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→By Identifying with the Divine
...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.
''Q. Does an individual mastery over desire suffice or is a general, collective mastery necessary?''
''A''....Human nature remains what it is—one can attain a great change of consciousness, that yes, one can purify one's consciousness, but the total conquest, the material transformation depends definitely to a large extent, on a certain degree of progress in the collectivity. Buddha said with reason that as long as you have in you a vibration of desire, this vibration will spread in the world and all those who are ready to receive it will receive it. In the same way, if you have in you the least receptivity to a vibration of desire, you will be open to all the vibrations of desire which circulate constantly in the world. And that is why he concluded: Get out of this illusion, withdraw entirely and you will be free. I find this relatively very selfish, but after all, that was the only way he had foreseen. There is another: to identify oneself so well with the divine Power as to be able to act constantly and consciously upon all vibrations circulating through the world. Then the undesirable vibrations no longer have any effect upon you, but you have an effect upon them, that is, instead of an undesirable vibration entering into you without being perceived and doing its work there, it is perceived and immediately on its arrival you act upon it to transform it, and it goes back into the world transformed, to do its beneficent work and prepare others for the same realisation. This is exactly what Sri Aurobindo proposes to do and, more clearly, what he asks you to do, what he intends us to do:
Instead of running away, to bring into oneself the power which can conquer.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/3-may-1951#p25</ref>
===Surrender===
One must first know what the divine will is. But there is a surer way—to surrender money for the divine work, if one is not sure oneself. "Divinely" means at the service of the Divine—it means not to use money for one's own satisfaction but to place it at the Divine's service.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/3-may-1951#p4</ref> <center>~</center> My whole effort is to live from minute to minute. I mean, to do every minute exactly what should be done, without making plans, without thinking, without... because it all becomes mental; as soon as you start thinking something out, that's no longer it. But quite instinctively and spontaneously, I do what needs to be done: this, that, this.... When something needs a response, it comes. As for money, it's the same thing; the only thing I am led to do is to say, "So-and-so has asked for so much, such-and-such Service needs so much," like that (not a long time in advance, but when it becomes imperative). And that's all. It's like that. So I don't know what will happen tomorrow; I don't at all seek to know what's going to happen. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/07/october-5-1966#p4</ref>
===Praying for Money===
All depends on whether the outer things are sought for one's own convenience, pleasure, profit etc., or as part of the spiritual life, necessary for the success of the work, the development and fitness of the instruments etc. It is a question mainly of inner attitude. If for instance you pray for money for buying nice food to please the palate, that is not a proper prayer for a sadhak; if you pray for money to give to the Mother and help her work, then it is legitimate.
I wanted to make him understand and experience that the thought, the feeling and the force that is in a gift is much more important and valuable than the thing given itself.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wealth-and-economics#p26,p27</ref>
<center>~</center>
"A practical problem comes up more and more often: should one who is preparing to do Yoga and has made it a general rule to offer You everything and depend entirely on You, accept gifts, in money or kind, coming from others? Because if he accepts, he is put under personal obligations and duties. Can a sadhak allow this? Can he say to himself: "The Divine has many ways of giving"?
This is the correct thing. One never has any obligation to anybody, one has an obligation only to "the Divine" and there totally. When a gift is made "without conditions", one can always take it as coming from the Divine and leave it to the Divine to take care of what is needed in exchange or response.
As for ill-will, jealousy, quarrels and reproaches, one must "sincerely" be above all that and reply with a benevolent smile to the bitterest words; and unless one is absolutely sure of himself and his reactions, it would be better, as a general rule, to keep silent.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wealth-and-economics#p28,p29,p30,p31,p32</ref>
==In Directing the Flow of Money?==
===Purpose of Money===
Money is not meant to make money; money is meant to make the earth ready for the New Creation.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/nations-other-than-india#p22</ref> <center>~</center>
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.
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.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-iv#p4</ref>
<center>~</center>
The earning of money and family affairs have only to be looked after if the circumstances are such as to compel it. They should then be done in a spirit of entire detachment, dealing with them so as to develop in oneself the consciousness described in the Gita.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/human-relations-and-the-spiritual-life#p30</ref>
===Giving to the Divine===
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.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wealth-and-economics#p3</ref>
<center>~</center> The rich man, or even people who are quite well-off and have all sorts of things in life and give to the Divine what they have in surplus—for usually this is the gesture: one has a little more money than one needs, one has a few more things than one needs, and so, generously, one gives that to the Divine. It is better than giving nothing. But even if this "little more" than what they need represents lakhs of rupees, the gift is less perfect than the one of half the mango. For it is not by the quantity or the quality that it is measured: it is by the sincerity of the giving and the absoluteness of the giving.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/11-january-1956#p13</ref> <center>~</center>
So the first thing to do when one has money is to give it. But as it is said that it should not be given without discernment, don't go and give it like those who practise philanthropy, because that fills them with a sense of their own goodness, their generosity and their own importance. You must act in a sattwic way, that is, make the best possible use of it. And so, each one must find in his highest consciousness what the best possible use of the money he has can be. And truly money has no value unless it circulates. For each and every one, money is valuable only when one has spent it.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/16-february-1955#p29</ref>
<center>~</center>
True wealth is that which one offers to the Divine.
You are rich only by the money that you give to the Divine Cause.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wealth-and-economics#p11,p12</ref>
<center>~</center>
Prosperity stays consistently only with him who offers it to the Divine.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wealth-and-economics#p19,p20,p21,p22</ref>
<center>~</center> If you give the money to the Mother, that can't be commercial; commerce implies personal profit, and here your profit is only spiritual.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/giving-money-to-the-mother#p6</ref>
=Spiritual Life and Money=
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.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-iv#p2</ref> <center>~</center> 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.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-iv#p6</ref> <center>~</center>
It is in his view quite possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a spiritual man, practise Yoga, have an inner life. The Gita is constantly justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a higher law also that work must be done without desire, without attachment to any fruit or reward, without any egoistic attitude or motive, as an offering or sacrifice to the Divine. This is the traditional Indian attitude towards these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/work-and-yoga#p76</ref>
<center>~</center>
I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest anchorite's. Obviously, greed for wealth and money-making has to be absent from his nature as much as greed for food or any other greed and all attachment to these things must be renounced from his consciousness. But I do not regard the ascetic way of living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/work-and-yoga#p77</ref>
<center>~</center> 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...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.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/3-may-1951#p18</ref>
=More on Money=
A very long time ago (Sri Aurobindo was still here), an old Tamil financier came here with his wife. He lived to be very old; his wife died and he stayed on. And he gave money: he paid for his expenses, made little gifts now and then, but he was very rich. And when his wife died, he thought, "Ah, what if I gave all that I have?" Then he had second thoughts: "One never knows, the Ashram might come to an end...." And he left all his money with relatives of his who were bankers or whatever, and... pfft! all gone. So he himself said, "There's my folly! I don't have it, anyway I don't have that money; if I had given it I would have had the credit of giving it; now I have neither the money nor the credit!" ("Mother laughs")<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/07/september-7-1966#p21</ref> <center>~</center>
" Does the economic condition of a man become stable with the betterment of his consciousness?"
If "betterment of consciousness" means an increased, enlarged consciousness, a better organisation of it, then as a result there should naturally be a greater control of outward things (including the "economic condition"). But also, naturally when one has a "better consciousness" one is less preoccupied with such things as one's economic condition.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/wealth-and-economics#p38</ref> <center>~</center>
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 asuricpowers 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.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/july-6-1958#p12,p13</ref>