Spirituality And Business

Question: The mixing of business and religion has a dubious history. Is there a positive side to this? Does spirituality approve of profit-making? Sadhguru: It is not dubious. People who are left out think it is dubious. If you look back at the history of this planet, most important decisions about the course of human life were made either by political leadership, business leadership or religious leadership. Some idiots made wrong decisions. That does not mean that everything that happened was wrong. Some fools – whether a politician, business person or a religious person, misused it. You have corrupt people at all levels of life. That does not make everything that business does, politics does, or religion does wrong. Why are you against the rich? Everybody is aspiring to get there. Just because somebody has gotten there, why do you grudge them? You must appreciate them. Isn’t everybody aspiring to get there? Just because one person made it, you want to pull them down. Unless we appreciate the successful, nobody will be successful. Unless we really acknowledge and appreciate the success in the world, success will not happen to everybody. Whether you are rich or poor, a criminal or a policeman, you are suffering. Whether you are suffering from hunger or indigestion, still it is suffering. Both hunger and indigestion need to be attended to with the same compassion because suffering is suffering. At least hunger can be relieved immediately, indigestion cannot be relieved immediately. So, what you are suffering from and how you caused the suffering to yourself is not the issue, people are suffering; that is the issue. I do not care whether they are rich or poor. I do not make a distinction. I do not think poor people need more attention and rich people need less attention. Why are we glorifying poverty? This attitude of glorifying the poor and making the rich look ugly is a sure way of making and keeping the population poor forever. That is a major problem in this culture; we have glorified poverty in a big way. This is a misunderstanding that has come from the spiritual dimensions of life. Certain people on the spiritual path took this step of becoming consciously poor. When a Gautama renounces his kingdom and walks as a beggar, it has a different significance. It does not mean he is telling the world that poverty is the best way to live. He is choosing it in a certain way. Does spirituality approve of profit-making? Only because you are very greedy you become spiritual. When your greed has crossed its bounds, that is when you become spiritual. If you are a little greedy, you would think of a piece of creation. Whether you buy a safety pin or you buy a big mansion, or you buy the whole city, what you are buying is a piece of creation. A spiritual person is abnormally greedy because he wants the creator himself. Others are going in pieces; this one wants to go all out. His greed is unbounded. So, spirituality is not against profit-making. We want to make profit – too much profit. It is just that your profit is no more exclusive. It has become all-inclusive.