Y.M. Can you extend that to money?
O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no material value; you think you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. His money’s value was gone. He realized that his joy in it came not from the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his family’s enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them. Money has no material value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is left but dross. It is so with all things, little or big, majestic or trivial—there are no exceptions. Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame—they are all the same, they have no material value: while they content the spirit they are precious, when this fails they are worthless.
A Difficult Question
Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities of its own, and when he is in that condition I can’t grasp it. Now when I speak of a man, he is the whole thing in one, and easy to hold and contemplate.
O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of “my body” who is the “my”?
Y.M. It is the “me.”
O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?
Y.M. The Me is the whole thing; it is a common property; an undivided ownership, vested in the whole entity.
O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it, including the hair, hands, heels, and all?
Y.M. Certainly not. It is my mind that admires it.