Money and "Spiritual Legitimacy"

Chris Tong, Ph.D.


Chris Tong has been a devotee of Adi Da Samraj since 1989. He is one of the founders of this website. You can read his biographical information in the About Us section.

In this article, I address a couple of common, but mistaken notions about money and spirituality: someone who is "spiritual" should have nothing to do with money (making it, using it, etc.); and any spiritual or religious organization that makes money a requirement rather than a "pass the basket" voluntary matter could not possibly be legitimate.

Misconception 1: Spiritual people have nothing to do with money

The many ascetically oriented spiritual traditions throughout history that have a notion something like this are the source from which we inherit this notion. There is the image of the Christian hermit in the desert, the Hindu sannyasin in the forest hut or in a cave in the Himalayas, or the Buddhist monk with the begging bowl.

The philosophical underpinnings of such ascetic traditions are life-negative: sex is a problem, money is a problem, food is a problem, and indeed, the material body itself is a problem. Being more spiritual is a matter of being less material, and dissociating oneself from money, food, sex, and the body to the degree one can.

In contrast, Adidam is based on a life-positive presumption: such dissocation is not necessary in order to Realize something Spiritually great; indeed, literal dissociation from life is not only not necessary, but counter-productive for Spiritual Realization. Our understanding of such images, to the extent that they hold significance for us, is that they are metaphors not for literal dissociation from life, but for freedom from attachment, based on our giving ourselves over to a greater Attachment, a Divine Distraction. Our practice is to be distracted from money, food, and sex by Something Greater, not to self-effortfully dissociate ourselves from these. With time and practice, the joy of God-Communion effortlessly exceeds and "outshines" the pleasure of sex.

Beyond the difference in orientation — a life-positive rather than a life-negative one — Adi Da has at times pointed out that the "living in a cave", or "begging for food" approach to spiritual practice also simply is not very practical in the 21st century, particularly in the West, but increasingly less practical in places like India as well. These days, if you park yourself in some forest to become a "hermit", you're likely to get arrested for trespassing! If you go around with a begging bowl, you're likely to run afoul of vagrancy laws.

Even spiritual practitioners living in cooperative community with each other (as Adi Da calls us to do in our practice of the Way of Adidam) still have bills to pay every month. Perhaps paradoxically, even though the “separate self” is ultimately Realized to be an illusion, we do need to care about our physical survival until we Realize that. As Adi Da puts it:

There is nothing inherently "un-Spiritual" about participating in the human world at the life-level. The functional responsibilities thus incurred do not, in any sense, prevent Real Spiritual life. The responsibilities of the human world require the exercise of creativity and intelligence. All life-conditions are forms of relationship. Everything at the level of life requires ordinary responsibility. If you are incapable of such ordinariness, then you have not even begun to become involved in Real Spiritual life.

"Money, Food, and Sex"
in My "Bright" Word

Adi Da
Adi Da Samraj directing the construction
of the first Adidam bookstore
(Los Angeles, 1972)

So true spiritual life is not an escape from the world, by people who are not yet even humanly mature, and who are running away from a world in which they have not yet learned how to function. Rather, spiritual life is the fruit of human life, the next phase of development. Its necessary foundation is human maturity, including all the obvious capabilities for handling one's "life business": being able to earn an income, etc. Indeed, even from a purely practical standpoint, the spiritual practitioner — with whatever help comes from his or her spiritual community — has got to be in some sense better at mastering ordinary life than the average Joe, because he or she has to not only handle all the ordinary things everybody else does, but accomplish an extraordinary spiritual practice as well. It is in this spirit that Adi Da writes (contrasting the functional effectiveness of Adidam practitioners with both ascetism and indulgence):

It is easier to reduce your involvement in the enterprises of ordinary life and to restrict your budget than it is to be creative and to succeed. You must control spending, but you must also succeed. Similarly, you must not take the easy road of using up your money. As My devotee, you are supposed to be living a life of self-discipline. Therefore, do not be a wastrel, and do not be lethargic in fulfilling your service and your financial obligations. Demonstrate your great motive to the God-Realizing Process in My Company.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj

It has traditionally been said that money is "the root of all evil". However, this traditional saying does not mean that money itself is evil. In and of itself, money is neither positive nor negative. Money is simply a sign of human energy. Money is made into a positive or negative sign depending on one's disposition toward it and toward life altogether. Therefore, if you are My devotee, the necessary and inevitable involvement with money is something to be made right, something to be transformed — not something to be merely eschewed (or, otherwise, merely wasted). My devotees must, both individually and collectively, re-orient and transform themselves relative to money. If you are My devotee, you must make money into an expression of the fullness of your devotional energy and your ego transcending disposition altogether, including your disposition toward the life-pattern of real and true cooperation. My devotees are to make right creative use of all of their personal and collective energies, including money.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
from "The Necessary Foundation of Right Life"
Volume III, The Aletheon

Misconception 2: Spiritual organizations that make money a requirement could not be legitimate

Sometimes when people hear or read that Adidam has financial "requirements", such as a 10% tithe, they get reactive, and make pronouncements like, "How could a legitimate spiritual tradition require money from its members? When I went to church as a kid, they used to pass the basket; contributing was voluntary."

There are a couple of issues packed together in such a reaction, so let's tease them apart.

1. The reaction to a spiritual way having any requirements whatsoever. The first issue is a reaction to the very notion of there being any requirements whatsoever! But this is just silly, if one thinks about it for a moment. Any great accomplishment requires much of anyone, whether the accomplishment is an Olympic gold medal or a great Spiritual Realization. And many of the processes required for such accomplishments involve more than just oneself. Winning an Olympic gold medal requires an excellent coach, and years of training, generally designed by the coach. In some sense, all of these "requirements" are voluntary, because after all, it is you who went to college to get that degree in engineering so you could become an engineer; it is you who wanted to win that gold medal and hooked up with your coach for that purpose; it is you who joined a particular spiritual tradition and "hired" your Spiritual Master for that purpose. So in that sense it is of course voluntary, but if you shirk the requirements associated with your choice, and fail to accomplish what you set out to do, it will be primarily you that you will disappoint.

Yet many of us start out with the strange notion that one can attain great Spiritual Realization without any requirements, or with "requirements" that can be applied in a "do-it-yourself", "pick and choose" fashion — as though spiritual practice were somehow a fundamentally different process from what is required to accomplish anything else that is great. There is a profoundly materialistic basis for this curious viewpoint. We are most familiar with religions that are "belief systems" only. Most of us are not personally familiar with a religion or spiritual tradition that provides an actual means for tangibly associating with a greater-than-material Reality. Consequently, the very "invisibility" of a believed (rather than experienced) "Spiritual Reality" allows us to play fast and loose with our notions of what that reality is and what associating ourselves with it for real (and permanently) might take. We think: maybe going to church now and then, and being a mostly good person throughout our life, really is sufficient in order to go to "heaven" when we die. Of course that sort of "fast and loose" thinking fails to take into account the real laws of the greater-than-material Reality, which require a whole lot more for "getting into heaven". Or if we are not the churchgoing type, but the do-it-yourself "new age" spiritualist: if we have a better-than-average day, some peaceful quiet time, or a nice walk on the beach, we may tend to call it "spiritual", and calibrate our notions about what is required for "Spiritual Realization" accordingly — what will it take to have more "spiritual" days like that?

But settling for a "relatively peaceful life" would be selling ourselves far short of our greatest destiny. Anyone who has actually experienced a tangible Revelation of the greater-than-material Reality through the Spiritual Transmission of a genuine Spiritual Transmission Master quickly becomes aware of how much greater real Spiritual Realization is than just the passing feeling of a little peace; and of how easily one's lifelong habits (dedicated to materialistic self-fulfillment) distract one from that Transmission. Such a person knows in a very concrete way that steady reception of that Transmission from moment to moment is going to require a great deal of oneself: the overcoming of lifelong (and perhaps even many-lifetime) habits. As Adi Da has put it, Ultimate Realization is the greatest creative process a human being can engage in, and so it will require more of a person than any other creative process.

2. The reaction to a spiritual way having financial requirements. The second issue is that "pass the basket" notion: "Contributing money was voluntary in my church when I was a kid. If it's not voluntary in your church, your church couldn't be legitimate."

The problem with this notion is that the church in which only a basket was passed is part of an established religion — Christianity — that has been flourishing for two thousand years now. And its largest sect — Catholicism — is at its core (in the Vatican) one of the wealthiest religious organizations in the world in terms of its possessions (properties, art, treasures, etc.). Many books now document this wealth (for example, The Vatican Billions and Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church). In The Vatican Billions, Avro Manhattan writes:

The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator, and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars.

Avro Manhattan, The Vatican Billions

I'm not in any way disparaging the ostensible principle (whether or not it was always strictly applied) underlying the wealth, namely: collect or create treasures for the Glory of God, from exquisite devotional art to cathedrals, aimed at moving the pious visitor to greater love of God. The point I'm getting at is this: such religions — which are not only merely getting by, but vastly flourishing — can afford to only pass a basket! Their survival is not at stake. Christianity, for instance, has over two billion members worldwide.

But the survival of new spiritual movements like Adidam, with currently only a small membership, is not at all straightforward or guaranteed. Those of us who are "first generation" devotees naturally share the responsibility and passion for ensuring (as well as the delight in ensuring) the survival of our Way for all time. Adi Da points out the kinds of resistances that sometimes surface:

Because of the automatic resistances built into religious and Spiritual endeavor, the practical need for money and for the means of survival is a very complicated and frustrating affair for even the most sophisticated religious and Spiritual groups.

But all of this should be a very obvious matter. You are not in heaven. This is the Earth. Everything here costs life, effort, and money. It costs a great deal of life, effort, and money to function as a gathering of religious or Spiritual practitioners. The purposes of such a gathering may be religious or Spiritual, but a living culture must fulfill the same functional laws as any household or any business corporation.

Nonetheless, whenever practical demands are made for effort, commitment, cooperation, or money, people tend to lapse into the "tamasic mood." [tamas: Sanskrit for inertia.] Such reluctance retards life. And the ability of an individual or a group to transcend this tendency is the measure of freedom and survival.

There is the suspicion that if you are “Spiritual” you are not supposed to need money, you are not supposed to require anything, and you are supposed to abandon the functions of life. Obviously, though, money is needed in most circumstances — and work, effort, human relatedness, and energy are necessary for functional survival. Why isn't it patently obvious, then, that individuals are responsible to bring life and commitment to their own religious or Spiritual community, that they must take responsibility for its existence and effective functioning in the world, and contribute a responsible amount of money for its continuation? Why isn't that obvious? . . .

It is because of the traditional illusion of Spiritual attainment — which is pictured as a kind of evaporation process, wherein you become more and more “elusive” [“non-material”], and you finally disappear inside your “something”, or dissolve into your “someplace else”. . . .

I find this traditional orientation to be utter nonsense. I do not teach it, and I do not support it. Truth Is Always Already the Case. There is nothing inherently "un-Spiritual" about participating in the human world at the life-level.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
" Money, Food, and Sex", in My "Bright" Word

We wouldn't be devotees if we didn't share in that understanding of the extraordinary enterprise of which we all were a part, and its potentially world-transforming benefit, through the Blessing Adi Da is making available to all. Among other things, then, that means raising a lot of money among ourselves to cover the vast number of expenses that accompany the creation of a new and enduring spiritual tradition.

Money Is The life-Key That Allows The Sacred Purposes Of The Cooperative Cultural Gathering Of My Devotees To Be Fulfilled. If You Do Not Make Effective Use Of money, You Lose A Crucial Opportunity To Make A Difference In the world.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Sutra 31, The Dawn Horse Testament

All That I Mean By The Term 'money' — Including life, energy, Love, work, and Commitment — Is The Resource For The Movement Of My Divine Avataric Transcendental Spiritual Blessing-Work Into the world. Through their Gifts Of money To The Sacred Organizational Entities Of Adidam, My Devotees Expand My Capability (During, and After, and Forever After My Avatarically-Born Physical Human Lifetime) To Have A Positive and Benign Spiritual Influence In the world.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Sutra 31, The Dawn Horse Testament

Of course there are also higher principles behind practices like tithing, above and beyond mere necessity, and even above and beyond the gathering together or building of beautiful things (art, music, temples, cathedrals, and the like) for the glory of the Divine (and the manifestation of the Divine) through a particular Way. These higher, spiritual principles are the reason practices like tithing have appeared in virtually all of the world's religious traditions, and are mentioned in spiritual literature from the Bible (Genesis 14:20, Hebrews 7:2, Matthew 23:23) to Emmett Fox ("The Magic of Tithing", in Emmett Fox, Alter Your Life). James Steinberg introduces a number of these spiritual principles associated with money in his article.

RETURN TO "MONEY IN ADIDAM"