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enter the kingdom of God." This does not mean that those who are rich will be deprived of entry for ever. The question is not so much of the wealth but whether it is the wealth to which you attach the most value. It may be that you have nothing, you are a beggar, but if your values lie in the wealth, your life is structured towards wealth, the basis of your thinking is wealth, you calculate everything with wealth, then you may well be a poor man but you would not be able to enter the kingdom of God. Why? -- because one who believes in wealth believes in the ego. To take refuge in wealth is to take refuge in ego.
To take refuge in Rama, in God, means that one's refuge in ego has come to an end; it is the end of one's own will. The man who is full of what we call willpower will find this statement quite meaningless because he feels that, "I am my own power. My power comes from me; my success comes from me; wealth, position, prestige, all come because of me. I am the source of power; I will create wealth, expand the empire, increase my power; I will fight even death and will one day attain to the final victory." A worldly man means a man whose confidence is in his own ego.
To understand this is difficult because we attach great value to self -- confidence, we teach self-confidence, we tell every child: "Stand on your own two feet. Have confidence in yourself. Fight, resist, don't be afraid. Maintain the idea that you will win, then you will win. The very secret of competition, ambition, contest, is in keeping confidence in yourself. If you lose confidence in yourself you will waver and fall." We teach every one that, "You are immensely powerful, do not fear, fight, and if not today then tomorrow, all will come to your refuge."
The day this illusion shatters is the day one feels, "How can any power be mine, because I myself am not! 'I am' is nothing but an idea. I can be only if I can manage to remain separate from this whole existence. But if I have no air to breathe even for a few moments, I will come to an end; no sunrise and I will soon die. In this vast network of existence, even if a single little thing slips from somewhere -- all the bricks
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