Money: “To increase one’s possessionsmeans to lose one’s self…”

What is one of the unluckiest things that can happen to a ­person? Winning the lottery! Since the beginning of the game in Germany in 1955, eighty per cent of those “lucky devils” who took home a major prize had empty bank balances after only two years—or were deep in the red. Like that man on trial in Bavaria in 2005 for robbing multiple banks. The one-time ­lottery winner wanted to cover up the fact that he had already wasted the prize he had won a couple of years earlier. And in Thuringia—as reported in the Sunday ­edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine on 26 September 2005—another “serial robber was becoming famous at the same time, a robber who had won 1.5 million DM in the lottery about eight years earlier but who also couldn’t handle his money.” One of the very first lottery winners had it even worse. In 1956, he hung a sign on the door to his house: ‘Closed due to riches’. “Then he set about blowing his wind­­­­fall,” the newspaper reported. “When he passed away a few years later, nothing was left of his grand dream. The man who had once owned his own hotel died in a homeless shelter.”

The fact that money doesn’t automatically bring happiness is an oft-quoted truism. But it is still surprising that the subjective experience of happiness felt by a lottery winner a few weeks later is the same ‘size’ as that of a paraplegic! That is the conclusion of research conducted in the US, at any rate. “Many lottery winners believe that their overall satisfaction will increase just because their material situation has changed from one day to the next.

That this is not so can be seen in the case of a secretary in Hamburg. After crossing off six correct numbers in the lottery, she immediately quit her job. Then she bought a house, redecorated it with the newest and most expensive things, and travelled the world,” according to the FAZ newspaper. However, “she wasn’t happy. Three years after her lucky strike, she only had one wish: she just wanted to live and work like a normal person.”

A Win Can Put Your Life at Risk

Psychologists think they have found the reason for lottery winners’ subjective feeling of unhappiness. They say that big wins overwhelm people and that there’s something like a ‘hedonistic alignment’. Because our body cannot sustain ongoing highs or lows, it counteracts them. This is the reason why lottery winners and quadriplegics share the same happiness quotient.

The Russian researcher S.N. Lazarev, who we thoroughly introduced in issue No. 101 , knows a much more basic reason. His research into the human and universal energy fields has shown that there is nothing more dangerous for people than to receive money they haven’t ‘earned’ in the form of positive energy expenditure. “Why is unearned money so deadly?” he asks in his book First Step to the Future. “Because it means that more energy is spent than is produced. Whoever hopes to receive more than he is willing to give begins to degenerate.”

Strong words, that don’t only reflect his personal view, but which have also been proven by his energy field research. In his book Karma Diagnostics, Vol. 3, he gives an impressive example of the terms on which Nature gives and takes: “Researchers undertook marine research at the be­ginning of the 1960s and discovered that of organisms living in underwater colonies, each individual only retains 20 per cent of vital materials and releases 80 per cent back into the water. For a long time they couldn’t understand why that would be. Then it turned out that the seemingly senselessly secreted chemical materials created bonds between the organisms, thanks to which the colony was able to survive. This principle holds true on all levels of organisation of living beings. Man is no exception. He should only retain 20 per cent of his soul’s energy for himself and his earthly problems and should dedicate the remaining 80 per cent to God. The more a person’s soul is bound to earthly things, the more he must strive towards God, whereas on the other hand, a spiritually rich person can afford to give some attention to the earthly. A healthy cell works first for the organism and then for itself. When the cells forget the organism and begin to work only for themselves, then that organism is condemned to annihilation.”

So this is the natural order that dominates the universe: from 100 per cent, an individual retains only one-fifth; the other four-fifths are given away for the good of the community. That is how all cells operate in the great wide cosmos. Man is just such a cell: “And as a healthy cell, he must first work for the universe and then for himself, and he must love God more than anything that binds him to earth. The greatest happiness on earth is love for God and people should not prioritise earthly values, but rather love for God. That is the most important thing. Everything that is constantly fed into our consciousness finds its way into our unconscious, i.e. into our souls. When a person only thinks about earthly things, clings to earthly things, and thereby forgets God, then not only does he dedicate a part of his soul to those things, he dedicates his entire soul to them. He is like a cancer cell that has forgotten the organism and that only works for itself. This process must be stopped, for the degradation of the spiritual structure is dangerous for the entire universe.”

If we take a look at the ­current business world, it isn’t surprising that even the planet has developed ‘cancer’ because of us. Already in the year 2000, the richest 10 per cent of the world’s population controlled 85 per cent of the global wealth2 —and they have shared increasingly less of that with the poor since then. And so the poorer half of humanity possesses barely 1 per cent of global wages and real estate! Confronted with these figures, we can surmise that the world population is headed “on a path to anni­hilation”—but none of the ‘haves’ want to admit that. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that too much taking and not enough giving has already destroyed their souls, to such a degree that they are too deadened to hear such simple truths. Because that’s what comes from greedy money-grubbing: whatever is sublime, noble, true, and generous in a person’s soul (his feelings and thoughts) dissipates more and more and finally disappears. “When a person’s main objective is wealth as a kind of protection for his body and instincts, his soul gradually loses love,” writes Lazarev. “And a person with an empty soul has no future. His body is simply condemned to death.” He continues, “When we forget love and cease to care for our souls, then an enormous accumulation of material goods, abilities and such begins. We rejoice over the sudden wealth and wishes fulfilled and don’t comprehend that it is in fact a plundering of our souls; that we will have to work off this ‘luck’ with gloom of spirit and the loss of physical strength.”

Is it any wonder then that dejection is one of the newest epidemics in affluent nations? More than 20 million Europeans suffer from depression. About 12 per cent of all illnesses in Europe are mental illnesses. The EU and the WHO present a dire prognosis: by 2020, depression will be the third most common illness in developed countries! Researchers have, in the course of extensive research, realised that people in the so-called Third World suffer much less from depression than we do in our ‘rich’ society. Again a fact that Lazarev’s research confirms: “When the highest goal is limited to earthly values, the human soul deteriorates.” This ‘mysterious’ soul is nothing more than the energy field of our thoughts and emotions that subtly surrounds us, and that we ourselves have created over many incarnations.
That the physical powers of civilised people are also steadily diminishing is proven by the high rates of ‘burn out’ and new illnesses such as ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’—even though we have never in history had to physically work so little for our daily bread as we do now.

Healer and Businessman

Lazarev’s research results are so overwhelming because they prove at the scientific level that the laws taught by all the great religions are not just the mental ­fabrications of ethics fanatics; they are a living truth that permeates, accounts for, and shapes the entire universe. If man works counter to these cosmic laws of nature—and he does that whenever he thinks, feels, or acts self-servingly—then he falls into parasitic oscillation to all of life that surrounds him. ‘Friction’ is created and that friction is always uncomfortable, eventually painful, and finally, if the person remains obstinate and his misdeeds are numerous, will lead to an early end of his earthly existence. That is the law—and just as an apple falls to the ground no matter whether thrown from the roof by saint or sinner, so do the laws take equal effect on all people—without regard for sex, social status, or nationality.

The consequence is the same—but whether it takes effect with the same intensity depends completely on the person in question. Just as a person’s physical constitution determines whether he can climb a high summit easily, with difficulty, or at the cost of his life, there are also various constitutions in regards to the effects of fate. However, in this case it is not physical fitness that is decisive, but rather the soul’s—or more accurately, a person’s ability to love. If a person lives in the right way, is kind, selfless, and full of love and sees the divine in everything, he has a guardian angel who will protect him from serious harm if he should fall from a roof; whereas a person who lives only for the material will not survive the fall.

This means that people today must learn to live in the material world while being filled with love and spirituality—not only to survive, but to exercise their true art of living. “Every person has to become a healer and a businessman at the same time,” advises Lazarev. And not meaning that he’s a saint on Sunday and a cold-blooded racketeer from Monday to Saturday, but rather that he conducts his business in a sacred manner—full of love, goodness, righteousness, fairness, and responsibility.

“Once I met a very rich young man at a party. He told me that no matter how indiscriminately he spent his money, it just came right back to him. I was curious as to why. I observed his energy field and I saw a very strong connection with the Divine. The reason lay in one of his past lives, in which he had been a nun and had spent his whole life praying. That is why his soul would never fall prey to the earthly, no matter how much money he had. We are allowed to have as much earthly goods as our souls can bear. The stronger the connection with the divine, the more earthly possessions are given to the person.”

A person for whom spiritual wealth has the absolute priority, can thus always be affluent, continues Lazarev. With the caveat that spiritual wealth is not just about getting knowledge from books or a big head from studying, but must rather come from deep, selfless love for all life. This love itself will protect the person in question from harming his soul: “The person who can love will always stop at that point where his prosperity is beginning to kill him and he will release himself from assets that have begun to destroy his soul.”

But people who suffer from a shortage of money should not dream about money or always think about it. For then (since this kind of attitude will only lead to inner degeneration) you won’t get any money at all, for your own good! Rather, you must understand “that everything earthly is only secondary, that it must be a means and not a goal. We need to have money, but we mustn’t become jealous of those with money or complain because we don’t have any and then develop inner aggression as a result,” warns Lazarev.