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
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.
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.
You have no right to judge a man unless you are capable of doing what he does better than himself.
It is one of the highest virtues − not to poke your noise in the affairs of 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 help for our progress. And when the mirror is sincere and of goodwill, the value of the help becomes considerable.
16 August 1967
Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles and the East-West Cultural Center 