In his book Small Is Beautiful, noted British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote:

Insights of wisdom … enable us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life necessarily sets man against man and nation against nation, because man’s needs are infinite and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.*

It is a fact that no matter how much sense gratification a person gets, he will never be satisfied. Material food, material things, material sense gratification cannot satisfy the atma (spirit soul). Just as the body needs material food, so the spirit soul needs spiritual food. To try to satisfy one’s spiritual craving with material things leads to endless consumption, greed, envy, violence, and war. Western people have as much sense gratification as one could ever want, yet they are not satisfied. Why? Because they are spiritually empty.

~ Jagad Guru Chris Butler (Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa)
© 2007 Science of Identity Foundation
* E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 38.

There is more than enough food, water, fuel and so on to satisfy the actual needs of everyone on the planet. But there is not enough to satisfy everyone's greed. Even if it were physically possible for you to consume all the food, water, and fuel in the world, you still would not be satisfied.“ “Material food” cannot satisfy spiritual craving. Since the materialist is never satisfied, he never feels that he has had enough.

There is enough in the world to fulfill everyone’s needs, but not enough to fulfill everyone’s greed. In some parts of the world, people are dying from severe undernourishment, while in other parts of the world people are dying from obesity.

~ Jagad Guru Chris Butler (Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa)
© 2007 Science of Identity Foundation