In ordinary life people always judge wrongly because they judge by mental standards and generally by conventional standards. The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p351
Timidity is a form of vanity. When you are timid, it means that you attach much more importance to the opinion others have of you than to the sincerity of your action.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p280
It is the petty ego in each that likes to discover and talk about the (real or unreal) defects of others—and it does not matter whether they are real or unreal. The ego has no right to judge them, because it has not the right view or the right spirit. It is only the calm, disinterested, dispassionate, all-compassionate and all-loving Spirit that can judge and see rightly the strength and the weakness in each being.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, pp351-52
…. The lower vital takes a mean and petty pleasure in picking out the faults of others and thereby one hampers both one’s own progress and that of the subject of the criticism.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p352
If you look closely, you will see that all these things—the rudeness of one, the anger of another—are exceedingly slight things which should be received with indifference. Do not allow them to trouble you so much. The one thing of supreme importance is your sadhana and your spiritual growth. Let nothing touch or disturb that.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p314
Never judge on appearances, still less on gossip.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 15, p42
When you are doing sadhana, you have not to care what others want or think or say, but only for what is right and what the Divine wants of you.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p314
Such reproaches (the stone etc.) are quite usual from those who do not understand against the sadhak when he remains firm in his path against the ordinary human vital demands upon him. But that should not perturb you. It is better to be a stone on the road to the Divine than soft and weak clay in the muddy paths of the ordinary vital human nature.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p315
… a young girl who was terribly troubled by other’s opinions, so I answered her:
“The Supreme Lord’s opinion alone matters.
“The Supreme Lord alone deserves all our love and gives it back a hundredfold.”
The Mother – Agenda: Vol. 11, p80
You are quite right in not allowing the moods and fancies of people to affect you. You must soar above all that in the constant feeling of the Divine’s Presence, Love and Protection.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p279
Don’t let anything from outside approach and disturb you. What people think, do or say is of little importance. The only thing that counts is your relation with the Divine.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p279
It is always regrettable when one is open to the influence of another person. One shouldn’t admit any influence except that of the Divine.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p279
To feel hurt by what others do or think or say is always a sign of weakness and proof that the whole being is not exclusively turned towards the Divine, not under the divine influence alone. And then, instead of bringing with oneself the divine atmosphere made of love, tolerance, understanding, patience, it is one’s ego that throws itself out, in response to another’s ego, with stiffness and hurt feelings, and the disharmony is aggravated. The ego never understands that the Divine has different workings in different people and that to judge things from one’s own egoistic point of view is a great mistake bound to increase the confusion. What we do with passion and intolerance cannot be divine, because the Divine works only in peace and harmony.
You are distressed because instead of listening to the voice of your soul, you have accepted the suggestions of vulgar minds and obscure consciousnesses who see ugliness and impurity everywhere because they are not in contact with the psychic purity.
Refuse to listen to these wrong suggestions, turn deliberately to the Divine and rekindle your faith in His Supreme Guidance.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, pp 279-80
Do not worry about the reactions of people, however unpleasant they may be—the vital is everywhere and in everybody full of impurities and the physical full of unconsciousness. These two imperfections have to be cured, however long it may take, and we have only to work at it patiently and courageously.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p280
It is this feeling of dislike that must have been the ground for the attack to come in. All feelings of dislike for other sadhaks should be absolutely rejected. Each has his own nature, his own difficulties and has to struggle out of them with the Divine Help. Defects and limitations in them should not be made a ground for dislike.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p346
You can disapprove [of what people say], but there should be no feeling of dislike or disgust for the people.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p347
The position you took finally about what happened today is the right one—to make the effort for one’s own perfection and not to be disturbed by any mistake in others but reply by a silent will for their perfection also is always the right attitude.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p347
If you find fault with anybody, that fault is likely to increase in that person and to come also into you.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p352
To become entirely indifferent to the good and bad opinion of others, especially those who are or were near, and stand on the Truth alone is very difficult; some reaction of the old nature can easily come across; but if one remains calm and firm within, these surface reactions quickly disappear and their rejection helps the remnants of the old nature to disappear.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p314
…. it is certainly always possible to get a lowering of consciousness from someone who is always gossiping or talking of her fears and difficulties. As for being kind, there is nothing harmful in kindness itself, but there is no reason why you should allow another to invade you with things you don’t want to feel or hear. There is a measure in all things—and besides one should keep oneself inwardly free and not admit that the vital movements of others should be a cause of difficulties—one has enough to do combating one’s own.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p315
I wanted to ask: what is the best attitude? Is it an attitude of intervention or an attitude of non-interference? Which is better?
Ah, that’s just it, to intervene you must be sure that you are right; you must be sure that your vision of things is superior, preferable or truer than the vision of the other person or people. Then it is always wiser not to intervene—people intervene without rhyme or reason, simply because they are in the habit of giving their opinion to others.
Even when you have the vision of the true thing, it is very rarely wise to intervene. It only becomes indispensable when someone wants to do something which will necessarily lead to a catastrophe. Even then, intervention (smiling) is not always very effective.
In fact, intervention is justified only when you are absolutely sure that you have the vision of truth. Not only that, but also a clear vision of the consequences. To intervene in someone else’s actions, one must be a prophet—a prophet. And a prophet with total goodness and compassion. One must even have the vision of the consequences that the intervention will have in the destiny of the other person. People are always giving each other advice: “Do this, don’t do that.” I see it: they have no idea how much confusion they create, how they increase confusion and disorder. And sometimes they impair the normal development of the individual.
I consider that opinions are always dangerous and most often absolutely worthless.
You should not meddle with other people’s affairs, unless first of all you are infinitely wiser than they are—of course, one always thinks that one is wiser!—but I mean in an objective way and not according to your own opinion; unless you see further and better and are yourself above all passions, desires and blind reactions. You must be above all these things yourself to have the right to intervene in someone else’s life—even when he asks you to do so. And when he does not, it is simply meddling with something which is not your business.
The Mother – On Thoughts and Aphorisms: CWM, Vol. 10, p235-36
Unless your vision is constantly the vision of the Divine in all things, you have not only no right but no capacity to judge the state which others are in. And to pronounce a judgment on someone without having this vision spontaneously, effortlessly, is precisely an example of the mental presumptuousness of which Sri Aurobindo always spoke….And it so happens that one who has the vision, the consciousness, who is capable of seeing the truth in all things, never feels the need to judge anything whatever. For he understands everything and knows everything. Therefore, once and for all, you must tell yourselves that the moment you begin to judge things, people, circumstances, you are in the most total human ignorance.
In short, one could put it like this: when one understands, one no longer judges and when one judges, it means that one doesn’t know.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol.9, pp 134-35
Judging people is one of the first things which must be totally swept away from the consciousness before you can take even a step on the supramental path, because that is not a material progress or a bodily progress, it is only a very little progress of thought, mental progress. And unless you have swept your mind clean of all its ignorance, you cannot hope to take a step on the supramental path.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol.9, p135
All these ideas of good and evil, good and bad, higher, lower, all these notions belong to the ignorance of the human mind, and if one really wants to come into contact with the divine life, one must liberate oneself totally from this ignorance, one must rise to a region of consciousness where these things have no reality. The feeling of superiority and inferiority completely disappears, it is replaced by something else which is of a very different nature—a sort of capacity for filtering appearances, penetrating behind masks, shifting the point of view.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol.9, p135
The conclusion is always the same: the only true attitude is one of humility, of silent respect before what one does not know, and of inner aspiration to come out of one’s ignorance. One of the things which would make humanity progress most would be for it to respect what it does not know, to acknowledge willingly that it does not know and is therefore unable to judge. We constantly do just the opposite. We pass final judgments on things of which we have no knowledge whatsoever, and say in a peremptory manner, “This is possible. That is impossible,” when we do not even know what it is we are speaking of. And we put on superior airs because we doubt things of which we have never had any knowledge.
Men believe that doubt is a sign of superiority, whereas it is really a sign of inferiority.
Scepticism and doubt are two of the greatest obstacles to progress; they add presumptuousness to ignorance.
The Mother – On Thoughts and Aphorisms: CWM, Vol. 10, pp 26-27
