GETTING TO THE ROOT OF
THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM
When
we have problems we naturally ask ourselves “why?” Generally we
want to understand what has caused the problem so that we can avoid repeating
it in the future and avoid the undesirable consequences again. Since so many
millions of people are now affected by economic calamity there is a great
collective why? being raised.
There
is a panoply of answers of course, the talking heads and internet are full of
analysts that will tell you exactly what is going on. Looking further at their
statement we find that the answers they come up with generally depend on their
station in life—whether they are the victims or the perpetrators—as well as
their conception of life in general. The government and banking elite offer
excuses and reasons that generally deflect any blame from themselves and their
own malfeasance, all couched in the arcane rhetoric of banking and finance
meant to mystify the common man. Through such subterfuge they convince some of
the people who see no recourse other than accepting the resulting struggles as
their lot in life, and carry on as best they can.
There are others
who look in the direction opposite of the official finger that is being
pointed—to those elite ‘leaders’ themselves. What are they up to by the
policies they have enacted or permitted, and what is their end game? Blaming
them tens-of-thousands are marching in the streets to voice their opposition to
policies that are destroying their lives.
There
are yet others with years of experience, or else a decent education in the
history of monetary crimes, who understand that the goal of all economic
machinations is to transfer wealth from the many to the few. Of course it is
all disguised as an ‘economic calamity’ that ‘just happened’.
Beyond all of this there are yet more answers,
answers stemming from other conceptions of life. On this website therefore, the
reader will not be surprised that we find the reasons in the spiritual
dimension. It is there that we must begin to understand our situation because
beginning with that dimension everything else follows in a chain of cause and
effect. If we take the effect to be the cause we are mislead, taking the
symptom to be the problem. Any and all efforts applied to the symptoms will not,
indeed cannot, bring permanent relief. The unresolved problem will
simply reappear in other circumstances, and although we may perceive it to be a
different problem entirely, it stems from the same, original unresolved cause.
The bump in the carpet thing.
If we want to deal with the problem itself, we must trace it out to its
root. We make progress by tracing from effect to cause, and understanding that
cause as an effect, look for its cause, and so on, back, back, back until we
may find the original cause. Dealing with that cause we can now solve all of
the subsequent problems that stem from it.
So
what is the root cause of our economic problems? The answer is hidden in the
simple word ‘our.’ Understanding that word we have a clue.
Pollsters
now tell us that a majority of people in the Western world now accept that they
are spiritual beings having a material experience. Spiritual beings? If that is
the case (and we accept that it is) then the first and most fundamental
question to be asked is this: Why are spiritual beings living in a
material world? Don’t we, as spiritual beings, belong in a spiritual world?
This
is the question to be understood, and it can be properly understood from
the sankhya philosophy presented in the Vedic literature where it is explained
that fundamental nature of all living (spiritual) beings is sat, cit, ananda—we
are eternally existing (sat), full of knowledge (cit), and
inherently blissful (ananda). It is our original nature to be not just
happy, not just joyful, but blissful—for no reason at all—simply because that
is who we are. There is nothing outside of ourselves that we need to be happy.
It is there within us.
But
we have forgotten that.
Coming
to this material world, as is the prerogative of the spiritual being, we have
assumed an identity based on the body that we wear. We have assumed ourselves
to be products of the material energy, and based on our experiences of material
pleasure we assume that we can be fulfilled by having material things and
material experiences. Having forgotten that our bliss is within we seek to find
it by having more, getting more, and being more in material terms. Thus
we think of ourselves in terms of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ although these concepts have
nothing at all to do with us. We fill our time with endeavors to enhance our
sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ not understanding that none of these things that are
outside of our actual selves can actually make us happy. If that were true then
why are the already egregiously wealthy not happy? Why do they want what you
have? Because after giving an initial sense of pleasure, things simply become a
burden, increasing our illusion and dissatisfaction.
Yes, dissatisfaction. Why
dissatisfaction? Because they lead us to thinking that by expanding what we
have we can somehow find satisfaction. But although the desired satisfaction
never materializes, the spiritual being chases after yet more, as an animal or
man in a desert chases a mirage. While a person suffering in a desert finds
water to be the most wonderful and desirable thing, a person who is not starved
and dehydrated does not find water, in and of itself, particularly exceptional.
This describes our situation: we are
spiritually starved and looking for satisfaction in material things. But we
can’t find it there. It doesn’t exist there. Material things cannot
satisfy the spiritual person. However, although a minimum of material
things are necessary to maintain the body, for one who is properly situated in
their normal spiritual condition material things have no value beyond one’s
immediate necessity. In the spiritually diseased condition of life we inflate
the concepts of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ to such a degree that we create a great
imbalance and disturbance in the world. Thus we have the elite top 2%, who are
absolutely spiritually bewildered, taking as much wealth of the world as the
poorest 50% in an effort to satisfy their spiritual hunger. And even that is
not enough because it is the wrong diet.
The bankers, politicians and
managers, the top 10% who serve the interests of the 2%, also suffer from the
spiritual disease of ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ They also think that they have become the
most important people, have become wealthy, have power and control. But from
the spiritual perspective all of it is simply a childish game. An illusion. An
illusion that ends when that spiritual being is forced out of their body at
what is called death. This ‘I’ and ‘mine’ is an illusion that we create for our
material experience, as if we had entered a movie theater for a lifetime. Then
the film stops and the lights come on when death takes us. What we thought was
‘I’ is finished, it was all just a movie that we played in our minds, and what
we thought was ‘mine’ is all left behind for others to use in their movies.
The 2% cannot conceivably use their riches,
and the impoverished suffer extreme hardships. This is the result of a world
that has become lost to spiritual reality. This is the root cause of our
economic problems since all other problems follow as consequences, or effects
of this original cause.
The economic problems can easily be
solved—for those who have recovered from their spiritual disease. But for those
who refuse to be treated, who refuse to acknowledge their diseased spiritual
condition, their attempts to find happiness can destroy themselves (think
alcohol and drugs) or even the entire world (think wars of conquest). There is
nothing that they will not give to increase their control and sense of ‘I’ and
‘mine’ in an effort to get it all. The majority of the people of the
world stand in their way of achieving this end and thus the people are now
targeted—being stripped of what they thought was ‘theirs,’ taken by others who
want to claim it as their own.
This is a struggle of madness and it
can only be stopped when people are willing to wake up to spiritual reality.
The purpose of Spiritual Economics is to make everyone aware of the spiritual
reality and affect the cure.