If I have a one-hundred-dollar note with me and I simply keep it in my pocket and never use it, then whether I have it or not, does it make any difference? I could have kept any piece of paper; that would have served the same purpose. But if I use this one-hundred-dollar note and it circulates in here, and everybody who gets it immediately uses it – so it passes through one hundred hands – then it is one hundred dollars multiplied by one hundred; then that much money is here in this room.
The miser is really anti-money. He is destroying its utility because he is stopping it being a currency.
I told him, “Do one thing: become interested in a woman.”
He said, “What!”
I said, “Just try. I can arrange for a few women to be introduced to you” – because so many women used to come from the university. There were many women professors from the colleges who came to visit me, to ask about meditation and things. I said, “There is no problem. Just indicate in whom you are interested, I will introduce you; and any woman is going to be interested in you.”
He said, “Why?”
I said, “Because of all the money. She is not going to be interested in you; she is going to be interested in your money. And once you become interested in the woman, you will start spending money; you will relax. The energy that has become perverted will start moving in the natural way. And you can’t find anybody better than a woman to finish your money. You will not need to live two thousand years; long before that the money will be gone. And once you become interested in a woman, your infatuation with money will drop to its natural state.”
He said, “I will have to think it over.”
I said, “You can think it over, but don’t waste too much time because right now you are almost forty-five. Once you are over sixty, then it will be difficult even for me to make an arrangement. So don’t waste fifteen years. Think about it tonight and tomorrow morning when we meet, tell me.”
He could not sleep the whole night. He thought about it again and again, and slowly the thing became clear to him: “Yes, deep down it is women, and I am constantly keeping myself occupied with money in order to avoid women, because if there is no space, no time, then from where can the woman enter? And why I am so infatuated now makes sense. It is a substitute woman.”
So this greed for money, this greed for power, this greed for fame – sex can take any form – will depend on the type of person. You will be aware of the fact that although poets continually write poetry about women, most of the poets have stayed away from women. Most of the great novelists were not interested in women. Most of the great painters were afraid of women for the simple reason that either you can paint or you can be married. You can’t have two wives – together they will kill you.
There is an ancient parable in India: a man was caught as a thief in a house. He was presented in court and the magistrate said, “Do you accept your guilt?”