Page 57 - Mystic Pathways through the Bible

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immoral or illegal methods—that is stealing. When you involve yourself in any criminal activity—you are stealing. In all criminal acts you are acquiring, misappropriating, or somehow altering something that is not rightfully yours.
If a lawyer takes up a case knowing that the person has committed a crime and he helps the person acquire freedom—he is stealing. If a doctor tells a person who doesn’t need an operation that he needs one, just for the sake of money—he is stealing. Whenever a person in any occupation has no sense of serving humanity, but only thinks about his own bene t or acquisition of money—that is stealing. Writers steal from others and claim authorship of works they have not written. Businessmen steal ideas, inventions and strategies from each other. Stealing goes on in every eld of endeavor among people who feel they must compete for success.
Even in spiritual matters there are many subtle forms of stealing. For example, if a person constantly quotes from great men or copies their external behavior or appearance, but makes no effort to understand and assimilate the real meaning of their teachings into his own life—he is a kind of spiritual thief.
Speaking from a more advanced, philosophical point of view, it is also a form of stealing even to consider your physical body to be your own: “This is mine, and this is me.” The body doesn’t belong