547. Consciousness of Matter

We enjoy receiving attention wherever it comes from. Plants and animals too equally enjoy attention. Inanimate matter smilingly responds to attention, defying the rules of material functioning.  The more superior the attention, the richer is the response. When great prosperity comes one's way and one is not used to it, he is unable to receive it properly. He is overwhelmed. As a consequence, there is enormous waste of everything. It is inevitable, though not pardonable. Still, the wasted material does not severely punish those who waste. The rule is, no waste is permissible; still waste within the level of your consciousness is NOT punished by those materials you waste. There are other people, who have recently emerged from poverty. They are proud of the present plenty and proud of the measure of the waste in their houses. Matter is conscious. It will never pardon man for such cruel neglect that is insulting. When the cycle reverses, the very same man can be heard saying, "Ten years ago baskets of fruits in my house used to rot. Now I am unable to get one."

If fruits are wasted in the house of the owner of a fruit garden, plenty of fruits in his garden will be stolen or go unharvested. For each fruit wasted at home, ten or a hundred will be wasted in the garden, maybe a thousand, depending upon the owner's consciousness. The higher the owner's consciousness, the greater will be the waste. By government favour, people came by the monopoly of hot-selling products in scores of depots. The owner proudly declared, "We were unable to collect 1 ½ crores of rupees because money came from all directions." Fifteen or twenty years later, one of them who earned thus was unable to see how the hundreds of crores he earned had disappeared. This is a knowledge in the soil of India, not so much in European nations.

One such English family was such a victim of the food they had once neglected. There were too many children to share too little food before the war. The boys grew up and earned enough but rationing came due to the war, and they could not buy enough food. One of them was a qualified electrical engineer who earned well after the war. He had an ulcer and could not eat. In his idealism, he gave up his job in England and came to India to serve. He knocked at several service organisations. No one needed his free service and would feed him in return. He had no money now and NO FOOD. He became anaemic and oedema set in. For one reason or another, the food the family had thrown away took its full revenge on this man. Those who have insight into life can see how unforgiving these inanimate objects are, especially the way in which you miss them later is exactly the fashion in which they are humiliated!