Evil/Criticism/Blaming.....

· Condemn none; if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so.

· No man should be judged by his defects.

· Do not be jealous of anyone. Look not to the faults of others.

· This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay blame upon anyone outside, but be a man, stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true.

· Do not go against anything-----------ours is to put the chemicals together, the Lord knows how and when the crystal will form.

· Do not disturb, but help everyone to get higher and higher; include all humanity.

· Do not recognize wickedness in others. Wickedness is ignorance, weakness. What is the good of telling people they are weak? Criticism and destruction are of no avail. We must give them something higher; tell them of their own glorious nature, their birthright.

· Never talk about the faults of others, no matter how bad they may be. Nothing is ever gained by that. You never help anyone by telling about his faults, but you do him an injury, and injure yourself as well.

· No one is to blame for our miseries but ourselves.

· Every man must begin where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him.

· Do not try to disturb the faith of any man. If you can, give him something better; if you can, get hold of a man where he stands and give him a push upwards.

· Blame neither man, nor God, nor anyone in the world. When you find yourselves suffering, blame yourselves, and try to do better.

· Man never progresses from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lesser truth to higher truth------------ but it is never from error to truth.

· Therefore, if you have knowledge and see a man weak, do not condemn him. Go to his level and help him if you can. He must grow.

· Bring in the light and the evil goes in a moment.

· It is gentleness that has the strength to live on and to fructify and not mere brutality and physical force.

· The evils that are in the world are caused by none else but ourselves.

· Each is responsible for the evil anywhere in the world.

· Evil exists, and there is no shirking the fact.

· In doing evil we injure ourselves and others also.

· He alone is a sinner who sees a sinner in another man.

· How can we see evil unless it is in us?

· The Vedanta recognises no sin, it only recognises error.

· This “me and mine” is the very root of all the evil in the world.

· We ought not to hate anyone. This world will always continue to be a mixture of good and evil. Our duty is to sympathies with the weak and to love even the wrongdoer. The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually.

· Nature wants us to react, to return blow for blow, cheating for cheating, lie for lie, to hit back with all our might. Then it requires a super divine power not to hit back, to keep control, to be unattached.

· Say, ‘This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing, proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.’ That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by someone else, I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourselves.

· You must be perfectly pure. Do not think of evil things, such thoughts will surely drag you down.

· Bear all evil and misery without one murmur of hurt, without one thought of unhappiness, resistance, remedy, or retaliation.

· Give up all self, as egotism; get out of anger, lust, give all to God. Blame none if evil comes.

· Bear with everyone’s shortcomings. Forgive offences by the millions.

· The more opposition there is the better. Does a river acquire velocity unless there is resistance? The newer and better a thing is the more opposition it will meet with the onset. It is opposition which foretells success.

· Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. Children finding glass beads in a mud puddle, that is the good of the world. Look at it with calm complacency; see good and evil as the same, both are merely ‘God’s play’; enjoy all.

· We must not look down with contempt on others. All of us are going towards the same goal. The difference between the weakness and strength is one of degree; the difference between virtue and vice is one of degree; the difference between heaven and hell is one of degree; the difference between life and death is one of degree; all difference in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

· Go on! Do not look back if you think you have done something that is not right. Now, do you believe you could be what you are today if you had not made those mistakes before?.............

· Bless men, when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing you; they can only hurt themselves. Go where people hate you, let them thrash the ego out of you and you will get nearer to the Lord. Like the mother-monkey, we hug our ‘baby’, the world, as long as we can, but at last when we are driven to put it under our feet and step on it then we are ready to come to God. Blessed it is to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

· The perfect life would be a wonderful harmony between doing and suffering.

· Do not fight with people; do not antagonize anyone.

· Let people praise you or blame you, let fortune smile or frown upon you, let your body fall today or after a yuga, see that you do not deviate from the path of truth. How much of tempests and waves one had to weather, before one reaches the heaven of peace. The greater a man has become, the firer ordeal he has had to pass through.

· Live in harmony with all. Give up all idea of egoism, and entertain no sectarian views. Useless wrangling is a great sin.

· Let there be action without reaction.

· There is neither sin nor virtue; there is only ignorance.

· The power of suffering is infinitely greater than the power of doing; the power of love is infinitely of greater potency than the power of hatred.

· Each work has to pass through these stages---------------ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Each man who thinks ahead of his time is sure to be misunderstood.

· Man never progresses from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lesser truth to higher truth---------------but it is never from error to truth.

· Resist not evil. Face it! You are higher than evil.

· There is no happiness higher than what a man obtains by this attitude of non-offensiveness, to all creation.

· Hate not the most abject sinner, look not to his exterior.

· Go on loving. If a man is angry, there is no reason why you should be angry; if he degrades himself, that is no reason why you should degrade yourself.

· Analyse yourselves and you will find that every blow you have received, came to you because you prepared yourselves for it.

· Bear with the various opinions of everybody. Patience, purity, and perseverance will prevail.

· Man is not traveling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth.

· Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness?

· Darkness is less light; evil is less good; impurity is less purity.

· When God and good and everything else is in us, there is no evil.

· The cause of evil is our desire to be superior to others and our selfishness. The moment that the world becomes unselfish all evil will vanish. So long as society tries to cure evil by laws and institutions, evil will not be cured. The world has tried this method ineffectually for thousands of years.

The Only Cure for Evil

Force against force never cures, and the only cure for evil is unselfishness.

· It is easy to strike a blow, but tremendously hard to stay the hand.

· I can not see evil unless I be evil.

· Force against force never cures, and the only cure of evil is unselfishness.

· Know partiality to be the chief cause of all evil.

· Jealousy is the root of all evil, and a most difficult thing to conquer.

· We must try our best to destroy ignorance and evil. Only we have to learn that evil is destroyed by the growth of good.

· Life is full of ills, the world is full of evils.

· Be bold, face facts as facts. Do not be chased about the universe by evil. Evils are evils. What of that?

· The real evil is idleness, which is the principal cause of our poverty.

· A person living in society, specially as a house holder, should make a show of the spirit of resisting evil for purpose of self-defence, but at the same time trying to avoid paying back evil for evil.

· It is a change of the soul itself for the better that alone will cure the evils of life.

· All evil comes, as our scriptures say, relying upon differences.

· It is only selfishness that causes the difference between good and evil.

· Beget no evil.

· Deny evil, create none.

· All the evil acts must produce their results also.

· Therefore, the only thing we can do is to understand that all this work against evil is more subjective than objective. The work against evil is more educational than actual, however big we may talk. This, first of all, is the idea of work against evil; and it ought to make us calmer; it ought to take fanaticism out of our blood.

· Resist not evil. Face it! You are higher than evil.

· Blows are what awaken us and help to break the dream. They show us the insufficiency of this world and make us long to escape, to have freedom.

· Don’t be ruffled if now and then you get a brush from the world; it will be over in no time, and everything will be all right.

· Don’t enter into wrangles with anybody---------------always maintain a calm attitude.

· Useless wrangling is a great sin.

· Use agreeable and wholesome language towards even the greatest enemy.

· Go on doing good, thinking holy thoughts continuously, that is the only way to suppress base impressions. Never say any man is hopeless, because he only represents a character, a bundle of habits, which can be checked by new and better ones. Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits alone can reform character…………….The chaste brain has tremendous energy and gigantic will power.

· Each human being stands for the divine.

· Goodness is our nature, perfection is our nature, not imperfection, not impurity.

· Only cowards sin, brave men never; no, not even in mind.

· If your freedom hurts others, you are not free there; you must not hurt others.

· What you have inside you is that you see in others.

· Refer UNSELFISHNESS; LOVE LOVE LOVE; THINKING; LOVE;

· Within every man, there is an idea; the external man, is only the outward manifestation, the mere language of this idea within.

· The ideal of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

· The miseries of the world cannot be cured by physical help only. Until man’s nature changes, these physical needs will always arise, and miseries will always be felt, and no amount of physical help will cure them completely. The only solution of this problem is to make mankind pure. Ignorance is the mother of all the evil and all the misery we see. Let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, not before.

· Misery is caused by sin, and by no other cause.

· Inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means resistance. Resist all evils, mental and physical; and when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come.

· If you know that you are positively other than your body, you have then none to fight with or struggle against; you are dead to all ideas of selfishness.

· We get only what we deserve.

· Know that talking ill of others in private is a sin, you must wholly avoid it. Many things may occur to the mind, but it gradually makes a mountain of a mole-hill, if you try to express them. Everything ends, if you forgive and forget.

· Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is any sin, this is the only sin----------------------to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

· From all of you I want this that you must discard for ever self-aggrandisement, faction-mongering, and jealousy. You must be all-forbearing like Mother Earth. If you can achieve this, the world will be at your feet.

· You gain nothing by becoming cowards.

· Become a True Optimist

Control Everything

Vedanta philosophy……………takes things as they are. It admits that this world is a mixture of good and evil, happiness and misery, and that to increase the one, must necessity increase the other. There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms………….It does not say that this world is all evil or all good. It says that our evil is of no less value than our good, and our good of no more value than our evil. They are bound together……………but beyond and behind all these manifestations, the Vedanta finds out that Unity. It says, “Give up what is evil and give up what is good”. What remains then? Behind good and evil stands something which is yours, the real you……………and it is that which is manifesting itself as good and bad. Know that first, and then and then alone you will be true optimist, and not before; for then you will be able to control everything. Control these manifestations and you will be at liberty to manifest the real “you”. First be master of yourself.

· Stand upon the Self, then only can we truly love the world. Take a very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world. It is but baby’s play, and we know that, so cannot be disturbed by it. If the mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased with blame. All pleasures of the senses or even of the mind are evanescent, but within ourselves is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon nothing. It is perfectly free, it is bliss. The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are. The pleasure of the Self is what the world calls religion.

· Hold yourself as a witness and go on working.

· Never tell yourselves or others that you are weak.

· We are bound by the senses; they play upon us, make fools of us all the time.

· Control your senses.

· Know that all sins and all evils can be summed up in that one word----------weakness. It is weakness that is the motive power in all evil-doing. It is weakness that is the source of all selfishness. It is weakness that makes men injure others. It is weakness that makes them manifest what they are not in reality.

· Ignorance is the cause of which sin is the result.

· We are to be saved from sin by being saved from ignorance.

• This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures a world for himself.
• Guess against guess makes fight.
• The body is our enemy, and yet is our friend.
• Serve diabolical.
• The great error in all ethical systems, without exception, has been the failure of teaching the means by which man could refrain from doing evil. All the systems of ethics teach, "Do not steal!" Very good; but why does a man steal? Because all stealing, robbing, and other evil actions, as a rule, have become automatic. The systematic robber, thief, liar, unjust man and woman, are all these in spite of themselves! It is really a tremendous psychological problem. We should look upon man in the most charitable light. It is not so easy to be good. What are you but mere machines until you are free? Should you be proud because you are good? Certainly not. You are good because you cannot help it. Another is bad because he cannot help it. If you were in his position, who knows what you would have been? The woman in the street, or the thief in the jail, is the Christ that is being sacrificed that you may be a good man. Such is the law of balance. All the thieves and the murderers, all the unjust, the weakest, the wickedest, the devils, they all are my Christ! I owe a worship to the God Christ and to the demon Christ! That is my doctrine, I cannot help it. My salutation goes to the feet of the good, the saintly, and to the feet of the wicked and the devilish! They are all my teachers, all are my spiritual fathers, all are my Saviours. I may curse one and yet benefit by his failings; I may bless another and benefit by his good deeds. This is as true as that I stand here. I have to sneer at the woman walking in the street, because society wants it! She, my Saviour, she, whose street-walking is the cause of the chastity of other women! Think of that. Think, men and women, of this question in your mind. It is a truth — a bare, bold truth! As I see more of the world, see more of men and women, this conviction grows stronger. Whom shall I blame? Whom shall I praise? Both sides of the shield must be seen.

The task before us is vast; and first and foremost, we must seek to control the vast mass of sunken thoughts which have become automatic with us. The evil deed is, no doubt, on the conscious plane; but the cause which produced the evil deed was far beyond in the realms of the unconscious, unseen, and therefore more potent.

Practical psychology directs first of all its energies in controlling the unconscious, and we know that we can do it. Why? Because we know the cause of the unconscious is the conscious; the unconscious thoughts are the submerged millions of our old conscious thoughts, old conscious actions become petrified — we do not look at them, do not know them, have forgotten them. But mind you, if the power of evil is in the unconscious, so also is the power of good. We have many things stored in us as in a pocket. We have forgotten them, do not even think of them, and there are many of them, rotting, becoming positively dangerous; they come forth, the unconscious causes which kill humanity. True psychology would, therefore, try to bring them under the control of the conscious. The great task is to revive the whole man, as it were, in order to make him the complete master of himself. Even what we call the automatic action of the organs within our bodies, such as the liver etc., can be made to obey our commands.

· Love alone is the fittest thing to survive and not hatred.

· Everything works for the best.

· If there is any sin in the world, it is weakness.

· The god in you is the god in all. If you have not known this, you have known nothing. How can there be difference? It is all one. Every being is the temple of the most high; if you can see that, good, if not, spirituality has yet to come to you.

· TALK NOT ABOUT IMPURITY, BUT SAY THAT WE ARE PURE.

· We must go out, we must conquer the world through our spirituality and philosophy. There is no other alternative, we must do it or die.

· The seeing of many is the greatest sin of all the world. See all as self and love all; let all idea of separateness go.

· If your ideal is matter, matter shalt thou be. Behold! Our ideal is the spirit. That alone exists. Nothing else exists, and like Him we live for ever.

· If you project hatred and jealousy they will rebound on you with compound interest. No power can avert them; when once you have put them in motion, you will have to bear them. Remembering this will prevent you from doing wicked things.

· If anybody comes to you for vain dispute, politely withdraw yourself. You must express your sympathy with people of all sects. When these cardinal virtues will be manifested in you, then only you will be able to work with great energy.

· If we are pure, we cannot see impurity.

· Say, “I am the Spirit! Nothing external can touch me”. When evil thoughts arise, repeat that, give that sledge-hammer blow on their heads, “I am the Spirit! I am the Witness, the Ever-Blessed! I have no reason to do, no reason to suffer, I have finished with everything, I am the witness. I am in my picture gallery---------this universe is my museum, I am looking at these successive paintings. They are all beautiful. Whether good or evil. I see the marvelous skill, but it is all one. Infinite flames of the great Painter! ”

· BEAR ALL EVIL AND MISERY WITHOUT ONE MURMUR OF HURT, WITHOUT ONE THOUGHT OF UNHAPPINESS, RESISTANCE, REMEDY, OR RETALIATION.

· MEN ARE MORE VALUABLE THAN ALL THE WEALTH OF THE WORLD.

· There is no difference between the secular and the spiritual. EACH ONE IS MOVING TOWARDS FREEDOM. Each action is a step towards the absolute.

· Spirit alone exists. Nothing else exists.

· …………….for weakness is sin.

· We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful.

· “Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life—face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.

· Let us make our hearts as big as an ocean, to go beyond all the trifles of the world and see it only as a picture. We can then enjoy the world without being in any way affected by it.

· The more we grow in love and virtue and holiness, the more we see love and virtue and holiness outside. All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm (which is in your power to do) and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you.

· It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world --------------- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

· THE WHOLE OF LIFE IS ONLY A SWAN SONG! NEVER FORGET THOSE LINES:

The lion, when stricken to the heart,

gives out his mightiest roar.

When smitten on the head, the cobra lifts its hood.

And the majesty of the soul comes forth,

only when a man is wounded to his depths.

· If we enjoy everything in the Self, and as the Self, no misery or reaction will come.

· Seeing difference is the cause of all misery, and ignorance is the cause of seeing difference.

· Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life---------these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow---------never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times; and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.

· Those that want to help mankind must take their own pleasure and pain, name and fame, and all sorts of interests, and make a bundle of them and throw them into the sea, and then come to the Lord. This is what all the Master said and did.

· The knowing ones must have pity on the ignorant.

· Think always, “I am ever-pure, ever-knowing, and ever-free. How I can do anything evil? Can I ever be fooled like ordinary people with the insignificant charms of lust and wealth?” Strengthen the mind with such thoughts. This will surely bring real good.

· Do not be miserable! Do not repent! What is done is done.

· This world for me, not I for the world. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. It is the nature of the brute to remain where he is (not to progress); it is the nature of man to seek good and avoid bad; it is the nature of God to seek neither, but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be gods! Make the heart like an ocean; go beyond all the trifles of the world; be mad with joy even at evil, see the world as a picture and then enjoy its beauty, knowing that nothing affects you. Children finding glass beads in a mud puddle, that is the good of the world. Look at it with calm complacency; see good and evil as the same, both are merely ‘God’s play’; enjoy all.

· Many of us get many messages in our lives, or think we get them. As long as the message is regarding our own selves, go on doing what you please. But when it is in regard to our contact with and behavior to others, think a hundred times before you act upon it—and then you will be safe.

· None can hate others without degenerating himself.

· Do not repent, do not brood over past deeds. You can not undo, the effect must come, face it; but be careful never to do the same thing again.

· We Vedantists in every difficulty ought to ask the subjective questions, ‘Why do I see that? Why can I not conquer this with love?’

· It is very easy to search for faults, but the characteristic of a saint lies in looking for merits.

· Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only cause.

· We cannot see impurity without having it inside ourselves.

· Live in harmony with all. Give up all idea of egoism, and entertain no sectarian views. Useless wrangling is a great sin.

· Let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, not before.

· Knowing that the Love is everywhere, the sages give up praising and blaming.

· Do not drag others down to where you are.

· Remove the veils of ignorance by purity, then we manifest ourselves as we really are and know that we were never in bondage.

· Stand up, be bold, and take the blame on your own shoulders.

· To call another man a sinner is the worst thing you can do.

· Love is truth, and hatred is false, because hatred makes for multiplicity.

· Have charity towards all beings. Pity those who are in distress. Love all creatures. Do not be jealous of anyone. Look not to the faults of others.

· It is hatred that separates man from man, therefore it is wrong and false.

· Stand aside, and freely let these frictions come. You feel the frictions only when you are outside of it simply as a witness and as a student, you will be able to see that there are millions and millions of channels in which God is manifesting Himself as Love.

· Think of your higher self, not of your lower.

· Each one of us will have to discover.

· Do not let the thoughts grasp you; stand aside, and they will die away.

· Life to everyone must be a compromise.

· Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

· If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

· If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.

· The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.

· Turn thy gaze inward, where resides the Paramatman.

· “Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life—face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.

· Everything in this world, whether good or bad, belongs to God.

· We must “sin” (that is, make mistakes) in order to rise to Godhood.

· You must not criticise others; you must criticise yourself.

· I shall work incessantly until I die; and even after death I shall work for the good of the world. Truth is infinitely more weighty than untruth; so is goodness. If you possess these, they will make their way by sheer gravity.

· Whatever is weak and corrupt is liable to die------------------what are we to do with it?

· Nothing is baser than calling our brother a sinner.

· Our conquerors must be made Devas by the power of our spirituality.

· See Him in all, good and bad alike.

· OUR MOTTO

Sympathy for the poor, the downtrodden, even unto death----------------this is our motto.

· Never forget that a man is made great and perfect as much by his faults as by his virtues.

· Persons are but the embodiments, the illustrations of the principles.

· Even fighting in self-defence is wrong, though it is higher than fighting in aggression.

· The Vedas cannot show you Brahman, you are That already; they can only help to take away the veil that hides the truth from our eyes. The first veil to vanish is ignorance, and when that is gone, sin goes, next desire ceases, selfishness ends and all misery disappears. This cessation of ignorance can only come when I know that God and I are one; in other words, identify yourself with Atman, not with human limitations. Disidentify yourself with the body and all will cease. This is the secret of healing. The universe is a case of hypnotization; dehypnotize yourself and cease to suffer.