The Right Use of Money

What is Money?

Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose.

Sri Aurobindo, CWSA 32, The Mother 1927

Financial power is the materialization of a vital force turned into one of the greatest powers of action: the power to attract, acquire, and utilize. Like all the other powers, it must be put at the service of the Divine.

The Mother, Agenda V1, 1958

This is indeed one of the three forces—power, wealth, sex—that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura. For this reason most spiritual disciplines insist on a complete self-control, detachment and renunciation of all bondage to wealth and of all personal and egoistic desire for its possession. Some even put a ban on money and riches and proclaim poverty and bareness of life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. 

- Sri Aurobindo, CWSA 32, The Mother 1927

To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the Sadhaka.

You must neither turn with an ascetic shrinking from the money power, the means it gives and the objects it brings, nor cherish a rajasic attachment to them or a spirit of enslaving self-indulgence in their gratifications. Regard wealth simply as a power to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service.

All wealth belongs to the Divine and those who hold it are trustees, not possessors. It is with them today, tomorrow it may be elsewhere. All depends on the way they discharge their trust while it is with them, in what spirit, with what consciousness in their use of it, to what purpose.

In your personal use of money look on all you have or get or bring as the Mother’s. Make no demand but accept what you receive from her and use it for the purposes for which it is given to you. Be entirely selfless, entirely scrupulous, exact, careful in detail, a good trustee; always consider that it is her possessions and not your own that you are handling. On the other hand, what you receive for her, lay religiously before her; turn nothing to your own or anybody else’s purpose.

Do not look up to men because of their riches or allow yourself to be impressed by the show, the power or the influence. When you ask for the Mother, you must feel that it is she who is demanding through you a very little of what belongs to her and the man from whom you ask will be judged by his response.

If you are free from the money-taint but without any ascetic withdrawal, you will have a greater power to command the money-force for the divine work. Equality of mind, absence of demand and the full dedication of all you possess and receive and all your power of acquisition to the Divine Shakti and her work are the signs of this freedom. Any perturbation of mind with regard to money and its use, any claim, any grudging is a sure index of some imperfection or bondage.

The ideal Sadhaka in this kind is one who if required to live poorly can so live and no sense of want will affect him or interfere with the full inner play of the divine consciousness, and if he is required to live richly, can so live and never for a moment fall into desire or attachment to his wealth or to the things that he uses or servitude to self-indulgence or a weak bondage to the habits that the possession of riches creates. The divine Will is all for him and the divine Ananda.

In the supramental creation the money-force has to be restored to the Divine Power and used for a true and beautiful and harmonious equipment and ordering of a new divinised vital and physical existence in whatever way the Divine Mother herself decides in her creative vision. But first it must be conquered back for her and those will be strongest for the conquest who are in this part of their nature strong and large and free from ego and surrendered without any claim or withholding or hesitation, pure and powerful channels for the Supreme Puissance.

- Sri Aurobindo, CWSA 32, The Mother 1927

When money is missing it must be replaced by an immense effort of goodwill and organisation. It is that effort that I am asking for, a triumph over Tamas and lazy indifference.

I do not want anybody to give up but I want everyone to surpass himself

---The Mother, CWM V13, 1945

It is to the Divine that all riches belong. It is the Divine who lends them to living beings, and it is to Him that they must naturally return.

The Mother, 1955

A day shall come when all the wealth of this world, freed at last from the enslavement to the antidivine forces, offers itself spontaneously and fully to the service of the Divine’s Work upon earth.

The Mother, CWM XV, 6 January 1955

The Function of Money

Money belongs to the one who spends it; that is an absolute law. You may pile up money, but it doesn’t belong to you until you spend it. Then you have the merit, the glory, the joy, the pleasure of spending it!

Money is meant to circulate. What should remain constant is the progressive movement of an increase in the earth’s production—an ever-expanding progressive movement to increase the earth’s production and improve existence on earth. It is the material improvement of terrestrial life and the growth of the earth’s production that must go on expanding, enlarging, and not this silly paper or this inert metal that is amassed and lifeless.

Money is not meant to generate money; money should generate an increase in production, an improvement in the conditions of life and a progress in human consciousness. This is its true use. What I call an improvement in consciousness, a progress in consciousness, is everything that education in all its forms can provide—not as it’s generally understood, but as we understand it here: education in art, education in … from the education of the body, from the most material progress, to the spiritual education and progress through yoga; the whole spectrum, everything that leads humanity towards its future realization. Money should serve to augment that and to augment the material base for the earth’s progress, the best use of what the earth can give—its intelligent utilization, not the utilization that wastes and loses energies. The use that allows energies to be replenished.

In the universe there is an inexhaustible source of energy that asks only to be replenished; if you know how to go about it, it is replenished. Instead of draining life and the energies of our earth and making of it something parched and inert, we must know the practical exercise for replenishing the energy constantly. And these are not just words; I know how it’s to be done, and science is in the process of thoroughly finding out—it has found out most admirably. But instead of using it to satisfy human passions, instead of using what science has found so that men may destroy each other more effectively than they are presently doing, it must be used to enrich the earth: to enrich the earth, to make the earth richer and richer, more active, generous, productive and to make all life grow towards its maximum efficiency. This is the true use of money. And if it’s not used like that, it’s a vice—a ‘short circuit’ and a vice.

But how many people know how to use it in this way? Very few, which is why they have to be taught. What I call ‘teach’ is to show, to give the example. We want to be the example of true living in the world. It’s a challenge I am placing before the whole financial world: I am telling them that they are in the process of withering and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and with even less than they are now spending for useless things—merely for inflating something that has no inherent life, that should be only an instrument at the service of life, that has no reality in itself, that is only a means and not an end (they make an end of something that is only a means)—well then, instead of making of it an end, they should make it the means. With what they have at their disposal they could … oh, transform the earth so quickly! Transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supramental forces that would make life bountiful and, indeed, constantly renewed—instead of becoming withered, stagnant, shrivelled up: a future moon. A dead moon.

We are told that in a few millions or billions of years, the earth will become some kind of moon. The movement should be the opposite: the earth should become more and more a resplendent sun, but a sun of life. Not a sun that burns, but a sun that illumines—a radiant glory.

- The Mother, Agenda V1, 4 October 1958

First of all, from the financial point of view, the principle on which our action is based is the following: money is not meant to make money. This idea that money must make money is a falsehood and a perversion.

Money is meant to increase the wealth, the prosperity and the productiveness of a group, a country or, better, of the whole earth. Money is a means, a force, a power, and not an end in itself. And like all powers, it is by movement and circulation that it grows and increases its power, not by accumulation and stagnation. 

What we are attempting here is to prove to the world, by giving it a concrete example, that by inner psychological realisation and outer organisation, a world can be created where most of the causes of human misery can be abolished. 

The Mother, CWM XIII p.149

Exchange of Money in Auroville

Will money be used in Auroville?

No, Auroville will have money relations only with the outside world.

- The Mother, CWM XIII, 1965

In the old formation which I had made, there had to be a hill and a river…[...]. And around all that, there was a wall, with a gateway and guardians at the gate, and one could not enter without authorisation. There was no money―within the walls, no money; at the various entrances, there were banks or counters of some sort, where people could deposit their money and receive tickets in exchange, with which they could obtain lodging, food, this, that. But no money―the tickets were only for visitors, who could not enter without a permit. It was a tremendous organization…. No money, I did not want any money.

Outside the walls, in my first formation, on one side there was an industrial town, and on the other, fields, farms, etc., to supply the town. But that represented a real country―not a big country, but a country. Now it is much reduced. It is no longer my symbol; there are only four zones and there are no walls. And there will be money. You see, the other formation was truly an ideal endeavor…. But I counted on many years before trying to start. At that time I thought twenty-four years. But now it is much more modest, it is a transitional attempt, and it is much more realizable.

---The Mother, CWM XIII, June 1965

And they don’t pay for their food, but they should offer their work or their produce: those who have fields, for example, should give the produce from their fields; those who have factories should give their products; or one gives one’s labour in exchange for food.

That in itself eliminates much of the internal exchange of money. And for everything we would find things like this. Basically, it should be a city for study, for study and research into a way of life which is both simplified and in which the higher qualities will have more time to develop.

----The Mother, CWM XIII, 30 December 1967