The economics of spirituality || On Vedanta (2021)
Questioner (Q): The right action dictated by spirituality is what the world requires, but if the world economy was to be structured around it, then wouldn’t that make most of the prevalent jobs and business models obsolete? If everybody becomes spiritual, won’t the world’s economic system collapse? If the economy is based on spirituality, will it work?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Work for whom? And work for what purpose? What do you mean by ‘work’? When you say the economy is working today, what do you mean by that? You mean that today there is a certain system of prevailing conditions and today’s economics is supporting that system. You want the prevailing conditions to continue? Economics, obviously, is inseparable from the way the world order is, and the world order is inseparable from the way man’s inner order is. Are you alright with these two, how man is within and how the world is without?
You are talking of maintaining the status quo as if the status quo is heavenly. You are asking me, “Will a new kind of economics work?” as if the current economics is really working. Look at your assumption. Is it functional, or is it deeply dysfunctional and we are living in a dystopia? It is such a common argument, that if people become spiritual, what will happen to economics? I mean, why aren’t you asking what kind of economics is promoted by people who are not spiritual? Economics is just human activity. If man changes, economics will change; economics will not disappear, economics will change. A lot will change.
Today you work for the sake of results, and results in economics is money, right? It is money that matters, so people want to snatch money from each other. But if you are really spiritual, you will work for the sake of work; money will become irrelevant. Obviously, there would be an economic upheaval. Somebody will come to take away your money, and you will have no problems because it is not money you worked for. Right now, everything is money-centric; and if people work at all, it is because they want money. And because everything is money-centric, therefore there is very little emphasis on right work, and all the emphasis is on counting notes.
Obviously a lot of things will change. The very definition of richness will change. Today the rich person is the one who has the maximum money. If the world turns spiritual, can you see who will be called rich? The one who has the greatest work to do—he will be the richest person. And the great thing is, you cannot tax this person, nor can you take away his riches. Today, the rich are in constant insecurity; their richness can evaporate any moment, the stock market might crash. Because the super rich are typically feasting on their shareholding, it’s not cash that they have in the bank, so their networth can reduce to half over a period of a few hours. Obviously there is a lot of insecurity continuously, because your riches are outside of you and dependent on unpredictable conditions.
So, a lot of energy of mankind just goes towards protecting money, and obviously when you are spending so much time and effort in just protecting money, you are not creating value, or are you? How will you have time to really work rightly if so much of your time is going towards earning and defending and securing money? Can you imagine the kind of frontiers that you will open up if you do not need to defend money? Can you imagine the creative possibilities?
Today, our workspace, rather workscape, is very distorted. We do not do what must be done; we do that which will fetch us money. So, we are not really creating the right value because a lot of that which you are doing—you understand creation of value? Creation of something that has real value. A lot of the work that we do does not amount to creation of value; it only amounts to creation of money—not even creation of money, but accumulation of money.
And money, mind you, does not always follow value. You can have something very valuable but it might not be valued by the society; therefore, it will not fetch you much money. At the same time, you might have something of zero value, but it might be valued by the society, and you will find yourself mega rich. That’s what happens when you are not spiritual and your value system is distorted. In the economy, money starts chasing very hollow, very meaningless things. The things have no intrinsic value at all, but a lot of money is chasing them in a very hot way. All this is just distortion in economics, is it not?
But when you are a spiritual person, then your work will be directed solely towards value creation. Whether the thing of value that you create is awarded money by the society or not, you will say, “I do not bother whether this thing that I am creating is going to fetch me money; I am not bothering about that. I am kṛtātman . It suffices that I know that this thing that I have created is a thing of value.” If there are many such persons like this, if there are entire societies like this, can you imagine the creative output? Can you imagine?
Today, people do what will fetch them money, and what will fetch you money is what people consider worth putting money on. So, you are not being innovative; you are just being a servant to the people. Real innovation people might not understand, so you will not risk real creativity and real innovation; you will instead, let’s say, in the name of innovation, come up with a cute app that delivers food to people’s doorstep—you know, an accumulator kind of app—and you will earn lots of money and you will come up with an IPO, and people will say you are supersmart.
But what is the value you have created? Please tell me, what value have you created? Has any real value been created? No, just that you have grown rich, and that’s all that you wanted—money. You had never sought richness in work; all you had ever sought was richness in your bank account, and you got that; your IPO is oversubscribed by eight times. And what are you doing? Collecting food from here and delivering it there, and you have made thousands of crores. Tell me, what is the value you have created? But then, creating value was never an objective at all. Such a person suffers and such an economy suffers. And at the root of this suffering is just an absence of spiritual values.
The other day I was saying, good spirituality is good economics.
Q: Can we say that value creation is about something that uplifts the consciousness of man?
AP: Yes, exactly that. What do you mean by creating value in the economy? Creating value in the economy means creating goods and services and an environment that uplifts you in the direction of the right values. A thing is valuable if it can add value to your inner life. Why am I saying ‘inner life’? Why am I not saying ‘outer life’? Because what is valuable in your outer life is determined by how your inner life is. If you are inwardly insane, then how will you know what is valuable to you in your outer life? For example, in the outer life we all wear clothes. If you are insane inwardly, will you know the right clothes to wear?
So, first of all, value has to be created inside. What does it mean to create value inside? Lift your consciousness. And once your consciousness is high enough, pure enough, you know what is valuable outside as well, and what is not valuable, what is not to be respected.
All that uplifts you is valuable. All that drags you down is not to be valued, valueless. And that’s how all goods and services in the economy must be assessed. What is this thing going to do to my consciousness? What is the value of an expensive mobile to me? I must know what it is going to do to my consciousness, what is the purpose I am going to use it for.
What am I getting this new camera for? I might be getting a new camera because I want to shoot a documentary that will expose the destruction of glaciers to the world and will therefore help raise environmental consciousness; that might be one reason I might want a camera. The other reason I want a camera is because I want to shoot a pornographic film and make money. Why do I want to have that camera? If I need the camera for the right reason, then the camera deserves to be bought even if it is very expensive, because it is valuable. If I need the camera for the wrong reasons, then I should throw away the camera even if it is given to me for free, because it holds no value for me, because instead of uplifting my consciousness it will degrade my consciousness.
So, every thing has to be looked at from the point of view of consciousness. What is it going to do to you once it enters your life? If it is going to help you in the inner sense, get it at whatever cost possible; and if it is going to corrupt you inwardly, throw it away even if you get it for free. That’s how real economics must work. But for real economics to work, first of all you need to have real people. The moment you find that people are making decisions based on their consciousness, you will find that the marketplace is now automatically full of goods that uplift you because that’s what the people are now demanding.
Can you imagine how the entire scenario will change? You go to a shop and you will find that all the things that were principally used just to defile your inner self are now suddenly gone, they are nowhere in the shelves—why? Because there are no takers anymore. People are now conscious; people do not want rubbish. All the flesh items have gone off the menu—why? Because people don’t want them anymore.
That’s the kind of economics we want: where people decide the value of a thing based on how it will contribute to their inner life. Consciousness has to be the criteria. What is this thing going to do to my consciousness?
