Don’t Fall for a Fictional Form of Security and Power
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In this video teaching, Shunyamurti opens with this question from Padamalai: Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi and explains the wealth of heavenly grace, versus the earthly riches that the ego seeks, and the creation of true wealth through Love.
We’ll return to reading Padamalai. This is page 333.
“What benefit do those who have lost their minds gain, even if they obtain enormous wealth?”
What does Ramana mean by those who have lost their minds? It means having lost your true Mind and falling into the ego-mind. Because the ego-mind is inherently a capitalist mind, and somewhere in its agenda—subconsciously or consciously—is the desire to make money.
The ego is a capitalist, and that’s why that desire for gain—we fell into the state that we are now in as a planet of those who will do anything to make money—including deceive themselves into thinking they’re doing it in an ethical and even spiritual way. And it is this using of the kind of discernment of the clarity and accuracy of what is truly ethical, what is truly in alignment with the will of God, and what is only the will of the ego and its methods of justification of its actions that are inaccurate, that produce the kind of harsh karma that our world is going through.
“Worldly riches are never a matter of importance to those true devotees who have in their hearts an abundance of the wealth of grace.”
How many of you have the wealth of grace? Have you earned that wealth? Because it’s the only wealth that you will take with you. It’s the only wealth that will bear dividends and not bring losses. It is the only wealth that will gain you an exit path from maya, into the bliss of the Real.
“The true devotees that are leading a life that abounds in the wealth of grace, a life complete with earthly riches, is insignificant. For true devotees, the only benefit worth attaining is the blissful wealth of grace. All other kinds of wealth are of no consequence. The heart can only attain fullness through the wealth that is grace, and never through material wealth.”
And this is because the very focus on material wealth takes you out of grace and puts you into a world that is a casino, in which you hope to make money, but money is always made at the expense of someone else who loses. That’s the way the system works. And so, whenever there is an entry into some kind of a relationship or a scheme of money-making, there is a karmic attachment and an account with everyone in such a scheme, and everyone who is in it then is an accomplice to the same greedy karma, and then suffers the same loss of grace. And if one enters in—and encourages others to do so—then one has become responsible for the fall of many. And so, accuracy in relation to money is one of the most extremely important understandings of a yogi. Because if that is not understood, then inaccuracy will follow into every aspect of one’s life, because we have, of course, entered into a world that is ruled by money.
Money has become the false God of that world. That God is now failing. The market is collapsing, the laws that have held up the capitalist system are now destroying it, because the ego has become so corrupted that even money has in its corruption, in its loss of whatever validity it might originally have had as a carrier of value, is now a carrier only of falseness, only of greed, only of a fiction of wealth that is now being unveiled as empty of meaning, and therefore its value will soon collapse in the minds of all of those who have forcibly come to recognize its illusionary existence, and this will bring on what is called a “depression”. But it is a depression psychologically that brings the depression economically.
And this is because the consciousness has lost touch with the real source of value, and, therefore, nothing that it touches can retain any illusion of value. In other words, the only possession worth having is God-consciousness, but unless you are the possession and the possessor, in other words—you don’t just touch into God-consciousness, and keep it in a vault or in an account—but you realize that you are that, so that there is never any loss of that, and never any illusion of gain of it, does it become real and will peace abide.
“As long as one’s possessions—or the possessor of them—remain different from each other, it is impossible for the mind to become still. In times of great wealth, the quality that will be the greatest blessing, is humility of heart. And in poverty-stricken circumstances, the quality that should shine out is a loftiness of mind that confers inner fortitude.”
What is a loftiness of mind? When Sri Ramana refers to a “loftiness of mind” he means the realization that there is only mind. But if one falls into the lower levels of mind, that are not lofty, then mind itself becomes deceived into believing it is material, and that there is a material body living in a material world, and the realization that all is mind, becomes lost. And once the illusion of being a bodily creature in a material world becomes the hegemonic paradigm, then the value that that creature will seek is not God, but money. And it is this fall from grace, this fall into a world in which money is scarce, this fall into a world in which grace is scarce, happens because we lose the one possession that always keeps its value, which is the one Self. The realization that the world is a dream.
Because as soon as you lose touch with the fact that you are the dreamer of it, then you become trapped in the dreams of others, and if the dreams of those others that you are imagining as being real, are the dreams of capitalists who want to take your money, at their own profit, then you become a victim of circumstances that are determined by the greed of others. And the only way to avoid falling into the dreams of others, who would take your riches and make them theirs, is to retain the possession that is the one value that keeps one safe and able to abide in peace, which is the realization that you are the dreamer of your dream. And the only way to improve the conditions of your dream is not as—by falling into the depths of illusion and trying to make money in that dream-world—that will become a nightmare—but by redreaming the world as a kingdom of heaven, in which wealth is distributed fairly to all. Because all are one, in the world of grace. Because there is one consciousness, one Self, one love, and it is love that is the source of value—not money. And once we trade in love for that other value, or when our love becomes limited to a few, and a loyalty only to a few, who we happen to collude with in schemes to make money, then we lose the universal love that is the key to grace. And love that is particular becomes love that is also hate. It becomes love that, once living in duality, becomes the source of evil, because it is a love that favors some at the expense of others.
And it is this duality at which love becomes its opposite, that must be avoided at all costs. If we fall from that grace of the realization of the divinity of all, and that the true source of wealth is the power of the imagination, the power of love, to emanate the wealth that is the creative power to dream the world as filled with all of the kinds of wealth and satisfaction that you could ever need.
It is this realization of the power of consciousness that becomes destroyed when we depend upon money instead of on consciousness to bring us to a place of peace. Because it is only the intelligence and the love that determine the nature of the world in which we abide, that will determine the conditions of the lessons that we will have to learn in such a world, in order to return to those lofty levels of consciousness in which everything is offered freely, without any need, desire, or intention of serving an ego. Because it is such a world that we wish to abide in, in which ego illusions do not any longer contaminate the mind and the heart. It is this transformation of the world through the transformation of consciousness, by giving our love to the one Source of wealth, the one Source of grace, that is our only salvation.
May we attain that peace that brings us to sattvic clarity of mind and openness of heart, in universal, infinite love. And may we gain that deeper peace in which we let go of any attachments to anything or anyone, any people, any things, any concepts, and give our entire focus to that which is the source of infinite wealth, which is the power of manifestation, that is the sole prerogative of the Supreme Being.
And may we find that peace that comes of letting go of any identifications that are lower and separate from that Supreme Beingness, that cause the desire for other things, like money, like relationships of sensory jouissance, and like other attachments to the animalistic level of psychology, that destroys our grace, our peace, and becomes a barrier to the liberation that is our true nature.
May we gain such freedom from all such illusions, that the power to create a world that is free of such obstacles to peace, vanishes from this phenomenal plane that is our dream-field.
Namaste, Shunyamurti
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