Money and the Meaning of Life

[zengrifter]

Money and the Meaning of Life

By Jacob Needleman
Gurdjieff International Review

These excerpts are extracted from Jacob Needleman’s book, Money and the Meaning of Life, New York: Currency Doubleday, 1991, Chapters 13, 14 & 22.

Why Does Money Seem So Real?

Since the beginning of recorded history, man has been haunted by the intimation that he lives in a world of mere appearances. In every teaching and spiritual philosophy of the past we find the idea that whatever happens to us, for good or ill, is brought about by deeper forces behind the world that seems so real to us. We are further told that this real world is not accessible to the senses or understandable by the ordinary mind.

But, and this is a point that is not usually understood, we live in a world of inner appearances as well. We are not what we perceive ourselves to be. There is another identity, our real self, hidden behind the self that we believe ourselves to be.

It is only through awakening to this deeper self within that we can penetrate behind the veil of appearances and make contact with a truer world outside of ourselves. It is because we live on the surface of ourselves that we live on the surface of the greater world, never participating—except in rare moments which do not last and which are not understood—in the wholeness of reality.

...continued here - http://www.gurdjieff.org/needleman4.htm