequence of it was
the boom in real estate. It was a decade
when the social progress was finding its feet. To convert all these positive
factors, a certain organisation was necessary. It was offered by hire
purchase. With that tool, every lower middle class home was quickly filled with
the comforts of an upper middle class home. The working class too took the
queue. The nation slowly, in a small measure, began to undergo a metamorphosis.
Theoretically what happened was at a time of socially ripe atmosphere; the
concept of hire purchase was born and accepted. It organised the aspirations of
the society as social power.
Of the thousands who buy lottery tickets, one wins
the prize. The prize winning ticket carries the lucky number. Whether the
number is predestined or it carries a possibility that through the language of
probability precipitates the luck at the final moment is immaterial. We see it is happening; we do not see the
process. It is given to our intellect to know the process; further
something deeper inside, the soul can know the essence. The process is the same everywhere, for the lottery, for events of life
and even the movements of Money. In life we have heard of many such
moments. Latha Mangeshkar was so chosen by a film director. One story of
Jayakanthan made him famous. The publishers saw the value of Tom Peters’
thesis. Man responds to Mother’s call. Gandhi went to Allahabad desiring to
recruit the Nehrus to the freedom movement. Sri Aurobindo chose Churchill as
His instrument. I made a conscious effort to touch the life of the village. Can
we now try to know such moments when Money by one single act opened up the next
phase of its development? The last twenty-five years is a period fertile in
such instances. The credit card, the Visa card, consumer loans in India,
housing loans, the micro credit of the Grameen Bank and other Banks are daily
expressions of this principle. It is one thing to be its beneficiary and
another thing to observe it and it is still another thing to see that that single act opens the next stage of development of
Money. A complete comprehension of the spirit of this paper will be
possible to one who sees in the
present time as well as in the past all such occasions. It is not necessary
that for this purpose one has to be a consummate scholar which demands years of
study. Such scholarship will invariably be able to give that knowledge of that
process. But, it is not indispensable to one who gets from several instances a touch
of the essence. It can be acquired in any period short or long provided one
gets to that process fully through the opening of the essence. This paper aims
at it. Another paper on Internet dwells on the same subject from the point of
view of technology. It can be clearer than this paper as this is on values that
are intangible and that is on tangible technology. In Man, particularly a
child, it is swabhava
that serves
as this border. Behind the swabhava
lies the swarupa. The lines of this form
are expressive for this purpose of discovering the process as well as the
essence. To discover the same border between the infinitesimal and the infinity
in the transactions of Money so that we can come by the limitless power of
Money is one act of the Lila in the plane of economic development. In each page
of this paper, through writings that are apparently repetitive, we are handling
the many aspects of that phenomenon.
Man is social. His social relationships are
maintained by his manners. This is in his inconsequential behaviour, towards
people who are least related with him. With his next inner circle, his
colleagues and neighbours, he relates through his behaviour. His own life is
built up with his character and that finds expression in his family. It is true that in all these relationships,
his sensitivities find expression, but they are least visible. Every
monumental decision of his will touch him beyond manners, behaviour, character
at the points of his own sensitivities.
Man is most touchy at those points. Positively he is most creative at those
points.
Money, apparently inert, has life, if not in
itself, but in its action. Money too has sensitivities. During high inflation,
depression, crisis, etc. the negative sensitivities reveal their vast negative
potentialities. We know with one whose million-dollar project is short of 5% or
10% of funds, positively those little amounts make the rest productive. In a
musical performance, it is the experience of the singer that the spirit of the
initial applause decides to what heights he will rise that day in his singing. The readiness with which the micro credit
was returned is one great expression of social sensitivity of Money. Out of
the one lakh borrowers, not one failed to repay. As long as the repayment is
from 99,999 borrowers, it is money collected back, repayment. The creativity of
Money will not surface, which it does in the last one borrower’s behaviour.
Ramapuram spread all over India, not only because the Money was recovered, but no farmer returned to the village
without paying the loan at the bank. The value of repayment, the spirit of
returning it is the social sensitivity of Money.
For Money, consciousness is the function, the
substance is its potential capacity. A father allows a larger pocket allowance
to his pet son. The actual use of that Money for the son, say to buy a camera
or some such thing is the use or function of that Money. It is its
consciousness. Such expenditure affects the character formation of the boy. It
can make him luxury minded or create a generous attitude of spending. It can
tickle his vanity or persuade him to lend his camera to his friends so that
they too may enjoy using it. This makes his character expansive. It is the
substance of Money. Sensitivities form
in both planes. Negatively it is the sensitivity of pride, vanity, etc.
Positively they are of generous, noble, sublime culture. Either way the highest
possible growth of Money is at the ends of such sensitivities, positive or
negative. These are individual. Correspondingly there are collective ones. Even
the collective ones express themselves through individuals. It is easier to
discern the collective sensitivity in a representative individual. Its
collective expression is less perceptible. Exhortation is a way of life in one
community as perversity in another. Modesty of shyness is another. Shyness of modesty is a superior version of
it seated more deeply. In cold climates people talk less, perhaps to
prevent cold air entering the mouth. In hot climates even the language is so
fashioned that in the articulation of it the lips are not permitted to close.
Twenty years ago someone sought change for a ten rupee note in Delhi. The reply
was five rupee notes were not in use in Delhi. Delhi, being the capital, enjoys
the heavy concentration of Money that goes with the seat of power. Man on the
street was offended by a foreigner asking him for five rupee notes. Bangalore
is a place where the value of real estates is rising at a speed of 100% in
twelve months as one expression of its fast becoming the home of computer.
About thirty years ago, a police inspector stopped a lorry carrying a forty HP
motor and demanded a bribe of five rupees. The driver noticed that in Tamilnadu
it would be fifty rupees. The varying amounts reflect the varying levels of
prosperity as well as social assertiveness. These are points at which the
collective sensitivity of Money is expressed in the individual behaviour. One
must be able to distinguish the cost of living from the sensitivity of Money.
One who pays in Germany Rs.700/- for a cup of tea to be served in his room
enjoys the hospitality of his company when that 700/- is paid by the company.
It is cost of living, not the sensitivity of Money. Twenty five years ago when
two or three people ate a breakfast of Rs.17/- and 3/- is offered as tip, the
server evaluated the customer as vain neo rich, not a member of a traditional
rich family who does not throw out the Money as an exercise in vanity.
Ø The gold bar travelling
to the end of the queue of customers in the Bank of England while the cashier
did not even look up.
Ø Griselda who contemplated
elopement with Palliser was rewarded by a costly jewel by her husband who
received her mother’s letter from her.
Ø Lady Mason’s son’s
outrage against the attorney who raked up the case and how it was reversed with
his ending up in Australia.
Ø The 75/- rupees of
Arunachalam coming back ten times as mess bill and finally becoming 75,000/- in
Mother Estates.
Ø The 2000/- of Nandan giving
him 2000 crores later.
Ø The 50 paisa uncle
grudged, after giving 500/- rupees for my marriage, prevented him from giving
his property to me.
o
The sensitivity of Money is capable of expressing itself through any
other sensitivity, but its power is
unmistakable. Roosevelt threatened to send a warship to South Africa to
collect the debts from the First World War. His country was to give away
billions of dollars after the Second War.
o
Gandhi who made the Sirkali Congressmen go away even without Money for
a ticket from his ashram was later forced to go on fast to give Rs.55/- crores
to Pakistan and lose Kashmir.
o
You can give away any Money or take any Money but that Money will not
forget to play its role, if only it was expressing itself at a point of
sensitivity. Rs.5/- I gave Radha was the base for him to loot 5 lakhs from the
garden.
o
If you accept Rs.1000/- offering from one who is inwardly compelled to
give, he will make you expend on him or through him Rs. 50,000/- when the cycle
is repeated.
o
The ₤3000 Darcy gave Wickham in lieu of the living repeated when
Lydia eloped and had its own way in continuing for years.
o
Money has sensitivity. It is collective as well as individual. It is
also functional as well as productive. It can be creative or evolutionary. It can combine any of these sensitivities
or even all.
o
Social sensitivity, cash sensitivity, sensitivity in a traditional
beggar, in women can be distinguished from each other. But one rule remains:
Ø The great always end up
giving.
Ø The mean always enjoy
grabbing and the cycle ends up that way.
For a yogi, the realisation is in the physical
substance. Till then he can have the powers of earlier levels. The birth of the
Supramental Being, the last level of transformation is a sine qua non. In ]Özöuõshº,
Siruthondar,
we see the demand coming from outside. In yoga, done in the right spirit, the
change comes from inside by a volition of surrender and what was a pain for the
Saint to overcome will be a joy for the yogi to court. Here, I limit my scope with the mental sensitivity. Money was
created by a mental Trust; hence Mind alone can accomplish our goal. One who
overcomes mental sensitivity in the mental substance is a rational person. In
handling Money at home or in public, we can train ourselves to overcome mental
sensitivity in the mental substance. The clerk at the Bank of England counter
was not disturbed in the least when the gold bar was drawn out by a customer.
Nothing in him winced. It is the physical substance not responding to the loss
of the gold bar. Fulfilling this condition, one in the teen years can earn all
the Money he would earn all his life. Life will put at his disposal the power
to earn all the Money the world can produce. It need not sound as a tall claim if you imagine that the television
carries one’s human voice all over the world. In the television it is
technology. In Money it is the power of psychology that blends itself with the
universal vibration. The process is the same. The planes are different as the
energy differs. The power is created as a potential which later becomes actual.
The first occurs in consciousness and the second in substance. The child
learning the mother tongue and a foreigner learning our language has a
parallel. First one recognises what is spoken after he hears it. Then he
recalls in his mind what is about to come but is unable to articulate it even
in the mind. Next he can mentalise it but not verbalise it. All these are
stages of development in the mental consciousness. Next the comprehension,
recognition, ability to recall, capacity to mentalise, verbalise and vocalise
shift to the mental substance. As the second stage is moving to completion, the
child begins to lisp, the foreigner talks in his accents our words to the
hilarious delight of the hearers. These
stages are the steps in the process whether it is Mind, vital or physical. The
shift from the consciousness to the substance follows the same rule in all
planes. What is potential in
consciousness becomes actual in the substance. The analogy can be repeated
between Mind and Body taking one as consciousness and the other as substance.
In the Body, apart from the distinctions of bodily consciousness and bodily
substance, we know they exist at two levels of subconscience and inconscience.
Maybe the flesh, blood and nerves belong to the subconscience and the bones to
the inconscience. Even in the bones there is life. There is no life of any
description in what is classified as Inconscience.
o
“Clarity of thought is contribution to peace,” said Robert Cooper in
his book.
o
Clarity of thought
generates power in consciousness for it to become substance.
o
Thought matures by clarity initiating a parallel movement in
consciousness towards substance.
o
The tip of the iceberg of abundance of Money is perceived as the
brightness of thought that clarifies.
o
In a human being it is a process that
Ø Moves him from youth to
age.
Ø Draws him into the
universal from the individual.
Ø Helps consciousness of
mind evolve towards the substance of the body.
o
Our idea of Money is it makes life possible and comfortable. But Money
has wider functions as the paper clip. Money comes to one from the society
invisibly bringing all that the society is potentially.
Along with it, the power
of the society to convert into actuality also is brought to the individual by
Money.
o
A family is a place where, in our view, a child is socially prepared. The social preparation is a conditioning of
community culture. As the family prepares the child socially and
culturally, the mental individual in him where the soul is more actively
present, responds positively or reacts negatively which is the process of
formation of the psychological individual.
In every move of this,
from the family, the child and the environment, Money offers itself as a field
that is an anvil on which the individual is to be shaped.
The generosity,
stinginess, readiness with which Money is handled, all express the Money value of the family intensely. It is the Money
value of the Society, surely not all
the value Money can express.
Money has an unexplored
higher dimension which descends as a force from above, changing itself into
social power in the psychological fabric of the individual. He is free to
choose from the society below and the force above and free to blend them into
what he desires in himself for himself.
o
A school is expected to build the character of the pupil. Money is
capable of shaping the youth into a social individual who can progress with the
progress of the society.
o
A school does to children what the parents cannot do. Money can do to an individual what the
family as well as society cannot do. Money contains all that the society
is. Also it contains all that the society is in its potential. Further Money
has the power which life has given the society from the plane of mind.
A person can get all
these capacities through Money if only he is open to them. Possessiveness of
Money enjoyed keeps one physical as well as vital. Trying to understand how the
family has acquired that sum of Money opens in the individual mental gates to
know how it is created.
The values through which
Money is handled, used, and possessed open up the corresponding values in
Money. It is an opening for him to grow in values.
o
A school, in a smaller view, gets one a certificate or degree. Money
in a similar view serves one’s functional requirements of daily life.
o
One goes to school so that he may become employable by the society.
Money, its possession,
enables a man to enter into the social activities as an acceptable member of
the society.
o
All the theories of
education, and all the educational researches are mostly or fully tended
towards one or the other ideas above.
All theories of economics
and their researches are directed towards the fostering of the above functions
of Money.
o
So an ideal school is one which accomplishes this feat efficiently. An
ideal citizen is one who uses Money well, earns it in good measure and saves it
in great quantities.
o
As years pass society moves from the physical to the mental. With the
maturing of Money in the society as an instrument of progress, Money becomes
less of a transaction, even less of a mere thing and more of a thing that
represents social as well as individual TRUST.
o
So, the cruel punishments of the physical phase are slowly replaced by
a human approach that realises, after all, the child is not a mere physical
being.
Money thus ceases to be a
coin, the coinage descending to represent only its fractional units. It becomes
currency, cheque, credit card, documents, bills of exchange, negotiable
instruments, etc.
o
Corporal punishment tries
to reach the mind through the cruel sensations of the body.
The heavy weight of a bag of coins, their jingling sound in
the appreciative ear change into a similar valuing of the currency or the
inherent legal value of a cheque or bill or a document.
When the Rishis and
shastris of India divided the spiritual quest, life in India lost its wholeness
and the real strength of Spirituality.
Equally so for the Rishis. Between the two world wars, currency was taken
off the gold standard. It not only did not lose its vigour of Money, but began
to show a momentum that was not there earlier. Currency represents gold in the
bank and therefore it should begin to lose its value once it is off that
support. It has not happened but had its opposite effect because Money at that
point shifted itself from being a thing to being a true reflection of trust in
the government and the society. In India the physicality of education condensed
into flawless memorisation. It is a final refusal to learn. Money being
released from the gold base was an extraordinary adventure the world was not
ready to take. Having taken that
evolutionary leap, the world reaped an inconceivable benefit. The present
attitude begun after the war, an attitude of Money seeking the borrowers is a
greater adventure least perceived. It is not only an adventure, but a reversal.
We rarely realise because of social demands that a child can learn best all by
himself outside the school. The parallel for Money is, Money can develop its
power best when it is not constrained by social norms. The genius has a greater
chance outside the society. The scope
for Money is great. Comparing it with education, Money today has spread in its
availability as education has spread over two hundred years. The further
scope for Money to expand is as great as is the gap between the ordinary person
and the genius. As no river needs any direction in its flow, no child ever
needs any direction in its education. So also Money needs no social
constriction. One may wonder under what restrictions Money is under now.
Firstly, Money is represented by what the government determines it to be, not what
it chooses to shape as. It is true without the present regulation Money will
become a wild growth and lose all its present value, but it will begin to
acquire the true value of Money. This is not to plead for Money being taken out
of its restraints, but is an argument to plead that its truer soul is not
flowering this way.
Ø The social organisation
that enables Money to take shape;
Ø The powers of
organisation that Money can release into the society for both of them to arrive
at their perfect forms.
An ideal is defined as a state devoid of
imperfection. It may be true, but it is much more than that. An ideal condition
may be defined as one where most could be made out of the opportunities that
present themselves. It goes further. An ideal condition is one which can create
the opportunities it needs. Sri Aurobindo’s ideal conditions are,
Ø where Matter is Spirit.
Ø where Simultaneous
integrality of Time is created.
Ø where the Individual has
discovered itself as the universal and the Transcendental.
Ø where Man realises the
egoism of service and shifts to divine service.
Ø where contradictions are
complements.
Ø where the subconscious
unites with the Superconscient.
Ø where Evil disappears.
Let us know
what these are in the context of Money. The question is what is the role played
now by Money in Matter evolving into
Spirit. Money being a thing is its condition of being Matter. Money as divine
Force is its spiritual status. Money entering into the phase of trust from
organisation and again shedding that trust, Money acquires its own force
drawing its energy from the social progress are these roles. For our
consideration the Ideal is the perfect form of TRUST and FORCE. As Force
is a further proposition, let us confine to considering what ideal Trust is. It is the rich man’s trust of the poor man.
Or when the rich man sees poverty is greater than wealth, he is tending towards
the ideal. It is the same as ignorance is greater than knowledge in the
sense ignorance issues out of knowledge. Society creates poverty to overreach
the present highest possible prosperity. Man becomes prosperous by his
capacities. That is not the maximum. There is a greater prosperity which grace
and supergrace can create in him. For this he has to withdraw from his social
and psychological personalities. By withdrawing from the social personality, he
becomes a psychological individual. To become a spiritual individual – the
psychic Being – he has to withdraw from his psychological personality, i.e. he
has to shed his faith in his own capacities. Money can be said to be a creation
of the society when it is a transaction or even organisation. It is a creation
of Man when it is created by Trust. The ideal form emerges beyond. Confining
our scope to Trust, we will achieve the goal before us. For that Money has to
shed being a thing, a transaction and even organisation. The credit card,
especially its being a number, destroyed the materiality of Money. It then
remains as a transaction. It goes to the background when the transaction is
indirect through the VISA card, but its being an organisation is
insistently at the front. The fact of
Money being an organisation very much recedes when Money seeks the borrower and
tempts him with concessions. In the Roll Programme Money seeks to give
itself away. Only it is seeking an excuse. The ideal form of Money emerges when
Man gives away Money seeking to become a social force himself by virtue of that
giving away.
o
Newspapers are sold cheaper or given away free so that mere advertising
revenue will accrue.
o
At the next stage, not even that revenue is sought, but what is sought
is the newspaper becoming a social force.
o
Giving away Money
makes the giver a Social Force.
The Perfect Form may not
be a Form we know.
Forms change as contents change. The forms as they
change may lose all the resemblance with forms we already know. Still the form remains. Food, riding on
horseback, memorisation of the textbook, speech as a vehicle of communication
in Silent will, etc. have changed far out of recognition, but food, transport,
knowledge, communication remain.
It continues its function as a subtle builder of the
social organisation.
In these various changes, if progress is there, it
will be negative progress. It is worthwhile knowing the two sides of progress –
negative, positive. Is there a neutral progress too? What then is progress?
Progress is change in the positive direction. A further question is about change,
movement. The inquiry ends at why the moveless began to move. As He says, if it
is in quest of Delight, the inquiry continues to ask what Delight is. He stops
the explanation at that point, maybe assuming the Delight is Self-existent and
therefore the answer is self-explanatory. We cannot go further than He, except
to say that Delight is a self-experiencing of what the Self-Existent is
Self-conscious of. All that ends in the concept of Freedom, the final law. We
have to travel in all these paths with respect to Money. That will reveal to us
what Money is now, and what Money is leading to be.
In that sense the
positive as well as negative are the same.
Only that they are
progress from opposite points of view.
From that perspective the negative progress is always
greater than the positive.
Poverty then is greater
prosperity, as Ignorance is greater than knowledge.
One earns and serves;
another spends and accumulates debts.
He who spends builds the
expansive vibration.
He who saves builds the
vibration of contraction.
Expansiveness is greater
than contraction.
From a still higher point of view, expansion and
contraction are the same.
That is from a centre
before creation.
The Absolute needs
neither to expand, nor contract.
Nor is it prevented from
either.
Its capacity to choose
either contraction or expansion is freedom.
Life becomes divine life
when we centre ourselves in that freedom and ACT here in life. Understand Money as a divine Force and see how it
achieves that purpose here.
It is to comprehend the
infinitesimal from the infinite.
Maybe HE calls that phenomenon Maya, the consciousness of
the Absolute.
When the Absolute chooses
to move, it becomes conscious of its being Absolute.
That is the consciousness
of the Absolute, what HE calls Maya.
That Maya is seen as
Prakriti, Shakti.
To see in our daily small
acts, Maya and how Prakriti and Shakti include Maya is divine perception.
To that perception, all
is progress. There is no positive or negative progress.
The perfect form is
arrived at as a human goal in divine life.
Forms change as contents
change.
To discover from your own personal experience these
powers of Money in the various transactions you know. All these are eternally in evidence all around you. The question is how
fully one perceives them and how soon. One can know them as soon as he
chooses to know. They are,
1)
Money spent generously is creative – coconut garden and cashew garden.
Money spent in vanity serves the purposes of vanity – The extra 500/-, 300/-
offered to Maria Susai went to Kamalam.
Money is the medium for the vibration that passes through
that.
To a large extent Money
is a neutral instrument. Later it acquires the character of the action.
2)
Money is a vehicle of right. - £zx ¹£õ´ ö\õøͯõP.
Money -- non-existent
Money -- imagined as a right serves to extract rights that are not there.
3)
Theft: Overcome in the next
generation, it rears its head in the third generation. Robbing the public,
transgressing rules, matures as robbing the Divine.
4)
Money ministers to ego – Padayachi.
5)
Trust in small matters helps money to draw upon the social culture.
Complementary currency in
Austria.
All future powers Money will acquire are now in potential
in Society.
6)
Internet – To grow one has to offer things and services free.
Google pays
$800 million to search “My Service” that is free.
All powers
of Money can very well be seen now in the Internet.
Paper clip
brings out the invisible dimensions.
E-Bay reveals
the value of used articles.
The more you give, the more readily it is given, the more
one earns.
Earning is in Money at
first, next earning is in status, the further power of Money being power.
7)
Movement is progress is best explained by Money.
8)
The conception of Money creates productive capacity, the expenditure
of Money produces. One is Maya and the other is Prakriti. Shakti does both. He
who can conceive of a productive project, execute it with efficiency later
finds in himself both these capacities and that they can be induced in others
or in an organisation. A poor housewife desiring to buy a dress for her child
does not buy it as long as she longs for it. The moment she conceives how that
Money can be earned, she finds that the opportunity to earn that Money comes to
her. Once the Money is in hand, not all women can readily buy the dress for
which she longed. Its coming into her hands as a physical possession creates
the possibility of keeping that Money. Most do so for a short time. Some rush
to the shop. The capacity to spend it
generates an unseen occasion to bring in another dress in a few days without
that conception and execution. So, if this theory is true in one’s
experience in life, he understands that the capacity to conceive is included in
the capacity to earn and both are included in the capacity of spending. So, the
rule reduces to
o
Spending ALL one has
generously with the right attitude quickly generates further Money without work
or conception.
A school completes the education for the child
which the family begins. Market expands
and extends the Money opportunities a family offers the individual. Schools
are supposed to give mental maturity to children which is necessary to meet the
social challenges in later life. A member of a family learns the primary values
of Money at home and acquires the right attitudes to handle larger sums in
later life which generally arises in the society. Society in this regard will
be far different from the family which offers cooperation and support based on
truth and affection whereas society will behave as another, a rival or even an
opponent. These are challenges the family does not offer. In education one
moves from the family to the society. In Money he moves from the family to the
market which acts as society here. It is obvious that one faces positive,
cooperative attitudes at home while in the market outside he cannot trust
anyone and the likelihood of cheating is ever prevalent. We can as well say the society or the market negatively completes the
training of Money which the family starts positively. Occasionally outside
of home one has trusted friends while at home he may not be able to trust many.
Either way, the family and society are complements for an individual in getting
educated about Money. Not that the family and the market need to be always cast
into moulds of opposite structures. They can interchange or be complementary if
they choose.
o
The main thing one needs to ponder here is the point elucidated
earlier that Money gets in a token measure its future possible powers from the
social culture mostly extended to it at home and rarely in good humane
occasions outside.
o
Interest rates of usurious money lenders rose to 60% in the previous
days. Now it even touches 250%. This shows the normal capacity of human nature
and its greed. It is the innate tendency of the finite towards the infinite.
Money serves as a tool to egg man in this journey. Law comes to curb this
tendency where the positive power of public conscience assents. Money serves greed negatively. Now
credit card companies offer to take over a man’s debts from another company on
lower rates of interest and even go to the length of saying that for a
specified initial period NO interest
need be charged. The roles are reversed. The higher positive energies of Money
are in store as potential in the society and emerge positively to a positive
attitude, negatively to a negative attitude.
What matters is not
Money, the transaction, the rate of interest or the occasion, but the attitude of man. His attitude
determines. It is shaped by his own
understanding. His negative understanding arises from outer circumstances. His positive attitudes and understanding
issue out of his inner being.
Money is an important
tool.
Market is an important
field.
The outer circumstances
have an unmistakable influence on the individual.
But they are not the
determinants.
There is a prime
determinant in all cases.
It is inside.
It is the inner being of
Man.
Life develops from one centre of activity to
several centres. The essences of all these centres emerge from a common centre
of a higher plane. From agriculture to
most modern department of life merges in politics as in government. Its
common centre in the society is not usually perceived. It is the power behind
the throne. Politics does function as a centre, but as it is indirect, it
cannot be a conscious centre. Of course, it can be a conscious centre where
power can be misused. Power rightly used brings about results which come by the
initiative of the beneficiary as the dealers of a hot selling product seek the
dealership depositing Money. There is
still a higher way of the public seeking the product. It is to appreciate
the spiritual value of the product as a seller of spiritual books does when he
is a devotee. These are aspects of existing social life but there is no life in
these fields. No devotee going to the temple buying a coconut has that attitude
towards coconut, camphor, etc. If he does, he won’t bargain or offer a little
more by rounding it off at a higher level. No one buys The Life Divine for a higher cost than its price. They look for
discount. These practices are there, but
they are without the real spiritual life animating them. It is there in the
commercial life of the Internet. Companies operating on the Internet realise it
commercially. It is well pronounced and needs no explanation or canvassing. It
has come to stay. Raising the commercial attitude to spiritual attitude is
possible for the spiritual individual. And for that, it cannot be in one of the
partial centres of “my space”, ‘Google’, etc. It is possible for the centre of centres. I do not think it is yet
developed somewhat on the lines of a VISA card. I hope it is a centre where all
services are offered free instead of the present arrangement of offering free
service on the one side and receiving payments on the other. Of course, the
receipts are there, but they will be dividends of social power as the banks are
now trying with the Roll programme. The phenomenon is not unknown to life. The
politician offered free service to the public in return of a hope for
government service or the satisfaction of serving the public. Morgan’s service
in 1907 was one like that. It is a moral power. Presently it is a moral power
without Money power if the man is pure. Corrupt men can raise enormous amounts
of Money, if they let their power be exchanged for Money. In the Internet we
see educational power is being developed. In the paper clip and E-Bay more
dimensions are revealed. It is a field
of technology where the subtle possibilities are in the plane of subtle
physical making the power of any description tangible or palpable. At that
point, arguments are superfluous. As a modern gadget – phone, pen, camera, etc.
– is used by the customer innocent of its process or origin, the public will
enjoy the benefit of this centre if only they put up the necessary attitude.
Imagine a possessive miser joining the chit fund and giving his Money for
somebody’s use and patiently waiting for his turn. In him it is a psychological
revolution. The fruit seller of Cuddalore was overbearing and bargained by
raising the price or refused to sell. Chakrapani, the radio shop intellectual,
would rather close his shop losing all customers than be flexible or
reasonable. Now the same people or similar people have to bargain offering to
absorb various types of costs and solicit customers. The demands of the market
bring it about. The medical college in such a context may have to offer
prospective students Rs. 40 lakhs for taking the course. In what shape the
rewards will issue is not yet known. We see the public’s vote is purchased and
the public are even paid to attend public meetings. The RULE is already working negatively. To a positive person it will
work positively. Even in sports which was an innocent past time, Money plays a
big part. Along with Money comes power. Presently sportsmen entertain by their
display. They have a subtle knowledge of the play which is of immense value to
the public. They can physically
demonstrate but cannot communicate it in the subtle fashion. It can be
developed. Whether it can be translated into Money or power is in the realm of
conjecture.
The family is the point where the individual begins
life. It gives him Money to live on, educate himself and often a fund to start
life. What he inherits from the family is Money, a thing. It becomes his capital.
The family teaches him values of human relationship. It is abstract or can be
simply family culture. Or, those values
can be given to him by the family through Money. In that case, the family
equips him with values of Money in human relationships – in Money as
transaction. It is a capacity that stands him in good stead in life and enables
him to make Money in his human relationships. The family certainly offers scope
to teach these abilities, if one chooses. Money as an organisation is not
always learnt at home unless it is a family in the money trade in some form.
Without that experience at home, the child cannot be taught the organisational
value of Money. For him to learn the value of Money as Trust, the family is the
best place, but, the context being minimal, not much can be learnt that way.
School may not play any substantial role in the child in this regard. A school
can give more information about sanitation and hygiene than the family, whereas
it is the turn of the family that can offer greater support to his health as
habits.
One learns about Money at home, at school, later as
an employee at his office. But, if he learns anything at all meaningful about
Money, it is in none of these places. When he enters the market as an
individual, he learns the true character of Money. Money as organisation, Money
as Trust are learnt there only. No family, no school, no work spot has any
knowledge of such powers of Money. Even in the market, such powers emerge
negatively.
I am pleading for a family, a school, a work spot,
an individual attitude which will teach every man this value.
Money is given to a brother, not lent. When it is
lent and is taken back the value of Money is nil. When it is given and not
taken back it is the brother who is valued, not Money. One who is so raised at
home will later in his life find Money coming to him from all sides when he
ventures but without QUESTIONS. Every
family value has its expression in Money. All
the values of Money this paper speaks of can be taught at home as seminal
values. Even the school can play a small part in it. To think of each
cultural, social, psychological view and how much of it can be positively
expressed through Money can be taken up by each individual as a study. Once he
embarks on it, family and other places will often offer him ample opportunities
to experiment though as a token.
We are aiming at a knowledge for the Individual
that gives him all the powers to attract Money generated as power or force. We hope, if that is done, the normal
capacities of one to earn money should come to him without his actively
acquiring it.
An active comparison between education to acquire
knowledge and a training to create Money will be of use.
Education is not a biological process as the mother
takes care of her younger ones for some time.
It is animal evolution’s gift to the offspring.
Integral yoga is spiritual evolution where there is
a reversal.
Education is man-made, even as civilisation is.
The genius goes further, denies himself even the
advantage of education.
On his own the genius discovers in himself an
infinite capacity to learn.
What occurs
in genius unconsciously in a lone individual, we hope to accomplish consciously
for the collective in Money.
In education the genius achieves by active original
thinking.
In Money one seeks life knowledge and through that
the power to create Money.
Mind seeks the opposite, tries to discover its
unity with that and achieves genius.
Money seeks
its complement, draws upon its potential or grows into that potential to expand
its creative powers.
In knowledge Silent will accomplishes the goal of
reaching higher knowledge, Money, by its outward going movements, enters into
the potentials of other factors, integrates itself with them and achieves the
goal.
Money is an instrument,
an organisation.
Society is a living organism.
Almost Money is to the
society what a pen is to the hand or the body.
At least Money is to the
society what the finger is to the body.
The writing finger
subconsciously acquires fully all the knowledge the mind and brain originally
gave it.
We say the fingers
subconsciously learns.
Money, at first, acquires all the properties of the
society.
Finally Money can enrich
even the society even as the pioneer leads the society having learnt from the
society in the beginning.
The journey is long,
varied, abundant in the final quest.
Our quest is for a
quantitative expansion of Money till all poverty is abolished.
It is not as if there is
a prohibition to continue the study.
Beyond that point, Money
takes on itself a wider aspect where it is an integral living part of the
social change.
At that point, all such
instruments become equal to each other.
The study, if it is to be
continued, must be a study of the Theory not confined to Money.
The West has developed individuality. The East has
set its face against it and developed conformity with the collective. Great
accumulation of Money is possible only around the character of an individual.
Conformity confirms survival and does not develop possibilities of great
individual wealth. The individual wealth is selfish while the collective wealth
of the joint family is selfless. Resolving the apparent contradictions between
the collectivity and individuality, we will arrive at a highly desirable
solution. As human relationship is one of domination and submission which has a
further possibility of mental reinforcement, so too Money has that dimension. Now Money dominates Man. Man can emancipate
himself from that and dominate Money. That way he may earn a lot more. Instead
of one dominating and the other submitting a mutuality that leads to unity
through harmony will bring about the best possible results – an unimaginable
abundance to all.
Man does not act in these fashions or does not know
how to act. Society, in ripe moments, puts up favourable circumstances for the
creation of a new organisation. Man can rise to that occasion and respond to
that.
To take an ordinary transaction like one helping a
neighbour with a sum of Money, Western Europe receiving Marshall Plan aid,
buying a railway ticket, etc. we can see all the above facets of Money. To be able to know how an ordinary
transaction moves into other dimensions and into the evolutionary impulse is
the capacity this article is supposed to give. Several years after a
routine marriage, it is not impossible for a couple to enter into a mood of passionate
affection and even slip into the domain of high Romance. Social existence moves
into revolutionary outbursts, without many observing the change. An innocent
purchase of an article from a neighbour can land one in jail if it is a stolen
article or a used book may turn into a rare item for collection. These are
occasional unconscious occasions. To us a conscious perception of every
possible facet is necessary.
One theme
of the Theory is man does not extend his experience to new opportunities.
Supramental life is a life of higher values.
Sri Aurobindo has explained each of these higher
values in the greatest possible detail. There is nothing in them for one to say
he does not understand.
The question for the devotee is whether to accept
them or not.
Once he
accepts them, he must have the common sense to follow them as he follows the
rules of human life.
There are hundreds of common sense questions man
does not raise in his own life.
He foolishly raises all of them here without
exception.
Suppose he does not raise them, the only question
before him is whether it is possible for him or not. Wherever it is not
possible, he must try to make it possible.
Apply this rule to Money and my theme that a great
quantity can be raised.
My stipulations are two:
1)
To understand the theory of creation of Money.
2)
Raise oneself to the level of a Spiritual Individual.
There is nothing in the foregoing pages of
explanation that defies understanding. Even for this understanding, Money will
respond by an eagerness to enter us. The goal of the Spiritual Individual is
reached by a graded ladder starting from the physical individuality.
The Westerner already has it. All that one has to
do in the West, if he endorses this project, is to raise his individuality to
the higher levels till he reaches the Spiritual Plane.
The Indian has a cardinal disadvantage in not
enjoying Individuality in any plane. But
he has a great advantage of being in touch with his spirit.
The Indian
should start from his positive side of personality.
It is one committed to the joint family.
On the
negative side, it has no edge of individuality.
On the positive side, it has a wider dimension of
individuality that has a greater responsibility.
(Those who are negative
must of course become positive).
Instead of referring our
action to our ego or the joint family or even the society, he must refer them
to his spirit, which is consecration.
The Westerner who has a
well constructed individuality must wean himself away from his mental ego and
shift to mental psychic.
Those who raise here the questions they do not
raise in their daily life, I refer them to their own standards in their own
life. To Russell, common sense is superstition of the stupid people. Common sense is gold, is not superstitious,
it is the essence of the eternal wisdom of humanity.
Man is superstitious. His stupidity insists on
using common sense as an instrument of superstition. One must avoid
superstition and stupidity.
Life in Europe emancipated itself from tribal
living, organised itself into civilised cities and saw mental culture flower.
That glory could not sustain itself in the absence of a spiritual content or
spiritual basis. It collapsed. It was again taken up in the next wave as a
vital exuberance in the Roman Empire and its lasting contribution of Roman Law
to the world, even as Greece contributed its exalted thought. After flourishing
for a few centuries, Rome fell giving birth to the Dark Ages. Russian
primitivity rose to passionate emotionalism and being unable to develop thought,
it degenerated into violent cruelty of tyranny for centuries. The liberation
Luther gave Europe in thought was in seminal seeds. Even before the French
revolted against the aristocracy, America was discovered. The barren freedom of the almost uninhabited land beckoned millions
whose thrust for emancipation from the thraldom of class. Its constant
message to the younger generation from the eldest was, “This is not Europe.
There is no class. There is no prohibition from outside or inhibitions from inside.
You are free to do what you want. No one will stop you”. This is the nascent
voice of recently emancipated slaves. The
intensity of longing for freedom expressed itself in vast achievement in a
larger rhythm. Till the world wars, Money was thus fettered. Money
naturally expressed all the social attitudes it inherited. Money is not for the
man who works, but it is for the ones who own lands or factories. Money is not
to be enjoyed expansively but austerity is to be espoused. Money is to be put
into savings. Money is for the elders, the learned, the high born, the noble,
the aristocrats, not for one by virtue of his being a person, not even for him
who creates Money by his own work. Money represented status and birth, a
function not natural to Money. As the people tried to rise to Mind and vital
briefly and fell, Money too rose in its reign and failed to reach any freedom
it ever deserved. Nature heard its call
and beckoned it to America where a free field was given to man to make as much
Money as they desired. Men enjoyed
physical freedom from outside. Money too enjoyed the same freedom. What man
earned, he kept. He knew no tax of any description. This physical freedom
enabled Money to expand in scope. Its first expressions were land was in
unimaginable plenty and being a virgin soil produced 1/3 more. Wages were
literally ten times moving slum dwellers into the middle class.
Money too has crossed the physical stage.
It is America that
invented the Internet and web.
They have made Money
global, if not universal.
Again it is the Americans
who created the hire purchase and credit card.
They all find higher
family and social values in Europe, showing the world the path away from
physicality, selfishness and narrowness.
In the long march of civilisation society aspires
for progress, releases energy. It is social energy. It serves the society not
just as energy but as energy organised --
skill. It is social skill. The grades are social aspiration, social
skill, social capacity, social ability and social talent. Aspiration that
releases energy organises into skill by non-changing repetition on a horizontal
scale without end. This is made possible by the non-stop movement of the social
collective. Man, when he finds himself a member of the social collective, also
finds himself equipped with all the sub-conscious activities he has inherited
from his animal ancestor. But none of them can make him speak, trade, possess
Money, transport over a distance, etc. These are social skills and capacities
he has acquired as MAN. For this
purpose, he creates social tools of which Money is one. He achieves power by
organisation, capacity through several skills, talents by concentrating the
capacity on a particular skill, ability by an exclusive exercise of Mind that
transfers the essence of one skill into another or one capacity into another. Relationships through communication,
organisation through Mind, symbolism through imagination, dynamism through
aspiration are his several achievements. In the creation of Money all the
above functions have occurred at one time or another. To trace them all as a
connected whole, relate them to the various appropriate other functions and see
the conversion of energy at each given stage is part of our present work.
Subconscious thinking is
the thinking of the whole mind. Hence it embraces the future.
Imagination was not a
faculty that Man, in those days, exercised in abundance.
Imagination is the
faculty that exactly sees a future possibility and has the power to convert it
into a present actuality.
It is the excess energy
that creates forethought, symbolism and imagination.
A shell becomes that
symbol which later in our appreciation is described as Money.
To touch upon each such
event and know it fully is our project.
The fact computer
engineers have stumbled upon this technology is a technological boon. Should the world see the value of this
principle for other fields, especially Money, they will be meeting a social
technology whose power far exceeds the mechanical technology.
For any tool or method to
come into use, the society fashions it with all its energies and holds all but
that one use back. That is how the infinite creates the infinitesimal.
Such hidden reservoirs of
energy or potential cannot be drawn upon until the society is willing to
release it.
It becomes a resource
when the period of holding back is over, not until then.
It will offer a great
resource to national or corporate planners, if they become aware of it.
The VRS -- Voluntary
Retirement scheme -- is one such in a negative sense to make a corporation
efficient. The scheme offers both the employee and the employer access to
hidden resources. In the sense it is
beneficial to both, VRS announces the beginning of a new period in the society
where both win as against the rule of society hitherto known that one wins at
the expense of another. VRS institutionalised this higher principle.
The Grid Technology
announces a period where the hidden potentials behind tools, institutions,
values, habits, attitudes, motives and finally PERSONS are willing to emerge for social use.
It is interesting to see
that this Grid technology first emerges in the field of computer.
§
Manoj was shown this possibility to which he turned a deaf ear.
§
Any family, if they are above the Line in GOOD WILL, can raise themselves to higher efficiency, as a personal
computer does, and that will be not less than the highest reach of the present
society.
§
This paper is at pains to explain this principle with respect to
Money.
There are two phases.
1.
Money in various fields drawing upon the unutilised strengths of Money
in other forms.
2.
Money can relate similarly with all the other social institutions.
·
Banks have played this role by collecting the unutilised savings of
the community.
·
They could do so by offering a guarantee to the depositors which they
had not had prior to the establishment of the Banks.
·
It could come to stay and grow as Banks became productive by making
the unutilised productive capacities of the individuals.
·
Insurance was one such striking innovation.
·
The risk to be covered in any individual victim was really covered by
the fear of risk in all the others in the community.
·
Democracy is the greatest of examples, if not directly, but in
principle.
·
Man has the capacity to take care of himself and it is a great urge
when that possibility is held out from him.
·
His knowledge of the country, his own needs in his personal life were
made more explicit to him by the spread of universal education. Thus it becomes
a resource.
·
One reason for the energy in Indian society is the willingness to
break the caste barrier in whatever minimum extent possible. Each caste has
enormous use for the other castes subconsciously. Modern cities are vibrant
with life because in any big city we now find people from various states. Their
coming together energises both, even if one does not much penetrate the other.
·
The common currency of Euro unconsciously draws upon such energies of
the other sectors of the society. I can only cite the case of population.
·
A common currency is a
common language of an economic community, certain lingua finance. It is a negative service
by removing the barrier.
·
The sportsmen earning through brand endorsement is one such case.
·
Internet is able to offer free service as its income is derived from
other fields apparently unconnected.
·
The unofficial subtle organisations wherein the Centre of Power is
situated in the society are aware of these powers and often effectively use
them.
·
Cyberspace is the Space in the subtle physical plane in the sense of
mechanics. Therefore any unformed phenomenon in the physical plane comes to the
surface here with life.
·
The paper clip has shown the world the potentials of the world of
collectors.
·
The real potential is the present world which is not fully aware of
itself.
·
A greater possibility is in the worlds to come, the future on a parallel
to the Force of Money.
Productivity and leisure are inversely related.
This is true when man is below average. While his position is above average,
his productivity and leisure are in direct proportion. Work is for life, life is not for work. In the wider scheme of
things as life improves, productivity too will improve. The reverse is an
untenable position.
Under scales and measurement there was an occasion
to speak about the football player’s running distance.
The distance of running has several versions.
So far we speak in terms of one’s team scoring. One
can help the other team run better and score better. There is a still higher
level of the game, where the running can be related to the quality of the game.
The teams of Sri Aurobindo Ashram visited Annamalai
University in the forties for a friendly game. The physical director of the
university spoke of those days. “Ashram players take the game as seriously as
nobody does. In no game we could half match them. Only in Table Tennis some
performance was put up.”
Running is rewarding when it secures goals.
One can run more and better and score high.
The player concentrates on the ball and runs and it
results in scores.
He can concentrate on the game; it will result in
others in his team scoring.
Then he will run less and make the right passes for
others to score.
He can concentrate on the spirit of the game and
challenge the other team to perform better either by running more or less.
All these positions apply to Money.
By becoming the richest country, not the second
richest, USA is using 2/3rd of the savings of the world.
This is the rule of the top newspaper getting all
the advertisements.
Its converse is, the poorest nation can attract the
majority of the world’s wealth as investment.
In partial
life, taking is giving and giving is taking. In the life of the whole, the part
is charged by the whole to become the whole and the whole has the capacity to
play the role of the part.
Money is a part of the society which is a whole.
Appreciation of this idea will enrich us with Money power and arm us with the
strategies necessary to reach the goal.
Europe seeks leisure. America seeks productivity.
Productivity will dominate the world through prosperity. That may hold true
only in the physical, vital period. When Mind comes into its own and has tasted
the culture of living, the urge to live is the urge to live the cultural
values. Cultural living has a higher
productivity than physical culture. For that to become a reality, the
cultured should centre their productivity in their culture.
If this is true, Europe must have a higher
productivity than America. In such a context Money will have far more value
than being a thing. Its value will arise out of human Trust.
Such Money will not merely serve as a transaction,
but will generate social power.
Such social power will bring USA under Europe.
But, presently, the efficiency of America is very
great as it uses two great weapons for its productivity: 1) education 2)
organisation.
Also Europe built itself up by the money of the
Marshall Plan. That influence must be overcome.
If Money in
Europe can create social power, Money in India will generate spiritual power.
Maybe India is waiting to be united by its wealth
acquiring Spiritual power. Even in 1948, it is the fifty-five crores that India
owed Pakistan which helped precipitate the Kashmir problems. Patel asked
Pakistan to vacate Kashmir in return of fifty-five crores. Gandhi threatened to
go on a fast. Otherwise, no Kashmir problem would have ever been created. What
can Money in emotional Russia or intellectual China do?
The role of Money in any society will come into its
own only when Money is freed from other fetters.
Europe’s culture is the culture of aristocracy.
Chinese culture is that of an intellectuality that
cannot be excelled.
The Japanese enjoy honour as their pride of possession.
Money, when free, in each of these societies will
play a social role.
In Europe it can yield social power as once enjoyed
by the aristocracy.
In China it can generate a power of knowledge the
world has not known.
In Japan Money will be a vehicle of honourable
social power of courage.
In India Money will give her Spirituality a power
spirituality has not had so far.
The power of the church was partly the power of its
wealth.
But that was the wealth of property, the least
valuable form of Money.
Money earned by Spiritual power can be the highest
power hitherto the world has had.
It can give
India the power to unite the world, to form a world government.
It should be preceded by prosperity, organisation,
social culture and education of life.
The base for all of them is the territorial unity
of India.
Indian unity was brought about by the British Raj.
At the time of its departure, Raj was keen on dividing India.
Kashmir is the Symbol.
Restoring Kashmir to India is to unite India and
Pakistan which will result in world unity and world government.
Pension, Medicare, Social Security of the future
are calculated as $40 trillion for which no provision is made.
·
It is our experience so
far that when society creates new needs, it does not always meet them in the
old way, but is capable of emerging out with new inconceivable ways.
·
This is a truth of life, whether history will supply us with earlier
examples.
·
Phones have done away with the lines shifting from electricity to
electronics.
·
Money that was generated by production was later generated by
services.
Invisibly Money has been
generated by Trust.
Trust can create more Money than production or services as
Trust can assume an endlessness not easily matched by the other two.
One rule of society that
today’s expense is tomorrow’s income may come into play with the elderly
population.
If the accumulated
experience of theirs can be permitted to change into ever-increasing enjoyment
for them, they can offer a free service to the society now not known.
In future more Money than needed can generate itself by
ways so far not known.
Now we can create any
amount of electricity.
It is true of several
other products in the market.
Particularly food grains
can be produced seven or eight times more than what we need.
After the advent of radio
and television communication has changed its old mode of printing.
Printing and writing were
preceded by oral communication.
There is more information on the Internet than humanity
can use.
Scarcity being replaced
by plenty is not a new experience.
There is so much Money
with some now that a handbag can be paid for with $5000.
It won’t be too long
before so much Money is available with all the others.
Corrupt politicians who
have amassed untold wealth may not find any value for their Money when what is
now procured by Money is procured without Money.
Huge amounts were paid in
India to secure a well paid job.
There are instances where
employees are offered three times or even twelve times their salary and a bonus
of several months’ salary for them to join.
Quantum
physics came upon the fact that the sub-atomic particles are subjective. For
over eighty years they did not know how to respond to that fact. As there are levels of
consciousness from life to consciousness, there are levels of subconsciousness
which is commonly known as unconsciousness. Mother, more specifically, Her
atmosphere makes the unconscious devotee conscious at that point – a point where
the being has changed into ego. Like the physicist, the devotee does not know
how to respond to the new feeble awareness he got.
In the relay race the baton must be passed on to
the next runner. Till then it must be held tightly. When it passes on, it must
be held NOT tightly. Otherwise the receiver’s run will be checked. The balance
is one that is delicate. There is no
human relationship or even human moment where this apparently conflicting
sensation does not arise. Their number is legion as our speech. Louder, it
will be coarse; softer, it will be missed. What is the principle behind this
phenomenon? Is there a principle? If so, what power issues out of it. Creation
began when the One became the Many. It is a differentiation that makes the
varying aspects pronounced enough to make lila
possible. It is not a division leading to separation. Such an assumption is
that of the myopic mind which creates ego. Ego sees itself different from the
other souls whereas they are one behind. This apparent division created the
lower triplicity. Its abolition raises Mind to Supermind. One who knows the
right measure of weaning away, how delicately firm his hold of the relay baton
must be, is one who emerges out of the ego into the Psychic Being. The
Principle in view, He says, is surrender. Surrender then is a capacity to move
into the subliminal from the surface, consciously giving up all that one
cherishes.
·
The capacity to give away
with the understanding of willingness is the capacity to expand into the domain
of infinity.
·
One is free to be the finite householder.
·
One by a supreme discipline of tapas can abruptly drop life and
disappear into moksha.
·
To transform one from life to the divine life one must have a full,
but detachable hold on life that can, in transition, initiate transformation.
·
Such a moment is brought
into all life by the Supramental consciousness that has descended on earth.
·
Weaning away is a
transition that is transformation.
·
Rejection of life cannot be surrender and will not lead to
transformation. Only surrender can lead to transformation. Surrender is the capacity to possess more fully than usual that can
detach without detriment to that from which we detach. Rather life is thus
transformed.
Money is a thing, a transaction, an organisation,
an expression of Trust and finally a power and a Force, we said so far. At each
of these points, at the point of maturity or saturation of one, the weaning
away arises. Theoretically it exists at
every moment as we grow at every moment or learn. One who is aware of
learning every moment is a genius. One who is aware of growing every moment is
immortal. Ordinary man can be aware of that phenomenon only in transitions.
Unconscious men are not aware of it even at the points of transitions. Phenomenon
such as the paper clip reveal it to him positively, stock market crash does it
negatively.
·
Social evolution is possible when at the points of transition man
awakes.
·
Supramental
transformation is made possible when a society is constantly aware of the
possibility of transformation.
·
Unconscious societies refuse to awake even after a negative crash such
as depression.
·
In that case Society has to restore the balance at a lower level.
After 1929, Nature opted for World War II to rectify the physical imbalance.
These symptoms started a hundred years before in 1825, but Man would not see
light.
·
Sri Aurobindo gave His yoga a hundred years ago to the world. Around
the same time the sub-atomic particles revealed their subjective nature. Man is
not yet awake.
·
Only in Money we see society is forging ahead in spite of Man’s
blindness by creating new organisations such as VISA card. Society does act
similarly in all other fields which is less visible.
·
As Sri Aurobindo’s arrival is the Hour of God, I feel it is the right
time for Man to emerge as a spiritual Individual. It can be most easily seen
and practiced in Money, as creation of endless Money is now possible. Man is
not aware to it.
Society is structured. The structure helps it grow.
A narrow, violent structure can stifle its growth. A flexible structure of
understanding freedom is an incentive to growth. It is obvious that the freedom within the structure is full of energy
for growth while freedom from structure that throws one outside the society is
a freedom to perish. In exceptional
cases it is a freedom to grow originally.
All that said of structures about the society fully
applies to Money. Money can oscillate between two ends.
One is where the flexible free structure of Money
functions in a society of flexible free structure. Here the growth of Money is
maximum. The other is Money of narrow violent structure functioning in a
society of rigid inflexible structures of society.
If these are the broad outlines we can construct,
what is weaning away of Money?
Money in its existence oscillates for a variety of
contributing contextual causes. To keep Money away from rigidity socially,
legally, fiscally, etc. is to wean Money away from its natural mother.
o
A time was when usurious interest confiscated one’s property.
o
Law can prevent it and it did on several occasions.
o
Shylock could be heartless because of the Money he lent but the then
society or social consciousness was helpless to save Antonio. At a later
century the social conscience would not have allowed it.
o
In India a bankrupt man loses his all and comes to the street. In USA
his house, phone and insurance are left to him.
o
Roll Programme, though it contains nothing that offends the law is not
permitted by law. It can help Money multiply.
o
Internet that generates faith in people unknown and unseen weans away
Money to play a positive role.
o
When the Madras government offered students in the diploma course in
medicine the option of shifting to the degree course, it cost 10/- per month.
At that time there was no financial scheme available to help students to shift
to the degree course.
o
Presently there are plenty of such schemes. They all wean Money away
from social rigidity positively.
o
Suppose an insurance scheme is introduced to the top ten or twenty
students of any institution promising compensation for wages for one year after
education, in the event of their being unemployed, educational standards will
rise as students will be anxious to avail of such schemes. It is a positive
employment of Money that prevents it from playing a hard negative role.
o
Money can be weaned away
from its positive role as it is done from its negative role.
The completed merchant vessels are a sight to see.
They are a city on the ocean. The achievement is magnificent in every sense.
There are other hundred such excellences. From another point of view, they are
monuments of inefficiency as they accomplish in as many months what really
requires days. Sixty years ago the wartime emergency demonstrated that a yard
can build a ship in 4½ days which till then demanded a month. Efficiency is to organise the work to be done in the
minimum number of days in which the physical work can be done. It only means
the yard accepts the lack of dynamism the external society is capable of.
College degrees which can be acquired in a few years now take twenty to
twenty-five years in the best of institutions. Accepting the time-receptivity
of outside society, a university offers a Ph.D. in twenty five years while the
knowledge content of that degree needs only four or five years or less. Money is no exception to this rule of
chaotic productivity. In India, Sachchidanandam was reached long ago. There
is nothing special about the Indian who has done this feat. We see the
phenomenon in the Americans who have accomplished material prosperity on a
magnificent scale. In both cases the external environment enabled or compelled
Man to accomplish it. Man’s outer environment varies. His inner faculties are the
same. Should he choose inwardly, what one man achieves is within the reach of
another man. His inner choice matters. The varying outer circumstances that
determine the varying inner choices had validity in the formative period of
Nature. As we saw under the Grid Technology, the potentials offer after a
certain point of social readiness. In my view, that point is now reached. Except in subconscious sufficiency, Man does
not know social forces acting in freedom reaching the efficiency of freedom. It
is a point of transition where,
making the conscious clumsy
efficiency of human civilisation into one of subconscious knowledge that
self-effectuates itself, as in the instincts of animals now.
Twenty-five people gather around two men quarrelling in white heat taking sides. The quarrel was in 1968 over Rs.2/- lent and collected back whose interest was due. They were men who earned sixty five paisa a day for which job they walked five miles from home. It was a time an acre fetched Rs.100/- a year from dry cultivation. They struck water, risked their property, and dug wells. When irrigated, cultivation gave them over 1000 rupees an acre. After about ten years they mustered courage when one pioneer earned Rs.25,000 an acre resorting to cash crop. Soon the whole village took after him and many villages around followed suit. The 25,000/- rose to a peak of Rs.150,000/- and steadied itself at Rs.75,000/- net profit. It was all over a period of thirty years. Now they dig bore wells of five hundred feet and pump water through submersible pumps costing three or four lakhs of rupees. In digging the well, or buying the pump, the villagers gave up the habit of bargaining.
o
External circumstances changed the villagers who fought over interest
for Rs.2/- to an attitude of not bargaining over thousands of rupees in thirty
years of increasing prosperity.
o
Bargain is the attitude of Money, the thing, to be saved.
o
Not bargaining is the expansive attitude of Money that is created out
of trust which increases endlessly.
o
The thousand-fold increase in income is the hidden potential of
society which Money brings out through a positive attitude of not bargaining.
o
Now the villager has learnt to locate an honest trader, trust him, pay
him what he wants so that his work will repay him what he expects out of his
field.
o
Bargain retains the responsibility for the results with the farmer.
Not bargaining gives the trader the responsibility for the successful issue.
o
What the ignorant farmer learns in long years of outer experience, the
educated individual can learn by inner meditation shortly.
Air tickets are becoming cheap. For thirty days in
a month there are thirty rates for the ticket.
Delhi costs only Rs. 4000/-, sometimes even less. We miss seeing the role of Money here
except that tickets are cheap.
o
More than the cost of a ticket,
Service is upgraded to the highest possible quality; almost it is royal
service now. The attitudes of companies
towards passengers can even said to be one of Christian love. Every salesman is
a Good Samaritan. It is not as if there is a real change of heart in the
company employees. They do it under orders as the airhostesses smile
involuntarily till their lips ache. At home, they are unable to smile.
o
One of the cardinal aims of humanity is tourism. It is an educational aim.
It is an education that comes as entertainment. Travel educates as nothing else
does. Those who like travel thrill in travelling. It is adult education in
geography and a little in history. After the war, the movement of tourism is
growing all over the world. America has started it long ago with a slogan ‘Go
west’. Airlines responded to that call of humanity because of telex. After the
advent of computer, airlines began to use it to the best advantage possible for
ticket reservation.
= Computer
reservation of tickets is an elaborate expansion of the service through
sophistication of the system. As services rose, customer intransigence rose too. The
companies ungrudgingly rose to the occasion. Airlines began to lose heavily.
According to the theory,
it only means that the airlines have a very long way to go to meet the demands
on them.
= Computer expanded the system of service.
It offered inconceivable benefits.
The refractory customer says he could
pay only $200 in place of $ 2000. Companies try to meet that also. All
unutilised potentials are fully tapped by the computer. Still the companies
heavily lose.
Market
has allowed the airlines to vary the price from $200 to $2000 which it does not
tolerate anywhere else.
Now, a theoretical understanding says exhaust not
many possibilities but all possibilities. As long as we use some new
possibilities, the benefits are proportionate. When the very last possibility
is exhausted, benefits come from the next plane. No One could consciously
conceive that Lydia’s elopement exhausts the very last propensity of Mrs.
Bennet, opening the other great possibilities.
o
Any airline company today can enter a BOOM, if it sees this truth and makes their partial response full. Do
we see it is Money that opens all these possibilities in tourism? Airlines
now act on the Trust that a future will open up.
Glyn Davis in his book on Money in pages 457-467
says that the paucity of Money directly compelled America to revolt.
It can be a source of
divine delight in daily life.
That is why the value of
theoretical knowledge over the practical use.
To be able to see this
character of Money in a small transaction enables us to acquire this delight in
the greatest of actions.
Kashmir can be solved or
the Arab-Israeli conflict can be readily solved by Money or for that matter by
this force expressing through any aspect.
What matters is the
perception becoming sensation.
It is the Process of
Creation.
= Brahman
– Maya – Sat – Sachchidananda –
Brahman
– Purusha – Ishwara.
Maya – Prakriti – Shakti.
= Self-conscious
Being – Spirit
Truth
Spirit – Time
Space
= Sachchidananda
Supermind
Comprehending Supermind
Apprehending Supermind.
Mind – The final action of Creation.
Life – Energy
Matter – Form with no
energy.
There are quick acts of
an hour. There are flashes of an act in a split second.
Theoretically it is the
same Process everywhere.
Practically it is not
easy to discover it.
It has to be discovered
in attitudes, strategies, atmosphere, motives, and assumptions.
Such a discovery completes
our knowledge.
Within each plane, these
two directions are perceptible.
The smaller the act where
it is discovered the greater is the power.
As the power raises it
shifts from the outer to the inner.
Further it moves to the
inner that includes the outer.
It can be seen in Time
dimensions.
It can be seen in ALL dimensions when it becomes
Supramental vision.
At other places Man is
subconscious.
Money too is sensitive
when it is in movement.
This too has two sides –
Positive and Negative.
This will release Money
energy.
It becomes Money-Force by
direction.
Money Power is the result
of this force passing through the organisation of his character.
Results are out of his
Money skills.
Should he honour the sensitivity of other aspects of life,
this power will rise to the next plane.
Each aspect may have its
sensitivity at different levels.
Education now is
sensitivity in spreading.
Money is sensitive at the
point of giving itself away.
It is indicated, among
other things, by the expansion of Money.
Such expansion will be in
multiples.
Money has the power to
expand even a thousand-fold and to continue that expansion in all the stages it
touches.
Such expansion is greater
in the lower planes, more so in the negative plane.
Such an act can be
conscious or unconscious.
Prosperity is the capacity to create more energy than is
needed for survival.
Survival is the
atmosphere where the Individual supplies energy to sustain the society.
Development generates
energy to sustain the organisations needed for it.
Evolution sets in when
the energy generated breaks the organisation of development.
In all these planes Money
plays an original role.
This is followed by
cultural sensitivity and spiritual sensitivity.
That Sensitivity which
releases the Spirit is spiritual sensitivity, when the spirit blossoms through
the part of being.
Life is not linear. It is
multidimensional. Truly it is in infinite dimensions. Not in an infinite
dimension in one plane. It is in infinite dimensions. It is not confined to the
physical plane but in all planes. Man’s vision is not linear. It is
multidimensional in the physical plane. But, he creates a limitation of the ego
around him. Still, even within the ego it extends all over the surface plane.
Here he exercises his choice. Within
this physical plane of the surface, Life retains its character of
multidimensional infinity. The planes of inner mind and the subliminal are
still available to him in potential. He actually functions restricting his
scope within the ego on the surface. Even there he chooses to neglect what is
before his eyes by his interest being focused on a thing or a person. All these characteristics are fully shared
by all the instruments of which Money is one. It is up to Man to reach the
infinite life by his inward expansion. It is his aspiration that achieves it by
limitation. His own aspiration is decided by what he is sensitive to as an
opportunity. The inner opening gives his outer opportunity. He is free to
extend it to Money. Man does not spend his Money regardless of the consequences
on himself or the society. Nor does he receive Money from wherever it comes. He
exercises this choice at every moment. His choice is determined by his values.
Man’s values are decided by the sphere into which he desires to fit. It may be
non-social selfishness, social conformity or inner psychological preferences.
Wherever one is, he
o
can observe the plane, sphere, and the focus of his action from the
point of view of Money.
o
As he is aware of the scale of the planes of his life, he can aspire
for the next plane.
o
His progress will be in a geometric progression with the coefficient
being anywhere between ten and infinity.
o
The speed of his expansion will be determined by his receptivity to
the Force above.
o
It will be determined by the outflow of his energies towards the
society.
o
Its character can be positive or negative.
o
Its non-social character will be determined by the character of his
inner aspiration.
o
The speed of expansion, its amplitude, its volume, its character and
everything is determined inside.
o
Its reality can
straightaway be experienced by his observation and an experiment.
o
Inner creation is in Time; outer expression is in Space.
o
That which relates them is the Divine Law, the causality.
o
The Divine Law retains its character, even when it is abridged into a
social law or any law of any plane.
o
The expression of this expansion occurs at the point of sensitivity of
all aspects that we are concerned with.
o
The action at those points has the capacity to convert the linear
thought into non-linear action and existence.
The
above are the stages of accomplishment. Creation of Money by the society has
all these stages. It is the subconscious of the society that conceives of
Money. When the society perceives the functioning of Money, apart from enjoying
the use value, Society begins to sense the power of Money in action and
possession. The conception is in the subtle plane, the perception in the gross
plane. Once Money enters in the causal plane, society acquires the capacity to
sense its creative power. As these stages develop, Money acquires its appeal to
the ego. Overcoming the limits of Man's ego, the selflessness of Money extends
horizontally its higher capacity usually in the subtle planes. At that stage
Society is able to progress unconsciously led by leaders who are perceptive.
Money
represents the Godhead in the ascent till it reaches the Divine Soul's
equivalent of Money. Money can be evaluated in its descent and in the ascent.
The attributes of Money as the Divine Soul are worth considering in this
context.
·
For Money
Sachchidananda is the Society.
·
Its being is
infinite, its consciousness is infinite and its delight too is infinite.
·
Money does not cease
to be in the presence of Society, its Sachchidananda.
·
It lives in the One
and the Many in Society as well as in the individual transaction.
·
There is no conflict
between the conception of Money and its executive force.
·
It has three aspects
of oneness, oneness in difference and individuality.
·
At no stage is there
any conflict between its thought power of conception and executive power.
·
Nor is there any
between any two members of the Many.
·
It has the power to
create the infinitesimal by withholding the rest of the infinite.
·
All this is possible
when Money sheds its ego or capacity to respond to the ego of Money.
·
Money sheds its ego
in the measure Man sheds his ego.
·
To consider the ego
of Money separate from the ego of Man is easier than to consider Money in the
relationship of Man.
Such a consideration takes us in a higher plane
than the surface mind where we are functioning.
·
As our consideration
rises in its content, the plane too rises from the physical, subtle physical to
the mental and subtle mental.
At each of these stages, an integration develops
which completes itself at the spiritual where the Spirit is in the subtle
plane, unlike in the other planes where its existence is split into gross and
subtle.
·
The Self of Money is
the Society.
·
It is the Society
that conceives of Money as all the faculties are conceived.
·
It is the general
energy of Money.
In
the conversion of Money energy into Money force, the determinant is the will of
society that determines the quality and quantity of Money that the society has.
·
Here the Society limits itself to create only the
quantity she needs.
·
By self-absorption
this Money divides itself into positive and negative Money.
·
In the higher part,
the seed is hidden deeper down, though on the surface its self-awareness is
awake.
On
the surface every faculty of the society is thus present.
When
such awareness of many faculties is turned into self-knowledge, the society
makes progress.
This
too can be organised, or unorganised.
Thus
consciousness progresses by organisation.
The
Money above has the potential of prosperity.
The
Money below has the complementary potential.
·
The aspiration of
lower Money evokes a response from the higher Money.
When
the movement is complete, Money becomes creative and touches greater heights.
This
is the movement of Brahman towards a greater delight.
·
The aspiration of the
lower culminates in surrender.
·
This surrender must
be made to the Society, as it is the Self of Money.
If
the surrender is made to God, one is released into moksha.
Society
is the Mother at its level of fullness.
What
is Mother at one level is God at a higher level.
This
is the secret of creation : the One divides into two which again unites.
Supermind
is the plane of fullness in the descent and ascent of the creative process.
It
is only the perception of fullness.
It
is available only to the Supramental consciousness of Man.
The
present Money energy is the inconscient energy.
The
delight Brahman seeks emerges through conscient energy of Money when it is the
divine force.
At
this stage Money serves the divine purpose through its selflessness and later
self-giving.
In
the man-woman relationship, it is the woman who serves to release the
inconscient energy and Man releases the conscient energy by seeking the
superconscient through his aspiration.
Germany has unemployment and a glut of Money. This
is like a Zamindar having a shortage of rice at home. This happens when the
status of the Zaminder leads to extensive enjoyment to the neglect of
cultivation. The simple solution is to cultivate. Or for a lazy Zamindar a
simpler solution is to use the Money for buying the rice in the market. Such a
solution if insisted upon leads to a crisis. The crisis cannot be solved if the
attitude is not reversed. Most human
problems are of this description. The present unemployment in Germany is one
such. Still without disturbing the radically irrational centre, Money can be
used to develop several aspects of the society that admits of social progress
in such a way as to relieve or wipe out the unemployment problem. There is one
more possible better approach. It is to restore the role of Money in each
sector to its desirable standard. Each
social force – Money, education, music, sports, communication, etc. -- has an
optimum role to play in the society. At that level, it maintains its proper
relations with other aspects. The question is how to know that level. There
are the standards set by other nations with which we compare. The pressure on
each sector like education automatically reveals the extra Money it needs
there. For us the central problem is how to use Money as a lever of social
progress. More than that how to use Money so that Money will more easily
multiply. The final aim of this paper is how an Individual can use Money so
that he will help it enter the phases of multiplication and self-multiplication
consummating in his possessing the power of generating all the Money he
chooses. Whatever is the stage or goal, the one issue that is of importance is
─ To handle Money on the positive side
first bringing it in the situation of progressive expansionary urge.
─ If a farmer has Money for cultivation,
his using it to cultivate a new crop, or to resort to organic farming puts the
Money in the expanding line. In its actual use he must avoid inattention,
miserliness, etc. In a student he must spend his Money to join a progressive
course. A trader instead of selling traditional products can divert his Money
to modern goods – not the fashionable ones – that are expanding in sales. Money employed in these places solves
problems directly connected with the field and even not connected with its
field.
─ What is true of Money is true of all
other such things.
─ Germany’s problem is not employment.
It is unable to give up
seeking glory that other nations enjoyed in the past and now have become
anachronism.
The produce in the field or the products of a
factory is converted into Money. Whether man understands values, ideals,
character, etc. or not, he understands Money. Money is concrete, tangible, presents to us as a bundle of currency.
Its power is there for us to see. To him Money is not a thing; it is an
act. Further, that Money is multiplied by sales is not what he can appreciate.
He understands that greater sales bring in higher profit. But he is unable to
see that Money turning over quickly abridges Time, becomes productive and in
that process expands in quantity and rises in quality. All this escapes our
vision. Bank pools the excess of Money in a neighbourhood and offers it to the
unutilised productive capacity there, thereby multiplies Money. It is done by
being an intermediary between the excess that is accumulated and the excess of
capacity that lies unused. As produce and products become Money, here the
productive capacity turns into Money. The productive capacity comprises of
available land, self-confidence and one’s trust in other people. It is rarely
appreciated that trust and confidence constitute productive capacity as it is
conceded to the excess land available. In a chit fund, we understand Money is
gathered from many for the use of one. Money is pooled, not created. By joining
a chit fund a member partakes of the capacity of an organisation. To that
extent his value of being an individual rises and generates a little more trust
in others. He receives a little more of trust from others. Even if these things
are not directly explainable, a member in government service does enjoy a
greater trust from the public. Thus a
plane of trust is created. As the planes of agriculture and manufacture produce
products, a plane of Trust creates Money. Even so, a plane of organisation
creates Money. It will be more self-evident in the plane of transaction, the
market. Market permits Money to pass through it slowly or quickly. Quick
passing of Money increases the turnover and hence the productivity of Money. By
raising the productivity of Money, market creates Money. Hundred crores of
rupees in a fast market, faster ten times, does the work of a thousand crores.
Its productive capacity is ten times. So, this market has created, in effect,
nine hundred crores. As speed creates Money, Trust creates more Money. In fact
every movement in the society, apart from doing its work, indirectly
contributes to creating Money. At the level where Money is a thing, what works
is symbolism. It is human mind that creates that symbolism and a token. It is
an exercise in imaginative experience. The power of imagination is greater than
the power of thinking. It is more creative than the faculty of thinking. It is
all creation. Money is originally created by the symbolic faculty of man; it
grew by the plane of transaction and its speed, furthered by organisation and
its power. Its greater potentials emerge in the plane of Trust.
A crore of Money with someone, if it becomes ten
crores or hundred crores, can be called multiplication. What happens is a crore
buys ten crores worth of things. Here the multiplication is not so visible.
Only in the real estate we see cheap properties selling for fabulous prices.
Here we see the Money value of a property rising, not the multiplying of Money.
The
basic value of Money is the value of the human being. It can be called human
value of currency. Once Man realises his value and raises it, his wages rise
and the goods that he produces rise in value. People pay higher prices often by
the Money moving faster facilitating the rotation to meet the requirements of
higher prices. Initially more Money comes into circulation from savings and at
the expense of other traditional items of expense, which begin to fall out of
existence. By this time the goods produced are of a higher value than before
and attract a higher currency in circulation. Labour becoming costlier
necessarily raises the volume of goods produced which demand higher circulation
of currency.
The
process of multiplication and self-multiplication do not take place in utter
vacuum. It always has a material base as a real estate property or a productive
organisation. In fact, they are only excuses, a concession to the disbelief of
the beneficiary. As one’s courage rises all on its own, Money can proliferate
all by itself. In practice it chooses to have a base which blurs the process in
our understanding. As knowledge multiplies in the mind without the help of any
objective field outside, Money too multiplies. Only that we do not see it thus.
Is it not a fact that
Money in circulation is only a projection of Man’s capacity to trust himself as
one who can survive, grow and develop?
Why then does Money need an outer occasion for its
creation?
Self-conception is for the Brahman. Therefore it is
self-creative. As Matter, Life, Mind too are Brahman, they too are, in theory,
self-creative. We know, feel and experience that Mind is so. It has the power
of self-creation as everything in the world has been created by Mind. At least,
to us, it is self-evident. Before considering Money in this light, we must be
clear in or minds that Matter and Life have this extraordinary capacity. To one
whose maximum development is vital sensation the idea of a self-creative life
is understandable. Seeing the weaver bird weaving its nest or the spider at
work in its web, he wonders from where those skills emerge. He says to himself,
“Yes, it is there” by which he means it is there inherently in life. When a
piece of wood or charcoal burns we do not think about it, as we know it to be
its property. On a little mental exercise, it will be seen that wood creates
fire all by itself. It is a process of creation or even self-creation. How do
we see it in Money?
The Money got by selling paddy buys clothes. To us
it is inter-convertibility. Can we not say figuratively that Money has created
cloth out of paddy, as no dress would arise in the absence of Money? Money
directly creates Money when it is lent on interest. It is a small insignificant
token. Money changers in international currency see Money, currency itself is
their product. In the stock market Money earns or loses Money. Black Money is
exchanged for white Money where white Money directly earns Money.
We are used to finite as well as infinite concepts.
There are only twenty four hours in the day. It is fixed. A retired man given
to reading will find his scope endless. In
our life we have the habit of labelling each item as one or the other. Thus
Money came to be labelled as a finite thing. The theme here is Money is
finite only to superficial observation, but for a deeper penetration Money is
not finite. It is truly infinite. Once the mind knows for certain that Money is
in its essence and origin infinite, one can think of ways and means to enjoy
its infinite character. In life there are several aspects, forces such as Time,
Space, relationship, etc. Each of them has two sides, one finite and the other
infinite. Whether something is going to be finite or infinite for you depends
upon to which side you are going to relate. That is a human choice. Here I wish
to state that Money is infinite and when there are no further questions about
it, we have to forge a relationship with it on the side of the infinite. For
the Individual it is a personal act. For the society it is an impersonal act,
possible only through an organisation. Now that several impersonal
organisations – VISA, Internet, etc. – are available, that too becomes
possible. The existence of Internet made someone think of a scheme of ‘unique minimum price’. This is a
lottery scheme where NO falsehood is entertained. In the lottery false hopes
are raised in the many, though everyone knows that only by chance one will get
the prize. This ‘unique’ scheme exactly resembles the lottery. The only
difference is the bidder aims at being unique in his bidding. He does not go by
chance. He exercises his understanding of what uniqueness will be for him. It is a quest for the truth of his own
uniqueness, a spiritual Quest. This is a scheme by which anyone can sell
his property for a price of ten times or more. When companies offer their
employers partnership, their salaries rise from $150,000 to $600,000. There is
no falsehood here. There are people who see a social opportunity and exert
themselves to avail of it, by an inner growth. This unique scheme is one such
where there is no falsehood, conscious or otherwise. Also, it helps or compels
men to search for their own uniqueness inside. Uniqueness is the end from where turning around one can discover his
own infinite nature. One’s infinity can be reached inside from any point
outside. Infinity is not confined to some aspects. It is everywhere. There is
in the individual that infinity which is spiritual. In life we meet with
relationship, possessiveness, security, action, movement, etc. As said earlier,
it is human choice that makes every circumstance finite or infinite. To be infinite
inside in any aspect is possible. It can later be extended outside. The reach
from outside inside or from inside outside is determined by one’s temperament.
Man loves security, not risk. He who risks has a greater self-confidence. The
greater one’s own self-confidence, the greater is one’s value of oneself. He who wants to create a higher value
outside − create Money in life – obviously must create a greater value
inside. Values, capacity to take risk, independence, self-existent joy,
selflessness, self-giving raise one’s value in his own eyes. It is the pioneer
who rises like that. All are not pioneers. A time comes when the society raises
itself. When that happens, every individual deserving or otherwise ipso facto
enjoys the additional convenience the society has acquired. The capacity to multiply Money arises from
the capacity to raise one’s inner value by conscious human choice. Until
the society attains development maturity, this opportunity is there for all
those who are endowed with the spirit of the pioneer to discover his inner self
and its values.
The Pioneer arises as a conscious Individual when
the subconscious knowledge of the collectivity matures. What the Pioneer is
today is enshrined in an organisation tomorrow. Ultimately the society comes to
accept that way of life as its own when we say it is institutionalised.
Society in its mental maturity created by its
imaginative symbolism Money which represented the human capacity for productive
labour. Man’s exertion became produce in the field and products in the factory.
Money represented it. Money is the symbol of labour as well as the product.
Banks made Money the product and created further Money out of the unutilised
productive capacity of the society. Thus Money multiplied. Imagination is
productive. It produces fresh planes of life by symbolism. In language,
imagination produces literature. The
characters in great literature are immortal while the living man in flesh and
body perishes and is forgotten. That is the power of imagination. History
is fact. Literature is of imagination. Literature teaches more effectively than
history. What history leaves in our subconscious, literature teaches
consciously.
The investment bank advises people how to invest
their savings and is paid for its services. It has a knowledge and expertise
about the financial market. Those investment banks which are trustworthy in the
eyes of the people are listened to and acted on. In the last quarter of the 19th
century these banks sprouted and multiplied Money in one or two years five
hundred times or even one thousand three hundred times. For commercial banks
the product is currency, Money. For the investment bank financial knowledge as
well as Trust is the product. Commercial banks could make a symbol their
product. It is a symbol of a material product or thing. Trust is a symbol of human value. Financial knowledge is a mental
symbol of a social activity. The reason why the investment banks are capable of
multiplying Money is their product is of a high value, at least high Money
value. Morgan was an individual. There was no Federal Reserve in 1907.
Roosevelt had immense confidence in him individually and gave him $ 25 million
of government Money. Morgan himself underwrote $ 30 million. The banks acted on
his words. The crisis was staved. Morgan in the next six years earned
about $ 50 million, almost equal to the amount which his integrity represented.
In Goldman Sachs the average earning of a partner is $660,000 a year. Its range
is from $ 17,000 to $ 33,000 an hour. Morgan was the promising individual who
later became in 1913 the Federal Reserve. In future the entire society will be
able to function as an investment bank. The key is good will, furthering
people’s prosperity, precise knowledge and integrity. Any individual who is
equipped with the financial knowledge of the market and is Trustworthy can earn
as the partners of the investment bank. Many act as such in matters of
education, career, marriage, etc. to others. It is a universal phenomenon, but
only in Money it is measurable. Good will equipped with knowledge is productive
of Money. It is truly creative of Money. What the professors and geniuses do in
the field of knowledge, Morgan and investment bankers do in the field of Money.
Professors create knowledge. We see its acme in a genius. Morgan was a genius
in investment. In future any spiritually awakened Individual who is equipped
with a comprehensive knowledge of Money will be able to produce or even create
Money of the size of his personality.
What the French Revolution gave the world, we are
still trying to assimilate. Liberty is the individual endowment in a general
atmosphere of freedom. Political freedom makes individual liberty possible, if
the laws made in freedom and to uphold them are seriously enforced. Equality is
understood to be equality before law. Only in the measure liberty thrives that
equality is enjoyed. It is a democratic ideal that upholds equality. While
liberty and equality are political and social, fraternity is psychological.
These three together remind us of the spiritual formula ‘all is in each and
each is in all.’ Sri Aurobindo says that it was a great idea that they added
fraternity to the other two. Power accumulates in pockets, is not
interchangeable. Even our physical strength cannot be converted into brain.
There may be excessive land and no water or great sources of water and no land.
Is there a way of converting one into another? Inter-convertibility is not
known in the physical plane. It is possible for the subtle plane if it can
become a symbol for some reason to both the objects. Convertibility is a great
step forward in civilisation. It is done by bringing to bear the subtle power
on the material plane.
Supramentalisation is to raise life to the causal plane. In the process
of conversion, the instrument, Money, is kept neutral otherwise the conversion
will become unfair which happens during periods of inflation and
deflation. This conversion can also
become creative or productive. In the
plane where Money is organisation, it is productive. On the plane of Trust, Money is creative or Trust is creative of
Money.
Internet has extended the concept of Liberty to the
subtle plane and infinite dimensions. It can reach all the potentials of
society. There are grades in the potentials. Products and wealth are potential
Money. Even capacity is a potential.
That which can become wealth is also a distant potential. Internet gives us an inexhaustible access to
all levels of potentials to be converted into Money when the Individual comes
into his own, because the spiritual Individual inheres in himself all the
levels from Matter to Spirit.
This formula of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity, when its spirit is kept up in the field of Money,
works wonders in Internet because of its universal reach. Money is the medium
of exchange. Here Money is the medium between the material and subtle planes.
Being a divine force, it has its reach to the causal plane. As a thing it is in the material plane. As
transaction it functions in the vital plane. Organisation brings Money to the
mental plane. It being a divine force and subtle, it enters into the
spiritual plane.
A heavy weight is lifted by a small force through a
lever. The excess power comes from the subtle plane. Life is composed of
physical, subtle, causal planes. Acting in one plane, powers of the other
planes can be drawn upon if the right strategy is used. In human psychology
that strategy translates into attitude. The causal plane accomplishes work
instantaneously. Here the attitude needed is one of patience that is ready to
act instantaneously. Organisation being subtle multiplies Money. Trust can be
causal when it is not mercenary and therefore it enables Money to
self-multiply. The same work yields different results to different people
because people act in various planes according to their attitudes.
Symbolism creates Money. It is subtle. Relationship
is vital and therefore is subtle to the physical plane. The physical plane is
material, inert, jada. We know
decision itself can precipitate acts. It is so when the thought of the mind has
the comprehensiveness to reach the mental substance and saturate it. Money acts
in the ascent while decision that accomplishes is in the descent, Money the
thing became transaction when the society moved from the plane of
material-physical to the vital thus introducing a certain amount of subtlety.
Organisation is entirely subtle and hence can lead to instantaneous
multiplication of Money, drawing the collective resources for the individual
benefit. Trust is entirely psychological and therefore is juxtaposed between
the subtle and causal planes. In the measure it enters the causal plane, Money
acquires the capacity for self-multiplication.
The process of ascent from physical to mental and
to the spirit beyond can be easily seen as it is self-evident. This is not so
with the process of descent. The ascent
is one of direct growth one leading to the other. The descent involves
evolution. In the process of descent the mind evolves into spirit, the vital
evolves the mind and spirit involved in it. At the physical plane descent compels it to evolve the vital, mental,
spiritual involved in it. Even in the ascent, there is evolution. It is an evolution of the physical into
vital and vital into spirit. In the descent the hidden Spirit in the parts of
being – Nature – is compelled to evolve into its fullness – the psychic being.
Parts of being struggle for survival when they function in themselves. They
grow into the next plane; they develop higher attitudes that are values, skills
of the spirit. It is development for each part of the being. All this is in the
ascent while the descent reverses the whole process. Here the spirit itself
evolves from its partial, quiescent status to the full dynamic action. This
change is a change from the lower to the higher hemisphere and enables the
entering into the Supramental plane. Thus the Supramental plane descends into
the lower parts activating the dormant spirit to evolve into the psychic. Money
travels through all these planes acquiring the powers of these planes. The
Individual emerging into spiritual individual is capable of making Money
multiply or self-multiply. The maximum for the causal plane is instantaneous
result; the minimum for it is the capacity for rapid multiplication. Money
acquires higher capacities while it enables those planes to evolve further. It
is a mutual process leading to integration.
The Internet is the society’s invention of an
organisation in cyberspace to make man shift from selfish aggrandisement to the
expansion of self-giving. It has been systematically demolishing the hold of
ego on property, idea, information, literary creation, etc. which bring to
those sites an enormous number of visitors. Advertisement as a source of
revenue and that too which enables the cost of newspaper to be cheap has been
known for centuries. Internet adds one more dimension to it by allowing the
advertiser and the reader to come together directly. This possibility allowed
the email and many other services on the web to reach the customer free. By giving something fully free one earns more
than by selling it is a truth made known to the world for the first time. In truth, this holds good in all fields.
Recently this truth is accepted by the world in the field of information. To
explain this truth in Money that Money multiplies by giving it away is not an
easy proposition. We can show the purchasing power of Money increases by its
faster movement. Wikipedia demonstrates this truthfully in knowledge. It
invites people to contribute facts that are verifiable with respect to an
entry. Millions of entries arrive. The editors arrive at a final article that
is far more comprehensive than can be had otherwise. Still the truth we aim at
does not fully emerge. In the matter of
ideas, the validity of this truth is seen in a greater measure. When one
sets out to teach on the web, this truth emerges in its full glory. Ordinarily
the teacher teaches what he knows to the student who stores it in his memory
with or without understanding. A better teacher trains the student’s
understanding or better still his thinking. Now unknown facts that are
unknowable by the teacher come to the surface as the teacher taps the
potentials of the impersonal – universal – mind. Unless the teacher rises to
the occasion by raising the level of his own mind – not the memory,
understanding, thinking that are parts of mind – he cannot make himself
meaningful to the student or the class. There is a further dimension of the
facet of life from where the student is drawn. This is Life, not mind. Internet
lays bare the universal mind and universal life to the perception of the
teacher revealing the infinite through the finite. Facts of immense quantity
collect. Ideas of which facts are symbols emerge in ALL minds that work this
programme. No encyclopedia of earlier construction can stand the competition of
Wikipedia. They are not comparable. This is an area where facts expand
infinitely, allow ideas to emerge out of them and indicate the possibility of
the Real-Idea being born. This indicates the parallel for Money but it is still
insufficient. In the Internet we see the field expands and becomes creative. It
gives the opportunity for the learner and teacher to expand equally and become
productive and creative. One who handles Money in a transaction has the
occasion to grow into the heights of his own personality when the field expands
as never before. Through the stages of symbolism, transaction, organisation and
trust, Money enters the subtle plane and causal plane undergoing multiplication
and self-multiplication. One who rises with the rising capacity of Money shares
these faculties. He can be possessive as Steve Jobs or self-giving as Bill
Gates. His own power to multiply Money will depend on the attitude he acquires.
Still the question of HOW the funds in one’s hands can self-multiply is left
unanswered. It takes place in the next
plane as in the mechanical advantage. It is easier to demonstrate as in THT
– six fold expansion – than explain. He who has done it stands a chance of
learning the process and essence.
It is the imagination that creates a symbol out of
the objective reality. Imagination is a
greater power than intellectuality. Intellect creates the thinker while
imagination creates the poet who is only one level below the yogi. Symbolism is
of the mental imagination. Vital imagination is superstition. The physical can
act but cannot directly think. It is the physical memory that repeats. We see
the ability of the physical to think in the formation of skill, a process of
organising energy by constant repetition. It has no faculty of imagination.
Maybe we can say its imagination is doubt. Capacity to doubt is a progress from
disbelief, as it is a step ahead of inertia that cannot act. Coinage is the
culmination of social imagination endorsed by the individual mind. One
important characteristic of the physical is possessiveness. Possessiveness is
the expansive extension of the physical with respect to what it produced. Possessiveness sublimated is adoration.
The very first creation of collective mankind is security and law and order. It
is symbolised by the leader who was a robber baron. Man allows himself to be robbed and tyrannised for the sake of
security. The monarch is the erstwhile robber baron. In adoring the monarch man
enjoys the physical possession of peaceful living and the security on the
border. It is an emotion of the body that grows into a passion of patriotism.
Coinage is the symbol of his economic well-being. Money is such a symbol of
man’s vital productivity, which enables his civilised living. At a further
level of progress, man seeks psychological well-being inside which is reflected
outside as social reputation. It is noteworthy that this reputation that is
status includes the earlier stages of abundant productivity and the
unassailable security. Possession of
Money is a rich symbol of this status. The symbol can be neutral, positive or
negative. Its neutrality is least productive while its negativity depletes him
of Money. A positive state of this status is capable of productivity, i.e. by
virtue of possessing Money, one can increase its volume. Money can
multiply while man possesses it. And every social activity is a medium of
multiplication. Man having Money with no sense of possessing it enables Money
to enter into the phase of self-multiplication. Monarchy is the symbol of
security. Money is the symbol of productivity. Knowledge is the symbol of
creativity. Knowledge that is will is the symbol and secret of that creative
power. It is cumulative in a selfish character while in a character of selflessness
it is expansive. Self-giving makes that expansiveness extend infinitely and
brings it back to oneself through another higher subtle plane. Its climax is
reached in the causal plane. Business helps earn by a service. The service
itself is productive of Money. Patriotic self-giving is not so productive of
Money but it needs Money even for that service. It is an act which can make
great funds flow towards one when it acquires intensity. The spiritual
Individual can attract towards him all the Money he needs for his spiritual
service. His essential need is to create
a solid foundation for his successful work.
It is an encouraging report for us in India.
An undernourished man’s health can improve by
better food, higher salary, shifting to a better job, attention to his
attitudes, etc. etc. The rule is
whenever a part improves, the whole rises. It is true of all the parts. Also
whenever one part is improved all the other parts receive that benefit. Man is
usually oblivious of his problems as well as opportunities. As long as the
knowledge of the Theory is lacking, people will studiously consider parts. The
whole is not in view as no one knows there is a whole. The whole has a centre
of consciousness. It lies in the individual. When most individuals awake, we
call it social awakening. The above report is a pointer in many ways.
In giving abundant Money to the people, we are
being a channel for the abundant consciousness of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
His birth was undertaken to deliver it to the world by His doing the yoga of the earth on her behalf. He was willing to do
the yoga of humanity, but they were unaware of His existence. He won India’s
Independence, but His ideas were rejected by the Congress. He did the yoga of
the sadhaks and they whole-heartedly
betrayed Him. He withdrew and sent His Force and now it is doing the work. Man
will resist, oppose, and be indifferent to the ideas on Money as Elizabeth did.
Darcy withdrew and offered his services behind the screen. Elizabeth gloated
over the results but wanted to suppress
the truth from Darcy. He persisted and won her over. First, it was his turn
to go awry. He was rude, resentful of what he most longed for. He took
initiative to wrong her sister, removed Bingley from Netherfield. He wanted for
himself what he denied to Bingley. His justification for it was his ardent love
for Elizabeth. Elizabeth did not want his true love but
wanted the patronage of Bingley’s status through marriage. His proposal was
offensive. She brutally refused him through stinging abuse. After this begins
his transformation, a true one. His was the inner change. Hers was the outer
acquiescence. It was Pemberly she was pleased with, not his infectious love. He
succeeded in pleasing her in several ways and went to Lambton to propose. Her
own eighth reversal remained unfulfilled. It came as Lydia’s elopement. He
decided to go through it also without letting her know. It removed the obstacle
– elopement – and he removed the obstacle of Jane’s wedding. Still, she was
unrelenting, found fault with him. The eighth reversal came in the shape of an
external event that humiliated her. She came to know of Darcy’s magnanimity and
was humbled. Still she was stiff and assertive. Only when she spoke it out to
him she was sufficiently humiliated making her receptive. Our giving the world
Sri Aurobindo through Money may have to pass through all these stages as
adjusted by our social context. We cannot accept the policy of Wikipedia nor
can we be indifferent to it. Ours is a subjective method, Wikipedia seeks an
objective one. The subjective method excludes the objective. There is another subjective method which
includes the objective. It is in the Simultaneous Time. Already Wikipedia
accepts the results of such a method. It is a method of letting the facts speak
for themselves, so that Wikipedia will not ask for reference. Wikipedia is not a collection of facts which they
claim to be. It is a collection of knowledge in terms of facts. Knowledge is
not confined to facts. They are foolishly proud of proclaiming it. Still, as
after his refusal Darcy went into himself to bring about an inner change for
its own sake, we have to swallow the follies of the world, that of Wikipedia
till we are accepted in toto. We must do exactly the opposite of what we
believe in, in deference to their ignorance. Krishna killed Kamsa to offer him moksha. He violated the gopis to award them spiritual chastity.
The procedure is Brahman. No step of it
can be skipped, it can only be abridged in the measure of knowledge available. Life
did not allow Darcy to propose to her a second time at Lambton without her
going through the last reversal. In knowledge, one’s reversal can be done
without a tragedy. In ignorance, it can be done only through a catastrophe. She
had to speak to him of Lydia’s elopement and tacitly receive his help.
Sincerity on her part could have averted the elopement had she realised her
family’s low status. She was unconscious. Let us be conscious of the Ignorance
of the world, not in it, but inwardly in us and still play the game. To accept
the world’s Ignorance as ours is consciousness responsibility. To know it as
our own ignorance and accept it is to be true to ourselves, a practically valid
simple truth, and a fact of life inside us.
·
Money was created by the urge in society to organise itself at higher
levels.
·
That organisation required converting the potentials into usable
energy, mutual exchange, a medium of exchange.
·
Such a medium cannot be in the plane of present existence.
·
It will be the medium in a higher plane.
·
That medium takes shape as a symbol.
·
It is a symbol of the accomplishment in the present plane.
·
Symbols are not the products of thought, but products of imagination.
·
The exchange is effected
by the symbol.
·
Transaction is made possible by the symbolic existence.
·
Such a transaction is between two individuals or organisations.
·
Production in the physical plane is by physical labour.
·
Productivity in the plane of exchange is in proportion to the
transaction.
·
The speed of the transaction, its volume, character, intensity
determine the productivity of that field. One such field is trade.
·
Commerce is a wider term than trade.
·
Relationship is more comprehensive.
·
Exchange expands the space of action, thus making higher productivity
possible.
·
Wider space of functioning makes Time a factor of productivity.
·
Time has been influenced by speed as it admits it.
·
As speed increases, productivity increases, Money multiplies.
·
Initially multiplying Money gathers Money at several points at one
point.
·
Finally it enables creation of fresh Money in greater quantities.
·
It is no longer multiplication, but self-existent multiplication or
Self-multiplication.
·
At the levels of Money a thing, a transaction, an organisation, Trust,
Force these phenomena – multiplication and Self-multiplication – constantly
occur.
·
Such expansion of Money is by physical multiplication of quantity,
vital multiplication of its purchasing power, its capacity to partake a vaster
share of growing social productivity, its inherent capacity to accomplish a far
greater amount of accomplishment and by moving into power from force.
·
It is made possible by the improving scientific technology at the
lowest, by the society growing into self-giving by everyone’s willingness to
support everyone else.
·
What an individual should achieve by decades of labour at the cost of
crores of rupees, is made possible by a higher technology offering the widest
social accomplishment for the use of the individual. Of course it is implied that this Individual will directly contribute
to the social pool of higher, further accomplishment.
·
A Development Encyclopedia that was only possible in 1960 by the
combined effort of over a hundred scholars of eminence highly paid out of a
vast fund, now is possible because the Web is available free and all such
scholars in thousands are willing to pool their efforts for the joy and
prestige of it. In effect, that $100 million is now earned and those scholars
employed. Only that it is on a different footing – freedom to insist of the
individual value of facts and the validity of law enunciated. Zero investment has thus multiplied.
The power of Self-multiplication is the power of
evolution in the process of knowledge emerging into higher knowledge having
done so first from ignorance. Movement
occurs by energy. Force is created by the directing will. Force passing through
organisation is power. Power accomplishes through skill. This is a part of
the process of creation. The three processes of Self-conception,
Self-limitation and Self-absorption are there at all stages of creation
beginning from Brahman and ending in Matter. It acts in the reverse order in
evolution. Each plane acts according to its characteristics. In the spiritual
plane the energy acts to relate each to all by the inherent power of spirit
which is endless. In the material plane the power is that of the form given by
imagination as a symbol. In the vital plane the power issues out of movement, a
movement that forges relations – transactions. In the plane of organisation, it
is no longer individual power but is the power of the collective. An individual
there is able to release the power of his own individual form, actively relate
to other individuals by the power of his imagination which creates the
organisation. The power of organisation is the sum total of all such
individuals who act not so much by thinking as by imagination. Organisation is the creation of imagination
in the collective. Trust is the organisation of psychological power of
understanding others. Mind is possessive when it acts through its vital. Mind
is expansive when it acts through the spirit in it. Such a spirit can be either
immutable or evolving. Once Mind creates an organisation the power of the
spirit in it chooses actively to relate it to every other individual. It does
it through inherent active goodwill that is infinite. He who has such a
universal good will has the universal power at his disposal to expand whatever
he has. Here our concern is Money. What he does is to expand himself
universally through an act of active goodwill. The power of multiplication and
self-multiplication is created. Its results come to him from the plane where he
has skills. It can be skills of production, lending, borrowing, understanding,
relationship, organisation, trust or anything on earth. Often the work he does
is invisible as there is no past experience on which he can rely. Money seeking
him is more invisible not because it is occult, but because one is not trained
to see. A thorough precise appreciation of the process of creation and an ability
to apply it to the given situation will render the invisible process visible.
Sachchidananda
objectifies as Supermind.
Comprehending Supermind
objectifies as apprehending Supermind.
Existence experiences
itself as Spirit.
Self-absorption is
Self-experiencing.
Spirit objectifies as
Truth.
Consciousness objectifies
itself as Time and Space.
Time works out its conception in Space by causality, the
Divine Law.
Self-absorption results
in Ignorance of Matter in form.
It is easy to see this
Power.
It is not equally easy to
see the planes it moves in and the powers it releases in the human being.
But it is not difficult
to reason it out.
Reason acquiring light
can see that plane and that process by insight or intuition. The prosperity of the village has come to
us as the higher value of our property.
Military might makes a nation a conqueror. It was
so for about a few millennia. After the Industrial Revolution, that power
shifted to industrial capacity whose performance was seen in the two World
Wars. It was a shift from purely physical power to physics – vital power. Later
it showed a further shift to Money. Here the shift is entirely to the social
vital power. It can further shift to Money earned by Truth. The shifts do not
stop anywhere. The next step is to Truth. Knowing the actual process of
shifting in the first stage, it will be easy to study and know the shift at
other stages.
§
For a full appreciation
of the Power that Money represents, it is essential to know the entire process
of shifting to Money and shifting away from Money.
In the
army men fought with swords, bows and arrows. Industries shifted them to
musket, rifle, pistol, cannon. Now it is to the sophisticated weapons. Man was
reduced to being a mere instrument. Now what is sought after is not territory,
but market that earns Money. The very industrial capacity largely depends on
Money. Also what the arms can accomplish is partly usurped by Money.
§
Money that is in search of markets to earn Money is determined at home
by the availability of Money.
The physical nature of the army, the vital-physical
nature of arms and ammunition, the vital-mental nature of Money will explain
the nature of shifts. That knowledge will essentially help us to multiply
Money. In management Money can be used as a tool for better execution. In
psychology decisions can be better used to earn Money. It can be done in both
ways, positively and negatively.
§
Knowledge can be used to earn Money.
§
Money can be used to earn knowledge.
§
Now that a serious writer has seen the fact that money is replacing
industrial capacity as a source of military strength, we can extend it to the
next plane where Money can be self-multiplied.
§
The process of the first shift is mostly physical and partly vital.
§
In the second it is mostly vital and partly physical.
§
In the next one it is mostly mental, subtle and a little vital.
Physicality is almost not there.
§
Money when thus mastered
will have the power of the military, i.e. one can lay his hands on the wealth
of the world.
§
We see thought in the world is already moving towards the goal that
Money is a Divine Force.
At the
level Society is fully integrated, each aspect of the society will be in live
relation with each other aspect. At such a point nothing
will be important or unimportant. Each will be significant in its own way in
its proper place. In the last hundred or two hundred years we can see how Money
has travelled along this path. That will reveal to us the future path Money
would take.
§
It can be called the extension of the Role of Money and how it rules
its domain.
§
Today, one may think that Money has saturated that role and if it is
to be extended we must await future developments. It is not so. The innovation of frequent flier miles
opens up a new concept and shows how it can be extended to hotel visits, shop
visits, etc. Once it is done, we
can see a whole new world is thus opened.
§
In future, services will become mostly free and therefore monetising a
certain social aspect will seem to have no value.
§
It is worth considering that a fully free service can emerge only when
the field is exhausted by the rule of Money.
§
As long as Money can serve as an instrument of social development,
that role will not be exhausted.
§
Now, in every free service, it is the advertisement that pays for it.
Still it is monetary role playing indirectly.
§
In the first ten years television earned no advertisements. Now
television is made free by advertisements.
§
The West is fully literate as against the Third World, but as against
an ideal education, the distance to be travelled is immense.
§
An attempt to measure each activity so that it may be put on a scale
will show the measure of importance of evaluating the work in terms of cost. It
is cost accountancy that made Carnegie dramatically reduce the cost of
production of steel.
= How far, even in the West, is cost accountancy resorted to?
§
Just now we speak of the expansion of Money by its Trust, organisation,
transaction and symbolism. That way we do not enter into the field at all.
§
Our lower world is ruled
by rules and methods in their lower expression. The higher world is governed by
the higher aspect of the rules. Beyond both of them there is a world of no
rules, the one RULE being harmony.
§
The process of converting activities in terms of Money – monetisation
– must continue till each aspect becomes unique and infinitesimal.
§
Our inquiry is confined to psychological and sociological views. There
is a functional view. It has the two dimensions of consciousness and substance;
positive and negative; surface and subliminal.
§
We can even say we must extend the role of Money to all aspects and at
the end convert its ruling Man into Man ruling Money.
§
Complementary currency increases the Velocity of Money from seven to
twenty one and draws upon the local interest heavily as Money is preserved
locally.