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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>
=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>