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PART FIVE
HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS Judging Others
The more a mind is ignorant, the more easily it judges everything it does not know or is incapable of understanding.
I want the peace to come into your mind and also the quiet, patient wisdom which prevents one from jumping to hasty conclusions and judgments.
It is always better to keep a quiet mind and to abstain from rushing to conclusions before you have the necessary information. 12 April 1932 Tell your vital not to judge on appearances and to collaborate. All is well in the long run.
You were wrong to be disturbed; that shows that suspicion was in your mind and heart. And if one is perfectly pure oneself, one cannot have any suspicion. The mind is incapable of knowing; it judges by appearances and not even by their totality but by what it can perceive of them, and its judgment is necessarily false. Only the truth-consciousness can know the truth, and it never suspects or judges. 14 November 1952 Page − 291 Before deciding that something is wrong in others or in circumstances, you must be quite sure of the correctness of your judgment − and what judgment is correct so long as one lives in the ordinary consciousness that is based on ignorance and filled with falsehood? Only the Truth-Consciousness can judge. So it is better, in all circumstances, to leave the judgment to the Divine.
Whenever somebody is not just according to the usual pattern, if all the parts and activities in him have not the usual balance, if some faculties are more or less missing and some others are exaggerated, the common and easy habit is to declare him “abnormal”and to have done with him after this hasty condemnation. When this summary judgment is passed by somebody in a position of power the consequences can be disastrous. Such people ought to know what true compassion is, then they would act differently. The first necessity is to abstain from thinking of anyone in a depreciatory way. When we meet a person, our criticising thoughts give to him, so to say, a blow on the nose which naturally creates a revolt in him. It is our mental formation that acts like a deforming mirror to that person, and then one would become queer even if one were not. Why cannot people remove from their minds the idea that somebody or other is not normal? By what criterion do they judge? Who is really normal? I can tell you that not a single person is normal, because to be normal is to be divine. Man has one leg in animality and the other in humanity. At the same time he is a candidate for divinity. His is not a happy condition. The true animals are better off. And they are also more harmonious among themselves. They do not quarrel as human beings do. They do not put on airs, they do not consider some as inferiors and keep them at a distance. Page − 292 One must have a sympathetic outlook and learn to cooperate with one’s fellows, building them up and helping them instead of sneering at whatever seems not up to the mark. Even if somebody has a deficiency and is hypersensitive and self-willed, you cannot hope to improve him by summary measures of compulsion or expulsion. Do not try to force his ego by your own, by behaving according to the same pattern. Guide him gently and understandingly along the lines of his own nature. See whether you can place him where he can work without coming into conflict with others. If those who are in power are puffed up with their own importance, they disturb the true working. Whatever their abilities, their achievement is not the real thing. But it is not that they are always lacking in good-will. They have false ideas of what is proper. If they become more conscious of the divine aim, they can surely succeed in carrying it out.
With our own perfection grows in us a generous understanding of others. 18 July 1954 Do not trouble yourselves with what others do, I cannot repeat it to you too often. Do not judge, do not criticise, do not compare. That is not your lookout. 1957 You have no right to judge a man unless you are capable of doing what he does better than himself. 27 June 1964 Page − 293 And what is X’s criterion of judgment? Has he become divine? Only the Divine knows the true value of each one. 25 July 1971 She has climbed on the heights of a too recently acquired purity to judge and criticise with undue severity an elder brother who has always been very kind to her.
Be severe to yourself before being severe to others.
Do not mind the stupidity of others, mind your own.
It would be better if the mind also did not meddle with others’ affairs, and still more if the vital took no interest in them.
I would suggest to you for your future guidance not to meddle in matters which do not concern you. If X is still here, it is because I choose to keep her with me.
It is one of the highest virtues − not to poke your nose in the affairs of others. Page − 294
Suffering inflicted on others is not a good base on which to build spiritual realisation. To advance alone on the path can be a form of egoism. One can liberate oneself alone only if the others refuse to follow. One must therefore first offer to lead them along. And if this burdens the advance and increases the difficulties, one should take it as the effect of a special Grace that tests the sincerity of the consecration in this way. The capacity to receive the divine help is in proportion to this sincerity. 7 June 1958 To help others is the best way of helping oneself. For, if you are sincere, you will soon discover that all their difficulties and all their failures are the sure signs of the same corresponding deficiency in you. Indeed, they prove that something in you is not perfect enough to be all-powerful.
We find in others what is in us. If we always find mud around us, it proves that there is mud somewhere in us.
It is only egoism that is shocked to find egoism in others.
Each of those who are around us can be for us, provided we are attentive, a mirror in which one or more aspects of our being are reflected. If we know how to profit by it, it is a powerful Page − 295 help for our progress. And when the mirror is sincere and of goodwill, the value of the help becomes considerable.
If you have sympathy for them and a true understanding of their difficulty, you can always help them.
You bring help to him who knows how to use it.
Humanity is a sick child always wanting what is bad for him. Philanthropy is like a mother who, in order to satisfy her child’s demands, would give him the very thing that will make him worse.
It is a mistake to consider service to humanity as the highest expression of service to the Divine. To do so is to remain far too confined within the limits of an exclusive human consciousness.
The best way of helping others is to transform oneself. Be perfect and you will be in a position to bring perfection to the world.
Rise to a higher consciousness for the world to be saved. Page − 296 Change your consciousness for the world to be saved.
Change yourself if you wish to change the world. Prove by your inner transformation that a truth-consciousness can take possession of the material world and that the Divine Unity can be manifested upon earth. Organisations, however vast and complete they may be, can achieve nothing permanent unless a new force, more divine and all-powerful, expresses itself through a perfected human instrument. 23 August 1952 No material organisation, whatever its degree of preparation, is capable of bringing a solution to the miseries of man. Man must rise to a higher level of consciousness and get rid of his ignorance, limitation and selfishness in order to get rid also of his sufferings. 21 February 1955 The best way to help the world is to transform oneself by an integral and intensive yoga. July 1965 The world will be made better only in proportion as we make ourselves better. The Vedantic truth that the world is only a projection − a function − of our consciousness is as pragmatically true as it is spiritually true. The ills that humanity suffers from − collectively and individually − stem from the errors that lie at the roots of our ignorant nature. We must be cleansed of these evils − individually first of all − if we ever Page − 297 hope to see a clean world outside. A yoga of self-purification is the condition precedent to a yoga of perfection. But, in the end, a Higher Destiny leans over earth’s children and its ways are beyond calculation. 16 August 1967 So long as you do not have the power to change the world, it is useless to say that the world is wrong. And if you abolish in yourself the things that are wrong in the world, you will see that the world will no longer be wrong.
When you are truly changed, everything around you will also be changed. Page − 298 |