The Impersonal Life

by Joseph Sieber Benner

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The Inner Life 1933

not exchanging service, they are exchanging material warmth. When two monkeys pick off each other’s fleas, they are not exchanging service, they are exchanging palatable fleas.

But when two business men are exchanging service because of the money each hopes to gain by the transaction, they are human to the extent that they are able to recognize an imper- sonal medium such as money. The actual transaction is no more than an exchange of fleas, nor can the Rotary and other Business Clubs gloss over the fact. Only the intelligence ex- hibited is human.

If a man graduates out of the animal and human methods of exchange and enters the Kingdom where economic systems no longer cause grief, it will be because he renders service not in exchange for service or fleas, but because he recognizes that his service is demanded by a Cosmic Scheme, and his service constitutes his relation and his obligation to a Cosmic Whole. And until money is seen as the symbol of this impersonal, uni- versal service to a Whole, it will remain as mischievous and destructive as were the well-meaning entities that have de- delivered me for many months.

When man has accomplished this, he will no longer be hu- man. He will be in the consciousness of a God, and will wield the attributes of a God; and the Kingdom of economic free- dom will descend from heaven to earth.

WHEN LOOSED FROM SELF

FOR MORE than once when I

Sat all alone revolving in myself

The word that is the symbol of myself,

The mortal limit of the self was loosed,

And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud

Melts into Heaven; I touched my limbs—the limbs

Were strange, not mine—and yet no shade of doubt

But utter clearness, and through loss of self

The gain of such large life as match with ours,

Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,

Themselves but shadows of a shadow world.

—From Tennyson.


When loosed from self


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