Money - A Flow Of Energy
by Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters)

Both of these concepts - learning how to attract money, and how to put it to the proper use - depend, finally, on understanding what truly constitutes our needs, that is, our own, and others', highest good. For it is a law of life that when we waste any resource, we encounter a time finally when we can no longer replenish it. Think of the vast numbers of forests that have been cut without thought for replanting; of farmland that has been exhausted because its soil was never replenished.

Think of the many stories of movie stars who, instead of using their money discriminately, squandered it until, at last, they were left penniless.

What is wealth? Most people equate it with investments, with savings, with income, with real property. Yet we've all known people who got by quite happily on very little money. I've known others, by contrast, who seemed barely able to scrape by, even though they may have earned several times as much as the first group.

The strange thing is that those who get by on very little often manage to obtain more of this world's goods, to go on more vacations, and to do a great deal in other ways that others with more money never seemed able to do.

Who among these, then, was the more truly wealthy? It isn't merely a matter of how much you have, but rather of how well you know how to use what you have. You know the song from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, "I got plenty o' nuthin, an' nuthin's plenty fo' me"? In the last analysis, one is as wealthy or as poor as he thinks himself to be. Wealth cannot be equated with some fixed quantity. If one is wealthy in his mind, or in his spirit, he may require very few material possessions to be perfectly satisfied with life. If, on the other hand, one considers himself wealthy only for his material riches, he may be convinced he is poor even if he has fifty million dollars, perhaps only because some former classmate of his has ninety million.

I remember a time, in 1963, when an absence of income, combined with a determination to devote myself to writing a book (I eventually published it under the title, Crises in Modern Thought), led to my having to live for three months on only ten dollars a month. Today, instead of recalling that period of my life as a time of great privation and hardship, I recall it happily as a time of satisfying challenge and adventure.

During those three months, I learned all sorts of tricks for living inexpensively. I sprouted alfalfa seeds. I made Indian chappatis instead of buying bread. I trained my palate to enjoy powdered milk, which is much cheaper than regular milk, and to be content with a single taste of dessert rather than filling myself on a bowlful of it. I took advantage of special sales at the local grocery stores. And I concentrated on preparing cheap, but high-energy, foods like split pea soup, which lasted me several days. No doubt one could say that I was poor then. Yet I didn't feel particularly poor. I won't go so far as to say that I felt rich, but the important thing is that, because I didn't dwell sadly on all the things I lacked, I really wasn't poor. I'll go farther: In every way that really mattered, I was rich.

There's the charming story of an American Indian who happily farmed a meager quarter-acre plot. A wealthy neighbor of his befriended him. One day this friend offered him five acres, to give him more land to farm. "Thank you for the gesture," the Indian replied. "But if I had more land to work, when would I find the time for singing?"