No More Learning

If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich.
Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the
treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that
may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that
external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal
property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual
wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step. It is to
be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily
good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true.
Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more
moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in
the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is
the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of
being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not
through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through
what he is.
And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is
represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the
laws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite
respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus
says to him, 'You should give up private property. It hinders you from
realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your
personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you,
that you will find what you really are, and what you really want. ' To
his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves,
and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things
matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the
world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates
Individualism. But that is not to trouble them.