Spirituality and world economics

Spirituality too has been in the world as long as humanity has existed and the process too has evolved. While spirituality is about organising your inner being, economics is about organising your external situation.

Today, the constant buzzword heard is "sustainability". True spirituality will only happen when people are peaceful and happy and you would think that would be a state in all affluent nations, but that is not so. What you see in all economic activity in the world is desperate action. People have no concept of what they really need. They are running endlessly in pursuit of happiness.

Only when you are at peace within yourself will you handle economic activity in the way which is good not just for you but for everybody else.

Spirituality has never been as organised as economic activity. Whenever the spiritual processes have been organised, it has ended up as religion. All religions on this planet have started as spiritual processes but in the form of religion. Economics today is also in a state of dysfunction. Organised economics is supposed to create big opportunities and well being for everyone but the disparity between the rich and the poor is so huge today that it seems as if they are living on different planets.

So both spirituality and economics today do not have the right focus. Today, we are not human beings with limitations. Technological advances have greatly empowered all of us, but has it made us happy? It doesn't seem so.

There seems to be a renewed interest in spirituality, because economically sound people have made such huge strides while the inner well being and happiness hasn't followed. So suddenly there is a great interest in yoga. I hear about 200 million people are practicing yoga in India today and about 25 million people are doing so in the US.

Until the inner well being is in place, organisation of the outer world will continue to be haphazard. We must remember that we are spiritual beings first and indulge in economic activity to exist in this world.

As long as we force our will, instead of doing what is really needed, we will not prosper. In the coming years, economic leaders will be even more influential than the political leaders. It is important that they too work towards the inner well being of humanity; only then can we take control of our outer well being.