Kuber is the guardian of material wealth. He is a Yaksha. Yaksha and Yakshini are beings of the mid worlds, the vital worlds which is home to powerful vital devas as well as strong daityas. These beings are not categorised into good and bad. They can sway on either side. Kuber himself is however a wise yaksha who gave the famous Kaumodaki gada to Hanuman ji. In fact being the guardian of wealth he needs help from the gods as he is under threat of the Asuric forces. He himself has been their victim. Ravana, his half brother actually snatched away his famous Pushpak viman. Dyuman bhai, one of the Ashram Trustees, once described a vision wherein he while thinking about arranging money for the needs of the Ashram, he had an unexpected visitation from Kuber who promised that the Ashram would be provided with the money that is needed.
Money itself is not hostile. It is a force in the vital world that is needed for the Divine Work, in the external field. Sri Aurobindo writes thus about money.
‘Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose. This is indeed one of the three forces—power, wealth, sex—that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura. For this reason most spiritual disciplines insist on a complete self-control, detachment and renunciation of all bondage to wealth and of all personal and egoistic desire for its possession. Some even put a ban on money and riches and proclaim poverty and bareness of life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the Sadhaka.
You must neither turn with an ascetic shrinking from the money power, the means it gives and the objects it brings, nor cherish a rajasic attachment to them or a spirit of enslaving self-indulgence in their gratifications. Regard wealth simply as a power to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service.’
Sri Aurobindo wrote this prayer below and then signed it himself.
‘I am the God of Wealth, the Strong and Splendid, I am the Master of the thousands and the Regent of the millions, I am the puissant Creator, the full-handed gatherer, the opulent disposer of treasures. All the riches of every kind that are in the earth and on the earth and below it and all the riches that are in the waters are mine by right; I have power over all their plenitudes. My power is for the Mother; I call all these riches for her, that I may dedicate them to her, that I may lay them at the feet of the Mother of Radiances.’
ॐ तथास्तु.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
