If there is a so-called condemnation of materialism versus God or
spirituality, then what does it really signify? Again, we come back to
mind. This is within our mind. When we set goals and values in life
based upon the material plane—obsessions and possessions, acquiring and
using—and if that is where our thinking and ambitions end, then we are
materialistic. It is not using matter that makes us materialistic. Any holy
person, Enlightened Being or Prophet would use some matter. They will have a
body and food and clothes, et cetera. In that context they would be called
materialistic but that is not so. Materialism is where our mentality gets
stuck in ambition and ends there, whether it is money, success, acquiring
more and more ”things,” or more and more modes of communication—a telephone
in every hand, a TV in every room.
Now again, there is nothing wrong with this or
that item, but to use material things selfishly is materialistic. Later
we’ll come to see that everything is divine, but selfish people will use
that and say, “This is all divine, so it’s fine with me.” Materialism is
where your focus or purpose of life is based on material things, which makes
us selfish, greedy, attached, possessive, competitive and jealous. Therefore
there are fighting, diplomacy, politics, and so on. When our purpose is
based upon materialism we can only create disharmony with our fellow beings,
within our nation and within our own mind. Materialism eventually breeds
competition, jealousy and quarrels because it creates agitation and tension,
domination, superceding, and other games of the mind. Therefore the result
of materialism is disharmony, which becomes a devilish force, to use
traditional language. There is no other evil involved.
HEN
WE SPEAK OF MAKING
GOD
NUMBER
ONE
or of living the spiritual life, what does it mean? One way is to renounce
or reduce your dependence upon certain material things so that your mind is
lighter. This allows you to devote your concentration and consciousness to
the higher pursuits of Spirit, of God, the realm beyond materialism. When
you depend less upon things in order to devote time and energy to spiritual
pursuits, you get joy and fulfillment of life in the higher sense. Even then
you are using some matter. So the spiritual way is not against using matter
as a whole but for reducing our dependence on it.
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But there is another way. Material life may
remain in fullness, but you do not use it in a haphazard manner according to
what you want and like. There is a lawful way to use things, according to
spiritual or natural law, dharma. To have the material life in
fullness we have to use matter according to dharma, where there is a utility
sense and respect for everything in nature, which is Mother Divine. But your
aim and purpose do not end there. In your mind you hold to the purpose of
joy, of the Spirit, of God, the highest in you, and then live the material
life proportionally, where it belongs. That is what in America you call “God
first” or doing for Number One, which in Sanskrit is Brahmasatyam.
If you are looking only to the material plane in
varying degrees and ignoring the spiritual, then you are not only subject to
life and death, which even a spiritual or Enlightened Being would be, you
are also subject to misery and pain because the material has a heavy or
degrading tendency. Its very nature pulls you downward into what has been
called tamas, inertia. Due to that heaviness—not so much the weight
of the body but of the mind—materialism slowly pulls you down and brings up
latent pains, which with a spiritual focus—upward, cheerful and
lighter—would subside. Therefore if you dwell only within this small inert
circle of consciousness, moving through life with whatever variables it may
have, the time comes when you complain, “For me life is just boring.” I say,
“You have been a materialist,” but they don’t want to hear that. They are
bored or lonely because they want something. The counter-question is: how
many things have you had and had and had, and still you feel lonely? Are you
not going on and on in the same circle of materialism?
Try to understand the material without condemning
it. If I cannot see you, me, and everything around me as Divine Mother
Nature, I am doomed. Therefore I have respect for everything. But if
I tell a person, “Your feeling lonely and bored is not because your life has
been misplaced or somebody has wronged you or placed you in a wrong
situation or given you a hard time,” they would not like to hear that
because self-pity is one of the ignominies of the ignorant, unfortunately.
Turn your thinking around a little bit: how many things, how many
relationships, how many enjoyments and pleasures have you had? I’m sure you
can fill a whole notebook. The Vedas have called it insatiability. That
is what is making you lonely. Because the things you were searching for
through materialism are not there but you are still seeking them. You are
trying to chew gum after it has lost its sweetness. It’s just rubber. That
chewing gum has become shiteela, which in Sanskrit means it is no
longer capable of giving you satisfaction.
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