April 10, 1968
P.L. has left. He had me asked for “blessings packets” to help him … (laughing) through four different people, to make sure he got them! He said about the same thing to everyone – that he was about to do something very hard and he needed my very active help…. So I gave four packets!
It occurred to me to ask him to wire me as soon as he knows
the date and time of his interview with the Pope.
It’s a good idea.
It seems he is a minister’s son…. I forget who he confided in, but he said his father is (or was) prime minister in [such and such a country], and he himself is a lawyer and manages several people’s fortunes. He said he has to manage something like twenty crores of rupees,[[One crore is ten millions. ]] which means a considerable fortune. But that’s all, he didn’t say anything else.
He asked me what he should do with his money, so I advised
him to go and see A. He said, for instance, that he had shares
in lots of businesses, and he asked me, "Should I divest myself
of all this?" I told him, "A. will be able to advise you, but at
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first sight there’s no reason to divest yourself; if you get interest,
you may give it to the Ashram if you feel devoted to the Ashram,
but there’s no reason to throw everything overboard."
He didn’t speak of divesting himself when he saw A., he said he manages OTHER people’s money.
Oh, he didn’t say that to me.
It seems odd: to one he says one thing, to another something else ….
I don’t think so.
As for me, I feel a very pleasant contact – very pleasant, very trusting, very good. A very good contact.
Probably to everyone he only says one bit.
To me he said he wanted to leave everything, then he hesitated
and asked, "But if, for instance, I need to go back to my country
to see my mother?…"1 told him, "There’s no reason for you
to give everything like that. If you wish, you can keep a certain
freedom through a little money for necessities. At any rate," I
said, "no one will ask anything of you, it’s for you to do as you
feel."
Yes.
But then, if it isn’t others’ money that he manages but his own, he is very rich.
(silence)
Yesterday I had the visit of a young man (quite young) with his mother and grandmother: they have a jute factory … in Pakistan. It’s worth about twenty crores of rupees, of which half is theirs personally, their personal money. The Pakistani government took everything. But there was a trial (the court was in Pakistan), and the court decided that the factory should go back to its owner. So the Pakistani government has written to this young man, saying, “Come and take possession of your factory.” But he has been warned (I don’t know how) that he should beware – that he would be put in jail as soon as he arrived! … Then he came to see me, quite embarrassed. He told me the situation. “Very well,” I said, “we’ll see.”
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We’ll try.
It’s amusing!
It’s like this: money (not a penny or two, I mean) has a sort of … I don’t know if it’s an attraction or a need to come [to Mother] … and then, one clearly sees that, everywhere, what prevents it from coming is the hostile force, it’s a force of disorder, a “force of misappropriation,” we might say. As a conflict, it’s interesting to observe. [[This is the whole problem of the Ashram’s “proprietors” (or Auroville’s former proprietors) and this “misappropriation” which Mother was already referring to in 1960 (and before): see Agenda 1, July 23, 1960, p. 400. ]]
I don’t know if it’s to teach me to find the kind of vibration or power capable of undoing this stranglehold … it’s possible.
But the conflict is between what we might call “opposing proprietors.” And the truth is that money belongs to no one. This idea of “possession” of money is what has perverted everything. Money shouldn’t be a “possession”: it’s a means of action, which is given to you just like a power, but you have to use it according to … what we might call “the Donor’s will,” that is, impersonally and with foresight. If you are a good instrument in the spread and use of money, then it comes to you, and it does so in proportion to your capacity of using it in the right way. That’s the true working.
I see these people [of the jute factory]: no choice needs to be made, the man didn’t say spontaneously (or anyway, with feeling), “This money is at the disposal of divine forces for the action” – not at all, that’s a thousand miles away from his thought. It’s “I quite simply want to take POSSESSION again …” of something he claims to own. So that’s why (Mother shakes her head) it may be this or that, this way or that way – it hardly makes any difference.
The true attitude is this: money is a universal force meant to do the work on earth, the work needed to prepare the earth to receive the divine forces and manifest them, and it must come into the hands (the utilizing power, that is) of those who have the clearest vision, the most general and truest vision.
The first thing, to begin with (this is elementary), is to have no sense of possession – "It’s mine," what does that mean? What does it mean?… I can’t really understand it now. Why do people want it to be theirs? – To be able to use it as they wish, do with it what they wish and handle it according to their own idea. That’s how it is. Otherwise, yes, there are people who love to keep it in a
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money, they heap it up. But if people understood that one must be like a receiver-transmitter set; that the vaster the set (just the contrary of personal), the more impersonal and generous and vast the set is, and the more forces it can contain ("forces," that is, to translate materially, banknotes or money). And that power to contain is in proportion to the best capacity of utilization – the "best," that is, from the standpoint of general progress: the broadest vision, the broadest understanding and the most enlightened, exact, true utilization, not according to the ego’s falsified needs, but according to the earth’s general need in its evolution and development. In other words, the broadest vision should have the broadest capacity.
Behind all false movements, there is a true one: there is a joy in being able to direct, utilize, organize things so as to keep wastage to a minimum while having a maximum of results. (That’s a very interesting vision to have.) And that must be the true side in those who want to amass: a capacity of utilization on a very large scale.
As this vision grows clearer … It’s a long, long time, years and years, since the sense of possession went away; that’s childishness, it’s nothing – it’s so silly! Will you tell me what pleasure a man can take in keeping heaps of papers in a box or in his wall! A real pleasure he can’t have. The height of pleasure is that of the miser who goes and opens his box to look at it – that’s not much! Some people love to spend, they love to possess and spend; that’s different, they are generous natures, but unregulated, unorganized…. But the joy of enabling all TRUE needs, all NECESSITIES to express themselves, that’s good. It’s like the joy of turning an illness into good health, a falsehood into truth, a suffering into joy, it’s the same thing: turning an artificial and stupid need, which doesn’t correspond to anything natural, into a possibility which becomes something quite natural – a need for so much money to do this and that which needs to be done, to set right here, repair there, build here, organize there – that’s good. And I understand one may enjoy being the transmitting channel for all that and bring money just where it’s needed. It must be the true movement in people who enjoy … (that’s when it becomes stupid selfishness) who need to hoard.
The combination of the need to hoard and the need to spend (both of them ignorant and blind), the two combined can make for a clear vision and a utilization as useful as possible. That’s good.
So then, there slowly, slowly comes the possibility of putting it into practice.
But naturally, to be everywhere at the same time and do every
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thing at the same time, one needs very clear brains and very upright intermediaries (!) Then this famous question of money would be solved.
Money belongs to no one: money is a collective property that only those with an integral and general, universal vision must use. And let me add, a vision not only integral and general, but also essentially TRUE, which means you can distinguish between a utilization in conformity with universal progress, and a utilization that might be called fanciful. But those are details, because even errors – even, from a certain point of view, wasteful uses – help in the general progress: they are lessons in reverse.
(silence)
I still remember what Théon used to say (Théon was quite against philanthropy), he said, “Philanthropy perpetuates human misery, because without human misery it would lose its raison d’être!” And you know, that great philanthropist … what was his name? In the time of Mazarin, the one who founded the “Little Sisters of Charity”?
Vincent de Paul.
That’s it. Mazarin once told him, “There have never been so many poor as since you started looking after them!”[[Someone had written to Mother, "I want my money to be used exclusively to conquer the causes of our sufferings and misery." Mother had replied, "That is what we are working towards here, but not in the artificial way of the philanthropists, who only deal with the outward effects. We want to eliminate forever the CAUSE of suffering, by divinizing matter through the integral transformation." ]] (Mother laughs)
* * *
A little later
I am thinking of my money affair again: that’s how life in Auroville should be organized – but I doubt people are ready.
That is, it can be done as long as they accept the direction of a sage.
Yes.
The first thing to be accepted and recognized by all is that the
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invisible, higher power (higher in the sense that it belongs to a plane of consciousness which, although veiled to most, one can gain, a consciousness one may call as one likes, any name – that doesn’t matter – but which is integral and pure in the sense that it’s not mendacious, it’s based on the Truth), that this power is capable of governing material things for everyone in a MUCH TRUER, happier and more beneficial way than any material power. That’s the first point. Once everyone agrees on it …
And it’s not something you can pretend to have; a being can’t pretend to have it: either he has it or he doesn’t, because (laughing) if it’s a pretense, life will use the slightest opportunity to make it obvious! And moreover, it won’t give you any material power – here also, Théon said something in this regard, he said, “Those who are all the way up” (he was referring to the TRUE hierarchy, the hierarchy based precisely on each one’s power of consciousness), “one who is all the way up (one or those) necessarily has the least amount of needs; his material needs decrease as his capacity of material vision increases.” And it’s perfectly true. It’s automatic and spontaneous; it’s not the result of an effort: the vaster the consciousness and the more things and realities it embraces, the smaller the material needs become – automatically so – because they lose all their importance and value. It’s reduced to a minimal need of material necessities, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
And that’s easily recognizable, of course. It’s difficult to feign.
The second thing is the power of conviction. That is to say, the highest consciousness, when it’s put in contact with Matter, spontaneously has … (what should I call it?… It’s not an “influence,” because there’s no will to influence…. I might put it this way:) it has a power of conviction greater than that of all intermediary regions. Through simple contact, its power of conviction, that is, its power of transformation, is greater than that of all the intermediary regions. That is a fact. Those two facts make it impossible for any pretense to last. (I am looking at it from the standpoint of a collective organization.)
As soon as you come down from that supreme Height, you find the whole play of diverse influences (gesture of mixture and conflict), and that’s in fact a sure sign: if you come down ever so slightly (even into a region of higher mentality, higher intelligence), the WHOLE conflict of influences starts. Only what’s truly all the way up, with perfect purity, has this power of spontaneous conviction. All substitutes you may try are therefore an approximation, and not
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a much better one than democracy – by "democracy," I mean the system that wants to rule through the greatest number and lowest masses (I am referring to "social democracy," the latest trend).
If there is no representative of the supreme Consciousness (which can happen, of course), if there isn’t any, we could perhaps (this would be worth trying) replace him with the government by a small number – we would have to choose between four and eight, something like that: four, seven or eight – a small number having an INTUITIVE intelligence. Intuitive is more important than intelligence”: they should have an intuition that manifests intellectually. (From a practical standpoint it would have some drawbacks, but it might be nearer the truth than the lowest rung: socialism or communism.) All the intermediaries have proved incompetent: theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, plutocracy – all that is a complete failure. The other one too is now giving proof of its failure, the government of … what can we call it? Democracy? [[Mother means socialism or communism. ]] (But democracy always implies the idea of educated, rich people.) That has given proof of its complete incompetence.
It’s the reign of the most equally shared stupidity.
Yes, that’s right!… But I am referring to the system all the way down, socialistic or communistic, which represents material needs…. Basically, it corresponds to a sort of absence of government, because they don’t have the power to govern others: they are forced to transfer their power to someone who exercises it, like a Lenin, for instance, because he was a brain. But all that … all that has been tried out and has given proof of its incompetence. The only thing that could be competent is the Truth-Consciousness choosing instruments and expressing itself through a certain number of instruments, if one can’t be found (just one isn’t enough, either, that one would necessarily need to choose a whole collectivity). Those possessing this consciousness may belong to any class of society: it’s not a privilege arising from birth, but the result of personal effort and development. In fact, that would be an external sign, an evident sign of change on the political level: no question anymore of classes or categories or birth (all that is outdated), but those individualities that have reached a higher consciousness would have the right to govern, whatever class they belong to – and no others.
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That would be the true vision.
But all those participating in the experience would have to be absolutely convinced that the highest consciousness is the best judge of the MOST MATERIAL THINGS. You see, what has ruined India is this idea that the higher consciousness has to do with “higher” things, while it’s not interested in lower things and knows nothing about them! That’s what has caused the ruin of India. Well, this error must be completely abolished. It’s the highest consciousness that sees the most clearly – the most clearly and the most truly – what the needs of the most material thing should be.
With this, we could try out a new kind of government.
There.
(Mother laughs)
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