Money

What is your attitude to money?

God has nothing to do with money. You can have God with as much money as you want, and you can have God without money, without as much money as you want. God has nothing to do with money. A rich man can become meditative, a poor man can become meditative. But my understanding is thins: that if a poor man wants to become meditative, he will need TREMENDOUS intelligence -- because he will have to see the futility of money which he does not have. He will need tremendous intelligence. Kabir must have been tremendously intelligent -- I think more intelligent than Buddha and Mahavir. My reason for saying so is this: Buddha had money, Mahavir had money. If they became fed-up, it is simple, it is logical. It is as simple as "two plus two are four." If Buddha had not renounced the palace, then it would have…

What is money and why are most people deeply uncomfortable about it in one way or another?

A wandering monk came to see me two or three years ago and he was very much against money. He would not even touch it -- this is a neurosis. There are people who only count money the whole day, and in the night also, in their minds, they go on counting. They touch only money with a loving hand, they never touch anybody else with a loving hand. When they look at their currency notes, watch their eyes -- they sparkle. They are hypnotized. These are neurotic people. Then there are other neurotics... This wandering monk came to me, he would not touch money. So I said: Then it must be very difficult for you. How did you come to Bombay to see me? He said: There is nothing difficult. He showed two other men, his disciples: they could touch, they were not such evolved beings. What foolishness! They…

A friend has asked: Osho, you said about a wayward son that one should let him pass through his experiences, and he will learn on his own. But even after experiencing, he still prefers the same thing—someone is asking about his wayward son—no matter how much suffering he has to endure, even if death itself should come, still he does the same. After stumbling again and again, he repeats it. What can be done? How to reform him?

You will not be able to reform him. If life cannot reform him, if even death cannot reform him, what will you be able to do? If what you say is true—that again and again, even after suffering, he does the same thing; even if death comes, he will still do the same thing, and he does not change—then take your hands off. You will not be able to reform him. You cannot be stronger than death. And one who does not learn from suffering—what will he learn from you? Do not call him a wayward son. You have found yourself a Jadabharata. Because those whom suffering does not reform, whom even death does not reform—these are great, arrived masters; they are in the ultimate state. Do not even try to reform such a one. And why are you so eager to reform another? It is enough to reform yourself.…

Money is considered one of the greatest inventions to liberate man, and as a means it has a good function. Don't you think that eliminating the use of money will lead to another barbarous world? What in your vision can be substituted for money in the world at large?

Money is certainly one of the greatest inventions of man, and it has helped tremendously in the past. But there is a negative side of it too: money has created poverty and richness, the classes and the class struggle; money has created capitalism, money has created communism. Money has helped in many ways in the exchange of things -- as a means of exchange -- but now its function can be taken by better means which can avoid its negative part. For example, in my perspective, instead of money as currency every society should become a commune. We can make a limit, five thousand or ten thousand... If the town is bigger then it can have two communes, three communes. But instead of a family, a commune takes over. The commune takes care of the children, the commune fulfills the needs of people, and the people don't have to use…