Editor’s Note: In these passages the Mother explains that Nature always gives everything in abundance, except money because it is not under Nature’s control yet. We also read about her trance experiences where she concretely ‘saw’ the power of money that is controlled by Asuric forces, and how it can be conquered.
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Nature gives everything in abundance, except money
This morning I asked myself the question, ‘is money truly under Nature’s control?’ I shall have to see. . . Because for me personally, she always gives everything in abundance.
When I was young, I was as poor as a turkey, as poor as could be! As an artist, I sometimes had to go out in society (as artists are forced to do). I had lacquered boots that were cracked. . . and I painted them so it wouldn’t show! This is to tell you the state I was in—poor as a turkey.
So one day, in a shop window, I saw a very pretty petticoat much in fashion then, with lace, ribbons, etc. (It was the fashion in those days to have long skirts which trailed on the floor, and I didn’t have a petticoat which could go with such things—I didn’t care, it didn’t matter to me in the least, but since Nature had told me I would always have everything I needed, I wanted to make an experiment.)
So I said, ‘Well, I would very much like to have a petticoat to go with those skirts.’ I got five of them! They came from every direction!
And it is always like that. I never ask for anything, but if by chance I say to myself, ‘Hmm, wouldn’t it be nice to have that,’ mountains of them pour in!
So last year, I made an experiment, I told Nature, ‘Listen, my little one, you say that you will collaborate, you told me I would never lack anything. Well then, to put it on a level of feelings, it would really be fun, it would give me joy (in the style of Krishna’s joy), to have A LOT of money to do everything I feel like doing. It’s not that I want to increase things for myself, no; you give me more than I need. But to have some fun, to be able to give freely, to do things freely, to spend freely—I am asking you to give me a crore of rupees for my birthday!
She didn’t do a thing! Nothing, absolutely nothing: a complete refusal.
Did she refuse or was she unable to? It may be that. . . I always saw that money was under the control of an asuric force. (I am speaking of currency, ‘cash’; I don’t want to do business. When I try to do business, it generally succeeds very well, but I don’t mean that. I am speaking of cash.) I never asked her that question.
The limited powers of Lord Ganesh and Santa Claus
You see, this is how it happened: there’s this Ganesh. . . We had a meditation (this was more than thirty years ago) in the room where ‘Prosperity’ is now distributed*. There were eight or ten of us, I believe. We used to make sentences with flowers; I arranged the flowers, and each one made a sentence with the different flowers I had put there.
And one day when the subject of prosperity or wealth came up, I thought (they always say that Ganesh is the god of money, of fortune, of the world’s wealth), I thought, ‘Isn’t this whole story of the god with an elephant trunk merely a lot of human imagination?’ Thereupon, we meditated. And who should I see walk in and park himself in front of me but a living being, absolutely alive and luminous, with a trunk that long. . . and smiling!
So then, in my meditation, I said, ‘Ah! So it’s true that you exist!’—‘Of course I exist! And you may ask me for whatever you wish, from a monetary standpoint, of course, and I will give it to you!’
So I asked. And for about ten years, it poured in, like this (gesture of torrents). It was incredible. I would ask, and at the next Darshan, or a month or several days later, depending, there it was.
Then the war and all the difficulties came, bringing a tremendous increase of people and expenditure (the war cost a fortune—anything at all cost ten times more than before), and suddenly, finished, nothing more. Not exactly nothing, but a thin little trickle. And when I asked, it didn’t come.
So one day, I put the question to Ganesh through his image (!), I asked him, ‘What about your promise?’—‘I can’t do it, it’s too much for me; my means are too limited!’—‘Ah!’ I said to myself (laughing), ‘What bad luck!’ And I no longer counted on him.
Once someone even asked Santa Claus! A young Muslim girl who had a special liking for ‘Father Christmas’—I don’t know why, as it was not part of her religion! Without saying a word to me, she called on Santa Claus and told him, ‘Mother doesn’t believe in you; you should give Her a gift to prove to Her that you exist. You can give it to Her for Christmas.’ And it happened!. . . She was quite proud.
But it only happened like that once. And as for Ganesh, that was the end of it.
So then I asked Nature. It took her a long time to accept to collaborate.
But as for the money, I shall have to ask her about it; because for me personally, it is still going on.
I think, ‘Hmm, wouldn’t it be nice to have a wristwatch like that.’ And I get twenty of them! I say to myself, ‘Well, if I had that. . . ’ and I get thirty of them! Things come in from every side, without my even uttering a word—I don’t even ask, they just come.
Also read:
Rhythm of Money Power and the Vaishya Soul-Force
Relation between money and the sexual impulses
The first time I came here and spoke with Sri Aurobindo about what was needed for the Work, he told me (he also wrote it to me) that for the secure achievement of the Work we would need three powers: one was the power over health, the second was the power over government, and the third was the power over money.
Health naturally depends upon the sadhana; but even that is not so sure: there are other factors. As for the second, the power over government, Sri Aurobindo looked at it, studied it, considered it very carefully, and finally he told me,
‘There is only one way to have that power: it is TO BE the government. One can influence individuals, one can transmit the will to them, but their hands are tied. In a government, there is no one individual, nor even several who is all-powerful and who can decide things. One must be the government oneself and give it the desired orientation.’
For the last, for money, he told me, ‘I still don’t know exactly what it depends on.’
Then one day I entered into trance with this idea in mind, and after a certain journey I came to a place like a subterranean grotto (which means that it is in the subconscient, or perhaps even in the inconscient) which was the source, the place and the power over money.
I was about to enter into this grotto (a kind of inner cave) when I saw, coiled and upright, an immense serpent, like an all black python, formidable, as big as a seven-story house, who said,
‘You cannot pass!’—
‘Why not? Let me pass!’—
‘Myself, I would let you pass, but if I did, “they” would immediately destroy me.’—
‘Who, then, is this “they”?’—
‘They are the asuric powers who rule over money. They have put me here to guard the entrance, precisely so that you may not enter.’—
‘And what is it that would give one the power to enter?’
Then he told me something like this:
I heard (that is, he himself had no special knowledge, but it was something he had heard from his masters, those who ruled over him), I heard that he who will have a total power over the human sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power—that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter.’ In other words, these forces would not be able to prevent him from entering.
A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men—that is, to control or master such movements at will, everywhere—is quite another. I don’t believe that this. . . condition has been fulfilled.
If what the serpent said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile forces that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled.
It has been fulfilled to a certain extent—but it’s negligible. It is conditional, limited: in one case, it works; in another, it doesn’t. It is quite problematic. And naturally, where terrestrial things are involved (I don’t say universal, but in any case terrestrial), when it is something involving the earth, it must be complete; there cannot be any approximations.
Therefore, it’s an affair between the asuras and the human species.
To transform itself is the only solution left to the human species—in other words, to tear from the asuric forces the power of ruling over the human species.
– The Mother (Agenda, Vol, 1, pp. 176-177)
* the room where, on the first of each month, Mother distributed to the disciples their needs for the month.
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Desire for power, money and sex —
Three great obstacles in terrestrial human life
Three things are interdependent (Sri Aurobindo says here): power, money and sex. I believe the three are interdependent and that all three have to be conquered to be sure of having any one—when you want to conquer one you must have the other two.
Unless one has mastered these three things, desire for power, desire for money and desire for sex, one cannot truly possess any of them firmly and surely.
What gives so great an importance to money in the world as it is today is not so much money itself, for apart from a few fools who heap up money and are happy because they can heap it up and count it, generally money is desired and acquired for the satisfactions it brings.
And this is almost reciprocal: each of these three things not only has its own value in the world of desires, but leans upon the other two. I have related to you that vision, that big black serpent which kept watch over the riches of the world, terrestrial wealth—he demanded the mastery of the sex-impulse.
Because, according to certain theories, the very need of power has its end in this satisfaction, and if one mastered that, if one abolished that from human consciousness, much of the need for power and desire for money would disappear automatically. Evidently, these are the three great obstacles in the terrestrial human life and, unless they are conquered, there is scarcely a chance for humanity to change.
– The Mother, (CWM, Vol. 4, pp. 380-381)
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Also Read:
The Nature of Money and Wealth Creation
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