If you don’t have money, you are condemned; your whole life is a curse, and your whole life you are trying to have money by any means.
If you have money it does not change the basic thing: you want more, and there is no end to wanting more. And when finally you have too much money – although it is not enough, it is never enough, but it is more than anybody else has – then you start feeling guilty, because the means that you have used to accumulate the money are ugly, inhuman, violent. You have been exploiting, you have been sucking the blood of people, you have been a parasite. So now you have got the money but it reminds you of all the crimes that you have committed in gaining it.
That creates two kinds of people: one who starts donating to charitable institutions to get rid of guilt. They are doing “good work,” they are doing “God’s work.” They are opening hospitals, and schools. All they are doing is trying somehow not to go mad because of the feeling of guilt. All your hospitals, and all your schools and colleges, and all your charitable institutions are outcomes of guilty people.
For example, the Nobel prize was founded by a man who earned money in the First World War by creating all kinds of destructive bombs, machines. The First World War was fought using the means supplied by Mr Nobel. And he earned such a huge amount of money… Both the parties were getting war material from the same source; he was the only person who was creating war materials on a vast scale. So whoever was killed, was killed by him. So in old age, when he had all the money in the world a man can have, he established the Nobel prize. It is given as a peace award – by a man who earned the money by war! Whoever is working for peace receives a Nobel prize. It is given for great scientific inventions, great artistic, creative inventions.
If you have money, it creates guilt
All charitable work is really an effort to wash your guilt – literally. When Pontius Pilate ordered the crucifixion of Jesus, the first thing he did was to wash his hands. Strange! The order for crucifixion does not make your hands dirty, why should you wash your hands? It is something significant: he is feeling guilty. It took 2000 years for man to understand this, because for 2000 years nobody even mentioned or bothered to comment on why Pontius Pilate washed his hands. It was Sigmund Freud who found out that people who are feeling guilty start washing their hands. It is symbolic… as if their hands are full of blood.
So if you have money, it creates guilt. One way is to wash your hands by helping charitable institutions, and this is exploited by the religions. They are exploiting your guilt, but they go on buttressing your ego, saying you are doing great spiritual work. It is nothing to do with spirituality; it is just that they are trying to console the criminals.
The first way is what religions have been doing. The other is that the man feels so guilty that either he goes mad or commits suicide. His own existence becomes just anguish. Each breath becomes heavy. And the strange thing is that he has worked his whole life to attain all this money, because the society provokes the desire, the ambition, to be rich, to be powerful. And money does bring power; it can purchase everything, except those few things which cannot be purchased by it. But nobody bothers about those things.
Meditation cannot be purchased, love cannot be purchased, friendship cannot be purchased, gratitude cannot be purchased — but nobody is concerned with these things. Everything else, the whole world of things, can be purchased. So every child starts climbing the ladder of ambitions, and he knows if he has money then everything is possible. So the society breeds the idea of ambition, of being powerful, of being rich.
It is an absolutely wrong society. It creates psychologically sick, insane people. And when they have reached the goal that the society and the educational system have given to them, they find themselves at a dead end. The road ends there; there is nothing beyond. So either they become a phony religious person or they just jump into madness, into suicide, and destroy themselves.
Money should not be owned by individuals
Money can be a beautiful thing if it is not in the hands of the individuals, if it is part of the communes, part of the societies, and the society takes care of everybody. Everybody creates, everybody contributes, but everybody is not paid by money; they are paid by respect, paid by love, paid by gratitude, and are given all that is necessary.
Money should not be in the hands of individuals; otherwise it will create this problem of being burdened with guilt. And money can make people’s lives very rich. If the commune owns the money, the commune can give you all the facilities that you need, all the education, all creative dimensions of life. The society will be enriched and nobody will feel guilty. And because the society has done so much for you, you would like to pay it back by your services.
All that is created by people will not be hoarded by individuals; it will be a commune resourcefulness. It will be yours, it will be for you, but it will not be in your hands. It will not make you ambitious; it will make you more creative, generous, grateful, so the society goes on becoming better and more beautiful. Then money is not a problem.