All human activities can be located somewhere along a spectrum that is anchored on one end by spirituality and the other by physicality. Praying is near the spiritual end, reading and writing, composing music, and making tools are its neighbours. As the source of both great sensual pleasure and also all new life, sex might be somewhere near the mid spectrum, while eating and all other bodily functions belong over towards the physical end.
So where do commercial transactions fit? When a man exchanges coins in his pocket for goods he desires, is he performing a physical act or a spiritual one?
One way of identifying a spiritual act is by determining whether a chimpanzee would understand the action. When I return home from work and slump into a comfortable armed chair, my pet primate undoubtedly sympathises. As I move to the dinner table and begin eating, he certainly knows what is going on. When I open a new newspaper however, and hold it motionless before my face for 20 minutes, he becomes quite confused.
The criterion for the spiritual is whether the action can be replicated by a machine full up if a human soul is indispensable for a certain process, that process is at least partially spiritual. Only a human soul can compose music that inspires men and March to war or bring a lump to one throat. No machine exhibits loyalty or can even test whether an individual possesses that quality. We therefore know loyalty to be another spiritual characteristic.
These tests suggest that a business transaction is more spiritual than physical. A chimpanzee would not have the slightest idea of what is transpiring between a proprietor and a customer at a store counter. No machines exist that can in dependently affect transactions, nor can they predict whether a customer will buy something or for how much. Economic exchange takes place only after two thinking human beings will the exchange into existence. The process is spiritual.
It is important to analyse actions because we human beings are always slightly uneasy with pursuits that lack spiritual overtones completely. When necessary, we superimposed spirituality just to avoid being exclusively physical because it makes us feel uncomfortably animallike. We apply ceremony and rituals or actions that are also animalistic.
