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A WORLD WITHOUT MONEY: IS IT POSSIBLE?

Possibly, some years ago such topic for a lecture would not even come up. Everyone knew that money is an absolutely essential part of life, that it can be relied on as a medium through which people try to reach a sense of security and satisfaction, and that it can be used for appreciation of a person’s personal effort, achievement and input into the society. If you asked: “How much a person is worth?” it meant you were asking about his or her wealth counted in money. It would mean that if a person is rich, then he or she deserves their riches and should be respected for them. It would have an underlying meaning that if a person is poor, then this person is presumably lazy or not clever enough and doesn’t deserve much respect.

The world financial crisis has changed the perception of money in the people’s minds. It appeared that banks, the rocks of security, can become insecure by themselves and require desperate measures to be salvaged. It appeared that bank accounts and other assets are not that secure as thought before.

It also appeared that fortunes can be made by deception and fraud, and by manipulation of other people (as, for example, in Maddoff’s case). Decent people, even workaholics, would lose jobs and houses, and this evidently wasn’t their fault. Quite the contrary, the CEOs , who led their banks to bankruptcy, went out of the situation with fat rewards.

Suddenly, the word “greed” appeared as from nowhere hanging in the air as the cause of all the trouble and destruction of the financial crisis. It was a very confusing statement. First, “greed” is a moral category, so, how can it be counted in terms of money? And second, the goal of maximal profit all the businesses and banks allegedly are seeking for can be understood as extreme “greed”. So what: should we drop the goal and reject the very idea of making profit, or remain “greedy” with all the crises possible?

All of this led people to rethink their notion about money and its real meaning, significance and measure. What if not money? On the one hand, then temptation for corruption, drug dealing, gambling and most of criminal activities would lose its grip over people, which would heal the society and everyone in it and save a colossal amount of time and energy for health, cultural and ecological improvement. But, on the other hand, is it possible at all? To come to the conclusion, we have to try to figure out what is real and unreal with money, what we can and what we cannot live without. Let us meditate on this subject.

We could start from the laws of nature, but money is not part of nature. People created money for their convenience; they use money as their instrument of power, and they are establishing and sometimes changing the laws and rules dealing with money. Maybe this tells us that money in itself is illusory, and its significance depends solely on the place it occupies in people’s minds? Money simply doesn’t have its own physical measure, which could be exactly counted and evaluated in conformity with the laws of nature.

In the days gone by, when money somehow reflected the amount of energy and time spent for the production of goods and the real need for them, it could serve as a measure for exchange of goods and services. But money long ago separated from the real production of goods that people need. Now, people can work long and stressful hours towards the goals of their companies and corporations, which could come just to which of the corporations wins in the competition with other ones.

The evaluation of money is nowadays rather a matter of belief and psychology (which currency or shares people trust more), and depends pretty much on the way it is used as a tool of manipulation. The more convincing is the advertising campaign the more time and energy people overall will spend to have money to buy the proposed goods and services. And the motion of shares on the stock market resembles casino, where people are gambling, and everything depends on their mood, fear and desires.

Also, money is now mostly represented in a virtual form and in this form is immediately accessible in any part of the world. In this form, it can be easily piled up in debts which nobody notices or cares about for long periods of time. All of this looks illusory, but because this illusion influences the reality of life for billions of people, it is an illusion worth of scrutiny.

More than a century ago, the renowned Russian author Leo Tolstoy investigated the problems of the world society in his work What Should We Do? The problems of poverty, homelessness and hopelessness of life appeared to be consequences of the deeply hidden problem of the social system, which was surfacing, on the one hand, as hopeless poverty, and on the other hand, as meaningless luxury. One impossible without the other like two sides of one coin.

When Tolstoy understood that the cause and means of preserving the condition of both sides of the society was money, he began examining – what was money, were did it start and what for it existed in reality. He applied to the science of economics and recognised from its statement that money was only the means for trade. Tolstoy doubted this statement and started examining real life examples to come to a true opinion. As a result, he came to the conclusion that money in fact was the means of forcing people to do that what they didn’t want to do. Money, despite its illusory nature, is power in the social system. People who possess this power can force those who don’t have it to work for their sake, i.e. they can deprive others of their freedom and turn them into slaves.

Historically, it started from personal slavery. The first democracies of ancient Greece were built up on the labour of slaves. It was like nobody would notice this condition. Even the distinguished philosophers like Plato and Aristotle were sure that life was impossible without slaves, impossible like life without the wars from where the slaves would be brought for the convenience of the people of Greece. Like life without money is impossible for our contemporaries.

The economy of another democracy, on the American Continent, also started developing primarily from the slave labour of people who would be brought from Africa. The slaves would be forced to work by physical abuse. Later on, as Tolstoy understood, it appeared that it was much easier and more effective to force people to work for gold, or money. Money appeared to be an exclusively convenient instrument for this purpose. It doesn’t need any care like slaves, it is easy to transport from one place to another, and in our time money doesn’t need to be transported because of computers.

Money is usually doing its job through the mechanism of rent, which someone pays with his or her work for the possibility of using the land and the working tools.

Tolstoy writes: “…what is the cause that the people who possess land and money can enslave the people who don’t have land and money? The answer, as common sense would see, is that this originates from the money which has a property of enslaving people… When people are devoid of the land and the working tools – this means they are enslaved.” The person who receives the rent will always try to increase it and decrease the payment for the work as much as possible.

Let us have a look from Tolstoy‘s viewpoint and ask – has money remained a means of enslaving people in our time or not? It seems to us that money became an even more clever and efficient instrument of enslaving. Where could you find, in the times gone by, a slave who would willingly work even longer hours for their boss or company, and a slave mother who would, willingly again, leave her baby to the care of others just to run to work? It became possible in our time through the medium of money. When a person needs a roof over a head, or whatever their needs are, they borrow money and afterwards have to pay it off with interest. The bigger the debt the longer hours people have to work to pay it off.

In all the countries, there is a substantial group of people who live on the edge of poverty and are forced to work only to survive. But not only poor people can be enslaved through the mechanism of money. Money gives status in society and allows making even more money. And doesn’t provoke questions like “what is the purpose of my work?” or “where am I running?” Money became a favourite “narcotic” providing people with satisfaction for their “ego”, and for this illusion they often sacrifice their real aspirations, health and parenting duties.

At the same time, any member of society is constantly bombarded by the advertisements of competitive consumerism, which often preys on the lowest people’s instincts and desires, and forces them to rotate in the constantly accelerating cycle of gaining and spending money. Everyone takes it that it is good for economy. Why should economy endlessly grow and accelerate? There is no answer. And the real part of economy producing vital goods and services for the people long ago became subordinate to the illusory part directly serving money.

Is all of this good for people? Yes, we live now a much more comfortable life than our predecessors lived, and money serves this goal. But what about out health? In the developed countries, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, allergies, mental illnesses and dementia have reached in some places epidemic proportions. Medicine is in great demand, and we are devouring astronomical amounts of tablets. Pharmaceutical companies make big money; this we know for sure, but is this the only possible way our life should develop?

Does money make us happy overall? It is also questionable because many of us live in permanent stress which we try to remove with alcohol and nicotine. Depression, drug addiction, divorces and suicide are not a rear situation in our society which makes its perfection doubtful.

Of course, these are the people and their “ego” that does all the harm and not money by itself, but as the main instrument of power money is in fact the creation of the people, of their “ego”, and is perfectly fitted towards its requirements.

The countries, which ages ago had grabbed foreign lands with their minerals (metals, oil, diamonds, etc) and appropriated the labor of the people, received the starting capital for their fast industrial and technological development. These additional resources enabled them to become well developed countries, with living standards that are much higher than these in their former colonies.

On the other end of the world society, in many of the former colonies, people are often working long hours in unbearable conditions, only to provide the basics of life for their families. These people make the majority of the planet’s population. This majority of low paid workers allow the minority to live a life where the abuse of money is not as noticeable as the convenience of using it.

In the last decades, the joint technological, informational and social development of the world has diminished differences between countries. In the majority of countries, money is working in the same market economic mechanisms. Some of former colonies are rapidly developing, and their citizens are becoming richer and gaining access to goods of which they couldn’t even dream before.

On the one hand, we can be happy for them. The world economy is developing, productivity is growing, and the opportunities of consuming are expanding limitlessly…

On the other hand, the development of economies around the world has already contaminated the planet’s land, water and air and led to varied ecological degradation. Now we face the dangers of irreversible climate change with possible dire consequences. These dangers increased when the world most populated countries, like China, India and Brazil, stepped into the circle of the intense race for productivity. Another, formerly invisible, aspect of money as a means of ecological abuse surfaced.

It appeared that while attempting to limitlessly raise productivity, using more and more of natural resources and producing more of waste, we are making valuable resources scarce and are worsening the ecological situation around the globe. The first sufferers, as usual, become these who already existed on the brink of survival. Sometimes they are literally sinking, with their islands going under water.

Every real aspect of human life is suffering in the “rat race” for money: health, family life, human relationships, but the greatest harm is done to the spiritual aspect of our consciousness. The very thought about money becoming obsessive doesn’t leave space for anything else. These who don’t have money often come to desperation and depression. And on the other end of the scale, a battle rages between corporations for even more money.

The illusion of money is covering the reality of life with its veil, and we, ordinary folk, are losing orientation in the mist of our fears and desires and become an easy target for manipulators of different kind, from advertisers to politicians. The power hungry politicians lure as with a dollar in a pocket and scare that someone would take this dollar from us. If we start thinking about the dollar, we become increasingly materialistic and may lose our spiritual properties, such as compassion and generosity.

Tolstoy suggested another goal for human life and activity – not profit, but “good”, meaning common good. He saw a human being as the purpose and meaning of society’s existence and was searching for the ways of really making people free. He supposed that it is essentially not right to force people to do that what they don’t want to do. “The only sign of good in any job is that people execute it freely. The people’s life is full of such jobs… At the same time, if people have to be forced to do a job, then because of this abuse, the job ceases to be the common duty and good.”

The need for labour and for sharing its results is inherent in a human being. As Tolstoy sees it, in an environment free from abuse, where any contribution is respected, if a person cannot or doesn’t feel able to earn a living, the “others are working for his or her sake with love”. They are voluntarily working for this person’s sake because they understand that, by acting in this way, they help this man or woman to fulfil another duty, which this person sees as important for themselves and other people, and which is also directed to the goal of doing common good.

Do we have any examples of doing not money but good in our modern society? It seems that we have aplenty. As it is known, a quarter of Australian citizens volunteer in their various individual ways. All the people working with SES (State Emergency Services) are not paid volunteers. They are doing hard, often dangerous work, and have to be ready to do it at a signal of their pagers. The same with the volunteers – fire-fighters. Other volunteers are working with old people, with disabled, dying, with refugees, disadvantaged children and youth. Volunteers help out communities in trouble, like they did in Victoria at the time of bushfires. People sometimes reverse their former direction of making profit to the opposite, and donate their money for good purposes. And receive real, not illusory, satisfaction in this way.

The history of wars, natural cataclysms and other hardships shows us that in difficult times money may turn into nothing, revealing its illusory nature, but human ability to do good saves lives. And most of all the real discoveries, inventions and masterpieces of arts, which are the treasure of humanity, were results of selfless work, not for money. While receiving and realising their ideas, the human creators didn’t and couldn’t think about money. It could later come to them as a reward for their effort, or not come at all, in any case, while working they couldn’t predict the outcome.

Now, let’s imagine: if money lost its grip over people and they became free of making money, thinking about it and working in the areas of money business, how much of natural and human resources would be released and turned towards the exploration of new ideas and creation of beauty! How much good we could do for the Earth if we started developing in harmony with nature and ceased overexploiting it! And the society would inevitably come to respect real values in people like humanity, spirituality, compassion, love and generosity. Bathing in luxury would seem possible but distasteful, and modesty and efficiency of life would become a voluntary norm.

It would be a less stressful and much healthier life also. People would feel safe not because they have a stash of money, but because they are cared for. And satisfaction from a purposeful, fulfilling and creative life in a friendly environment would be much healthier than that from a status and money.

Many problems which are impossible to solve today, including the problems of overpopulation, luck of resources and aging, would find new solutions. People would turn their eyes towards the cosmos, towards the far away worlds, as the Masters recommend through Agni Yoga.

People are naturally attracted to this way of progress. In some countries, they already created “banks of time”, where people give out their time and skills for those who need them, and receive skilled assistance when and where they need it. Modern technologies allow and even facilitate free exchange of information – every internet user knows and participates in it. And everyone knows how productive our research on any topic goes while using information freely available on the internet, and how it becomes distracted by the requirement to buy a product which we are not sure about.

If people all over the world possessed free access not only to information, but also to energy, they would produce the goods they need for life, and the problem of global poverty would be solved. And in many cases where natural resources become limited, we see that money doesn’t provide the solution, and only human good will and cooperation does. In Victoria, Australia, when several years of drought limited water supply, water usage restrictions were introduced for all households, and people were explained the situation, asked to limit their water consumption and provided with some technical devices for this purpose. The common effort allowed maintaining the necessary water supply for several years.

It seems to us that everything depends rather on human spirit than on money. Tolstoy wrote about the spiritual aspect in human life as a priority: “ it only seems to people that humanity is busy with trade, treaties, wars, sciences and arts; it has only one important job, and it does only this job – it comes to understand the moral laws, with which it is living. The moral laws already exist, humanity only attempts to understand them, and this understanding seems to be unimportant and even invisible for the person who doesn’t need this moral law, who doesn’t want to live in harmony with it. But this understanding of the moral law is not only the main, but the only job for all of the humanity”.

Tolstoy believed that humanity would understand the moral law and live in conformity with it. He predicted that humanity would change its understanding of the purpose of life. Tolstoy decided to begin the process of transformation from himself. He started from confessing that his previous way of life aimed to his personal good had been not right, and then found for himself out the answers to the question – “What should we do?”

“First: I should not lie to myself, however far away my way of life would appear to be from the right way, which my conscious mind had opened to me.

Second: I should renounce that which I thought of as my rights, my privileges, my particularities compared to the other people and recognize my guilt.

Third: I should fulfil this eternal and undoubted human law – to work with all of my strength, not being ashamed of any job, to fight whatever the nature of circumstances to sustain my life and support the lives of other people.”

Everyone can answer this question differently according to their aspirations in life. But Tolstoy is giving us a tuning fork that could be helpful for tuning our own consciousness into the high vibrations of real spirituality.

Why do we think that Tolstoy was right, and a world without money is not only possible, but inevitable, and people will eventually come to the goal of making not money but good?

In our book, The Laws of Life, we are writing about the rise and decline of civilizations as a reflection of “standing waves of time”, where every civilization is going through the stages of birth, early development and fighting for survival, intensive unabated development to full blossom, and decline. Nowadays, in the world, everything is interconnected. Almost all the world society is homogenous in capitalism and dependence upon money. It is called globalisation. So, in our investigation we can operate with a concept of global civilization, and not limit ourselves with a separate country. And this civilisation bases its activity on confrontation (competition and fighting) and division (“haves” and “have nots”). Money is serving as a medium in this process.

Where our civilization is now – are we on the rise or already on decline? We don’t know for sure. Our economies are still growing, but there are some warning signs, and the turmoil of the financial crisis was only one of them. The gap of wealth distribution between the rich and the poor is rapidly increasing and moving away from a sustainable balance to the point where one part of the population is bathing in meaningless and superfluous luxury, and the other part is stretching its precious resources of time and energy to their capacity just to maintain the speed of economy’s growth.

The French President Sarcozy recently said that to salvage capitalism we have to somehow change and improve its morals. Is it possible at all? American investment guru John C. Bogle in his book The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism stated that the former “owner’s capitalism” already mutated into the “manager’s capitalism”, where the managers of big banks, companies and corporations are using the power of money, to which they received access, just for their own sake, to make more money and receive more power.

This concentration of power in the hands of the minority is one of the signs of civilization’s nearing decline. Also, Vishnu Puranas millennia ago were predicting that complete materialisation of world society would lead to its degradation.

Wherever our civilization is positioned for now, within it, a new civilization is already born and struggling for survival. It is possible that for this young civilization money doesn’t carry the meaning it carried for the old civilization.

The young civilization, which is starting out in the situation prepared by the old one, may be unable to afford to base its development on money because of the divisive nature of money. It’s likely that the people of this new civilization will have difficult tasks ahead requiring new levels of cooperation: to feed the growing and ageing population, to offset climate change and other consequences of former thoughtless abuse of our planet’s resources, and to progress further building up a better future for the generations to come. And who knows what nature and the nature of the people is preparing for them to solve?

What do prophesies and predictions promise us in the future? St.Germain through Azena is telling: “Currency is consciousness, and currency shall pass away from this plane, for your currency will be your energy exchange directly, one unto the other.” He is predicting that people will be able to expand the dimensions of their thought and come to the condition of super-consciousness. He says:” “In order to become part of super-consciousness, it is necessary to release the desire and the need for your power over others.” “And what is the basis for power these days in your time? Money. “

His book Earth’s Birth Changes promises us upcoming cosmic alignment with a greater consciousness (which astronomy confirms in its way) and some Earth’s changes. Some prophesies promise wars and battles, and then the coming of a Golden Era. Wars and battles are going on right now, and there is enough weapons accumulated for their continuation.

Changes are always possible and now very likely to come. They will require adjustment to the new conditions in which humanity finds itself. It seems that the civilisation based on confrontation and competition has no chance of succeeding in the times of changes. It will have to change the basic understanding with which it exists from confrontation to cooperation, sharing and assistance to each other.

To meet the tasks of the future, people of the new civilization will have to find completely new pioneering solutions to the problems of life, and this leads us to the conclusion that they would need to somehow change the old system or create a new system of relationships. Every new civilization on the Earth does this. We hope that this time relationships will be based on doing common good, not money. A new system will require new instruments of interaction, and whether money will remain in some form or not, it will definitely lose its power for separating people and enslaving them.

Why do we think that this is possible? The new wave already exists inside our civilization and within every one of us as a pattern of doing good. As Agni Yoga puts it: “…giving out energy is the highest generosity and compassion.” And for the purpose of doing good “…everyone has a hidden treasure within”.

What allows us to think that history will go this way, and where can we see any signs of such a future civilisation that would be able to exist without confrontation, and wouldn’t need money? We already spoke about volunteers, creators and simply good and sacrificial people, whose spoken or not spoken purpose is good. In our opinion, they are the precursors of the new” wave of time”. And Tolstoy spoke of mothers who know how to educate their children in the best traditions of love and giving. From the beginning of the time, they are selflessly doing good for their children.

The success of our endeavours always depends on the driving force behind our actions. When we are acting in accordance with our inner driving force, then we receive the highest satisfaction. If it is accumulating money, then we are making money by working, fighting, living and dying for money, usually for money for ourselves. If our driving force is to do good, then we are doing everything in our power to do good for others, and in our way serve humanity. When the patterns of doing good will accumulate a “critical mass” in the world population, this will be the turning point to the Golden Era.

If we ask ourselves who are the people of the new future civilization, we come to understanding that they are our children. We can assist them by educating them with understanding of love and cooperation, and they will put this understanding into action becoming the real new “wave of time”. Children don’t know money until its concept is represented to them by adults; but children naturally understand the concept of good as a response to all of the love and care they receive from their parents and the environment in which they are growing up. It is easy to reinforce this concept in them and to turn it into their driving force. We adults can do it.

More than six decades ago, at the time of WW2, a Lithuanian Maria and her husband Kazimeras rescued one of the authors, Roza, a little child, from a ghetto for the Jews. Now, thanks to their selfless effort and all their love and good , a second generation of her descendants is starting to join this new wave of life and putting their effort into a better common future. Today is Maria’s 113th birthday, and this lecture is our tribute to her life and her example of doing good.

This lecture was presented at a meeting of Theosophical Society (Pasadena) in Melbourne, Australia. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena).