What is Money?

By Acharya Rajneesh "Osho"

It is touchy question, because money is not what it appears. Money is more deep-rooted. Money is not just there outside in the currency notes, it is something to do with your inner mind and attitudes. Money is your love of things, money is your security against death, money is your effort to control life, money is a thousand and one things. Money is not just in the currency notes been otherwise the things would have been very easy.

Money is your love - love of things, not of persons. The most comfortable love is of things because things are dead, you can possess them easily. You can possess a big house, a palace - the greatest palace you can possess easily - but you cannot possess even the smallest baby; even that baby rejects, even that baby fights for his freedom. A small baby, howsoever small, is dangerous for the man who wants to possess. It will rebel, it will become rebellious, but it will not allow anyone to possess it.

People who cannot love persons start loving money because money is a means to posses things. The more money you have, the more things you can possess; and the more things you can possess, the more you can forget about persons. You will have many things but you will not have contentment because deep contentment comes only when you love a person. The money will not revolt but it cannot respond also, that is the trouble. That's why miserly people become very ugly. Nobody has responded to their love ever. how can you be beautiful without love falling on you, without love showering on you like flowers - how can you be beautiful? You become ugly. You become closed. A man who possess money or tries to possess money, is miserly and he will always be afraid of persons and people because if they are allowed to come closer they may start sharing. It you allow somebody closeness you have to allow some sharing also. People who love things become like things-dead, closed. nothing vibrates in them, nothing dances and sings in them, their hearts have lost the beat, they live a mechanical life. They drag, burdened, burdened with many things, but they don't have any any freedom because only love can give you freedom only if you give freedom to love.

People who are afraid of love become possessive about money. People who love become non-possessive, money doesn't matter much. If it is, it is okay, it can be used; If it is not, that too is okay, because love is such a kingdom that no money can purchase it. Love is such a deep fulfillment that you can be beggar on the street and you can sing if you have love in your heart. If you have loved and you have been loved, love crowns you, makes a king of you. money simply makes you ugly.

If a man of understanding has money he shares it because money is not for itself, it is for life. If he feels that life needs it, love needs it, he can throw it away completely, but it is not a renunciation, it is again using it. Love is the goal for him; money is never the goal, money is the means. For people who are after money, money is the goal, love becomes jus a means. Even their prayer is for money; even prayer becomes a means to money. money is a very complex phenomenon. Why do people get so much into it, and so many people at that< It has a certain appeal, a magnetic appeal. money has a hypnotic appeal in it and the appeal is that you can possess it completely. Money is very docile, it becomes a salve. The ego feels very fulfilled.

Love is not docile, love is rebellious. You cannot possess it. You can possess a woman, you can possess a man but you can never possess love. If you possess a woman, the woman has become money, a thing; if you possess a man, the man has become money, a thing an instrument. A man is a man and a woman is a woman only when they are an end unto themselves, not a means to anything else. Money is the means, and to become obsessed with the means is the greatest foolishness that can occur to a man and the greatest curse. Money should not become the goal, but I am not saying at the same time that you should renounce it and become beggars - use it, it is a good. I'm not against money, I have nothing to say against it. I am saying something about you and you possessiveness, not about money. Money can be beautiful - if it is not possessed, if you don't become obsessed with it. It can be beautiful. Money is like blood circulation in the body: in the body of society money circulates, it is blood. It helps society to be enriched, to be alive - but it is like blood.

One should expect only that which can be expected, one should no move in the impossibilities. Just asking poor money to give you love - poor money cannot do it. But nothing is wrong, don't get angry with the money! Don't burn it and throw it in the river and go to the Himalayas. In the first place you asked something which a man of understanding would never have asked - you are foolish, that's all. What is wrong in a currency note? It is just paper, and these spiritual people go on saying that it is just paper. If you put ordinary paper in their hands, they touch it, but when you put a currency note there they throw it away as if it is a scorpion or very deadly disease. Neurosis can move from one extreme to another. Use money. Money is beautiful as far as it goes, and it goes far enough! As far as the world is concerned it goes far enough, but don't expect love, because it is of the interior, of the inner being, and don't ask for God, because it is transcendental.

Use everything for its own capacities, not for you dreams. Then you are a healthy man, and to be healthy is to be holy. Don't be abnormal in any way. Be normal, ordinary, and just create more understanding so that you can see. Money can be used, should be used, it can give you a beautiful world. Otherwise, sooner or later, if you are against money you will create a dirty country like India: everything is dirty - but they think they are great spiritualists. Everything has gone ugly but they are great spiritualists because they have renounced. That's why things have got so bad. They think one has to close one's eyes and not look outside because outside is God's creation; it is good to look inside because inside is sitting creator. Both are good. Eyes are not meant to blink; they are not meant to remain open forever and they are not meant to be closed forever. They are meant to blink - open and close, open and close. That is the rhythm out and in, out and in.

"Look outside - the beautiful creation, look inside - the beautiful God.
And, by and by you will see
that the in and out meet and mingle and are one"

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